Bewitched || P. Jackson

ℝise and shine

Nicki wasn't sure of how long she was out cold, but it was long enough for her to feel like she was stuck underwater. Her head was throbbing, almost as if she was was a scarecrow, bursting at the seams with straw and nothing else.

The air was freezing. Nicki tried to wiggle her fingers but they felt frozen together. Her eyes flittered open, before she screwed them shut again. Letting out a groan of pain, she tried to force herself to move to no avail.

"Hey, woah! Take it easy, Nic." A soft touch opened her mouth slightly and a warm, sweet smelling liquid filled her mouth. The taste reminded Nicki of a Wendy's dinner she'd used to share with Ethan and Luke.

"E?" Nicki peeked an eye open, seeing Ethan's face hovering upside down over hers.

A pair of arms squeezed Nicki tightly. "Gods, don't you scare me like that again." Leaning into his touch,  the dark-haired girl let her eyes adjust to the brightness. The air whipped around her as Festus glided through the air.

"Where's Piper?" The girl no longer sat in front of Nicki. Leo sat in front, driving. They flew peacefully through the winter sky as if nothing had happened.

"Back here!" The younger girl's voice drifted toward Nicki. Glancing backwards, Nicki waved at Piper softly. "Gotta look after sleepy." Piper laughed, resting her head against Jason's asleep one on her shoulder.

Nicki nodded unsure. "What happened to him?"

Before her question could be answered, Jason let out a yell. His eyes snapped open. "Cyclops!"

"Cyclops?" Nicki questioned, glancing between Ethan and Jason. The older boy shook his head, tightening his grip around her.

"Whoa, sleepyhead." Piper sat behind Jason on the bronze dragon, holding his waist to keep him balanced.

"D-Detroit," Jason stammered. "Didn't we crash-land? I thought—"

"It's okay," Leo said. "We got away, but you got a nasty concussion. How you feeling?"

"How did you—the Cyclops—"

"Leo ripped them apart," Piper said. "He was amazing. He can summon fire—"

"It was nothing," Leo said quickly.

Piper laughed. "Shut up, Valdez. I'm going to tell him. Get over it."

And she did—how Leo single-handedly defeated the Cyclopes family; how they freed Jason, then noticed the Cyclopes starting to re-form; how Leo had replaced the dragon's wiring and gotten them back in the air just as they'd started to hear the Cyclopes roaring for vengeance inside the factory.

"I feel like I'm missing something." Nicki mumbled to herself. "What cyclopes?"

Nonetheless she was impressed. Taking out three Cyclopes with nothing but a tool kit? Not bad. It didn't exactly scare her to hear how close they'd come to death, but it did make her feel horrible. She'd stepped right into an ambush and spent the whole fight knocked out while her friends fended for themselves.

When Piper told the about the other kid the Cyclopes claimed to have eaten, the one in the purple shirt who spoke

Latin, Nicki felt like her head was going to explode. A son of Mercury. Ethan shook his head subtly, telling Nicki to leave it alone.

"I'm not alone, then," Jason said. "There are others like me."

"Jason," Piper said, "you were never alone. You've got us."

"I—I know... but something Hera said. I was having a dream..." He told them what he'd seen, and what the goddess had said inside her cage.

"An exchange?" Piper asked. "What does that mean?"

"Percy. She swapped you for Percy."

Jason shrugged his shoulders. "But Hera's gamble is me. Just by sending me to Camp Half-Blood, I have a feeling she broke some kind of rule, something that could blow up in a big way—"

"Or save us," Piper said hopefully. "That bit about the sleeping enemy—that sounds like the lady Leo told us about."

Leo cleared his throat. "About that... she kind of appeared to me back in Detroit, in a pool of Porta-Potty sludge."

Jason wasn't sure he'd heard that right. "Did you say... Porta-Potty?"

"I'm not surprised." Ethan sniggered.

Leo told them about the big face in the factory yard. "I don't know if she's completely unkillable," he said, "but she cannot be defeated by toilet seats. I can vouch for that. She wanted me to betray you guys, and I was like, 'Pfft, right, I'm gonna listen to a face in the potty sludge.'"

"She's trying to divide us." Piper slipped her arms from around Jason's waist. Nicki could sense her tension without even looking at her.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"I just... Why are they toying with us? Who is this lady, and how is she connected to Enceladus?"

"Enceladus?" Jason didn't think he'd heard that name before.

"The giant. Son of Gaea and Tartarus. Athena's opposite in the Giantomachy." Nicki's voice was low. She was trying to avoid speaking names out loud. "How did you guess that?"

"Yeah. I mean..." Piper's voice quavered. "That's one of the giants. Just one of the names I could remember."

Nicki got the feeling there was a lot more bothering her, but she decided he not to press her. She'd had a rough morning.

Leo scratched his head. "Well, I dunno about Enchiladas—"

"Enceladus," Piper corrected.

"Whatever. But Old Potty Face mentioned another name. Porpoise Fear, or something?"

"Porphyrion?" Piper asked. "He was the giant king, I think."

"Yep." Ethan and Nicki spoke simultaneously, popping the p. "The Bane of Zeus."

Jason envisioned that dark spire in the old reflecting pool —growing larger as Hera got weaker. "I'm going to take wild guess," he said. "In the old stories, Porphyrion kidnapped Hera. That was the first shot in the war between the giants and the gods."

"I think so," Piper agreed. "But those myths are really garbled and conflicted. It's almost like nobody wanted that story to survive. I just remember there was a war, and the giants were almost impossible to kill."

"Heroes and gods had to work together," Jason said. "That's what Hera told me."

"Kind of hard to do," Leo grumbled, "if the gods won't even talk to us."

"They're stubborn." Nicki's comment was snappy. She seemed on edge with the others' comments.

The group fell into a heavy silence.

They flew west, and Nicki became lost in her thoughts as she learnt into Ethan —all of them bad. She wasn't sure how much time passed before the dragon dove through a break in the clouds, and below them, glittering in the winter sun, was a city at the edge of a massive lake. A crescent of skyscrapers lined the shore. Behind them, stretching out to the western horizon, was a vast grid of snow-covered neighborhoods and roads.

"Chicago," Jason said.

"One problem down," Leo said. "We got here alive."

"Woo!" Nicki cheered, high-fiving Ethan.

"Now, how do we find the storm spirits?"

Jason saw a flash of movement below them. At first he thought it was a small plane, but it was too small, too dark and fast. The thing spiraled toward the skyscrapers, weaving and changing shape—and, just for a moment it became the smoky figure of a horse.

"How about we follow that one," Jason suggested, "and see where it goes?"

"He'd be the first one to die in a horror movie." Ethan commented.

"Oh no! There's a noise in this haunted house, I'll go investigate!"

"Look!" Ethan laughed, trying to stay serious. "A man with an axe! I'll go see if he's friendly."

"You two are weird." Leo commented. His eyes shone as he looked at the two best friends.

"Yeah, we get that a lot."