The Forgotten Heroes || PJO

TWENTY-TWO: The Dream

---Nico POV---

"ARE YOU SURE everything is going to plan?"

"Yes! Stop questioning it and things will go faster!"

I looked around the room I had woken up in. There were no windows, and no doors, the dark floor looked spongy, and seemed like it was moving, but wherever I stepped, the floor seemed still and solid. The walls were made of pure gold, and the ceiling was red. There were two chairs in the room, both occupied, and a stand with a crystal ball could be seen in front of them. There was no other furniture in sight. I tuned back into their conversation as I observed them.

"Fine. Tell me what is running through your head and I shall calm your worries." The bigger one said. He wore a black cloak and he was broad shouldered, and the only other thing I knew about him was that he had a deep voice.

"Do they still have the ability to message each other?" The second one said. He was small, and scrawny, with a nose that seemed to have been broken many times.

"It should go faulty any day now." I decided to focus on their conversation as I moved closer to them

"And their pure focus?"

"Worry will take over those who are naturally that way when the time is right." I was standing right behind them now, and they had fallen into silence. The scrawny one was playing with the crystal ball, and the big one, was concentrating on the wall in front of them.

I studied his shadowy face, and a sense of dread filled me, though I wasn't sure why. I followed his gaze and found a blurry image that was coming more and more into focus as the scrawny guy played with the crystal all more. I realized that the crystal ball wasn't just the kind that fortune tellers used to predict the future. It seemed to be used as a video camera or focuser.

When the image came into focus properly, I understood why. The image was so clear it looked like what was happening was actually happening right in front of them. When it was focused properly, the scrawny guy leaned back and started to speak again.

''The-"

"Wait. Let me watch this first. I must see what is going on, how close they are getting."

The image showed people walking quietly through a large, empty field. I quickly realized that there were eight people, and I knew every single one of them: They were the eight who had gone out searching for 'Fate's Cave' over a week and a half ago. Skylar, Jacob, and Will seemed shaken up, but unharmed otherwise.

Leo, on the other hand, was sporting a couple small scratches on his arms and one on his cheek, Thalia and Luke both had bruises all over them, and Piper had a limp and a bloody arm. But Reyna, she looked like she'd gotten the worst of the attacks. She was covered in sweat and grime and she had a huge stab wound in her side that had been wrapped tightly, but bloodstains were still prominent. The parts of her complexion that weren't bloody looked slightly green, and I suspected that she'd been poisoned.

I almost gasped, but held it in, thankfully. Though I had left Earth on a bad note, I had never felt betrayed by Reyna or Will. Most of the immortal campers had actually become my friend, but none of them knew that we were once their friends. We still weren't sure about a lot of things, and we wanted to question them on the subject further.

But I had grown fond of reyna the last time I had spent time with her, which was when we were traveling across the world to get the Athena Parthenos back to Camp Half Blood - over 5,ooo years ago. I shuddered at the thought, then focused back in the wall, worried for Reyna.

"All right Reyna, you should drink some more nectar now." Will said. "I don't know what kind of dragon that was, but it poisoned you so don't try to argue with me." He grumbled as he looked through his bag for something. "All I have left is ambrosia and nectar. This isn't any help against poison."

I smiled as Reyna took a drink of nectar. Will hadn't changed at all: he still got frustrated when he couldn't heal someone.

"Look. There it is." Skylar gathered everyone's attention and pointed. I didn't see anything. Then Skylar walked into view and pulled back a curtain of ferns, like in the old disney movie from the last time I was on Earth, the remake of Rapunzel. Tangled I think it was called.

Everyone followed her through, and the view blurred.

"NO." The big one jumped up angrily and started pacing the room. "They can't be there already. My dragon was supposed to kill them!"

"Well, obviously, your dragon failed." The scrawny one mumbled.

"DO NOT SASS ME KENNETH!" The unnamed one shouted angrily.

"I wasn't!" Kenneth said quickly. "I was just stating the obvious!"

"Well we need a new plan! The Fates care for them! The Fates will break the Ancient Laws to help them! They have shown that they will because they are all still alive!"

"W-we c-ould let T-Tartarus t-take c-care -o-of t-the o-ones t-that g-go t-there?" Kenneth suggested.

The unnamed man stopped pacing. "Yes. They will die before they can get anywhere useful. Like Hemera. They'll never reach Hemera. Yes, we can use their inevitable trip to Tartarus to finish this." He strode back to his seat, passing me on his way. He sat in his fancy chair and opened his mouth like he was going to continue, but froze with his hand still up. "We are not alone." He whispered. I gasped, and backed away quickly. Both of them looked around, but didn't seem to see me. 

The bigger man said something, but I couldn't hear what. My ears were suddenly filled with ringing,and my view started to ripple, like a lake right after a rock has been thrown in.

My vision went black, and the next thing I knew, I was sitting up in my own bed, with my heart racing.

I quickly got up and searched for my journal, to write down everything I could remember. I wasn't fast enough though, because the dream was already fading. I wrote down the scraps and pieces I could remember, then fell asleep again just as fast as I had woken up.

In the morning I was very grateful I had written down what I had when I had, because when I woke, I could not remember the dream at all.

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A/N: Sooooooo... I officially SUCK at updating... I'm so, so, super sorry. I was gonna try to update this almost two week ago but things didn't go according to plan. But things are finally getting a move on in this book and it's going to get very exciting very, very quickly! just wait! I'm going to spend more time on this book now, and try to do better with my updates. I want to go back and re-wrote Chapter Four (the really crappy, REALLY short Hazel POV chapter when they first meet Chaos) so that it;s a full length chapter, and actually has foreshadowing in it! I'll tell you guys when I finally do that too. Let me know what you guys think, I REALLY wanna know. I miss getting a whole bunch of comments because I love talking with you guys. I also like hearing what you guys think is gonna happen, because even though the story is basically planned out, your ideas can give me ideas to make this book better or to use in the next book. So yeah! Comments! Please! And once again, I'm so, so, SO sorry that I took over a month to update. Again.

- Kat -

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Words: 1085/1289

***UNEDITED***