Arsonist's Lullabye ──── Leo Valdez

9: Happy the Dragon

─────Vincent was going to sneak onto the quest, he decided.

If Percy Jackson could do it to save his "best friend" who had been kidnapped, so could Vincent (though his reasoning was a little different). Granted, the last time someone defied the whole rule of three, Bianca di Angelo had died and then there was the whole mess about the crack in the dining pavilion.

But Vincent really hoped it wouldn't happen again this time. Yes. Hope. That's all he had. As pathetic as it sounded, the best he could do was cross his fingers and hope for the best because the underworld would freeze over before Vincent let Leo go again.

Please dad don't let anyone on this quest die if I join it, xoxo your favorite son.

He prayed to his dad before he snuck out of the Ares cabin.

There were booby traps and landmines everywhere (Who the fuck puts landmines indoors??) which made it harder to sneak out, though Vincent knew the Ares campers like the back of his hand by now.

He knew Ellis talked in his sleep and dreamed about fighting dragons and murdering monsters (you know, normal teenage stuff). He knew Chloe slept with a sword under her pillow, a knife strapped to her thigh and another knife clutched in her hand. He knew Grace was anything but what her name meant, she slept snoring the loudest, spread out on her bed, cuddling a mace.

It was because he knew them and their sleeping habits, that Vincent was able to sneak out undetected.

It was sort of exciting, he had to admit, breaking camp's rules. Here he was, searching for a way out of camp, in the middle of the night, with nothing but an enchanted bag like Hermione from Harry Potter.

He wore a black t-shirt so as to not draw any attention with the bright orange camp t-shirts, a thick denim jacket drawn over it and his trusty converse.

The first and most logical place to look for a way out of camp undetected would be the woods. Sure there were a million different things out there that could kill him, but Vincent had to hope there was a way out.

The labyrinth entrance was out of the question since the whole structure was destroyed and also it made people go mad like Clarisse's boyfriend. Camp borders would alert the demigods on patrol, and Vincent didn't want to run into Argus if he tried to go through Camp Halfblood hill.

Into the woods he trudged.

─────The woods weren't like anyplace he'd been before. Leo had been raised in a north Houston apartment complex. The wildest things he'd ever seen were that rattlesnake in the cow pasture, Vincent's butt the one time he fell in the shower and Leo walked in on him and his Aunt Rosa in her nightgown, until he was sent to Wilderness School.

Even there, the school had been in the desert. No trees with gnarled roots to trip over. No streams to fall into. No branches casting dark, creepy shadows and owls looking down at him with their big reflective eyes. This was the Twilight Zone.

He stumbled along until he was sure no one back at the cabins could possibly see him. Then he summoned fire. Flames danced along his fingertips, casting enough light to see. He hadn't tried to keep a sustained burn going since he was five, at that picnic table. Since his mom's death, and burning down the Wilson's house, he hadn't tried anything. Even this tiny fire made him feel guilty.

He kept walking, looking for dragon-type clues—giant footprints, trampled trees, swaths of burning forest. Something that big couldn't exactly sneak around, right? But he saw nada. Once he glimpsed a large, furry shape like a wolf or a bear, but it stayed away from his fire, which was fine by Leo.