The Ambassador of the Gods

6. Call Me When You're Dying

-- 9th August 2009 --

Alabaster C. Torrington panted, "Aren't you going to thank me for the save?"

Nico was back down on the dirt, wheezing, his chest turned to one big jellified bruise where the Laistrygonian had backhanded him. Just a second ago he had been on the opposite end of the rural road -- more like a walking path that had been driven over on occasion, really -- almost ten meters away. Without the magical weapons harness Valhalla had gifted him in April to distribute the blow, he'd have snapped at least a couple ribs.

Call it a brief demo, but Nico had decided he didn't like flying. He got up bracing his chest and dismissed his sword.

Nico stumbled over to his cast-aside backpack and hefted it onto his shoulder. "Screw you," he gasped.

Alabaster rolled his eyes, pulled his heavy, rune-scrawled Celestial bronze armour back into place, and jogged after him. "You'd think being eight feet tall these guys would be the furthest thing from sneaky," he said, following Nico off the path and into the trees.

"Shut up," Nico snapped. "You staff your army with these things. You know exactly how sneaky they are."

Alabaster sighed. "Here we go again. You know I'm First Lieutenant of the Demigods, right?"

Nico stopped abruptly and wheeled around. Alabaster nearly smacked into him, sword in hand. Nico snarled, "I shouldn't even be talking to you."

"Ambassador, darling, I just saved your life. I've held watch while you slept. I think we're way past just talking."

Nico wished he could hold in this exhaustion, but his hard, oxygen-wanting breaths came out in a long shaky sigh.

Alabaster was doing a commendable job of acting upbeat. Last night they had talked before Nico fell asleep, only a few sentences back and forth, but Nico knew Alabaster wasn't having the greatest time, either.

He seemed jumpier today. Percy's sixteenth birthday was a week and a half out. Alabaster kept pushing his brown hair out of his face, his green eyes flickering to the trees, down the road behind them -- Nico felt his gaze like an ambush on their backs, like a beacon to Kronos, like Alabaster had read his mind and knew at some point Nico was going to have to IM Charles Beckendorf at Half-Blood and update him for maybe the final time on the ship.

Nico turned away. "You're going to get us all killed," he said.

"I didn't think you were so humble as to think you were included with the rest of us non-Big-Three demigods."

"Kronos will burn the world for ever having been the property of someone else."

"The gods will burn the world on accident."

"So why are you fighting this war just to die in the end anyway?" Nico asked backwards. He caught a glimpse of Alabaster's jade eyes in the setting twilight, brighter than the gleaming runes on his hoodie and leather armour, brighter than the appearing stars.

"Because then I'll have fought for something that actually matters and won, by the time I get to this inevitable death."

Nico laughed. "That's it? You're leading hundreds of demigods to their deaths and you made me wait two days for 'So I can die fulfilled'?"

"Debate my death with me, Angels."

Alabaster Torrington had shown up in Nico's camp ahead of him the morning before and revealed he'd been trailing him since Nico arrived in Massachusetts. Alabaster had turned him utterly unproductive for the last forty-eight hours with comments about the good he could do in Kronos's army, remarks on his current situation with the gods, pushy jabs at his business and future plans, and the occasional saving of his life. Mostly Alabaster wielded his knowledge of Nico's title to dance circles around him in a waltz with the Ambassador on his lips. Nico was almost at the point his heart would stop threatening to go into arrhythmia every time he said it aloud.