A/N: Couldn't bring myself to finish writing this one - but now I guess I finished it. Thank the gods. Dedicated to my annoying little friend who wouldn't stop bugging me to finish this chapter.
Arrow of the Fallen - Chapter Seven: Nightly Encounters of a Strange Kind
"Guess what, Nico! Rachel Dare has arrived in camp!" Victoria gushed over her healthy, vegetarian salad.
"That's great. And why do I care?" I said over my high calorie, meaty, barbeque-sauce-drenched rack of ribs.
"She can obviously tell us something about the Next Great Prophecy," said Shoots over his fried fish and potato wedges.
It was already dinner time and Vicks, Shoots, and I were all sitting in our usual places on the assigned Table #2. The whole camp was buzzing about how our Oracle of Delphi had already come to camp. The last few years she had only shown up for a week in late June to belch out quest prophecies and then left for vacation. And right now was early June. This was way earlier than normal.
Though Vickie and the others hadn't really thought about one little thing: it was just a rumor right now. "Either Chiron's hiding her away, or she didn't come at all and you're just jumping to conclusions," I said, ripping into the flesh of another rib.
Victoria averted her eyes. "You're disgusting."
"I have to say that Vickie's right." Shoots passed me a napkin and I waved it away.
"I'm a man. I don't do napkins."
Victoria and Shoots shook their heads as one. "Are you usually such an idiot?" Vicks asked.
"Why are you even talking to me?" I complained. "Talk to your Nike half-siblings instead."
We all looked at Andrew Goeser, the Nike cabin leader. He was texting furiously on his cell phone, a potato wedge sticking out of his mouth. Loranda and Paul, the other two Nike half-bloods, were cracking up from an inside joke.
"See?" Victoria whispered. "Loranda and Paul are like, twelve and seven years old and Andy's busy, so what can I do but like, hang out with you guys?"
I sighed and looked over at Table #3, where Cres had apparently became best friends with Roxy, Laken, and Sorcha Bower from the Iris cabin.
"I see you looking at her," Vickie grinned widely. "You like her."
I was about to say 'shut up' when I got a massive thump on the head from someone behind me. My head nearly hit the table before I caught myself.
"Aww, look it's Nico di Angelo!"
"Rachel?"
Just one look at Victoria and Shoots' gaping faces knew I was right on the guess.
I sighed and looked around. Rachel Dare was ready for me, yanking on my cheeks and stretching them out like I was a five year old. "Aren't you a cutie, now?"
"I'm – fifteen – years – old – get – AWAY!" I forced her hands off my face and my skin snapped back onto my cheeks painfully. "Ow."
"You've grown so much!" declared Rachel ruffling my hair. "Seriously, Annabeth, hasn't he grown so much?"
The two eighteen year olds giggled down at me and I wanted to scream. Victoria was laughing herself and Shoots was openly smirking. "What do you want?" I snarled nastily at her. Rachel was now really tall, with extremely curly red hair, paint splattered jeans, graffitied Converse, and dressed in a T-shirt that was obviously the product of some ripping, slashing, and knotting.
"I just came to camp to – oh, SNAP!"
"Rachel?"
"She's having a prophecy!" Annabeth gasped.
What?
I jumped up from the table and went to help Annabeth steady Rachel until she could stand on her own. Her mouth opened and clouds of green stuff poured out of her mouth, the inspiration for Rachel's nickname: Barf Bag. Green swirled everywhere and when Rachel opened her mouth, it was triple her voice.
"Seven half-bloods will answer the call.
To storm or fire, the world must fall.
An oath to keep with a final breath,
And foes bear arms to the Doors of Death."
Her mouth closed in almost a smile and the green stopped coming out of her mouth. Her eyes dimmed to their usual color, not the scary snakey green.
"Wait a sec . . ."
"That was the same prophecy she said three years ago!" Annabeth wailed.
Annabeth looked like she was punched in the face and I expected I looked the same. "Has an Oracle ever said a prophecy twice?"
"How should I know?"
Rachel was waking up from her ordeal and shook herself. As usual, she looked like she had never said a prophecy in the first place and seemed normal as ever. She saw the grumpy faces on me and Annabeth and asked, "What happened?"
"We thought you might prophesising some new prophecy for a quest or something, but instead you just told the old 'seven half-bloods will answer the call' one."
"What? I've never said a prophecy twice!" Rachel yelled, amazed. "Even if there was a three year gap in between when I said before and now!"
"That's what she said," I deadpanned.
Shoots got massively excited. "That means that the prophecy does concern someone of the current generation!"
Did I tell you that when Shoots gets excited, he uses strange James-like terms? Oh, great, I'm doing it too. Kinda. Who uses the word "terms" these days?
"Scoot that way, Goeser," Rachel practically growled at Andrew.
After Andrew quickly scurried down the table, Rachel plunked herself down and grabbed a breadstick. "Do you know how weird it's been the last few days? I was afraid to go to school because I kept thinking I would collapse with a prophecy. The dreams were just pouring on and on so I couldn't sleep at all either," Rachel started.
"What kind of dreams?" Annabeth asked.
"There was a man with brown hair, and two teenagers with the same brown hair but no highlights, and the boy had a scar that came down his face."
"The Fallen," I breathed. They were everywhere. "Did they talk to you?"
"No. The who?" said Rachel.
They all looked at me and I fidgeted uncomfortably. Even Andrew stopped his nonstop texting to listen in.
"Um, yeah, I could maybe tell Rachel, but for the rest of you, sorry."
"Nico!" Vickie complained loudly.
"Look, you can ask Chiron all about it, okay? This isn't my choice."
"Maybe I will ask Chiron," Annabeth said.
Still in the end, there was no more time to talk to Cres about whatever her blood came from. I was so exhausted from the whole day I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. Thankfully, neither Shoots, Roxy, or James camped out in my cabin and I could sleep at a normal hour.
Again I had a weird dream. I really don't know what's been going on in my head lately.
I was walking through a forest of tall dandelions. Like I was small, and they were big. Three stories tall by the looks of it. They were all around me, swaying in some super strong wind you wouldn't believe. There were three figures in the distance. As I got closer, I slapped my hand to my forehead. Of course. It was the Fallen triplets.
"Hey, Mitch, Rhys, Kat," I said with false happiness and casualty. I was actually wringing my hands together and my teeth were gritted. I didn't care if Cres's father was one of them, I didn't trust them at all.
They all answered in a reflection of their different characters. "Hey there, Nico," said Mitchell. "Hello," said Rhys. "Hey, Nic," said Katrina.
Katrina turned deliberately in my direction and made such a slow, sly wink, I felt uncomfortable. She and Rhys looked eighteen, but Mitchell still looked a lot older than them.
"What's up, guys?" I asked. Man, I was good at this casual thing.
When Katrina rolled her eyes, she looked exactly like Cres. "Nothin' much. You?"
"Well since you were the guys who made me have all these creepy dreams, I was hoping you would tell me why you're suddenly showing up," I said, exasperated.
"It's something that has to do with the Arrow of the Fallen." She laughed. "My little nickname for someone special."
"That's great, Trina," Mitch smiled. "Just like your Blood of the Fallen."
"Yeah, what you call Arrow Ichor, which in my opinion is some lameass name for something as simple as the Blood of the Fallen," Rhys spoke in his quiet way.
"Rhys! Language!" Katrina said.
"I can definitely handle the 'L' word," I said drily. "And what does this have to do with you guys showing up in my dreams? I can't understand a word you guys are talking about. Arrow of the Fallen? Blood of the Fallen?"
"Never mind!" the triplets said together. Katrina and Mitchell exchanged glances and grinned, but Rhys still looked sullen. "We're here to lead you to a special meeting place, come!"
"I don't have any other choice do I?"
I followed them through the forest of gigantic dandelions and out to a circular pond. "Look into the waters, Nico," said Rhys. "The call of the quest is here."
"The call of the quest?"
And then I woke up. Darn it.
"Nico?"
"Cres?"
My eyes squinted in the bright light and readjusted. Somehow I had sleepwalked all the way to the Great Hall. In the dead center of the place, seven half-bloods including me were somehow standing in a perfect circle.
Cres Fallen. Roxy and James Alfred. Shoots Barrel, Victoria Draper, and Van Ryon. All together we made seven.
"Seven half-bloods will answer the call," James said softly. "I wonder how they made us sleepwalk in a dream."
James took it so calmly compared to the rest of us.
"What the hell am I doing here?" said Van. He looked horrified, staring at his hands like they were the ones who made him do something so utterly humiliating called sleepwalking. He also refused to meet Roxy's eyes.
"What is he doing here?" said Roxy. She stabbed a manicured finger in Van's direction.
"How did we all sleepwalk and make a perfect circle?" said Shoots, staring with wonder around him.
"Why am I, like, sleepwalking?" said Vicks. She looked totally out of her element, blinking at the torch light of the Great Hall at night time in a flimsy nightgown.
Cres and I looked at each other. "Suppose we call Chiron, Percy, and the others, and spill the whole story?" she suggested. I nodded and went to call them. Cres raised her eyebrows a little at that, but we're living in the twenty first century and everybody owns a cell phone.
Chiron arrived a little after two minutes later with Percy, Annabeth, and Rachel in tow. "What are you all doing down here?" Chiron asked. "I was only expecting Nico and Cres."
"We're the seven from the new prophecy," James said bluntly.
We all looked at him. "Are you still asleep, Alfred?" Van said, which was what we all were thinking. Somehow, the sluggish way James was acting and his quick readiness to accept the fact that we were part of the prophecy summed up how James could still be dreaming in Dreamland.
"Forget my brother, and let's get down to business, 'cuz I don't know about you guys, but I'm dead tired," Roxy snapped her fingers.
"Sure," said Cres. "Last night, the goddess Styx visited me in a dream. She told me about a mortal she fell in love with – and had a half-blood baby named Seth Fallen."
"Your grandfather," said Chrion. "Go on."
"Seth Fallen never went to Camp Half-blood, but he trained himself how to kill monsters. He was remarkably handsome, said Styx, and Eos fell in love with him. Eos always falls in love with young, handsome men, apparently. Seth and Eos had the Fallen triplets: Mitchell, Rhys, and Katrina. Mitchell knocked up my mother, Shannon Pike, and had me."
"Yeah, and she gets Artemis blood because her mom was blessed by Artemis," I finished.
"Wait a sec. Shannon Pike is your mother?" Shoots asked with an almost funny incredulous look on his face.
"That's hardly the point." Cres sighed.
Annabeth yawned hugely after we explained our sleepwalking dreams. We all had the same dream: walking through dandelion forests and meeting the Fallen triplets. We all ended up in the Mess Hall, standing in a perfect circle. None of us remembered feeling grass under our bare feet or whatnot. That meant all seven of us ending up in the camp's cafeteria at two o'clock in the morning meant that we had 'answered the call.' So what was next?
"To storm or fire the world must fall. Anyone know what that means?" said Annabeth.
I thought all the way back to my first dream that starred those stupid little relatives of Cres's. "Rhys mentioned to me last last night that he thought he was storm and his brother was fire. He didn't explain what it meant, though."
"I guess there's nothing else to do then but to wait," Rachel nodded.
"And get some sleep," Van said bluntly.
Roxy nodded in actual approval in Van's direction.
A/N: I'll be in Shanghai for a while, so don't expect quick updates. You CAN expect a chapter extremely more exciting than this boring one. Review? Please? It makes me feel special. And if you review something really cool (either negative or positive comments), I'll reply to you. And then you'll feel special too. :D
