SUMMARY: SEQUEL to A Series of Firsts - Nico and Will had it all. Since leaving Camp, life had settled. It had eased, become comfortable, even if in many ways that comfort was slightly manic. But of course it couldn't last long. Peace never did, not for a demigod. When a quest goes wrong, Nico finds that his perfect life hangs by a thread, the likes of which can only be maintained if he offers the ultimate sacrifice.

They'd always promised they would be there for one another. Always. Except that some promises were impossible to keep.

Rating: M

DISCLAIMER: The characters, setting - vaguely - and all rights go to Rick Riodran for the absolutely FABULOUS world that he's created. Thank you so much for lending us feeble writers such a wonderful context to frolic in. I make absolutely no profit from this other than the precious reviews that my readers offer me :)

A/N: Okay, so I know I always leave these notes but I feel like this one warrants it. Yeah, this might be a sequel, but I guess you maybe don't have to read the prequels? It might probably make sense if you don't. Most of it.
Secondly, yes, this is mature. NicoxWill mature, for both violence and sexual references, so if you don't like that... I honestly don't know how you got through the last two stories but kudos to you!And finally, this is a darker fic. A lot darker than the prior two. I'm not gonna lie - sometimes it hurt to write. Why do we torture our favourite characters so? But anyway, a heads up: violence, actions (of the mythical, questing sort), angst and misery on the horizon.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did writing it! I apologise in advance for the first chapter - a little domesticity had to arise before all hell broke loose. As always, if you like it, please take a second to leave a review. You've no idea how appreciated any sort of feedback is!

Chapter 1: Being

Nico and Will had always said they would be there to have one another's backs. That they would support each other, would defend each other, would do everything that they could to ensure one another's safety. Because that was what you did for the person you cared the most for in the world.

If only it was that easy.

Nico had never considered that such promises could breed conflict. The notion hadn't even crossed his mind, just as he'd never considered that fulfilling the most important of those promises would be so hard to keep.

At twenty-one years old, Nico would readily claim he was content. Not happy exactly – he had never really understood the meaning of 'happy'. What made someone happy? How could it possibly be a permanent state of being when it was such a fleeting emotion? He could be happy, when he smiled, or when he was amused, or when he was satisfied or comfortable, but to assume happiness as a state of being? No, it didn't make sense to Nico.

Will was happy. He always said that he 'couldn't be happier' whenever anyone asked him how he was going. Whenever they visited Camp Half-Blood on the weekends, or when his college friends asked him how he was feeling, or when Nico joined him to take a trip to his mum's for the day. That he 'couldn't be happier' seemed to be a catch-cry of sorts for Will. It would have been tiresome, the same sort of reply to the tedious questioning as "Good, thanks, how are you?" except that Will always meant it. Nico could saw it, could feel the sincerity with a warmth that he felt like the sun upon his skin. Will always radiated it, even when tired, even when stressed over his studies, or when he was running from a monster or pressing upon a wound to stem his own bleeding. Nico had seen him with a hand clasped over a bone literally protruding from his arm and still, when the platoon of Apollo healers had descended upon him with nectar and ambrosia in hand, he had offered a surprisingly strong smile and claimed he was fine. And he'd meant it.

Nico had always considered Will a little bit insane for that. Maybe that Nico loved him for it just the same made him a little insane too?

In the years since Nico and Will had officially graduated from the relative safety of Camp Half-Blood, they'd fallen into a familiar routine. They weren't even all that far from Long Island, taking up residence together at a modest apartment in Cambridge so that Will could be closer to his college, and it was barely much of a jump via shadow travel for Nico to take them to the familiar grounds of camp. Will was studying to be a surgeon. A cardiologist was what he was currently aiming for, though Nico wouldn't have been surprised if he switched the focus of his sights to something else; it had wavered to neurology and paediatrics twice each before that he could recall. At only just twenty-two himself, Will was trundling down the hill of his medical degree, embedded in clinical rotations for nearly a year now as one of the youngest of his cohort. Fast-forwarding his undergraduate degree had accelerated him somewhat; there was something to be said for having connections, both with his fellow demigods in the industry – mostly children of Apollo, naturally – and with his mother as a world-famous neurosurgeon.

Nico knew without being told that Will was loving every second of it, even if it did exhaust him. Even if it meant that Nico saw decidedly less of him than he would have perhaps preferred. Not for any intentional detachedness or dismissiveness of Will's, but through simple necessity. He was swamped beneath a combination of practical hours and theoretical studies in the form of revision, reports, write-ups and essays that kept him up till all hours with his head buried in his textbooks and fingers to his laptop. Nico had more than once had to take a trip onto his college campus to drag him home, whinging and moaning and objecting the entire way though falling to sleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

What would Will do without him? Honestly…

But even seeing how exhausted his boyfriend was, even begrudging the hours that they were kept apart from one another, Nico was happy for him. And proud of him, as he so rarely admitted. It was a hell of a mission Will signed himself up to, that was for sure; he'd would go into his residency straight out of college and that would last for another three years at the least. A hell of a mission.

In contrast, Nico… Nico was about as confident in his own future, in his own mission, as a fish out of water. Not that he really cared, except when Will would bring it up to ask out of simple curiosity. Each time, Nico would sigh and roll his eyes while wishing that he had something more concrete to tell Will other than a shrug and a dismissal of his query.

It didn't matter. Not really. Because Nico was content. And if it wasn't the perfect and intangible 'happy', then it was about as close as he figured he'd come.

He strode along the central promenade of the college, drifting past the laughing and chattering students as he made his way towards the impressive, stately buildings of red brick and white trimming. Harvard was upstanding, the most upstanding, and prestigious of colleges. It had the top MD course, so of course Will would go to it. If he could, which, naturally, he could. The support of Naomi Solace went far, but even without that Will was brilliant enough to make a name for himself. He would stand out amongst the ranks of plebeians for more than just his bright hair.

Skirting the lake sprawling across the grounds and making his way along the green, vibrant with the colour of spring, Nico flipped his phone from his pocket and keyed in a call to Will. He didn't even bother to put it to his ear, expecting with almost absolute certainty that it would ring out. He wasn't disappointed in that regard and, with a long-suffering sigh, Nico made his way through the double doors of the central, looming building.

He knew his way to the library almost as well as he did the layout of Camp Half-Blood. Nico had traversed the halls enough times in search of his boyfriend in the past two and a half years to grow accustomed to the nooks and crannies, the shortcuts that could truncate his trek by halves. Long hallways dotted with students, rich with doors that led into auditoriums and less expansive tutorial and conference rooms; Nico had poked his head into most of them upon numerous occasions in the hours he'd spent at Harvard University. And he didn't even attend.

He wandered through the doors to the library with hands in pockets, into the yawning silence broken only my muted whispers and the creak of chairs, the click of computers and the tap of keys. A pause in set was all Nico needed to scan the vast room of domed ceilings and multistorey shelving stacked with regal tomes dusted and swept clean of the cling of dust that such a space would typically tend to acquire.

Not in Harvard, though. Dust was too scared to settle in Harvard's library, floating in ever-falling drifts in each beam of light peering radiance through the windows. Nico had to wonder if even monsters would fear to tread into its halls for fear of staining the floors. He'd certainly never seen any tempt fate before, for which he was sincerely grateful. An all-out brawl in the middle of the college probably wouldn't do Will's reputation any favours.

Nico spotted Will with the ease that he always did. It was something of a sixth sense they shared, though whether demigod-related or otherwise he didn't know. When he stepped into a room, Nico would always know where Will was.

He made his way down the aisle between desks, past the whispering students frowning in concentration as they fell into deep debate with their partners, bypassing silent workers whose fingers tap-danced across the keys of their computers or scribbled in their notebooks so fast that their movements appeared to be reminiscent more of spasms and twitches than deliberate motions. Nico stopped at the desk that Will had monopolised, textbooks and workbooks, laptop and calculator spread around him with a greater capacity than anyone should possess homework. He propped himself against the edge of the desk, folded his arms and waited.

It took Will a full three minutes and thirteen seconds to notice that Nico had arrived. He was intently focused upon his readings, scratching his head idly and frowning in a way that Nico found more amusing than anything else. He'd long since overcome his annoyance with Will's focused intensity when he was working.

Will blinked up from his textbook towards his computer and started slightly when he noticed Nico sitting before him. In an instant a grin spread across his face and he practically jumped to his feet to lean across the desk and press a kiss upon Nico's cheek. It was that response more than anything else that assuaged Nico's disgruntlement over being ignored.

"Sorry! Sorry, I was concentrating –"

"I know," Nico said with a casual shrug. "It's probably the same reason that you didn't pick up my call. Calls."

"You called?"

"Only twice."

Will winced. "Sorry. I always turn my phone on silent when I have a tute with Belinda. I think she sort of has a prejudice against them. Always goes on about how people are on them too much these days."

"True enough. Is she old? That'd explain it."

"She couldn't be more than forty."

"Well, she's got no excuse then."

Will smirked his crooked grin. "Yeah, but she's sort of into the whole meditative, anti-technology-unless-absolutely-necessary kind of lifestyle."

"And she's a… isn't she a radiographer?" Nico raised an eyebrow.

"Ironic, right?"

Shaking his head, Nico crossed his legs and settled himself more comfortably onto the edge of the desk. He tilted his head towards Will's spread of books and pages. "You nearly done for the day? I can wait if you'd like."

"Where did this newfound patience come from?" Will teased, already reaching over to begin folding his books closed and stacking them atop one another. At Nico's hooded, silent stare of reply he shook his head. "No, it's all good. I'm keen to get going and I've done enough for the day."

"What, no more study to do?"

"There's always study."

"And you wonder why I avoid any form of formal education?"

Will snorted. "No, I don't wonder. Anyone who does go to college is insane. Why we put ourselves through such unnecessary torture is a mystery to me."

"You love it. Don't lie." Nico said, straightening from his slouch as Will swept his books into his then-bulging pair of bags and picked up his laptop with a closing snap. "Here, give me something to carry. You'll break your back."

"I'm fine," Will shrugged, fighting Nico for a moment until he was relieved of one of his burdens. "And you're right. Absolutely. I wouldn't have it any other way."

They made their way out of the library, chatting idly as Nico asked him to fill him in with his classes for the day. There were only two, one in the morning and the other six hours later, but Will spent the entirety of the rest of the day with his head buried in his books.

"That sounds engrossing," Nico said, raising his eyebrows at Will's jargon-rich description of his afternoon lecture.

Will shrugged awkwardly beneath the weight of his bag. "It's dry, yeah, but that doesn't mean it's not interesting."

"I never said it wasn't."

"Yeah, but you insinuated it."

"You read me like a book."

"Hm." Will scrunched his nose in distaste. "No, thanks. I'm all read out for the day. How about you?"

"Am I read out?"

"No, you idiot," Will grinned, looping an arm around Nico's shoulders. Nico made his customary attempt to dislodge the one-armed hug before giving up as usual. "What have you been up to?"

"Today, or since I last saw you?" Nico asked, glancing up at him. Will had always been just a few inches taller than him, but he found he didn't mind it so much these days. It would be weirder if Nico didn't have to look up at him a little.

"I saw you yesterday afternoon before you went to work," Will said, raising an eyebrow. "Other than going over to Mickey's I'd have assumed you'd just been sleeping." He paused, then became faintly reproving. "You did sleep, didn't you?"

Nico sighed long-sufferingly, turning his gaze from Will's slight frown to scan across the university grounds. Will was eternally nit-picky about such things. "Yes, I am sleeping."

"How much, exactly? You still keeping a log?"

"You actually expect me to remember to do something like that? Me?"

"If you're trying to convince me that you have questionable memory skills, it's not going to work. You have the memory of an elephant."

Nico turned back to him and raised an eyebrow. "Are you calling me an elephant?"

Will's reproving frown broke momentarily. "Obviously. A big, hulking elephant with massive ears and a ridiculously long nose."

Nico scowled. "I don't have big ears or a big nose. You shouldn't say things like that. I could get self-conscious."

"Of course you don't," Will grinned crookedly. He leant towards Nico and pressed a kiss to his temple. "They're perfectly within the normal range of size and structure. Trust me, I'm a doctor."

Nico attempted to maintain his scowl for a moment longer before it faded. It was all a farce anyway; the occasions that Nico was truly angry with Will were few and far between these days. "Stupid Quack."

Will laughed into his head for a moment. "Always. Your Quack, don't you forget." Then his amusement faded. "Seriously, though. We tend to miss each other half of the time between work and college. How are you sleeping?"

Nico shrugged. He could divert Will's attention to something else – Will usually realised when he did it intentionally but just as often let it slide – but though it was tiresome at times he knew Will's questions came from a place of actual concern. And even if he was truly worried, he would only make suggestions; Will knew not to push him with orders and demands. "Usually about five hours a night when I sleep."

"You still get nightmares?"

"Yeah, sometimes. Same as usual – just bits and pieces that I mostly forget when I wake up – but a lot of the time I think it's more habit than anything. Not sleeping that is."

"Have you considered going to a sleep specialist again?" Will asked, trying and failing to pretend he wasn't as concerned as he aways was.

"After last time?" Nico shook his head. The memory of the overly intrusive and touchy-feely personal psychologist he'd seen last time was somewhat scarring. "No thanks. It's not a problem now, really. I slept last night. A little."

"How late were you at Mickey's?" Will asked, and Nico saw it as a deliberate attempt to move himself on from the topic that concerned him. Will was a worrier, but Nico's adamant refusal to let him worry about him had pushed him into at least attempting to smother his reflexive response.

"Till about two. I got distracted."

"Let me guess. You got lost in a computer?" Will asked, a more genuine attempt at a smile spreading across his face.

Nico shook his head, rolling his eyes at the memory. "You should have seen it. I don't know what he does to his electronics - use them for fire fuel? I honestly don't know – but it's all fine now. I cleaned it all out and it's up and running again now."

Will jostled his captured shoulder affectionately. "You little genius, you."

"Hardly a genius," Nico shrugged. "It's easy to put pieces together and pull them apart when you actually look at it and think about it. It makes sense, you know?"

"Not to me," Will said, shaking his head as they stepped from the university ground and onto the roadside. Cars trundled past largely unnoticed. "I couldn't get so far as cleaning the dust out my laptop without blowing something up. Who'd have thought that it was you, the one who'd never used a computer six years ago?"

"As you keep reminding me. It's useful knowing that sort of thing, though."

"As I remember telling you six years ago," Will pointed out.

"No, I meant that it pays well."

"Ah. Yes, well, that it does," Will nodded. "What else?"

It took Nico a moment to recall what he was talking about. "What else? Um… Some family down in Quincy called about an exorcism."

"Was it an actual exorcism that they needed?"

Nico shook his head, sighing his exasperation that was more forced than genuine. "Of course not. Just a bit of a ghoul problem, some clinging soul making noise around Witching Hour. It wasn't even a strong one; I'm surprised they heard anything through the Mist. It was alright, though, because Chiara was visiting her little half-brother down there and I actually bumped into her. I paid them a visit; her brother's only seven but she's got him doing sword practice already and asked if I could help out."

"I didn't know Chiara was swinging by for visit," Will commented mildly. "She should have stopped by to say hi. I didn't even know she had a younger brother up around here. Tyche claimed him before he even got to camp?"

Nico nodded. "Yeah, surprisingly enough, but he's not going for a couple of years I don't think. His dad's a martial arts practitioner and seems to think he's capable of protecting his kid from monsters."

"Reminds me of Venus Hannon's dad," Will muttered.

Nico cringed slightly. "Don't remind me. That girl still annoys the crap out of me."

"Me too, actually."

"Hey, you're not allowed to say things like that," Nico rebuked, elbowing Will in the side.

"Why not?"

"Because you're the nice one out of the two of us. Butter wouldn't melt in your mouth kind of nice."

"Maybe for appearances sake," Will smirked. "You're the cinnamon roll out of the two of us."

"Cinnamon roll? Hardly."

"Definitely."

"You're deceiving yourself."

"Stop trying to escape reality, Nico." Will taunted, ignoring Nico's elbow in his side once more even as it nearly caused him to stumble and lose his hold around Nico's shoulders. "We all know you're the first to jump to help when someone calls. At Camp Half-Blood or New Rome. Don't think I've forgotten what happened with the third cohort got stuck in that rut in Toronto last year."

"Please don't remind me," Nico said with a wince.

"Cinnamon roll," Will grinned.

Nico pointedly ignored him as he turned instead towards listing what he'd happened across for the rest of the day. They wandered down the side main road, making their way towards the nearest bus stop because it was always easier to simply catch public transport to campus than look for a parking spot for Will's admittedly shitbox of a car. They settled themselves to wait beneath the overhang as Will prompted Nico to continue.

He gave a quick rundown of the day, of visiting his sort of friend Jon Browning at the graveyard he worked at – the man had a susceptibility for seeing through the Mist and had seen some strange things amongst the tombstones, of which Nico, in passing, had reassured him was entirely normal and largely harmless – to giving Hazel a call, to wagering the neighbours teenager into doing his homework by absolutely pulverising him in a video game to taking a call from Eve Novak that had lasted a solid hour of the little girl talking his ear off.

"She's alright for a six year old," Nico said, slouching with his back against Will's shoulder and legs stretching along the bus stop bench as he flicked through his phone. Phones would always be dangerous for a demigod to use, even Leo's remodelled ones, but they were useful for music nonetheless. "Pretty good, actually, but Gods she's got a mouth on her."

"You still have to introduce me to her sometime," Will said, crunching his way through a packet of trail mix and graciously sending any raisins Nico's way. "I feel like I'm missing out on an integral part of your social life by not meeting your god-daughter."

"She's not my god-daughter."

"Only because Melissa and Nikola just started to get to know you after they'd already picked one for her." Will shook his head, munching loudly as he leant forwards slightly to peer down the road for any approaching buses. "Seriously, I don't know how you managed to integrate yourself into their family so well. I've never even met these people but it's obvious that they adore you."

"I don't know how either, honestly," Nico admitted, eyes still downcast to his phone. "I'm not complaining though. I mean, for most people I'd rather poke their eye out than listen to them natter on for an hour about – I honestly don't even know, something about kindergarten and star of the week or something. But Eve just seems sort of cute."

"Maybe you should get a job looking after kids," Will suggested. "Not that you seem to have all that much time to pick up another job. How you manage to fit so much in your day is a mystery to me."

"How I manage so much?" Nico tilted his head backwards to peer at Will's face upside down and raised an eyebrow. "Says the medicine student drowning under homework and exams and hours doing your rotations –"

"I'm hardly drowning," Will said with a smile that was just a little weary. Nico didn't believe him for a second.

Shaking his head, he accepted the raisins Will handed to him and turned back to his phone. "I don't think I'd want to work with kids anyway. I can't stand screaming – does my head in."

"You seem to like Eve enough," Will pointed out. "And really, the fact that you sort of stare a little longingly at any kid you see makes me wonder if you're sort of turning into a mother hen."

Nico drove his elbow backwards into Will's ribs hard enough for him to lose his breath with a faintly pained laughed. "If anyone's clucky out of the two of us it would be you," was all he muttered in reply.

Will was right, though Nico wouldn't admit it. Not about the 'mother hen' business or anything, but the fact that Nico couldn't help but stare at kids. It might even seem a little creepy sometimes – Nico tried to hide that he did it, but most of the time couldn't help it. It wasn't because he was considering abducting them as an overly concerned passer-by might assume, or that he felt any particular inclination to be around children. Other than Eve, of course, but the little girl who reminded him so much of his own long-lost sister was a special case.

No, Nico didn't particularly like kids. It was just… they were so much cleaner than adults. Or, more correctly, they didn't smell of death.

Everyone had that aura to them. In most people it was barely apparent, like the faint, lingering traces of day old perfume that could be smelt only when the wind turned just the right way. Faint, but still there. Even Will had it sometimes, which was a reality that sickened Nico to even contemplate. There was no avoiding it, though. The older a person became, the stronger that scent grew. In the old, or the frail, or the sickly, it was the strongest, like an ominous cloud settling right above them and them only.

Everyone had it, though. Everyone except children. Children, who were so full of life and joy and simple enthusiasm for living that it drove away the shadows of death that were as familiar to Nico as the backs of his own hands. And Nico… for all that he was intimately familiar with death, Nico hated it. He hated the reminder of what it was, of what hung suspended in the future of every living thing. That hatred was why he looked at children, with what was apparently wistfulness if Will was to be believed.

"You alright?"

Will's voice drew Nico back from his thoughts. He tilted his head back to glance up at him once more, meeting his familiar, multihued eyes that peered down at him curiously. Nico shrugged, deliberately turning his gaze down to the phone he'd dazedly neglected in his hands. "Yeah, just tossing up between listening Gregory Porter and Esperanza Spalding. Decisions, decisions…"

Will gave an appreciative murmur, slinging an arm over Nico's shoulders to crane his gaze over his head more easily. "You've got the Junjo album, haven't you?"

"Of course I do. What do you take me for?" Nico replied, flicking through the playlist to the unvoiced request. The quiet lull of modern jazz soon rippled through the bus shelter, to the evident bemusement and subsequent appreciation of the elderly man who was only other commuter sitting on the bench. Nico and Will sat in comfortable, temporary muteness, picking through Will's trail mix as they waited.

"We'll just swing by home to dump my stuff before heading to camp, then?" Will suggested when, eventually, the puttering hulk of the bus drew up before them. He rose to his feet, urging Nico to do the same.

Nico, shrugged, falling into line behind the old man as he ambled slowly up the bus steps. "Yeah, sure. Whatever. It's not like there's any rush." There was never any rush. Camp Half-Blood welcomed them every weekend that they visited like returning soldiers, with appreciative bellows of welcome and far too much enthusiasm, regardless of the fact that neither of them had been on a real, oracle-designated quest for years.

"You sure you're right to shadow travel us that far?" Will asked. Typically. Expectedly. As he always did. Will had never quite become comfortable with Nico's use of the shadows, even if he had grown to admit to their usefulness.

Nico didn't begrudge him asking anymore. It was almost nice to be so considered. Even if Will's care was baseless and he didn't even have to think to reply. "Of course."

"Just checking."

"I know," Nico replied, stepping onto the bus behind him. Will always would.

It hit Nico soon as he shadowed into the middle camp, shaking off the brief bout of tentative weariness that he still got these days. He knew immediately that something was wrong, and that was even before he saw the distant figure of Chiron turn tail from a group of panicky demigods to head towards the Big House at a gallop. There was something in the air, tension bordering on hysteria, which immediately set Nico on edge and his fingers to reaching unconsciously to the sword hilt at his shoulder.

He glanced at Will, meeting him worried frown to worried frown, and without a word they both leapt into a run in Chiron's wake. Nico didn't pause at the steps, didn't slow to knock on the door that hadn't completely slammed shut yet, but burst straight through instead, bypassing the infirmary and the stairs up to the attic to follow the sound of raised voices to the rec room. He stepped inside the door with Will on his tail just as Chiron's voice, raised in uncharacteristic volume, called for silence.

"Everyone, please! We'll get nowhere if this continues. We must remain calm."

The room broke off its chattering and fell into tense silence. It was overflowing with demigods crowded around the central ping-pong table, but from what Nico could see they were just the counsellors. Most he knew only distantly, having had little to do with counsel meeting in the years since he'd left camp and the turnover of counsellors being fairly regular when demigods came of an age where the inclination to stretch their wings and soar away grew too great. He saw a very worried looking Nyssa of Hephaestus, Alice Miyazawa from Hermes, Tilly Bodwick from Athena and Mikael Somes of Hebes, but barely spared a moment's glance for the rest of them. His attention snapped to Chiron instead.

"What happened?" Will, standing at his side, spoke before Nico could himself, voice ringing with sharp demand.

In Chiron's enforced silence, all eyes turned towards their entry. Nico barely registered that most flooded with relief. He affixed Chiron with an unblinking stare, urging him to answer Will's question.

Chiron wasn't bereft of his own touch of relief as he glanced towards them, though the thick presence of concern still tightened the lines of his ageing face. Arms folding across his chess, appearing more an act to stabilise himself than in stubbornness or determination, he nodded his head in brief greeting before launching directly into an explanation.

"We received a distress call from one of our quests."

"Who?" Nico asked immediately.

"A party of five – Riley, Fionn, Huang, Josef and Harley. Their Iris-message was cut out halfway through." Chiron's eyes tightened. "That was nearly ten minutes ago."

Ah. I guess that's why Nyssa's looking the most worried, what with Harley being involved and everything, Nico thought. He instantly discarded the observation as irrelevant. "Did they tell you what was happening?"

"Chimaera," Nyssa said before Chiron could reply. Nico glanced towards her, to the sight of her chewing on her lip hard enough to pierce the skin. "Chimaera with a horde of lesser monsters."

"From what we could make out, it sounded like they'd already acquired injuries and it wasn't looking good," Sebastian Sean, son of Nemesis, glared at the floor at his feet as though accusing it of a wrong. "That was about all we could get before the message cut out."

"A chimaera?" Will asked, sucking in a breath in a hiss. "That's bad. But surely it's not –"

"Not a Chimaera," Nyssa interrupted him, voice tight and grim. "The Chimaera. As in son of Echidna, Chimaera."

It was Nico's turn to hiss. Echidna had more kids that could be counted, but most of them were of a class with every other monster. But there were some few who were of a class of deadly above and beyond the rest, hanging around the danger level of giants for their destructive capabilities. Nico remembered his brief confrontation with the Nemean Lion, another of Echidna's deadlier brood, both the first time years before and then the second not a month ago when he had actually managed to vanquish it. Somehow, impossibly, to defeat it. It had been a miracle that his sword had somehow, impossibly, managed to pierce the impregnable skin. Neither were confrontations he was likely to forget any time soon.

"Shit," Will cursed quietly. He shook his head and Nico saw his hands clench at his sides. "Shit. And with its own horde of groupies, too?"

Chiron nodded. "They are not an old group – Fionn is the eldest of them but we know she lacks the aggressive capacities of most demigods, to tell of the truth where it stands. They aren't equipped to face such a foe."

"Which is why we need to go," Nyssa cut in, her voice angry in her desperation. "We know where they are, so we need to go and help them. Now. If I could use the Labyrinth, I could get there in no time –"

"No," Chiron cut her off harshly, with a fierceness he was usually so devoid of. "You will not journey into the Labyrinth with such intentions. You'll surely become lost."

"But I have to," Nyssa cried, more pleading than demanding now. Her lip was actually bleeding now for how fiercely she was biting it. "I can't let Harley –"

"You know where they are?" Will cut in, his voice sharp once more yet soft in a way that somehow managed to provoke not the slightest anger from anyone. "You know their coordinates?"

Chiron made to reply, and Nico go the impression that he was more likely to caution them than to give Will what he asked for, but Nyssa, her voice warbling with panic even more now, spoke before he had a chance. "They're down near Atlantic City. Wharton State Forest."

"Where?" Nico asked. "Where exactly?"

"I don't know, just that –"

"Where did they say? As close as you can get, Nyssa," Nico cut into her hysterics.

Tugging at the collar of her shirt as though she meant to choke herself, Nyssa finally actually turned her attention directly to Nico. Her gaze was as pleading as her voice. "Harley said they were a little ways down a road from a long-running drag racing strip. Acto or something-or-other. I don't –"

"Will." Nico turned towards his boyfriend, ignoring the continued broken words of Nyssa that Tilly at her side attempted to soothe. He didn't ask, simply posing the statement of what they had to do.

Will turned towards him, a slight frown touching his brow. "Atlantic City's a ways down. You think you can make it that far after travelling today already?"

"Of course," Nico nodded shortly, hoping he was speaking the truth rather than a hope.

'Will, Nico," Chiron interrupted guardedly. "Don't just go charging into this. We are all concerned about them, but we need to think this through –"

"We can think later, Chiron," Nico interrupted. "I don't think the kids really have the time for us to wait."

"You'll need reinforcements besides just the two of you," Chiron objected, taking a clopping step forwards and dropping his crossed hands to lean upon the pin-pong table. He had to nearly bend double to do so and he was still taller than most in the room. "You're more than competent fighters the both of you, but this is the Chimaera."

"You've already said that," Nico replied, turning from the room.

"Nico – "

"We'll send a message as soon as we can. Reinforcements would be great," Will called over his shoulders as he too turned, barely sparing the effort to make his tone cordial as they departed the Rec Room.

"Will, Nico, wait -!"

Nico didn't wait. He didn't even wait until they made it to the door of the Big House before he grabbed Will's hand, drew his shadows around them and threw them both from the House. A moment before they disappeared, he caught the rising exclamations of the counsellors behind them, Chiron's voice still calling. Then it was gone.

They found the raceway easily enough. It would have been harder to miss. The single main road leading away from it and the small collection of buildings and houses that barely constituted a town, the outskirts of Acto, was similarly hard to bypass. Sword and bow drawn respectively, Nico and Will set off at a fast run down the bitumen leading into the forest. The clean warmth of spring dampened the air, bursting greenery to life, but Nico hardly saw any of it.

The fight wasn't as far away as he'd expected. Upon their approach, they could hear it from the sound of shrieks and roars, of bellows and cries of pain drowned out by strange yipping sounds almost reminiscent of a dog. As always, Nico wondered what it would have looked like to people through the Mist. An animal attack? Surely not, for the Chimaera and it' twisted accompaniments would be far too large for simple 'animals'. They didn't look anything like them either, Nico acknowledged when they burst upon the scene. There were at least a dozen of them, maybe two-dozen, with the dusty remains of countless others scattered blanketing the forest floor like thick ash. Nico wasn't sure how many they were, nor what they even were, and he didn't pause to alleviate his ignorance. Sword poised, he charged from the roadside down the rocky slope dotted sparsely with trees towards the demigods stumbling in retreat from their enormous foe. The sound of Will's bow twanged alongside him.

The hissing swing of his sword split the air and Nico fell into battle.

The smaller ones were twisted horrors of monsters. The mish-mash product of goats and felines, some with forked tongue spitting from their mouths, others with three hooves and one paw. Some resembled miniature lions but for the long, curving horns sprouting from their heads. They were the size of a mountain lion, or a giant, mutant goat, or an anaconda on steroids. Nico fell upon them without a second thought, adrenaline coursing through him and erasing any fear that may have arisen drawing their attention with a shout. He smashed a pair of lion-goats into dust with his first of contact, Will's arrow dissipating a third, before launching himself further into the fray.

The kids were there. Nico saw them, barely registering them. They were a bloody mess – literally bloody, with dark streaks of gore matting their clothes and limping in an attempt to retreat while still defending themselves. Scratches that looked to be the product of a clawed attack painted Fionn's face and Huang was nearly unconscious and leaning heavily upon Riley's arm as she dragged him alongside her with her sword still raised. Harley, the burly teen standing before them defensively with his double short swords raised, was panting heavily with dirt, sweat and his own mess of blood thickly lathering his hair. At his side, little Josef was smacking aside the lion-goats with his javelin, dark eyes blown wide less with fading adrenaline and more in rising fear.

Before them loomed the Chimaera.

Nico barely had time to take stock of the creature, twisting and slicing through the small fry that turned towards him as he was. Will sprung from the roadside after unleashing a flurry of arrows to stand against his back, tapping his bow into a morphing quarterstaff in an instant and splintering monsters with each smack of his weapon. Nico did notice its size, however, the elephant mass of muscle and fur, scales and mane impossible to miss. He noticed the tawny pelt barely marred with gashes the creature appeared not to notice, the lions head wide and yawning with ivory curves of teeth bubbled with saliva. He noticed the long length of snake that reared its head from the creature's tail and darted a scorpion-like strike at Josef, who stumbled backwards with a cry, the goat's head with its towering coils of horns as it swung from the chimaera's shoulder in an attempt to spear Harley. Harley noticed too late, taking a nick that drew his own cry forth and nearly stumbled him from his feet.

The kids were exhausted, though whether from the fight or from something that had happened before Nico didn't know. That much was evident. Fionn – despite the trio of deep gauges that marred her cheek, dripping tears of blood – appeared the most lucid, the least terrified, but even she was visibly panting and trembling. Nico made a step towards them, only to be waylaid by a lion with snake-eyes and horns.

"Will!" He called over his shoulder. "The kids –"

"I'm on it." Will spun in a windmilling twirl of his quarterstaff, pulverising the giant snake hosting two leonine front legs with a single swipe to the head. He glanced towards Nico, towards the Chimaera and the demigods beyond. "You got the rest of these little bastards if I take him?"

Nico didn't want that. He'd rather be the one to face the Chimaera, the creature from nightmares that was supposed to be nearly as indestructible as its brother, the Nemean Lion. But even as the thought made itself known, a pair of identical, heavy-jawed goats the size of small tractors charged towards him and it was all he could do to nod and call a sharp, "Go!" over his shoulder.

Will leapt past him, vaulting over one of the tractor-goat's backs as though it were nothing but a three foot wall and tearing towards the Chimaera and the stumbling demigods. Nico took a swipe at the monster as it turned in angry confusion to its vaulter, piercing it behind the ear in an attempt to draw its attention before striking it to the ground with a heavy, overhanded blow that burst it into a spray of dust. He spun an instant later to face the charge of another of its siblings.

Slicing and cutting, ducking and leaping, parrying the swipes of clawed hands, the kicks of splintered hooves, the darting strikes of the snakes' heads. Nico fell to the floor and rolled as often as he bounded over the backs of his wounded foes. He showed no mercy, felt only determination and need, to erase the monsters in their threat against his cousins and fellow demigods. There was no mercy necessary for such mindless killing machines. They attacked for no other reason that to attack.

Nico hated them. He hated that they had killed some of what was his.

He didn't feel fear. He barely even felt satisfaction when the number rapidly dwindled, focusing their attention solely upon Nico as he whipped around trees to spring forwards and drive his sword through ribs. He didn't feel the moment a lion dug its claws briefly into his thigh, only noticed enough to direct his downward slice towards the monster's leg followed by its head. He chance a dive into his shadows to escape a spit of venom, in that brief, disorienting and momentary disappearance that he'd barely had the chance to practice since the first time he'd tried it years before, and reappeared behind the creature to hack it into dust. The nick of a goat's horn was disregarded as a minor injury, the bruise of a collision negligible, and Nico soon found himself standing before the last, prowling monster that looked nothing if not a miniature of its forefather standing beyond it, barely within Nico's field of vision. The padding step of its paws as it prowled forth, growl rumbling from its throat, kicked the dust of its vanquished siblings into the air in little plumes.

Nico took a deep, steadying breath. He raised his sword. Then he charged, black blade cleaving through the air with the miniature chimaera as his target.

He heard the scream on the edges of his consciousness. Heard it and barely heeded it but to notice its sound. Nico's attention was focused upon destroying the last of the smaller monsters, and it was only when, after a brief scuffle that he thought might have broken at least one of his fingers from the goat-head's bite, obliterated it into the dust of its fellows that he truly registered it. Then he turned towards the Chimaera, towards Will and the younger demigods. The sight froze his blood in his very veins.

The Chimaera was brutalised. Will had done his job almost to completion, with the goat's head hanging limply, tongue lolling forth and a wound to the skull seeping blood through its dark fur. The snake of the monster's tail fell just as uselessly, split nearly its whole, scaled length by the white protrusions of bones that poked through its skin. The lion's head was still mobile, still awake and roaring, but even that looked a mess. Its jaw was skewed as though dislocated and hanging at an odd angle. But it still approached the demigods, because Will –

Will lay on the ground, tossed aside like a rag doll and with as little grace. His quarterstaff had tumbled from his grasp to fall to the ground just beyond him. His jacket was ripped as though clawed, half fallen from his shoulders and tangled around his arms, and jeaned legs sprawled at an unnaturally angled limpness. But it was his head, the bloody mess that dyed his hair red from gold, pulsing forth tendrils of dark scarlet down his forehead, that was the horror.

Nico saw blackness. Then he saw vivid white, then blurred focus that sharpened only onto Will's face. He felt cold, then flushed hot, couldn't breath, then breathed too much. He barely even felt the sword in his hand, could have been weaponless and collapsing to the ground for all he knew. At first Nico couldn't move. Not even when Harley's cry of distress at tumbling to the ground before the Chimaera filtered into his ears.

Will was…

Will… oh Gods, Will was… Will couldn't be…

Will couldn't be…

Nico snapped. He flew into a frenzy. He barely even realised his legs were moving until he was upon the Chimaera – literally upon, somehow clambered onto its back and driving his sword down into its shoulders with a double-handed thrust. The beast bellowed, lion's head tossing backwards as it reared in objection. Nico was thrown from his standing seat, tossed to the ground to land with a painful roll that crunched something, only to spring at the monster a second later. He raised his sword, breath gasping, vision filled with only the hulking mass of the turning Chimaera and the memory of Will's bloodied face before his eyes. He didn't think. He couldn't think. He charged.

There was no finesse to his movements, no skill despite his years of practice. Nico swung and struck, sliced and spun and hacked and parried as the lion lumbered backwards then lurched forwards with its own strikes. Claws met black Stygian iron, hissing as the contact drew ear-splitting shrieks. Nico scored a strike to the snout, sliced along the Chimaera's swinging foreleg, caught a crushing blow to the shoulder that was worth it for the piercing thrust he managed in return. The Chimaera… for whatever reason it seemed almost wary of him, wary in a way that monsters rarely exhibited. Nico didn't care why, didn't pause to contemplate the slight hesitancy between each of the creature's attacks. He was winning, or he was losing, he couldn't tell. Didn't know and didn't care, couldn't make it out until –

The Chimaera leapt. On shambling limbs it leapt, throwing its full body into a cannoning effort that aimed to crush Nico where he stood. It managed it too, and Nico barely had the chance to raise his sword to spit the monster as it fell before he was smothered against the ground.

His breath left him. His head cracked against something hard jarringly, painfully, and the weight of the Chimaera atop him was asphyxiating, crushing, breaking. Nico could only think to maintain his grip on his sword, to twist and lodge deeper, even as his mind chanted Die, you fucking bastard, die – Will, Gods, Will – die! How dare you!

The Chimaera groaned. It splattered a dribble of red-tinged saliva onto Nico's face as its snout suspended upon him. It voiced something, Nico thought, something intelligible, but though his ears heard the words, catalogued them, his mind didn't understand. There was no room for understanding, no space for anything but the two things that Nico needed now, more than anything, now, he needed it now!

He needed Will. And he needed the Chimaera dead.

The monster stopped talking. It stopped with a heavy, groaning sigh, then, crackling like a limb falling from a tree, its weight fell more completely. Crushing, completely smothering, only to burst into dust an instant before the broad, tawny snout, the twisted whispers and stinking breath, could fall upon Nico's face.

Nico's breath returned in a rush, only to fall into coughs as he inhaled the smoky, golden dust. His legs hurt from the abrupt abuse of too much weight loaded upon him that was abruptly relieved, his chest ached as his lungs protested to the foreign invasion of dust as much as oxygen, and his eyes dimmed for a moment before he could blink them into clarity. He hurt. He hurt a lot, so much and in so many different places. And he didn't consider a single one of them.

Movement was impossible, should have been impossible, but Nico somehow managed. His hands were wrapped in a tight, unshakeable grasp around the hilt of his sword, but he somehow pried them off to a detached scream of pain – broken, probably, at least one of his fingers. In a roll, Nico clambered onto all fours and, coughing through the dust and the continued onslaught of air, he scrambled as fast as his screaming limbs could carry him.

He didn't spare a thought for the younger demigods. Nico didn't even look in their direction. His gaze was focused solely upon Will's lifeless figure as he dragged himself through the dust, over the jagged rocks scattering the thinly-forested floor that speared abusively at his palms. He fell upon him with something that could have been a sob but he wasn't sure. Nico didn't care to think about it.

Will's face was a spider web of bloody streaks marring pale skin. His eyes were closed, his expression lax, and he flopped unresponsively when Nico grabbed his arm, locked broken fingers into his jacket, croaked out his name. Something in the back of his mind told him to be careful, to watch his neck, to keep his spine straight, but Nico hardly heard it. He had a mind only to cry out to Will, again and again with discordant words as his fingers clutched at his wrist, his shirt, touched his face and drew down to his neck in a desperate search for a heartbeat. It was horrible, the limpness, the blood, that Will wouldn't wake up.

But worst of all, the absolute worst, was the thick aura of death that hung around him. It blanketed Will and clogged Nico's senses in stifling darkness.

No, no, no, this can't be happening. Please, oh please, please be alive, please have a pulse, oh Gods, please don't be dead, please –

Nico's hands were shaking so hard that he couldn't hold them still long enough to check. He was wrought with panic, with mind-encompassing terror and rage, distraught with uselessness and hopelessness, and the only words that tumbled from his mouth were Will's name. Or maybe he spoke his thoughts, he wasn't sure. Will's face was a blurred image of red and pale gold, his freckles morphing together in… tears? Was Nico crying? He didn't know and he didn't care.

Long, precious moments passed. Long, infuriating, horrifying moments in which Nico gasped over Will's limp form, his fingers shaking too fiercely for him to feel anything, to know for certain whether he even could feel anything at Will's neck. Until he did. It was in such a faint, butterfly flutter of thumps that Nico wasn't even sure if it was there at all.

He didn't care. That vague flutter was a chance. Throwing himself into jerking action once more, Nico's hands dove to Will's jacket pocket, to the zip-lock bags of ambrosia that Will always carried for no other reason than because he could. He dropped half of the little cubes of what looked like chocolate upon the forest floor before his mangled fingers managing to kept a hold of one long enough to stuff it into Will's mouth. He held Will's jaw closed for barely a second before considering he'd waited long enough. He couldn't wait any more.

Will was bigger than Nico. He'd always been a little taller, had more of an archer's build across the shoulders. That discrepancy hardly made an ounce of difference when Nico slung him over his back. It didn't matter that he weighed more than Nico did himself, that even on a good day – which Nico's legs were shrieking at him that it definitely wasn't – he would have struggled to lift him.

But he did. Nico managed, and when he rose to standing with his not-dead-he-wasn't-dead boyfriend hanging limply over his shoulder, it was to grab at his shadows without a second thought. He barely even noticed the exhausted, damaged demigods that had ringed around him; Huang was nearly unconscious at Riley's shoulder, Harley pale and still breathing heavily and Josef trembling like as though he was having a fit. He barely noticed the wide-eyed yet determined nod that Fionn gave him, the mouthed "Go" that gave him permission where he sought none.

Nico threw himself into the shadows without a backwards glance.