Caliginosity [ Leo Valdez ]

Dwarfs Love to Pants People

During the third attack, Livana almost ate a boulder. She was peering into the fog, wondering how it could be so difficult to fly across one stupid mountain range, when the ship's alarm bells sounded.

"Hard to port!" Nico yelled from the foremast of the flying ship.

Back at the helm, Leo yanked the wheel. The Argo II veered left, its aerial oars slashing through the clouds like rows of knives.

Livana made the mistake of looking over the rail. A dark spherical shape hurtled toward her. She thought: Why is the moon coming at us? Then she yelped and hit the deck. The huge rock passed so close overhead it blew her hair out of her face.

CRACK!

The foremast collapsed—sail, spars, and Nico all crashing to the deck. The boulder, roughly the size of a pickup truck, tumbled off into the fog like it had important business elsewhere.

"Nico!" Hazel scrambled over to him as Leo brought the ship level.

"I'm fine," Nico muttered, kicking folds of canvas off his legs.

She helped him up, and they stumbled to the bow. Livana peeked over more carefully this time. The clouds parted just long enough to reveal the top of the mountain below them: a spearhead of black rock jutting from mossy green slopes. Standing at the summit was a mountain god—one of the numina montanum, Jason had called them. Or ourae, in Greek. Whatever you called them, they were nasty.

Like the others they had faced, this one wore a simple white tunic over skin as rough and dark as basalt. He was about twenty feet tall and extremely muscular, with a flowing white beard, scraggly hair, and a wild look in his eyes, like a crazy hermit. He bellowed something Livana didn't understand, but it obviously wasn't welcoming. With his bare hands, he pried another chunk of rock from his mountain and began shaping it into a ball.

The scene disappeared in the fog, but when the mountain god bellowed again, other numina answered in the distance, their voices echoing through the valleys.

"Stupid rock gods!" Leo yelled from the helm. "That's the third time I've had to replace that mast! You think they grow on trees?"

Nico frowned. "Masts are from trees."

"That's not the point!" Leo snatched up one of his controls, rigged from a Nintendo Wii stick, and spun it in a circle. A few feet away, a trapdoor opened in the deck. A Celestial bronze cannon rose. Livana just had time to cover her ears before it discharged into the sky, spraying a dozen metal spheres that trailed green fire. The spheres grew spikes in midair, like helicopter blades, and hurtled away into the fog.

A moment later, a series of explosions crackled across the mountains, followed by the outraged roars of mountain gods.

"Ha!" Leo yelled.

Unfortunately, Livana guessed, judging from their last two encounters, Leo's newest weapon had only annoyed the numina.

Another boulder whistled through the air off to their starboard side.

Nico yelled, "Get us out of here!"

Leo muttered some unflattering comments about numina, but he turned the wheel. The engines hummed. Magical rigging lashed itself tight, and the ship tacked to port. The Argo II picked up speed, retreating northwest, as they'd been doing for the past two days.

Livana didn't relax until they were out of the mountains. The fog cleared. Below them, morning sunlight illuminated the Italian countryside—rolling green hills and golden fields not too different from those in Northern California. Livana could almost imagine she was sailing to Camp Jupiter.