A New Life to Live (PJO FF)

Magic Forest

They fell down the building, the wind pushing up their hair and clothes.

Nico shut his eyes tightly and brought his arms closer to his chest, Percy held him closer to him.

"Percy!" Nico yelled and suddenly there was a loud sound and Nico couldn't feel himself falling anymore. He slowly opened his eyes and saw them gliding through the night sky. His eyes widened in amazement as he took in the bright lights from the city below. "Woah."

They admired the lights with the sound of the city echoing around them. The sound of Percy's wings flapping above Nico.

Percy changed direction and started flying upwards. He moved Nico in his arms so they were facing each other.

"You okay? Do you want to go down?"

Nico shook his head. "I'm good. I like it up here. It's...calming, I guess. Different from on Earth when I think Zeus will shoot me down at any moment."

Percy nodded. He kept flying upwards toward the sky and Nico could see something in the distance above them.

"What's up there?" Percy looked up to what Nico was talking about.

"It's something I made a few years after my father brought me here. I go there when I need to think or when I.... never mind that. It's just somewhere that clears my head."

Nico furrows his eyebrows at what Percy was going to say. Percy seemed to have noticed and sighed. "I stole something from Chaos a long time ago. He never noticed it was gone but I used it a lot. It would show me... things. Things that I want to see or tell me something that I want to hear." Percy looked away from Nico. "I used it when I fell back into the past and needed something to bring me back. Something that would make me feel better. It was good for a while. It helped. Until one day I just came to terms that whatever I saw and heard was never going to happen, but...." he trailed off and Nico put a hand on his cheek.

"What?"

"It did happen. And now I'm glad it did." Nico smiles and carefully put his arms around Percy's neck.

They finally land on the floating space and Percy lets go of Nico only to grab his hand and pull him. The floating surface was filled with glowing trees and there were pixies flying around and coming up to Nico.

"Be careful." Percy said. "They bite."

Nico quickly retracted his hand and let it swing by his side. He continued looking around and saw a shadow run by them.

"What was that?"

"That was a shadow panther. I found that one a while back and he likes to play with the pixies. Except when they bite him too hard." Nico watched the panther as it jumped into a tree and pawed at a group of pixies. They made a noise and the panther jumped at them. A purple monkey appears out of thin air and jumps on the panther.

"All the creatures here play together all the time. They sometimes jump on me but they try not to if I'm in a bad mood." Percy pulled Nico along as they ventured deeper into the magic forest. When they step on the grass it glows and fades away after a few seconds. The flowers move when the couple past by them and when Nico listened closely he could hear a faint humming noise.

The noise was soothing and helped Nico find himself becoming more and more relaxed the more he listened to it.

Percy glances back at Nico then puts his mouth to his ear. "Don't listen to it too much. It'll send you right to sleep for hours." Nico blinked then shook his head and focused on the sight of the forest.

"I once got put to sleep for a whole week. Father was looking for me and the warriors were freaking out thinking I went on a mission and somehow got myself killed. On the seventh day, Dad finally thought to look up here and had to bring me to a room down there to get me away from the humming. Good times."