annais min had everything to prove and no time to do it. as one of the five children of the underworld destined to lead the seven on their journey of death and destruction, annais had the fate of the universe resting on her shoulders, holding her do...
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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: OF MONSTERS AND MEN
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IN THE EYES OF Annais Min, Leo was a man (child) of many faces. Beneath the smooth, familiar face of sarcastic defence used to protect the wounded heart buried deep, there was another waiting to tear the world in two, to release the anger from within. Annais watched with interest as he summoned fire with ease, holding his hand against a stone door and grinning as locks clanked below the surface. Around him, his cabinmates gasped in horror, but Leo's ecstatic face refused to waver.
"Leo," Nyssa exclaimed, stepping away like he'd turned his hands on her. "You're a fire user!"
"Thanks, I know."
Jake Mason breathed out a panicked sob. "Holy Hephaestus. That means... but it's so rare..."
Before he could say anything more, the door swung open, revealing a war-style bunker filled to the brim with machinery. For a moment, the group stood in stunned silence; that was, until Leo spread his arms in an introductory gesture.
"Welcome to Bunker Nine," said the fire boy. "C'mon in."
Everyone hesitated, even Annais. How had Leo found this? What else was he hiding beneath what Annais Min already knew of him? Eventually, she shoved her way to the front and joined him inside, Jason and the others following after, then his wide-eyed siblings. The first thing Annais noticed was Festus' head. It sat on the centre table, scorched at the edges from his final crash while Annais and Ezra were away, but relatively okay. Leo paused in front of him, a bitter breath lingering in the air.
"I'm sorry, Festus," he murmured, quiet enough that only Annais and their friends heard him. "But I won't forget you."
Slowly, Jason reached out and gripped his shoulder, squeezing in a gesture of comfort. "Hephaestus brought it here for you?" Leo nodded, sniffling to himself, causing Melanie to reach for him too. "But you can't repair him."
"No," Leo confirmed, sounding pained. "But the head is going to be reused. Festus is going to be with us."
Annais wasn't sure how that was possible, and from the looks of it, neither were the others. "What do you mean?" Piper asked, brows tugged into a frown.
"Well--"
A sharp cry cut through the air like a knife. On the other side of the room, Nyssa stood with a sketchbook clutched in her hands, flipping through the pages with evident anxiety. "Guys, you have to see this," she insisted, prompting her siblings to rush over with the others not far behind them. Through the crowd, Annais caught a glimpse of diagrams that only the Hephaestus children seemed to understand. "I've never seen anything like these. There are more amazing ideas here than in Daedalus' workshop. It would take a century just to prototype them..."
