The Silver Ring (PJO)

Chapter 15

I flopped back down on the bed and pulled the blankets over me again.

Suddenly, Nico pulled them off. "What are you doing?" he demanded.

"I'm going to practice sword fighting," I said sarcastically. "What do you think I'm doing? I'm sleeping."

He tugged on my arm impatiently like a little kid. Except, since he was an adult warrior, he nearly tore it out of its socket. "No time for that now. It's time—"

"Will you stop saying 'time?!' " I groaned. "If you say it one more time—"

Nico laughed.

I growled at him. Or, more specifically, his silhouette. "Well? Are you going to say what you wanted to say . . . ?"

"Oh. Right. Let's go visit Sally."

"You already said that," I said through a sigh. "Wait . . . You mean right now?!"

"Well, there's no time—"

I coughed loudly.

"There's no time—"

I cleared my throat.

"There's no time like the present—"

"That's it!" I shouted. I quickly rolled off my bed, my feet connecting with Nico's stomach and dragging him with me. We both fell onto the floor, and started rolling on the floor, fighting. "Stop . . . saying . . . time!" I exclaimed between attempts to pin him down.

Nico simply kept rolling in different directions so I couldn't hold him down. One time, I had both of his arms pinned down, but he simply kicked me in the stomach, knocking the wind out of me and making me let go.

"Whoa there!" Nico exclaimed, trying to reign in his laughter. "This is not the time to be fighting."

Then, Nico stopped trying to evade my attacks and then tried to pin me down.

He grabbed my right arm, preventing me from rolling away, then hit my solar plexus, making me drop my guard for a few seconds while my body tried to breathe. He sat on my legs and took hold of my other arm, and pinned both of my arms to the ground with his hands.

The sun had finally risen enough that I could faintly see Nico's triumphant face. "I won!" he crowed.

I grinned devilishly at him. "Not quite." Since he was sitting on both of my legs, I had enough leverage to lift my legs and launch Nico over my head, sort of like a human catapult.

Nico gracefully softened his landing by summersaulting right back up when he touched the ground. "Touché," Nico said, seeming blasé about the whole fight. "You want to call peace?"

"As long as you don't say the word," I said childishly.

Nico raised his eyebrow. "What word? You're going to have to be more specific."

I groaned. "Just forget it. You want to meet Sally, right?"

"Yes," Nico affirmed. "Preferably before breakfast. We could probably eat breakfast there in Atlantis. I've always wondered how underwater food would taste like."

"From experience, I can say that it tastes the same as dry-land food."

"I'd like to see that personally."

"Sure. Right after we get ready." With that, I dashed towards the indoor bathroom, closing and locking the door a second before Nico smashed into it. "Not cool Jackson!" Nico howled.

There were only two cabins with bathrooms in them; my cabin, and the Artemis cabin. The Artemis cabin had a communal bathroom inside for themselves, since they refused to share one with the camp women. 

I was the only one living in my cabin, and I was probably going to be the only one in it for eternity, so the cabin builders renovated my cabin by constructing a huge private bathroom, all for myself. 

From that day onward, I was no longer one of the many campers who had faced the situation of having the horrible urge to go all the way to the communal bathroom in the dead of the night because they drank too much water before bed. Thankfully, for them, Chiron took pity and told the builders to install modern bulbs lighting the way to the bathroom.

Before that, there was a fifty-fifty chance of losing all your teeth by crashing into a tree.

While I was freshening up, I thought of my dreams. I had been used to Chaos stopping my nightmares, so I wasn't really ready to be tortured endlessly. I wondered what happened to Chaos. He probably wasn't in trouble, since he was the father—or mother?—of trouble, and basically everything else. That either left it up to lousy memory, or he wanted me to fix the world without anymore help.

Knowing Chaos, it was probably the former. 

Having finished my shower, I changed into new clothes and opened the door. I saw Nico exploring my cabin, poking and prodding at all the decorations as though they would come to life and fight him.

I took a deep breath, masking all my pain and sadness behind a mask." Y'know, you don't need to be that rough with inanimate objects."

Nico turned and glared at me. "I'm not! It's just everything is too . . . bluish."

Admittedly, it was. The ceiling, walls, blankets, couches—even the paintings—were different shades of blue. To me, it was blue heaven. "What's wrong with that?"

"That it's blue," Nico bluntly responded.

"Well, that's your problem," I shot back. "You're in the Poseidon cabin. Plus, this is coming from a person who has a vampire den as a cabin."

"It's not . . . whatever," Nico groaned, knowing that my point was correct. While my cabin was tastefully decorated, his cabin was . . . black. Pure black. Everything that could be painted was dark. I always had wondered what deranged builder had designed it.

"You ready to go?" Nico asked.

"You don't need to get ready?"

"Already did. You took so long. I had enough time to go to the Underworld."

I pouted. "I don't see the problem."

"I'm well aware," Nico said through a sigh.