CATHARSIS, jason grace¹

𝟬𝟮𝟬. she means you're amazing, man

SOMETHING WAS BOTHERING AERA. Jason perceived that there had been a sharp skydive in her mood since they left the department store. Her posture was tense. Her shoulders were tight and straight. Her nostrils were constantly flared. She strangely didn't have anything to say during their long trip out of Chicago following the glowing vapor trail. No sarcastic comments for the gods or complaints about her hair getting messed up. Aera just sat silently in front of Jason, gazing at nothing.

It made Jason nervous. He racked his brain for any phenomenon that could explain this. Had Aera wanted to spend more time at the shopping mall? Did the noxious fire irritate her skin? Was she mad at him? Did he do anything that would make her mad? Well, Jason did hold back a compliment about her new outfit, which reminded him of a fluffy snowman...but was that really it? Did she want him to compliment her? Aera was cute, but Jason assumed she knew that he knew that about her.

There was also the Piper problem. Her father was obviously in some sort of trouble, but she didn't seem to want to talk about it. When Leo brought the subject up, Piper just said she was tired and leaned against Aera to fall asleep. Aera didn't even try and press the conversation, which Jason thought was weird, considering how she was usually the first to gossip about other people's problems.

Leo shrugged and gave Jason a shrewd look from the front like, Girls, Amiright?

Then everything got worse when they stumbled upon the rich person's mansion.

Festus took the laser beams for them when they started free-falling out of the sky. The dragon had been disintegrated, his limbs scattered across the snow-covered lawn they landed in. His tail hung on the fence. The main section of his body had plowed a trench twenty feet wide and fifty feet long across the mansion's yard before breaking apart. What remained of his hide was a charred, smoking pile of scraps. Only his neck and head were somewhat intact, resting across a row of frozen rosebushes like a pillow.

"No!" Leo sobbed.

Leo ran to the dragon's head and stroked its snout. The dragon's eyes flickered weakly, oil dripping out of his ear. After Leo told Jason to bring Piper and Aera to the ground first, he had taken a pretty hard roll. Leo had tried to reboot Festus in mid-air, but he must have met some kind of complication that sent them both plummeting back down to earth.

"You can't go!" Leo cried. "You're the best thing I ever fixed. It's not fair!"

The dragon's head whirred its gears, as if it were purring. Leo seemed to be under the impression that Festus was trying to say something to him. He ducked his head down in concentration, as if listening to a different language.

"Yeah," Leo mumbled, tapping his fingers on his thigh in some kind of code. "I understand. I will. I promise."

The light in the dragon's eyes flickered out.

Leo broke down completely. Piper was blinking back tears when she started murmuring words of comfort to him. Aera couldn't even look at him, pacing angrily next to him. Jason recalled the image they saw of her friends in the fountain. The one called Beckendorf had wanted to invent something that would be a turning point for demigods. Likewise, if it weren't for Festus, they wouldn't have had transportation on this quest. Jason wondered if Beckendorf was who Aera was thinking of now.

He wanted to say something as the leader of their group, to make them feel better and raise morale, but his mouth felt as dry as sandpaper. Festus the dragon had been a good companion and they couldn't save him.

"I'm so sorry, man," Jason said as gently as he could. He thought about how Leo was trying to communicate to the dragon in his final moments. "What did you promise Festus?"