Ghost King Meets Batman

Secondhand State of Mind

Nico woke up with mixed feelings. He didn't feel that Hazel was in danger, but he also wanted to know that she was ok. She wasn't going to join the pack and become a semi-immortal wolf, was she? He wasn't sure if he could handle being left like that again.

Although he was still tired, he climbed out of bed. He took a quick shower and changed into a set of loose clothes. He didn't need anything that restricted his movements right now. He was still stiff, but a lot of the pain had gone away overnight. He could hear his brothers getting up and getting ready in their rooms, and he could even smell some food that he couldn't identify coming from downstairs. He briefly considered going down to eat but ultimately decided against it. He wasn't sure that he'd be able to keep anything down at the moment-- he'd woken up to his stomach churning.

Since he didn't want breakfast and socializing didn't appeal to him either, he needed to find something else to occupy himself-- so he decided to draw. It didn't take him long to come up with the subject matter either. He was going to draw Hazel with the pack of wolves. He had never really done much with animals before, so it took him a long time to figure out the facial shape and the proportions of the body parts. He used the back of a failed sketch as a place to practice. He knew that he probably wasn't going to be able to finish in this sitting, but he wanted to get started on it while he had the chance.

As he was sketching, Diana came into the room-- presumably to check on him. She came in quietly, and the demigod didn't hear her come in at first. He noticed her only when she rested her palm on the desk by his elbow. Her other hand perched on the back of his desk chair. She was glancing over his sketches which made him want to hide them. He knew he had only just started trying to draw wolves that morning, and he shouldn't feel ashamed for his lack of competence, but he did anyway. If Diana thought they were bad, she didn't say so.

"I thought you'd be resting. After all, possessions take a lot out of you." She sounded like a concerned parent. Not as much as Ivy might have, but still. Nico shrugged and turned back to his notebook. Diana continued looking over his shoulder as he drew. Nico erased the haunches to start again for the fourth time.

"I am pretty tired. That's why I didn't come down this morning," he admitted, looking up from his work again. This conversation was stealing all of his motivation. It seemed that he wouldn't be learning how to sketch wolves today after all.

"Your eyes are sunken. How did you sleep?"

"Not great," he shrugged uncomfortably.

"Did you have a nightmare?"

"No, not really. It was just... a weird dream." He didn't know how to describe the dream. Nico couldn't think of the words. He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest.

"I see-- Nico, your burn! Has it gotten worse?" Diana exclaimed. He was wearing a t-shirt that revealed the rather nasty-looking burn on his arm. The burn did look worse, but it hadn't started hurting yet. Diana grabbed his arm gently to inspect it.

"Why is it worse?" He asked the Amazonian woman.

"My lasso must have burned you deeper than I thought..." Diana sounded horrified.

"It's not hurting," he replied. It was weird that it wasn't hurting. The coloring was dark and angry. The skin was blistering and raw, but he only felt like he had gotten a mild sunburn.

"Maybe it hasn't caught up with you yet," she suggested hesitantly. She obviously didn't know what they were dealing with here either. Nico absently hoped that it wouldn't just decide to start hurting at some point-- it didn't look enjoyable.

"What could be causing this? Is it magic burn?" Nico had only ever heard about magic burns-- he had never seen one in person. Supposedly they occur when two beings with conflicting magic types use their magic on each other, and it burns them. Was Diana's magic not compatible with his own? They were both Greeks, weren't they?