Found Light in the Shadow (Solangelo)

Chapter Thirteen

Nico

"This explains a lot, someone must have set us up. They organized all of this to make sure that we didn't succeed on our quest."

Will must have been able to tell that I was starting to get worked up. "Angel calm down, we're a lot smarted than they are. We just need to think of a plan to rescue Bob and not get all of us killed."

"He's right Nico," Reyna said, "what we need is some kind of diversion to distract the monsters long enough to shadow-travel us and Bob out of here."

"I'm starting to wish that we would have brought Percy with us. He could have used the river to our advantage."

"That's it Nico," Reyna exclaimed, "we can use the river to our advantage!"

"I'm not sure that I follow."

Reyna asked, "the water flow will carry the cries downstream right?"

"Yea, it should."

"Then all we should have to do is really piss the river off. Hopefully the cries will be bad enough that they will even drive the monsters away. That should buy us enough time to get Bob and get out of here."

"This sounds crazy enough that it might actually work. One question though, how do we piss off the river of pain?"

"That should be easy," she said, "we just need to talk really nice to it."

"So, you want us to sweet talk the River Acheron into being more pissed off than it already is? Hoping that it will make the monsters move from the river? Yea, I think that this could work. Will, do you have anything that we can stick in our ears so we don't have to hear the river's cries?"

"Um, I think that I can find something, give me a sec." Will took off his backpack, which was full of Gods knows what from the bathroom closet. After rummaging around in it for a few minutes, he pulled out a mess of cotton balls. "These should do the trick if we pack them into our ears tight enough. We may still hear some of it, but it won't be as bad as listening to it full force."

He handed us each some of the cotton balls and we packed them into our ears the best that we could. Will said something to me, but I couldn't make out what he was saying. I tilted my head to the side and pointed at my ear. My baby just smiled at me and gave me a thumbs up. Then he looked at Reyna as she also gave the sign that she was ready. We gathered our things back up and started walking towards the river.

Once we reached the bank, I couldn't hear any of the rivers cries coming through the tightly packed cotton. The three of us shrugged and started saying nice, comforting, things to the souls trapped in the murky waters. It must have been making some kind of effect, because I could start to make out some of the muffled cries now. We continued doing this for about five more minutes. Since I was running out of nice things to say, I decided that I should go and see if it was having any effect on the monsters. I looked at Will, then pointed at my eyes and in the direction of the monsters. I laid back down on the ground and crawled toward the edge of the hill on my stomach. When I could finally start to the monsters below, I stopped where I was at. They were all looking around like they were confused, but they weren't running anywhere. I turned around and crawled back to where the others were.

Desperate times called for desperate measures, so the only other thing that I could think of came to mind. I looked at Will and shook my head 'no.' Then I pointed at him, pointed at myself, and waved my hands in an arc over my head. He nodded before grabbing Reyna's arm and repeated the gestures too her. She must have understood what he meant, because she also nodded that she understood. The three of us faced the river and started singing.