House of Hades (book 4 of Heroes of Olympus)

Chapter 6 - Hazel

Hazel

It was such a Percy thing to say that for a moment, everything ground to a holt until Jason laughed weakly and mutter “Oops”.

Hazel smiled meekly and glanced at Frank – he was staring hard at her, sending her a message to tell everyone about her problem. Clearing her throat loudly, she waited for everyone to look her way before she started, “So my problem with metals and jewels… has gotten worse. Frank suggested that it might have something to do with the quest, any ideas?”

Leo jumped straight in, “I think that during the battle with Gaea, you’ll end up summoning a giant bar of gold and hitting her round the head with it, thus winning us the war”.

Piper glared at Leo for a second before taking over, “Clearly Leo’s wrong. What he meant to say was how bad has the problem gotten?”

“Well, today I managed to summon a gold bar and that’s just about impossible with us being on a ship. The gold bar would have had to go through the ship, and it obviously hadn’t”.

“So you can teleport things now?”

“I think so, yes.”

Nico held up his hand. It seemed to take him a lot of effort because he was still so tired. “Right, so maybe dad is sending us a message”.

Everyone quietened for a moment to consider this – except for Jason noisily chomping on his slice of pizza.

Coach hedge lent his bony elbows on the table, baseball bat forgotten and dropped on to the floor, “Why would your father be doing that?”

Nico pulled a face, “Because we’re currently in a war against Gaea, duh”.

Bleating piercingly, he glared daggers at Nico and continued, “Yes, but why metal?”

“Because metal is from inside the Earth and he lives inside the Earth,” Nico paused, “Duh.”

Coach Hedge slammed his hand against the table, causing Leo to whimper at the loud crack it caused. His face had turned a fetching bright red when he shouted, “I SWEAR -”

Jason interrupted by clapping his hands and holding them high in the air, “So that’s the end of the meeting then?”

Everyone else hurriedly issued a ‘yes’ and ran off somewhere, leaving Hazel, Nico and Coach sitting at the table. Glaring one last time, the Satyr stormed off too.

A deep laugh resonated from Nico, surprising Hazel slightly. Nico, being the son of Hades, didn’t laugh much. Unlike Hazel.

“What’s so funny, Nico? Because of you we never got to finish the meeting!”

He grinned, his fingers absentmindedly tapping the table, “Just thinking what he would have done against a skeletal army”.

“Nico!” Hazel cried, feeling slightly appalled at the thoughts her half-brother was having. Well, half-brother from different fathers. But also the same father. But –

“Okay, okay. But seriously…”

Sighing, she ran a hand through her hair. Suddenly, a thought struck her, “Did you say skeletal army?”

Nodding, he snapped his fingers and two warriors, very much dead, sprung up beside him, “You can’t do that?”

“Erg, erm…” she stuttered, feeling slightly at loss.

Nico’s face fell, “Oh. It must be like the charmspeak thing. Piper can do it, and so can Drew, but no one else can.”

“And Leo can conjure up fire, but again, no one else can”, she inputted, “Anyway, Nico, I thought you were tired, hmm?!”