²Olden Crown, heroes of olympus

025.

OLDEN CROWN
━━ chapter twenty-five

━━ LEO HADN'T FELT this jumpy since he offered tofu burgers to werewolves. ( Long story—don't ask. ) When he got to the limestone cliff in the forest, he turned to the group and smiled nervously. "Here we go."

It sounded like he was about to prophesy their death, but that wasn't it. Unless he caught the forest on fire, of course ...

He willed his hand to catch fire, and set it against the door. His cabinmates gasped.

"Leo!" Nyssa cried. "You're a fire user!"

"Yeah, thanks," he said. "I know."

Jake Mason, who was out of his body cast but still on crutches, said, "Holy Hephaestus. That means—it's so rare that—"

The massive stone door swung open, and everyone's mouth dropped. Leo's flaming hand seemed insignificant now. Even Elisa, Piper, Delaney and Jason looked stunned, and they'd seen enough amazing things lately.

Only Chiron didn't look surprised. The centaur knit his bushy eyebrows and stroked his beard, as if the group was about to walk through a minefield.

That made Leo even more nervous, but he couldn't change his mind now. His instincts told him he was meant to share this place—at least with the Hephaestus Cabin—and he couldn't hide it from Chiron or his best friends.

"Welcome to Bunker Nine," he said, as confidently as he could ( which wasn't very confidently because his voice cracked ). "Come on in."

"The group was silent as they toured the facility. Everything was just as Leo had left it—giant machines, worktables, old maps, and schematics. Only one thing had changed. Festus's head was sitting on the central table, still battered and scorched from his final crash in Omaha.

Leo went over to it, a bitter taste in his mouth, and stroked the dragon's forehead. "I'm sorry, Festus. But I won't forget you."

Jason put a hand on Leo's shoulder. "Hephaestus brought it here for you?"

Leo nodded.

Elisa watched the boy carefully. "But you can't repair Festus," she guessed.

Leo hated how good Elisa was at reading him. It was like he was an annoying younger brother to her, and part of Leo liked that—something like a family—but he hated how vulnerable it made him.

"No way." He shook his head. "But the head is going to be reused. Festus will be going with us."

Piper came over and frowned. "What do you mean?"

Before Leo could answer, Nyssa cried out, "Guys, look at this!"

She was standing at one of the worktables, flipping through a sketchbook—diagrams for hundreds of different machines and weapons.

"I've never seen anything like these," the daughter of Hephaestus gasped. "There are more amazing ideas here than in Daedalus's workshop. It would take a century just to prototype them all."

"Who built this place?" Jake Mason said. "And why?"

Chiron stayed silent, but Leo focused on the wall map he'd seen during his first visit. It showed Camp Half-Blood with a line of triremes in the Sound, catapults mounted in the hills around the valley, and spots marked for traps, trenches, and ambush sites.