Chapter Text
When Guo Chengyu wakes him up at the crack of dawn the next morning, Chi Cheng has dark eye circles from the fitful sleep he'd had the night before. He's not used to sleeping on the stiffest mattress he thinks he's ever laid on, the total lack of air circulation in the obsidian box he called a new home starting to suffocate him throughout the night.
"Damn! You look like a panda!" Chengyu takes one look and blurts out teasingly, poking him in the cheek. In no other circumstances would Chi Cheng ever let someone else touch him that way, but he makes an exception for his new friend—also because his reflexes are too sluggish to catch him. Instead, he grumbles under his breath, making a show of lifting his hand to swat Chengyu away from his face.
Chengyu pays his ministrations no mind, acting like a mother bird taking a new hatchling under her wing. He drags Chi Cheng to the showers, to breakfast where they sit with Wang Shuo and Wang Zhen (sue him, for sneaking a few glances at the Aphrodite table) and finally, to Chiron where they try to figure out a new schedule for him.
That's how he finally begins to settle to a new routine, slowly adjusting to life in Camp Half-Blood.
In the daytime, he finds himself stuck doing basic combat training, Greek and History lessons. The first two he's able to skate through with ease, with his quick reflexes and the way his brain had been wired to pick it up faster than the average demigod. Chengyu and Wang Zhen had been quite impressed looking over his work.
As for the last, it proved more interesting than any similar classes he's ever had in school, maybe it was the absurdity of the stories, or the way Chiron was able to regale these tales without as much as flinching. Sometimes, Chi Cheng even feels a little bit of second-hand embarrassment when he hears the bits that have to do with Hades. Heck, he hadn't even met the man, but boy had the Abduction of Persephone been hard to stomach.
At night, as soon as he's done with his classes, Chengyu doesn't let Chi Cheng wander far from his sight, even popping by the Hades cabin sometimes, with a deck of poker cards and the Wang brothers in tow, where they play and banter through the night.
For some inexplicable reason, Wang Shuo and Chengyu also seem to be obsessed with finding out what kind of demigod abilities Chi Cheng, more importantly, a son of Hades could possibly have. They spent their time, making theories and conspiring behind his back. Chi Cheng doesn't know whether to be concerned.
So, when he walks into what's supposed to one of his last Greek lessons and sees Wang Shuo, Chengyu and Chiron waiting for him, he raises an eyebrow, reluctantly sitting down. His eyes trail over to the blackboard, where they seem to have drawn some kind of mind-map listing all the different kind of abilities he could have. The middle bubble, 'Hades' links to 'Geokinesis', 'Necromancy', 'Osteokinesis'...and a couple other words all ending in 'sis'. Too many for his brain to comprehend.
Wang Shuo and Chengyu present all of them eagerly, asking Chi Cheng if he's ever had experiences with these kind of powers. He nods to Geokinesis, retelling the incident with the Manticore.
"I-I'm not sure I can do it again though," Chi Cheng stutters out looking down at the floor. A blanket of silence descends for a split-second, before Chengyu lets out a low whistle and Wang Shuo has a hand to his mouth.
Chiron, doesn't have any visible reaction, carrying on reading the newspaper he brought. Chi Cheng suspects he was probably just here to supervise their little brainstorming session.
"It's hard enough for an normal demigod to pull that off. But for an untrained one to do something of that magnitude?" Wang Shuo thinks out loud.
That's a bad sign. An omen of imminent disaster. Something Chi Cheng had come to associate with the ill-advised(read: reckless) bets him and Chengyu had gotten up to in their weeks together.
More often than not, it ended with Wang Shuo being miraculously fine—a by-product of being an offspring of Hermes who probably got up to much worse when he could—and Wang Zhen hauling a mildly injured Chengyu to the lake to heal himself. He would scurry toward the infirmary instead, promptly rambling about getting to see that pretty Son of Apollo again.
Whatever that meant.
The next second, they're out the door, Chengyu and Wang Shuo pulling an arm each. Chi Cheng shoots Chiron an imploring look, anything to help him at all, to save him from their insanity. Chiron smiles placidly, desperately trying not to make eye contact as he takes a sip of his coffee.
Traitor.
Chi Cheng's expression twists into a dissatisfied scowl, letting himself be carried off by his two friends, raving excitedly about the litany of experiments they were prepared to administer on their unwilling test subject.
Chi Cheng makes the mistake of thinking that this occasion is a strange one-off that won't ever happen again. He has no idea how Chengyu and Wang Shuo obtain permission from Chiron, dragging him off everyday just to see if he could magically manifest powers. It's the fifth time this week alone!
This time they've brought him to the woods, after they agreed no more indoor experiments—the previous two had nearly resulted in Chi Cheng being crushed by a wardrobe in the Hermes cabin while the other entrapped him in a faulty janitor's closet they had no way of breaking the lock to without the help of the Hephaestus cabin—Wang Zhen spends an hour designing a key.
Today's just happens to be especially tame, with them sticking him in another big shadow of a random tree they've found. Like if they tried every single one they found and eventually discovered the right shadow, he would be able to miraculously unlock new abilities and control them.
He highly doubts his ability would show with an audience half as infuriating as Wang Shuo and Chengyu. At this rate, he would will a new portal to the Underworld for them both before he developed an inkling of control over the shadows.
"Now do it!" Chengyu repeats, gesturing at it, "Stick your arm in or something!"
Like always, Chi Cheng extends his arm for a moment to pacify his friend's curiosity, unsurprised when the shadow, stays a shadow. His hand waves around in the darkness for effect, before Chi Cheng pulls it back, to the disappointment of Chengyu.
"Nothing's happening. Now let me get back to the archery range." Chi Cheng sighs, solemnly picking up the bow he abandoned in the grass. It wasn't like he was any good at archery either, he'd nearly sent more than one camper from the Ares cabin to Hades with just a single arrow, missing the target by a few miles. All the reason to not miss any more of this class.
"Wait!" Wang Shuo calls out from the other side of the tree.
"Doesn't this look weird?" For the first time, he looks unsure, examining the spot Chi Cheng's hand had touched.
Chengyu and Chi Cheng make their way over, both squinting at the shadow the same way Wang Shuo does. True to his word, the darkness forms a wisp at the side, slightly curling to where Chi Cheng had just had his arm. As he stared, his fingers start to itch, the shadows calling for him. For his presence, for him to be consumed—
Unconsciously, Chi Cheng reaches out. He feels them, creeping up, like a liquid chill seeping into his skin, spreading all over. His flesh doesn't go numb, it just…doesn't exist anymore. The sensory void climbs, past his wrist, past his elblow. There's a gasp, followed by a scream of excitement by his side he assumes is Guo Chengyu.
"Your arm's gone!" Wang Shuo practically shouts in his ear, jumping up and down on the spot.
Chi Cheng rolls his eyes, watching as they both high-fived.
He bends his arm, a little freaked out. He can't see it at all, where the rest of it should be is a gaping hole of pitch black staring back at him. At the same time, his head is pounding, a heavy burden on his chest, the pressure mounting by the minute. His willpower single-handedly holds the rest of the shadows at bay, even as they clamour for control.
Finally, Wang Shuo and Chengyu cease their chatter, noticing how pale he's turning, the cold sweat dripping down his forehead and the noticeable absence of the rest of his right arm.
"Dude, are you okay?" They approach him slowly.
Obviously not, is what Chi Cheng wants to grit out. Instead, he gnashes his teeth together, slowly losing the energy to form tangible words. They weren't just on his hand anymore, they were in his lungs.
"Think of where you want to go!" One last command cuts through the static—
Was that Chiron?
The last thread of his control snaps simultaneously. The world turns impossibly cold, sub-zero temperature as a void of emptiness formed around the teenager, his friends disappearing from view.
Where he wanted to go?
Chi Cheng draws up an image of the Hades cabin in his head, his cramped lower bunk coming to mind. The bedsheets are a mess from this morning, his only picture on the wall one of him and his mother from kindergarten. His bag sits at his desk, textbooks from his Greek lessons and a random slew of documents fanning the surface.
The world vomits him out. Instantaneously, he stumbles out the shadows against the bed frame, a large crash reverberating as he lurches to the floor in a graceless heap. His long limbs spreadeagled on the ground, his heart wasn't beating; rather battering against his ribs, going at a thousand miles per hour.
Wang Zhen bursts in the next minute, a huge sigh of relief escaping his mouth before he makes sure Chi Cheng's fine, before summoning the rest of them without delay.
"Thank god you're okay!" Chengyu cries sprinting in, nearly bawling from the stress as he hugs Chi Cheng tightly.
Too stunned to react, Chi Cheng gives him a sympathetic pat on the back, not complaining when Chengyu doesn't release him after a good few seconds. Like he's trying to make sure Chi Cheng has his entire body back, more shaken up than Chi Cheng himself had been.
"I knew he'd be fine." Wang Shuo claims. The way his gaze wavers tells Chi Cheng otherwise.
Shadow-travelling after that feels like a hallucinatory fever trip mixed with the feeling of free-falling through space, leaving him out of energy for a good few minutes depending on the distance he tried. Maybe it had something to do with a lack of control like the Wang Brothers had theorised. To be fair, he had only begun attempts for a couple of days at that point. When he tries one end of the camp to the other, he's left bedridden, fainting on the spot as he'd fell from the shadows.
On awakening, he comes face-to-face with someone he recognises from all the evenings of looking at the Aphrodite table. One Jiang Xiaoshuai. He hadn't expected him to be a son of Apollo, chalking it up to his constant association with the Aphrodite kids.
"Your vitals…are surprisingly stable for someone who just napalmed their own nervous system," Jiang Xiaoshuai says serenely, tone as smooth as his features. Chi Cheng could only manage a groan in response.
When Chengyu strolls in to check on him, he says something to the boy that Chi Cheng can't hear, that makes him so flustered he turns red, scurrying away so speedily Chi Cheng can't even ask him when he's allowed to leave the infirmary.
Chi Cheng files this information away for later, vowing to question Chengyu when he can.
Time flies and two weeks pass. Chi Cheng's stamina improves exponentially, not immediately passing out when he uses shadow travel for a longer distance than normal.
Nonetheless, no one but Chiron, the Wang Brothers and Chengyu knows about his abilities, keeping the rest of camp in the dark. For all they knew, he was a son of Hades who had yet to prove his power beyond the incident that had gotten him into camp in the first place.
They didn't avoid him, the gossip slowly dying down, some even extending a helping hand when he found himself floundering with the basics. However, it seemed most of camp still kept their distance as he stayed more with the little group they had formed.
Wang Shuo sniggers, recounting the way his half-siblings had described Chi Cheng as broody and scary, when he was in fact anything but when the three of them had gotten to know him. It's ironic, considering Wang Shuo's silver tongue no doubt contributed heavily to the ridiculous rumours circulating camp—Wang Shuo had told one of the Ares kids that Chi Cheng could drag someone to the Underworld just by touching them—just for the fun of it.
Chi Cheng rolls his eyes, a reluctant smile tugging at his lips.
"Just wait till capture-the-flag!" Wang Zhen says, eyes glinting with strategy as he laid a hand on Chi Cheng's shoulder.
Wang Shuo gives him a sneaky wink, "We'll show them just what you're capable of!"
For the first time, the thought of being some secret weapon doesn't fill Chi Cheng with dread, but with a slow, cold spark of anticipation.
When Chi Cheng comes to know about their monthly game of capture-the-flag, he doesn't quite expect for all the campers to treat it like a matter of life-or-death, prepared to breeze through it with Chengyu guaranteed to be on his team (quietly praying for the Aphrodite cabin to be on their side as well.)
Naturally, the two cabins leading capture-the-flag the turn out to be the Ares and Athena Cabin. To Chi Cheng's slight disappointment, the Aphrodite, Nike and Apollo cabins are amongst those that pledge on the side of Ares while Hermes, Hephaestus, Chengyu and Chi Cheng the other. As the teams are announced, Wang Shuo preens, a grin that Chi Cheng recognises slowly sidling up his face.
"What?" Chi Cheng asks, though he already somewhat infers the answer from his expression alone.
"My bribery worked! The Hermes cabin swapped with Nike!" Wang Shuo whispers, incredibly proud of himself.
If he'd said Aphrodite, Chi Cheng would've shed a tear.
"Yeah, and now you've doomed us to lose idiot!" Chengyu says exasperatedly, rubbing at his temples. "She's literally the Goddess of Victory and you know their Head Counsellor would do anything for capture-the-fla—"
"Relax, we have an ace right up our sleeve," Wang Shuo tilts his head towards Chi Cheng.
It's pretty much the same sentiment he ends up dishing to the the Athena Cabin later, all of them looking less than enthused to be saddled with the ragtag crew, especially sceptical of Chi Cheng's seemingly little combat ability.
"And that's where you're wrong," Wang Shuo taunts, very much enjoying this little show he's put on, like Chi Cheng was some kind of product for him to sell. Chi Cheng can tell he's fully in his element, every little theatrical gesture with his fingers as he described what they planned to do in full detail.
Chi Cheng feels a heat creeping up his neck, a little mortified being the centre of attention for once. The stares pierce through his skin uncomfortably for a bit, before they turned their attention back to Wang Shuo who went through his pitch casually but with conviction.
By the end, even the Athena cabin, ever the master strategists, were throughly impressed by his plan. The Hermes cabin had began to pledge him next in line for Head Counsellor and the Hephaestus cabin already started allocating the manpower they would need. This was their only chance at catching them off guard and being the first in history to ever beat both the Nike and Ares cabin at their own game.
Soon, the entirety of Camp Half-Blood gathers at the dining hall, Chiron hammering his hooves on the marble to begin his starting announcement.
"Heroes!" His voice echoes across the pavilion, "You know the rules. The creek is the boundary line. The entire forest is fair game. All magic items are allowed. Prisoners may be disarmed, but may not be bound or gagged. No killing or maiming is allowed. I will serve as referee and battlefield medic. Arm yourselves!"
He spreads his hands and the tables were suddenly covered with equipment: helmets, bronze swords, spears, oxhide shields covered in metals. Chi Cheng marvels internally, grabbing a helmet with a blue horsehair plume. The rest of the Ares cabin and their allies wore red plumes.
As instructed, he leaves the weapons on their table to the rest of the Hephaestus cabin. He couldn't possibly transport much if for what they were planning anyway.
"Blue team, forward!" Wang Shuo yells, having been appointed temporary group leader by their allied cabins. Everyone cheers, marching towards the south woods. Chengyu and Wang Zhen bid Chi Cheng good luck with a clap on his shoulder, making their way to the creek and corner of the woods respectively.
Their jobs are simple: just keeping the reds away while Wang Shuo led the rest in a diversion, causing enough chaos to draw most of the biggest threats away from the flag.
All too soon, the conch shell blows and the forest instantly fills with the sounds of whoops and shrieks, metal clanging as the demigods fought fiercely.
Chi Cheng slips away, deeper to the darker parts where the wind blows harsher. Goosebumps form on his forearm from the chill as he clenches his teeth, awaiting the signal. Who would've known 'You'll know when you see it' would be the last hint he received from Wang Shuo? It could be anything, ranging from a shout to an explosion, knowing the Hephaestus kids.
He just had to guess which one.
Restlessly, he begins to trace the shadows of the tree, bending them to his will. He forms the shape of a sword unconsciously, beginning to wish he at least had a weapon as a last minute resort. Nonetheless, as Wang Shuo had predicted, it really shouldn't take too much for Chi Cheng to bypass the entire backline of defence and steal their flag. Having a bulky metal weapon would take much more effort to dematerialise.
Before he knows it, a flare goes off in the sky, so explosive it erupts into a firework. It must've been the work of the Hephaestus cabin, Chi Cheng thinks, jumping into action immediately. He lets the shadows consume him, desperately trying to recall the place Wang Shuo had marked their last trip to the woods.
Cheating didn't count if they weren't caught, Wang Shuo reasons with an age-old adage he claims is coined by Hermes. Chi Cheng still doesn't know whether to believe him.
He's lucky when he sets one foot out and he's covered by the silhouettes of the trees, the flag sitting tranquilly in the clearing. He's not dumb enough to charge straight in. The rest of the defenders were possibly hiding in the underbushes nearby, waiting for the chance to strike any blue who tried their luck.
At this point, the only thing he has is the element of surprise. If he gives away his presence and the location of vantage point he has, it's over for them. They would lose the gamble and Wang Shuo would throttle him for messing their plan up.
At the corner of his eye, he spots another shadow circling aimlessly near a bush. Bingo.
With a lethal accuracy, it takes Chi Cheng a couple strides over to seize the flag in one hand, the other reaching for the shadows. Like a moth to a flame, they're drawn up one forearm. He concentrates, trying to force the rest of his body along. It feels a little like cramming everything into a single suitcase despite already knowing it won't fit. It takes longer than it should, considering he had exhausted his energy earlier.
That's definitely the only reason why a single crunch is all it takes for his focus to be shot. He swivels around, the shadows retreating into the forest and dissolving from his grasp.
"Dang," Wu Suowei pants with a genial smile on his face, "I could've got you there."
They both know it's a lie. Chi Cheng would have gotten away.
His fringe falls past his eyes as he heaves bent forward, wiping the sweat from his brow. He's holding the helmet in one hand, clearly struggling from all that extra weight around.
Yet, he's still as unfairly pretty under the moonlight, Chi Cheng utterly starstruck by his brown eyes, flecks of gold slowly seeping in the longer he lingered. Maybe it was a trick of light, he couldn't quite recall—
"Put it down," Wu Suowei commands, dropping the helmet to the floor with a thud. His irises shine, uncanny in a way Chi Cheng can't place. His limbs tighten, his instincts completely going against any remaining semblance of logic he has left.
Why am I holding this? His brain supplies helpfully as he leans down, compliantly laying the flag at his feet.
"Wait—" Chi Cheng could barely begin to verbalise a thought before Suowei surged forward, snatching it at lightning speed. When he puts a respectable distance between them both, his hands tremble at his sides, the one holding the flag fidgeting clumsily.
The two of them alone in that clearing, the chirping of the crickets seem to grow louder by the minute. Chi Cheng's at a complete loss. He didn't even have any weapons while Suowei had a dagger as his disposal. Despite that, the boy doesn't wield it to intimidate Chi Cheng. They both stare dumbly at each other, until Suowei's eyes dart behind him.
"Look out—!" He tries to warn, maybe out of habit.
It's too late. Chi Cheng feels the blunt edge of a sword hit his head and he crumbles onto the floor, his limbs heavy as lead.
"Good job Weiwei!" His attacker gushes, taking off her helmet to rush to Suowei's side. By her long black hair, Chi Cheng recognises the Head Counsellor of the Aphrodite cabin, the half-sister Suowei seemed pretty much glued to the side of.
From the other side of the forest, Chiron blows the conch again, signalling the end of the game
Suowei flinches at her voice—a full body recoil like he'd just been slapped in the face instead of praised. His eyes meet Chi Cheng's for one breathless second, and the guilt is so raw, so personal, Chi Cheng forgets the throbbing in his skull.
Why do you look like you're the one who got hit?