Bianca sat with [the Hunters], leaving her little brother to hang out in the front with us, which seemed cold to me, but Nico didn’t seem to mind.
“This is so cool!” Nico said, jumping up and down in the driver’s seat. “Is this really the sun? I thought Helios and Selene were the sun and moon gods. How come sometimes it’s them and sometimes it’s you and Artemis?”
-Rick Riordan, The Titan’s Curse
“I am the son of Hades,” Nico insisted. “Be gone!”
Minos laughed. “You have no power over me. I am the lord of spirits! The ghost king!”
“No.” Nico drew his sword. “I am.”
He stabbed his black blade into the floor, and it cleaved through the stone like butter.
“Never!” Minos’s form rippled. “I will not—” The ground rumbled. The windows cracked and shattered to pieces, letting in a blast of fresh air. A fissure opened in the stone floor of the workshop, and Minos and all his spirits were sucked into the void with a horrible wail.
-Rick Riordan, The Battle of the Labyrinth
“Son of Hades.” Kronos spit on the ground. “Do you love death so much you wish to experience it?”
“Your death,” Nico said, “would be great for me.”
“I’m immortal, you fool! I have escaped Tartarus. You have no business here, and no chance to live.”
Nico drew his sword—three feet of wicked sharp Stygian iron, black as a nightmare. “I don’t agree.”
The ground rumbled. Cracks appeared in the road, the sidewalks, the sides of the buildings. Skeletal hands grasped the air as the dead clawed their way into the world of the living. There were thousands of them, and as they emerged, the Titan’s monsters got jumpy and started to back up.
-Rick Riordan, The Last Olympian
Hazel felt like she’d just introduced two nuclear bombs. Now she was waiting to see which one exploded first.
Until that morning, her brother Nico had been the most powerful demigod she knew. The others at Camp Jupiter saw him as a traveling oddball, about as harmless as the fauns. Hazel knew better. She hadn’t grown up with Nico, hadn’t even known him very long. But she knew Nico was more dangerous than Reyna, or Octavian, or maybe even Jason.
-Rick Riordan, The Son of Neptune
Nico wasn’t exactly a sunshine person, but for once he welcomed the warmth. It made him feel more substantial – anchored to the mortal world. With every shadow-jump, coming back got harder and harder. Even in broad daylight his hand passed through solid objects. His belt and sword kept falling around his ankles for no apparent reason. Once, when he wasn’t looking where he was going, he walked straight through a tree.
Nico remembered something Jason Grace had told him in the palace of Notus: Maybe it’s time you come out of the shadows.
If only I could, he thought. For the first time in his life, he had begun to fear the dark, because he might melt into it permanently.
-Rick Riordan, The Blood of Olympus
“Nico,” I said at last, “shouldn’t you be sitting at the Hades table?”
He shrugged. “Technically, yes. But if I sit alone at my table, strange things happen. Cracks open in the floor. Zombies crawl out and start roaming around. It’s a mood disorder. I can’t control it. That’s what I told Chiron.”
“And is it true?” I asked.
Nico smiled thinly. “I have a note from my doctor.”
Will raised his hand. “I’m his doctor.”
“Chiron decided it wasn’t worth arguing about,” Nico said. “As long as I sit at a table with other people, like…oh, these guys for instance…the zombies stay away. Everybody’s happier.”
Will nodded serenely. “It’s the strangest thing. Not that Nico would ever misuse his powers to get what he wants.”
“Of course not,” Nico agreed.
-Rick Riordan, The Hidden Oracle
