The Coming of Nico di Angelo

Irony, Thy Name is Jesus

CHAPTER SUMMARY

Nico is brought to speak with Hecate.

BEGINNING NOTES

Chapter Rating: General Audiences
Content Warning: None
Word Count: 2520

Computer is dying, have to go fast.

Ignore the awkward passive voice in the chapter summary--since those summaries showed up in people's inboxes back when I posted on Archive of Our Own, I didn't want to mention WHO brought Nico to Hecate in case someone hasn't read the previous chapter yet.

And all the characters are owned by JK Rowling, or Rick Riordan.

Credits at the end.

____________________NICO____________________

Nico never imagined Hecate could be so beautiful.

It wasn't in a romantic or attractive sense. No, Hecate's beauty and grace came from pure power. She looked the way Nico thought a goddess would back in his Westover Hall years--like she could kill you with a snap of her fingers.

The underworld's texts had described her well--the seductress stereotype with 'skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony,' as the Brother's Grimm put it. Her sons modeled Snow White off of her, although based on the Disney movie Will forced him to watch, the fierceness of her aura and character didn't translate. That poison-apple red dress, Greek fire bracelets, fluttering locks, and moving tattoos on her sternum screamed enchantress. The Greek headdress painted her as royalty; her throne told the world she was an empress. A goddess.

They were in a church. A Roman Catholic church. Until 1939, until ten-years-old, he had sat in pews like the ones next to him every Sunday. As the teenage Nico walked down the aisle, he recalled his childhood self kneeling and listening to mass beside Nonno, Mamma, and Bianca.

Nico no longer worshiped that God. He found it ironic that a son of Clementia, the Roman Goddess of forgiveness and mercy, and his fight against the corrupted state of Roman religion to restore it to its former glory morphed into the religion that ended the outward reign of Olympus.

Irony, thy name is Jesus.

Still, Nico was in awe of his surroundings. Roman arches of marble held a domed ceiling adorned with mosaic after mosaic of medieval art. Nico recognized the style; Nonno took him and Bianca to a few of the ancient churches over the years, many of which were maintained with money from the Vatican. But this artwork... Nico's preschool brain had only hazy memories of what little he had to compare it to.

The sheer age of the thing rocked Nico to the core. And its size, how it towered over Nico and the son of Hecate beside him? It took his breath away. How long had it taken for laborers of fifteen-hundred years ago to construct? To design? Even without an interest in architecture like Annabeth's, the sight transported him to another plane. With everything that had happened in the last two months, Nico welcomed that feeling.

On a blue background of a sea, a golden sun rose to cast the red and orange colors of dawn on the water. In the center stood Jesus, wrapped in robes the color of the star behind him, with his disciples on either side. Below that, layers of other sites: sheep staring up at him, golden scripture glittering on an oceanic background, and so much more that Nico couldn't process it, all the colors vibrant despite their age.

He and Alabaster walked through the wooden gates to where Hecate stood, facing them with her back to the altar, so its marble statues and Roman columns framed her. It made her even more divine.