WAIT FOR ME [ nico di angelo ]

Nico's positivity is unsetteling

“Come on.” Nico led Louis gently away from the scene. “We don’t want to lose them.”

"I sort of with we could." Mumbled Louis.

After a few more miles, the empousai disappeared over a ridge. When Louis and Nico caught up, they found themselves at the edge of another massive cliff. The River Phlegethon spilled over the side in jagged tiers of fiery waterfalls. The demon ladies were picking their way down the cliff, jumping from ledge to ledge like mountain goats.

Louis' heart crept into his throat. Even if he and Nico reached the bottom of the cliff alive, they didn’t have much to look forward to. The landscape below them was a bleak, ash-gray plain bristling with black trees, like insect hair. The ground was pocked with blisters. Every once in a while, a bubble would swell and burst, disgorging a monster like a larva from an egg.

All the newly formed monsters were crawling and hobbling in the same direction—toward a bank of black fog that swallowed the horizon like a storm front. The Phlegethon flowed in the same direction until about halfway across the plain, where it met another river of black water—maybe the Cocytus? The two floods combined in a steaming, boiling cataract and flowed on as one toward the black fog.

The longer Louis looked into that storm of darkness, the less he wanted to go there. It could be hiding anything—an ocean, a bottomless pit, an army of monsters. But if the Doors of Death were in that direction, it was their only chance to get home.

He peered over the edge of the cliff.

“Wish we could fly,” he muttered.

Nico looked at Louis as if he was stupid. "You have some wild ideas. That's not a compliment."

Louis disagreed, “I’d settle for a hang glider.”

“Maybe not a good idea.” Nico pointed. Above them, not even considering Louis' ideas.

Dark winged shapes spiraled in and out of the bloodred clouds.

“Furies?” Louis wondered.

“Or some other kind of demon,” Nico said. “Tartarus has thousands.”

"Horray!"

"I don't appreciated your sarcasm."

"I don't appreciate your attitude."

Nico didnt respond, leaving Louis to feel satisfied with the conversation.

“Okay, so we climb.” Nico suggested instead.

The boys couldn’t see the empousai below them anymore. They’d disappeared behind one of the ridges, but that didn’t matter. It was clear where he and Nico needed to go. Like all the maggot monsters crawling over the plains of Tartarus, they should head toward the dark horizon. Louis was just brimming with enthusiasm for that.

As they started down the cliff, Louis concentrated on the challenges at hand: keeping his footing, avoiding rockslides that would alert the empousai to their presence, and of course making sure he and Nico didn’t plummet to their deaths.

About halfway down the precipice, Nico said, “Stop, okay? Just a quick break.”

They sat together on a ledge next to a roaring fiery waterfall. Louis put his arm around Nico and he leaned against him, both shaking from exhaustion.

Louis wanted him to know that he was still here. Even in the deep dark depths of hell, surrounded by monsters and possible death, there was still one reassurance of human life with him. Physical touch made it seem real, and Louis needed that same reassurance, that neither were alone.

Louis' stomach felt like it had shrunk to the size of a gumdrop. If they came across any more monster carcasses, he was afraid he might pull an empousa and try to devour it.

At least he had Nico. They would find a way out of Tartarus. They had to.

“Things could be worse,” Nico ventured.

“Yeah?” Loius didn’t see how, but he tried to sound upbeat.

"Yeah," responded Nico. "We could've already of been killed by now. But we haven't, so we're doing well."

"It's really unsettling when your positive."

"Now you know how I feel whenever you speak."

Louis gave Nico a small shove. "Shut up."

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