plague bringer - a heroes of olympus insert

𝗑𝗏. 𝗇𝖾𝗐 𝗍𝗋𝖺𝗎𝗆𝖺 𝖺𝗊𝗎𝗂𝗋𝖾𝖽

Aria was ecstatic when she saw Leo enter the room.

Piper's voice called out yet another time: "Leo?" Less certain this time, but very close.

Leo locked eyes with Aria, who immediately began shaking her head no, encouraging Leo to stay quiet. She pointed towards where their friends had ended up. He peeked around the machinery taking in the dreadful scene. Hanging directly above the assembly line, suspended by a chain from a crane on the opposite side, was a massive truck engine—just dangling thirty feet up, as if it had been left there when the factory was abandoned. Below it on the conveyor belt sat a truck chassis, and clustered around it were three dark shapes the size of forklifts. Nearby, dangling from chains on two other robotic arms, were two smaller shapes—that happened to be their two friends.

Then one of the forklift shapes rose, and Leo quietly gasped, realizing it was a humanoid of massive size. "Told you it was nothing," the thing rumbled. Its voice was too deep and feral to be human.

One of the other forklift-sized lumps shifted, and called out in Piper's voice: "Leo, help me! Help—" Then the voice changed, becoming a masculine snarl. "Bah, there's nobody out there. No demigod could be that quiet, eh?"

The first monster chuckled. "Probably ran away, if he knows what's good for him. Or the girl was lying about another demigod. Let's get cooking."

Snap. A bright orange light sizzled to life—an emergency flare—and Aria was temporarily blinded. She and Leo ducked behind the crane until the spots cleared from their eyes. Then he took another peep and Aria saw his face drop in horror.

The two smaller things dangling from crane arms weren't engines. They were Jason and Piper. Both hung upside down, tied by their ankles and cocooned with chains up to their necks. Piper was flailing around, trying to free herself. Her mouth was gagged, but at least she was alive. Jason didn't look so good. He hung limply, his eyes rolled up in his head. A red welt the size of an apple had swollen over his left eyebrow.

On the conveyor belt, the bed of the unfinished pickup truck was being used as a fire pit. The emergency flare had ignited a mixture of tires and wood, which, from the smell of it, had been doused in kerosene. A big metal pole was suspended over the flames—a spit, Aria realized, which meant this was a cooking fire.

But most terrifying of all were the cooks.

Monocle Motors: that single red eye logo. Why hadn't Aria realized sooner?

Three massive humanoids gathered around the fire. Two were standing, stoking the flames. The largest one crouched with his back to Leo and Aria. The two facing them were each ten feet tall, with hairy muscular bodies and skin that glowed red in the firelight. One of the monsters wore a chainmail loincloth that looked really uncomfortable. The other wore a ragged fuzzy toga made of fiberglass insulation, which also would not have made Aria's top ten wardrobe ideas. Other than that, the two monsters could've been twins. Each had a brutish face with a single eye in the center of his forehead. The cooks were Cyclopes.

Leo's legs started quaking and Aria understood why. They'd seen some weird things so far—storm spirits and winged gods and a metal dragon that liked Tabasco sauce. But this was different. These were actual, flesh-and-blood, ten-foot-tall living monsters who wanted to eat their friends for dinner.

She was so terrified she could hardly think, but felt more at ease with her friend by her side. Leo had his toolbelt and a backpack. However, his three-pound club hammer looked awfully small compared to those Cyclopes. Aria had her bow and sword, which would be pretty effective, but she knew they'd need to work together to win and not become dinner.

Leo suddenly slipped off his backpack and quietly started to unzip it. Aria glanced at him, before turning back to their scary friends.

The Cyclops in the chainmail loincloth walked over to Piper, who squirmed and tried to head-butt him in the eye. "Can I take her gag off now? I like it when they scream."