A cool hand slaps your cheek, a persistent, annoying tapping. Half-awake now, you’re semi-aware of the drool slipping from the corner of your mouth on to your pillow, and you should probably wipe it away, but honestly it’s the weekend, and you’re in the mood to totally chill.
Apparently, people can’t take a hint.
“Are you getting up?” Someone whispers, leaning down to your ear. Breathing in deeply, you lift a heavy hand and wave it in their general direction.
“Begone,” you order, using that same, waving hand to wipe away the drool on your cheek. “It’s the weekend.”
You hear laughter, and furrow your brows, trying to fall back into the comfort of sleep. What’s so funny, anyway? What’s wrong with beauty sleep? Heaven knows half of the people in this cabin are in desperate need of it.
The person leans down again, shaking your shoulder firmly. “Come on!” The voice nags. “It’s Monday!”
And so, your week begins.
“Start as you mean to go on!” Chiron is taking his place at the head table, sending you a jolly wave of inspirational quotes as you pass by in an outfit yanked from the depths of your drawer space. The camp leader appears to be in a jolly ol’ mood this morning, and it serves to fuel your own.
“Do one!” You jab your thumb over your shoulder. If it were anyone else giving him grief, no doubt they’d be in for a serious talking to about manners. Unfortunately for Chiron, you’ve learned to wear a silver shield over your shoulders this last month or so, and ultimately, you’re quickly losing all respect for rules and social norms. What do they matter, when the world might end? Your camp leader and moral consultant knows this, so unfortunately for him, his words of reprimand have no further effect on you.
After breakfast, you skipped sword practice to take some time out in the woods. More and more often, lately, the open space in the woodlands, just to the left of the opening for the beach, served as a safe haven. While the others would be studying, practicing or taking an afternoon to themselves in their cabin, your solitude came in the form of the wooded area doused only in a light layer of sand blown in off of the beach. Sometimes—well, more often than not—your mind felt exhausted. It’s one thing to be, as you described to Percy, ‘body tired’, but ‘brain tired’ is a whole different ball game. This area felt provided just for you. Nobody else came by, and nobody ever found you there. It was a beautiful space provided by Mother Nature simply for your pleasure. But nothing good lasts forever.
Something had happened. Something you knew which Luke was fully involved with. The trees were dying, and their bark covers peeling off in the wind, chipping away beneath your fingers when you leaned on one to test the surface. The tiny creatures, those delicate crabs you knew Percy adored, would once not so long ago be caught crawling through the sand, migrating to safety for survival. You hadn’t seen them in a while. And honestly, even the sand felt different: grainier, tougher, like the planet was trying to fight back from the inside out and was using up all of its resources. It was struggling. Luke was going to win this war, you knew, and you had nothing left to give. You’d turned sixteen years old on a day nobody remembered, and had partaken in more travelling and fighting for life than most people would three lifetimes over. Inside, your mind was growing tighter and strained, and your heart longed for a rest.
“Knock me out,” you asked the earth, lowering to the sandy ground beneath a shaded area, lying back and stretching your hand out to the sand, sifting the grainy beads through your fingers. “Give me a break.” Head tilted, you focussed on the waves crashing the shore, the tide pulled out by Poseidon’s wishes, before surging furiously inland, white bubbles smashing the shore like they had something to say.
Earth, begging for assistance.
All four years of this new and wonderful world had taught you that the ground was a sacred thing, and life existed in all forms. When the world struggles to breathe, you listen. When the world calls your name, you answer. Mother Nature crying your name is a painful thing indeed; a stab to the bottom of the spine, a knife you cannot dig out. You need advice. You’re just too scared to go and get it.
The sun peaks through the gaps in the leaves, in the trees, swaying with the warm breeze that sends sand across your cheeks. You dig your feet into the soft, warm earth, and close your eyes, taking in Mother Earth, and all that she stands for.
The water reaches you this time. It prompts you, gently, with a touch to the cheek, taking over your outstretched arm.
Peace is over. You huff under your breath, grabbing one last handful of sand, lifting it and slowly letting it glide between your parted fingers. “Fine,” you tell it. “I’m going!”
It seems happy to hear so.
Camp felt…different, this year.
For starters, shortly before the camp year officially commenced, the organised-slash-unorganised ambush of the Princess Andromeda, a large ship carrying equipment and fighting bodies for Luke, commenced. And it didn’t end the way people wished it would. Chiron hoped and prayed for the safety of all of his wards taking part in the ambush, but there was only so much that praying could do for souls whose fates were tied from the get-go.
A little party gathered in the Big House early that morning, at the designated time for the group to begin their attack. There were only a handful of people who knew of the attack, and it had to stay that way, in order to keep it under wraps far away from Luke’s ears. Silena, Annabeth, yourself, Travis and Connor. Five demigods, two away actioning the plan, and two elders who planned. Of course, you were the first up and ready, waiting for any sort of news. While Chiron could sit and appear patient, you were the total opposite. Pacing by the French doors, open to the fields and sweeping warm morning air into the room, you folded one arm and pressed your knuckles to your mouth with the other. It was cruel to say, really, but you didn’t much care for the safety of Charles Beckendorf at the time. You cared for his travelling companion, rather.
“What if he’s—”
Chiron cleared his throat, sending a pointed look. “Let us not say it out loud to the universe, hm? I’m sure both Percy and Charles are managing well. They’re capable boys.”
“But—”
Chiron raised his hand from the poker table, and the movement made you pause. Over the summer you’d developed a serious line between your eyebrows; you rubbed that line in stress with sore, raw fingers.
The relief you felt when Percy came knocking on the door was intense. After a long day of nothing, pacing the floors, bouncing your knee, that firm, woody knock on the door, before the announcement of him with that telltale trip over the threshold. Your body reacted before you could reason with yourself.
You sprung from the sofa, stretching over a tired Silena, and running to the door. The sky was peach and pink and tired, and there he stood, with the lace curtains waving past him in the breeze. Percy, battered and drained, and tense as a rock. You dived for him, heart in your stomach, swinging your arms around his neck like a metaphorical buoyancy aid, a life preserver, as if your hold could take back everything he’d seen and save his sanity. Percy’s shoulders were taught as a wire and tough as iron, beginning to fill out with muscle beneath soft and supple skin from all the training he’d taken on this summer. And yet when you staggered together backward from the house, crashing into the railing and stilling as one, he became soft and wilted. On your tiptoes, you stretched one arm around his neck and with the other you splaid your fingers in his hair, sweaty and dirty. A clean freak at heart, you couldn’t care less for the grime. Percy’s heart was beating firmly like an iron press in his chest, and that was what mattered the most. His strong heart did nothing to save his emotions, though, and it didn’t take long for the bliss to end, inviting that heartbreaking sound. A single sob, loosely contained, as his arms tightened around you. One hand scrunched into the base of your spine and stayed there.
Footsteps approached gingerly from behind. You understood, then, that life could be cruel. A small voice, afraid, uttered one name: “Charles?”, Silena asked.
Your boy returned. Silena’s would never come home again. And you’d unwittingly shoved that in her face.
The camp burned a shroud for Charles Beckendorf that same night. Poor Silena appeared as a lifeless, emotionless doll, a real life vintage porcelain doll cursed to cry forever. No, you knew. No—Silena would never be the same again.
Beckendorf blew up the ship to save everyone else: the camp, his friends, his family, the world. His final choice: to go down with the ship for the greater good, and stop it from docking. Decrease the numbers in Luke’s army, and give everyone else a better fighting chance. A good guy, selfless right to the end. You could only thank him mentally, for telling Percy to go.
No, nobody took it well. And Silena? Well, it made sense that she loathed you, after that. The boy you loved with your whole heart came back to you in one piece, and hers would never come home to her arms again. Beckendorf’s friends were devastated, naturally, and you felt awful, you really did, but all you could do was revel in the fact that Percy was safe, he wasn’t going anywhere, and you were okay together. You stayed together that night, with a blanket on the dock walk, under the stars and the fireflies and the balls of glowing light over the water. Safe and sound.
Barely any time at all had passed before things began to get…weird. Percy’s birthday had flown by in the summer, along with your forgotten one, and the mourning of a camp leader. By the time August thirty-first rolled around, life both inside of the camp and outside were beginning to strain. The fields lost their lustre, and crops refused to grow. ‘Freak’ weather conditions would soon hit New York, according to the weather agents, though they couldn’t understand why. All of these weird occurrences combined with what Percy announced at lunch one afternoon simply set you on edge.
The two of you, and a just-arrived Annabeth, took your seats at a bench outside the Big House, taking swipes at the bowl of snacks going between the three of you. Annabeth had been yapping about the weather patterns and how unusual they were for this time of year, linking everything to Luke—struggling with his name—when Percy’s head suddenly jerked back, looking over your shoulders.
You laughed lightly. “You okay? Something possess you, then?”
Annabeth giggled, and Percy tried to smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. His gentle hands pushed the snack bowl into your stomach, as he stood up, brushing off crumbs. He cleared his throat, taking a few steps forward and stretching, very inconspicuously. Annabeth shared a look with you, grinning.
“I’m—I’m just gonna—” he jabbed his thumb in the other direction. “I’ve gotta go. I’ll be back later, okay. Save me some snacks, yeah? Keep me in mind when you refill that bowl.”
Annabeth dove her hand into the chips. “Where’re you going, fishface?”
Awkward Percy shrugged. “I’ll be back! Later! Uh, bye!”
Your sister elbowed you, watching him run away. “You picked a strange one.”
“You liked him first, don’t blame me.”
“You brought him here!”
“Correction—it was him who brought me.”
The sickness began to set in around six-thirty. What began as light sweating at dinner time slowly evolved into full-blown chills and full-body sweats.
Annabeth at your side lay a hand on your shoulder. “You feeling alright? You don’t look so good.”
You tried to reassure her that it was a sugar rush from earlier, but your bones were hurting, too, like someone had taken a sledgehammer to your whole body and forced you to run a marathon shortly afterward. “I’ll be fine. I just need to rest.”
It was a struggle to get up off of the bench, but you did it, and managed to walk yourself to the girls’ shower blocks. Without thinking, you stepped right into the water, a comfort, and doused yourself in cool water. Without thinking of anything at all, focused only on the aching at the base of your spine, you pressed your back to the wall and slid down it, rubbing your back with your free hand. It hurt, and not a stabbing kind of pain but a deep, engrained kind, like something was trying to get out. The water helped a little, and once the pain had peaked, forcing you to vomit the contents you’d eaten earlier, things began to calm, slowly. By eight o’clock, shaky and tired, you managed to pull yourself up from the tiles and turn off the shower, traipsing back to your cabin to redress and dry off.
That ache stayed all night long, keeping you from getting a proper nights rest. At breakfast, Percy walked to the hearth to burn a portion of his food, looking worse for wear with sun-burned skin and rubbing the base of his spine.
Somehow, you knew he had something to do with your sickness spell last night, and you were going to get the truth out of him, sooner or later.
This one’s just an introduction really to getting back into the swing of things, but it does all matter in the long run. I apologise for the loooooong wait.
chapter thirty-seven | out of the grave, into the woods.
It’s September 9th, and two days have passed since Percy. Chiron tells you to have hope; maybe he escaped before the place went kaboom. You didn’t see a body, so you should keep the hope alive. You viciously respond that no, there wouldn’t be a body if it was blown to a million pieces, would there?
You eat more than you ever have. The week that passed in the maze had been particularly busy, so much so you’d scarcely had time to eat anything proper. It’s nice to stuff your face, sitting with Annabeth in comfortable silence.
Everyone knows. Everybody knows what happened, by September 9th. Chiron holds a small meeting and explains exactly what happened to the others. Some suggest sending searchers down into the maze to continue what you couldn’t, but Chiron declines the suggestion under the excuse that it’s too dangerous as of late. Percy will turn up eventually, he concludes.
“Have faith,” he sighs, looking around the room. His eyes land on you, where you sit with folded arms and bloodshot eyes nestled between Annabeth and Travis.
It’s hard to do when your mother refuses to answer your prayers. You pray every night for Grover and Percy’s safe return, all week, every morning. You beg any god that will listen to just grant you this one thing, and allow Percy to still be breathing. A tense week passes, and at the week mark—September 14th—since you came out of the maze, hope is beginning to wane. You see it in Chiron’s face with every falsely enthusiastic speech, and in your friends. Annabeth helps you to make a new weapon in the armoury, a lean, light sword made of celestial bronze. You’re working on convincing one of the other campers to charm it to make it smaller, taking inspiration from Riptide. Convenience is key.
By September 15th, people have lost hope. A whole week of people trying to come home should have shown some signs, at least. Another week passes, with no such luck. And then a third. You barely move from the Big House, not really feeling much up to participating in activities and practice fights. You’re just getting into reading a new book, scrunched up in the chair on the porch, when Chiron approaches you, with a solemn look on his face.
“Another book?” He tries for a smile. You see right through him, raising your eyes above the line of your book. There seem to be more stress lines under his eyes. “That’s the third this week alone.”
You raise it a little higher. “I like reading. You can get lost in books pretty easy.”
“I like a good read myself,” he admits. “Maybe not three six-hundred-pagers a week, though.”
Now, you do smile. Just a little.
“I didn’t come here just to halt your peace, my dear. I wanted to talk to you about Percy, and Grover.”
Of course. It’s all anybody wants to talk about with you.
You snap shut the book and pay Chiron all your attention. “Okay.”
He eyeballs the ground for a second. “I think it’s time that we begin to build up a burial shroud for Percy, and begin the proceedings for Grover. Three weeks is…it is unlikely for them to come back to us now. A week, a week and a half at most, is the usual waiting time for heroes to return. I’ve seen this many times before, my dear. Three weeks is too long. It’s time we pay our respects to our friends.”
It’s a hard pill to swallow. You feel your heart stammer in the ribcage, tiny shooting pains going haywire. You’ve had these pains all of three weeks—Chiron calls them a reaction to stress, and grief. It’s why he encouraged so much rest, so little training. Your eyes fill with strong tears and your throat thickens.
“Okay,” you manage. A leaded weight pulls your innards down, and something else grinds them together. You feel overcome with hopelessness, a feeling alike deep and terrible sadness, gut-wrenching. You only want to cry until you can’t cry anymore.
“As Percy’s longest friend,” he continues with a hard swallow, “I wanted to ask you personally, if you’d like to create his burial shroud. As an honor to him.”
You want, in that moment, your dad. You want the comfort of a parent, even though you know you won’t get so much as a hug from him. You want home.
You ask Annabeth to help you in making Percy’s burial shroud. A heaviness settles over camp the next day, and everyone you talk to or pass by offers you a sympathetic look, a hand on the shoulder. Together, you pick out sea-green fabric, and tie in some gentle details of deeper greens and little dashes of blue. You find it in yourself to delve bravely into his left-behind cabin, and dig a seashell from the wall beside the statue of his father. It’s a creamy-pale colour, and lined with streaks of red and pale peach, engrained with bits of sand like it had just come directly from the beach. You weave a few into the fabric until your fingers are sore and pricked with blood. It’s all very factual, death and its proceedings. You find yourself zoning out, staring at the soft material in your hands and thinking of absolutely nothing, at times. Annabeth gently says your name, and pulls the needle from your bloody finger. It takes all day to make it perfect, but you finally complete the burial shroud, and tie it off with a pretty bit of creme ribbon and sea rope.
For Grover, it’s different, and Annabeth carries this one forward better than you because she’d known him for a long time, a hell of a lot longer than you knew Grover. She sits down on the sofa, and almost tears the earthy-green and gold fabric with how forcefully she grips it. Annabeth acts normally, but her lip trembles. She presses them together to stop it, reaching out to the table between you both for the needle.
By evening, just as the sun is going down and the sky is burning orange, you’re finished with Percy’s shroud, and Annabeth is finished with Grover’s. They’re not due to be burned until tomorrow evening, but Chiron said it was in everybody’s best interests to finish them sooner rather than later. It would make the process of burning them a lot easier to handle, apparently. You’re but a second away from blowing up, taking action with screaming and hacking at the strawberry fields; so, anything to lighten the situation, really.
“We should really get some food before curfew,” Annabeth set aside Grover’s shroud. “C’mon. They’ll be looking for us if we don’t turn up, and you know what Travis has been like, worrying this week.”
You huff a short laugh. “Guy hasn’t stopped.”
It was true. He’d been so attentive to your every want and thought that you felt somewhat guilty for dropping him the way you had done to accompany Percy into the maze. You felt like such a terrible friend, recently. But if Travis was holding it against you, he didn’t show it a bit. Ever the selfless.
Your stomach growls painfully, prompting you to stand and hold Percy’s shroud for another second or so, before dropping it safely next to Grover’s. The silky material slips from your fingers and hits the table carefully. The clock above the door tells you it’s nearly seven o’clock at night, and you haven’t eaten a thing since breakfast.
Annabeth is long gone by the time you force yourself to leave the room. You can see her in the distance, walking to the dining pavilion. You stop against a wall, breathing deeply and exhaling heavily, just taking in the air. It smells of pine trees and strawberries, and something warm. The sky is burnt orange and lined with golden clouds. An otherwise perfect evening, if you weren’t hearing Grover’s voice in the back of your mind.
He’s shouting your name, so distantly it feels like he isn’t even there at all. You wish you could help him. His voice grows louder, and closer. You begin up the hill just as you hear breathing—hard, heaving breathing like the person it’s coming from has ran a marathon.
You spin, somewhat startled, and your jaw drops so hard you think it might have landed in Tartarus. “G—GROVER?!” He’s really here. Really! With sweaty hair, missing a sleeve of his jacket, but he’s here in person. Grover is alive. “Holy cows. Holy cows. Holy cows—”
“I did pray to some holy cows, actually,” he nods out of breath. Grover puts his hands on his hips, tilting his head back. The sun is setting very quickly, and really it’s nothing special tonight compared to every other night, but to Grover, it must be amazing.
All the breath he gets back in his lungs is swiftly knocked right back out again. You lunge for him, the relief falling like a heaviness from your shoulders. Grover is a little bonier under your hugging arms than the last time you were together, but he’s in one piece and here in front of you, and it’s more than you could ask for given the circumstances.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” you breathe. With your heart beating ten-to-the-dozen, it’s difficult to discern whether you’re about to have a heart attack, or if you’re developing some sort of condition from all the scares. “Really. It’s good to see you.”
He’s shocked. Of course he is; you’ve barely shown even camaraderie towards Grover before. You think it might be time to change your tune.
“I wasn’t sure you’d gotten out,” he sighed, pulling back. “I’m so sorry for leaving the two of you, but look—I found him. I really did. I found Pan.”
You blanch. Not solely from his insinuation that both you and Percy got out, but that he found what he’d been looking for. You can’t help smiling.
“Really? You’re sure?”
“One hundred percent!”
“We should go tell Chiron, then.”
Heaviness settles in your gut the closer you get to the dining pavilion. You figured that’s where Chiron will be—eating like nothing’s wrong. You haven’t eaten properly in days.
Everybody is seated by the time you arrive. Chiron is, as you’d guessed, at the table and eating as well. It must be the movement from the corner of his eye that turns his head to face you, and it’s a result: he sees Grover; tired, drooping-at-the-shoulders Grover. Chiron stands so abruptly that the table shrieks, the legs scraping against the floor, and campers groan and cover their ears, turning to face the commotion. They follow the leader’s direction, and see him too. The sky is burning, the clouds on fire, and fire in the heart flickers.
A great deal of clamour comes next. It’s all very factual, in the after. They yell Grover’s name and people come running, some in relief, some in disbelief, and some in excitement.
He eats his heart out at the head table, and nobody bothers him. You sit together and for a little while you laugh. Annabeth smiles so hard her cheeks must hurt, and the three of you manage to relieve the last few days and weeks with some joy, especially now Grover has found what he’d been looking for.
It doesnt change the fact that you go to bed with a heavy heart and a sorrowful stomach, and don’t get a wink of good sleep, tossing and turning until the cows come home. When morning comes, you’re sore-eyed and sore of heart, dressing in jeans and a sweatshirt despite the warmth of camp itself. On a day where all eyes will be on you, it’s comforting to feel somewhat sheltered by sleeves and neckline.
You don’t eat breakfast, though your stomach grumbles and whines, and you can barely manage to get a glass of apple juice down. People are casting you looks from every table, because they all know what you’re about to do. After all, his burial shroud is only metres away, folded neatly in a small box before the open fire pit.
Finally, after breakfast of little words to anybody, Chiron smiles somewhat skewedly and directs everyone to crowd at the pit. A few girls from the Aphrodite cabin are crying crocodile tears, pretending they’re oh-so-sad over the loss of Percy, though they haven’t spoken to him before, or if they have—only to ridicule him for tripping during track, or letting an arrow fly too early. Silly little things really, that make Percy, Percy. And you miss him.
You barely notice that Chiron is speaking until he’s finished. The soft blue is in your hands, palms up to the sky. You hope they’re watching.
It smells of smoke that will stick to your hair and clothes, of flames that burn your hands even this far out. Orange, yellow, and wicked red all dancing together in the grate like it’s a terrible little party just for Percy.
You have to clear your throat out hard, it having been in disuse since yesterday. Sets of eyes are on you, big and waiting. A few Aphrodite girls are pulling sneering expressions, because they’re not fans of other girls being the centre of attention.
“Uh—well,” you start, wondering why on earth you hadn’t prepared something earlier. There’s a hard lump in your throat, rolling around and around and around and you think you might choke on it. “Percy was my best friend. He meant a lot to all of us, a great deal, actually. I can’t think of one moment where Percy…”
And suddenly you can’t think at all. There’s pressure behind your eyes burning away like the fire in the grate. Your stomach hurts because you’re so hungry you’re starving. The brain fog because of this is alarming, and you can feel the casual facade start to falter. Why can’t you find the words.
You cough a jarring laugh. Annabeth whispers your name from just the front row, moving to get in your line of vision, concerned. She’s upset but she’s holding it together much better than you are.
The blue in your hands is beginning to absorb the sweat from your skin. “Percy was…there are no words. I think his actions said more, anyway, if I’m honest. Truth be told,” you finally look up from your shaking hands, “truth be told, those of us who knew Percy properly already knew that. Percy was just—”
When you lift your eyes just behind the crowd, you begin to notice something strange. A figure. A boy, in immaculate clothing and tanned like he’d just spent a week at the beach. His shirt is ironed and crisp, and a thin circle of white shells is clasped around a wrist.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Annabeth urges. Her voice shakes when she carefully pulls you aside. “You don’t have to do this. It isn’t fair.”
But your eyes are stuck glued to the boy getting closer, so close that you can make out the green of the eyes you’d recognise absolutely anywhere.
“He’s right there.”
“I know, it’s fine, I can take this.”
She attempts to pry the material from you, but you’re not having it. Clenched in your fists, you nod to the distance, as the lightheaded feeling grows.
“Percy’s here. Percy’s here.”
Heads turn. Bodies shift. Chiron moves through the crowd and pales considerably because he sees what you see. At last, people gasp, people yell out, people rush forward to surround him. But he only has eyes for you, and they’re glossy ones at that.
Your head spins. “Dear god, I think I need to sit down.”
And indeed, down you go.
—
This chapter’s title is taken from the song ‘the let go’ by Elle King. https://youtu.be/RcnUJTIyjXs?si=HO1lzccJfsaF6SbQ (1.18 seconds)
chapter thirty-six | everything in its right place
It wasn’t a real spider. Not completely. But it moved like one over your hands, and so you’d thrown it so far away with one almighty shriek that the spider jumped—a tiny automaton thing, built by Hephaestus himself.
The whole thing felt like one, big joke on you.
It begun as a silver chain previously in Eurytion’s possession. He said he didn’t need it, and had no need to go into the Labyrinth or make contact with Hephaestus. If you needed to find the god, this would lead you right to him. At first, turning it over in your hands, you felt grateful that finally somebody was helping you properly. Until you pressed down on the tiny button in the middle, and it turned into a spider.
The good news: it led you straight to him. Right to Hephaestus’s doorstep. Or, entryway, for a better word. The spider had been scuttling and crawling along the tunnels for a good distance, enough so that you were starting to get tired. Percy had been nearly bouncing in place, both with anticipation for what you might find, and eagerness to get this over with; he wanted out as much as you and Grover.
If you weren’t so good at running, you might have lost the creepy little thing. By the time it finally stopped, all eight legs perched like broken wires, you were hot on its trail and pretty breathless. Grover slowed to a pace at your side, raising his hands to run over his sweaty t-zone from the exertion that was chasing the mechanical spider. Percy slid into your back, and brushed himself off like nothing happened.
You could have described it as developing a funny feeling that something was about to happen.
You stopped only because of one thing.
The giant cave, a spectacular hole in the ground inches away from the tips of your Converse. You watched from the corner of your eye Grover settling back from the jagged edge, and became aware of Percy’s fingers winding round your backpack. Human nature or stupid curiosity, you dug for your flashlight in your pocket, and leaned forward over the abyss. Percy tugged violently on your strap.
“Hey, come on, dont.” He sighed. “If you fall down there—”
“I’m not gonna fall down there!” You protest.
“Do you see with your own eyes right now? You’re literally leaning over a cavern.”
“I’m not gonna fall. But if I did I’d just take you down with me. For company ‘n all.” You drawl, turning to face him with a sly smile. Your brows jump, and Percy huffs, giving your bag one last tug until you avail, and step back.
“How kind,” he deadpans.
“I try my hardest.” You shrug.
“I think we have bigger problems than falling right now,” croaked Grover. He raised his flashlight and flicked it on and off to highlight the problem: a series of metal bars strung up to the ceiling, half-corroded.
You bark a sudden laugh at your luck. “Hope everyone’s had their tetanus shots!”
Between the rotting bars jammed into the cave roof, the tiny spider was swinging across with its strange silky webs, and crawling with its sticky feet across the ceiling. Unless you wanted to stay stuck down here at this junction, you’d have to follow it. And heights were not your speciality.
You clap your hands together; it echoes in the vast space. “So, any first takers” Neither boy answers you. “Brilliant. So, the thing is, I’d rather die than do the monkey bars. Do you guys see my arms? They weren’t made for this shit.”
“Have a little faith,” gulped Grover. “If a mechanical spider with no physical brain can do it, we totally can!”
“I like your enthusiasm!” Percy snapped his fingers. “It’s just the kind of leadership style we need!” He leaned forward and clapped Grover on the shoulder. “Onward, my friend!”
Grover tittered on the spot, and a nervous belch boasted loudly in the air. All the while he argued back and forth with Percy over how he should go first, you decided that it was best to shove down your nerves for the sake of the ever-furthering spider, and stepped back twice. The boys hardly noticed, caught up in their silly back-and-forth debate. You made your choice, and decided to make a run and jump for it.
The second your hands touched the first metal rung, they stung from the impact. You couldn’t prevent the shriek escaping your throat, but everything after that was blocked out. The brain has a funny way of focusing when it senses danger; it blocks out everything it deems unneeded. In this case, you knew though you couldn’t hear them that the boys were probably yelling something. You focussed on the strain in your shoulders, reaching forward for the next bar with halfway decent momentum. Halfway across, your palms started to sweat, and the panic set in even further.
“Guys—” you swallowed, choking on it. “What are the chances I die on impact? Don’t answer that—I already know the answer. It was in this book I read a while ago. It was 31,000 people in 2000. That’s the last time they looked at the statistics. They’ll probably go up—”. Your hand slipped from the bar, and you wiped your palm on your pants before reaching for the next one. You take deep breaths as your body is suddenly hit with panicked sweating and heat, and you know you’re not too far from a panic attack. There’s nothing anybody can do to help you here—it’s all on you. And it’s a horrible feeling knowing that.
It’s hard to move when your fingers start to tingle and grow stiff, another oncoming sign that your body has had enough, it’s working too hard. The brain works in tandem with the limbs—the control centre tells everything else what to do. If it says calm down, it’s going to calm down everything else; even hundreds of feet above a plunging cavern.
When you touch the ground again, you feel rather shaky. But there’s no proper time for rest, or to wait for the boys. The spider is scuttling further away, and it’s literally a race against time to catch up to it. With legs like jelly, you bolt as fast as you can after the spider, the tiny clicking of its mechanical legs sounding through the narrowing tunnel. It’s dark and damp, and your flashlight is beginning to flicker as the batteries run out. You lose all sight and sound of Percy and Grover, and your chest screams with the exertion of holding yourself above ground for so long and then moving instantly into a sprint.
The spider really doesn’t care, though.
You run and run, until something crunches under your feet. You ignore it until you can’t anymore, and gradually slow down, as the crunching becomes too loud. You bend down to inspect the pieces: wood chips, like from…pencils? There’s a shard of lead from the end of one just laying around, and another a bit away from it. Who the hell needs pencils down here? Is somebody else lost, too? The pieces slip through your fingers as you get to your feet, falling back down.
You pick up your flashlight from between your neck and shoulder where you’d been holding it, and twist it in your hand. The light still flickers, except this time it has enough of a glow to show you just who left the pencil scrapings.
Skeletons. Dead, very dead skeletons.
And they look a little different to the ones in gothic movies.
Some are white, like they’ve been bleached, but mainly they’re a weird yellow-brown and mottled, rotting away. They don’t smell, weirdly. They could almost be props. You’re not naive enough to believe that though.
A set of footsteps is growing louder nearing your position. It’s Percy, calling your name. And when he falls to step next to you, a hand on your shoulder, you can’t help but nodding grimly to the skeletons he hasn’t seen yet. You flash your light on them, and he gags.
“Let’s keep going,” you say, and nod to the literal light at the end of the tunnel. You can already see it opens into a big room. “I don’t wanna meet the thing that left those.”
You wait for Grover to catch up before you move on towards the bright light at the end of the tunnel. It feels weirdly intimate, all quiet and settled as you near it.
But…yeah, you take that back. Because you meet the thing that left those skeletons pretty quickly. Just when you thought things couldn’t get weirder down here.
You stop short, and can’t help your jaw dropping in disgust at the creature perched on the glittering dais on the far side of the room. With the body of a lion and the head of a woman, you quite honestly feel like vomming. She wore makeup like a clown, and her stringy hair was tied back way too tightly—how the hell did she even do her hair, with paws?
Grover gagged. It echoed. “Sphinx.”
You scrunch your nose in response. “Ooooh, are we talkin’ that weird thing that does riddles?”
“Funny way of putting it, but yes.”
You want to reply to Grover, but you’ve lost sight of the spider, your only way forward. You can hear it in the quiet, tapping away down the only exit: right next to the Sphinx.
You try your luck; you suck in a deep breath and make a run for it, but the creature is quicker than you are, and it dives down to block your path, roaring in your face with such ferocity that you’re left only with shock. Your face stings with the heat. You gag, and step back. Metal bars slammed down across the exit, and the way you’d come in, blocking your way out indefinitely. Looking longingly through the bars, you lost sight and sound of the spider, heart sinking.
When the bars were settled, the creature smiled. Somewhat horrifying, the voice to leave its mouth was on par. “Welcome, lucky contestants! Are you ready to play…GUESS THE RIDDLE?!”
Spotlights cranked into place and blinded Grover, who slapped a hand over his eyes. Canned applause blasted like there were a dozen soundbars in the room. Something popped from the ceiling, and glittering rained down, sparkling purple, pink and silver in the spotlight.
The Sphinx prowled the room and flicked back her head like you would tossing your hair over your shoulder. “Pass the test, demigods, and you get to advance! Fail, and I eat you for dinner! So! Who will be our contestant tonight?”
“Grover,” you point instantly, and then feel terrible because he looked rather sick. Coincidentally, both boys looked at you. “What, you think I’m smart enough for this shit?” You hiss.
“Absolutely!” Percy encouraged. “And we’ll be right here to fight for you!”
“Totally!” Nodded Grover. He reached into his pocket and produced a stick, and began munching on it instantly. A nervous habit, you’ve come to realise.
“How romantic,” you roll your eyes to Percy, but inside your stomach says SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!! You deflated at the shoulders, and squeezed your flashlight between your fingers. Approaching the CONTESTANT podium, it wasn’t difficult to notice the dusty skeleton in a school uniform still leaning over the platform, jaw hanging open.
Holding your flashlight by the very end, you gave the skeleton a shove, and then a kick for good measure. It toppled off the side and clattered to the ground, bones rattling. You side-eyed it and quickly looked away. “So sorry, man.”
“Welcome, daughter of Athena!” The Sphinx cried in a cheesy, televised tone. “Are you ready for your questions?”
You point your flashlight at her. “Uhhhh—no.”
“I need an answer!”
“Sure, yeah. Give me the question, then.” At the side of the room, Percy sends you what is supposed to be an encouraging set of a thumbs-up, and a large smile, nodding his head.
“Riddles, actually, get it right dear. Anywho! Twenty riddles coming your way!” A drumroll sounded overhead, rattling your organs the bass was so deep. There may as well have been a band up in the ceiling. Hell, maybe there was. “What is…the Capital of Bulgaria?”
Embarrassingly, you almost fall flat. “Pffttt, I know this.”
“You know this!” Encouraged Percy from his place, except when you turned to look at him, he was leaning against the wall and sweating. Very encouraging. “You’ve got this, B!”
“Isn’t it, like Sofia, or something? And that isn’t even a riddle, that’s just basic knowledge—”
Applause screamed above. The Sphinx smiled too sweetly, and her sharp canines showed. “Correct! Now, mark down your answers in the booklet with the yellow pencil.”
You eye your empty hands. “What pencil—?” With a solid POP! the pencil, sharpened to a point, appeared on top of the little booklet like magic.
“Now,” said the Sphinx. “If you need to erase an answer, be sure to do it COMPLETELY! Or else the machine is unable to read the answers.” She smiled with closed eyes. A horrible sight, really. The nightmares will be anticipated, when you’re out of here.
Waving around your pencil, and growing slightly annoyed with the creature, you huff. “What machine?”
With a large paw, the Sphinx made a pointing movement to the giant bronze thing situation to the side. It had appeared under a spotlight, and was covered in the Greek letter Êta. If you weren’t wrong, that was Hephaestus’s mark.
Another nail in the coffin of life being a total joke.
“Now!” The Sphinx clapped her paws. “Next question!”
“Shit question,” you mumbled. You set your hands on either side of the podium and waited.
“I beg your pardon?” The Sphinx grew still instantly, clearly annoyed.
“Nothing. Continue.”
“What is the square root of sixteen?”
“Oh. I cant do math. Uhm…”
“Ten seconds on the clock!”
A loud and irritating ticking began with an audible countdown from invisible voices, making your eyes ring. Suddenly uncomfortable, you dip your head and discreetly look at Percy, whose hand moves at his side.
“Four?” You frown.
A bell rang off. “Correct! Which United States president signed the Civil Rights Act?”
“Lyndon. B. Johnson? I th—”
“Correct! Which planet spins clockwise?”
“Venus?”
“Which part of the human body is incapable of healing itself?”
“I think it’s your teeth?” You shift on your feet, feeling way too under pressure.
“Need a definite answer!” The Sphinx pointed to the ceiling with a paw, and the countdown began.
Tiredly, you drawl, “It’s your teeth.”
“Correct again! What comes into the world with more bones than the adult human?”
“A baby?”
“Correct!”
The questions go on, and on until your mind feels like a battered sieve, bent out of shape and a little corroded. You passed twenty questions, and stared at Percy, unimpressed, as a dozen layers of glitter and confetti rained down upon you. A techno electric song began blasting over the invisible speakers in celebration. Grover was taking deep breaths, mumbling under his breath, probably thanking the gods. When you found your place next to Percy, he huffed a laugh, and glitter shifted from your face as he did.
“Oh, you did great!” He offered. The metal bars ground out a horrid noise as they rose back to where they came from. “I knew you could do it.”
“You offered me up like paint at an artist’s house.”
Grover, still praying, took off with his eyes closed, doing a little jig. The Sphinx took a seat at dais, eyes closed. She looked somewhat frozen, barely breathing. When Grover passed on by, it was as if she’d never moved at all.
Clapping a hand down on your head, Percy shook the confetti and glitter like dust from your hair. “I’m sorry,” he said, though he said so with a humoured smile. “I’ll never do it again. Friends?”
“Suppose so,” you shrug, and glitter dances to the ground.
“Let’s go, disco ball. We need to find that spider.”
You skedaddled past the Sphinx whom paid you no mind, and out the tunnel way, leaving a trail of glitter. After a few wrong turns, and following Grover’s voice, and finally managed to locate your friend and the spider, which threw itself at a metal door, a little bit of light spilling out underneath it. In the middle of the door, old and creaking despite not touching it, was nailed a big sign, wilting like it had been melted, dashed with the same sign as the answering machine ten minutes ago: the Greek Êta.
“Are we ready to meet Hephaestus?” Grover asked nervously.
“I’m ready to ask why he spends his time down here,” you grumbled. “Why not somewhere nice?”
Deciding you’d done enough today, Percy reached out around you for the door handle, and gave it a good push. The door screamed, slowly opening, revealing all inside.
The room was bigger than words could describe. It was filled to the brim with machines and makings, some working, some not. There were cars, half-built just lying around, and bits of mechanical animals waiting to be put together. A fire burned in the corner of the room, not tended to though. A dozen tools hung from the walls and were splashed across work tables.
Nobody noticed him until the door slammed shut, you screamed, and he shifted out from underneath a car. A giant man in dirty work pants, and a leg in a metal brace.
“Well, what do we have here?” He boomed. Maybe it was wrong to be so terrified, but you were, and you found yourself shifting slowly, subtly, taking your place beside Percy.
Unfortunately, your slinking act didn’t last for long. When Hephaestus stood properly, he towered way over the three of you.
“I didn’t make you demigods, did I?”
Percy coughed. “No, sir.”
He was tall, and his beard was smoking. The metal spider perched on his head.
“Good. Terrible workmanship.”
“We’ve met, sir,” said Percy.
“Have we, now?” His tone indicated that he couldn’t care less. “Well, if I didn’t get rid of you the first time I won’t need to now, I suppose. And a Satyr. Wow. You’re all far from home. There better be a good reason for disturbing me.”
“We’re looking for Daedalus—”
The god’s beard flickered ten times brighter, and he seemed to get taller. “Daedalus?” He roared.
“Yes, sir, please.” Grover pleaded nervously.
“You’re wasting your time.” He stomped over to the corner of the room, and began to tinker with some pieces of metal. “I understand you met my mother.”
“Yes, sir,” Percy nodded.
“What did you think of her, daughter of Athena?” You jolt at your place, and wish the ground would open up and take you. Side-stepping, you remain half behind Percy, grimacing. “She’ll smile to your face and talk about important values, family values. Didn’t stop her pitching me off of Olympus.”
Why me? You wish you could ask. Why are you asking me?
“I thought that was Zeus?” Percy tries to deflect.
Hephaestus spun on his feet like a top, facing you. “She likes telling that version. Makes her more likeable doesn’t it? The truth is, my mother loves families, but only certain types of families. She influences, and she lobbies. She likes to get involved.”
Finally, he looked up from the metal in his large hands, and focused on Percy. “Oh, this one doesn’t like me. I’ll bite, demigod—what do you want?”
“We told you,” Percy snapped. “We need to find Daedalus. It’s important. There’s this guy, a son of Hermes, and he’s working with Kronos. They’re trying to find a way to navigate this maze to take over everywhere. If we don’t get to Daedalus first—”
“And I told you, son of Poseidon—you’re wasting your time. He won’t help you.”
Hephaestus shrugged his heavy shoulders. “Some of us are thrown off of cliffs and some of us learn not to trust people. Ask me for gold, or a new sword. I can grant you those things. But a way to Daedalus? Well, that’s an expensive favour.”
“So you know where he is?” Asked Grover. “He’s down here at least?”
“It isn’t wise to go looking.”
But isn’t looking the nature of wisdom?
Hephaestus made a deep, rumbling sigh. “If I help you, there will be a price. I need a favour, too.”
“Name it,” demanded Percy.
“You heroes! You like making your promises. How very…refreshing.” The god reached out with a giant hand to push a button in the wall, and it instantly changed. The concrete and metal combined twisted and glowed until it became a television screen, showing mountains, and a forest. Smoke bellowed from the background.
“One of my forges gone, but this used to be my favourite.”
“But that’s Mount St. Helens!” Pointed out Grover. “But you said it used to be your favourite?”
“Well, the monster, Typhon, is trapped there.”
“What do you want us to do? Fight him for you?” Ah, Percy; ever the brave.
Hephaestus snorted meanly. “Well that’s suicide. Someone or something is using my forges there. They sense me coming, and they go, when I try to search it. There is something ancient and evil waiting there, and I want to know who has invaded my territory.”
“You want us to find out who it is.”
“Correct!” Your brain aches, thinking back to the Sphinx. “Find what you can and report back to me, and then I’ll tell you everything I know. Promise.”
“Fine,” Percy nodded. “How do we get there?”
Hephaestus clapped his hands together, and the mechanical spider fell from the rafters, right at your feet. You jumped about ten feet in the air, and screamed so loud it was bolstered by the metal walls. “My creation will show the way. Try to stay alive, young ones. Humans are much more fragile than automatons.”
For a while, you followed the spider without any trouble. The paths seemed unusually normal, just straightforward tunnels of concrete, or metal park slides the whole way down. But the ground began to change to dirt, and trees sprouted in the darkness, and a singular tunnel led away from the original path—Grover was headed straight for it, as if in a trance. He slowed, and slowed and stopped, just before the entrance.
“Come on,” you groaned. “Let’s go, man, It’s not far.”
“This is the way, guys!” Grover mumbled. “This is it! I can feel it!”
“Yes!” He exclaimed, suddenly reinvigorated. “This is it, guys!”
You followed after the spider, intent on not losing it, but held back when neither Grover or Percy followed.
“I have to follow this. I won’t get this chance ever again. You know that, right?”
On the one hand, you wanted to tell Grover to not be selfish. This was the original quest and it was important. But on the other, saying that would mean you were being selfish, holding Grover back from the only thing he wanted. He’d gone along with your plan for a while now, and outwardly telling him that he shouldn’t be doing the one thing he’d ever wanted would feel like stabbing him.
“Percy,” said Grover, “we will find each other again. We have the empathy link, remember? I have to do this. I have to; he’s…so close!”
Because, at the end of the day, this was all Grover had wanted for so long. Really, it felt cruel to tell him no.
Percy sucked in a breath through his teeth. “I hope you’re right.”
“I swear it, I am.”
“Just be careful, yeah? And find us, afterwards.”
Maybe it was to be your last sight of Grover. Perhaps you’d never see him again, although you really didn’t want to think so. You looked after him, as he wandered into the tunnel surrounded by darkness and tree roots winding from the ground until finally he’d gone completely.
It left a strange feeling that something was going to happen.
“We shouldn’t have split up,” you shake your head. “This is a horrible idea!”
“We’ll see him again…” Percy tried to sound confident, but even he fell a little short. He chewed his cheek, still looking at the tunnel Grover had left through. “Don’t worry. Come on, let’s catch up with that spider. It won’t wait for us.”
And it didn’t. The tiny spider scuttled through tunnels and tunnels, down slopes and up them. They grew tighter, and hotter, until your face dripped with sweat. The flashlight slipped in your hand, and you’d been forced to put away your dagger for fear of it slipping away.
More than once you had to stop in place and wipe the sweat dripping into your eyes, sticky and slippy. Your hair grew damp, uncomfortable around your face.
Percy seemed to be struggling the same way. When you turned back to him, his cheeks were bright red like cherries, highlighting the green in his eyes. Somehow, he managed a smile, nodding encouragingly. You swallowed hard, throat as dry as anything.
“Keep going!” He urged. “It’s not far, now, I know it.”
You didn’t want to tell him that he was a little too optimistic for it to be true, but who were you to burst his bubble?
It realistically didnt take a long time, but it certainly felt like it did. Eventually, the spider stopped short and curled into a ball, rolling down a little decline before it popped back open, and crawled a small distance. At last it waited for you and Percy.
The room before you now was the size of a large football stadium, times two thousand. It was so big you could scarcely see each end. The worst part, when you pushed aside the fact that you couldn’t really see properly, was the fact the floor was not floor at all but a plaza of bubbling lava, and your only way to get across should the need arise was two lengths of metal bridges, which ultimately, if the pool of lava was anything to go by, would be too hot to walk across for human beings. Here and there on little platforms were machines bigger than you, rumbling, whirring. Perhaps they weren’t the weird things though—the creatures, dark and shapeless and moving around the solid concrete platform around the lava, paid you no mind. Maybe they’d yet to see you.
“Let’s go, while they’re not looking,” hissed Percy. He snatched up your hand and pulled you along, despite how sweaty you were.
“Hold up!” You pulled back on him, but he persevered. “Percy, wait! We need a plan.”
“We don’t need a plan. We just need to get some information and get out of here.”
“Exactly why we need a plan!”
Your eyes began to burn from the heat of the lava, and your lungs ached from the smoke. It became difficult to even see, so it didn’t take long at all for something to go wrong.
“Agh!” Percy screamed, and you reached out blindly in the smoky haze to slap your hand over his mouth—you missed, and your palm found his eyes instead. “Ow!”
“Shut up, idiot!” You couldn’t help but laugh. “What did you do?”
“Kicked a cart by accident. I can’t see a damn thing with all this smoke.”
Near enough four years ago, when you met Percy, you wouldn’t have thought you’d be creeping around a pit filled with lava and carrying a deadly weapon in your backpack. At most, you’d believed you’d go through high school and eventually Percy would find other friends. You would see each other in hallways in brief glances and walk on by. Maybe in another life. In a normal life, if you’d been born to both mortal parents. You might have even had a dog in the mix. It was strange to think about, as he pulled you down behind a crate, not caring even a little bit about your sweaty palm, or the fact that you’d accidentally slapped him in the face. Life worked in funny ways. The Fates certainly chose you two for a reason, though you couldn’t be sure what that reason was, yet. Maybe, when you’d asked to be born again, the Judges in the Underworld decided you needed some more excitement in your life. Or maybe they hated you, and you’d done wrong before, whoever you were before, because to be here now you’d have to have been here once—after seeing the Underworld with your own eyes, there was no more questioning life after death. Did you reach Elysium? Were you a nice person?
Being a demigod had its pros, its cons, and its questions. It enabled deep thinking.
“Come on, just go around it,” you nodded to the sight up ahead. Percy went to climb to his feet…
That was when you heard the voices.
“Shit! Get in the cart!”
Pulling back the tarp, stinging your fingers, Percy clambered over the edge and into the pile of metal pieces, flat and smooth between the hot cart. He raised his hands, holding up the tarp as you shot a hasty look in the direction of the voices; shadows were growing bigger on the wall. You flopped into the cart in an uncomfortable position of squashed-up legs, Percy’s longer set digging into your side. You tried to move over as far as you could to make room for him but really there wasn’t much point. He flipped the tarp over your heads, and together you held your breath.
It turned red. With the tarp now covering the pair of you, light from the flowing lava pit illuminated the red tarp, casting an amber glow.
Riptide? you mouthed to Percy. Your dagger sat in your backpack, crushed under your weight and between the cart.
He raised his hand ever so slightly, and twirled the pen in response.
“Bring it in?” One voice asked. It was deep.
“Yeah, movie’s just finished.”
Lowering your gaze from the side of the cart, you meet Percy’s. Movie?
Suddenly, the cart jerked, and tipped forward. You jostled into Percy, and thrust your hands out to either side of the cart. The metal was warm. You slammed your mouth shut, hoping nobody heard the surprised squeak.
“Hey! Thought you said this was a small load? Thing weighs a ton!”
Rude.
“It’s celestial bronze, idiot,” the other voice laughed. “What did you think, it’d be light? Hurry up and set it in the back, for crying out load. Hey, younglings! Watch the damn movie. I’ll answer your questions later.”
Had you found some secret school? Were people living here? Younglings didn’t sound very human, however. Nobody in their right mind would use that language.
But a movie did play. You strained your ears, trying to make some sort of sense of where you were. Growth spurts, and hygiene working in the forges.
“And lastly, don’t neglect your flipper hygiene!” The soapy voice rang over speakers. “Good flippers equal good mind!”
Percy spun Riptide between his fingers, dashing back and forth and swapping hands. His dark brows furrowed in concentration, tired eyes pinned on nothing in particular. They seemed brighter in here, somehow. More ‘calm before the storm’ rather than their usual ‘storm’.
“So, younglings, what is the correct name of our particular species? You, at the back!”
“Sea demons!” A voice cried.
“No,” the ‘teacher’ flatlined. “You?”
“Telekhines!” Another voice grumbled.
“Brill! And why are we here, guys?”
“Revenge! Revenge against the Greek god Zeus, for casting us down to Tartarus!”
“Indeed! And only after we created their weapons, might I add!”
So, you were dealing with a bunch of salty monsters. Great.
“Zeus cast us away,” the teacher continued in a mocking, sad voice. “Down to Tartarus. We had no control in this, young ones, no choice! Which is why now is our perfect time for a takeover! We will start here, in the very forges of Hephaestus! And soon after, the undersea furnaces, too!”
There was a huge uproar of applause and yells, some barking, some screaming. Terrible noise, honestly. And that was only the very tip of the iceberg.
You’d done your research after being at camp for so long. You’d come across their names, the Telekhines, but the gross result of the previous Titan takeover remained a subject to be avoided. To you, even reading about the ugliness of that period was enough, never mind looking at pictures of the creatures produced then. Maybe Ares was right, so long ago—you valued prettiness and vanity so much that you may as well have been a daughter of Aphrodite rather than Athena. Is that why your mother wouldn’t connect with you? Did she see her sister, rather than her daughter? Brains and beauty go hand-in-hand, but the Gods have their own set of values and expectations. You didn’t live up to too many of them. Maybe you were vain—perhaps a little too much. Probably ignorant, too.
On your head it was, then, that you had clue what you were up against.
“Who do we serve, Telekhines?”
“Kronos!”
“And when you all grow to full maturity, who will you serve? Whose army will you fight for?”
“Kronos!”
“Lovely. Now, at the back we have brought some scraps for you to practice making weapons with. Go ahead and take a look—but share! We don’t need any arguments today.”
You scrambled in place. Percy’s elbow kneaded into your stomach as he tried to set up Riptide early. Reflexively, your foot shot out at the feeling, and booted his knee cap. Your hand fell to his shoulder, urgently whispering, “backpack. Open my backpack!”
Alas, you both prepared too late. The tarp was thrown away by…human hands. Except the creatures they belonged to one-hundred percent were not human beings. A dozen faces looked in, with snouts like dogs, wet and slimy, and bodies of sea lions, all black and shiny.
“Demigods!” One growled.
“Eat them!” Cried another; from the back of group, there was a sound like nashers clashing.
Fortunately for you, they had also prepared too late. Riptide appeared in full form, and in one strong swoop, Percy decapitated the whole row. They disappeared in puffs of dust, sent straight back to where they came from.
“Back off!” Percy yelled, jabbing at another one.
You swung your arm back with your torch still in hand, and swatted one on the snout. It barked, but retreated, giving you the room you needed to clamber out of the cart.
You came face-to-face with a hunched over, crouching Telekhine with the features of a Doberman, snarling. Your shoes squeaked the further you backed up, right to Percy’s back. The back of his head very briefly knocked the top of yours. He had your back, and you most definitely had his. Very slyly, his free hand rose and made contact with your side, following the strap of your backpack and skimming across it blindly. What was he doing?
“New lesson, class,” said Percy. You clutched the flashlight harder, as the six-foot Telekhine began to advance, its fangs making an appearance briefly. The zipper of your bag jingled, and—ah, Percy was trying to get your dagger. “Monsters tend to vaporise when slashed with a celestial bronze sword. Just like this—!”
The Telekhines dove, driving Percy into gear. He abandoned your backpack, taking one firm swipe to the next set of monsters. They dissolved instantly, little clouds of ash and dust sending puffs in the air. The warm handle of Riptide was pressed into your palm straight after, and you dropped your flashlight. With both hands around the hilt, you swung the sword over your shoulder and back again like you would a baseball bat. The speed at which you did so enabled you to get a surprise hit on the advancing, taller monster, and you split him down the middle. Its essence went up like a bomb. The rest of the monsters were backed up, but you didn’t have long.
You threw the sword back to Percy blindly. Turning, he reached out a hand for yours. “Let’s go!” With eyes wide in anticipation and adrenaline, still furiously red in the face, he pulled you along. In tandem, you made a dive for the exit tunnel, where a door had been placed.
Bingo. Sliding into the safe space, you threw your body back against the door and held it in place while Percy’s deft hands made quick work of the wheel handle, spinning it until it locked. Monsters thudded on the other side, the sound like thunder in this winding tunnel.
Back in the open lava room, you noticed a couple of things that weren’t there before: one, four sea demons even taller than the rest, at least nine-feet; two, the statue and work of which they hammered away at in the middle of the room by the first bridge; three, the harsh language they spoke did not register in your mind. An old language, then. Old as hell.
“What are they making?” You muttered, trying to get a good look without exposing yourself. Sparks flew from the large piece of metal between them.
Percy sighed. “Whatever it is, it isn’t good. They were banished to Tartarus by Zeus for a reason. Now, I don’t like the guy, but I’m pretty sure he’d have a good enough reason for doing something like that.”
You’d nearly forgotten about the locked door at the end of the tunnel, until the creatures came falling through. Crawling over each other, they began to run towards you.
Percy grabbed you by the shoulders, sword dangerously close to your face. He’d never let it touch you, you trusted, but even the aura of it was unsettling so close to your skin. “Start running. Get a head start.”
You shook your head and scoffed. “Ha, no. We leave together.”
“We don’t have time to leave together!” He exclaimed, “I’m gonna hold them back while you get a head start. If you get to Hephaestus first, he might help us. Tell him what we found out, and I’ll be right behind. Got it?”
You liked to think, later, that the final look in Percy’s eyes was determination. It certainly seemed that way, storming bright, his mouth set firmly. You weren’t to fight a whole army with a flashlight and a dagger stuck deep in your bag with no time to grab it.
“Just go!” He ordered. You took a single step back, unsure, until he reached out with one strong hand and gave your shoulder a confident push. “I’ll be right behind you. I promise.”
The army advanced and by this point, the taller, grown ones had taken notice of what was happening. More of those came out of the walls, too, and the dark shapes from earlier finally paid attention to the two of you.
In one movement, not thinking at all, you threw yourself forward, and threw your arms firmly around Percy’s neck. He smelled like sweat and boy and dirt from being down in the maze for so long, but you didn’t care one bit. He was warm and solid and sure and here, and his free hand touched your back, before tugging on your shirt. You moved away, to see something not unlike real desperation on his face.
“Now go,” he ordered, one last time.
And you listened.
You made a run for the way you’d came, and the sounds of the forge were drowned out the further you ran away. At first, it was fine—lights like the metal ones of an old Cold War bunker lit your path. Nausea reigned, until you and your heaving chest took a break against a wall just for a second. You hadn’t gone too far, but the Telekhines weren’t here yet. Percy said he’d be right behind. You’d wait here for him.
Or you could go back.
Kneeling, you slid your bag from your back and unzipped it. Percy had moved the zipper not even halfway in his mission to get your dagger for you. It sat between your jacket and your packets of food. You pulled out a water bottle and sipped slowly. Shrugging your bag back on your shoulders, you waited a second on weak legs, trying to regain some strength.
The tunnel remained silent if you excused your laboured breathing. The lights on the ceiling began to flicker, dimming and brightening again, probably trying to move you along and change itself. It wouldn’t have been unsettling if Grover and Percy were with you, but they weren’t, and you felt completely alone in this maze despite knowing they were still down here too. You laid your hand on your forehead and ran it through your sweaty hairline, trying to wipe the remains of your overheating from your face. As you did, and slowly got to your feet, the lights flickered even more intensely.
That was just before the ground began to shake. At first it was a tiny amount of trembling, and soundless, beneath your feet. Its intensity grew in size pretty quickly, from a little shaking to full-blown rumbling, like an explosion was popping off and heading your way. You stepped back once, trying to make sense of the direction, and only looked up the way you came just as the lights went out silently. It was like a bomb exploded, or some part of the tunnel had blown apart. A fierce gush of wind blew, so forceful you had no choice in being shoved to the wall, hot air hitting you square in the face. Bits of debris and dirt were blown in your eyes, gritting and painful. Just as it began, it ended, and the sound of the maze changing again came through loud and clear.
Which left you with two bouts of knowledge:
One: Percy had definitely just been killed.
and Two: you were totally, utterly lost, without even a flashlight.
Standing in the aftermath of hot, diffusing air from the direction of the forges, breathing in bits of explosion, there was absolutely no denying that your best friend had just been blown to smithereens. Nobody survived an explosion like that. Nobody.
Even so, your mind turned on autopilot. What happened after the explosion was numbed and distorted, like looking through murky water and only half-awake.
“No,” you mumbled, “no, no, no. Not happening. This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening.”
Horror began to sink in, and you felt suddenly extremely, permanently wounded. Percy was, without a doubt, very, very dead. You scarcely moved, scarcely breathed. Staring at a wall replacing what you thought was where you came from, but now couldn’t be completely sure, because you’d dropped your flashlight back in the blown-up cavern, and your best friend was lying in bits and pieces of body somewhere you couldn’t reach. The mind runs rampant in panic. All you could think of was blood, and bones.
You might have screamed. You thought you did. Your throat turns sore and raw, and you figure you’ve been screaming for a while in the darkness on your own.
How strange it was that Percy had been the only thing keeping you safe this whole time. Without him, you feel exposed even when nothing can see you. They can definitely sense you. You hear something coming, like a body being dragged along the ground, and decide now would be a good time to get up and go. But your hands and feet are numb and tingling, evidence of a panic attack. Your head swims without sight, and you can’t feel the wall when you touch your fingers to it.
Your feet hurt when they take step after step until you’re running, dragging your fingers blindly along the dark tunnel as some semblance of a path finder. The walls change, and twice you fall. It’s embarrassing, scraping your chin on brick, eating dirt. You stumble up stairs, walk through cobwebs and feel things crawling up your neck, and scream now and again out of sheer annoyance, sheer exhaustion. You begin to pray, muttering insanely under your breath to anyone who will listen: first your mom, and you beg her to forgive any doubts you had. Then you beg Hermes, the patron of travellers, to at least give you direction here. And finally Ares, because the only thing fuelling your body is determination to not die down here.
Someone has your back.
Just as you’re beginning to freak out again, you feel the wall begin to curve around, and dip. And…grow…lighter? And it is, growing lighter. There’s a glow coming from a door at the end of the tunnel, and you’ve seen this door before.
You’ve made it back to Hephaestus’s workshop in one piece.
You think about knocking. And then you realise how stupid that idea is, and burst right in.
Heaving, sweating, and rubbing your sore chin, you stand wilting in the doorway of his workshop. He’s hanging from the ceiling on some sort of platform, but jumps down when he notices you.
“Ah,” he cleared his throat. “It’s you.” Hephaestus raises his hand to his beard and pats at it, putting out a great deal of fire burning there.
“Percy’s dead. And Grover is as good as.” You swallow, and kick the door shut blindly. “I want a way out of here, and you’re going to help me.”
“Look at you, making all the demands!” He laughs. It’s bellowing, and it rumbles the room. “Little demigod. Get a hold of yourself. You’re getting tears on my floor.”
You flinch in place at his cruelty. “My best friend just died!” You yell out. “Percy’s dead, because you told us to do something. This is your fault.”
Hephaestus looks up from the screwdriver in his hand, to meet your eyes head on. It’s like tiny fires are burning there. “Hold your tongue, daughter of Athena. It’s unbecoming. And I didn’t kill the other one—whatever was in there did that.”
“Telekhines,” you spat. A gritty tear rolls down your cheek. “That’s what’s in there. Or, was. It’s all blown apart now. So we went there for nothing. I hope you know they’re all against you. Kronos’s army is rising, and they’re coming for you.” And I can’t say I blame them.
He paused, raised a brow briefly, and scoffed. “Demigods don’t scare me.”
“No, but Kronos does. And he’s still coming whether you like it or not. You killed my friend. So I have a request.”
Hephaestus threw down the instrument in his hand, colliding with a metal worktop and echoing somewhat off the walls. You cringe, but refuse to back up. “Look at you, demigod, making all the requests.” He pauses for a moment. “But I cannot deny you, I suppose. You did as I asked. You want a way home.”
“Of course I want a way home,” you seethed.
He cocked his head and huffed. “Go out of here. Follow the tunnel left, and all the way down. You’ll find your way home, daughter of Athena.”
Without a ‘thank you’ you find yourself marching out of his workshop, abandoning the door. You do as he says, and it feels ridiculously easy, hand on the wall again and sliding your fingers across to follow the way it bends. Left, and all the way down. Your fingers hit a bump in the wall, and that little bump instantly begins to glow dark blue.
It makes you think of Percy, but you have no energy left to cry with.
Hephaestus wasn’t misleading you, then. Stepping away from the hole opening up over your head, dirt caves in and crumbles around your feet. A dirty ladder begins to shake its way out of the dirt wall, all the way up to the new gap in the earth.
You hear voices, as you heave up the ladder. It’s short, and doesn’t take long to reach the opening at the top, where a hand has reached down to help you up, a face peering in—Clarisse.
Her expression is one of apprehension, and it’s as serious and firm as ever. Her muddy eyes flick over your face, and you imagine you must look a state. Your chin still burns with your ground collision, cheek smarted.
For a second, as she pulls you with a strong hand from the Labyrinth, she doesn’t say anything. You barely look at Clarisse, crawling out of the hole. A distance away you can hear voices.
“They’re all patrolling that way,” she grumbled. “Bit of a stupid move on our part. You’re lucky I was here, and not…” she trails off. You’re not quite short who you were lucky she wasn’t to be, because you can’t find anything in yourself to question her.
Instead, you shake your head. Clarisse pulls you to your feet, and you’re vividly aware of the smell of camp, strawberries and the smell of the trees. The air is a cold shock above ground.
Finally you look up. You meet Clarisse’s somewhat concerned look. She stares expectantly.
“Percy’s dead,” you swallow. Clarisse’s eyes widen for a fraction of a second, then everything falls from her face. “Grover’s gone. And I need to talk to Chiron.”
“Wait—” you stumble past her, tearing your arm from her grip. The world feels blurred. “They’re—they’re both dead?! They’re gone?”
“That’s what I said, Clarisse!” You snap, raising your arm to wipe your eyes.
“We all thought that you’d be fine down there!” She follows after you. “You’re—capable, at the least! I don’t understand!”
You walk quickly through the woods, tearing past groups of people on guard, and some kids playing by the cabins. Up ahead is the Big House, your destination. People call your name when they see you, but there’s nothing left to answer them with.
You wished you could smiled, walking into the house. You wished Grover and Percy were right behind you, laughing at something stupid as usual. You might have been greeted by your friends with cheers, quest completed successfully.
Murphy’s Law says anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. If you have a handful of opportunities of things that can go wrong, the one most likely to cause damage will occur. You’ve deducted that Murphy’s Law is charging your life.
So, you walk the creaking, fading steps of the Big House and along the porch. You thought of Percy at the very beginning of all of this, recovering on this porch. It made you think of returning here after Bianca passed. You throw open the door, bordered by white drapes, met with silence.
“Hey,” calls Clarisse. “Hey, look, I know how you feel. But we should get you to the med bay first. You look about to pass out.”
And you feel it, too. But you can’t rest until you’ve settled this.
Chiron’s face lights up when he hears you, standing in the doorway. Brown eyes warm and welcoming sadly fade, like he knows.
You choke on a sudden flow of tears, the back of your hand flying to your mouth. “He’s dead,” you tell him outright. “Percy’s dead.”
That’s the most important thing to tell. Not that you didn’t find Daedalus, or that you insulted a god down there, nor that you abandoned Nico. After all, it is the worst thing imaginable, in your eyes. All-consuming horror, taking over every inch of you. Your best friend, your longest friend, is dead.
“He saved me,” you whisper shakily.
There’s a lot of hush on camp, after that. The daylight was already fading when you came up above ground again, and it’s nearly gone now, the sky a dull, sad shade of dark-blue. Clarisse declared the time to be six o’clock in the evening exactly when you climbed out of the Labyrinth. You spend two hours going over everything in excruciating detail, from the second you stepped foot in the maze and the meeting with Hera, the blown-up forge, and what you saw. Everything feels strange after spending, as Chiron tells you, a week in almost complete darkness, with no way to tell time, in a setting altering itself every few minutes. The distant sound of laughing campers and the kids playing by the lake are long gone, as if the whole camp knows what has happened—maybe they do know. But nobody can feel the grief you feel, the struggle to really accept what happened. Logically, Percy is very, extremely dead and gone. Your heart is beginning something to change.
You don’t sleep well that night. Chiron writes down every little thing you say, and has Clarisse bring up some food for dinner for you. It’s kind, and unusual for her. She keeps her gaze lowered the whole thing you’re there, but she isn’t mean, so that’s something.
It’s nearly nine o’clock, and you’ve washed and dressed, ready for sleep in the spare room on the third floor of the house. There’s absolutely no way you can face company tonight—you’re drained completely, and know the second you hit the pillow you’ll be out. Nursing a cup of hot chocolate with extra marshmallows per Chiron’s sympathy, you settle at the table, swirling around the pink and white delicacies in your mug with a teaspoon. It’s a kind thought to make it for you, but you don’t need hot chocolate; you need to scream. You need to grab the nearest bat, and smash up the kitchen. You notice a rolling pin hanging from the wall…
“We need to talk about the maze,” says Chiron in a low tone.
It’s late and you want to sleep. “We already did.” You clink the spoon against the mug.
“It’s just…my dear, nobody navigates the maze like that. The way you described, coming back in the dark… Chris Rodriguez and Clarisse were down there for weeks, separated, and neither managed to find a way out alone. Someone found them. Alone, they might have been stuck down there for a lot longer than they were. They were the last people to go down before yourself, Percy and Grover. You walked alone, and found your way not only to the workshop, but back out of the maze again in one short go.” He pauses. “How did you do it?”
You swallow and breathe in order to ebb away the annoyance you’re feeling a lot of. You shrug. “I uh…I just knew what to do. Hephaestus told me which way to go before Clarisse found me but—well, I just walked the rest. Couldn’t see a damn thing.”
“You just knew?” He repeats. Raising your head, Chiron is frowning deeply. “To me, it doesn’t seem right. Put it this way, my dear—nobody has been able to navigate the maze like that since Luke.”
You slam down the mug in an instant on the hard wood table, spilling the contents all over the table, dripping to the floor. “Alright, so you think I’m working with Luke? Because I walked a couple of tunnels alone? If you really believe after my best friend was killed by the very people Luke is working with, that I’d work with that guy, your head needs a good tap, no offence.” You stand up swiftly, knocking the chair back. He calls your name but you ignore it and stomp up the stairs to your temporary bedroom.
In there, you lock the door, get on your knees, and pray. Your tears soak your clasped hands at the side of the bed. You get on your knees, and you beg.
I’ve added the song ‘everything in its right place’ by Radiohead to the capsize playlist on Spotify if you want to give it a listen! Figured it worked well with the end of this chapter. After all, these things are Fated to unravel whether our main gal likes it or not ☺️ the song absolutely hits me in the gut. It’s the epitome of ‘oh, it didn’t go the way you planned? tough. it’s meant to be this way’ and the realisation that things are falling as they should.
chapter thirty-five | when I say ‘hell’, you say ‘nah’
Being tied up and gagged sitting beside a barbecue spitting hot oil at you, was not on the agenda.
And yet you sighed, tied up to a barbecue. Across the porch, Nico sat the same way, bound to the railing. To your left, Grover mirrored him, tied up in the sun. He was sweating, and looked incredibly tired. You wished you could do something about the situation you got caught in, but the truth was, you couldn’t do a thing. Percy got you here, and only Percy could get you out.
“Lovely day!” Geryon flipped sausages. A bit of piping-hot oil landed on your cheek. You flinched, but he didn’t pay you any notice. “Lovely day…Eurytion, get those banners higher!”
Streamers and party balloons were tied up and taped to the windows by Eurytion, who you deducted to be a spineless man. He’d tied you all up at Geryon’s instructions and relaxed on the bench under the window, in the shade.
You tried desperately to think of a way you could contact anyone. Chiron, perhaps, who could advise you on what to do now that Percy had gotten you tied up and held hostage. Maybe even Sally Jackson, since she always knew what you could do. Her advice hadn’t failed you yet. But there were no water sources or reflective surfaces to make a rainbow, and you could reach your bag chucked out of the way down on the grass, anyway. Eurytion had been kind enough to put your dagger in your bag, rather than throwing it away. That was something.
Eurytion and Geryon ate barbecue food, put more on the grill, and ate that, too, until the sun had set relatively low. The whole time, you tried not to hyperventilate at the thought of Percy being eaten by monster horses. You tried not to think of the high possibility you’d be sold off like a piece in a thrift store. You tried not to, but your mind ran wild. Grover communicated with his eyes, probably as tired as you were after your struggle to get out of the ties. You hadn’t any idea what he was communicating, though—the sun beamed in your eyes.
You were beginning to think he wasn’t coming back at all, a hopeless sort of sadness setting in, when a desperate, boys voice rang out above the barbecue and Geryon’s terrible singing.
“Let them go!” Percy’s voice raged. He ran up the porch steps and rounded. He locked eyes with you, and then Grover and Nico. “I cleaned the stables. So let them go.” Relief lifted the weight off your shoulders, that Percy was still breathing.
Geryon lifted off his cooking apron and dumped it over the porch rail. “Did you, now? How’d you manage it, sonny?”
Breathing deeply, Percy explained. “The water from the river. I…controlled it. Cleared the stables out completely.”
Geryon nodded appreciatively. “Well, then, Mr. Genius, smart move. You could have at least poisoned the naiad that resides in there, but hey-ho.” The staticky radio on the bench next to Eurytion played an Elvis Presley song, cutting out here and there. Polk Salad Annie felt a little bit too upbeat for the unpredictable crowd.
“Let my friends go,” Percy seethed, not appreciating the insinuation that he hadn’t done enough. “We had a deal.”
Geryon chuckled. “See, the problem is, and I’ve been thinking about this very deeply; if I let your friends go, I won’t get paid. They’re staying.”
Your eyes widened so much you might have looked comical. Percy turned gray. “You. Promised.”
“Ah, but you didn’t have me swear on the River Styx, did you? Therefore, it was not binding. Always remember, Percy, when you’re conducting any business, you should always swear on the River Styx. A binding oath is worth everything, alrighty?”
A beat of silence hit as Percy drew his sword. Riptide reflected the gold of the sun, strong at your friend’s side. Orthus, standing at Grover’s head, growled deeply.
Geryon waved Percy off like he was a knat. “Eurytion, he’s annoying me. Kill him.”
Grover and yourself protested as much as you could with your mouth’s somewhat bound too. Geryon looked away and slung a packet of bacon on the grill. At the same time, Percy inched closer to you, angling Riptide to the ties on your ankles. Orthus pounced and snapped at him, forcing Percy to move away. Saliva dripped from the dog’s mouths in a disgusting puddle near your feet. You couldn’t help feeling a little angry at him. For the first time, Percy had truly put your life at risk, and his way out of it failed to be effective.
“Kill him yourself,” said Eurytion, crossing his arms loosely.
Raising his dark brows, Geryon uttered a calm, “Excuse me?”
“You heard me! You keep sending me to do your dirty work. You pick fights for no proper reason, and I’m tired of dying for you. You want the kid dead; kill him yourself.”
Tensely, the scene reminded you of a movie, like a cowboy facing down his enemy. You wanted to laugh, but honestly you felt a little too heat-exhausted and scared.
Geryon threw down the metal tongs. “How dare you defy me? I should be rid of you this instant!”
“And who’d look after your cattle then? Orthus, heel.” The dog left you, settling at Eurytion’s side.
“Whatever! I’ll deal with you later, after the boy’s gone.”
Then the scene
went
wild.
Geryon picked up two carving knives and threw them with such fury in Percy’s direction that they went haywire; he raised Riptide and deflected one away, over the rail, the other landed between Eurytion’s feet. Orthus barked aggressively, and Elvis Presley went crazy on the radio. Though obviously tired, and looking sweaty and pale (and in need of a shower after the stench of the stables), Percy went on the offence, raising Riptide and aiming right for Geryon’s head. He ducked and moved aside, causing the sword to go right through his middle chest. You looked away, praying to your mother you didn’t gag, because the way you were feeling in the sun, it would not be good. Geryon yelled in pain and thudded to the deck. You anticipated the familiar sound of crumbling to ashes and dust the way monsters usually do, but it didn’t happen.
“Nice try,” he growled. “Thing is, I obviously have three hearts. It’s the perfect backup!” You looked back just in time to witness him kick over the barbecue that had been boiling all day long. The metal grates fell away, as smoking coals spilled out. Being so close to it, one caught your cheek as it dropped, others burning around your feet. You screamed, and couldn’t stop it. Grover yanked uselessly at his bindings, while Orthus approached him in a low crawl. Elvis didn’t give a shit that you found yourself in a stressful situation. Eurytion stepped back down the porch steps. Nico looked visibly terrified. After all, he was only a kid.
Percy struck Geryon in the chest again, but he only laughed in his face. The dark-haired boy ran the sword through his stomach but it did absolutely nothing. Percy persevered, usually, so watching him take off inside the house was a kick to the stomach. He couldn’t leave you here, surely? Your cheek itched painfully from the burn of the coal and the oil and the sun, you were tired and hot and stressed. Sooner rather than later, you might explode.
Geryon launched the large barbecue fork through the open doorway, and it landed in something with a terrible clunk. “Your head’s gonna go there, Jackson, next to the bear!”
In the doorway, Percy appeared carrying a large bow and notched an arrow, shocking since he couldn’t so much as hit a target a metre away at camp. Geryon berated him verbally with cruel remarks and laughter, but Percy was not to be deterred. The monster didn’t need weapons to charge toward Percy, who dove sideways. Before he could react, Percy let the arrow fly. It shot straight through Geryon’s arm in a bloody mess, and right through his bodies to the other side, landing in the wall inside the house. The ranch grew still and quiet, Geryon turning. “You can’t shoot,” he struggled to talk. “They told me you can’t.” In a sickly shade of violent green, he fell to his knees heavily and promptly turned to ashes, grains as small as sand. Silently, all that remained was a pair of jeans, a huge shirt and boots.
Percy turned, dropping the bow to the deck, clattering. In his pocket Riptide had returned. He cut your mouth free first, careful of the stinging cheek, knowing somehow that freedom of speech was what you wanted now.
You coughed to clear your throat, and brilliant-gray met sea-green. “Glad you’re still breathing, Percy Jackson.”
He swallowed, cutting through the binding at your ankles. “Glad you’re still here, B.”
You collected your backpack and dug straight for a bottle of water, sipping slowly as Grover and Nico were released. Casting the bottle away into your bag, you stood to build up the barbecue again, and offered the last packs of burgers to the gods as a thanks for helping Percy actually get a good shot…and not somehow shooting you, instead (which he had nearly done, once before).
Nico said Eurytion should be tied up, and Grover agreed on the grounds that his dog had tried to kill you all. Murder wasn’t in your books, and you didn’t want to become a subject of interest, but the old man had done nothing while you cooked under the sun and was going to allow you to be handed over to Luke. So…something had to be done.
“Why don’t we just…” you thought, “I don’t know, actually. Could just tie him and make a run for it before he breaks free?”
“Or we could contact Chiron?” Suggested Grover. “Maybe he could do something about this?”
You waved him off. “Chiron would be too nice.”
Percy raised his brows. “And just tying some up is isn’t being too nice?”
“Alright! I’m just saying, murder is a bit far. He isn’t completely guilty. He didn’t really do anything to us.”
“Didn’t do anything for us, either,” retorted your friend. Percy flicked his hair from his face, sweaty and sun-kissed.
Nico gasped with an idea. “We could kill him, and then I’ll go and judge him in the Underworld.”
You clicked your fingers, pointing at Nico. “Ha ha, that’s not what we’re gonna do.”
“Look,” breathed Percy, pocketing Riptide-now-pen. He held out a hand to Eurytion as he spoke. “How long will Geryon take to reform and come back?”
“Couple hundred years,” the farmhand shrugged. “He ain’t one of those quick reformers.”
“Oh, thank you Zeus,” you mumbled. The sky rumbled, perfectly clear.
“You said you died for him in the past, didn’t you? How’d that happen?”
Eurytion explained his immortality, chosen way back when in his half-blood era. Percy stood beside you leaning on the fencing, raising his hand to shield his bright eyes from the blinding sun. In turn, his shadow blocked you, dimming the feel of burning on your face.
“You can change things ‘round here,” offered Percy, “be nice to the animals, not selling them. If we leave you here, you’ve got to stop trading with the Titans.”
Eurytion thought about it hard, and long. He sat silent, just pondering, until eventually he nodded. “I can live with that.”
“Hey, if you get the animals on your side, maybe when Geryon comes back, he’ll be working for you. Tables—turned.”
Eurytion hummed, chuckling low in his throat. “I wouldn’t mind that,” he grinned. He waved off in the distance. “Now go. I haven’t had peace and quiet in years. And the girl looks like she needs a hospital. Seriously, you look sick.”
“That’s rude.”
“You’re not gonna stop us?” Grover pushed away from his seat. You leaned your elbow on his shoulder.
“Hell no.”
Despite his calm, laidback demeanour, you couldn’t help feeling suspicious. Raising your bottle to your warm cheeks, cooling them a little, you asked the question stuck on your mind. “He said somebody paid for our safe passage. The only person I can think of down here who could have done so would be Hera. She met us in the maze. She gave us some not-so-helpful advice. You seen her anywhere?”
Eurytion shrugged. “I don’t know what he was talking about. And I ain’t seen any gods round here, lady.”
“What about Luke, and his army? Did you actually tell them we’re here?”
He scoffed with humour. “Did I hell. We were waiting until after the barbecue. So to answer your indirect question, missus, they don’t know about Mr. Nico.”
The boy himself glared right at you with such passion it almost physically burned. Two options were here and two only.
“You can come with us and get out of here,” you offered. “Or you can stay on the ranch for a while. Either way you’d be quite safe.”
Nico’s face warped to one of fury. His skinny fists clenched at his sides. “I’m not going anywhere with you! Safe? What do you know about being safe? You got my sister killed!”
You practically saw red. Shoving your bag into Percy’s fumbling arms, you leaned down to face Nico, who ground his teeth loudly. “Alright, you little shit—let’s get one thing straight before we go anywhere: I did not get your sister killed. I’ve thought long and hard about it, and ultimately I’ve decided that Bianca had her own brain, and her own free will. I didn’t make her do anything, and I didn’t push her. It was a tragic accident, okay?”
“Nico,” Percy stood beside you, laying a warm hand on your shoulder and urging you back from the kid who didn’t move. “She’s right. Please believe her. Believe us. None of this was anybody’s fault. Staying here would be fine, you don’t have to come with us if you don’t want to. But if Kronos finds out about you, he’ll take you, and he’ll do anything to get you on his side. It won’t be good, Nico, trust me.”
Nico turned his face away. “I’m not on anyone’s side. And I’m not scared of any of this.”
“You really should be. Bianca wouldn’t want any of this.”
He turned back. Nico’s eyes swam with tears, and you felt a little bad for popping off. “If you knew my sister, you know she’d want to come back! If you cared about her, you’d help me to bring her back.”
“A soul for a soul, right?”
“Yes!”
Percy looked troubled. “But if you didn’t want B, and you didn’t want me, then who?”
“I’m not explaining anything to either of you!” He exclaimed. When a tiny tear tread down his cheek, Nico raised his hand to wipe it away aggressively. “I’m going to bring her back. She’s my sister. I need to…I need her.” He rubbed his eyes viciously.
You deflated. Nico tried to look brave, and act older than he was, but his eyes were rimmed with red as he rubbed at them, and he choked on his tears. All of a sudden you wanted nothing more than to sit him down and talk to him, apologise for shouting when he was so upset. You wanted to kick yourself for acting impulsively, and shouting at a child as they cried. At fifteen years old, you should have known better. You reminded yourself terribly then of your father.
“Why don’t we ask Bianca what she wants?”
Nico’s face stilled. “I’ve tried,” he said miserably. “She won’t answer.”
“Try again,” shrugged Percy. A cold breeze shocked you, suddenly. In the distance, storm clouds were rolling in out of a perfectly sunny day…. “I have a feeling she’ll answer with me here.” He sounded very confident in that, and for what reason?
“Why would she?” Asked Nico.
“Because she’s been sending me messages,” Percy shifted on his feet at the sudden onslaught of confused looks. “I’m sure she has. She’s been warning me of what you’re doing. She wanted me to protect you.”
Nico wiped his eyes furiously. “That’s impossible.”
“Why is it?” Percy offered. “Besides, didn’t you say you’re not afraid? Let’s try it. We’ll need a lot of food, and a pit. You got anything like a grave around here?”
—
The grave happened to be dug especially by yourself and Grover. You never were one for gardening, and you find yourself slacking towards the end of the grave-digging.
“Come on,” urged Grover, sweaty and tired. “Just—we can do this. We’ve got this. Positive thinking. Deep breath in…”
You want to tell Grover that positive thinking won’t influence positive actions, because your limbs feel like lead. But together you finish the grave, and your friends pull you out of it. You waited until dark, the five of you and the dog, to call on the dead. With crates of root beer at the ready, Nico paced back and forth, anxious. You sat at the edge of the grave and dangled your legs in, exhausted beyond belief. Every now and then you had to kick away a bug. Grover sat on his heels, sleeping on the crates of root beer.
“Minos should be here by now!” Came Nico’s tiny voice, his dark eyes full of worry. The moon was high and full and bright. Percy’s infinite gray streak shone in the light, a patch among dark, dark hair. “It’s dark enough. It’s late enough…”
“Maybe he got lost,” suggested Percy. Nico glared furiously.
Percy crouched beside you and clapped you on the shoulder, digging his fingers in as a means to try and show you he was there. Maybe he knew you well enough by now to know you were getting irritated and agitated, waiting and tired and forcing your eyes to stay open.
Little Nico grew fed up himself, and wrenched a bottle of root beer from the crate, pouring it into the pit. Grover jerked away, and began helping. With food in a pile from the forgotten barbecue, Nico’s hands dashed out hungrily, and threw them into the pit too, chanting in Ancient Greek. To anyone else, the sudden chill of the night air and the aura that settled with Nico’s chanting might have been terrifying, or uncomfortable. You found the grim ordeal that was summoning the dead to be a rather interesting situation. Something satisfying in raising what once was. A reminder that things never truly died.
It didn’t take long for someone to come forward. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the right someone.
A dark shade of blue, a thin and whispery figure that mirrored who it was once, kneeled at the edge of the grave and reached in. The image somewhat shimmered, and when you looked hard enough, features showed through; deep-set eyes, hardened and somewhat angry; facial features showing crows feet around the eyes, dark brows…
“Minos!” Yelled Nico, suddenly on guard. He brought forth his sword, aimed at the ghost. “What are you doing?!”
“My apologies,” he said, though there wasn’t a hint of sorry in there. Slowly, the ghost’s image grew a bit more real, more colorful. “The sacrifice seemed too good to leave be. Almost in solid form—it’s nice to see myself again.”
“You are disrupting the Ritual! Leave, now!”
Minos paid him no mind. You’d long since jumped away from the edge of the grave, and joined Percy’s side, but something about the ghost ignited in you a want to take Nico’s sword and run the loser through with it. He turned to the two of you, running his eyes in a way that had you almost wretching.
“Percy Jackson!” He hummed. “My, my. The sons of Poseidon never seem to get any better.”
A rude and untrue comment, because you’d seen old images of Greek heroes, and Percy was the best by a million. Not that you’d say that out loud, or anything.
Percy had a lot more self-control than you did in the moment, because he simply took a deep breath, and said, “We’re looking for Bianca. Get lost.”
“Do you really believe Daedalus will help you?” Minos taunted, tilting his head. Nico had begun chanting again, kneeling at the edge of the pit with Grover kneeling dutifully at his side, taking care. “He cares nothing for you, half-bloods! You certainly cannot trust him. He’s cursed by the gods, and guilty of murder. You want somebody like that on your side?”
“Who did he kill?” Asked Percy.
“Don’t change the subject!” Minos spat, a confirmation that he was talking bull, really. “Stop hindering Nico. Don’t persuade him to abandon his goals!”
“We’re helping Nico,” you touched your dagger tucked away in the pocket of your pants. “He’s a child. Leave him alone.”
The ghost settled by Nico’s ear, leaning down to mutter. Nico visibly flinched and squeezed his eyes shut. “Don’t listen to them, Nico. Let me protect you, not them. I’ll turn them to madness as I did the others. Just say the word.”
If Minos wasn’t already dead, you swore, you’d have killed him there and then.
“Was it you?” Barked Percy. “Did you hurt Chris Rodriguez?”
Minos rolled his eyes lazily, turning around to face Percy. He got in real close to his face; Percy’s arm shot out in front of you and urged you backwards, away from the vile ghost. “The maze is my property,” he hummed. Percy refused to back away. “Those who intrude on it deserve madness.”
Nico turned furious, whether at Minos’s lecturing, or his interrupting. Either way, he turned to the ghost and ran him through with his sword. “Go away, Minos! Leave us!” His voice turned sad and desperate, like he was tired of this too. “Bianca! Come on!”
It was heart-wrenching, watching Nico beg for his dead sister. It wasn’t fair.
But she’d heard him. Bianca came forth, a silvery wisp of light from the dark trees in the distance, growing closer. You didn’t feel wary of her, and Percy dropped his sword, Nico backed away to give her space, and Grover shuffled away from the edge as Bianca knelt to accept the offering in the pit. When she got to her feet, she was a solid hue of silvery-blue form, the image of herself in life. It was like the chatter grew quiet, the chaos turned silent, when Bianca smiled sadly at her brother. Nico had grown still, and pale.
He wasn’t the first one she spoke to, though. “Hello, Percy,” said Bianca, her voice like a lullaby. Her body flickered like the stars would, before it stilled.
“Bianca…” One look at Percy had you reaching for his hand, clasping it between both of yours. He was choked up. You didn’t blame him one bit—you hadn’t known Bianca well at all, and she’d killed herself in the process of saving you all, but even seeing her again like this had your throat burning. “I’m—I’m so sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologise for, Percy. I made my choice.” Somehow, she seemed older, calmer, and a whole lot more at peace, as if this didn’t phase her and her death was simply an article she’d read in a paper and let pass over her, at the back of her mind. “I don’t regret it, either.” Her eyes, a mirror of Nico’s own, fell on you. What did you look like to her, you wondered later? Holding back your own teary eyes the way Percy did.
She turned to face her brother quickly, and his name fell from her lips. She turned sad.
“Oh, Nico.” She raised a hand to cover her mouth. “You’ve gotten so tall.”
“Why didn’t you answer me any sooner!” He exclaimed. “I’ve been trying to find you for months!”
“I was hoping you’d give up, Nico. Please give up.”
Heartbroken, Nico reached for her, but his hand passed right through. “Give up?…I’d never!”
“I need you to do this, Nico. Trust Percy. Trust her.”
“No! She let you die! They’re not our friends!”
Bianca’s ghostly hand reached out to touch Nico’s cheek, but she fizzled out too quickly, and never made contact with him. “You must listen to me now, because this is important. Holding grudges is bad for children of Hades. It’s our fatal flaw, and you must forgive.”
“I can’t. I’ll never.”
Bianca struggled, exhaled. Her eyes betrayed every feeling in her body—anguish, anger, sadness. “Percy has been worried for you, Nico. I let him see what you were up to so that he could help you. You understand, don’t you?”
“It was you, then,” shuddered Percy. “You were sending me those messages.”
Bianca nodded softly. “I was.”
Nico demanded her attention. “No, listen!” He screamed and went to grab at her again. “Don’t help him! Help me! This isn’t fair!”
Bianca kneeled to be face-to-face with Nico. “You’re so close to the truth now, Nico. Believe me. It isn’t them you’re angry at; it’s me. And it’s okay to be angry, do you understand? You’re allowed to be upset—”
“No!” He heaved a great cry.
“You’re mad because I left you, to join the Hunters. And you’re so angry because I died and left you here. It wasn’t my intention, and I’m sorry.” Bianca’s voice turned thick with emotion. “But you must try to accept this, now. I cannot come back. And you must stay with them.” She nodded at you and Percy.
“I just want you back,” Nico sobbed. Bianca, on her knees, looked as if in a great deal of pain. She swallowed hard, and her voice was shaky.
“You can’t have that, Nico. This is how it has to be. And one day, we’ll be reunited again properly. Trust me. Believe in that. I’m never too far away, even when you can’t reach me. But for now, you have to let me go. Can you do that for me, Nico? You’re so strong…you’re so brave.” She turned suddenly to look over her shoulder at something the rest of you couldn’t see. “I must go now. Your powers are attracting unwanted attention. I have to go back.”
“Wait!” A terrible, pained cry ripped from Nico’s throat. “Please don’t go!” He heaved. “Please stay! Don’t leave me here!”
“I love you, Nico.”
You understand Bianca then, and her decision. It was why you dropped Percy’s warm hand and took up Nico’s cold, limp one. He heaved and cried, and didn’t protest when you lay your free hand on the side of his head, and gently pulled him to you. You raised your gaze from Nico’s teary, reddened eyes, squeezed tightly shut, to Bianca’s mirrored gaze. A single, shiny tear trailed down her translucent face, and you tried to convey one last message: Nico would not be alone.
She nodded slowly, and sniffled once. Getting to her feet, Bianca managed a sad smile, and lowered her eyes to Nico once more. He was the last thing she saw, as she trailed out of the mortal world for the final time. Bianca di Angelo simply faded away.
Just because she’d told him to trust you, didn’t mean he trusted you right away. That night, Nico sat out on the porch alone, talking to somebody that wasn’t there, crying to himself. You’d tried to talk to him, but had no luck. Nico demanded to be left alone, so you left him. When you returned two hours later, he’d fallen asleep on the bench, a hand tucked under his cheek. Percy dug out a blanket from one of the bedrooms upstairs, and you’d covered Nico over as the night air grew chilly. Your heart felt heavy, but the day’s trials didn’t prevent you from falling asleep quickly. The boys took the sofas downstairs, and you picked a spot at the bay window with a comforter and pillows. Sleep took you the second you laid down your head.
Your mother decided it was a good time to pop up and say hello, apparently.
You recognised the setting immediately as New York’s Public Library. Beyond the windows lining either two walls, the sky was black as could be, no stars or anything showing through. The lights and the slightly dusty chandeliers on the ceiling of the grand roof were golden, more yellow than usual, and the tables stretching the length of the hall were empty as could be, the dark stretch of tile down the middle aisle echoing your footsteps the further you walked.
At the end of the wall, standing beneath the clock small in the grand wall, was a tall lady, casual as could be in jeans and a pretty sweatshirt. This didn’t defer her from wearing a sword in a scabbard at her hip. Long, light hair was tied back in a practical bun, tight and secure. In her hands was a heavy book, and her brilliant gray eyes scanned it furiously. She didn’t look up from it until you’d paused at her side, peering up at the taller woman, admiring her. Strange, how the gods technically had no DNA, and yet you were her mirror image. The same jawline, the same nose, definitely the same eyes. She was pretty, really pretty, and she carried herself with confidence.
It would have been nice to be acknowledged, however similar you were.
“Mom?” You voiced into the quiet library air.
“Chapter eighteen of The Iliad—what do you know of it?”
You raise your eyebrows, curiously. “I don’t know off the top of my head, exactly. There’s a fight over Patroclus’s body, isn’t there? Real dramatic, like. They’re worried about going to fight the Trojans. Achilles worries about the outcome of Patroclus going out to join the fight.”
“Do you notice any similarities between this and our life?” She quips. Your mom huffed at something she read, and snapped the book shut. The cover was battered leather, the title almost rubbed away. It was old, but no dust rose from it.
You shrug, and feel somewhat nervous. “We’re history repeating itself?” You offer. “Is this to do with Bianca, last night? The fight over what happened to her, fighting over what she wanted for her end?”
Mom hummed, and threw the book over her shoulder. You had a sudden desire to catch it, but as you went to grab it, as it hit your hands, heavy as hell, it disappeared, as though she’d never thrown a thing. Your mother turned to watch you, bringing your brows together, spinning in a circle to look for this damn book like a stupid dog chasing its tail.
“The fight for life is always happening,” said mom, factually. “What happened to Bianca di Angelo was a negligible accident. She could have been saved.”
Frozen, you shakily exhaled. Gray met the mirror image.
“She could have been saved, but it was her destiny. You understand, don’t you, daughter? That what is meant to be is meant to be. So even though you could have saved her life one way or another, she was supposed to die.”
You scoff, and surprise yourself at the burning in your eyes. “People aren’t supposed to just die, mom. When their time comes, when they’re old, then sure. Not like this.”
“Was it not Bianca’s time? Who decides when it is right to die?”
“What’s the point of this?” You snap. “Did you bring me here just to take a dig at me?”
“Everybody has their time. I’m here to tell you to your friend that he should stop meddling in things. Leave things well alone.”
“Great advice. After we’ve sorted things. Bit late to the party.”
“Not entirely.” She tilted her head. “Before I go, just one thing—tell Percy Jackson to let the dead rest, when the time comes.”
“That’s ominous.”
“That’s life,” mom hummed. “I’ll let you go, now. The boy is trying to wake you up.”
When you come to, Percy is knelt beside you. Sunrise is in your eyes, and Nico is shouting downstairs. You gather your things, and prepare to make your way back into the maze.
