Daughter of Wine

Hazel

During the third attack, I almost eat a boulder. I'm peering into the fog, wondering how it can be so difficult to fly across a mountain range, when the ship's alarm bell sounds. 

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

Back at the helm, Leo yanks the wheel, and Calli pulls a lever. the Argo II veers left, its aerial oars slashing through the clouds like rows of knives. 

I make the mistake of looking over the rail. A dark spherical shape hurtles toward me. I think: Why is the moon coming at us? Then I yelp and hit the deck. The huge rock passes so close overhead it blows the hair out of my face. 

CRACK!

The foremast collapses. The sail, spars, and Nico all crash to the deck. The boulder, roughly the size of a pickup truck, tumbles off into the fog like it has important business elsewhere. 

"Nico!" I scramble over to him as Leo and Calli bring the ship level. 

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

I help him up and we stumble to the bow. I peek over more carefully this time. The clouds part just long enough to reveal the top of the mountain below us: a spearhead of black rock jutting from the mossy green slopes. Standing at the summit is a mountain god, one of the numina montanum, Jason calls them. Or ourae, in Greek. Whatever we call them, they're nasty.

Like the others we've faced, this one wears a simple white tunic over skin as rough and dark as basalt, He's 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, or like the look Calli has been getting ever since our friends fell into Tartarus. He bellows something I don't understand, but it obviously isn't very welcoming. With his bare hands, he pries another chunk of rock from his mountain and begins shaping it into a ball. 

The scene disappears in the fog, but when the mountain god bellows again, other numina answer in the distance, their voices echoing through the valleys. 

"Stupid rock gods!" Calli yells from the helm. 

"That's the third time I've had to replace the mast!" Leo agrees. "You'd think they grow on trees!"

Nico frowns. "Masts are from trees."

"That's not the point!" Leo scowls. 

Calli snatches up one of the controls, rigged from a Nintendo Wii stick, and spins it in a circle, that familiar crazy look flashing across her face. A few feet away, a trapdoor opens in the deck. A Celestial bronze cannon rises. I just have time to cover my ears before it discharges into the sky, spraying a dozen metal spheres that trail green fire. The spheres grow spikes in midair, like helicopter blades, and hurtle away into the fog. 

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

"Ha!" Calli yells. She and Leo high-five each other. 

Unfortunately, I guess, judging from out last two encounters, Leo and Calli's newest weapons have only annoyed the numina. 

Another boulder whistles through the air off to our starboard side. 

Nico yells, "Get us out of here!"

Leo and Calli mutter some unflattering comments about numina, but Leo turns the wheel. The engines hum. Magical rigging lashes itself tight, and the ship tacks to port. The Argo II picks up speed, retreating northwest, as we've been doing for the past two days.