Myth Mashup (A Percy Jackson, Magnus Chase, and Kane Chronicles crossover)

Chapter 20: TJ's POV

The face of Natalie Chase stared through me. She looked a lot like Magnus. The face structure nearly identical to my hallmate's. She stared right through me, not seeing any of us.

"T.J....?" Sadie reiterated. "What is it?"

She walked over to where I was standing, and looked at the ghost in front of me.

"Who... who is that?" She asked.

"It's..." I started to say, but trailed off.

"Natalie Chase," Nico finished for me. "Magnus' mom."

Sadie's eyes widened. "Oh."

"There's nothing you can do for her, T.J.." Nico said, cutting through my thoughts.

I didn't say anything, but nodded dumbly, following Nico as he started to walk away. I felt terrible that Magnus wasn't even here to see his mom again. I know I would give anything to see my mama again - and that's what I planned to do.

I wanted to save her somehow, give Magnus the chance to see what had been taken away from him one last time. But it was impossible, unless I dragged Magnus himself to Helheim. I couldn't compromise our mission.

As we got in a closer proximity to the large castle looming in front of us, the occasional spirit would start to approach and try to attack us. Instead of eradicating them with his sword, Nico simply thrust a hand out, stopping the ghosts in their tracks.

Every time he did this, however, I could tell he was getting more tired. I could only imagine how exhausting his powers were. His breathing was steadily becoming more labored, and he paused every so often to take a small swig from a mixture of unicorn drought and Mountain Dew.

Sadie checked in with him to make sure he was doing okay, but he assured us that he was fine - that he had done this plenty of times before.

It took us ages to get through Helheim, trudging through the dreary fields of misery. We were only a couple hundred yards away from the castle when a loud rumbling interrupted my hunt for my mama.

We all looked up, and saw the huge double doors groan open to reveal the faces of a crowd of zombies. They all looked more or less the same, with varying degrees of gruesome features. Some of them merely looked decayed, but others had chunks of flesh missing, or entire limbs missing. All of them had the same gray skin and bright yellow eyes. Every single one of them held a weapon - a sword here, a dagger there, I even saw one with a gun.

I cringed at seeing all of the dead. Sure, I was dead too, but you wouldn't know it by looking at me - unless you're Nico. All of that decay and rot made me sick. 

Wordlessly, di Angelo took out his sword, and got into a fighting stance. His face was beaded with concentration. I assumed he was the only thing stopping them from attacking, but I didn't think he could hold them off for long. He was already exhausted as is, and it seemed that he couldn't keep it up for very long. I unstrung my bayonet, and made sure it was loaded and ready. I started to aim. I saw out of the corner of my eye that Sadie took out her long staff and wand from her bag.

"I can't hold them forever," Nico said, grunting with exhaustion. "On my mark, be ready."

We both nodded, ready for the fight.

"3... 2... 1!" Nico exclaimed, as his face relaxed. Immediately, the zombies ran towards us. I bit my tongue between my teeth, aimed, and fired bullet after bullet into the skin of the ghouls. I didn't have a large supply of bone steel shells at all, but I made the most of them before the zombies would get too close for me to shoot them. Every time I hit one of them, they fell to the ground and stopped moving, but I ran out far too soon.