Becoming Pluto's Ambassador: Nico Di Angelo

3

I woke up to the sound of clattering. There was one of my father's skeleton guards coming into my room.

Seeing that I was awake, he nodded and quickly backed out of my room.

I was glad, because I really valued my privacy. At least no one living had ever seen my bedroom apart from me.

It had black brick walls, parts of which were covered in a soft red velvet. The floor was the same black stones, but had a bright red cow skin rug. I had asked my father to remove this many times as I had seen Apollo's sacred cows and knew that this had to have come from one of them. I was rather disgusted by it. As my father refused to take it away, I had decidedly rolled it up under my bed so I didn't have to think about it.

My bed itself was a king-sized poster bed with a canopy, all made out of wrought iron that had been painted black. The sheets were blood red and the duvet was black and silver swirls.

If you couldn't tell, most of the stuff in Hades palace was black or red. The only thing permanently in my room that was not was pictures of my sister and mother when we were young. These were tacked to the wall above my (you guessed it) black obsidian dressing table.

I quickly brushed my teeth and hair and got dressed in my usual black clothes. Snatching my Stygian iron sword up from the dressing table, I attached it to my belt. I was ready to go.

When I finally found my father, he looked different to usual, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

He looked more composed with a smart suit that shifted when he walked. I realised that it was faces of the screaming dead.

This wasn't the only difference though. He also had a more stern expression on his face than usual, ..... And now that I'm looking, his features seem more severe.

I decided not to worry about it as he was a god. He could literally take on any form that he wished, whether that be 7 metres tall in Greek armour or a 1 foot tall plant.

I laughed at imagining him looking like a plant.

"Is something funny Nico?" He asked sternly, in a voice slightly different to usual.

"No" I swallowed.

"Well then let us be off, this is an important day." I didn't quite understand what he meant until he waved his hand and I felt my body being split up and reassembled. It felt like shadow travel only a lot less nauseating.

Although, what I really focused on, rather than where we had gone was the fact that his hand was covered in rings. There seemed to be a ring of every precious metal or gem I had ever heard of. There was silver, gold, platinum and the most valuable one by far would have to have been the diamond one. The ring did not have diamonds on it: it was a solid ring of diamond, seemingly carved of it. I looked to his other hand and recognised topaz and other birthstone gem rings, seemingly carved the same way.

I wondered why all of a sudden he had such a liking to rings.

I looked up to ask my father, but he was intently staring at our surroundings. I decided to take a look.

We were stood on the side of a hill looking across at another set of hills in the distance. Between here and there was a peaceful bowl shaped valley with lush green fields. There was a small river flowing from the hills in the distance that went off to the left and curved a wide arc into the valley, almost like a C, before it pooled into a small lake.

After surveying our surroundings, I couldn't deny that they were beautiful, but when I looked up my father was still looking intently into the valley.

"Um, what are you looking at?" I asked my father. "And where are the people I'm supposed to be meeting?"

He gave me a puzzled look and then his expression change to one of understanding. "Of course, the mist obscures the view for anyone who doesn't know what they are looking for."

He clicked his fingers in front of him, and suddenly I could see a sprawling settlement out in front of me now that the most had been bent to allow me a look at it.

The thing that immediately caught my eye because the landscape was different to before was a small hill set in front of the lake, slightly obscuring it from my view. It had fancy building on it that looked like temples, with them increasing in size as they got closer to the top of the hill.

There at the very top was the biggest temple of them all, and I could see from here the vast support columns that ran along the front edge, clearly marking this one out as special.

On the other side of the lake, there was an impressive town that from here looked beautiful with many different housing styles and spacious parks. There were also a lot of buildings that looked like scaled down replicas of famous landmarks, but I couldn't quite figure out where I had seen the actual land marks before.

Leading away from the town towards hills behind is an impressive aqueduct with too many arches to count.

Leading off to the left of the hill with temples and the town was a well worn path that lead towards an encampment that had a military look to it. It was well organised with barracks in one section and bigger public buildings in other sections.

Now that really looked, I could see people the size of ants swarming around all of the valley's main features.

"So they're the people I will be going." I stated with a hint of a question in my voice just to get confirmation.

"Yes" my father replied.

"And can you tell me what this place is then, father? Or does it break the oath?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

"Yeah, it would break the oath if I told you," he said, "but there is something I must tell you before you make the same mistake again."

I looked up at him slightly confused and very curious.

"I'm not your father Nico. My name is Pluto."

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A/N
Sorry if this chapter was a bit description heavy, but it sets up where a good chunk of the next chapters is likely to be based and I felt it was important.

Once again please let me know of any grammatical errors and I will fix them.

~Sheeps