Nico slowly opened his eyes.
He blinked a couple times. Where in Hades was he?
A voice beside him spoke up. "Hey, Will. He's awake."
Will?
Two worried eyes entered his field of vision. Will Solace was staring down at him.
"Will?" Nico muttered.
The blond's brows furrowed in a mix between worry and anger. "You- you asshole!" He looked like he wanted to hit him, but held himself back to not hurt him.
Nico blinked at him and tried to sit up. A sharp pain in his abdomen and arm made him wince. He looked down at his left arm. It was in a supportive sling. His abdomen was bandaged, as well as his right leg.
"What happened?" he asked.
Will sat down on a chair next to the bed, his hands folded in his lap. One of his thumbs was rubbing the skin on the other hand. "You just showed up here, well, not here, but in camp." He took a shaky breath. "You were not okay, Nico."
Nico looked at him. "What?"
"Your arm was broken, and your leg was all blistered and bitten. And-" Will stopped to take a breath. "You had a branch sticking into your stomach."
A branch. Oh, shit. The fir-tree. The seeds.
"Where's my stuff?" he asked, trying to get up. Will pushed him down again.
"It's here." He handed Nico his things.
He shoved his hand into the pocket of his pants. The cones were still there. He breathed a sigh of relief. His backpack was also there, even though he'd put it down at the base of the tree.
How on earth did he get to camp?
Wait. Anubis!
"Hey, Anubis," he mentally asked.
Silence filled his mind.
"Anubis! Hey! Where you at?"
Still nothing.
Nico frowned. He slowly sat up, earning a yell from Will. He waved his hand at him.
He leaned forward, closing his eyes. He concentrated on his thoughts.
"Anubis? Are you there? Please answer me!"
There was no answer. He hadn't noticed how used he was to that voice in the back of his head, but now that it was gone, he felt lonely.
"-co! Nico!"
Nico looked up. Will was half standing, his arms reaching towards him.
"What?"
Will frowned. "I yelled your name like five times!"
"Oh, sorry."
The blond looked puzzled. "Are you okay? You had a tiny concussion, but I've already healed that, so your head should be fine." He placed a hand on Nico's forehead, and in any other situation, Nico would have flushed at that, but all he could think about was the silence in his head.
Will pursed his lips. "You don't have a fever. I think you should still rest a while. At least until tomorrow."
Nico nodded absentmindedly. When Will gently pushed him down again, he complied. He lay down on his back, careful of his injuries. He closed his eyes again, trying to fall asleep. Maybe he would find Anubis in the dreamscape.
When Nico opened his eyes again, he saw the ceiling in the Apollo-cabin. He hadn't even entered the dreamscape.
He glanced around. It was dark outside, it seemed. Will was gone, probably asleep somewhere. He sat up slowly. His injuries weren't that painful now.
He swung his feet down on the floor. His leg didn't hurt too badly when he put weight on it. He grabbed his things from the floor. His pants were missing a leg. Will had probably cut it off to heal his leg.
He got ready to step into the shadows, when a voice spoke up behind him. "Where are you going?"
Nico winced at the sound of Will's voice. He slowly turned to look at the other demigod.
Will was leaning against the doorframe to the room he was in, where they usually kept patients. He didn't really look mad, just tired.
Nico opened his mouth. Gods, it was hard not being able to talk to anyone about the god living in his head (even more so how lonely he suddenly felt at his seeming absence). He closed his mouth again.
Will raised his eyebrow at him. He walked closer. "What's going on, Nico? You're gone for days, then you suddenly show up severely injured." He gestured to Nico's backpack. "And you have some seriously weird plants in there."
Nico felt slightly irritated at that. What if something had been destroyed? "You went through my stuff?"
Will flinched. His tone must have been harsher than he thought.
Nico raised his hands. "Sorry, I didn't mean to sound mad, I just-" He ran his good hand through his hair. "Those things were really important, and I can't afford for them to be ruined."
The blond looked confused. "Why? What're they for?"
Nico groaned inwardly. Fuck. "I… I can't tell you. They're just super important."
Will blinked. He made his way over to Nico's side, his gaze fixed on his shoulder. "What is that?"
Nico looked down. His eyes widened. There were fingerprint-shaped bruises on his shoulders, like someone gripped them really tightly. He suddenly remembered Anubis shaking him pretty hard in the dreamscape after he fell down from the tree. Were the marks really from then?
He flinched when Will touched one, but the blond flinched even more. He pulled his hand back quickly.
"Whoa, whatever left that is seriously powerful. It feels kinda weird, like you, almost," he muttered.
Nico rubbed his hand on the mark on his left shoulder. It felt tender. He wondered why it hadn't shown up earlier.
He glanced up at Will again. "I, uh- I gotta go, Will."
Will's eyes widened and he opened his mouth to say something, but Nico had stepped into the darkness before he could say anything.
He grabbed some things from his cabin. His pants were ruined, and there was a hole in the bottom of his shirt, where the branch had stabbed him, no doubt. He still had loads of ambrosia and food.
Wasting no time, he stripped off his ruined clothes and took a brisk shower. His bandages soaked through with clean water. He ripped them off. His skin was nearly healed.
He wrapped some clean bandages around his leg and stomach. He carefully stashed the cones and flowers in one of his drawers, covering them with a shirt to hide them from prying eyes.
As he stepped back into the shadows, the oppressive silence in his mind even more present in the empty shadow-lands. He had marked the next location on his map so he tried to navigate the dark landscape as best he could.
He stepped out of the shadows in what he figured would be a safe place not too far from where he would find the black unicorns. His feet met the dark grass underneath a huge willow tree.
He crouched down, in case there was some sudden threat.
It was eerily quiet.
Nico slowly rose, keeping his guard up. The black unicorns were not the friendliest of creatures, and were apparently better off dead, so he could just slay one and grab its horn.
He walked towards the open field nearby. He stopped short at the sight that met him.
The field was strewn with corpses. Black unicorn corpses.
"What the…?" he mumbled. He stepped gingerly between the dead creatures. He noticed that they were all missing their horns. "What happened here?"
A sad whimper made him glance to his left.
Someone was sitting at the edge of the field, hunched over.
Nico crouched slightly, making himself a smaller target (it was almost second nature now, to always stay on alert). He slowly made his way towards the whimpering creature.
"Hey," he said. The figure flinched. "You okay?"
The whimpering turned into an almost sob. "Please. Help me."
Nico squinted. This close he could see that it was a satyr. He knew how much satyrs devoted themselves to the natural order, so maybe they were distraught over whatever had happened to the unicorns.
"Do you know what happened here?" Nico asked.
The satyr turned towards him.
Nico's eyes widened. The satyr's clothes were covered in blood, and he had a pile of unicorn horns in his lap.
On instinct, he jumped back a few feet, his hand grabbing his sword.
The satyr looked at him, his eyes red from tears. "I didn't want to, but the voice… It promised so many nice things if I just did what it asked."
A voice? Nico furrowed his brows. "Why these unicorns?"
"It said that you would come, that you would be looking for them," the satyr answered. "I was supposed to destroy them, but I can't get myself to do anything anymore."
The son of Hades raised an eyebrow. Was someone trying to sabotage his mission? Maybe he was in a bigger hurry than he thought. "Do you know whose voice it was?"
The satyr looked thoughtful. "I think it was something like Kabe-" His voice suddenly cut off. He scratched at his throat as he started to choke.
Nico watched in horror as the satyr's eyes started to bleed. He fell down to the ground after a second, blood dripping from his open mouth, his eyes stuck in a terrified expression.
Had he been killed to prevent him from saying the voice's name?
Nico stepped closer, leaning down to check the satyr's pulse. He was definitely dead.
Not wanting to spend more time there than absolutely necessary, he grabbed two horns. He left the field, melting into the darkness again.
Once in the shadows, he leaned onto his knees, dry heaving. He couldn't shake the terrified stare of the satyr from his mind. He fell to the ground, curling into himself in the darkness.
"Anubis? Why aren't you here? I… I don't wanna be alone."
No answer came.
He felt the familiar burn behind his eyes of oncoming tears. He lay down on his side, his knees drawn up to his chest. He let the shadows take his consciousness, falling asleep, alone again.
Nico blinked his eyes open to an unknown landscape.
He sat up.
It looked like he was in a giant hall. A throne stood at one side and a pair of large scales was placed in the middle of the room. Other than that, the room looked scarce.
"Hey," a voice said behind him.
Nico turned around.
Anubis was sat at some steps, his chin resting in his hand, like this was the most mundane situation ever.
The son of Hades slowly rose to his feet. He started walking towards the god, his eyes growing angrier by the step. Anubis sat up a bit straighter, no longer resting his hand on his palm. His face wasn't so relaxed anymore either. His expression gradually changed to become nervous, no doubt based on the furious look on Nico's face.
Nico got up in his face, his hands gripping the god's stupid shirt. "Hey?! Hey?! That's all you have to say?"
Anubis raised his hands in surrender. "What? Why are you so mad?"
Nico grit his teeth. "You disappeared!" His hands tightened their grip on Anubis' shirt as he pulled him close. "You say nothing for over a day! You said… You said I wasn't… alone."
Anubis' eyes turned soft at his words. His hands cupped Nico's on his shirt. "I'm sorry. I did tell you that I would be quiet for some time. You're not alone."
Nico frowned. "You told me you would be gone? When?"
The god's expression turned sour and his hands tightened around Nico's. "It was after you fell down from the tree in Muspelheim. You wouldn't awake in the waking world, so I had to… take control of your body to take out the spider. That really hurt, by the way. You were seriously injured." As he said that, Anubis gave Nico a once over. "You're healed now, right?"
"Yeah, but my arm's in a sling for now," Nico answered absentmindedly. Having Anubis' face this close made him remember something. "Did I poke you in the face?"
Anubis smirked and chuckled. "Yes. Although you also said my face was pretty, so you made up for it."
Nico quickly drew his hands back. "I did?!"
Anubis smiled smugly at him. "Yup. And you felt my bicep and said I was strong, too."
Nico felt his face heat up. He scrambled to his feet. "Shit. Sorry."
Anubis seemed to take pity on him. "You were pretty out of it."
"Yeah, Will said I had a concussion."
Anubis frowned. "I- I'm sorry you had to go through that."
Nico raised an eyebrow. "Isn't the reason you're stuck in my head that you saved my life? And you also saved my butt back in Muspelheim, right? I owe you."
Anubis smiled at him.
Nico felt his face heat up again. He looked away. "So, what is this place?"
The god got up. "This is a replica of the Hall of Judgement." He glanced around the room. "Well, a version of it. It's not usually this barren."
Nico walked over to the scales. He trailed his fingers along one of the scales. "So this thing weighs the souls of the dead. Such a judgement on such an ordinary item."
Anubis came to stand beside him. "Yeah, it's actually a bit odd when you think about it."
Nico looked at him. "Right? So many things in mythology is super weird."
Anubis laughed at that (Nico definitely didn't think that his laugh sounded way better than his chuckle). "Yeah. Weighing a soul against a feather in normal circumstances would make no sense."
"True. And the whole Underworld in Greek mythology is so strange. Also, a weird ferryman takes you across a burning river, that's just unnatural!" Nico snickered as he thought about the absurdities that he'd met over the years. He looked over at Anubis again, and his smile almost faltered. The god was looking at him with such a fond smile, that Nico's heart actually skipped a beat. Shit. He needed to control his feelings around cute guys.
"What?" he asked, trying not to sound too affected.
Anubis' smile grew. "Just thinking that your laugh is nice."
Nico almost gaped at him, feeling his face heat for the third time in a way too short time-span. "How- how can you say stuff like that with a straight face."
The god looked confused, his head cocked to the side (gods, that was adorable, (crap, Nico needed to get a grip)). "But I'm just telling the truth."
Nico groaned.
He jolted when he remembered what had just happened outside his dream. He gripped Anubis' arm, the god looking at him in surprise.
"I think someone's trying to stop me from freeing you."
Anubis frowned, his hand coming up to grasp Nico's. "What makes you think that?"
Nico told him about the satyr killing the unicorns and removing their horns. When he came to the part about the satyr choking to death, and his terrified expression, he was surprised by Anubis pulling him into a hug.
"I'm so sorry you had to see that."
Nico could feel his eyes sting with tears. It seemed like his loneliness had caught up with him. The god's chest was so warm, even through his clothes. Nico felt so inexplicably at home in Anubis' arms (it was scary how comfortable it was).
The son of Hades reached up to grab the back of the god's jacket, burying his head into his shoulder.
"I'm here for you, Nico."
Nico raised his head to look at the god, his heart skipping a beat at the honesty in his eyes.
"Thank you…"