Death and Madness|| Nico di Angelo

Don't make any comments about the boss's appearance

We ducked into a tunnel and saw light ahead. By the time Minos caught up with us, we were staring at daylight streaming through a set of bars above our heads. We were under a steel grate made out of metal pipes. I could see trees and blue sky.

"Where are we?" I wondered.

Then a shadow fell across the grate and a cow stared down at me. It looked like a normal cow except with was a weird colour—bright red, like a cherry. I didn't know cows came in that colour.

"Ah, so these are the cows that make strawberry milk" I mumbled. 

"Why are you like this?" Nico shook his head.

The cow mooed, put one hoof tentatively on the bars, then backed away.

"It's a cattle guard," Minos said.

"A what?" I asked.

"They put them at the gates of ranches so cows can't get out. They can't walk on them." Nico explained. 

"Triple G ranch" Minos breathed out. "My lord, you might find some information about Daedalus"

"Well then, shall we?" 

"We shall" Nico nodded. 

I didn't think of feelings this time. I thought of berries, grapes and vines. I imagined them growing and I imagined myself controlling them. Small crack appeared in the ground and tiny vines- which were nothing compared to the ones I had conjured during my panic attack- grew and wrapped themselves around the bars. 

"You can do this" Nico told me. 

I focused on making the vines thicker, more powerful. More vines popped up now, thicker than the first ones. They all moved the way I wanted them to. I forced the vines to push out the metal guard. It popped off and went flying out of sight. We heard a CLANG! and a startled Moo!

I rubbed the back of my neck sheepishly. "Oops?"

But Nico was smiling. "Are you kidding me? That was great"

With that, I gave him a boost out of the tunnel and he pulled me up. 

We were on a ranch, all right. Rolling hills stretched to the horizon, dotted with oak trees and cacti and boulders. A barbed wire fence ran from the gate in either direction. Cherry-coloured cows roamed around, grazing on clumps of grass.

"Holy Cows" I snorted. 

"Quit literally" Minos said. "They're the sacred cattle of Apollo"

"I knew that" I scoffed. 

"Sure you did" Nico said sarcastically. 

"Wait," I said. "Listen."

At first everything seemed quiet...but then Nico heard it too: the distant baying of dogs. The sound got louder. Then the underbrush rustled, and two dogs broke through. Except it wasn't two dogs. It was one dog with two heads. It looked like a greyhound, long and snaky and sleek brown, but its neck V'd into two heads, both of them snapping and snarling and generally not very glad to see us.

Nico took out his sword and I followed with my daggers, even though I had no idea how to fight with them. 

Then its master lumbered out of the woods, and I realized the dog was the least of our problems.

He was a huge guy with stark white hair, a straw cowboy hat, and a braided white beard— kind of like Father Time, if Father Time went redneck and got totally jacked. He was wearing jeans, a DON'T MESS WITH TEXAS T-shirt, and a denim jacket with the sleeves ripped off so you could see his muscles. On his right bicep was a crossed-swords tattoo. He held a wooden club about the size of a nuclear warhead, with six-inch spikes bristling at the business end.