Chapter Text

It Started With A Nightmare

He was at the park. He didn’t remember how he got there or why he wanted to be there at such a late hour in the first place, he just knew that he was supposed to be sitting at the bottom of the slide, looking at the ground beneath him. There was a small groove of dirt whittled into the space below the slide; carved there by countless children falling to the ground after having their turn and no doubt by also trying to climb back up for their second turn.
From a short distance, the young man resting at the slide, dimly illuminated by a nearby street light, seemed a bit odd. He had pale skin that looked like it could have once been darker, as though he were sickly. His eyes were dark brown, but the poor lighting made them appear to be as black as his shaggy hair. His clothing, too, is mostly black, with the exception of what appears to be a WWII aviator’s jacket, a chain belt, and a silver skull ring. His body seemed to radiate an aura of both ‘don’t touch me’ and ‘I hate your grandmother’. Nico di Angelo was not one to be fucked with.
As his eyes acclimated to the dim lighting, Nico began to see the individual grains of dirt mixed in with the unfriendly woodchips that littered the park to ‘delicately cushion’ the fall of small children. He admired the varying shades of brown spotted with flecks of white Styrofoam and absentmindedly wondered if it would be at all possible to count each grain of dirt below him before the sun rose. Would his father notice his absence? Being swept away by thought, the young man hardly even noticed when the ground started to swirl around him. Three spots of dirt before him began to spiral counterclockwise, slowly picking up speed as white shapes began to emerge. Soon, three fully-formed skeletons kneeled before him, muscle and marrow still clinging to their rotting forms.
“Oh shit!” Nico screamed, scrambling backwards up the slide. The bones looked up to him with empty faces, hands over what were once their hearts, and seemed to question him; as though saying “Wait, what?” Immediately, one cocked its head, rearing forward, attempting to climb up the metal slide and failing to find traction. The other two followed shortly, pushing the first one ahead, supporting him as he swiped at Nico’s red and black converse, catching a shoelace and dragging him down. He fell into the space where countless carefree children before him had landed, the skeletal forms clacking around him, enveloping him until not even the light from the street could be seen. He woke up screaming.
Nico di Angelo would love to say that it was simply a dream. He would love to blame it on that night’s dinner or a bad day, but he knows better. That shit is most definitely not what dreams are made of. That night was real, except instead of waking up to his bedroom ceiling, he opened his eyes to the sound of clattering bones; watching them as they sunk into the hard-packed earth as though it were quick sand. Afterwards, he had run like hell back to the penthouse he shared with his parents, crawled into bed, and prayed to every deity he could think of. Nico was raised Roman Catholic, but never really believed in any of it. He swore that what he just experienced must have been God pissing on him. You think I’m not real? Well here are some undead freaks for ya, motherfucker! Believe in me now?
He took a moment to look around his room. Shadows lay across everything, hiding under his bed, around his desk, in the space left by his open closet door. Never before had he been so afraid of the dark. He had that dream enough times to know that he wasn’t going back to sleep tonight. Nico grabbed his laptop from his desk and booted it up. Like every other night, he started up going to Mythomagic sites. Chat rooms, wikis, even subreddits. After a couple of hours of this, he was looking up terms like ‘necromancy’ and ‘dead rising’. He never really found much. He knew that it would probably be best to write it off as a lucid dream and move on, but then he’d find a story on Yahoo or some beyond the grave fan site about some girl who knew a guy whose uncle’s great grandmother Tootie could see ghosts and raise the dead and, for just a second, feel as though he weren’t crazy. That night, Nico fell asleep at his keyboard, snuggling it for warmth like a cat or a desperate fangirl.
He woke up the next morning to the sound of bickering, nature’s alarm clock in his opinion. He quickly jumped in the shower, the high water pressure barely penetrating his matted hair and tried his best to wake up under the cold water after a mere three hours of sleep. After his shower he looked into the mirror. Dark bags weighed heavily under his eyes, giving them the impression of being large and black with a glint of madman in the foggy reflection. He really should stop doing this to himself. After dressing in his usual all-black attire-the usual exceptions included-Nico stole a pomegranate from the fruit bowl on the sleek black marble kitchen table, a furniture piece selected by his step-mother to match the rest of the recently remodeled room. Sneaking past the elevator door, he successfully avoided the now full-on fight going down in the living room. He pressed the ground floor button and waited as the elevator took its sweet time, going two floors up. Usually, penthouses are found on the top floor of the building. His father was neurotic, though, and hated the sky. So, naturally, his father came to the totally sane conclusion of commissioning the construction of a 66 story apartment complex with a spacious two-floor penthouse carved into the warm, cuddly, cold, hard ground. He still has no idea just what, exactly his father does for a living, but he senses that he must really not want to know.
Once on the ground floor, Nico waved to the doorman, who did his job well as he exited the building. The valet had come to know his routine by now and was standing outside the tall building, keys in hand, smile on face. Nico tipped the kid and jumped in his 1966 Volkswagen Beetle, a small present from his father, gifted on his sixteenth birthday. He promptly peeled the pomegranate, digging out its insides and enjoying the bittersweet taste as he waited for his half sister, Hazel, to finish getting ready-if she was even up yet. One fruit rind tossed out the window and thirty minutes later, Hazel burst out the front door, her heavy gold necklace jingling as she slit into the car and threw her backpack in the back seat along with his. She was wearing high-wasted red jeans with a flowing white mid-drift top. A simple outfit made loud by her usual abundance of gems and jewels. One difference he noted today, however, was a thin gold wire clasped around her wrist. It was an odd choice for her; simple and small. He could only assume that it had come from her new boyfriend that he had been hearing so much about. She noticed him inspecting it and immediately drew her hand away from sight. "What?" she asked, defensive. "Nothing," he responded lightly, kicking the car into ignition and pulling out of his parking spot.
To Nico, school was almost as bad as the park at night. Grotesque people skulking about, some looking at him as though he could be an easy target, others averting their eyes because they knew better. All dampened by their idiocy and intensified by their insensitivity. Oh, high school. He stuck close to the walls, timing his steps perfectly so as not to bump into any of them unnecessarily. his locker was near the center of school, lining one of the walls that surrounded the outdoor eating pavilion. His school was relatively new and apparently, when it was built, someone forgot to add enough lockers when they were trying to make it look 'eco-friendly' and nice. So it has solar panels, windmills, ponds that recycle water, and a greenhouse commonly used to smoke pot in, but only approximately 500 lockers, meaning that seniors and juniors get lockers and all underclassmen are forced to either carry their books, or start dating a junior. Nico shared his locker with no one. It was filled with books that he had never opened and homework that he never did with a tiny disco ball hanging from the top hanger, courtesy of Hazel, who probably now shares a locker with Frank, a guy who is just barely old enough to be a junior and more than capable of stepping on Nico if he felt like it. He grabs his physics book and heads to class just as the first warning bell of the day rings, once again fading into the shadows.

By fourth period, Nico wants to take a nap. He's already taken two, but still. He goes to his locker once again to get out his English book and heads off to the corresponding classroom. English is probably the only real subject that Nico actually likes. He doesn't think that anyone has ever really taken a glance at him and thought 'must be a bookworm', but its true. He loves the thought of going into a world where anything is possible. That's probably why he adores Mythomagic so much, too. Nico's English teacher reminds him somewhat of the one from the movie 'Dead Poets Society'. He was loud, vindictive, and passionate. Not to mention the fact that he didn't take shit from anyone. Today, he had us writing poems for this year's arts and literature magazine. Nico wrote about his 'encounter', making it seem dreamlike. It sounded so cool on paper, as many such ideas do. Half the things that go on in books would have people shitting if it happened for real, but the characters always handle it so well, even if it doesn't seem so from an outside perspective. I guess that's why they're called heroes.