Avoiding the Hunters of Artemis

Chapter 2- Nico's P.O.V.

-Saturday-
I walk closely behind my sister, my hand grasping hers with a tight death grip. We weasel our way through all of the people playing arcade games.
“I’m not done!” I complain in a high and whiny voice. I didn’t even realize how annoying I am until right at this moment.
She glances back at me, chuckling half heartedly. So relaxed. “It’s your bedtime.”
“I don’t know what time it is!”
Now I realize why that is. It wasn’t any time. Time wasn’t a thing. We might have been tired enough to sleep once a year or so.
“Bedtime!” She clarifies vaguely, “We’ll go watch TV in the hotel room. We’ll get a snack before going to sleep.” She tries to trick me.
I sigh. “I don’t want to.” I pull my hand away once we get into the lobby. Once I know I’m not going to get lost so easily. I used to get lost sometimes; I’m not sure how she found me or how she remembered me when she did.
“Nico,” She laughs it off, taking a step closer to me and kissing my forehead. I scowl and glare at the floor, not saying anything. I never admitted how much I liked that and needed it; I don’t think I realized until she died. “Tomorrow is another day where you can play around. They will have new games, maybe even another one with those godly characters you like.”
“They’re not godly, they’re gods. And they aren’t just characters! People believed in them!”
“A long time ago, yes. Now there is one God.”
“I know~ It is okay!” I wave my hands a bit, trying to keep her from arguing with me.
She backs off a little. My eyes go to the doors to this place. They’re so intimidating, maybe it’s knowing that you can go in but you can’t really go out.
I can never manage to actually learn more about the Lotus Hotel and Casino. It’s the only story that’s made me willingly left class at Camp Half-Blood. Usually, I love hearing them and I want to learn more all the time.
“…Nico?” She asks, and I realize she probably said something.
Did I just get distracted by something in my dream? Is this where things change?
“…Bianca.” I respond, voice strained now.
I can control myself a little, not a lot. Just enough to refocus on her.
She seems to have changed a little; when I look back at her, her hair is in a braid instead of loose. She looks a bit older even though she couldn’t have aged here and she never got to age at all.
Maybe she’s just more tired, matured in some way. She looks the way she did when she died.
“I’ll go to bed, I’m sorry.” I say. I think it’s back to normal?
If I act normal, and don’t interfere with anything, can I get her to be normal? Can we do what we actually did here, go to our room and go to sleep with her close to me?
“I can’t do this anymore.” She says.
I stop, holding my hand back out for her to take. That’s not what she’s supposed to say.
“Hold my hand.” I manage.
She looks over at the doors, “You don’t want to listen, Nico.”
“I am, let’s go to bed. I just got distracted.”
“I don’t want you anymore.”
“I’ll follow you.” I say, my face heating up with frustration.
She’s going to leave me here?! How is she even leaving? Even with my knowledge that I want to, knowing where the doors are and trying to go to them, I’m still being drawn away, back into the arcade.
This is just a dream…
“Nico…” She huffs, “Don’t. I hate you.”
Why does that hurt so much?!
“Bianca.” I say again, pleading.
She moves further away from me. I try to yell for her, but I can’t before I lose track of her and this dream entirely, everything melting and fading away around me.
…
I shift around, everything replaying in my head. That place… I can’t stop thinking about it. I never want to go there again.
“Nico?” I hear Will’s voice, “Are you waking up now? Because it would be really helpful if you did.” He says nervously.
I open my eyes, hearing all sorts of noise around us. I wince. “What the hell…” I mutter, grabbing onto his arm loosely. He’s holding onto me, keeping me up, propped over his lap. This is how we often end up after I…
“We’re in Vegas.” He tells me. “We’re in a safe place now, so you don’t need to worry about it.”
“Vegas?!”
“Yeah. You um… shadow-traveled us to the Lotus Hotel, but I brought us outside as soon as I knew what was going on. We’re sitting outside now.” He explains.
He got us out of there?! How?
“I just-” shadow-traveled in my sleep…? All the way across the country, with another person? That’s really impressive. “Oh gods, sorry…”
“It’s okay, I’m just glad you’re waking up so quickly, it’s only been a few hours.”
“Only?!” I scoff. I’m incapable of speech right now, apparently!?
“Usually something like this would take you a few days to get over! I was about find a way to Iris-message Hazel, or something, and ask her what to do.” He rambles.
“I-” I feel like I’m going to cry. I don’t know how to handle this.
I brought us to the Lotus Hotel? I can do that? It’s a magical place, so I’m surprised. I was unable to in Tartarus.
“Just try to breathe, we’re safe, we can wait here as long as you need to.” He says, acting calmer now.
“No!? No, we can’t! Something is going to get us.”
“You can’t exactly travel back right now, though. That’s too far. Is there somewhere closer you can take us for now?” He asks.
“I can’t go anywhere right now, I’m sorry. I can’t…help you, I can’t protect you.”
“It’s alright, I’ll keep us safe. Nothing’s approached us so far.” He tells me, as if he could protect us.
“I’ll try to, I’ll take you somewhere safe…”
The closest safe place to here is Camp Jupiter, and that’s nowhere near here really. I don’t know anywhere else. This is bad, I need to think of different places.
“I’d call the Grey Sisters if I had a drachma, but I don’t have anything with me.”
“Styx, okay. I’ll try something.” I hold onto him tighter, gathering all of my (very little) strength. I’m still shaken up from that dream. I don’t feel like I ever woke up, but him being here is helping me with that.
“Nico, it’s not doing anything. Just go back to sleep, I’ll figure something out.”
I take a deep breath, and then I move us…ten feet away. “Oh, wow. That’s going to take a long time.” I groan. I need to be further away from here, I’m being tempted.
I could go back in and be happy and clueless forever.
“Stop, save up your energy, and wait until you can do something that’ll take us farther than that. I’ll steal us some food or something in a minute.”
“...don’t need it.”
“You need energy. So if you sleep and eat something, we might be able to be on our way.” He tries to reason with me for some reason.
“I need my sister.” I mutter. That doesn’t even make sense…
“...Hazel?” He asks.
“No.” She would be great too, but that’s not what I meant.
“...Did you have a dream about Bianca?” He asks instead, putting the pieces together.
“Look at where we are, idiot!?”
“Right, that’s what I just figured. I mentioned Hazel a second ago so I wasn’t sure.” He says softly. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No, I want to get out of here.” I growl. I never want to talk about it.
I try to shadow-travel us again, but we go even less of a distance this time. We’re just going to the nearest shadow. It’s a good thing this city is so lit up, or I’d just get lost.
"...I know you do. We don't need to talk, but you're just going to keep making yourself tired if you do this."
“…” I try to stay awake, “Get away from me!?”
"You can't even sit up straight." He says, shifting me off him and propping me up against the nearest wall, backing up a bit.
I pull away from him and hit my head a few times with both hands. “We need to get out of here.”
"I know we do. But trying to... do it this way isn't going to work well."
“No, wait. Hold onto me.”
"Nico, your shadow-traveling isn't going to work well if you keep just exhausting yourself. We're only going a few feet at a time."
I rock a bit, surprised I have the energy to move at all. I tangle my fingers into my hair. “We’ll be somewhere eventually, and if…if I do it again by accident, then…I’d…”
"You'd lose me." He reaches out and carefully takes my hand, getting me to refocus myself onto him, "I'll just hold you like this, so you can at least have a bit of space."
“I don’t want to hurt you.” I almost sob, but luckily, I stifle it well enough.
"You won't hurt me. I'll be fine." He promises, "Just try and be careful."
“I could hurt you.” I remind him softly. It’s unimaginable, but…likely.
"And if you do, I'll be fine. I can heal myself. I'm not afraid of you."
“Are you going to leave me?!”
"Never. I'm never going to leave you." He promises me, "You have my word."
“Good. I love you.” I squeeze his hand.
We need to find a way back…
Does he hate me? Did Bianca really hate me?
He squeezes my hand back. "I love you too. We'll... figure something out."
“I don’t want to go back in there.”
"We don't have to. We'll do anything else." He takes my other hand. "You don't have to go again."
“I did it accidentally, what if I got stuck?”
"I'd come find you, and I'd get you out, obviously. And I'm with you almost every night anymore, so I'm sure I'd get you out then, like I did now anyway."
I might cry. Like, full-on sob for hours. Instead, I cling to his hand, bringing him close again. I won’t hurt him.
…
We had to get zombie-chauffeured out of Las Vegas.
With shadow-travel not being an option, and neither of us having drachmas or anything, it was our only choice. It took a bit for me to be able to summon him, but it worked out.
We went to Camp Jupiter.
I don’t think I can go back and face the Hunters of Artemis. I don’t know if they’re what caused a Bianca dream, but I don’t want to risk it. This can’t happen again…
I’ll need a rain check with Jason if he really wanted to hang out today at all. He’ll be at Camp Half-Blood all week, right?
I sigh deeply. We’re eating breakfast with Hazel, Frank, and Reyna, who were all more than happy to help us out. Reyna assured me she’d kill whatever freaked me out, then I said it was probably just Thalia, and she quickly decided she didn’t want to face her.
I take a bite of the toast I have. It’s plain. I feel so sick and exhausted, it would be great if it was life or death so I could borrow some of Reyna’s power. Not that I want to take her energy and make her weaker, but I could use a little bit of it.
“I’m not sure how long we’ll stay.” I admit.
"Long enough to get some rest." Hazel tells me.
“I know, I’m eating literally right now and I’ll take a nap and everything.”
"Which is great. But don't rush out, really. I'm glad you made it here safely." Hazel says.
"Maybe its better for you to stay here while the hunters are at camp anyway." Renya says.
“I don’t care that they’re there.” I mutter.
Am I scared of them? I think so. I won’t admit that, that’s for sure.
Reyna gives me a no-nonsense look. "You don't have to lie to us about it."
"You're welcome here even if you don't stay, just remember that." Hazel says in a much nicer tone.
“What’s wrong with the Hunters? They’re pretty cool…?” Frank says cluelessly as usual.
Hazel sighs, leaning against him again. "They are... I'll just tell you later, we don't need to bring it up right now."
“It doesn’t even matter,” I wave a hand dismissively, “Jason’s there for his birthday right now and I want to spend some time with him. He’s one of the only people who hasn’t ever let me down. I don’t want to let him down.”
Granted, I can come here whenever he’s here too. I just don’t want it to get too far out from his birthday so it doesn’t count anymore.
"Couldn't you wait until he came back here?" Hazel asks me.
"...I can't leave for a week, I have stuff I have to attend too at Camp Half-Blood. I could always get back another way, though." Will tells us, glancing at me. "It's whatever you want, obviously."
“You don’t want to stay here with me?” I ask him.
He thinks about it for a moment. "Of course I want to stay here with you, I don't want this happening again without me. At the very least, we need to contact someone  from my cabin so I can let them know I won't be there."
“Kayla can be in charge.”
"She can for a bit, I just need to let her know." Will says. "If we're just here for the week, it should be okay?"
“…We’ll go back tomorrow or later today. Don’t worry about it. I need to let Jason know when we’ll be back though, and come up with an explanation of what happened.”
"Just tell him the truth." Reyna says to me. "He'll understand."
“No? He can’t know how much I accidentally mess things up.”
"Why not? Everyone makes mistakes." Will says. "It's not even a mistake, it just happened."
“Not like that one. I would have ended up stuck forever. No one would even know where I was.”
"I would have found you somehow." Will promises. "I'd have gotten ahold of the people here, then we'd have came and-"
"Kicked ass to find you." Reyna finishes, cutting him off.
“You’d get stuck in there too.” I tell them.
"You got out somehow, right?" Will asks me.
“What, when I was a kid?”
"Yeah. You got out then, right?" Will asks me.
“Well, yeah…? What makes you think I want to talk about anything right now?”
"Nothing. I'm just saying we'd find a way to get you out safely." Will says.
“You’d get stuck,” I insist, “You forget who you even are in that place, what you’re doing. The only reason I knew ANYTHING the whole time I was there is because Bianca was with me.”
Just like Tartarus and the Labyrinth, the more alone you are, the more insane you get. By the time they found me, they wouldn’t know they were looking for me.
"I got you out of the lobby. Maybe you can't get any farther." He says.
“That’s not it, that’s where we were in my dream.”
"...You think it could be worse later?" Will asks.
“Maybe? I have no idea.”
"Well, we're here either way. Maybe keep Will close to you, so you're not alone when it happens." Hazel says.
"Sleep with a weapon, too." Reyna adds to her suggestion.
“I do, I always do. I need to sleep with drachma attached to me, apparently.” I tell them.
"It's probably a good idea. Can you make a spot on your sheath to hold one?" Reyna suggests.
“Maybe.” The idea of sleeping with all of that is…not something I adore. But I’ll have to. I need to be ready, so I should probably keep my jacket on too just in case I end up somewhere cold.
"I can keep the drachma. I can wear my hoodie with the zipper pocket." Will offers.
“I have to be ready if I end up alone. I’d have to be holding you, or you’d have to be holding me…” We got lucky. We don’t usually CUDDLE.
"It might be best for both of you to have a small amount of provisions." Hazel murmurs. "You got real lucky you weren't alone."
“Maybe I can tether us together every night?” I suggest to Will.
Will raises his eyebrows at me. "How so?"
“Like,” I gesture to Reyna, “Like the Athena Parthenos stayed hooked to me when I was shadow-traveling. We wouldn’t have to worry about getting separated or me being alone somewhere dangerous if I accidentally went somewhere in my sleep…” I don’t know if he’ll be willing to do this. It’s really complicated and I feel stupid even having to worry about it, “…What if I tied you to me? With rope or handcuffs or something?”
Will glows for a split second, but quickly tries to contain himself, so the light coming from him starts sputtering out almost immediately. Is he nervous...?
"We could do something like that. For... yeah. So that if this happens again we're together." He says it like he's convincing himself to do it.
“That way I don’t have to actually touch you.” I nod. He seems okay with it.
"It would be difficult to hold on all night." Will says, nodding seriously. "I'll see what I can find, we'll get used to it I'm sure. At least this is a good excuse if someone catches me sneaking to your cabin at night. Doctors orders."
NO. I don’t want anyone else knowing about it! Is he missing that part?
“You guys do that regularly…?” Frank asks him.
Hazel watches Will intently, glaring at him like she's expecting him to say something she doesn't like.
He puts a hand up, before replying. "I reckon this seems questionable, but it's only to help him sleep. He's better rested when someone stays with him."
"He needs someone with him, especially after this. It makes sense." Reyna says. "It would be better if it was someone with more combat training..."
I’m sure they do weird things that help them sleep too. I actually know that Frank turns himself into a bulldog just to sleep, so I think that’s way weirder than needing another person.
“I’m teaching him.” I assure her.
"Good. I don't like that you were defenseless."
“I know you don’t.” I say pointedly.
She got really worked up about that on our quest, and it took a lot for her to trust Coach Hedge to look after us, I could tell.
Reyna looks at Will intently. "Maybe he should stay here for the week. I can train him."
Will visibly shivers, looking at her wide eyed.
“That’s a good idea. I’ll leave Will here then I’ll go back to Camp Half-Blood.” I agree.
"Don't leave me here!" Will squeaks. "I've got stuff I'm actually supposed to be doing this week."
“Yes! Training!”
"...I need to be back on the fourth. I could stay a few days I guess.. ?"
"It's a start." Reyna shakes her head.
“I’m just kidding. He needs to stay with me, I can’t sleep without him. Remember?” I remind them what we were JUST talking about.
"...I was hoping you'd spare him, or just decide to also stay." Reyna crosses her arms.
"Thank the gods." Will exhales.
“You can train him today while I’m sleeping. Someone else can stay with me.” I say.
"I can if you'd like." Hazel offers.
“If you want to, that would be great.”
She nods. "It's not a problem. Frank can handle being in charge for a day on his own."
“Uhhh. I can?” Frank processes that he’s the highest ranking officer here then.
"It'll only be for a day, you'll do just fine." Hazel assures him, patting his arm.
Will doesn't protest by saying anything, but he still looks alarmed.
Reyna clasps him on the back like he's an old friend. "Come on, Child of Apollo. You'll do just fine. We'll make a warrior out of you."
That all sounds pretty much perfect to me. I’ll get some time with my sister…my alive sister, who is alive because I brought her back to life. Will can get training, Reyna can get to know him better, and Frank can lead a whole army and the entire city for a day.
“Good luck~” I tell Will.
"Thanks." He shakes his head.
"Are we starting from scratch?" Reyna asks warily.
"I do the basic combat training at camp with my knife, or a bow. That's it." He informs her.
She shakes her head. "Just about, then. I'll see what I can do in a day. Make sure to get plenty of rest, Nico."
“I will.” I assure her.
The best part of this? Being here, getting to avoid the Hunters of Artemis.
I’ll need to apologize to Jason. And to Kamaria, since we do shadow-travel training once every couple days and today would be the day for that. She’s used to being disappointed by me.
Everyone should get used to that.

End