Thunderstorm ➪ʜᴀᴢᴇʟ Lᴇᴠᴇsǫᴜᴇ [𝟷]

𝗜 𝗫

𝚃𝚘𝚐𝚎𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛, 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚢 𝚝𝚞𝚖𝚋𝚕𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚛𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚊𝚒𝚛. Bronte struggled to unbuckle herself. She tried to concentrate–there must be something she could do—but it was hard to focus so far above ground.

"Jason!" she yelled. Leo woke, and after a couple more shouts, so did Jason. "Can't you fly?"

"It's more about control-" his voice faded in and out of hearing range. "Not with all of us."

Bronte looked down. She wasn't afraid of heights, thankfully. Far below she saw city lights glimmering in the early dawn, and several hundred yards away was the body of the bronze dragon spinning out of control. His wings were limp, and his fire was flickering in his mouth like a badly wired lightbulb.

A body shot past her—Leo, screaming and frantically grabbing at the clouds. "Not coooooooool!"

It really put it into perspective, how little training they had. Bronte had been training since Chiron would let her, when she was six. She had a feeling Jason had been trained nearly that long. But Piper and Leo? They were fresh out of the mortal world.

"Level out!" Bronte yelled down to him. She could hear Jason giving similar advice to Piper, both above her. "Extend your arms and legs! Imagine you're a bird!"

She flipped over, trying to make eye contact with Jason. They were a lot closer than she thought they'd be, and they slammed into her, throwing them all off balance.

Jason managed to right them, so they faced Leo, and the ground.

"We have to get Leo!" Piper shouted.

Their fall slowed as Jason controlled the winds, but they still lurched up and down like the winds didn't want to cooperate. Bronte's mind raced, and it began to snow lightly. 

"No!" she cried. "That's not what I want!"

She couldn't see Jason's face, but she knew what he was thinking. He and Annabeth had had that horrible conversation about her, and she knew that he thought she couldn't do anything with her powers. That they were out of control. She'd been working so hard!

"Gonna get rough," Jason warned. "Hold on!"

Jason grabbed her around the waist, and they shot toward the ground. Piper screamed, the sound muffled. Bronte's vision blurred, tears ripped from her eyes by the wind.

And then, thump! They slammed into another solid mass-- Leo, still wriggling and cursing.

"Stop fighting!" Jason said. "It's me!"

"My dragon!" Leo yelled. "You gotta save Festus!"

But Jason was already struggling to keep the four of them aloft, and Bronte knew he couldn't help a fifty-ton metal dragon. Before she could even consider trying her own powers, she heard an explosion below them. A fireball rolled into the sky from behind a warehouse complex, and Leo sobbed, "Festus!"

Jason tried to maintain the air cushion--Bronte could sense the pressure, the invisible force in the sky-- beneath them, but intermittent slow-downs were the best he could manage. Rather than free-falling, it was more like they were bouncing down a giant staircase, a hundred feet at a time. Bronte couldn't even imaging the strain Jason was feeling, keeping them all from falling to their deaths.

As they zigged and zagged, Bronte could make out details of the factory complex below-- warehouse, smoke-stacks, barbed-wire fences, and parking lots lines with snow-covered vehicles. They were still high enough that hitting he ground would flatten them into demigod pancakes when Jason groaned, "I can't--"