tw: blood

IX:
New Ordeal

When I woke up, the hawk sat by my windowsill, watching me with its round eyes. It chirped calmly when I sat up, examining it.

"What was your name again?" I questioned, straining my mind to remember the details of my dream. I remembered the tree, twisting and turning, the hawk, circling over the five gods…

I rubbed my eyes to clear up my foggy vision, and almost had a heart attack when I heard a dark voice go:

"Alastor."

I backed onto the wall my bed was placed against, hitting my head. When my vision cleared for me to look at the bird, it wasn't a fucking bird anymore. A half bare man with straight hair down to his shoulders was standing casually in front of my bed. He was wearing a brown ancient greek robe, ornamented with black and golden embroidery. As I examined him more carefully, I saw how his arms moved and blurred, how his entire image seemed to flow with… the wind. It was an Ánemoi, a wind spirit.

"What the fuck?" I gasped, still backed into the corner of my bed. "You can turn into a wind spirit?"

"Any flying creature, mistress." Alastor answered regally. I cringed at the title given to me.

"Don't call me that, for Tartarus' sake." I answered, as I carefully dragged myself to the edge of the bed and stood up.

"What should Alastor call you?" he asked, as he moved out of my way.

"Just… by my name?" I yawned in suggestion, as I walked to open my bedroom door. Alastor stopped me. "And don't refer to yourself in third person, if you don't mind."

"Your friend is outside, waiting to swing on his Stygian Iron sword." he warned.

"Turn into a fly or something."

Alastor disappeared. When I opened the door, Nico was indeed holding his gloomy black saber above his head. I casually greeted him, as I stretched. He had his usual dark circles, but he seemed more tired than usual.

"Are you okay?" I asked, noticing the dried blood on his jacket and hands. "Are you hurt?"

"The blood isn't mine." he answered, looking behind me without sheathing the sword. "I heard something from your room. Are you alright?"

"Oh yeah, about that. We should talk about it." I muttered, still half-awake. "Take your shirt off so I can see if you were stabbed or not."

I headed into the bathroom with those words, splashing my face with cold water in order to spike up my brain. I took into account all that happened from last night to this morning, and cold-blooded I realized: it had been the first night in over three months in which I hadn't had a nightmare.

That had to mean something. Nemesis had spoken of a new ordeal. What the fuck had I gotten involved into now? My life had just fallen slightly into order, and they'd make me go to another quest? That had to be cruel at its least.

I stared into the mirror, wondering which of the Fates I had angered this time to have my life scatter into pieces. The cold water in the sink went silent as a ringing took place in my eardrums, and anxiousness slid through my chest. My hands gripped the porcelain tightly, while water droplets ran down my forehead and onto my shirt.

I turned the water off and wiped my face with a towel. I took a deep breath as I bent down to grab the first-aid kit under the cabinet. The ringing slowly subsided, and the sound of my fearful heartbeat took its place. Each pump was more desperate than the last, each breath sounded more hurried. I looked into my own eyes, commanding myself to get a hold of it.

As soon as I did, I opened the door and went to Nico, who sat by the kitchen table shirtless crumpling his bloodied white t-shirt into a ball. I saw the dried blood clots over the cuts along his entire back, the dried marks of wine-colored fluid.

"Jesus, Nico. Did you go for a ride on the Fields of Punishment to get whipped by a Fury?" I muttered to myself, although I knew he wouldn't answer. He only slumped over the chair's back exposing his back to me.

I pulled on a chair, sitting it behind his curved back. He was short, skinny, and overall just a sick looking child. His pale skin wrapped around his protruding bones, and he wouldn't eat much, no matter how much I urged him.

I slammed the metal box on the table, as I had countless times with him. I felt like his mother sometimes, asking him to eat, patching up his cuts, even grocery shopping for him. We took care of each other, you could say.

"We need to talk, Nico." I announced, as I took out a piece of cotton and sprayed it with sterilizer.

He nodded, shaking his feathery black hair across his neck. I cleaned the cut he had from his left shoulder to his spine, scrubbing the dried blood off, and he flinched, trembling under the burning liquid's effects.

"What's up?" he asked, his arms hugging the chair as I moved on to the next one.

This one wasn't as deep, but it was longer, and stretched almost as much as his spine, almost parallel to it. I swiped the piece of cotton along that as well. He gritted his teeth.

"Something. I know something's going on." I replied, changing the side of the rag. "You've been coming home more bruised, more tired."

He didn't answer while I disinfected the deepest wound he had on his back. He'd need stitches for that one. Although in minor quantities, fresh blood still splurted out from waist, and it clearly hurt him.

"It's business that Hades sends me on, you know I can't–" he muttered, panting as I rinsed off the bloodstains on his back.

"I don't expect you to tell me. But last night, " I started, as I threw the dirty pad at the trash can and took out the thread and needle. "I had a dream. A vision."

"Oh?" he spoke, forcing his voice to not let me hear his discomfort as the needle went past his thin skin. "Could… Could be your mind playing tricks on you… maybe."

"I don't think so, no."

I tried to be as fast and gentle as I could patching his wound. Nonetheless, a muffled moan still escaped from his mouth as the metal line dragged pain across his flesh. He sighed in relief when I cut the string.

These types of wounds could be fixed easily with nectar or ambrosia, but it was dangerous for demigods to have them all the time, and also, they were expensive and hard to find.

"I still need to sew the first one." I told him, and he nodded, biting down on something.

I'd gotten used to the stench of blood long ago, but his blood was different. Not only nauseating, it… When I touched it, my throat clenched and my breathing went quiet, scared of something I didn't know. It felt scary to look at it, and terrifying to tend to it. This job always made me uneasy, and Nico knew it. I sewed up his other cut as quickly as I could, and then told him to turn around and sit on the chair normally.

"No, I think I'm good." he said, unconvincingly. I wondered if there was something that would tell me shit in his wounds. I ignored his request, and flipped him over on the chair. He was too tired to resist, as his eyes threatened to roll back.

Seeing him like that worried me too much. His front wasn't as covered in scratches and slashes like his back, and instead there was simply a hyperbolical amount of blood on his abdomen. He'd covered up the stabbing wound with duct tape, which wasn't very effective.

"Fucking hell. What happened, Nico?" I panted, as he tried to tell me that he was alright. I crouched in front of him, so that the duct taped point would be at my eye-level.

Carefully, taking into attention his pained whines and winces, I removed the four layers of terribly applied duct tape. By the second layer, his red blood already started flowing through the uncovered corners and slits. By the third, with the blood came bubbles of air, that escaped violently from their confinement. Once I'd finished removing it, blood gurgled from the opening, almost gushing. I felt a beat of panic in me. I didn't know how to stop that bleeding.

"How did you do this?" I asked, my throat dry and my hands shaking.

"They stabbed me with a piece of metal." he whispered. "I've had ambrosia, but it didn't heal."

He was bleeding too much. I couldn't see clearly, I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. Quickly, I grabbed his shirt, starting to soak up the blood with it. As soon as the blood faded, he started bleeding more.

"That's…" I didn't finish my sentence. Why didn't the ambrosia heal him?

As if reading my thoughts, a mythical breeze whispered in my ear: Alastor's voice.

"There's a piece of cursed celestial bronze stuck in him. Metal from the highest mountain doesn't go well with the son from the deepest pit."

Without time for deliberations, I reached my hands into his wound, trying to ignore his wail. He huffed nervously, his pupils shrunk in terror as he looked to his own gut. With my other hand, I stuffed the roll of bandaged between his teeth. My fingers scrambled desperately, trying to feel something sharp or of different texture.

His groans and squirms didn't make it easy for me.

"Alastor." I commanded, and he materialized next to Nico. The son of Hades' eyes widened, and he tried to reach for his sword. "I want you to hold him down."

The Anemoi did so, holding down on his shoulders and arms to prevent him from thrashing around. Finally, my fingers closed around a shard of metal.

"Nico, bite down on it." I said, and pulled the broken knife out. He howled in pain, muffled by the bandages. He spat out the roll. "Give him nectar."

Alastor got the flask from the table, carefully opening Nico's agonized mouth and dropping a stream of godly honey into it. His panting became calmer, and his thrusts weren't as pained. He still bled, not internally, but he lost too much blood nonetheless.

"How do I stop this?" I looked up at Alastor, who calmly rolled the cap back on.

"Burn the skin." he answered, without a pinch of worry. How was I supposed to burn his fucking skin? I looked into the boy's terrified face, his brows furrowed in anguish and his lip nearly bleeding upon biting on it. His sword laid on the floor.

The blade.

"Alastor, get my dagger, it's on the–" before I could finish the sentence, Alastor already smiled with the weapon in his hand, extending it to me. "Thank you."

I took it, then told him to step away, and leaned the flat of the blade on his face.

"Phoenix." I muttered in command, praying that it worked. He burst up in flames, almost charring my entire arm. The blade of the dagger offered to me by Kronos was reddish with the heat. Nico's eyes showed fear as he saw what I planned, but before he had time to oppose, I leaned the burning iron on his wound.

An agonized scream came from him, echoing throughout the whole flat and making the lamps shutter. A glass shattered, and the plants placed around the house wilted and died all together.

I dropped the knife on the floor, clutching on my own burning arm, which had turned red. The skin around my hand was fucked up.

His skin was charred, but the heat had made the bleeding stop.

Nico went silent as I laid back on the floor.

"You better fucking explain yourself after this." I said, and we both started laughing.

Roughly two hours later, after we'd cleaned up the table and ourselves, I made him go lay down on the couch as we spoke. It was about nine in the morning, and the sun started to shine upon the windows. I lowered the blinds when I saw him squinting his eyes.

"Di Angelo, what the fuck?" I cursed, half serious as I sat down next to him with some cookies. He grabbed a couple, stuffing them in his mouth. I'd willed Alastor into a sparrow, and now he jumped around the floor.

"It's complicated, alright?" he muttered, chewing down the biscuits. "I'm on a quest, kind of. It's about… making the dead rest well and stuff."

"Why, thank you for that detailed explanation! That will be all, goodbye!" I shrieked, with most embarrassing smile I could muster. Then, I rolled my eyes. "Elaborate."

"There's been some… problems. In the Underworld, with my dad. There's some people who can't find their relatives, and friends, and whatever more. Mainly the soldiers. It's not rare that the proper rites aren't given to a dead warrior, because the enemy refused to give up the body or simply because it went missing in the confusion." he explained. "Normally, it gets sorted out eventually, unless there's something unwilling for it to get sorted out. So I'm the one my dad's been sending to sort out the matters that someone else doesn't want sorted out."

I thought of my brother's empty casket, burning.

"Speaking of–" I brought up, meaning to ask about Ethan.

"Ethan's fine, he just spent a long time at the entrance and in the courthouse because of the paperwork issues." he assured me, before starting to munch on another cookie.

"Right, thanks."

He gave me a thumbs up in response.

"So who's the one who doesn't want the issues sorted out?"

Nico stopped eating and sighed.

"Achilles has been causing riot in the Isle of Blest lately. When Patroclus died, they didn't give him a proper burial. Achilles had it wished that they were buried together or something, but apparently someone stopped it from happening." he explained. "In fact, Patroclus isn't in the Underworld at all. Someone's keeping him haunting around the mortal world."

"That's thousands of years, how–"

"Time passes differently for the dead. For Achilles, it's been a year or so, at most."

"For Patroclus?" I asked.

He said nothing, looking down at his cookie.

"After a certain point, I think his notion of time would've started to blur out, and his notion of everything, honestly, so–" he started.

"So he's been trapped as a ghoul for thousands of years?" I asked. Nico nodded.

I couldn't imagine what it was like to be stuck dead in the mortal world. I'd heard from somewhere that when that happens, they don't lose sense of their bodies. They feel it rotting slowly, as maggots crawl and eat their insides, while they're unable to do a thing.

"I want to help you."

He looked at me for a minute, and then thought for another. He sighed.

"I don't think you should, but I won't refuse your help. I want you to know that this is a dangerous quest, and that meddling with the dead seldom brings no consequences, capiche?"

I nodded, happy he let me help him.

"Honestly, I don't think I could take him on by myself." he muttered, as he took another bite of the cookie.

"Who?"

"I think it's Neoptolemus, Achilles' son, who's been guarding the crypt and preventing anyone from going in." he answered, and then put the rest of the cookie in his mouth. I didn't know Achilles had a son. "He was reincarnated, I think."

"Did he do that to you?" I asked, tipping my chin toward him.

"See, that's the tricky part… I don't know where the crypt is." he said, pursing his lips and twisting on his ring. "Neoptolemus and his little team… They've been moving around, settling in random places and moving as soon as they're found. So far I've just been following my intuition. Ironically, what did that to me was a guarding spirit, that are placed in graves to prevent graverobbers."

"Little team?"

"Neoptolemus got together a bunch of monsters and reincarnated warriors or something, according to what I've heard. That's why this is a matter that dad has been taking into account." Nico explained, reaching for another cookie. "Him and his soldiers have been pillaging towns. Soon it'll get bigger. Someone needs to send them back to Hades."

"How many of them are there?" I inquired, curious of how a zombie managed all that. Then, I remembered how Kronos' story was indeed that of a zombie that hadn't even risen from the dead who was very persuasive.

"From what I've heard, five, plus a dragon. Neoptolemus, Keuthonymos, a death deity who's been acting up lately, a demigod, a cyclops, and something else I don't quite know."

"And your father sent you to deal with all that?" I questioned.

"He didn't say I couldn't seek help, but he just… knows me." he mumbled. It wasn't typical of him to ask for anyone's aid. "But now that you're in, you might as well bring someone else. You know how useless I am after shadow-traveling."

"Percy?" I asked, squinting my eyes. That was really the only person I knew. "Or Annabeth?"

"Neither. Hades told me that I could get anyone but those two, actually. Recommended you and one of your little exiled friends." he muttered, munching.

Alastor hopped at his feet, picking up the crumbs that he dropped on the floor. I still didn't know what I'd do with him.

"I don't know where any of them are. And even if I did…" I wouldn't be able to even look them in the eye, knowing what I did.

"Get someone else then." he shrugged, looking completely indifferent to whomever I decided to bring along our silly little quest, as long as they were useful, and not off-limits like Percy or Annabeth. "Sincerely, I think the ideal would be five people, you know? You, me, somebody smart, somebody strong, somebody quick."

"Yeah, anything else, your majesty?" I scoffed at his request. "Would you like a drink to go with that? A head massage?"

Nico di Angelo shook his head, disappointed at my sarcastic remark, before stopping his insane cookie consumption and staring at the bird tiptoeing around.

"You need to do some explaining too, if I'm honest. What the fuck is that bird?"