DISCLAIMER: Again, we don't own PJatO or HoO. Rick Riordan does. Believe me, if we owned HoO, it'd be so different…
REVIEW RESPONSES:
Goddess-of-Battle – Nyx: I work hard to make sure Granny isn't a stereotype old lady or grandmother. In fact, she's actually based off of someone. So yeah, I hope she comes across as different. And as far as Germany's National Candy-Corn Day… Well. I don't know. America has it because we're all crazy about the least healthy of all candies. We also have a burger day, a fries day, a chocolate day, a chocolate ICE CREAM day, etc…. The list is kind of sad, actually…
Koryandrs – Nyx: Kolkolkol u mean the hydra? That's what came to mind when I read that. Again, yes, violence is not an odd thing for me or this story but it's not supposed to be quite so gruesome yet… Nevertheless, thanks. Things like that are always a little tricky to do details for, and it's nice to have feedback on it.
Emoxkitten – Nyx: Psh. Half of my reviews are merely because if I tried to have such a conversation to real people, they would walk away mid-sentence. I think I've said this before…? Anyway. I live what I love and I just get so excited. Seriously, I can even bore English teachers… It's nice to actually have a good conversation on it for once. And thanks – those last two chapters were a little hard to write.
oOo
You'd think that one who can master the tricky art of a short sword and light feet and was trained to be nothing short of deathly cunning in a battle would manage to keep her head when she was asleep.
No. Far from it.
Insomnia, I can handle. It's spawned from dreams and the dwindling remains of adrenaline and my own worries. Even those hours I spent, lying awake atop the covers, were nothing compared to the nightmares. In fact, that was the more restful period. Sprawled with two pillows beneath my shoulders and my head in a crooked elbow, stripped to a tank top and sweat pants in the dead of a merciless Oswego winter, sweating and feeling rather ill all of a sudden. I could even hear Hunter talking to herself from down the hall. Yes, very peaceful.
I was impatient this time, eager to see my brother. Perhaps he'd appear as a raven again. Or would he look like himself, now that I'd seen him in real life? For some reason, the idea disappointed me. Even if that'd make telling him of the snake and Shay's news and Hunter's theory all the easier.
But I didn't see Nico.
I knew I was screwed before the real horror even began. I could hear, in the background, muffled as if beneath water, a familiar voice. A broken, raspy, harsh tongue that'd been gurgling from the Phlegathon, scarred by the fires of Tartarus.
It didn't speak clearly this time, and I had the odd sensation that I wasn't meant to hear it. It had cast me aside when I'd chosen to battle Orpheus and fight The Patron rather than killing myself and saving it some sort of unmentioned pain. It wouldn't be speaking to me again soon, for benefit or for harm.
But it still spoke, and its words still felt like acid-coated knives raking up my limbs. Along arms, across sore shoulders, plunging into my chest from between the ribs in my back.
And then I realized that I wasn't standing on anything.
My arms were dangling above me, jacket snapping against its own sleeves in the wind. The bones in my neck refused to stay straight. When I moved, my whole center of balance was thrown, and I went tumbling through utter blackness.
Falling. I was falling.
Fear shot through me, a bullet in my chest blooming into a deadly poison. Gravity owned me now. No matter how I twisted, my limbs were not mine; they were pulled and pushed as if by playful kittens batting at a frightened mouse. The ground was nonexistent.
Anywhere. Everywhere. Nothing but black space and more room to fall.
In my mind, screams echoed. I heard my own. I heard Ethan's. When I opened my mouth, though, blistering heat ran down my throat and all that came out was that cursed rasp. I couldn't tell if it was a laugh or a cry.
The last thing I can recall from it is trying, desperately, grasping at strings, to fall head-first with my hands held out beneath me. Some sort of warning. My fingers disappeared into blackness as Ethan had into the clouds that day. The voice screamed again and I saw – grey – flashing across the world-
oOo
I landed, but I didn't.
Suddenly the grey reigned everything and I stood in it, on solid ground, with perfect posture and not a wrinkle in my jacket. A gentle breeze graced my face.
The voice had vanished.
As the greys began to bend and take shape, I slowly slid to the ground, sitting with my legs hugged to my chest. I swear, I could still feel the pull of the ground from miles and miles away…
"Ciao? Pronto?"
I looked up. The grey mass had turned into a real world now; I could see buildings thrusting in standardized rectangles up into the sky, see the faces of people marching along the sidewalks, admire the polished gleam of light on the railing I leaned against.
Behind that railing was another drop.
I yelped and scrambled to my feet, backing to the other edge of the sidewalk. The Hudson River trudged along beneath me without care.
"Hello?" Nico called again, this time in English. I hadn't been sure what language it'd been in before. It'd sounded like Latin, but…
I swallowed thickly and looked up at him. He stood there on the sidewalk, staring out into the street blankly, eyebrows furrowed. "Hello?"
"I'm here," I rasped, but no sound came out of my mouth. I flinched and waved my hand before his face.
He didn't react. "Bree? You there?"
My hand returned sullenly back to me as I realized. The truth was grim, but it was the truth; he wasn't going to know I was here. And I couldn't speak.
Couldn't admit. I'd made great progress in the three – four? – days since he and I had spoken to Ethan's ghost together. The grief had hurt a little less and didn't stir in my chest so violently. But I still looked to my right, and as that dream had just proved…
Well. It seems that my traumatized mind wouldn't be getting over the fear of heights anytime soon, whether I eventually let go of Ethan or not.
I turned and looked at the city as he called my name again. The noise of it was dulled to me, nothing but rumbles, gurgles of random sound that meant nearly nothing, save his words. I couldn't even distinguish the voices of the people who walked past.
Walked past Nico, anyway. Most went right through me. For a moment, I was worried that it hadn't been a dream, that I'd fallen, that I'd landed and died-
"I-I'm not sure you're here," Nico stammered. A man walking by gave him an odd look. "Usually I can, but this city's real trucked up. It's not…" He trailed off and stared at his feet, shuffling nervously again. His eyes were rimmed with thick bruises that the lack of sleep left.
Cotton caught in my throat. Something was wrong.
Sympathy flooded me afterwards as my heart calmed down from the fall. The city was probably just adding to his stress. Towers and people and crowds – not good, for a kid who'd been nothing but scared of others and technology his whole life.
He sighed and shook his head. "Look, if you're listening, this is a one-way connection. That's the way it works when one person's awake and the other's asleep. The waking one can't hear anything from the other and hardly can sense their presence as it is. So don't try to talk. You'll have to Iris-Message later, alright?"
I nodded, even though he couldn't see, and glanced at the clouds again. They looked like the ones in Oswego that were currently dumping their load of snow.
Nico went on, ignoring the teenager that stopped to stare. "I checked Orpheus's Clearing. There's nothing there aside from the diamonds and dust Hunter left. So I came to New York next. Annabeth's on edge, but Camp's fine, and so am I. In fact, I found something. You won't like it, but I did."
From his pocket, he drew a piece of marble and held it out to a woman who just so happened to be there at the moment. She frowned and walked faster. He continued to speak to the space in which she'd stood, black marble gleaming.
My stomach lurched. I knew that marble.
"This is a chunk of marble from Mount Othrys. There are memories of it left by J- by the Hecate kid." The hasty correction sent electricity up my spine. "Someone's been both on the mountain and here. But nobody goes on Mount Othrys, not since the Romans toppled it. It's cursed ground guarded by the Garden and has Atlas creating noise pollution. The only reason someone would brave that mountain is if they were powerful, and if they had an allegiance to the Crooked One. Like The Patron does. And if they'd had a hand in taking Percy, then they've probably crossed here, beneath Olympus's sleeping nose. Forgot this on the way."
The teenager, now smirking, drew a phone and began to record Nico's monologue.
"My plan right now is to talk to some of the… less obvious people here. Maybe a few nymphs, if they'll put up with me. Scope around during the night and see who I can talk to. Any advice or news I can get a hold of. I'll… I'll sleep during the day and head out again at sunset. Cross the garden and take twenty-four hours on the mountain. Come back down with news of whatever I find. Don't plan to engage anything, but I'll be prepared. Something's bound to happen."
You should probably get more sleep before you shadow travel, then, I thought. The bags under his eyes nearly made me attempt to say it.
He glanced behind him at the river. "Well. That's all I have. I hope… I hope you guys are alright. Be careful. And forget what I said about Oswego. It's better than… Than this place." He sent a wary glance in the Empire State Building's direction.
The people kept on walking by, oblivious or apathetic. Save the internet-bound teen.
Clearly, this was on Nico's mind, too. His eyes skimmed their faces up and down the street, took in the shadowy pillars of the skyscrapers, cocked his head at some sound I couldn't hear. Those tired eyes took on a distant look so far I opened my mouth to ask if he was okay.
"There are so many people here," he muttered. "It's all… orderly. Not like the Underworld is. The Underworld is based off common sense and basic values. This... It's crazy. Most of the buildings look crooked to me. I wonder what'd happen if they all just fell down and squished everyone like little bugs."
Well. There's Nico, for you.
The teen holding the cell phone frowned at that, as if finally noticing that this wasn't funny.
At that moment, Nico noticed him. He narrowed his black eyes and glared. Then, for just a moment, obsidian morphed into cobalt. The kid turned deathly pale. In his hands, the phone split in half. Tiny glass shards danced across his wrists and down his arms and began to dance, belittled in the grey light, along the pavement.
Nico tore his gaze away. "Anyway. Be careful. Make sure the twins know not to go slinging demon names around." Heh. "I'll call you again tomorrow; try to stay alive until then, and so will I. If anything approaches the house, kill first, and ask questions later. Talk to Hunter and let me know what she remembers of Mount Othrys…"
He said more, but even his voice began to fade. Then the world grew dark, and the ground… it vanished…
For a moment, I was scared I'd start to fall again. But no. I sank, as if through icy water, into true sleep.
oOo
So from what I understand, people don't like America's education system. Particularly the high school. It's social pyramid is mixed up, the teachers don't care like they do in college, kids are maturing faster than they used to, the curriculum isn't rigorous enough, yada yada yada.
Nobody pays attention to the middle schools.
So that's how I wound up in math class at seven in the morning while the snow still fell outside and the thermometers read negative twenty-five (negative thirty-seven with wind chill), despite the law New York State has about colder-than-negative-five weather.
Way to go, America!
Though yet again, a fair amount of disbelief probably went into it. Who'd ever take the newsman seriously when he was breaking the bad news? While he shattered impossible records?
Luckily, the city of Oswego seemed to know snow fairly well. It had been a long while (save earlier this winter) since we'd had ten feet of snow and the air became so cold your spit froze on your tongue. A long, long while. Long enough ago to make us all frantic, but no so much that we were actually helpless. Some ancient instinct in the plow drivers awakened on that grave day, and they conquered the icy roads like the true and timeless heroes that they were. Of course, the students didn't see it that way, but if you ask me… We only had today and tomorrow before Christmas break, anyway, so why not give the guys some credit?
After all, they had to get up a lot earlier than us.
I don't know if Nico was responsible for how I slept that night, or if my body had finally broken under those last dreams and decided it wouldn't wake until it was ready. Either way, I woke five minutes before the bus was due. Which meant breakfast would come from the cafeteria and Hunter was already out waiting for her own ride.
Brook complained that she'd been poking me for ten minutes and had been ready to unleash Moon's loud, howling voice. I threw on my clothes, one eye on the clock, and simultaneously explained Nico's news in rushed murmurs. The silver in her eyes gleamed brighter.
"Mount Othrys?"
"Mount Othrys," I agreed, shrugging into my jacket. The name buzzed around my skull like an eager little fly.
We mused quietly on it. I didn't mention the other dream.
School was tolerable. The air conditioners must've remembered the Ice Age, too, because they didn't struggle one bit. I actually had to remove my jacket in several rooms. Natalie was absent for the first two classes, which was one less loud voice to ignore. The teachers, knowing that half of us had skipped, didn't assign anything heavy. Not even math bothered me.
Because I had orchestra waiting just before lunch.
That was the first time I saw Natalie that day. Jake and I were in our cramped corner, focusing on our stand as the rest of the room bustled to finish tuning and finding their places. We'd figured that a warm-up wasn't bad. Since we had a test coming up, I suggested we try some sight-reading, and judging by his answer, he was in desperate need of studying. So I cracked open my book to a random page and set it before us.
When playing together ended disastrously, we took turns.
It was clear that he was far better at this than I was. His eyes didn't even move across the paper – they fixed their placid gaze in one exact place and stayed there, stayed, stayed, while his fingers rose and fell like the waves in the ocean his eyes matched and the bow moved back and forth, back and forth, slowly, even matching the slurs on his first attempt.
I was watching him when, in the background, Natalie walked in. I focused on her. When Jake plays, focusing is an easy thing to do. She strode in unaware of her jealousy-inducing soundtrack and unpacked her viola quietly. Three friends walked past and weren't spared even a glance.
A hard ball landed in my stomach. All day, I had thought of nothing but my violin and my first home. Even my worry for Nico had been succumbed by the idea of Mount Othrys's ruins being used again. I had been itching with the need to be there, to visit, to make sure the palace was resting in peace. And to chase out the intruders.
I couldn't read Natalie like I could my brother, but the idea was the same. Something was wrong.
That's when I remembered that I had wrestled with a giant panther-eagle-monstrosity right in front of her the day before. What had she called it? A bat?
Well. Don't ask me how the Mist works. I don't know. And that's exactly why, when I saw her face, that I began to doubt it.
Why had she been late? Why had she come? Between that hallway being blocked off and all the snow, most kids hadn't.
I forced myself to examine her closer. No, no, I was wrong. Natalie was fine. My world hadn't just gotten my complicated. See? She still wore makeup. Her hair was done. Her clothes were crisp and she still snapped at the boy who'd stepped too close to her viola. She still sat with a straight back and a cold, regal expression in the third chair of her section.
I let out a long breath. Nothing major. No blip in reality, no mental scar. Nothing too serious. So it couldn't have been me and the gryphon.
…Could it?
During lunch, I found myself wishing Nico had taught me how to reach into dreams. It'd come up during training, but it was one of those topics that we never actually got around to… Oddly enough… But I couldn't, so there was no way to tell him of Shay and the hydra.
Shay. She was scouting the perimeter somewhere, knowing that the twins were in school with me. I tried to find them and had no luck.
The bell rang, and the cafeteria itself seemed to rise as we prepared to go to class. I regained custody of my stack of floppy school-things – paper, folder, this old homework sheet I'd been doodling on – and turned to follow the nearest current out the doors.
Beside me, my friend Brad scowled. "What does she want?"
"I don't know," Kayla said.
I frowned. "Who wants what?"
Brad motioned to the crowd and then disappeared into its deadly seas. Kayla seemed to simply vanish.
I stood, dumbfounded, until the one they'd been talking about surfaced and came to a halt before me.
Natalie's amber eyes were all but glowing. Her hair had been dyed again – a nice wood brown with a tint of red that matched those two smoldering embers. Her pink and blue binders were clutched tightly to her low-necked shirt as if she expected them to make a run for it. "Are you okay?"
I blinked. "What?"
"The pipe explosion yesterday. The bat that nobody will believe me about." She rolled her eyes and took up a position on my left. "You disappeared. You alright?"
My eyes strained to keep her in good view without turning my head. She just stood there, much like I had kept position next to Ethan mere months ago, and waited.
Too late, I realized she wanted me to answer. And to jump into the crowd. What, were we walking to class together? Were we friends now?
"Uh…" I said, leading us into the throng. I had a lie ready, of course, but how should I…? Eventually I settled for modest in the hopes that she'd abandon my soft voice. "I'm fine. Just didn't want to stand on the sidewalk for hours while the adults figured crap out."
Neither my tone nor edgy language worked. She just gave me a skeptic look and said, "Are you sure?"
"I'm fine," I sighed, "really. You?"
"You're the one the bat wanted to eat," she laughed. The sound was misplaced among the grave plains of her face. "Yeah, I'm alright."
My eyes scanned the crowd for an escape. "…Good, good…"
"I, uh, wanted to say something. My family's got a, um… A funeral to go to. We're bailing this winter wasteland and hitting Seattle for a week or so."
"Seattle. I'm from there," I said absent-mindedly, glaring at the kids before us as if that would force them to part. Come on, come on… Just long enough for us to get separated…
"I know. But I won't be at school. I'll be in Seattle."
Like I cared if I wouldn't see her. "Real bummer."
"Yeah. Having to stare at Isaac in his coffin – in Seattle – just can't measure up to that," she muttered in a mimicked tone.
I sighed and spared her a glance. "Sorry for the sarcasm. I'm not in a good mood."
"I noticed."
My eyes jumped along the other students' heads again. "So, you're heading to… Seattle…?"
At that moment, I saw a black pony tail bobbing among the others. And a second two moments later.
The twins!
My conversation with Natalie was forgotten. I yelped and shoved past the two kids in my way. Natalie, shocked, leapt after me. Her words became warbled by the surging of the crowd. "…Travel… Seattle… Bye!"
I managed to catch up to the two ponytails, but they swerved into a classroom at the last second, and as hard as I tried to follow them, my body was carried away by the relentless flow of hormone-filled bodies.
oOo
"Oooh. So another trick Death Breath's hiding from us," Hunter muttered, but the smile was there on her face. She let her 'magic fingers' – basically her impersonation of Bellatrix – drop and shook her head. "Big deal."
"But Mount Othrys!" Shay muttered, falling back onto the couch with a groan.
Hunter's face fell quickly. "Nothing should be there. No one but Atlas. I don't… I mean, I can't think of anything there…"
"Books," Brook declared, taking her own seat next to Moon.
"Books!" the wolf echoed eagerly. Her tail wagged when she got it right.
"Books," Hunter agreed sadly, drawing one of her father's smallest volumes from her bag and flopping into the armchair.
I opened my mouth to tell her – before she read – about the other dream, about falling, about… About blackness and fear and Ethan's screams…
No words came out. I closed my mouth and sat down.
"So," Hunter said as she flipped automatically to the page detailing werewolves. "Other news? Shay?"
Oceanus's daughter let out a long breath and closed her eyes.
"You still don't want to tell the twins?" Brook guessed.
Shay shook her head. "I don't, no. But we can't wait. As much as I'd love to give them another Christmas, it's just… No. They have to be told before something happens. Y'all are done with school tomorrow, right?"
"Right," I agreed.
"Pssh," Hunter muttered. "Only if you want to go tomorrow."
"You're going tomorrow," Grandpa muttered, pausing from where he stood in the kitchen and raising an eyebrow in her general direction.
"I'll catch them on their way out tomorrow, then," Shay said as if they hadn't spoken. "I made sure to track where they left from today."
A heavy weight lifted off of us. It was most visible on her – she sat straighter and her lips began to twitch, just the smallest little signs. Satisfied. A decision had at last been made. Now all we had to do was see it through, and obliterate anything that got in our way.
Not unfamiliar territory for us.
"…I had a dream."
Silence fell. Hunter set her book down. Together, every head – even Moon's – swiveled to stare at Brook.
She quickly dropped her gaze to her hands. "I, uh, was killing stuff. Got lost in a cave. Started hunting again. Then something else. I forget."
"You forget?" Hunter asked, bewildered.
"Forgot," Moon sighed. Her ears flicked in dismissal as she slid to the ground.
Brook nodded and patted her wolf. "Yeah. It was all fuzzy, anyway. I think it's actually just from when I hunted down that mountain lion on Othrys."
We stared for a moment longer. But then her nervous fidgeting became too much to bear and we turned away to get on with the rest of our afternoon.
oOo
Nyx: READ THIS, GUYS!
Some people are a little confused. There are only two chapters this Saturday, as the first for the week went up on Monday. So there's just one more chapter after this.
'kay. Now that's out of the way…
Nic: Hope y'all had a happy Halloween.
Nyx: Uh… I had something else to say, but it's lost…
Oh, well. Next chapter, then!