a/n: i'm well aware y'all are shook. you're welcome :)

in honor of the end (choking up internally, my baby is almost over we have four more chapters to go including this one ohhhhhhh) i'll be responding to reviews sent recently down below. ffn was being really annoying with reviews but they're back up so that's amazing :)

they'll be at the bottom because i don't like long a/ns at the top aha, and yes i will be doing this till we reach the end

review if you please, i'll answer for sure :)

. . .

Bianca turns to face him. Recognition illuminates her face, almost shadowed but still visible in the large room. "Nico," she breathes, not elaborating or providing any answers. Nico is not sure he wants them. He doesn't want to believe Bianca is in league with Hazel and Octavian and Lawrence. He can't believe it. It's not true, it's not supposed to be. He's already lost his sister in everything but blood to them. He will not believe that his biological sister is working with them, too.

It's fake. It's a trick. It can't be. They are not working together. Bianca is not killing people. Bianca's eyes are dark but they are the same eyes as they've always been, they are the eyes Nico grew up with —

Nico is fooling himself, he knows. Everyone's thoughts are racing, though, he is quite sure. Trying to make sense of the situation. The fight between Will, Hazel, and Bianca has momentarily halted, but Nico thinks it will restart soon enough.

Hazel narrows her eyes at them, but something is off about the gesture. "So you showed," she mutters.

"Yeah." Nico scowls back at her. "We showed."

"How did you —" Will starts, but then says, "I — okay." Evidently he is confused about the entire thing, wondering how Nico and Jason know the mysterious girl with the dark eyes and about Hazel, who's betrayed them all, Hazel who's pulled the wool over his eyes and everyone else's.

Will has powers. That's an odd revelation. But it makes sense, of course. It makes so much sense now that Nico thinks about it. The constant light, his sunshiney demeanor and cheerful personality. Perhaps the healing is a factor in it too, how Will is so talented with that kind of thing.

Nico has no right to judge. He and Will have clearly been keeping their secrets from each other and it'd be hypocritical of him to criticize his boyfriend for the exact same things he does. So Nico ignores the slight sting in his chest that Will is undoubtedly also experiencing. Now is not the time. The time is later and in private and in a healthy way where both of their questions can be answered.

Nico can tell the fight is unfair: it's double the darkness against one beacon of light. And Will is running out of energy, whereas the girls have obviously been more trained and have more numbers, so different amounts of force fall on each of them to combat Will. And Will must take all of the battle, not even the brunt of it. He'd taken them on solitarily, alone, with nothing but his light to combat their powers.

But that's not enough, it won't be for two highly trained people who've obviously learned how to hone their powers. Sometimes it takes fire to fight fire.

Will won't be fighting alone, not anymore, Nico thinks with resolve and persistence. He came here for Will and he's going to support him. If his sister is a murderer he will fight her and she can see about that.

He runs toward his boyfriend. He raises his arm. Nico can feel a tug in his gut, the power he hasn't harnessed in a long time. The dead, the undead, everything about them. It fills his core and the dead call to him, beckoning, Master, prince…

That feeling rises from the ground; it forms something tangible as bones collect themselves and connect into a distinct shape: the human skeleton.

"Let's make this even," Nico tells the girls challengingly.

"Not a chance!" exclaims Jason, blinking out of the stupor he was momentarily in. "I'm coming too." He is an odd sight to befall in his pajamas but there is a look in his eyes no one can deny him and there is a stance to him — that of a fighter — that no one will challenge him.

Bianca scowls, twitching a finger, and the skeleton she'd been controlling, previously a bit limp after Will destroyed it with his light, reforms and perks up. It's taxing work, Nico knows, and as such Bianca and Hazel, as well as Nico, can only make a few at a time. It's impressive she managed it with a finger's twitch, but it is not the movement that matters; it is the method.

Nico tells his creation, "Fight them."

He motions with his arms and two more skeletons assemble themselves out of the dirt. Jason spares him a little trouble with moving it and directs the winds — being the son of Jupiter, having his air powers — to guide the skeleton.

Will smiles. He raises his now glowing hands.

"Sweet," Nico says appreciatively.

"I could say the same to you." Will nods at the skeletons, now in full fighting mode against the others' dead.

The skeletons clash, bumping into each other, carpals colliding with one another, falling off and returning to their original spots. Nico's skeletons kick at Bianca's and Hazel's, but their opponents dodge the hits swiftly, rolling and disassembling themselves out of the way. Will helps Nico's skeletons, concentrating his light with an impressive precision at the enemy skeletons, and Nico lends a bit of his strength into his creations. Jason creates air resistance against their opponents, making it harder for them to move. They've got a numerical strength and they have a bit of a tactical strategy as well — Whatever it takes to get them down. Fight dirty.

Despite Nico's advantages, however, Hazel and Bianca hold their own. They both fight in tandem, if not more synchronized than Nico's team. Moving their hands up simultaneously, their training and the sheer number of skeletons and zombies they're able to produce almost overpowers Nico's work. Will flashes light at Nico periodically, healing his power-induced "wounds" — if they could qualify as those. Mostly Nico is sapped for strength and he finds himself a little more shadowy than normal, weaker and a bit frailer.

The scene before them is odd and would be almost frightening to an outsider. Light amidst the darkness with winds being controlled and teenagers raising the undead in practically a palace setting, full of gold and ivory, black marble and swirling silver, the domed ceiling reflecting a story — one of black against white, of dark against light.

There are no knives, no guns, no blasts; there is no conflict among the people themselves, but there are factors they add to in the skeletons' fight as the dead swoop around one another. Each person stands at the sidelines, letting the dead make their moves like chess pieces. Maybe it is cowardly, and maybe they do not care. Everyone has resolve glinting on their face and everyone fights with the intention of winning. Only one side will emerge victorious in the end, though, and Nico thinks it may just be his evil sister who does.

Nico is curious and he is baffled and he cannot take it anymore. He cannot keep wondering why his sisters turned to this place. They are good people, he knows in his heart.

Are they? wonders a small part of him, the cynical voice who thinks people are out to get him, the part of him that thinks friends are a waste of time and that no one is trustable but himself. Nico regards this part of him sometimes a lot more than he'd like — actually considering the bitter words. Oh, he might not act on them, but Nico listens to them none the same..

He does not speak of his own volition — his words bubble with a life of their own.

"Why are you doing this?" The words echo around the grand room. It makes them sound a little bit hollow, Nico thinks dimly.

"I am a soldier," Bianca replies. There is by no means a ceasefire, but the battle seems distant. Will and Jason are fighting, and the skeletons are fighting. Perhaps they are listening with one ear and fighting with their hands. Nico doesn't care; he just needs his answers. "I serve the Earth Mother. She made me great and I will repay the favor." She speaks stiffly, harshly, as if it pains her throat to get the words out and she has to choke on her own breath to say them. She pauses in between words at random intervals, as if she must force her voice box to enunciate.

"This is so weird. This is beyond creepy," Jason murmurs under his breath, but Nico can hear him somehow. "This is some kind of cult."

Ignoring him, Nico breathes almost disbelievingly, "But you died...Bee, you died…" He cannot believe she's here. She'd been taken. He remembers that night, the night he'd run and it was his fault and the night she'd died. Nico remembers all too well. She is not supposed to be alive.

"The Hunters did kill me," she confesses. "And then they brought me here, where they could hone my power, make me alive again, all thanks to the Earth Mother's ace in the hole...none other than our wondrous little Hazel…" Her tone is slightly bitter, slightly enraged, but overall calm. Nico does not care, because of course it's been Hazel. Hazel, the precious power play who'd manipulated him...Hazel, Hazel.

"Since when has it even been Hazel?" Will asks in confusion. So he isn't up to date on his friend being a murderer — of course, Nico rationalizes, why would he be? He has no reason to suspect Hazel in anything.

"I have been working with the earth mother for a while now. Gaea is great and she will bring us glory." Hazel recites the lines flatly, as if it is something memorized — and for that matter, so does Bianca…

"You're being forced to work for her — this Gaea lady," Nico realizes in horror. His sisters...they're not murderers. They're under duress. Or they'd be madly raving right now, foaming at the mouth for a chance to kill him and end the Agency's plans. And Nico feels horrible, horrible, for assuming things about his sisters, for thinking they'd willingly work with her, for making those terrible inferences. "You weren't betraying us…"

"I was right." Jason gasps. "My conspiracy was right, Hazel's not working for them."

"Gaea is great," Bianca echoes Hazel, but her tone has dropped somewhat, as if she desperately wants to give up the gig, but can't. "And she will bring us glory."

"Stop," Nico says, pained. "Stop saying that. You can drop the act, you know...I'm here, I'm your brother…"

But Bianca and Hazel press on, sad-faced but determined

The skeleton fight steadily drains Nico; it's been going on all this while, but he's tiring and Will is tiring, too, and he can tell everyone is tired but the girls have more stamina.

Nico needs an edge, something that can summon armies —

Armies —

Nico has enough energy for one last thing.

He waves his arm, summoning the inky shadows; the fighting doesn't quite pause but it doesn't quite continue either, but there's something in his hands that the shadows have deposited.

The Scepter. After all the time in his closet and then in the shadows. It's here, solid, with the obsidian orb on top glowing with Nico's power, the coincidentally ivory-colored shaft matching the walls.

"What — what's that? What're you doing?" asks Will in concern.

"Nico, are you sure that's safe —" interjects Jason worriedly.

"It'll save our asses," remarks Nico dryly, and he thrusts the scepter up high, and there is a burst of power surging through him — he can feel so many bodies and skeletons animating to life, under him, more than ever before, a new feeling, his gut swirling with sheer power and ability and the darkness — everything feels like it is at his command.

An army of the dead, skeletons and necrotic flesh, rises, slowly erecting itself into a formation of his subjects.

Nico breathes, then tells the group, "I can free you guys...if you'll let me."

. . .

oh yes i did, i brought out the scepter. it's been there since chapter one; it's a minor detail but at the very beginning there's a brief scene where nico looks at it and stashes it in the shadows — yeah that wasn't just a word count scene. i was saving it for this chapter.

review responses (and we got so many so thank y'all for reviewing! this was a lot more than usual idek why aha) —

from ch 4:

Celestial Iris: it's with the help of supporters like you that i've stuck with this story, so thank you for that :)

from ch. 10:

DiAngelo646: thank you, i'm glad you liked it; i'm really hesitant to write fluff because i'm an angst addict so i love that you enjoyed :) hope this chapter was satisfying

herecomesthepun: thank you! i'm glad to hear you liked it especially because you're so famous and i am a groveling peasant on the ground ahah

Thrawn13: thanks! (is nico this savage, was his threat really that memorable? wtf i thought it was a terribly trashy pun) glad to see you enjoyed :)

ch 11:

Thrawn13: thanks for adding this story to your community, it means a lot to me; also, let's just say i didn't just kill bianca "because canon." details, details ;)

DiAngelo646: no spoilers, all shall be seen eventually...you shall have to wait and see what happens next ;)

Guest: nice connection, but again, all shall be seen eventually!

a-halfblood-with-attitude: thank you for the compliments, i'm glad my present tense use didn't turn you off haha. here's your update, hope you enjoyed :)

hana-liatris: this chapter, i think, clarifies things a bit, but things will definitely be more clear in later chapters so stick with me!