They walked in silence, for the most part. No sense in alerting any monsters to their presence, if there were any. Nico was starting to doubt it, since they had been walking for several hours now, and they still hadn't seen or heard anything. In fact, Nico was starting to feel uneasy about the eerie quiet that surrounded them.

It kept him on edge so much so that he nearly slit Will's throat with the dagger he was holding when Will first spoke. His quick grab at the dagger caused him to drop one of his crutches, leaving Nico off balance and on the ground. Will had also stumbled back from the shock of being attacked and had also toppled.

Will glanced at Nico's state and started laughing, "Some attack." Will got up, luckily uninjured, and brushed himself off. After he had gotten back on his feet, Will hoisted Nico back up and Nico felt those skeletal butterflies come back. It was kind of stupid, after all the time he had spent with Will, he still got nervous and embarrassed when they made physical contact. Every. Single. Time.

Nico picked up his crutches and began walking again, passing Will in the hopes Will would be unable to detect the embarrassment on his face. Will ran to catch up with Nico, "Wow. You're extremely fast on crutches. Have you been practicing?"

"Yeah, I practice once a week in case I break my foot, " Nico deadpanned.

Will let out a small laugh, "Shut up Di Angelo."

Nico smirked, "You asked."

They kept walking, making light conversation along the way. They talked about any and everything so long as it wasn't personal. They even got into an argument about the best ice cream flavor, which was obviously rocky road. It wasn't up for debate.

"Strawberry is better!"

What kind of blasphemy is this? "Rocky road. Fruits do not, and will never be a flavor. You can't have food flavored food. What, are we going to have pizza flavored cookies or something? Except ketchup chips. Ketchup chips are good."

Will let out an exasperated sigh, "This is completely different. Fruits are flavors!"

"There are only 4 real flavors. Vanilla, chocolate, mint, and ketchup." He glared Will down.

Will met his gaze, "So have you, like, never ate a blueberry muffin."

Nico looked at Will as if he was crazy, "Of course I have! But that is completely different. Blueberry muffins aren't blueberry flavored, they have blueberry in them."

"Fine. But what about barbeque? And teriyaki. Those are flavors!" Will gave Nico a challenging look.

Nico stared back at Will stoutly, "Fine. There are some other flavors. But fruit 'flavors' are still unacceptable."

"So, if I'm hearing this right, the all knowing Nico Di Angelo is admitting he was wrong."

"Shut up Solace," Nico rolled his eyes.

Will, "That wasn't a no."

"It wasn't a yes either."

"So were you right?" Will asked.

Nico pretended not to hear.

"So, you were wrong?"

Nico glared at Will, "Over my dead body."

"Well, wouldn't all those dead people that you summon be 'yours'? You know, since you're the king of the dead. And I would assume the underworld is below us. So as of right now, we would be over your dead bodies."

Nico couldn't help but be a bit impressed by Will's logic. It was stupid logic, but how Will got there was impressive. "Shut up, Solace."

'"You know I'm right."

Nico stifled a laugh, "Quite the opposite."

Their conversation was cut short by a rustling sound they heard behind them. They jerked their heads around and saw a hellhound in their path. Neither Nico nor Will wanted to be the first one to go at the hellhound, but they were both ready to deflect any attack, but it never came. The hellhound started… panting? Once the shock of the attack wore off, Nico realized what was going on. It was Mrs. O'Leary, Nico wasn't sure how she had found them, but it was. Nico ran over to pet her, and noticed Will staring at him, aghast.

"Will, Mrs. O'Leary. Mrs. O'Leary, Will." Nico glanced back and forth between the two. Will looked back at Nico, his mouth agape. "You know a hellhound? That is awesome! How could you not tell me about that?!"

How did this not scare Will? How did nothing scare him. At least nothing that should scare him does. Like Nico, for example, is a perfectly good example of what should scare him. "I didn't think you would care. We've only even known each other for like two weeks."

"So, we've been talking for two weeks and you decided not to mention the fact that you have a pet hellhound? You can be pretty stupid sometimes, you know that?"

Nico sighed, "She's not even mine. She belongs to Percy. And how are you not scared that we were being followed by a hellhound in the middle of the woods." Shit. The vision. Nico wasn't sure whether to be relieved or worried. Maybe he should be relieved because this could've been what Rachel was talking about, except for the fact that he had crutches. Rachel would've mentioned it if he was wearing crutches in her vision, right? He didn't exactly want to bring that up with Will, but it didn't seem like he had any other option, Will was the only one of them who talked to Rachel. He had zoned out for a bit and only just realized Will had started walking. He jogged to catch up, "Hey, Will?"

"Yeah?" They kept walking as they talked.

"Do you remember Rachel's vision?"

"Yeah, of course, it's kind of hard to forg…" Will trailed off as he realized what Nico was insinuating, "You really think this could be it?"

"I don't see any reason why not."

"Rachel didn't say anything about you having crutches. But maybe it was Mrs. O' Leary that she saw."

"Did she know for sure that I wasn't in crutches?"

"Well, if she did, she probably wouldn't have thought that would be important to mention."
Nico blushed, silently berating himself for sounding like an idiot. "Right."

"But Rachel did say the vision was blurry, so maybe she just couldn't see it if you were wearing them."

Nico noticed a nearby puddle shimmering, and when he turned to look at it, he swore he saw Chiron's reflection back at him. He figured he was seeing things, and did a double take and the reflection waved. He nudged Will, "Do you see anything in that puddle."

Will stared at the puddle for a few seconds and said, "Oh! I think Chiron is sending us an Iris message."

Why was it so faint? Usually, Iris messages were much easier to see, but it was more like they could see Chiron's silhouette. He couldn't even be sure Chiron was talking. If he was, Nico couldn't hear a thing.

Nico and Will crouched over the puddle, and he could faintly hear a voice. "Rachel's vision, there's more. You need to-"

Chiron's voice got quieter, and Nico leaned further forward, trying to hear, but lost his footing. He fell into the puddle disconnecting the call.

Will glared at Nico, and Nico shrunk under his gaze. "Nico!"

"Fuck. Sorry. Please tell me you heard most of that." How could he be such a dumbass? If they died in the forest now, it was probably going to be his fault.

Will's gaze softened a bit, from anger to irritation. "It's… fine. I heard up until Chiron said we were in danger."

"He said that?!"

"Yeah, he said that we need to leave the forest. It looks like you were right, Rachel's vision could be happening now. It cut out before he could say what the vision was though."

How was Will being so nice about this? Sure, Will was angry at first, but Will seemed to have recovered quickly. Nico had no idea how any human being in the world could be such a forgiving, trusting person. Of course, he didn't exactly have a good point of reference. He was a lot less compassionate, understanding, forgiving, or trusting than most other people.

He looked at Will, "What should we do?"

They heard a snap somewhere in the distance behind them.

Will turned to Nico with a new sense of urgency in his eyes, "We leave. Now."