The Stars Against the Sky

Nico hated being treated so nicely with Aphorei's sickly-sweet croons. He hated how he couldn't resist shuddering every time he visited the dark chamber where Ouranos's soul rested. He hated being treated by the Dark like they were preparing him for something special—something that he knew he wouldn't be able to get out of.

He looked around, a ripple of dismay settling in his stomach as he gave his room in the Underworld a brisk once-over. It was dark and deserted, the shadows making his domed room look like an endless abyss.

The amaryllis that Nico used to decorate and lighten his room up a bit were now gone too; those flowers were always Will's favourite.

Nico could only remember how his room was always the first place that came to mind whenever he wanted to stay away from the cruel world he lived in for a good long while.

But now . . .

With all his will, Nico tried not to tremble as he twisted his ring—his engagement ring, which has long replaced his skulled one. Nevertheless, his gaze stuck on Malcolm's arm, where the crimson tears of an eye bled.

"You have it too," the son of Hades said quietly.

Malcolm smiled bitterly. "I know. Apparently, they thought death was too much of an easy escape." They were the only two people in the room of darkness, hence why their voices seemed so much louder to their delicate ears.

Nico couldn't tear his eyes away from his arm. "I want to go." It broke him; it broke him how helpless he sounded, and he hadn't realised it until he felt the tiniest of tears sting at the corners of his eyes. "I want to run away. I—" With horror, everything around him blurred. "I miss him. I miss Will. I don't want to do this anymore."

Malcolm didn't move. Nico knew that the peaceful quiet was all that the son of Athena could offer, but he despised it. He needed something to fill the searing silence, anything—

"We can still help them," said Malcolm quietly. Nico was glad his back was half-turned towards the blond; he hoped his tear-tracked face didn't glisten alight. "We know things that could help the others so they could win the war against Him."

Something in him snapped, breaking free. "But would they ever listen to us?" Nico hollered, a fire raging in him, telling him to let it all out. "Do you think they'd ever trust us again when they realise what we've done? All of camp probably knows already that we've gone over to the Dark side, that we've willingly handed the Book over to Aphorei—"

"To save Will's life!" snapped Malcolm, his voice as harsh and rough as Nico's. "We had no choice! If we hadn't handed the Book over, Will—Will could've died, Nico, and there would've been nothing we could do left."

"You think our friends would believe that?" Nico curled his trembling hands into fists, using the one coping mechanism he knew he was good at; anger. He laughed loudly, relentless raging fury surging through him. "No. No, they wouldn't believe us. Why would they, when all they'd think of us are traitors?"

"That's—" Malcolm visibly flinched, but Nico wasn't listening. Traitor, he could almost hear his friends telling him. Traitor. "Look, Percy and his friends know what happened that day. They know the truth, and that's good enough for us. It's all that matters."

Of course. That day. The day when Malcolm had done good, helping Percy and the others escape, but . . . it was also the day Nico had failed. He'd seen the lost shine in the young boy's eyes, Elijah, and yet . . . Nico failed to save him. He couldn't do anything, not with the Mark permanently scarred into his skin. Not when everything was at risk.

Nico took careful, measured breaths as his eyes flitted shut. He could do this. He's gone through so much, only to come to this mess that he didn't know how to get out of. "I'm sorry," he whispered, his voice cracking, "I shouldn't have lashed out like that, I . . . I was just sca—"

"Scared," said Malcolm softly. Nico turned his head just slightly, a cold shiver fluttering up his spine when he caught the son of Athena letting out a silent howl of pain. Malcolm's arm had stopped bleeding, but it still was somewhat . . . gruesome to look at. "Yeah. I know. I'm scared, too. All of us are."

I just wish I was a little braver, he thought woefully.

Nico doubled over, not being able to hold back a hiss of pain when the feeling of a knife plunging through his arm clouded his mind, his senses. It made him see stars, even when he shut his eyes close. He felt a pair of arms support him up, and a panicked voice calling out to him.

"Shit!" Malcolm had taken the pain better than he did, but that didn't mask the panic in his grey eyes. "It's—" a choked gasp came from him. "It's Him, not Aphor—fuck! Go!"

Nico couldn't think straight. All that ripped from him was a scream before he felt the shadows loom over his skin, engulfing him with that all-too-familiar warmth. He felt something bitingly cold brush against his knees as a frail gasp bounced off the walls. He could hear Malcolm, who had shadow-traveled to the dark chamber like Nico did too. They wanted something—

A curse sounded to his left. When Nico stood up, with all the will and dignity he had left, he could only imagine what horrors were going to be thrown on his path when a pair of golden eyes scorched, flickering above. Ouranos.

In front of them, an amber-eyed boy he recognised all too well was at his feet.

*.·:·. ✧ ✦ ✧ .·:·.*

"It's time to tell them, Jackson!"

Percy was pacing around relentlessly, not even flinching whenever he so much as tripped over something on the shambolic floor. Faith had made Thalia go back to the Artemis cabin to check on Lucius, telling her that she and him needed a quick word with one another, but even the thickest of people wouldn't fall for that.

He stopped pacing, staring at the crooked shards of yellow-tinted glass scattered on the floor. "Why?" he said, small and soft-spoken. Nico and Malcolm. "They'd never . . . they'd never steal the Book. They—they helped us. They helped us escape."

"I know," whispered Faith, and he could almost see her hesitate to go near him, "and we're going to tell them that, all right? We . . . we have to tell them the truth. We can't keep hiding it from them."

Percy's shoulders sagged, defeatedly burying his face in his hands before running them through his mussed hair. "The Book's gone, Faith. Nico and Malcolm are allying with us, they saved us for gods' sake, but why would they steal the—"

"Nico and Malcolm?"

It took him a moment to notice that it hadn't been Faith's voice that interrupted him. With an uprising panic reeling in his head, Percy spun his head around so sharply that a crack of bone left his neck throbbing. Thalia stood there, by the doorway, her face almost impossible to see under the shadows.

"I was right," breathed Thalia, shaking her head at them. "You two are hiding something. What—what happened? What about Nico and Malcolm?"

Percy wanted nothing more than to hurl anything at anyone—no one was supposed to know. He knew it was all he could offer to repay his debt to Malcolm at the moment. "How much did you hear?" His voice was a deadly savage promise, but . . . there was fear interlaced within it, too.

Faith didn't look at him; no, all her attention was transfixed on the daughter of Zeus. Careful and determined. "Look, Thalia, I'm sorry we kept this from you, but we had to—"

But Thalia wasn't listening at the slightest; her gaze was darting between the two, until her mouth parted open in both shock and horror. "Of course. Of course. Nico stole the Book, didn't he? He's the only one who knows it's here other than me—"

"No, no! You, you've got it all wrong, Nico didn't steal the Book—"

"Why—why didn't you tell anyone? We could've known sooner that he was—that he was a trai—"

This time, it was a droll tank filled to the brim with crystal-clear water that burst. Not only did the serrated fragments of glass cut through the air, but the water came spilling and splattering itself on various items; a grey-stained teddy bear lying flat on its front, a globe, and several other volumes of books.

He didn't know who got hit. He didn't care.

"Don't call him that," said Percy quietly, letting his merciless rage slip through the leash and tiptoe to the near edges of the line. He was more than willing to cross it, and it looked as if Thalia was too.

Faith realised the dangerous flutters of magic way before he did. "Enough, you two. Jackson, stop. Please. Thalia, we're going to tell you everything, but you need to calm—"

"I can't believe you two lied to us." Even as Thalia said it loud and clear, Percy knew she intended to put all the blame on him. A strong gush of wind picked up in the room, a strange bold glint in her eyes. "Since when? Since when did Nico join the Dark side? Hades, and to think I trusted a traitor all along, with the Book, of all things—"

"Oh, Fates!" Faith threw her hands up, throwing them both a pleading look. "For our sake, will you two stop acting like children—"

Percy felt a rush of pure ageless power fill his temper up, eternal and never-ending. He couldn't hear what Faith was shouting, no matter how much he wanted to. He focused his power on something else entirely, something that didn't come as naturally to him whenever he controlled water—

"—don't do this, Thalia, you know better—"

"Nico isn't a traitor," he managed to get out, his hopes of getting rid of his anger being crushed when his eyes of sea-green met those of daring lightning blue. Percy realised then, that when one of them broke, they'd only stop until either of them were completely drained.

Defiance shone in Thalia's eyes. "You still think Nico's innocent? You still think that even after he willingly handed the Book over to the wrong hands—oh, don't look at me like that! We both know I'm right! You need to understand that not everyone can be trusted, not even someone like Ni—"

"He was forced!" he bellowed, unaware that his hands were quivering. "Stop fucking jumping into conclusions—you don't know the whole story, you always let your stubbornness to get ahead of yourself, you aren't always right—"

He didn't know if it was real or just a figment of his imagination, but he swore he heard the faintest boom of lightning by the distance. The firelight flickering from the hanging lamps in the room had shut out, turning the room darker than usual.

Percy allowed himself a dark mirthless glower. Thalia didn't know what she was throwing herself into. If she wanted to play that ill-edged game with him, then she failed to realise that he was very good at it too.

Faith seemed to have had enough, trying to get in between the two raging demigods. "Come on, Jackson, you know better than to—oh my gods! Stop that right this instant, Thalia Grace—"

Percy felt it dance on the ends of his skin rather than ring in his ears. There it was, one that he hadn't seen for a good long while; a brewing storm, a silver-fade, from the strongest of greys to the softest of whites just outside the tall window he looked out from. Bold and heaven-bound.

He forgot how easy it was for their temper to snap.

And now that it was running, wild and free, he was afraid it was going to be near impossible to stop the crackle of unblighted magic pulsing from his head to his mere fingertips.

*.·:·. ✧ ✦ ✧ .·:·.*

They didn't know what was going on.

None of them understood why a brutal storm had so suddenly swallowed the heavens whole, diminishing the once-paled blue sky with a wave of frightening grey. The oblique shadows loomed over the camp as the dusky clouds turned the streams of simmering sunlight into nothing more but thin rays of yellow.

Many of the older campers knew that a normal storm wouldn't be able get in the borders and hurt them. But if it happened to be a particular demigod controlling the thunder . . . chances were that the outbursts of lightning could cause mass panic and havoc through not only the camp, but those living in it as well.

"What's going on?" asked a son of Apollo, his mouth agape as he saw campers left and right from the corner of his eye scramble around in a blurred mess, trying to get back to their own cabins as fast as possible.

"The hell like we know!" A daughter of Ares jostled off the climbing wall, her dark eyes narrowed to slits. "Someone's doing that, inside this camp. It's that hunter, the one with—"

A loud crash of thunder painted the world an intense white, shutting her to silence. Dryads and nymphs that had once been dawdling around the outskirts of the camp were now cowering behind trees, true fear shining in their eyes.

A blur of sterling silver came rushing at them, a few droplets of what seemed like rain dancing on their skin. They could hear the panicked whispers around them, distant voices arguing as to what was happening—

It was a hunter that approached the nearest camper they could find, her face flushed as she paused for breath. "Have—have any of you seen Thalia? Where is she?"

One of the Roman Praetors, Reyna, ignored the hunters as she glared at the storm that was slowly picking up, an almost gentle-like surge of wind licking at their bare skin. "It is her doing this? Your hunter, daughter of Zeus? She's the one controlling this, this—"

"We are sure," said Phoebe, and she didn't seem bothered at all to hide her shaking hands. The hunters have dealt with Thalia's hot-tempered behaviour before; admittedly, it wasn't a nice experience. "She, Percy and Faith mentioned something about—about fetching the Book of Fyrmarcs or something at some sort of secret place, and we need—"

Reyna's head shot up. "No! Absolutely not! That is confidential information, and we would not be—"

A rumble of white flame that did not burn erupted from somewhere—so far away, yet so dangerously close. From another world.

"Holy gods," one of them whispered. Demigods around them stumbled back, gawking upward in terror and wonder.

It was coming from the Big House.

"There's our answer," breathed Phoebe, her voice nothing more but a whisper.

*.·:·. ✧ ✦ ✧ .·:·.*

To say that Faith was terrified out of her mind was one way to put it. Sure, she's heard of quarrels between the two over the years when they've been young, but this . . . it was nothing she's ever seen before.

"Jackson," Faith warned, but his attention was utterly focused on Thalia. "Percy," she tried again, and this time, the son of Poseidon snapped his head to her. "Don't do this. Thalia, listen to me. Nico and Malcolm aren't—they aren't—they're good people—"

The daughter of Zeus wasn't listening. None of them were listening. They were blinded, fueled by their own power. Faith backed up, realising with jaw-dropping fright that they had too much—Thalia and Percy had too much raw magic for their own good.

Faith was afraid they'd burn themselves up. She'd seen Thalia snap completely before, but Percy . . .

He was petrifying. Trembling from his fingertips was a strange, twinkling gleam. She watched it flicker, shifting colors from amber, to ruby, then back to a glossy golden. Faith could see him clench his fists, his nails digging into his palms. She was surprised to see that he wasn't drawing blood.

This was Percy's magic. Unearthly. Thalia's thunderous power did nothing to rival his.

"Back away, Thalia," Faith warned the daughter of Zeus, crying out a curse when the room swayed dangerously, as if it were to fall apart at any moment under her feet.

"No. No, I won't," said Thalia heartlessly, her stare unfaltering and controlled as she never broke eye contact with the son of Poseidon. Her next words hit like a blow to the heart. "Percy needs to understand that he can't trust everybody around here. He can't expect traitors to still have some sort of good in their hearts after—"

"Nico isn't a traitor, and neither is Malcolm!" Percy snarled, the light burning brighter as fire seemed to be emblazoned in his sea-green eyes. It was that churning, perilous green that the ocean turns to during a storm, Faith recognised. "He saved our lives, Thalia! How can you just ignore that?"

"Why did Nico give the Dark the Book, then? Why did he hand over the one thing that could turn over the tide of this war, the one thing that could give the Dark side a higher chance of winning—"

Faith screamed, then. She screamed, toppling over an upholstery of broadswords as she felt the small of her back press against a door handle. The floor of acacia broke into splintered wood, making towers and towers of clutter collapse in a burst of pale grey smoke.

She could hear footsteps now, shouting from two floors below. There was harsh rain thumping against the tall dust-coated windows. She recognised voices, one from the Roman praetor, another that sounded like Thalia's brother—

Thalia carefully looked the son of Poseidon over, and Faith could tell she was hesitant. "I just want you to understand. I don't want to fight you." So delicately worded.

"Really? The storm outside says otherwise," Percy remarked offhandedly, and Faith couldn't blame him. There was a wild sort of glint in his eye, tainted with a threat.

Faith lost her balance, stumbling back when a flurry of powdery dirt showered her from the head. Spikes of fear nicked at her body as a flash of close-cropped blond hair ran past, just when she thought the roof might truly crash down on her.

"You—your . . ." Faith didn't even flinch as she was shoved away by none other than Jason Grace. "They're in there, Ja—Jackson and Thalia, I—I didn't know what to do—"

"Stand back!" a rich, gallant voice of shouted. Reyna. Behind the Praetor, Faith recognised the gleams of pearl-grey belonging to none other than the hunters.

"What happened?" demanded Phoebe, trying to look past all the piles of books and people scurrying about. Even with the hunter's loud voice practically pressed against her ear, Faith could still painstakingly make out what Percy and Thalia were saying.

"I trust them with my life, and not for one second will I ever think they were evil—"

"—why didn't they fight back, then? All of us would've rather died than join them, Percy!"

Faith felt a chill delve deep from skin to bone when the sound of crackling lightning burst, not so far away from where they were. She could hear one of them say, one that had hair as dark as chocolate with kaleidoscope eyes, "Not again."

Her heart thumped. "What do you mean, not again? What do we do?"

It was Thalia's brother that answered, even if he weren't looking at Faith directly in the eyes, "It's happened before, but it was me against Percy. We . . . we weren't ourselves at the time, and—"

"No, you idiot!" Faith didn't feel particularly polite at the moment; she was having a ridiculously hard time breathing at the fear of one of them getting hurt. "What did you do to make it stop?"

She saw the small shine of fear in their eyes when Jason exchanged a look with the daughter of Aphrodite—Piper, she remembered. Before any of them could reply, they were all flung back. Eruptions of kindled gold and white broke out as Faith let out a shameless choke of pain, the back of her head hitting the floorboards.

"Charmspeak," someone gasped, somewhere to nearby Faith. She couldn't tell, not when she felt like her eyelids were burning. "She—Piper can charmspeak. She can try—"

"I can't!" said another from below this time. It was Piper. "I—I have to get close, but I can't!"

There was shuffling going about; an arm made a grab for Faith, hoisting her up. Her throat was parched, and all that was running through her mind was getting to Percy, but—

"Damn it all to hell," Faith rasped, not bothering to acknowledge the arm that pulled her up from the secluded corner she ended up in amidst the blast. She saw the barest glimpse of a blood-red symbol, one that looked all too familiar to her. Percy was . . .

"He isn't controlling water," she breathed, yanking her arm away from Phoebe's firm grasp as the ginger-haired hunter tried to pull her away from all the delirium. "No, no—you don't understand, Jackson still has trouble wielding the Fyrmarcs, he won't be able to—"

"—to never call him that, because Nico wasn't given a choice!" Faith stopped breathing, and it seemed as if everyone else that had heard Percy did too. There was a shattering outcry, one that dropped a dead weight down to her toes. Before all of them even knew it, Faith was already running.

Not away, no. She was running towards the chaos, where she just might find herself a free ticket to the Underworld.

She felt something warm drip down her leg when she lumbered upon a jagged splinter of wood, tripping over herself from the haste panic she was in. Faith didn't stop, though—even as she heard a shout of warning behind her back.

Faith knew the all the turns she needed to take to reach the two rampaging demigods; she's memorised almost every inch and angle of Room Number Three the moment she walked in. She bolted through the aisles, tossing aside whatever happened to be right in her path, and—

Her heart stopped. She wasn't sure if it was from the shock or fear gripping at her like a lifeline.

The bursts of fiery gold had gone, and it seemed as if the lightless somber sky had quietened down too. There were coal-black burns in the shape of unfamiliar Fyrmarcs imprinted on almost every surface she could find. There was still sparks of electricity shooting up in the air, but it was so thinly undaunting that she knew it was harmless.

And then in the middle . . . in the middle of it all . . .

"Jackson . . ." Faith felt a knot form in her throat. It hurt to utter even the shortest of words. "What . . . what did you do?"

The son of Poseidon finally lowered his hands, bringing it up in front of his face. For a quick second, she thought he'd collapse then and there, until she saw where he was looking. Coils of pure white weaved through his fingers, curling and twisting on his palms with its ends no more but a wisp of air.

He was clean; no evident drop of blood could be seen on his tanned skin. On the other hand . . .

Faith couldn't breathe. She felt like she didn't need to, not when she stared at the chaos of it all, even as footsteps trailed behind her. It was exactly as she anticipated; the gasps of shock, fearful trembling, and unbearable silence. No one moved.

"I—I didn't know what I was doing." Percy looked terrified out of his mind; afraid of what he could do, what he was capable of. Afraid of himself. "She was—I couldn't control myself, it was just h—happening, and . . ."

For once, Faith didn't know what to do. She always had lived by a code; she always looked out for that line, the line between right and wrong. It had never been a hard choice for her to decide what to choose, but this . . . Percy was standing right in the middle of that line.

There, on the sundered floor, lavished by the thinnest coats of dust, was Thalia. Pale. Unconscious. Bloody.

But alive. Barely.

Faith couldn't hear Percy, even as he whispered 'sorry' over and over again, sounding so . . . so broken. Vulnerable.

She didn't want to hear anything he had to say.