misplaced || l. valdez

39 || leo shows us this cool lil cliff in the woods

° ~ •. ♆ chapter thirty-nine ♆ .• ~ °
"leo shows us this cool lil cliff in the woods"

Leo led the Hephaestus cabin, Jason, Mari, Piper, and Chiron to a limestone cliff in the forest. Why this special thing was hidden at a cliff in the monster ridden forest, Mari had no clue. Leo turned to the group and smiled nervously. "Here we go."

He willed his hand to catch fire, and set it against the cliff wall.

His cabinmates gasped.

"Leo!" Nyssa cried. "You're a fire user!"

"Yeah, thanks." he said. "I know."

Jake Mason, the senior counselor for the Hephaestus cabin, said, "Holy Hephaestus. That means— it's so rare that—"

The cliff had done a good job of looking like a cliff, because Mari was left speechless when it started moving. The massive stone door made Leo's flaming hand seem insignificant.

Everyone was in shock, including Piper, Jason, and Mari, and they'd seen some pretty weird things lately. Only Chiron didn't look surprised. The centaur knit his bushy eyebrows and stroked his beared, as if the group was about to walk through a minefield.

"Welcome to Bunker Nine." Leo said confidently. "C'mon in."

° ~ •. ♆ .• ~ °

The group was silent as they toured the facility. There were giant machines, worktable, old maps and schematics, and Mari was starting to feel overwhelmed again. She saw Festus's head sitting on the central table, still battered and scorched from his final crash in Omaha.

Leo went over to it and stroked the dragon's forehead. "I'm sorry, Festus. But I won't forget you."

Mari's eyes stung a bit as she walked over. "So that's what happened at Omaha, huh? Hephaestus brought it here for you."

Leo nodded sadly.

"But you can't repair him?" Jason guessed, walking over.

"No way." Leo said. "But the head to going to be reused. Festus will be going with us."

Piper came over and frowned. "What do you mean?"

Before Leo could answer, Nyssa cried out, "Guys, look at this!"

She was standing at one of the worktables, flipping through a sketchbook— diagrams of hundreds of different machines and weapons.

"I've never seen anything like these," Nyssa said. "There are more amazing ideas here than in Daedalus's workshop. It would take a century just to prototype them all."

"Who built this place?" Jake Mason said. "And why?"

Chiron stayed silent, and Mari had a feeling that he knew the answer to that. She noticed Leo staring at something else— a giant map that covered the entire wall. It showed Camp Half-Blood with a lot of little drawings covering the Sound and the hills around the valley.

"It's a wartime command center." Leo said. "The camp was attacked once, wasn't it?"

"In the Titan War?" Piper asked.