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The nightmares didn’t typically go like this.
He’d had plenty before. Strange scenes, things he couldn’t quite understand, words that didn’t quite make sense, not back then at least. Now that he was aware of his status as a demigod, he’d learned that these dreams were pretty normal for kids like him and he’d just have to put up with them.
But this was different.
From the minute he laid eye upon the scene he knew that something was off. The valleys of discarded junk, the sand sweeping back and forth between the few patches of ground, drifting gently to and fro.
It was all cold.
A shadow cast over him, causing the sand to stir and the breeze to pick up but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Not a drop of rain in sight.
The land without rain.
He wasn’t sure why that line came to mind. It was annoyingly familiar. But in whatever state this was that he was stuck in, he felt like a shell, watching only passively, like he couldn’t even care to remember what that meant.
Maybe deep down, a part of him already understood what was to come. Maybe that’s why he was here to bear witness. Maybe a part of his soul was aware of what he was about to lose, even if he was not.
Shouting (muffled, but present) drew his attention to the demigods to his left. Indifferent, he turned and watched them flee, taking cover behind various scrap items.
He could place each of them, their names and the important facts — son of Poseidon, daughter of Zeus, Lieutenant of Artemis, satyr — but again, it was as if his mind couldn’t care enough to remember why he knew them.
However, when his attention was brought to the final girl, that changed. His stomach did flips and his heart rose to his throat like the threat of vomit, the only thing stopping him from reaching out and shouting her name.
Bianca.
It was like fighting his very nature. He was here as a bystander and yet every bone in his body screamed out for her.
She was nostalgia, she was safety, she was love. His sister.
He was supposed to observe the scene as a whole, for whatever reason that was the job he had been given, but no matter how hard he tried (and he didn’t) he couldn’t tear his attention away from Bianca.
She was crouched behind a chariot with the son of Poseidon and they were talking in frantic whispers.
While the voices of everyone else were nothing but mindless chatter — much like buzzing flies or gusts of wind — Bianca’s words were clear and crisp.
“No!” The tremble in her voice made his stomach lurch. He very nearly stepped forward. “I… I didn’t take the bow! Besides, it’s too late.”
The shadow curled over her, drenching her in its shade. Though frightened, she followed the son of Poseidon as they ran, narrowly missing the bronze foot that crushed the chariot they had been hiding behind.
The son of Poseidon was urging Bianca to move again and he couldn’t agree more.
Run, he wanted to scream. Go! Don’t just stand there! Bianca, please!
She stayed frozen. From her pocket, she removed a glint of metal and then his attention was drawn back to the scene as a whole.
Whatever force had dragged him here seemed to have won and he was back to observing, no matter how much his gaze tried to flicker back to the girl holding a small metal something he couldn’t quite make out.
The lumbering bronze giant drove its weapon into a junk pile, causing an avalanche of metal to sweep over the satyr.
Lightning struck the giant and for a brief moment it was brought to its knees but that moment was very brief and it rose once again.
Terribly slow, it raised its foot and brought it down on the sand. In his peripherals, he saw the younger hunter dart straight towards the foot.
The commotion from the other demigods became meaningless and he watched as the giant’s foot came down on his sister.
In this state, breathing was not something to consider and yet, he held his breath.
Please. Bianca, please.
The suspense was unbearable, he was like a coil wound as tight as it would go yet still unable to spring.
And then the giant froze. Its lumbering limbs flailed in slow motion and its own heavy fist was driven straight into its face.
It stumbled.
The torn-down power lines from the battle writhed, waiting patiently like a pit of vipers.
He could only watch.
The giant’s ankle snared the line.
One shall be lost in the land without rain.
Nico jolted awake with a pain so bad he doubled over and had to fight back the urge to vomit.
Not only did he feel like he’d touched a live wire, there was a sharp stabbing pain in his chest like he’d been impaled and for a moment, he questioned if he was dying.
“Hey, kid!” Came a harsh whisper from across the room, “You good?”
Still processing whatever had just happened and recovering from the pain, Nico focused on willing the pain away. From behind, he heard the sounds of two people dropping down from their bunks and creeping across the floor.
Two people sunk down on either side of him, one settling a hand on his back and another brushing the messy hair out of his face. He knew only two people who could be so in sync.
“Hey kid, you good?” Asked the younger of the two, Connor Stoll.
“We all get the nightmares,” his brother, Travis, added, “It’s a demigod thing.”
That wasn’t a nightmare, Nico wanted to say. It was a…
A what?
Was it a vision of the future? Or… something that had already happened…
At that thought, his stomach dropped like he’d just been shoved off a cliff. That couldn’t be the case… right? Surely, he would know if his sister—
His chest still burned with the remnants of pain.
Without so much as a warning, Nico leapt out of his sleeping bag (much to the surprise of the Stoll brothers), barrelled out the door of Cabin Eleven and sprinted through camp.
It was only when he burst through the door to The Big House, waking both Chiron and Mr D (did gods sleep?), that he stopped to consider what his goal was.
The only thought that came to mind was I have to save my sister.
“Nico?” Chiron, the activities director, said, staring puzzled at the small panicked child that had just run through the door. “Whatever—“
“My sister!” Nico exclaimed, finally finding his voice and then the words wouldn't stop coming. “Bianca’s dead! O-Or she’s going to die! I don’t know but I— somethings wrong! We need to go help her! The quest— the prophecy— it—“
“Woah woah woah, little man.” Mr D frowned, lazily lifting his palms up in a placating gesture but only slowly, as if he really couldn’t care less, “What—“
“Nico!” Connor cut him off, running through the open doorway. He was panting and slapped his hands down on his knees. “You’re kinda a fast runner—“
Travis wasn’t far behind and trailed in after his brother. “Yup! We should — get you — to prank — the Ares cabin — with us!”
Connor considered this, “Oh yeah! You could — totally outrun them!”
“Boys.” Chiron brought their attention back to the situation. “What’s going on?”
Nico was ready to go on another frazzled rant about his dream (vision?) but Connor beat him to it.
“Nico had a nightmare.”
“It wasn’t a nightmare!” Nico shouted back, “I know what nightmares are like! That wasn’t a nightmare!”
“Well, the fear from nightmares is very real and sometimes, that can make the nightmares feel just as real,” Chiron said softly like he was trying to calm a skittish animal.
Whether from the earlier pain or simply because he was out of breath, Nico’s chest throbbed again and he only became more distraught.
“Bianca’s dead!” He was sure of it now and that certainty made it difficult not to break.
“Nico…” Travis said, concern dripping from his words. He tried to put a hand on the younger boy’s shoulder but was shrugged off.
“She’s dead! I know she is! I felt it! She’s—“
Chiron’s expression creased. There was something else there. “You felt it?” He asked with slight cautiousness. For a minute Nico wondered if he should have said that.
But Bianca was the only thing on his mind right now. “You have to believe me!” He cried, looking around at his audience. They all looked sympathetic, even Mr D, but it seemed they more feel sorry for him, rather than actually believing him.
Travis was the first to speak. “Why don’t we go back to the cabin? Don’t tell anyone this but I managed to steal some snacks from the Apollo cabin earlier! We can have a midnight feast.”
Nobody pointed out that he clearly didn’t care enough to keep this a secret considering he was saying it right in front of Chiron and Mr D.
“You have to let me do something…” Nico sobbed, already feeling the defeat, “She’s my sister…”
“I’m afraid there isn’t much we can do,” Chiron admitted apologetically. “The quest is already well underway, the prophecy is in motion. We will just have to see where it goes.”
It didn’t take much for the Stoll brothers to coax Nico out of the big house and into the woods, he was too busy crying to argue much more, but when they led him past the cabins and into the woods they were strictly not supposed to enter at night, he began to question.
“Where are we going?” He sniffled miserably. Connor produced a pack of tissues from his pocket and thrust them into his hands.
“Well, the Hermes cabin is a bit crowded. It always has been.” Travis explained, “Sometimes we want some peace and quiet.”
“Or some privacy to plan pranks,” Connor added.
“Eh, whatever suits.” Travis shrugged.
At a seemingly random spot in the middle of the woods, the brothers stopped and began tearing away the foliage from… a trap door.
Travis pried it open, hopping down first and Connor gestured for Nico to follow. Hesitant and still shaky from crying, Nico leaned over the trap door and peered down. The floor wasn’t too far down and with the help of a handcrafted rope ladder dangling from the entrance, it wasn’t difficult to climb down. Connor followed soon after him and closed the trap door behind them.
This ‘secret hideout’ was more like a cosy room that just so happened to be secret. The ceiling was low enough that they had to weave out of the way of the dangling light but high enough that crouching wasn’t necessarily required. There weren’t any boards full of elaborate schemes or detailed maps of the camp like you might have expected from the nutritiously mischievous sons of Hermes, just some battered beanbags and stolen snacks. It was cosy.
Nico sank down in one of the beanbags, pulled his knees up to his chest, and started crying again. Like back in the cabin, Travis and Connor sat on either side of him and offered their reassurances.
“The dreams are scary.” Travis sympathised. “I get them too. About Mom. Connor too.”
Connor nodded along and Nico wondered if they’d discussed this before.
“It wasn’t a dream though!” Nico tried to argue between shaky breaths and hiccups. “I saw her die! I felt it!”
“It’s not exactly the same, but I had one a bit like that before,” Connor admitted. “I was being chased by a cyclops but every time I tried to run it was like wading through treacle. It caught me and strung me up over a boiling pot then… dropped me in. I woke up screaming, the pain felt so real I thought it was real, at least until I finally calmed down.” He fiddled with a beaded bracelet on his wrist. “What I’m trying to say is the dreams can get bad, bad enough you do think they’re real or some sort of warning, but they’re just dreams. They aren’t real.”
Nico began to calm. Just a little.
“I bet Bianca’s thinking about you too.” Travis grinned, “I’m sure she’s dying to get back to you and tell you all about her adventure.”
Nico felt his breath catch. Connor elbowed his brother rather harshly.
“What?!” Travis scowled.
“You can’t just say that!” Connor said through gritted teeth.
Only now did it finally seem to dawn on Travis what he’d said.
“Oh! Wait— no! I mean… Ack! I didn’t mean that! Ohhh that was poorly worded!”
To the surprise of all of them (even he himself), Nico began to laugh. Slowly, the Stoll brothers stopped cringing and cracked smiles of their own. Soon they were all giggling. Just quietly.
“Ah, that was kinda really stupid of me wasn’t it.” Travis winced.
“Top ten Travis moments.” Connor rolled his eyes.
“Like you don’t have enough of your own!” Travis scoffed, “Top ten? You’d need top fifty to even begin covering the sort of dumb stuff you do.”
“That’s rich coming from you.”
“At least I didn’t call Mr D ‘mom’.”
“Dude! We agreed not to go there! That was ages ago!”
“Connor, that was last week.”
“Irrelevant!”
“Oh! And there was that time you dreamt I stole from the Ares cabin without you and then you didn’t talk to me for two whole days!”
“See Nico, sometimes dreams seem so real you can’t believe they’re not!” Connor said, but he found the boy in question asleep, his head rested against Travis’ arm.
“Well… that was quick,” Travis noted, quietening his voice just a bit. “He was probably exhausted between all the crying and dead sister rants.”
Connor tried not to smack him over the head. “Come on, let’s get him back to the cabin then.”
With a bit of teamwork, they slid Nico onto Travis’ back and carried the sleeping boy through the woods and back to the cabin.
———————
Before coming to camp, Nico didn’t think he’d ever slept in past eight. However, in the unfamiliar environment of Cabin Eleven, he often found it difficult to get to sleep, resulting in him sleeping in later and later. Not to mention, with so many kids in the cabin, the talking wouldn’t stop until well into the night.
So, when he woke up at eleven, it wasn’t much of a surprise. However, what was a surprise was to be greeted by the face of Connor Stoll who was leaning over his sleeping bag only a few inches away from his face.
“Umm… good morning…?” Nico tried, still half asleep and a bit unsure of how to react.
“Get dressed,” Connor said, a big grin stretched across his face. He leapt up (much to Nico’s relief) and grabbed him a clean shirt and some jeans (stolen, like most of the contents of cabin eleven).
Nico sat slowly, half expecting a bucket to appear out of nowhere and splatter him with paint or for his pillow to magically disappear. Connor only got like this when he was up to something and though he’d spared Nico from his wrath when it came to pranking, Nico didn’t trust the son of Hermes to not pull something.
“Don’t look at me like that!” Connor exclaimed, sensing Nico’s suspicion, “Now hurry up and get ready!”
“Why? Is there a party? We had these dances back at the military school where they shoved us all in the gym hall with really loud music and everyone went a bit feral. If so, can we team up?”
Connor seemed to find the idea of a feral disco quite amusing but shook his head. “They’re back!”
“Who’s back?” Nico frowned.
“Percy and the rest of the quest!”
Nico was ready and dressed in about three seconds flat. He was all but ready to dash out the door and sprint across to the Big House but Connor stopped him long enough to wrap him up in a jacket and a scarf.
“Go see your sister.” He grinned, patting him on the back with so much force he nearly fell over.
Nico grinned from ear to ear. He liked when the other kids treated him like that, like he was just as normal as them.
He was reminded how easily the Hermes cabin had taken him in and made him feel like part of the camp. Part of him even hoped his father was Hermes too so he’d get to stay with them even after he was claimed. That would be nice.
With one last ‘Thank you!’ To Connor, Nico went out into the cold and made his way to the Big House where his sister would be waiting.
One shall be lost in the land without rain.
Crisp frost and a thin layer of snow crunched under his shoes as he ran through the grass. His heart hammered in his chest but he could pass it off as excitement rather than anxiety. He was excited to see Bianca again. He could picture the way her eyes would light up when she saw him and she’d rush over to hug him, her new cosy jacket (courtesy of the hunters) soft against his cheek when he’d bury his face in it. She’d spend the whole day telling him all about the quest and all the cool stuff she got to do and he’d listen eagerly. His sister was just so cool.
Finally, he reached the Big House. Pumped with adrenaline he burst through the door and—
“Where’s my sister?”