Lucas had barely made it past the edge of the pinewoods, when he heard it: a keening cry, sharp and high, that echoed across the sky.
He looked up.
He saw the monster that made the sound. Flying between the clouds, red beady eyes locked onto him. Broad wings stretched from muscled flanks. A hooked beak gleamed and an eagle's head on a lion's body.
Gryphons.
Or as the campers called them, Hyenas of the sky.
Another shriek split the air. Then two more followed.
He bolted into the trees.
They dove.
The air cracked as talons slammed into bark beside him, shredding a chunk out of the tree. Lucas rolled forward, came up behind a rock outcropping.
Another dive. A swipe of claws just missed his satchel.
Harold squeaked in outrage from inside. Lucas patted the pouch instinctively. "Not now."
He sprinted through the woods. He didn't try to fight. He had learnt to conserve his energy, and understood what fights were worth it.
Instead, he used the terrain, twisting between trees, blinking from root clusters to high ledges. Illusions misdirected, shifted his shape, added phantom versions of himself running in opposite directions.
Eventually, the shrieks grew distant. Lucas slipped down the hills and made his way toward the distant silhouette of a city.
By late afternoon, he arrived.
He cloaked himself with the Mist, appearing to mortal eyes as a clean-shaven man in his thirties with a pressed coat and polite smile. That form drew no questions. No stares. After all, a dirtied teenager covered in scratches and claw marks would draw too much attention.
Weathered storefronts lined the main road. Mortals moved through their lives.
He found a modest hotel, rented a room, and scrawled sigils of concealment across the floorboards and windows, and while concealment wards only temporary hid him, they did allow him to rest in peace.
The next day Lucas made his way around the city, quickly gathering some supplies like dry food for the last stretch of his journey.
Until the ground began to shake.
Down the street, someone screamed, "Bulls! Run!"
The crowds fled, abandoning the road and fleeing, giving Lucas clear sight at what they considered 'bulls'.
Lucas cursed.
Bull-shaped constructs barreled down the avenue. Steam hissed from bronze joints. Fire glinted in their mouths. Their eyes burned like coal.
Colchis Bulls.
Automatons from a forge of Hephaestus, long gone rogue.
Three of them.
Steam hissed from the Colchis Bulls' joints as they stamped down the pavement, their metal hooves cracking the stone. One of the automatons lowered its head and let out a mechanical screech. Another bull crushed a parked car beneath its hooves, flames licking from its jaw.
Lucas sighed and rolled his shoulders.
"So much for a quiet day."
The first bull charged.
Lucas jumped to the side, just out of reach as the bull barreled through a row of trash bins and flattened a parked bike.
"Olé" Lucas cheered, posing like a matador.
His hand flicked forward. A jagged spike of ice burst from the air and drove into the automaton's leg, attempting to freeze its joints. It didn't, only causing it to skid slightly from the impact as its heated bronze body resisted the frost. Its red eyes locked onto him, brighter now.
He ducked under a blast of fire, the heat rolling off the asphalt, melting it. The other two bulls flanked him, boxing him in with slow, synchronized stomps.
Lucas weaved illusions, multiples of himself flickering into place, darting down alleys or leaping onto fire escapes. One bull lunged and passed straight through a fake, colliding with a car and sending the alarm wailing.
Lucas used the moment to blink upward, landing on the fire escape three floors above. He spotted a weak chain on a crane. Invisible threads of telekinesis wrapped around the weak chain, loosely holding up a metal construction beam. He broke the chain with force, wrenching the beam free and letting it fall downward. The heavy metal rod crashed into one of the bulls, forcing it to its knees. The core inside flickered.
He snapped his wrist again, launching a second illusion, this one not running, but just standing still, breathing, waiting. The injured bull targeted it, opening its mouth to release a beam of fire. Lucas waited for the right moment, then fired a focused lance of fire straight into the open mouth of the bull, straight into its core.
The bull detonated in a burst of steam and shrapnel.
One down.
He dropped down, landing where his illusion was.
The second was already turning toward him.
He used his telekinesis to jam a rusted signpost deep into one of its joints, locking the knee. The machine staggered, and Lucas didn't wait, he sent three daggers flying. One embedded in the eye. The second in the mouth grille. The third slipped between its plates, managing to hit its core.
The automaton shuddered, exhaled smoke, and collapsed into pieces.
He turned. The final bull was charging, full tilt, head down, horns glowing.
Lucas planted his feet.
He waited for the bull to be close in its charge before backflipping, momentum of both causing Lucas to land saddled backwards on the bull. He didn't hesitate. He dug both daggers into the spine. Sparks flew. He focused, channeled a burst of cold into the metal, this time he kept it up trying to fight against its natural heat. Ice gradually bloomed across the metal, cooling the bull down and slowing it until it stopped moving.
The bull collapsed, rolling once before falling still.
Lucas stood, panting.
He didn't get more than a second to breathe before a shadow fell over the alley.
A familiar screech.
He looked up.
The Gryphons were back.
Lucas swore under his breath. "Of course."
They circled above, wings beating steadily, beady eyes scanning the ground. Then the first one dove.
He raised his hand and whispered a single word.
The sky answered.
Clouds twisted. Air pressure dropped. The temperature fell. Snow began to fall, slowly at first, then in thick, fast-falling sheets. The temperature plummeted.
He shaped the weather with force and precision, calling down a white veil.
A blizzard.
The Gryphons cried out as the flurries thickened into a blizzard, their aerial advantage neutralized. They veered off-course, unable to see clearly, crashing into buildings and billboards, forced to circle lower and lower.
Lucas snapped a hand upward.
A gust of focused wind slammed a gryphon off-course, slamming it through a billboard, and while it was mid-recovery, launched some of the shrapnel of the Colchis Bull into the gryphon, acting like a shotgun blast. A hole tore through the beast, some shards ripping through its wings.
The creature screeched, claws scraping against air itself, it fell in a spiral, crashing through a lamppost before turning into golden dust.
The second Gryphon had landed.
Lucas blinked forward, scattering snow and illusions. Four versions of him converged on the beast: each attacking from a different angle. The Gryphon lashed out blindly.
One illusion vanished under its claw.
Another under its bite.
The third ducked and rolled.
The real Lucas slid in low, beneath its belly. He gripped the dagger tight, infused it with fire, and drove it upward, through flesh and into its heart. The Gryphon shrieked. Flames burst from its mouth. It reared back, flailing, then crumpled into the snow, to ash.
The final Gryphon decided to flee, attempting to take to the skies once again.
Lucas didn't give it the chance. Lucas raised a spear of ice. Shaped from the storm and sent it soaring towards the gryphon, skewering it and the momentum sending it into a building, where it gradually dropped, turning into gold dust during its fall.
Lucas, soaked with melting snow, wiped his brow.
He walked over to the steaming wreckage of the bulls and gathered what scrap he could: bits of bronze plating, a glowing core fragment, and one still-humming gear. He wrapped it in cloth and tucked it into his satchel.
He couldn't stay for long, police sirens already on the horizon.
He cloaked himself in Mist and moved. Through the alleys, down side streets.
The mortals? They saw none of it. News vans called it a freak storm. Colchis Bulls were just normal bulls that broke free and rioted. The destruction came from faulty construction equipment and considered accidents. The Gryphons? Seagulls.
Gathering his breath, Lucas made his final trek towards the harbor, where he would sail and once again return to the Sea of Monsters.