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The first chapter is set in the past. The main story itself is set three years after this chapter.
I Eat Blue Cake
I was walking down a corridor, I thought it was a corridor but I couldn't really tell, it was dark with a black and white checkered floor, there were dark stains splattered over the floor. My eyes jolted straight ahead before I had the chance to figure out just what the substance that was scattered over the floor was, truth is I knew what it was, I just didn't want to confirm it. The corridor was so narrow and the more I walked the more I felt it closing in on me, tighter and tighter, darker and darker. There's nowhere to run, Nico, nowhere. I heard a voice, it wasn't just any voice, it had a tinge of metal to it, a scraping sound, deep and dull yet somehow familiar.
I dragged my feet farther down the corridor. I heard a sharp squeak as my foot slid against the dark substance on the floor, the checkered floor coming closer and closer until I fell flat on the floor. The first thing I fell was cold, I forced my palms onto the freezing floor, I pushed with all I had in me to try and get myself upright again. Nobody will help you young demigod, you're alone, unwanted, unwelcomed even in the place your kind call home. I pushed harder, the voice only making me want to get up more. I tried to speak, to tell the voice to 'shut up' but nothing came out but silence.
So alone, with only the dead for company, would you really call that company? The voice was only angering me, I finally got myself standing looking at the darkness ahead but the corridor was already thinning. "SHUT UP" I yelled, my words were clear and loud, finally my voice was working. I heard a foul laugh echo from wall to wall, bouncing from the darkness to more darkness.
That was when I woke up; I jolted forwards in a cold sweat with a figure in front of me looking more worried than I felt. "Nico?" the worried figure stared right at me, his hands on each of my shoulders, his black hair a mess, his sea green eyes wide so I could almost see the crashing waves behind them.
I was breathing heavily, gasping for air "I… I…" was all I could manage before squeezing my eyes shut trying to come to terms with what I'd just seen.
"Bad dream?" His voice sounded calm, like he knew just what had happened to me and I knew he did. When people like me had dreams they were never good, they were usually prophetic and that really wasn't good.
My head was throbbing, if my eye lids weren't holding my eyes back they felt like they would've been falling out of my head. I nodded, my hands holding my face, I just wanted the feeling to go away. My messy hair was stuck to my forehead from the cold sweat. "Percy" I mumbled, I knew if I had tried to say anything else it would've came out like 'ughifhalp'. I pushed my hair away from my face opening my eyes just enough to see the boy in front of me, he looked at me with a hint of sadness, he'd felt just how I was feeling now many times. His hands left my shoulders as he stood, allowing the cold presence that I carried with me (being the Son of Hades and all) to engulf me again.
Percy knelt down beside me a few seconds later with a glass of some sort of blue substance, no surprise there. "Hey, drink this, it might help" he handed the glass over to me and I took it without hesitating. As soon as the liquid touched my lips I was overcome with yet more coldness although it mended my dry mouth so I wasn't complaining.
"Thanks" I muttered, placing the glass on the empty patch of floor next to me. The throbbing in my head had died down just a little allowing me to concentrate. "That was…" I began but Percy hushed me.
I looked around the room; everything looked so different with the moonlight glowing through the window. Candy wrappers and leftovers of blue cake were scattered around the room, most of the wrappers shimmering in the light. Now I'd realized just how messy we'd left the place. Percy must've been watching were my gaze led to because then he spoke "I'll clean that up in the morning, or mom will" his voice was soft.
"Percy" I turned to him, I felt stable enough to tell him about my dream, I knew I could trust him with it and maybe it could help even if it scared the heck out of me. "I, my dream" I said, his eyes were watching me, waiting for me to tell him the details, so I did, not all of it though. I could tell Percy knew I was holding back on something but he didn't try to force me to continue.
"What a great birthday" he mumbled, he added a grin but neither of us laughed, I guess with the whole war approaching, (the war I became part of although I didn't really want to) there was nothing to laugh about.
"You get some sleep, I'll just erm, try and find out more about what I was meant to be telling you" I said, I wasn't so sure it made any sense at all, especially with all the unneeded pauses I was making.
"No" Percy replied, almost a second after I'd finished. I hadn't gotten the chance to tell him last night when I appeared right in front of Percy admiring his plant that shone like the moon. He'd offered me inside, we ate blue cake and all sorts of other food which explained the mess we'd left his room in. It was nice, I finally understood why friends liked hanging around together, just doing completely normal things.
I knew what Percy was thinking, his eyes focused on a spot somewhere behind me, he was thinking we should go back to camp and tell Chiron about my dream but he was too scared to say anything because he knew exactly how I felt about that place.
"This is bad Nico, Kronos could be trying to use you or scare you onto his side" Percy said, a sense of worry to his voice.
"We don't know it's Kronos Percy" I replied, though I was pretty sure the voice belonged to the crazy Titan god who was building his strength to take over Olympus and if he had me on his side who knows what would happen. I told myself over and over again I wouldn't join him, if I had to choose, I'd fight with Percy.
Percy's eyes shifted so he was looking straight at me but he didn't say anything, as we sat there in silence for a few minutes we both knew who the voice belonged to and just how bad this could be.
"Yeah, you're right" he finally said, I knew he was just trying to make me feel better, trying not to get me scared. I wasn't sure what happened next because everything went black, Percy mumbled something about sleep and scrambled back into his bed and I flopped back down on the floor pulling the blankets over my head.
I didn't sleep well the rest of the night, my eyes were scared to flutter shut in case of an unwanted dream. I don't know how I managed to get myself to sleep but the next time I opened my eyes I was attacked by blue, Percy's room in the day light. I pushed myself up allowing the blankets to fall to my waist they were also blue, believe me I had already tried hunting for anything black around here and came out unlucky.
"Feeling better?" I heard Percy's voice as he sat down beside me with a plate of pancakes, blue pancakes. At first I thought I was hallucinating but as my eyes adjusted to my surroundings I realized how wrong I was.
"Do you have anything that isn't blue?" I asked, lifting one of the pancakes and hovering it under my nose, it smelled really good, just like the blue cake had. I nibbled off the edge as it filled me with warmth, it tasted even better than it smelt.
"Nope" Percy laughed as he too lifted a pancake from the plate. It felt nice to be sitting here with company, a real friend, I guess anything beats the Underworld. We finished the remaining pancakes and Percy chucked the plate in the middle of the room, were most of the wrappers had been thrown.
"So, what you were going to tell me last night…" Percy said as though things were about to get serious. I pulled my knees up to my chest and leant against Percy's bed side table, it's not like I weighed much so it wouldn't tumbled over into the wall. I'd forgotten all about the reason I'd came here, the offer, what I was going to talk to him about, I'd kind of hoped he'd forgotten too.
I watched the blanket, the curves, grooves and twisted shapes that had been formed from it being left lazily, it almost was like the sea, each curve, each bump a wave. I felt my head drop causing my hair to fall over my face which is just what I wanted it to do, meaning I didn't have to look at Percy.
"It doesn't really matter right now" I replied, of course it mattered a lot, it would probably be the only way he could beat Luke but right now my head was lightly pounding and my eyes were stinging, begging me for the sleep they had missed out on. I shut them tightly hoping to trick them into thinking that just for a second they were getting what they wanted but that second turned into something else. The blackness that had attacked me before returned and with the irritating screech of metal against stone and I felt myself sinking into the waves of the sheets.