"Thanks," Nico said, as he stepped off the creaking boat.
Charon nodded, silent. The boat driver looked like a stylish zombie, all skull and bones with a form-fitting suit and a few sprays of cologne on top. Nico dug around in his pockets, fishing out a few casino coins he had smuggled from Elysium, and tossed them in Charon's top hat.
As he stepped onto the ground, cold and stiff, he breathed for a second, letting the damp air swamp his lungs. He was dead anyways, so what did he have to lose?
He reached for the door, but instead of pushing on the heavy metal, he slipped into a shadow, reappearing quietly on the other side. He turned around.
In front of him sat Hades, his father, face framed by shadows.
"Hello, Nico." Hades spoke first. "I figured you'd come to see me eventually. I guess I'll also have to check up on Charon; I thought he was more loyal to me."
Nico felt anger swell up in his throat, but he forced it down. Now wasn't the time. "Why did you remove my memories?" he hissed.
Besides Hades, a Fury stepped out, her eyes glowing dangerously, but his father waved her back.
"It was for your own good. As a son of mine, you already have substantial power in my domain; but with your lineage, it was best to keep you safe by taking-"
"What lineage?"
Hades glared at the boy, and the green torches around them flared up. "Be quiet and listen."
He glared some more until Nico shrank back, and continued.
"I heard all about the incident with Hazel, the summoning." Looking at the boy's wide eyes, Hades smiled gently. "It's okay, I should've known something like that would happen. Lately, the magical borders of Elysium have been weakening, and the occasional demon or Asphodel worker wanders in."
Nico frowned. "You didn't answer my question," he snapped, only to flinch back when Hades' eyes shot into slits.
However, the god merely sighed, and ran a hand through his slickly combed hair. "Perhaps- perhaps it's best if I let someone explain to you." He sounded nervous, eyes darting left and right. "Just hurry up, boy."
Nico opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, a woman appeared. She was dressed in a pure white gown, except the front, above her chest, had been blackened by char. She looked beautiful, with the look of a traditional actress, and her long black hair was tied up into a neat bun. Her eyes glistened with tears.
"Mom", Nico barely whispered, almost questioning.
And before he could react, the woman lunged forward and embraced him. As his fingers made contact with her bare arms, he gasped- her skin was freezing to the touch, as if she had just woken up from a refrigerating session.
"My dear son." Her voice slid gently into his ears, a sound he had last heard a century ago.
Nico grinned, blinking back tears. "Hi." However, she didn't seem to hear, and kept on talking.
"Your father called me here today for a very special meeting. We're going to teach you about your family." She beamed at him, pointing her hand at the space right behind him.
He looked questioningly at Hades, who motioned for him to keep listening.
"Last week, I heard from Bianca that your school was having a play, and they wanted you to dress up as an ancestor. Well, your father is out of the question," at this, she looked to her left and winked, "but I can teach you a bit about my history."
His eyes were wide as he watched. His mother seemed to be talking as if they were still alive, and if he was still the child she was able to hold in her lap.
"Mommy came from Italy, and her family came from Rome. Do you remember that story I used to tell you and Bianca, about the twins who found Rome?" Apparently hallucination-Nico nodded yes, because she beamed. "Well, they didn't actually create Rome. Instead, my grandfather's grandfather's grandfather, many times over; he was a heroic sailor who, pursuing love and peace for his people, could be counted the real Father of Rome. Do you know who that is, my pearl?"
Maria Di Angelo slowly turned pale, and Nico could see Hades from behind her. Their lips in unison, his gentle growl blending with her softer lilt.
"Aeneas."
As he neared the house, about two blocks away from the Sun Palace, he heard shouting from outside the window.
"He doesn't need to know. The boy's still new to Elysium; he earned it just as much as you and me." The voice, pleading softly, sounded oddly familiar, though Nico couldn't quite place it.
Another man- this one Nico recognized as Aeneas' heavily accented English. "You were once strong, during the war. Look at you now. I don't like using him either, but we need him. Also, maybe he can save Will-"
Nico didn't notice it, but he snapped, and found himself morphing out of the ground in the middle of Aeneas' kitchen, surrounded by a halo of blazing purple fire.
"This 'boy'," he put a particular snarl onto the word, as Aeneas turned pale, "wants to know what is going on."
He turned around, and almost fell over. Achilles stood before him, squared chin jutted forward, glaring down. That voice he heard, defending him- it was Achilles?
"Uh- and you too!" His voice squeaked up an octave, causing Achilles to raise a brow at him.
However, Aeneas didn't speak, just beckoned towards the hallway. Nico watched as his eyes looked past his shoulder, at Achilles. A few seconds passed, before the leaner warrior stood and walked down the hall, pushing open a door.
Nico followed, quite drained from the display he had put on. Behind him, Achilles followed.
"Um, whatever it was, thanks for looking out for me I guess."
The warrior only grunted, and prodded him forward.
As they reached the door, Aeneas stepped to the side, and Nico looked in. The room itself was relatively sunny, with light pouring in from the skylight and windows on the side. However, it was the bed in the corner, and specifically the occupant, that he noticed immediately.
"Will?"
The blond boy lay, eyes closed, underneath the sheets, his head rested on a pillow. Beside him, on the tabletop, a sleek laptop sat, with a logo depicting a pomegranate missing a bite.
"He won't wake," Aeneas put his hand on Nico's shoulder, which he instinctively recoiled away from. "That's the thing- your precious boyfriend is also the only damn person who can heal us."
Nico leapt back, eyes wild. "Wa-wait, boyfriend? Heal us from what?"
Aeneas opened his mouth as if to respond, but instead gulped. Instead, Achilles spoke.
"What pretty boy here means is that Will, your boy-friend." As he said boyfriend, the warrior slowed down each syllable mockingly, "has healing powers from his pops. I assume Hades told you about the problem, and also about Aeneas?"
Nico nodded, glaring at Aeneas, who was currently peeking out from behind Achilles.
"Well, the problem isn't just that others are getting in, it's that we're falling out. Take a look at this." Achilles moved over and opened the laptop, clicking on the video.
It was Hazel, running with a hunky Asian guy. They smiled at each other as they ran laps around the Winter track, recognizable by the snowflakes spilling down from the sky.
And then, out of nowhere, something shot out from the snow-lidded trees, and the guy cried out in pain. Nico watched as Hazel screamed, running across the track to the guy, and the camera panned over to the Asian.
He felt sick to his stomach. While the top half of the guy was human, the bottom half of him looked like a mangled set of tiger legs, as if he had been in the middle of transforming. All around him, a swarm of gray corpses clung onto him, tugging him down into the ground. Hazel shrieked and shot a few blasts of mist from her fingers, but it was too late, and a few more seconds later, Hazel was left screaming on the track.
"Frank wasn't the first. We've lost four heroes since the beginning of this year. And it's more than that. Can't you feel it in the air? The death down here, it's slowly twisting us."
He was right. Even though he had only been down here a few days, Nico already found himself more violent and possessive than he had ever been. His eyes caught onto Will, still busy cuddling a pillow.
"So, um, why is Will sleeping?"
Aeneas glanced nervously at Achilles, who stared stone-faced at the boy. "Well, he's one of Apollo's most powerful children. We tried forcing him to prophesize a question – uh, asked him to", he corrected quickly, but Nico's slits dilated.
Lunging, he grabbed for Will's arm, and focused his mind, banishing all the light from the room, and forming it into a circular fortress around him and Will.
Will thrashed, and Nico put an arm around him, holding him closer in the swirling mass of shadows. He felt Will's pulse beat against him, and he searched his brain, scrambling for a way to get out. Shadow-travel, right. He had used that quite a few times in his youth.
Unlike his darkness-slip trick, where he chose a shadow and ported through it, shadow travel was different. It wasn't teleportation; rather, he had to almost kill himself and whoever was with him, reducing them down to the very base essence of life- the shadow. Once in that stage, they could move faster than the speed of light; after all, a ray of light can never catch a shadow.
He channeled, feeling their life auras crumble down. Three, two, one..
And then a girl stepped through the shadow, pointed her finger at him, and he instantly crumbled down to the ground, unable to move.
"Hazel?"
Her voice was quiet. "Sorry, Nico."
They sat again in Aeneas's living room, except this time, Nico sat there stiffly bound by long chains of shadow, Will lay snoring on his lap, and Hazel sat on the couch opposite him. The bitch didn't even have the courage to look at him, just to tighten the chains periodically. Good, at least she didn't feel comfortable.
Aeneas frowned. "Were you even listening?"
Nico spat at the gray-haired man, his eyes narrowed to slits.
"Again, we don't want to do this, but trust me, it's necessary. Don't blame your father, he didn't know about any of this, but he was right- your lineage."
The man shuffled in his seat, and Nico couldn't help but remember waking up in Aeneas's house. Had he been planning this since then?
"In history, only two demigods have combined lineage from Hades and Aphrodite, and one of them is sitting in front of me. The other one, well he had a few generations removed on either side from the gods, and well, he turned out to be the worst dictator the world has known."
He looked at Nico, as if gauging his reaction. Wow, he thought, an exclusive club shared by only him and Hitler. How lucky.
"But you, you can tap into the emotional powers of love and adoration, as well as complete mastery over death. And our blonde friend here is perfect- he apparently still has feelings for you, and we know he's got that prophecy in him somewhere."
Nico stared blankly at the man. When he had first gotten here, he remembered how nice everyone seemed; now, he realized something. Inside every eye he saw here, there was always a hint of ruthlessness, as if death had stolen humanity away from them.
"You're asking me to steal from Will's mind," he said.
Aeneas winced. "Not steal, no no. A better word would be, perhaps, coax."
He moved his hand over Will's, feeling how delicate and helpless he seemed. Monsters, all of them. He glared at all three of the heroes; Hazel, with her head bowed down, Achilles with his eyes frantic, Aeneas – frantic.
And all hell blew up.
Achilles jumped up, knocking Aeneas to the floor. He reached for Hazel, but a tendril of shadow wrapped around his fist, squeezing it tightly.
"Go. Run. We'll find you later."
We? Nico felt the bonds around him loosen, and he prepared the shadow travel process again.
Just one minute left. Achilles stood up, one hand fighting back Aeneas, the other one clenched against Hazel. In the light, he truly looked like a hero from the ancient art in museums; muscles rippling underneath his shirt, an almost reddish aura surrounding him.
Ten seconds. He gripped Will's hand tightly. Just ten more.
And through the door, as if they had all the time in the world, walked Perseus and Luke. Nico prayed they wouldn't notice him.
Of course, the gods never listened to him. Percy saw him immediately, beckoned to Luke, and flung a golden pen at Nico. Midair, it turned into a sword. Time seemed to slow down for Nico; he wondered if he could still die, or if it would just hurt a lot.
And the sword landed, a centimeter in front of his face. Nico frowned, or at least tried to, but his mouth wouldn't move. In fact, everything in the room seemed suspended in the air.
Except for one blonde. Luke walked through the room casually, knocking aside vases and such. He walked up to Achilles, the warrior still surrounded by a faint red aura, and knocked him to the ground, where he lay still.
"You know, you can't die in the Underworld. But honestly why kill, when I can suspend time itself? Right, you can't answer." He laughed at his own joke, a manic giggling. Around him, Hazel, Aeneas and Percy unfroze, the final one grumbling.
"Luke, I told you to not freeze me. You ruined my dramatic entrance!" The hero half-pouted.
Together, they walked over to the immobile Nico, Aeneas delivering a sharp kick to Achilles on the way.
"Now, won't you cooperate?"
The number hung in his mind. One second. One second was all he needed to escape, to drag them out of this mess. He tried screaming for his father in his mind, praying that today was the day Hades decided to take a tour of Elysium.
As if reading his mind, Aeneas smirked. "Daddy's not going to be here to save you. He's off aboveground, visiting Persephone for a favor at the request of Hazel."
He moved Nico's fingers off of Will's wrist, and Nico instantly felt the shadow connection sever. He glared as hard as he could at Aeneas, which was pretty hard without moving a muscle.
Hazel pointed at Will's feet, and a large hole opened up, while she suspended him with a claw. "Go in, or Will's going to be taking a long trip to Tartarus".
Nico felt himself unfreeze, and immediately jerked up, feeling a sharp pain jolt through his back. He held up his hands, glaring at the demigods.
"Okay I'll do it. Put him down."
"You can touch him from there."
He frowned. This wasn't going to be easy, was it? Resigned, Nico put his palm on Will.
Going in, well it was hard to describe. He felt his mind gently probe out, almost poking out at Will's, a soft bubble. He felt his way around, and found a hard membrane blocking his path of entry. Undeterred, he pushed slightly harder, and the membrane flexed in, stressing, stressing, pop.
He slid inside fully, feeling the warmth flood into his mind.
And the world turned once, and sunshine spilled everywhere.