Untitled Part 14
News of Arielle's disappearance spread fast through Camp Jupiter. To Nico's irritation, most of the legionnaires reacted with a shrug, or even worse, made jokes about it. Nobody seemed terribly concerned. Along the Via Praetoria, Nico heard bits and pieces of conversations like: "It was bound to happen." "Good riddance." "Maybe we should smack the rest of them with practice swords."
Only Lavinia's Fifth Cohort seemed to take the disappearance seriously. With Frank's permission, they had mobilized to search for the empousa, but even this became the subject of wisecracks: "Losers looking for losers. Lavinia and the vampire would make cute tap-dancing partners, wouldn't they?"
It was all Nico could do to control his rage and not summon an army of skeletons to kick some Roman posteriors.
He found the Second Cohort on the Via Principalis. Savannah was lined up with the rest of the group, running pre-breakfast spear drills like on any other day. Centurion Maurice didn't look thrilled when Nico asked to borrow her for a few minutes. Nico insisted it was important.
"Whatever," Maurice said. "Just don't upset her again. She's been through enough."
Nico led Savannah to the porch of the guest barracks. They sat together on the steps as the sun rose a baleful red over the eastern hills. The Puffs, who were both sleepy and smart, took this opportunity to scamper back inside and catch some more z's in Nico's bunk.
Without preamble, Savannah said, "I had nothing to do with it."
She sounded sad rather than defensive. Her red hair was gathered back in a messy bun. Her armor was well polished, as per regulation, but her hands and jeans were speckled with gray flecks that looked like dried clay. From one wrist dangled a glazed blue stone pendant on a twisted rope bracelet. Nico realized he'd seen other Roman demigods with those. Had Frank been wearing one? Hazel? He'd been too busy to pay much attention.
He waited for Savannah to say more. He didn't believe she had the ability to abduct an empousa from her room in the middle of the night. On the other hand, Savannah had wounded Arielle badly. She'd made the empousa a pariah at camp. Her personal tragedy didn't excuse those things, and Nico didn't trust himself to respond.
Savannah scraped a fleck of clay off her knee. "Yes, I wanted her gone. I...I'm glad she's gone." She scowled at Nico, daring him to object. "Monsters should not be here."
Nico stayed silent for a count of ten.
"But...?" he prompted.
"But I shouldn't have attacked her," Savannah said. "I know she's not the empousa who killed my parents. She didn't deserve the way I treated her."
That was something. Nico's desire to yell at Savannah subsided. I'm an elder demigod, he reminded himself. It's my job to guide others.
"Would you be willing to tell me what happened?" he asked gently. "With your parents?"
Savannah shivered. "Have you heard of the Daemones Ceramici?"
It took Nico a moment to translate the Latin. "Pottery demons? I think I heard a story at Camp Half-Blood once." He gestured to Savannah's graystreaked hands. "You're a potter, I take it."
She nodded glumly. "Every morning. First thing."
Nico understood how much dedication that would take. First thing at Camp Jupiter meant Savannah would have to get up every morning around three or four.
"I'm a legacy demigod," she continued. "My grandmother was a child of Minerva, patron of ceramic arts. She was so talented."
gazed at nothing, clearly lost in memories. "We always kept a little statue of Minerva on the kiln in the workshop. It's an old custom with potters. When you fire your pots, it's supposed to protect them from the ceramic demons that want to break your pieces or destroy them in the flames."
Nico's stomach felt heavy. He thought he knew where this story was going. It was similar to other demigod tragedies...including his own.
"My mom and dad made all kinds of art together," Savannah continued. "But my mom's speciality was magic containers. Things that could entrap bad spirits."
"Like empousai," Nico guessed.
"Yeah...the empousai didn't like that. I don't know how they found us. One day they broke into the workshop while the kiln was firing a new batch of vases. My mom and dad and I were working, and...the demons broke the kiln god. They unleashed the Daemones Ceramici."
Her green eyes shone with rage. "Do you have any idea how hot a kiln fire gets? The empousai weren't bothered by the flames. They pushed me outside, saying, 'Learn a lesson from this, girl.' I couldn't fight them. I—I wasn't strong enough. They barricaded my parents inside, and..."
She didn't need to finish.
"I'm sorry," Nico said. "My mother died in a fire, too."
He told her the story. Even after so many years, his voice broke when he talked about the wrath of Zeus; the way a single thunderbolt had left Bianca and him orphaned.
"I guess if I could whack Zeus with a practice sword," Nico said, "I probably would."
Savannah wiped away a tear. "That wouldn't go well."
"No," Nico agreed.
They sat listening to Centurion Maurice barking out commands: "Pila tollite! Ad pila portate!"
"What can I do?" Savannah asked.
Nico studied her face. She seemed serious about wanting to help.
"You could start by telling people what you told me," he suggested. "That you know Arielle wasn't responsible for your parents' death. That you were upset, understandably, but you were wrong to attack her."
Savannah grimaced. "I guess that's fair. I'll send an Iris-message around." She tapped the blue pendant on her bracelet.
"What is that, anyway?" Nico asked.
Savannah slipped off the bracelet and handed it to Nico for a closer look. "A tessera—a tile from a mosaic."
Nico turned the pendant between his fingers. It wasn't stone, he realized, but layers of colored glass fused into a single square that glimmered and flashed in the sunrise.
He remembered asking Hazel about those high-definition Iris-messages. She'd said something about tesserae. "How does it work?" he asked. "No water, or rainbow, or golden drachma offering?"
Savannah smiled. She seemed relieved to talk about something she actually enjoyed. "Each piece has an underlayer of Imperial gold. I fired them in a kiln and then constructed all of them into a mosaic of the goddess Iris, right? Once the mosaic was consecrated at her temple, I broke down the pieces and handed them out to people in the legion, starting with the praetors and centurions, obviously. You just tap the tessera and speak the name of the person you want to talk to. Iris does the rest. You can even talk to multiple people at once, like a group chat."
Nico tried to digest that information, and how much easier it would make demigod communication. "You invented this?"
Savannah shrugged. "You don't have to sound so surprised. I'm a legacy of Minerva. I don't have enough tesserae for everyone in the legion, but yeah...they're pretty helpful."
Nico thought that was an understatement. Before he could ask any follow-up questions—like Can I have one?—the horn sounded for breakfast.
"Thanks for listening," Savannah said, taking back her bracelet. "And... not hating me."
She jogged off to rejoin the Second Cohort, leaving Nico with a lot to think about. If nothing else, maybe he had set an example for not hating. He felt like he deserved some breakfast tacos for that.
At the officers' table, Nico brought Will, Hazel, and Frank up to speed on all the news, including his conversation with Savannah.
Will leaned over and gave him a kiss. "You did a good job. Mr. D would be proud."
Nico wasn't sure about that. Listening and empathizing were hard. If he were Dionysus, he would've been sorely tempted to sic an army of drunken leopards on everyone who annoyed him. He appreciated the kiss, though, even if Will's breath smelled like pico de gallo.
"Maybe she can help quash some of the rumors, at least," Nico said. "Any news from the searches?"
Frank forked scrambled eggs into a tortilla. "Nothing. Orcus flew around the valley until his wings gave out. He says he can spot a mouse from two hundred feet in the air, but he saw no sign of Arielle. The search teams on the ground also came up empty."
"Terminus wasn't much help, either," Hazel reported. "He didn't sense any incursions last night, or any mythics leaving our borders. But he's not infallible."
Will took a bite of migas. "This Terminus guy—"
"He's a statue with no arms," Hazel explained, "who is also a minor god."
"Okay..." Will said this in a way that indicated he had heard of weirder security systems. "And he protects you all, kind of like the Golden Fleece at Camp Half-Blood?"
"Kind of," Frank said. "But he can't be everywhere at once. If an army marched up to our borders, yeah, he would sense that. But one person sneaking in or out, whether it was a monster or something else...maybe, maybe not."
Nico frowned. His bacon-and-egg tacos were excellent, but he found it hard to enjoy them. "What do we do now?"
"The best we can," Frank said. "Keep looking. Hope for the best."
Nico glanced around the mess hall. The atmosphere seemed calmer at the moment, at least, but Nico wasn't sure if that was a sign of improvement. The legionnaires might just be relieved that the mythics were sequestered in their quarters.
He looked at Will. "I wonder if this is how Chiron feels—sitting helplessly at the head table, trying to look calm and collected, hoping the campers can solve their own problems without killing each other."
"Are we becoming the adults?" Hazel wondered.
Nico shuddered. "Don't ever say that to me again."
Hazel gave him a rueful smile. "Yeah. It's a horrifying thought."
"Quests and battles are easy," Nico said. "This"—he swept his arm toward the rest of the room—"this responsibility is exhausting. Constantly having to make decisions that are going to impact a bunch of other people, you know?"
"I am familiar," Frank grumbled.
Hazel dipped a chip in her guacamole. "I didn't think any of this would happen when I took in Asterion and his friends. I knew it wasn't going to be easy, but...gods."
"And we started it," Nico said, putting his hand on Will's. "Unknowingly, when we went to Tartarus. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around that."
"We're going to figure it out," Will promised.
His optimism was such a superpower that Nico felt reassured. He remembered sheltering with Will in Tartarus, holding on to him in that dark, poisonous landscape, and being certain that they would survive, because Will was certain. Their relationship had only gotten stronger since then.
Even if there was no end to this race, like Mr. D had said, Nico had the best partner at his side. That had to be enough.
"You're right," he decided. "So we just keep searching?"
"Leave that to me," said Frank. "I'll do a sweep with the Second Cohort. I think it's important to keep a normal schedule going for the rest of the legion as much as possible. Let them see we're working on the problem, but we're also not freaking out." He smiled at Will and Nico. "That means you, my friends, need to get back to training with the Fifth Cohort."
"Aw, Dad," Will complained.
Hazel laughed, which made Nico feel a little better.
He was glad to have a plan, even if that plan was wait and see. Maybe by tomorrow, things would work themselves out. That had to happen occasionally, right?
Nico threw himself into the wait and see plan a little too strenuously.
He and Will worked with the Fifth Cohort for the rest of the day. They marched six miles with full armor and weapons. They did an hour of line dancing. They cleaned the elephant poop from Hannibal's enclosure.
During archery practice, Will even hit the target multiple times, which, for the bow-challenged son of Apollo, was a pretty big deal.
Nico raised his palm in the air. "Proud of you, sunshine."
His boyfriend gave him a high five. "Thank you. Now if I can learn to hit a moving target someday, I'll feel accomplished."
By dinner there was still no word about Arielle. Hazel suggested they try to get some sleep. Since they'd had very little the night before, and since they were exhausted from a full day on Lavinia Time, Nico didn't argue.
"We are going to figure this out, aren't we?" he asked Will as they left the mess hall.
"Absolutely," said Will. "Do I currently know how? Absolutely not."
Nico went to sleep hoping for the best.
So, of course, he got the worst.
His dream was the same: the dark room, the insistent knocking on the door, the inability to move as he sat in the cold metal chair. But this time, the voice was back.
You were warned, it said. Now the trials begin. WE FIND YOU IN CONTEMPT.
A sharp pain radiated from his chest, like knives digging into his heart. He started awake and found a pair of yellow eyes peering down at him. The thing's claws pierced his shirt.
Before he could come to his senses enough to defend himself, the intruder squawked in a familiar voice, "Nico! Get up!"
The miniature griffin Orcus was sitting on his chest.
"Orcus," Nico said groggily. "What's going on? What time is it?"
"Nearly dawn." The griffin's voice trembled with barely controlled rage. "Quinoa is missing. You're needed in the principia."
Hazel and Frank were waiting for them.
Orcus was the only mythic in attendance, but Johan the blemmyae must have been hard at work since Nico's last visit. The shelves along the south wall were now impeccably organized. Rows of leather-bound books were sorted by subject and title—records of camp activities, camper profiles and attendance, the journals of past praetors over the centuries.
It clearly impressed Will, who drifted over to the shelves and ran his fingers along the gold-embossed spines. Nico gently pulled him back toward the praetors' desk.
"What?" Will said. "Don't you want to read them all?"
"Focus," Nico whispered.
Hazel and Frank spread a large map of Camp Jupiter across the desk as Orcus paced along the edge, farting in agitation.
"Okay," Hazel said. "Here's what we know."
She picked up a gold figurine of a Roman soldier. "Let's say this is Arielle."
"It doesn't look like Arielle," Orcus muttered.
"She was last seen in the mythics' quarters here." Hazel placed the figurine at the north end of the Field of Mars.
Frank picked up a second gold soldier. "This is Quinoa. He refused to stay in his quarters yesterday. Apparently had a big fight with Asterion."
Orcus ruffled his feathers. "Quinoa wanted to work with the kindergardeners. Is that so terrible?"
"We know he got into New Rome safely." Frank moved the figurine across the map from the Field of Mars to the city. "The kindergarten teacher told me he did an incredible job. The kids loved him. They wanted the, uh, 'angry green baby' to teach them every day."
Nico felt a sense of dread building in the pit of his stomach. "And then?"
"Quinoa stayed at the school until nightfall, when the last of the kids was picked up from after-school care. He helped clean the classrooms. He was basically a perfect assistant. Magistra Camilla said she would welcome him anytime. Quinoa left and started walking back to his quarters."
Frank moved the figurine toward the edge of the city but stopped after only a few inches. He set down the figurine and knocked it sideways. "Terminus never sensed him cross the Pomerian line."
"Wait," Will interrupted. "You have a line of Pomeranian dogs?"
"No, it's..." Frank pinched the bridge of his nose, probably forcing back a headache. "It's the city limits. The Pomerian line is like an interior magic defensive border. Only protects the city, so it's a lot smaller than the barrier around the whole valley—more secure and easier to monitor. Anyway, Terminus was on the lookout for Quinoa to leave town, because he, uh, didn't trust the karpos."
He glanced apologetically at Orcus.
Orcus's only protest was another fart. Apparently, he'd been eating citrus.
"Quinoa disappeared," Hazel concluded. "Terminus alerted us around ten last night when he realized the karpos hadn't left. He scanned the city himself. Nothing. We spent the night searching door to door. Nothing. Quinoa was just...gone."
The praetors had obviously gotten no sleep. Frank's eyes looked red and puffy. Hazel's hair was once again tucked into a sleep bonnet, like she'd just been about to turn in when she got Terminus's message. The cap was hand-knit silk-lined purple wool, no doubt a gift from Asterion. Nico found that both sweet and heartbreaking, given everything that had happened.
He turned to Orcus. "Where are the other mythics?"
"At our quarters." The griffin's tone was mildly disgusted. "Asterion insisted we hunker down and wait for you all to come up with a plan. As if we're safe anywhere. If Quinoa was taken, too..."
Orcus made a sound somewhere between a cat's mew and a bird's chirp. Nico suspected it was the griffin version of a sob.
"I know," he sympathized. "We're going to find them."
"How?" Orcus demanded.
Nico scanned the other demigods' faces. They looked just as lost as he felt.
"We can't be sure they were taken," Frank said tentatively. "I know Arielle and Quinoa were close. Is it possible Quinoa went to look for her?"
Hazel shook her head. "He couldn't have gotten past the Pomerian line, not with Terminus keeping tabs on him."
"But if something took him," Frank countered, "that means it got inside the line to do it, without Terminus sensing it or being able to stop it."
Hazel shivered. "In which case, even our strongest defenses are useless. What could do that?"
Nico remembered the feeling he'd had the night before—like something large and powerful was watching him, something none of them could see.
He studied the map, the two gold figurines. The setup reminded him of the Mythomagic games he used to play with Henry when he was younger. He wished he could simply turn over a card or roll a die to solve this problem....
Then he recalled one of Henry's favorite trap cards: the Trojan Horse.
He picked up four more figurines and placed them next to Arielle in the mythics' quarters. "Let's say these are the other mythics: Asterion, Semele, Johan, Orcus."
"We all look like legionnaires now," Orcus muttered. "This is clear discrimination."
"Bear with me," Nico pleaded. "I think you're right, Orcus. No place is safe...."
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"
"Oh!" Will said, a glimmer of understanding in his eyes. He picked up a few more figurines, placing them in a defensive ring around the mythics. "Like this?"
Nico loved it when he and his boyfriend got on the same wavelength, which seemed to happen more and more frequently these days.
"But hidden," Nico agreed. "And we wait for tonight. So far, the disappearances have only happened at night."
Will nodded. "Which means we'll need to get some sleep today, while we can."
Frank frowned at the map. "Don't get me wrong. I'd welcome an excuse to take a day and catch up on my sleep. But I don't understand—"
"I get it," Hazel said suddenly. "But how?"
"We'll need Savannah's help," Nico said. "And anyone you've got who can operate well at night."
"Hold on!" Orcus demanded. "Does somebody want to explain this plan to me?"
The griffin looked at Nico with desperate hope. Nico remembered how he had felt yesterday, holding the trembling little guy in his arms after rescuing him from the highway. He had to make this work.
"I can only promise you one thing," he told Orcus. "You're going to hate it."
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