What Happened in Albania?

What happens in Albania…
Nico hadn’t been focusing, it was true.
In the aftermath, he felt especially bad for Reyna. During those terrible, fiasco moments, it seemed like she was the only one holding up the weight of the group. Which wasn’t technically true- Nico was the guy shadow traveling a forty-ton statue across the world. But other than that, he was completely and totally useless. After the travel, he’d immediately drop into a fit of sleep. Even at full strength, he couldn’t fight nearly as well as Reyna. And it was his fault they transported themselves to Albania on accident.
He may have been focusing on not focusing on the bright green eyes of a particular someone.
Maybe.
So, yes, he was partly to blame. Maybe a little more than partly.
But it was definitely Coach Hedge that screwed things up.
Nico was so stupid- along with locating themselves a few hundred miles off course, he’d totally forgotten to restrain Coach. He normally didn’t do that sort of job- that was more Hazel, and Piper, and Jason, really. But they weren’t here. And Reyna hadn’t really met the guy yet.
She’d get to know him quickly enough, it turns out.
“Nico,” she demanded, immediately crouched, ready to pounce to action. Her eyes blazed. “Where are we?”
He collapsed in answer. Dancing kaleidoscope spots swirled in and out of his view. Red splotches blurred his vision. He managed to stay just barely conscious.
But Nico didn’t have enough energy to speak.
He could hear Coach Hedge shout a death threat to any enemy within a hundred foot radius. He could hear Reyna curse and give the goat a good whacking to the head. He could hear the heartbeat in his ears pound down to a slightly slower, bearable rhythm.
Reyna cursed again. She must have realized what idiots she had on her hands. Her dogs began to pace around Nico, giving purring growls, low and almost inaudible in their throats.
“Albania,” Reyna had suddenly announced. Nico really didn’t know how she knew that. Hedge began to speak brashly and loudly, and she gave him another smack that didn’t sound too pretty.
“Has your brain melted?” she hissed, and if Nico had the strength to laugh, he might’ve. “Are you trying to get us killed?”
“Hey!” Coach Hedge immediately protested. Nico’s pulsing red splotches were fading into the black of his eyelids. That normally was a good sign. “I know you’ve got your thing leading your pretty Roman legion and all, but over here in these Albanian woods, I’m the protector, cupcake! I brought down the giant Enchiladas with my own bare hands! I steered the Argo II with my own sweat and tears and blood! I can kill anyone with just the glare in my eyes and a click in my heels, missy, and I-“
There was sudden deathly quiet. Coach Hedge groaned in pain. Nico knew something bad had happened.
He tried to move.
A foot on his back stopped him.
He froze until the foot stepped down next to his face. As his eyes blurred and focused, he noticed a sparkle of familiar gold gleam of boot armor.
Reyna. She’d stepped on his back. To stay down. Hold his ground. She was trying to tell him something.
But what was it?
“Who are you? Is this territory your home? Speak your names.” Her voice rang out, loud, clear, commanding. Anyone who knew anything would have immediately began talking. But only wind stirred the air.
She tried again in Latin. Then in Spanish, in a last desperate hope.
Still. Silence.
Nico had never felt more useless. Lying on the floor, blind, in the middle of some obviously terribly dangerous situation that he had no control over.
A nap sounded nice. A twelve-hour, twenty-hour maybe, nap. Maybe that could solve this problem…
There was a step forward. It was from a little farther away- maybe twenty, thirty feet. Nico couldn’t see, but it seemed tentative, curious. Not terribly threatening at all.
Nico could sense it was coming a split second before it came. He tried to call out. He tried to stop him. But it was no use.
Coach Hedge had, of course, charged.
And he was screaming, “Die!”
***
They had the Athena Parthenos in their hands. They had a sword on the throat of Nico Di Angelo, who could barely keep his eyes open. Coach Hedge had managed to get knocked out within the first five minutes of fighting the group. If Reyna continued to fight, she would maybe be able to save one of the three, but she needed all of them.
How did things manage to go so wrong?
“Stop!” she announced, hardening her wolf stare. She repeated the command in Latin, Spanish. She put her weapon away and held up her hands. Her mind raced to find a way out of this.
For now, it’d have to be divide and conquer. They hadn’t seen her fight- at least, not the hardcore Roman way- yet. Hopefully, a bunch of men would try to take the statue while the others took Hedge and Nico, leaving a small group of men guarding her.
And she’d be able to take them down easily.
She was so mad she wanted to stab her sword into a rock. Nico brought them to the wrong place. The statue had immediately been seized by other hands. Coach Hedge had charged at the locals without having any sign of threat.
And Reyna was unsure how to proceed.
The crowd began watching her, their faces completely unhelpful. There was fear on that face, glee on that one, uncertainty in those eyes- the mob did not have a collective group of feelings that Reyna could manipulate. Her dogs wisely stayed still behind a tree, ready to surprise attack if Reyna gave the call.
Her brain was whirling with possible ways to mime the words she needed to communicate when one in particular stepped forwards.
“You speak Latin?” he said, in English. Reyna felt her heart slump in relief. One problem down. A million more to go.
“Yes,” she responded, her chin tilting up. She held her ground, tried to radiate power, tried to look royal despite the mud caked up and down her armor and cloak. “And you speak English.”
He had a very strong accent when he said, “It is good language to know. I speak also Italian, Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese.”
Just fabulous for you, Reyna wanted to snap, but she kept her head high and her feet rooted. Coach Hedge was starting to stir, but one of the Albanians smacked him in the head and he stayed facedown. Her throat constricted.
“We didn’t mean any harm,” she said coldly, trying to hold in her wince. How terrible did that sound? Coach Hedge had promised to murder them. “My friend-“ Friend? Advisor? Unnecessary responsibility? “Got a little over-excited at the sights of you. I promise you that it will not happen again.”
She glared at the goat thirty feet away from her, even though he couldn’t see it.
The Albanian waited. He and the rest of the men (and some women) around him were a little on the pale side, most of them sporting light brown hair and brown eyes. They all wore some form of armor, with a large snake plastered along the front, but most of them were in jeans, casual t-shirts. Many of them looked bored to be there, but some of the older ones with scraggly beards had fierce looks in their eyes as they surveyed Reyna.
“Yes.” The Albanian looked at Reyna strangely. He had blonde hair, which was stood out slightly from all the people around him. He seemed to be waiting for more information. Reyna cleared her throat.
“So if you don’t mind, we’ll be going now. We would appreciate you returning our statue. We will be out of your hands in only a couple of hours, at most, and we apologize for making such… nuisances of ourselves.”
No such luck. The Albanian gravely reported this back to the group, and most of the elders laughed in harsh humorlessness. One had a fixed gleam in his glassy eyes as he barked out orders to the translator. There was a scar on the bridge of his nose. His eye was misshapen. His brown beard as well as his hair was nicely trimmed, contrasting with the ruthless savagery etched in his face.
Reyna assumed this was the leader. She clenched her fist in warning.
“ ‘You have brought war to us’,” the English speaker quoted. “ ‘Do not try to- uh, I do not know how to say- give out now because you have lost!’ “
Give up, Reyna corrected numbly. She thought about what he said: You have brought war to us. It reminded her of what the Romans said to the Greeks when the lanky Hispanic- Leo- had accidentally fired onto Camp Jupiter. It hadn’t been the Greeks’ faults, of course, but there was nothing she could do to persuade the Romans otherwise.
Was this any different? A stupid misstep, and sudden conflict? It pained her to realize how easily battles were started, how quick people were to jump to fighting to the death instead of finding another way.
“Trust me,” Reyna promised, her voice low and grave. “You will most definitely regret it.”
Without the Albanian even translating the words, the leader must have decided that he had enough. He held up his hand and asked Reyna a question-
“Roy-myen?”
Roman. He wanted to know if she was Roman.
She hesitated, looking at the guy’s nose scar with vivid intensity. She furrowed her brow. It was not good to give out too much information about yourself- Rome had a lot of enemies.
Apparently that was all he needed to know. He nodded, like he knew it the whole time. He turned to shout to the people behind him, and the people in front cheered. The teenagers in the back sort of looked like they couldn’t wait to go home and bust out the iPhones.
They all began to advance towards Reyna.
Reyna whistled for her dogs, and Argentum and Aurum came barreling out, scratching and tearing and ripping skin. She whipped out her sword again. People- especially the teens- obviously panicked, running away, and Reyna felt a strong surge of victory, but they took Coach Hedge and Nico with them. It all turned into a mad dash.
She groaned, unsheathed her sword, and began to run. She looked back at the statue and cursed. “We’ll be back,” she promised. She told her dogs, in Latin, “Guard the statue.”
That was before something hit her in the head, and blackness shattered around her.
****

She was alert, she was ready, she was being captured, Coach Hedge and Nico were being taken away, and her sword was in her hands.
Except when she finally blinked and looked around, she realized that A) she was actually already captured, B) Coach Hedge and Nico were nowhere to be seen, and C) her sword was imaginary.
Reyna cursed. And then she cursed again. In English, Latin, and Spanish.
It really was amazing how everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong the second they began shadow-traveling.
She started to pace the area before realizing she was stuck in chains. Actual, metal chains. They were bonded into the concrete ground beneath her, and she apparently was in… She was in some sort of backyard?
People had backyards in Albania?
Well, of course, she chided herself. Where else would they hide their actual, terrifyingly creepy metal chains?
Which wouldn’t be a huge problem if she had time to get out of them. Because she knew she could get out of them, but she only had a couple of weeks at most to get a forty ton statue back to New York. Reyna really didn’t feel like wasting a day wriggling around for a makeshift lock pick and using it to unlock her metal chainery.
She checked her inventory.
Her weapons had been displaced, as well as her backpack and all her supplies.
Her lungs finally gave in, sinking to the bottom of her stomach. She couldn’t believe how terrible things were. She wanted to screech. She wanted to scream. It wasn’t even like they were in a particularly dangerous situation- considering the things she’s faced before, this was leaning less towards “oh my god I am going to get killed” and more towards “oh my god I am so frustratingly, agonizingly, terribly, £¢§¶ing annoyed”.
Thank god- somebody had come outside.
She immediately kicked up, using the fastening of her chains to swing her up and around. The body crumpled before her, and she kicked him over towards her feet so she can knock him out and maybe examine the weapons he has. Before she could do much else, the tiny backyard of bushes and dead grass had filled with fifty so people, all in armor and t-shirts with snakes on them.
Reyna scoured the crowd for any information she could gather. There was a guy that wore slightly more whacked out clothes than everyone else. He had some sort of crown hat of metal that swirled around itself, like a big rusted ice cream swirly cone (you know which ones she’s talking about). He was addressing the crowd with big, exaggerated gestures and announcements.
What the hell was going on?
The translator muttered, “-with today, we’ve has a key to revenge, against everywhere Romans, because of how Illyrians were m-mercilerly, I think is term? I think? Ah, well- cruelly defeated by Rome of empire such long ago! Today, we remember and appease ancestors! We appease Great Serpent! Today, Roman is chooses- death, or marriage!”
The English was so rocky that it took Reyna a second to fully understand that no, that was not a bad translation, this is actually happening. Reyna is the Roman. And today, the Roman is chooses- ah, she means, the Roman is choosing between death or marriage.
Reyna is getting married.
But to who?
And what was this about ancestors? Great Serpents? Illyrians?
Her eyes locked with Nico’s in the crowd. His eyes were wild. Coach Hedge apparently had to have been knocked out many times, because his head was filled with bumps Reyna could see even from twenty feet away. The look of that made her absolutely sick. She was completely ready to stab someone.
Especially the next someone that was stupid enough to come up and try to get her to marry anybody.
Nico seemed to realize it, too. His eyes said- as hypocritically crazed as they were- “Calm down”.
As in, “calm down. We need you to keep your head.”
She took a breath and exhaled with great difficulty.
Everyone was looking at her now. The teenagers were laughing out loud, trying to force themselves to look away. The older ones were more serious, but still very amused. Her expression hardened. “What?” her voice dripped cold, quiet venom to the crowd. “What did I do?”
“You marry, or die?” the translator winced as those words came out. Why wouldn’t he? He knew how insane that sounded.
Reyna was momentarily shocked into silence. “What do you mean, do I marry or die? How about neither, you-“
“Marry,” Nico called out, weakly. Reyna glanced at him in surprise. His voice and body was shaking, but his eyes remained dark and strong- just say the damn vows, Reyna. It’s not like it’s real, anyways.
“I…” No, Nico was right. This didn’t even matter. The marriage was hardly official- she was chained in the middle of an Albanian backyard. If her hesitation was only based on pride, she would be glad to lend some in exchange for getting the statue back to Camp Half-Blood on time.
She grimaced and paused for a full ten seconds before nodding, stiffly, once.
Nobody really understands the sacrifices she makes.
The guy in the weird swirly cone hat clapped his hands in laughter. The guy next to her- holding something that was wriggling in his hands- stepped forwards.
“I’m marrying him?” Reyna blurted out, on accident. She then cursed herself. Who else would be better? Why would who she married make the situation any worse than it already was?
Funny she should ask…
“No,” the translator said, in a funny voice. It was enough to make Reyna’s wolf stare waver. That tone… it was so weird… Like pity, concern, uncertainty, disbelief, laughter all in one…
“You are marry the snake.”
Because that was what was in the guy’s hands.
A slithering, tiny, small green garden snake. That seemed to be asleep, but still flicking his tail.
The leader- that old guy with the scar across his nose- turned and announced in mocking, slow, shaky English,
“Roy-myen are marry the snake!”
Laughter rippled through the crowd. Reyna found Nico’s eyes and gave him the biggest “you’vegottabekiddingme” face she could pull ever.
“No, Roman are NOT marry the snake,” she said savagely.
“Reyna…”
“Nico, you can not, you will not, you better not expect me to-“
“Reyna, it does not matter.”
“I will not marry the snake!”
“She will marry the snake!” he tried to weakly announce.
“She will not-“ Reyna was faced with another death stare. It pleaded, ‘Let’s just get out of here as soon as possible, please. Starting with you marrying the snake.’
Her chin lifted again. Her shoulders rolled back with as much authority as she could muster. Her eyes flashed. She announced, her stomach twisting as she admitted it, “The Roman will marry the snake.”
The translator relayed this back to the crowd, who cheered. The swirly-cone head stepped forward and began sprinkling powder of god knows what on her head. Upon closer examination, she realized that the cone hat was made of snakes twisting around each other to the top. She flinched, but the translator whispered, “Is part of ritual.”
She stayed tense.
While the swirly-snake-head guy began addressing the crowd, her words attacked the translator in an almost murderous tone. “What is going on here?”
He winced, again. His face really was very skinny and pale. He probably would be in Albanian college, if it wasn’t summer. He really had no business hanging out with a bunch of psychopaths. “We are, ah, ‘Snake Group’, I guess. Snake is a powerful symbol. When the Rome took over the king Illyria, there were not much of Illyria culture left. There still is not. Some people try to put back pieces later, much much much later, but you see- it is not the same. It never be the same. Most people here to ‘not let culture die’, but not one really believes in Snake magic except the elders and sons, who got attacked by Italy 1939. Says Romans come back. Say Romans will take over. Most people here because of parents. And to laugh. I am sorry.”
Reyna groaned, her insides turning bright red. Of course they had to stumble into the craziest of the crazies. The ones who happened to hate Romans. The ones who happened to make prisoners of war marry their sacred snakes.
She had to think.
It’d gotten quiet again. They were all looking at her expectantly.
“The marriage is done,” the translator winced again. He pointed to the garden snake uncomfortably.
He waited a couple of seconds before saying this, hesitantly. “You… You kiss.”
And this was where Reyna drew the line.
Because the snake was clearly not defanged. Now that she got a closer look, she had no idea why this crazy person volunteered to hold the thing, because the snake was also not a garden snake.
It was tiny, yes.
But non-poisonous?
Reyna definitely was not going to take her chances.
And that’s what they wanted, she realized, growing angrier still. To kill her in humiliation by marrying a snake and dying by the kiss that sealed the deal.
And she knew what she had to do.
She leaned over, and summoned her magic.
Life or death. It only worked in a life or death situation. And this was a life or death situation. If the snake woke and bit her, she could die right now.
The power of Bellona coursed through her veins, and she channeled her energy directly to Nico Di Angelo. Strength, she tried to laser in those strong feelings to those wild, dark eyes. I give you strength. Strenght. Strength.
And before the crowd realized what she was doing, she leaned back and kicked, launching the snake up, up, up in the air.
***
Nico, thank god, immediately sprang into action and started wounding the people around him.
They were mortal, so they weren’t affected by her Imperial Gold blade, which he managed to get into his hands. (Which was so absolutely insulting it was sickening- Reyna and Coach and Nico had been backtracked by nothing but a bunch of crazy mortals. Not even a monster. Mortals.) But good punches to the faces weren’t too pretty, which was what everyone around him was getting, as well as a full-blown panic attack.
The snake had hissed and slithered away, frightening everyone into a frenzy. People immediately turned and ran back into the house. The translator had scurried away over the backyard’s pointy wire fence, which leaned into the rolling hills of greens and yellows.
“Nico Di Angelo!” Reyna’d yelled, and he came over after kicking a few people in places nobody wants to be kicked. With her sword, he slashed through her chains. She wasted no time in grabbing Hedge and her weapon and slicing through the fence to make their escape.
Looking back, everyone was watching through the glass door on the inside: frightened, but laughing. They really hadn’t cared at all whether Reyna lived or died. They couldn’t give less of a crap whether she escaped or not. They had their fun with humiliating a Roman- and that in itself made it a good day. So what if their prisoner had left them in the dust?
She still married a snake.
She wanted to throw up just thinking about it.
And the worst part was- Reyna felt her stomach turn- It made sense. She remembered back to what Aphrodite said, all those years ago-
“No demigod shall heal your heart.”
In the smallest, smallest area of her mind, the tiniest fear spoke: Would the goddess of love be that cruel? To make me feel love for a snake instead of a demigod? Was I doomed to be the wife of an animal, to love it like a husband?
“No,” she said out loud, trying to hustle the satyr behind her as best she could. He lolled around as she struggled. “I will not bow down to that sort of skepticism or doubt. ”
What was she even thinking?
She was worth so much more than that.
She was not doomed to be mated to a snake.
She would not let the Illyrians, or Aphrodite, get into her head.
Ever.
End of statement.
End of discussion.
She was better- so much better- than having doubtful thoughts like that.
She was the praetor of New Rome.
And that will always be her biggest honor- not whether she could land a guy at her side or not.
If Nico was confused, he didn’t show it.
They just continued running, blindly, towards the aura of power, towards the radiation of godly energy, kicking through the three Illyrian guards, straight towards the statue, fastening themselves onto Reyna’s dogs and Coach Hedge and the Athena Parthenos before slipping into the shadows.
Appearing in another area- gods know where they were- Reyna managed to state to Nico, grasping onto his shoulders firmly- “That will never be spoken of ever, ever again.”
The son of Hades made eye contact and grimly nodded, before his eyes rolled to the back of his head and he passed out in front of the praetor’s feet.
Reyna shook and sat down in exhaustion, leaning back to shake her head.
What happens in Albania….

Notes