The Return of Leo Valdez (After Blood of Olympus)

31- Nyssa

All Nyssa could do was stare wide-eyed at the decaying half-brother she once knew.

"How is this possible?" She finally said. "The ship blew up, everything should have disintegrated."

Then, an idea popped into Nyssa's head. "The armor."

"What?" Percy asked. "Are you saying that stopped his body from decaying? How is that possible?"

"He must have been wearing some kind of preserving armor," Nyssa hesitated. "The only way to find out is to touch it."

She bent down, her hand was out, slowly reaching towards the armor. The smell of her old brother wanted her to throw up, but she kept inching in closer.

Nyssa refused to look at any of the body except the chest plate. The rest would be to hard to look at.

Nyssa knew she shouldn't be touching old armor. It could be poisoned, or enchanted with a whole lot of other nasty things. And even without special features, it was probably full of bacteria and dirty.

"Nyssa stop!" Percy yelled. "It could be dangerous."

Nyssa jerked her head to Percy. His eyes were wide with fear and his arm was outstretched. "Do you remember if there was any enchantments in the armor?"

Percy relaxed and scratched his chin and head. "I don't remember."

"It's okay. But how could I have been so stupid to not bring an enchantment identifier!"

"Don't be too hard on yourself. You've gotten us through most of the hard things on the mission."

Nyssa sighed and put her head in her hands. "I guess I did."

Even though Nyssa got the team through so much, the only way she was going to figure out about the curse of cabin 9 was if she were to get some samples of the armor, or at least figure out what type of metal it was.

With each inch closer to the armor, a bad feeling rumbled in Nyssa's stomach. Something was wrong, but she had to keep going.

Her fingers gently touched the armor and in a blink of the eye, everything turned black.

***

Nyssa was falling. Free falling. Everything was pitch black and she couldn't see a thing.

She twisted and flipped around the big tunnel.

She couldn't scream, she didn't have a voice. When she opened her mouth, no sound came out. Her brain was spinning, she didn't know what was happening.

Suddenly, Nyssa was swiftly pulled to the side and she stopped falling.

Nyssa gasped for air as her fingers scraped against the cold, wet, stone floor. Her heart pounded against her chest and she could feel blood drip down her cheek.

Nyssa looked around, everything was pitch black, she couldn't even see her hands.

Nyssa slowly began to stand up. Inside her, things cracked and popped and everything ached.

Nyssa put her hand on her chest.

Her heartbeat began to slow down and her breathing returned back to normal, even though, with each breath she took, she wanted to cry out in pain.

"Where am it?" Nyssa asked herself. She bent down and felt around for her bag full of magical items. Gone.

Nyssa sighed, "if only I had a light."

Suddenly, Nyssa felt something fall on her foot. The pain shot up her arm, causing her to grab her ankle and wince in pain.

She looked down at the object and saw a small pocket flashlight. Nyssa bent down and flicked the on switch.