Slightly late, I know, but I had a migraine yesterday that prevented me from posting. So sorry about that.
I tried for more humour in this chapter but I don't know how well it worked. Hmm. Well, at least I tried (although I generally hate those participation awards because anyone can participate).
Marz.
"This is a bad idea," Nico muttered into his third cup of coffee. All around him on the top table of the dining pavilion, where he, Percy, Rachel, Annabeth, Clarisse, Justin, Chiron and Mr D were sitting, people were tucking into food. However, he was still angry enough to want to avoid it despite how hungry he had felt earlier. Any kind of strong emotion he felt played havoc with his appetite.
He could feel his eyes smouldering over the top of his coffee cup at the assembled crowd below the top table and wondered idly if he was anywhere near close to the purple flames that sometimes appeared behind his father's eyes when he got really pissed.
Now that would be a cool look.
It might explain the relative quiet of the dining pavilion as the campers ate; normally, the place was alive and bustling but aside from the prayers to their parents when they had scraped a portion of their meal into the flames conversation was incredibly subdued.
The hush over the place was akin to being in a cathedral except instead of staring at arches and flying buttresses spanning overhead, the campers were looking at him with that same muted awe. Although granted probably with more fear than a cathedral would warrant, even for demigod children of pagan deities.
Well, good. That was what they got for screwing with him.
Rachel, who was sitting next to him and spreading marmalade on whole-wheat toast, shook her head. "Nope. It's genius," she said airily. "Now will you please stop looking at them like they're gazelles and you're a leopard trying to pick the juiciest one? You're scaring the crap out of them."
"Genius? Uh-huh," Nico said dryly. "Sure it is. I've heard that one from you before. And believe me, I would not want to eat any of them. Child germs. No thanks."
Rachel snorted exasperatedly. "Nico, you're eighteen. According to the State of New York, you werea minor this time last year. And you're barely older than half the counsellors."
"Not according to my birth certificate," Nico muttered. He wrinkled his nose in disgust, pressing the hot ceramic of his mug into the split in his lip and allowing the burning pain. "Still, I think they'd taste bad," he concluded.
Rachel's reply was cut off when Chiron rose to his hooves out of his wheelchair and surveyed the whole pavilion. He hardly had to wait for silence; the thick fog of nervousness and tension that had prevailed since Nico had walked in with Rachel had suppressed the usual hubbub of breakfast. "After breakfast, all but the head counsellors of the cabins are to assume their normal, daily duties," Chiron said. "If the counsellors could see me at this table as soon as they have finished breakfast I would appreciate it."
It wasn't long before breakfast was over and the dining pavilion cleared of everyone but Chiron, Rachel, Nico and the head counsellors. Percy had given Nico a quizzical look on the way out and looked like he might stay, but Annabeth had dragged him out by the arm.
Nico kind of wished he had stayed. He couldn't help but feel that what was to come would be a lot easier if Percy were here. The campers liked Percy after all. They'd listen to him.
Nico kept his eyes on the tablecloth, trying to betray as few of his feelings as possible with his expression. The campers probably thought that he had told on them and that they were there to get in trouble. It wasn't true; he would never leave it to Chiron to fix his problems. Revenge was a personal thing. Still, he wouldn't be surprised if the campers thought he had tattled and had been a big baby by running crying to Chiron. They didn't think much of him, that was clear.
Chiron cleared his throat. "As you know, we have a range of alumni from this Camp who visit during the summer months to teach the younger generations — you," he began. "There are none better qualified who are alive today to do so, not after the battles they have seen. Our training thus far has focussed mostly on the physical: battle tactics or battle plans or helping you all to make the best use of your talents. It has been brought to my attention that I fear we have neglected the most important aspect of all: exercising the mind.
"Education is an important part of battle readiness but this is not limited to just learning about the enemies you will face. That is the easy part, in a way. The hardest part is learning about what you are fighting for. Now, you may all be looking at me and thinking that you well know what you are fighting for, but I hazard a guess that most of you are wrong. You think you fight for the glory of your godly parent, to protect the whole of Olympus, and yes, you would be right to a point. However, you also fight to protect the ideals of Olympus itself, not just its physical location but what it stands for. In the new order forged after the Second Titan War, those ideals and principals include tolerance and understanding at a level which we are all unused. That is why today you will all accompany Nico di Angelo, the only living child of Hades, and our Oracle, Rachel Dare, on a field trip."
There were general mutterings of dissent, murmured protestations and grumblings from the assembled teenagers. Many scowled; Nico was suddenly looking at a sea of folded arms and hard, piercing glares when he looked up for the first time. They didn't want to go anywhere with him or learn anything from him, obviously.
Sighing, he stood. He still thought that it was a bad idea but he had to at least try to sell it now it had got this far. "I am who I am," he said solemnly, looking back impassively at all those who were meeting his eye and making a good few of them reconsider. "I am a child of Hades. A son of the underworld. You all think you understand what it means but you don't, that much is clear. Today will be a chance to widen your narrow little minds."
"Where are we going?" a female voice asked from near the back of the crowd.
The corners of Nico's mouth tugged up into a grin and his eyes lit up. "We're all going to take a little trip to Hades," he said, the grin widening as he saw some campers go grey in the face at the thought of it. "My home."
Rachel was already in position to steady him when they reappeared in the Underworld. How she'd manage to shift so fast after shadow travelling he had no idea but he was grateful. It would look ridiculous if he'd fallen face first into the dirt from exhaustion. She grabbed his elbow and held him upright as he swayed from the exertion of travelling so many people.
The counsellors, however, had fared much worse than him (aside from Lucille from the Nyx cabin, for whom shadow travel was par for the course) and had reacted badly to it. Several sat down hard on their butts on rematerialising and others were bent double with their hands on their knees. He didn't think that any of them noticed Rachel's momentary act of support.
Nico took a deep breath and managed to dial down the ringing of exhaustion in his ears. "No one said you could just sit around," he said harshly. "You're here for a reason."
There was grumbling a muttered curses but everyone made it to their feet again eventually, despite how pale some of them still looked.
"This way," Nico said, turning on his heel and marching away, not looking back to check to see if he was being followed as Rachel fell into step beside him. If they wanted to make it back to Camp they'd stick close. There were few other ways out of the Underworld.
A deep, booming bark elicited yelps of fear from behind him; he supposed that meant that they were following orders and keeping close. He rounded a corner and came to a halt in front of the gates to his father's realm and immediately was faced with Cerberus on guard.
The long lines of dead people choosing either EZ Death or Attendant on Duty never changed. People kept dying, after all. The lines were just as long now as they would always be. Nico sneaked a glance back at the head counsellors, who looked shocked to see the sheer amount of dead people spread out before them.
"These are my subjects," Nico said to no one in particular, although he made sure his voice was heard.
The milling ghosts immediately went silent, a hush rippling backwards through the crowd like a wave. They all turned to face him, any movement in the lines suspended.
"As you were," Nico told the ghosts. The lines started slowly shuffling forward again and the unnatural stillness that had befallen the vast cavern was broken. "I hear them all," Nico continued, turning to the campers. "Each one of them, every day." He tapped his temple. "They're all in here."
"You hear every dead person?" Ray of the Apollo cabin asked, his voice dripping with scorn. He was one of the people clearly still suffering from the shadow travelling, probably amplified because he had been cut off from the sunlight. It didn't stop him, however, from sneering at Nico. "Seriously, you expect us to believe that? Every single one of them? Look how many there are. There's no way one person could hear all of that."
Ray stopped speaking but Nico thought that he heard the unsaid ending to the sentence: "Without going mad."
Maybe he was mad, then. It would probably explain a lot. No one seemed to understand how it felt to be so connected to death and the dead all the time. Not even Hazel did, as her powers were derived mostly from their father's facet as the god of wealth and all things underground rather than the death side of things.
"All of them," Nico repeated, his voice dangerous. It was like Ray was accusing him of lying about it. Why would he do that? Why would he pretend to be attuned to every dead person? It wasn't something that was cool to brag about, like Percy's ocean-fu powers or Jason and his lightning. It wasn't something that made people look up to him — it was something that downright terrified them. Why would he lie and make it worse than people already assumed it was?
Nico whirled around and started pointing towards the eerie crowd, picking out individual ghosts. "Look. Sonia Sotomo. She was twenty-six. Killed in a hit and run. Connor Noble, ten. Leukaemia. Michelle Ramirez, fifty-seven. Heart attack. Harry Spittle, forty-one. Thought he could get away without dropping money on malaria medication for his once-in-a-lifetime African safari. Jennifer Taylor, eighteen, haemorrhaged during childbirth. She's holding Julia Taylor, precisely forty-three minutes old. She outlived her mother by ten minutes." He turned to Ray, his nostrils flaring. "Satisfied? Or do I need to point out Rita Hapworth over there, 93, who is at the front of that line having had a stroke in her sleep in her Florida condo?"
Ray, already pale, turned positively green. "Grams?" he breathed, emotion choking his voice. The little old lady in question didn't respond to his voice just shuffled on forwards in the line, vanishing as she reached the front.
"She was," Nico said. "And now she's not. She died. Mortals die. We'll all die. And we'll all come here and I will know about it. I know them all."
Rachel squeezed Nico's hand, hoping he'd take it as a warning to stop, but he just wrenched his hand from hers impatiently and folded his arms, jamming his hands under his armpits. He was still glowering at the group but especially at Ray, who was staring intently on the floor with his shoulders hitching oddly every couple of minutes or so as if he were crying.
Rachel bit her lip. Maybe coming down here hadn't been the right thing after all. Maybe it had made everything worse; Nico didn't appear to be very... redemption-receptive right now. And he wasn't endearing himself in the eyes of the campers, either.
"Every single one?" Chloe Adams of the Demeter cabin asked, her voice diminished with awe.
Nico nodded sagely. "Yes. All of them. All the time. That's what I have to live with every day. When you saw me fighting in the arena? I wear hearing them. Which brings me to lesson number one. You see what I'm wearing?" He gestured down to his usual sombre attire. "The black? You all think I'm making a statement. The son of Hades, the emo slash goth, how original. No. And it doesn't mean that I'm bad, either. Black does not mean evil. Black is a sign of respect for the dead. Just like you wouldn't turn up to your grandpa's funeral in fluorescent orange so I don't stomp all over the dead people I hear all the time by wearing colours."
Rachel let out the breath that she'd been holding. This was better; this was the human side of Nico that hardly anyone got to see.
"Some of them come to me for help, did you know that?" Nico pressed on. It felt like years of pent up frustration, of people not knowing who he was or what he was about, was finally bursting through. "Do you think the dead want to see me in this season's latest colour palette, disrespecting them? No, they do not. Black is respectful. I respect them. Once upon a time, they were real people. With real family, real friends. They mattered. That means something to me, even if it doesn't mean anything to you. They were all someone's grams ones. Mother, father, sister, brother, husband, wife, aunt, uncle, son, daughter. Got it?"
Nico was sure that his eyes were blazing again, piercing the gloom like burning coals, but this time he wasn't angry. There was a passion inside him that he had to let out. This wasn't just about him anymore; it was about his father and the way they thought about him, and most of all it was about the dead people he represented. If he didn't stand up for himself and them, who would?
"Black also helps me blend with the shadows and makes shadow travelling easier," he said. It was like a perpetual motion machine now; he couldn't stop it. "Black represents the primordial. It is the absence of colour and represents potential, something great that's about to be. Plus it gives me a kick ass silhouette and makes sure people know not to fuck with me. Usually. You guys underestimated me."
He got some nods out of the crowd which was good enough for now. He turned around and produced a red rubber ball with a squeaker in it from his pocket, squeezing it twice. The unusual sound pierced what was otherwise near-silence.
Cerberus barked again in triplicate, which boomed off the rocky walls, and came bounding over, soaring over the long lines of the dead awaiting their fate.
Rachel's stomach tugged unpleasantly when she saw Nico's face twist into a satisfied grin at the fear Cerberus' presence was instilling in the counsellors, many of whom had jumped backwards at the enormous flying beast barrelling towards them. Some of them screamed.
At the moment, Nico could go either way. She kept seeing glints of humanity, the Nico that she knew, contrasted with a darker side of him that maybe had always been there and she just hadn't noticed before. Was it only now that she had received the warning that she was realising that it was there.
"Meet Cerberus," Nico said, smiling as the dog wagged his tail and threw himself flat on the floor so Nico could use both hands to scratch behind an ear. "He's another perk of the job."
Nico squeaked the ball again and Cerberus instantly leapt to his feet, bounding around and waiting for Nico to throw the ball. Nico did so after a couple of false starts that had Cerberus half-running after it before coming back when it turned out that Nico hadn't thrown it after all.
The game of fetch went on for another couple of minutes before Nico threw the ball as far and as hard as he could and concentrated hard on shadow travelling the other campers away before Cerberus could return.