To what would be the great surprise of probably every single resident of Camp Half Blood and Camp Jupiter, Nico di Angelo had never stepped foot in a haunted house. Okay, so maybe he'd been in houses that were actually really haunted but not the kind that cost $10 around Halloween. Despite being a child of Hades, spending the majority of his time in the Underworld with the companies of ghosts and ghouls and all sorts, he'd never found himself riding through a haunted corn field or walking room to room where backlights or strobe lights made people nauseous while people dressed as mummies or monsters tried to get him to scream. The whole thrill thing was sort of lost on him since he could spend his time with real creepy crawlies (and the Underworld had a lot, though, he was starting to realize, maybe not nearly as much as Tartarus). So really, Nico didn't exactly have anything to compare Nyx's mansion to but he was pretty confident that what mortals had imagined of haunted houses probably wasn't far off.
Maybe after this whole ordeal he'd make a point of going to one.
That last thought, really, was wishful thinking. Don't focus on that right now, he chided himself. Because what they had to do was meet Bob and to meet the Titan they were going to have to make it through the mansion, escaping a murder of gods and goddesses (because murder was entirely appropriate because they were so going to kill them if the demigods didn't get out and quick). So really it was just a typical Tuesday for Nico and Percy.
He had felt it seconds before it had happened, just like he could sense the general direction of the Doors of Death. But seconds were only long enough to shout the other boy's name in warning whilst his fingers scrabbled to unhook the bar that was fastened across their laps keeping them inside the car. Nico had climbed onto the back of the car attempting to grab Percy as he went but fingers made of mist were too thin, too weak to materialize and cooperate that quickly. And Percy. Percy Jackson just looked at him with his sea green eyes wide and waiting explanation before crashing through the floor and disappearing in the dark. Nico groaned despite himself, just as he cursed the son of Poseidon. Couldn't be a little quicker on the uptake, could you? No, relax into the ride like they weren't going to kill us the first second they had the chance. Nyx— or one of her children, but it really didn't matter who— must have been waiting to trigger their trap.
Worry about Percy later. You can't help him if you're not alive.
"I'll take the most pleasure in feasting on you, child of Hades."
Nico looks up from the precipice but he's too slow. Nyx is on him, pain flaring up his left arm as her claws rip through flesh like a hot knife through butter. Already he can feel the blood flowing down his arm as he pulls his sword from its hilt and lunges, but she beats her wings and he's knocked backwards, tumbling. Nico lets out a growl and throws himself forward, running and jumping, using the wall as a springboard to throw himself higher until his sword slices through one of her wings. Nyx screeches and as he falls back to the ground, he's sure his eardrums will be ringing that same pitch until he's gone deaf to it. Being made of mist has made him unsure off is footing, so he lands wrong on one ankle and rolls, trying to catch himself.
"Being made of mist is getting really fucking inconvenient." He mumbles to himself. What he wouldn't give for an honest-to-gods solid body. The kind that's totally made of flesh and blood, not some death mask that's sending him frozen to his core. Just as Nico is about to try putting what limited weight he has onto the injured foot, Nyx is on him once more. From her impossibly dark robes she revealed talons, long and flexible. They gouge at his side before he punches him with the humanoid hand that adorns end of one of her wings (humanoid in that it can make a fist, but it's most definitely clawed like an animal).
The breath escapes Nico in a hiss as he's thrown to the side, crashing into the wall and something else. Maybe a mirror. Whatever it was, it broke. The taste of metal filled his mouth, teeth slicing through his cheek and his lip, before falling onto the bad ankle once more. His stygian blade clatters to the ground but it's somewhere down the hall, out of his reach, and Nyx is between him and it. "Fuck, fuck, fuck," he mutters and using every ounce of his concentration he calls to the shadows, to pull them to him, to wrap around him, to become them. Shadow mimicry is dangers, even if someone knows what they're doing (which, honestly, when has Nico ever?). It's something he's only attempted a handful of times, but what other choice was there? Nyx is 40 feet and he was compromised even before the fight began. I am a shadow. He repeats to himself silently, as he draws them closer, calling them to him, until finally he joins them.
"Where did you go!? You can't escape! I will find you!"
Nico wouldn't be able to keep the form long so he moved, silent and imperceptible through the house of night as quickly as he could, clinging to corners and just out of the corners of eyes. From one room to the next, up a little, and then back down, through a hallway, up another flight of stairs. He was weightless. The type of thing a cat stared at in the corner of a room, flicking its tail, unsure why its human cannot see what is right in front of its imperceptive face. Nico was a shade, and it's not quite shadow traveling because with traveling he's going through them but not quite one of them and at the moment? Right then he was one. Nico was a shadow. He's the dark that clung to spaces the light could not quite reach and it was only a few minutes, but Nico might have run a marathon when he snapped back into being, anchored to the physical world once more. His heart was racing, banging in his ears almost as loud as the whooshing of blood through his body. It was straining, just like his lungs, and for a moment he is drowning despite his head above water and land so close his fingertips might scrape against it. All he could do was cling to himself, arms around his stomach, hunched over misty knees as he willed everything to work, for his stomach to stop knotting and rolling, the ground to stop quaking beneath his feet.
Tartarus.
The death mist.
It's killing me.
Everything was working against him and his body was burning out.
Come on. Just a little longer. We're almost there, I can feel it.
The doors weren't far now. Nico could feel them… they weren't far from the edge of Nyx's mansion, and beyond that would be Bob, waiting for them. And beyond Bob would be Styx. And beyond Styx would be the doors… and whatever else waited for them when they made it there. Honestly, it was probably better not to think about that last part. Titans. Gods. Monsters. An entire army against two demigods and a Titan who now worked full time as a janitor to the Underworld? The odds weren't exactly in their favor.
When he opened his eyes, he glanced at the arm Nyx had attacked; being a shadow had done nothing to stop the bleeding. It started again the second he snapped back to himself. When Nico finally brought his hand away from his chest— only when he was certain it was actually going to stay there— he did a quick once over himself. Everything else felt like it was in place, though half of himself felt like it was on fire. His calf was aching and with each deep breath he took, pain shot up his side. He went to reach for his stygian blade and found the sheath empty. Of course. He'd dropped it and unlike Riptide, it wouldn't be returning to his pocket.
So in summary: you're injured, you don't have a weapon, Percy is who-knows-where, and you're probably going to have to save him before you can get out of the mansion before Nyx and her legion of creepy children find you. That seemed to about sum it up. Nico rolled his eyes to himself. Of course that was his life. Fortunately, his injured ankle was weight baring, so he took off down the hallway letting his senses reach out for that familiar spark of life he knew to be Percy Jackson. Because he could feel him, if he tried, from anywhere. That unique spark that was his essence, amongst all the other souls that would someday find they way to the Underworld. "You're alive, so that's something." He murmured to himself. Opening his eyes again, he began to creep along the hallway toward emptier space he was sure would be a staircase.
Just as he slid passed an empty doorway he heard a squeal.
"Why there you are! Naughty thing, there's no wandering off from the tour! Unless you're hoping for a tour of my room."
"Friendship," he groaned. That was one thing he definitely didn't need.
"Oh, you remembered! Of course, you can call me Lottie. Only my nearest and dearest do and I have a feeling we're going to get to know each other extremely well. Don't you think?" The goddess gushed as she came closer, batting long eyelashes at him as she threw hair back over her shoulder. Maybe she would have been pretty, desirable even, but her lips were drawn on with pencil and lip gloss above and beyond the natural shape of her lips as if she were trying to remake herself. Girls wore makeup, he knew that, but she took contouring to a whole different level than those tutorials he caught Hazel watching. She'd given herself cheekbones she could cut a demigod with and from how she was hovering, it looked like he was next.
"I don't think so… especially not the way you make it sound."
Nico groped the wall behind him, attempting to find anything at all. There was art, random pedestals with statutes and his fingers brushed behind him across one. He had no idea what it was, what it was worth, or what it was made of but it felt solid and heavy in his hands. Nico took a broad swipe with his statute-turned-bludgeoning-object but only managed to knick her shoulder. The extra weight of the statute carried him forward, something he hadn't factored for, and brought the son of Hades into range for Lottie to give him a swift roundhouse kick to the ribs, knocking the air from his lungs.
"I love a man who plays hard to get. It's so much more gratifying when I finally get to sink my teeth into him." There was a licking noise, either the gnashing of her teeth or the tapping of her nails — both conjured up a picture of a cartoon villain.
Whipping around, Nico used both hands on the statute this time, and succeeded in clubbing her against the jaw. Her head snapped backwards, long strands of midnight hair whipping back as it happened. Without a sword he wouldn't last long. He needed to lose her but she was blocking the way forward and he didn't want to back track in case Nyx was on his trail. As Philotes righted her head, she spit out what might have been a tooth before giving him a massive bloody grin complete with gap tooth. "Oh, you have no idea how much I like it a little rough. It's been so long since I've had someone who made the effort worth it."
The words sent a chill up the back of his spine. Nico rolled, narrowly missing her lightning light reflexes as she attempted to roundhouse him once more. His brain was buzzing, that natural ability switching on as a hundred different things happened at once, each sliding into focus.
One, throw his legs up and out and land crouching on his feet.
Two, somersault out of the way as she attacked again.
Three, wide arc up connecting the end of the three foot long statute to send her head reeling to the side.
Four, Percy was still alive but down… down that staircase beyond her.
Five, use the wall to spring forward, smashing her once more with the statute.
Six, leave that unnecessary weight behind and let the momentum take him forward.
She howled in pain and he had a feeling this time he'd knocked loose more than just a couple of teeth.
"These are veneers!" She bellowed. "One tooth is hard enough to get replaced but five? Do you know how much it's going to cost to get them redone!?"
"Well I thought you were supposed to be friendly. What part of attacking me and groping me outside of your mansion is nice?"
Nico might have made it over, the staircase now to his back as they'd switched positions, but he couldn't just make a mad sprint for it. She would catch up to him. Letting out an enraged cry, her makeup was smudged and beginning to run. It was just his luck she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror hung in the hall because she paled almost visibly.
Oops. Maybe trying to beat up on a goddess using a piece of art wasn't the best idea I've ever had.
"I am so much more than friendship." He ducked and dodged, somersaulted backwards to escape her punches and kicks, but the last one was too slow and she landed a hit in his ribs once more. This time he felt something snap, pain flaring through his left side. "It's about relationships. Social. Sexual. They have their softer sides and their darker sides…" His blood chilled in his veins.
"I'm not in the market for a girlfriend, or friends for that matter."
Nico dodged another hit, inching further back towards the stairs. He happened a glance over his shoulder and they were getting closer, but they were still too far. Nico called upon the shadows to help him move with the grace and speed of a shade as she made her next lunge. Please work, he pleaded and she missed him, the arm she scraped dissipating briefly like someone attempting to bat at smoke. He felt the tug in the depth of his gut as he called the particles back together reforming his arm.
"A child of Hades!? It's like we're a match made in Olympus." She flashed a wicked smile, her teeth sharp as she flicked long black strands of hair over her shoulder. "I'm just looking for a little fun before we eat. Mother always did say I had a problem playing with my food."
The goddess giggled from behind a manicured hand, as if she'd let him in on a secret she wasn't meant to share. Playing with her food… That meant they intended to eat them. Not just murder them because they were demigods. Nico shuddered. Why did literally every single thing in Tartarus want to turn them into a meal?
Percy… you need to find Percy.
Before Philotes could exit her stance to attack once more, and before Nico had finished the thought, the goddess dropped to the floor landing in an unconscious pile. Stepping from the shadows of the doorway was a woman—and he used the term pretty loosely— gnarled claws where hands should have been, stringy hair falling in a tangled mess over emaciated shoulders, eyes somewhere between smiling and scowling. Raising one of her hands, she presented Nico with his stygian blade.
"I have a proposition for you," she rasped.
Nico took his blade.