Chapter Eighteen
Disclaimer: I do not own the PJO or HoO series by Rick Riodan, nor do I own Star Holder Commander's character Walker. I do own all of the other OCs mentioned.
Nico's POV
"Man, I could really go for a cheeseburger," Kyra grumbles.
I chuckle upon hearing her stomach growl. I was hungry myself, those berries we had eaten hours ago hadn't lasted us long. We had climbed countless trees, to no avail. There was no civilization close by, we were in the middle of literally no where.
"You feeling any better?" I ask. I was worried about her health and the way her soul had been looking for the past week, but to make my anxieties worse, she had almost fainted from sudden weakness nearly an hour ago. Thank the gods she had just hopped off the tree she had been on, otherwise she might have fallen and seriously hurt herself.
"Yea, a little. The sun has helped a lot. Those first rays of light that soaked into my skin this morning nearly made me sick though, been away from it too long,"
I hesitate before saying anything, worried about what her reaction upon hearing this news would be. "Ky, I need to tell you something,"
"Yea?" She was looking around for more trees to climb. There was a care-free, yet anxiety ridden aura about her.
"You—" An ear-ripping wail cuts through the air.
Kyra had her bow in hand in seconds, and I had raised my club-like stick defensively, like a baseball bat. I could feel the ground tremble slightly beneath my feet.
Less than a minute later, a huge Frost-Tipped Drakon stomps through the trees, giving extreme frostbite to whatever its body touched. Its eyes were a chilling icy white, its dark blue skin leathery and the tips of the spikes around its head a metallic light blue color.
It screeches again and heads straight towards us. I look up at my club that looked much more like a twig now compared to the Drakon. Kyra's arrows didn't look like they'd do much damage against the thing either.
I take a deep breath, ready to charge this thing and give it my all. Kyra fires an arrow right as I launch myself forward, mustering up the loudest shout I had in me.
Just as I'm preparing to smack the thing with my stick, I run right through it. I whirl around to see Kyra's arrow lodged into a tree, completely intact and unfrozen.
I walk around the thing and stand right in front of it, waving my stick around. I eventually drop the stick and jump up and down, waving my arms around. Nothing was happening, it was looking right at me, but it couldn't see or hear me.
Kyra comes up behind me, as equally confused as I was. "Why do you think it can't see us?" she asks, waving her hand through its snout.
I sigh, shrugging. It was obvious that it was of no harm to us, since it couldn't see or hear us, and we couldn't even touch it.
"You're in a different dimension," a small voice says from behind us.
Kyra and I whirl around, startled. I could practically hear both of our hearts trying to beat out our chests from the shock of hearing another voice.
Standing there was a small girl, no more than ten years old. With a stab of pain, I realized just how much I missed Adrienne. She and the girl standing before us looked nothing alike, but there was something familiar about the two.
"Excuse me?" Kyra asks.
"I'm sure you've heard of alternate dimensions by this point in your lives. We're in one right now, kinda," she says, twirling her light brown hair around a finger.
"What do you mean 'kinda'?" I ask, inching forward a bit.
"We're, I guess you'd say, vibrating on different levels than the mortal world. We're at just a slightly higher vibration rate than they are, therefore we can see into their world and walk on it, but nothing can see or hear us or touch us. That's why your hand passed right through that Drakon,"
"How do we get back? We have to get back," Kyra says, a tone of panic in her voice.
I was willing to bet that the same thought had popped into her mind as it had mine. If what this little girl was saying proved to be true, how were we going to get back to Michael and James and Adrienne?
"You two look hungry, come with me," The child comes towards us and takes our hands, leading us East; away from where we had come and where we had been headed.
"Where are you taking us?" I ask.
"You'll see,"
And we did. About fifteen minutes later, the tress changed, shrinking in size and bending over to make a sort of canopy. We were walking on a well-worn path. It was wide and void of leaves and twigs, as if it was well maintained.
At the end of the path, there was a small, yellow brick house. There was a little garden by the wrought-iron door and red tulips were blooming like mad in it.
"Come in," the girl says, releasing our hands and skipping to the door.
She opens it and waits for us to follow her. I look to Kyra and she looks at me, uncertainty painted across her face. I shrug and take her hand, pulling her along with me.
The little girl, whose name we had learned was Jamie, had gotten out some fresh vegetables and quickly prepared a vegetable beef stew. Where she had acquired the beef, I didn't know.
She waited patiently for us to finish eating before talking to us. Something told me her looks were deceiving. She didn't act like the usual ten year old.
When we were done, she took our bowls and placed them into the sink, then came back over to us.
"So where did you come from?" she asks.
Kyra and I look at each other. How in the world were you supposed to explain where Osiris's skyscraper was when you didn't even know to begin with.
"Uh, have you ever heard of a man named Osiris?" I ask.
Jamie's teal eyes darken and she nods. "Oh yes, the blue eyed one with a temper?"
"That's the one," Kyra says.
"You came from his palace?"
"More along the lines of escaped," I say.
We begin to tell her the story of being taken from our safe-house in order to get Mike back, and being locked in the skyscraper for weeks. We didn't actually know how long it had been, for all we knew we could have only been there five days, but it definitely felt like weeks.
Jamie was nodding along to everything we said, as if she had experienced it all first-hand. I was starting to wonder just who this little girl was and what she was doing here all alone.
"So now we have to find our way back to the mortal world so we can contact our friends and defeat Osiris and get Michael back," Kyra finishes.
"I wish the two of you the best of luck. But you mustn't leave now. Even though it seems as if we're alone in this dimension, at night, there are things that come out. It would be wise to stay here for the night and rest, then leave tomorrow morning. I know of a place that will take you back to the mortal world," she says.
"Things? What kinds of things?" I ask, leaning forward a bit.
"Evil things." And that was all she said about it.
She got up and walked down the small hallway and into a room. We followed her and found a double bed made up with a baby blue quilt with flowers all over it. The walls were painted hyacinth purple and the floors were old, worn hardwood. There was a window in the middle of the wall facing the doorway. It had solid, billowy white curtains that were tightly closed.
"You can sleep here for the night. There's a bathroom at the end of the hall, and there should be extra clothes of all sizes in the drawers. Pick what you would like to wear and just throw your old clothes in the hamper,"
"Thank you Jamie," Kyra says, giving her a small smile.
Jamie smiles back and gives a single nod. Then she turns around and walks out, closing the door behind her. I had a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach.
A/N:
I figured I'd shake things up a little more than they already are, go a little outside the box. So where do you think Jamie came from, and why does it seem like she's alone in this other dimension? And do you think she actually wants to help Kyra and Nico, or is she just stringing them along?
It's kinda strange to think I'll be sixteen in two days. Time has just seemed to speed up, yet it's also been slow going getting here, if that makes any sense.
I've had some disorienting and terrifying dreams over the past couple of days, and they're the kind you can't really remember so it bothers the fuck out of you until you just forget it altogether. I hate those kinds of dreams.
M/A:
"'Well when you like something, it's an opinion
But when I like something, it's a manifesto,
Pomposity is when you always think you're right
Arrogance is when you know.'"
Pike St. / Park Slope by Harvey Danger
XOXO,
Mrs-diAngelo25
