DISCLAIMER: Rick Riordan owns PJatO and HoO. We do not. Unfortunately.
oOo
I saw flickers.
Strange things. Wolves, many wolves, standing over snowy brick ruins. A night sky full of stars, swinging by as if lost in time. I heard the wolves howling and the screaming of wind – perhaps the snowstorm pounding on my window managed to affect my dreams.
I saw mist and a forest and green scales. They all flickered by like a television with bad reception, or static on a radio. Half-remembered things. I saw a street of houses totally unfamiliar to me. One had an address written in Ancient Greek. Then it was gone, flickering and changing, the colors shifting until I saw the image of a pale girl with dark hair in a dress white as snow. A crown of ice sat atop her head. Then she succumbed to the picture of the night sky once more.
Then, slowly, beneath the screams of the wind like a worm creeping beneath a blanket, a voice began to speak.
It was raspy and dry, like it'd spoken too much too quickly and with no rest or water. Or someone who'd just seen too much. I'd feel sorry for them if I didn't swear, by that creepy tone, they had nothing but dark, awful things in mind for me.
The voice whispered, stuttering, tripping over itself, cutting back and skipping like a scratched CD. "F-forgotten horrors best left untouched – horrors left untouched…"
As it spoke, crimson began to bleed into the images. The air crackled as the voice came closer, louder…
"-Too much – Rise from – from minds scarred far too much…"
Something thick and warm boiled in my throat. I tried to scream but choked on it, on the warm, rusty taste of blood….
"Beware – shadows – dreamer waits…"
I tried to run, but I had no body. There was just the scenes, moving too quickly for me to see now, flashing by like snowflakes in a blizzard-
"Enslaved – peace – Sky's eternal peace shall – eternal peace shall break-"
-The scenes and the voice, creeping closer, its rancid breath in my face-
"-Traitor's hand – enslaved by hand – eternal peace-"
The words become more and more broken, like shattered pieces of glass, or the shattered fragments of a mind-
"Fate's shadows – to death – death are heroes damned by day…"
At that moment, searing hot claws grabbed at my throat, the visions vanished, and everything fell absolutely silent.
oOo
"Come on! Come on! Come on, stupid school board! Close it!"
"Is it not closed yet?" I asked, glancing out the kitchen window. The white snow was draped in gentle waves across the lot. The neighbors' tree – which had fallen down after the drakon left – was nearly completely hidden in the white ash.
"No, just a two-hour delay," Brook said, sitting on her knees in the living room floor, still surrounded by Hunter's books. Her eyes were wide and glued to the screen. Moon had taken a seat next to her and was staring at the television in a similar matter, yellow eyes just about ready to pop out of her head, but I don't think she knew what we were looking for.
I took a big bite of my honey bun and closed my eyes, deciding that even if those spare two hours was all we got, I'd enjoy them. My backpack lay forgotten next to the door. Hunter had decided to spend the extra time sleeping on the couch. She looked like she hadn't gotten that much rest the night before; her eyes were sunken in and red, and she was crankier than usual.
Which meant we were all in danger of having our breakfasts drenched in tobacco sauce, but there wasn't much we could do about that. So we let her sleep.
"UGH!" Brook howled as our school rolled by on the news again. "Come on, you thick-headed old hags! SNOW DAY!
"Quiet," Hunter moaned, turning over. "I'm tryin'a sleep."
"I don't care about Rochester!" the brunet continued to scream at the television. "Give me Oswego!"
I expected Hunter to throw something at her, but she just groaned again and hid beneath her pillow.
"Brook, pipe down," I said, and bit into my sugary breakfast again.
Moon yelped excitedly and huddled down on the floor to wait. She wouldn't stop squirming. She looked so much like an anxious toddler that I had to laugh.
"Children, children!" came a scolding voice from the second apartment. Granny appeared in the threshold, hair a wild mess and clothes rumpled like the sea's surface in a monsoon. "What is all the noise?"
"We're working on it," I said apologetically as Moon, unable to contain all that excitement and wolf energy, barked.
"We have a two hour delay," Brook provided, watching the school names for the C towns go by.
Granny perked up at that. "Oh. Would you like me to make breakfast?"
"No thanks," I said, waving my honey bun. Granny, who ate those for breakfast regularly (oh, she could cook when it came to dinner, but wouldn't dare try anything too hard in the mornings), nodded and made her way to the chair next to Hunter. She smiled at the blonde girl's sleeping form. Or, what looked like could be sleeping. She could sleep through anything, but not fall asleep during too much noise.
"Come on, come on!" Brook began to chant. Oswego was coming up again. "Snow day! Snow day!"
Granny frowned. "How much snow fell last night?"
"Four feet, and it was right about three in the morning," I provided. "It's more of the time that fell – the snow plows apparently can handle that, but they won't get near finished in time for school."
"Four feet," she echoed, amazed. "In late October. We usually don't get that much until December and keep it well through January. We may break hundred-year-old records."
"Didn't Oswego used to get tons of snow every winter?" Brook asked, craning her neck to see both Granny and the screen. "That's why there's a sealed door in the hallway upstairs? The one that just leads to a fifteen-foot drop outside?"
"Yes, and that's exactly why it's sealed," Granny said firmly. "Don't go poking around that thing. And it hasn't been used in ages – it's been many years since Oswego actually got that much snow. They quit making houses with those a while ago. Only the old houses have them."
"Come on! Come on!" Brook yelped again. Moon jumped to her feet and let loose a flurry of barks. Hunter shouted something to them about shutting the front door but was drowned out by the wolf.
Then, before I could even read the screen, they both leapt up and shot through the house like untied balloons. Moon howled and Brook screamed, "YES! NO SCHOOL!" They barreled of Antonio as they whirled through the house, leaving the poor dog looking quite bewildered.
"Quiet down! Your grandfather is sleeping!" Granny called after them. She shook her head and chuckled.
My own sad smile crossed my face. I turned to the right, expecting it mimicked, and then looked away.
When Brook and Moon came shooting through the living room again, they were followed by the other fives silver wolves. Moon and another, larger, light silver one with long legs – Star, I think her name was – were now in the lead. The racket they made could've woken the dead.
While I was busy laughing, Hunter grabbed her pillow and threw it as hard as she could. It hit the slowest wolf, the largest one with dark fur and I think the only male, got it in the face. It had such momentum that it slammed him against the wall with a loud banging noise. He growled, shook the pillow off, and continued to follow his new pack.
I swallowed the last of my honey bun and made my way over to Hunter. Sitting on the armrest, I asked, "You feeling okay?"
"Fine," she muttered. "Just a stupid nightmare."
I sighed and looked out towards the window again. Nightmares. They were more than nightmares, when you're a demigod. I knew I had to share my dream with them eventually. But if Hunter'd had one, too, then things were looking even more bleak.
"Well," I said. "Just one more omen of impending doom, right? What's one more?"
"You're going to say that until we find the straw that breaks the burrow's back," she muttered into her last pillow.
"Right. I'm sorry; you know you can't force me to play the optimist. I suck at that."
"You do indeed," she sighed. "Give me four hours and we'll figure out the omens, alright? I need to sleep."
"Okay," I said, and went to find Brook. She was upstairs dancing in the hallway with her wolves. Poor Sylvester was hiding beneath the couch with wide, terrified eyes. He had never seen so many dogs, and none so wild. I chuckled and told them all to quiet down and find something calm to do; it was too early in the morning for a sugar rush.
Brook settled for using wadded-up paper and a rubber band to shoot at a poster of a tiger up on her wall. The wolves gathered around her bed and on her floor, staring intently up at the picture, and wagging their tails excitedly when she made a kill.
Knowing they'd be fine for a little while, I headed back downstairs to find something to do. The cartoon channel served. As I watched, though, my mind wandered. It drifted to the drakon and my dream and the violin locked in its case upstairs. I thought of Natalie and her viola and the song the orchestra had been playing. And the elusive song from my dream.
After discovering the air to my right held no advice, I glanced at Hunter, but thankfully she had fallen asleep. Granny had vanished – probably gone back to bed as well. Since cartoons weren't distraction enough I got out the extra credit homework sheet from English – received after my poem was read – and tortured my brain with little English letters.
But staring at the lines for a poem brought back the voice's words. Forgotten horrors best left untouched… And then what? Something that rhymed…
A new, stunning idea dawned on me. I wasn't sure if I should look up to or fear it. All I knew was that it was strong-
-Interrupting my thoughts, the shadow the table was casting began to churn. It twisted and curled and demanded my attention, writhing, turning into new shapes and showing me something…
I watched as it rose above the floor and moved around in slow circles, growing larger and larger, until the shadows appeared solid. Then they fell away to reveal a head of uncut black hair and cold, unreadable eyes. His jacket was rumpled as if he'd just woken, and his sword hanging crooked; otherwise he looked much like he did every day. In fact, very much like he did every day, for I'd only seen him in like three different shirts. The one he wore now, he'd worn yesterday.
"Nico," I greeted, turning back to my homework. His showing up so often now was beginning to unnerve me. Though no longer only because he was strange. Now I had to worry about some giant flaw in the universe that worried our father and released deadly drakons on the world. "It's a tad early for training, isn't it?"
"Lord Pluto told me you had the school day off," he said, leaning back against the pole. "I'm sorry for showing up in your house uninvited, but I didn't want to waste time."
Lord Pluto. Not that Nico never understood Pluto was his father – it was just that Pluto was so far, so alien from Hades, he had a hard time imagining it.
"He ordered you to come here?"
"Yes. He seemed upset about something."
Now I turned to look at him again, after glancing at Hunter to confirm she was still asleep. We were alone; he'd speak to me here. "Has something happened in the Underworld again?"
Nico shrugged. "Lots of people have been escaping. Could be another one. Or he was upset about the drakon." He turned towards the door and waved for me to follow.
"Okay, one, did he recognize it, and two, we'll have to go out a window. We're snowed in."
He grimaced. "If it's possible for you to get snowed in, then you shouldn't live there. I can't stand snow." He leapt onto the kitchen counter with easy grace and began to fiddle with the window. A sly glance was shot over his shoulder at me. In that glance, I saw the familiar hate that made my stomach churn. "And no, he didn't recognize the drakon. He had no idea."
He slid the window open and frowned. "Think this one's big enough?"
"It is," I said as I watched him crawl through it. There was a loud, disgruntled oof as he landed in the snow beneath.
I slid through and landed on my feet beside him. He scowled and picked himself up from the white frost. "Ugh. This is nuts."
"Speak for yourself," I muttered, opening a hand to help him up.
"Don't touch me," he spat, and got to a wobbly stand on his own. Then he strode off, sinking into the snow with each step, towards the center of the clearing.
I sighed. He wasn't in a good mood today. Which guaranteed a long, hard training session.
oOo
"I told you to focus on the points, not the whole picture."
"I am!" he barked, and shoved the Stygian iron back underground. "It's just not working right!"
I sighed and shoved the tip of my sword into the snow, where it stood on its own. "This whole thing is about control. Yelling isn't going to help you."
"I don't lack control," he muttered, his voice suddenly dropping. "You wouldn't believe how long and how desperately I've mastered that."
"Then what do you suggest?"
"It's lack of power. You can have all the control on your mind that you want; if you don't have hands to hold the pencil, you're never going to draw the picture."
"So… You're saying you lack the ability? On the magic side?"
"The ability to be precise, yes," he said, and rose another slab from the ground. This one resembled a totaled car. "There's the mental side to magic, I understand that, but it's not my problem here."
"Hm," I grunted, not so sure I liked my student correcting us both.
"It's like mayonnaise," he said to himself, and seemed quite happy with that comparison.
I didn't ask him to explain. This was the crazy side of Nico; he made odd connections, weird little segways, that nobody else could follow. I doubted most of those connections actually existed. His oddest connections, he never would explain.
"Yeah, like mayonnaise. Totally."
He let the Stygian iron disappear into the snow again and turned to me. "Alright. I've done my hour of practice. Your turn."
"I already can summon Stygian iron in specific shapes. I don't need to practice."
"I meant your sword. I want you to search it. Right here, right now, where I can watch you."
Oh, hell. I squirmed in the snow and grabbed my sword protectively. "…Why?"
"So I can memorize the glyphs on it. To figure out why you can't read its recordings! Why else?"
"There are no further recordings. It's just my own."
"Really? You positive on that?"
"Positive," I growled, glaring back at him. Oh, I knew there were more, but he wasn't going to force me into anything.
"I think you're mistaken," he said.
Mistaken. Not lying.
"And how could that happen?" I muttered.
"Well, you just accused me of lacking mental control and ability, didn't you?"
"I have more power than you do on-"
"I said mental ability, not magic. Mental."
"Well… Yeah, I guess I did accuse you."
"Exactly. I'm merely suggesting something similar. You can consciously try to work magic all you want; if your subconscious isn't in on it, you won't get a scrap of work done. That part of your mind can totally destroy your intentional goals. There's a mental side to everything, especially magic. Make sure it's not a disadvantage to you."
"You think it's become a disadvantage?" I asked, trying to remember a time I'd even consciously wanted to find something. There wasn't one.
Yet I'd discovered something, anyway. Hadn't tried to look since.
"Yes, I think that's the problem. You can't find things because some part of your mind is reluctant. I'm going to figure out what it is and break it. Make sense?"
"I don't want you breaking anything remotely related to my mind."
For the first time since I'd met him, he smiled. It wasn't a pretty smile. It was a wide, sharp-toothed, unstable, wicked, Cheshire cat smile. Teeth white as bone – paler even than his skin – gleamed in the cloud-shrouded sunlight. Something bloody flickered in his eyes. He didn't speak; just stared and smiled at me.
Rumors of his insanity hadn't been too exaggerated on Mount Othrys.
I did my best to look unfazed. Like the smile didn't set alarms off in my mind. "Well, I'll take that as an apology. Great. I didn't want to look at my sword's records, anyway." I stood and walked to the house, praying he would not follow.
"I could have Phil break it, if you don't want me to!" he called.
I sighed. "Who's Phil?"
"My friend."
"The last three times you mentioned him, you said you'd bring him to meet me."
His tone became confused. "I did?"
"Yes."
"Well, he must've never wanted to come."
I was pretty sure, especially in times like this, that Phil was imaginary. And Phil didn't scare me any less than Nico did. "Well, tell him I said hi! I'm gonna go see if Hunter's up. We have a dream to discuss."
"I'm sure Phil would like to meet you," he said as I strained to open the window. It'd been shut while we trained. And, a quick glance through the glass confirmed, was now locked.
"He could help with your sword problem," Nico said very seriously.
"I'm sure he could," I said, sighing. We'd have to find one unlocked.
Behind me, I heard Nico get up and stumble across the snow to get to me. "You know, the window to Hunter's room is open up there."
I craned my head up to look at Hunter's window. It was, of course, second-story. "Ha! Very funny. Have fun breaking your neck. I'll go find my own window."
"You have a lot of subconscious fears," he muttered, but clambered onto the kitchen window's sill anyway.
My blood ran cold. "Wait – I didn't mean you should actually try-"
"Chill. I got this," he said, and dug his nails into the ice on the house's sliding. With a grunt, he lifted himself off the sill and began to climb.
"You're going to fall," I rasped, my tongue dry. I wasn't so sure I should let him loose while he was in one of his crazy fits. You know, impaired judgment and all.
Nor did I want to watch this.
He ignored me and continued to climb. Don't ask me where he found footholds and handholds. I have absolutely no clue.
"You're going to hurt yourself," I tried. Some part of me said that I should climb up there with him to help if he fell. The rest of me was frozen in place.
The last time I tried, I hadn't saved anyone from falling.
At last, he got his hands onto the windowsill leading to Hunter's room. He swung his leg up and over, as if he were mounting a horse, and disappeared into the room. I held my breath and waited for him to reappear.
"Hey!" he called, and leaned far out over the edge of the sill. He reached out a hand, signaling me. "Your turn!"
Yep, he was nuts.
"No thank you," I said, closing my eyes. No way was I going to even try. "Why don't you just come down here and unlock the kitchen window from the inside?"
He rolled his eyes at me. "Oh, sure. That works too." And he disappeared again.
Moments later he appeared through the glass of the kitchen window. He gave me that crazy smile again. Maybe he did that whenever something amused him. Nevertheless, he unlocked the window for me and stepped aside so I could crawl in.
"You," he said smugly, "are absolutely nuts."
Well, give the boy a prize.
Or maybe he was just making his own connections again. Perhaps, in his world, 'nuts' meant something entirely different. Possibly even a good thing.
"Thank you," I said, and closed the window behind me. I shivered. "Geez. Somebody forgot to turn on the heaters in here."
"I guess someone did," a familiar voice said from behind us.
I turned. "Hey, Hunter. Get enough sleep?"
"Enough," she snorted. "Hey, Brook! Get down here!" Then she cast Nico a sideways glance. "Are you two done mountain climbing, or do you want to help sort out visions of the future?"
Nico's Cheshire smile vanished. "What?"
"I had a dream last night. Held images and words. Due to rhymes and syllable patterns, I have reason to suspect it was a prophecy."
"That's what I heard!" I gasped. "Something about forgotten horrors and stuff!"
Nico growled and backed up like a frightened cat. "Prophecies don't come through dreams, guys. They come from the Oracle. Through Apollo and the Oracle. It couldn't have been a prophecy."
She raised an eyebrow. "You got a better idea?"
He bared his teeth at her. "How about not poking around? If it is from the future, or even is a prophecy, you're only going to make things worse by screwing around. Trust me."
She snorted and turned away, striding into the living room to meet Brook coming down the stairs. "Suit yourself. But I intend to figure a few things out. Have fun sitting there in the dark."
Nico made a strange, startled sound. "She's kidding. Tell me she's kidding."
"She isn't," I said. "Seriously, at least we could talk about it. What's so bad about the dream? Surely if we can figure something out, it's not as dangerous?"
I wasn't prepared for the look he gave me now. It was, in fact, startled. Panicked. "No. No, you're wrong. You can't just… And trying to prevent it is worse-"
"Nico, chill. It's alright."
"No, it's not! Listen to me when I talk! You shouldn't do this!"
My jaw hardened. "Don't order me around. We're going to figure out what we've been shown before it kills us first. You can participate or not as you wish. If you'd rather not, then that's fine. Leave."
The cold, horrible hate glazed over his eyes again. The house fell deathly silent. Even Moon didn't dare make a sound.
"Fine," he spat, turning away. The shadows played eagerly with the cuffs of his black jeans. "Ignore me. Don't come crying back when one of you winds up dead."
Something in his eyes screamed of betrayal. That something wrong had been done. Something unforgivable. He didn't give that look to them; only to me, as he disappeared into the shadows, leaving the house eerily silent once more.
Hunter snorted. "It's alright, guys. He's in a bad mood. When he next shows up, we'll probably have figured out the dream and the drakon."
I stared a moment longer at where he'd disappeared from. A cold feeling had settled in my stomach.
Nico could be crazy at times, and very dangerous, wasn't always welcome here, and I would never place trust in him.
But I'd never known him to be wrong.
oOo
Nyx: Okay, lots of new info in this chapter. Hope I'm not making anything too obvious.
Nic: That creeped you out? That first scene?
Nyx: Yes, it did, actually. That, and I found a beetle in my room. Big, giant black thing that had a small head and a large abdomen/shell thing. Kind of resembled a semi truck. The cat refused to kill it, and it escaped.
Nic: I thought u were only scared of spiders.
Nyx: I haven't ever seen this beetle before. It's subject to anything.
Nic: Geez. It ought to be subject to a shoe or a flyswatter, too.
Nyx: Eh…
Nic: ANYWAY, she was right. A lot of important things in this chapter, little details that'll grow as the story continues.
Nyx: So what'd you think of what you read so far? Interested? Please review and tell us! All feedback is greatly appreciated!
Nic: As the schedule goes, the next update will be on Monday. It will contain its chapter and the extra. Nyx will be on vacation the next week, so there will be no updates, but that's kind of why we're doing double this week. She will be back on the… Uh…
Nyx: June 20th. So, this Monday, and then skip to June 20th. The schedule will pick up there as usual.
Nic: 20th! I knew that!
Nyx: Personally I'm so excited you might get an extra chapter updated somewhere in there. I write when I'm excited.
Nic: Clearly.
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FUN WRITER'S FACT; Professional editing for a novel costs about one dollar a page. If Rebels were to be published, the editing alone would cost over $500. TLO cost nearly $400. Puts things into perspective, huh?
