FIC: The Necklace of Harmonia, chpt 7

[shiiki]

Title: The Necklace of Harmonia (Daughter of Wisdom 3)
Author: shiiki
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Annabeth Chase, Thalia Grace, Percy Jackson, Luke Castellan, Chiron, Clarisse La Rue, Chase family, OCs, various others, Gen with slight Percy/Annabeth
Fandom: Percy Jackson

Summary: After an eventful summer, Annabeth Chase is on her way to boarding school for the first time. With her friends Thalia and Percy close by, she's looking forward to spending the year in New York. But soon, she finds herself dealing with unfathomable dreams, tangled plots, and a mysterious necklace that keeps finding its way back to her. Worse still, her father wants her to move to the most dangerous city in the country. The choices Annabeth faces this year will have her questioning the meaning of friendship, loyalty, and family. And most of all, just what it means to keep a promise. An alternate PoV retelling of Percy Jackson and the Titan's Curse. Part 3 of the Daughter of Wisdom series.

In this chapter
Chapter Title: Thalia Meets Her Dad
Rating: PG
Characters: Annabeth Chase, Thalia Grace, Clarisse La Rue, Chiron, various Greek gods
Word Count: 4,562

Chapter Summary: Thalia receives a summons to Mount Olympus.

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When we drove up to Half-Blood Hill on Saturday morning, Clarisse was standing at the crest, feeding Peleus, the guard dragon. Terse as always, she greeted us with a, 'Took you long enough to get here.'

I raised my eyebrows. She was the one who'd been in Phoenix the past few weeks without bothering to let us know when she'd be back.

'We gotta talk,' she said importantly.

'I'm supposed to meet Chiron,' Thalia said. 'Can it wait?'

Clarisse crossed her arms. If it had been anyone but Thalia (namely Percy), she would probably have told them it was none of their business anyway-accompanied by half a dozen death threats. As it was, she scowled and said, 'It's Annabeth I need to talk to anyway.'

'Go for your lessons,' I said to Thalia. 'I'll fill you in later.'

We parted ways at the Big House. Thalia went in to meet Chiron for her private training, while Clarisse led me to the climbing wall.

'I thought you said you wanted to talk?' I asked. The climbing wall was probably my least favourite of all the camp's training equipment. It had a nasty habit of spewing hot lava-the kind the harpies used to scrub our dishes-as an incentive to speed climbers up the wall. I think the harpies got a kick out of it, vindictive as they were about not being allowed to eat us.

'Don't want to be overheard.' Clarisse slung her spear over her shoulder and started to climb.

Sighing, I deposited my bag clear of any lava spills, and followed her.

Once we reached the top, safely out of reach of lava fingers and eavesdroppers, I asked, 'So what did you find out in Phoenix.'

Clarisse glowered at me. 'Chris isn't fine, thanks for asking.'

'That's what I meant,' I lied quickly. 'Is he still, um-'

'Crazy? Yeah.' Once again, Clarisse looked uncharacteristically morose. 'Nothing we did made any difference. Gave him as much nectar and ambrosia as we dared-no change. Hedge tried some nature shit that put him to sleep for a bit, but when he woke up he was raving again.'

'Did you find out what he meant, about the string, and Mary, and how he ended up in the desert?'

'Will you just let me tell the story?'

I held up my hands and gestured for her to go ahead.

'We couldn't get anything sensible out of him so Hedge and I went back to the rez to look for clues. We found this abandoned building. There was a weird trapdoor inside. Like, I dunno, it wasn't really a door, more like a big stone, and it didn't do anything when Hedge sat on it, but when I touched it, it just, like, lifted up and tossed him off.'

'What was under it?'

'I dunno.'

Beneath us, a tongue of lava flickered up several feet. Clarisse brought her feet up to rest on a higher climbhold.

'It was a hole,' she amended. 'Just this black hole in the middle of the building. I was gonna see what was in there, but Hedge wouldn't let me.'

I raised my eyebrows. It wasn't like Clarisse to back away from anything. And while I didn't know Hedge as well, he didn't seem like the type either.

'Did something in there, er, scare him?'

'No one was scared, wiseass,' Clarisse growled. 'He's a satyr. They get crazy weird about underground spaces.'

The lava hissed as it retreated down the wall. It almost sounded like it was laughing.

'But that must be how Chris got to the desert,' I said. I tried to picture it-Chris emerging from a dark hole in the ground, a tunnel maybe, that led from … where?

For some reason, the image of Elise's wall poster imprinted itself over my mental picture. The tall, strong actor beckoned to me, to a maze of twisting walls in the background.

The Labyrinth.

I knew the story of the Labyrinth well, of course-the real one, not whatever blockbuster my classmates had watched. Its creator, Daedalus, was one of my mother's most famous children due to his prowess as an architect and inventor. And the maze itself was a hallmark of ancient architecture. It was said to have a life of its own-an old demigod had described it to me once as 'living, breathing architecture.' No one really knew what had happened to it, but something as monumental as the Labyrinth could well have passed along in the memory of civilisation like the archetypes Chiron always spoke of. They shifted with the seat of the West, the way Mount Olympus was now above the Empire State Building and the Sea of Monsters in the Bermuda Triangle.

We are losing too many of them to the maze … Was that was Kronos had been referring to in my dream?

'Whatever it is, he went beserk when we tried to ask him about it,' Clarisse said darkly, drawing me back into our discussion. 'He started to-to cry.' She looked highly uncomfortable with this. 'Said he'd never get out 'cause he didn't have the string and I had to help him or the walls would kill him.'

I shivered in spite of the heat rising from the lava below. 'Have you told Chiron about all this?'

Clarisse gave me a look like, do you think I'm an idiot? 'Of course I did. He was the one who said I should talk to you-only you.'

The flutter in my stomach was a mixture of pride and apprehension. Chiron valued my independent judgement enough to ask Clarisse to consult me alone. But he also wanted us to keep it to ourselves … which meant he thought the situation was highly dangerous.

I didn't want to make a mistake assessing it.

'It sounds like there's a-an underground tunnel.' I decided not to bandy about the word Labyrinth until I was sure. 'And Chris was, I don't know, scouting it or something?'

Clarisse let out a bark of laughter. 'Whatever it is, there's something down there that messed him up good.' She fingered the tip of her spear like she wanted to shove it into the monster responsible for Chris's state.

I ran through what we knew so far: the mystery hole that opened into an abandoned building in the desert, Chris's incurable madness, his incessant babbling about string …

String.

An integral part of the myth of Theseus and the Labyrinth was Ariadne's Thread.

Chris had been calling for a girl called Mary. Which sounded a whole lot like Ariadne if you weren't speaking clearly.

I had a sudden, dizzying desire to be back on firm ground. We were most likely dealing with the mysterious reappearance of an ancient structure that hadn't been seen for two millennia. I preferred not to discuss the subject while dangling over a lava pit.

'You know something,' Clarisse said, staring at me intently.

'How much do you know about the Labyrinth?' I said slowly.

'That's the maze, right? With the bull man? The one Percy's supposed to have killed?'

'He did kill Minos's bull,' I corrected. That was another worrying thing. Percy had killed the Minotaur only a year ago. Could it have reformed already? 'I don't know if that's what Chris ran into, but a hole in the ground, possibly an underground tunnel, and a string that's supposed to guide you through it-' I sighed. The conclusion seemed inevitable. 'That all sounds like the Labyrinth to me.'

'But it's just a building, right? Didn't some ancient king build it in, like Crete? What's it doing in Phoenix?'

'Daedalus built it. And he's not a king, he just built it for King Minos.' I started to explain about the Western migration of ancient archetypes, but Clarisse's eyes glazed over. She lost interest even quicker than Percy-at least he actually tried to pay attention when I talked. Clarisse just waved her hand dismissively.

'Okay, whatever,' she said. 'So some monster maze reformed under Phoenix. Why Phoenix? There's nothing there but desert.'

I racked my brains for anything I knew about Phoenix, which wasn't much. 'I guess the other thing is, if it is the Labyrinth, why was Chris scouting it? He's working for the Titan army-' I saw Clarisse's mouth twist like she'd bit into a lemon, 'so it must be something they want.'

'Like the string he keeps going on about?'

I nodded. 'That's probably Ariadne's thread. Theseus used it to find his way in the Labyrinth. But I can't think why they'd want that, unless it's to lead them to something else. It doesn't have any other-'

'Ariadne?' Clarisse interrupted. 'But what about-' she took a deep, shuddering breath, 'Mary?'

'Well, I guess he might have been trying to say "Ariadne." It was her string, you see. She gave it to Theseus so he could get out.'

'Oh.' Clarisse was so uncharacteristically thoughtful, I wondered if I'd missed a clue.

'Who do you think Mary is?' I asked.

Clarisse didn't answer. She swung herself down from her perch and began climbing down the wall. I checked the lava levels quickly before following.

'No one,' she said when we reached the bottom. 'You're probably right. He must've been talking about Ariadne's string.'

And that was the last I could get out of her on the subject of Mary.

OoOoO

Chiron agreed that Clarisse should return to Phoenix and scout out the Labyrinth.

We discussed the matter in the rec room, which had acquired a new ping-pong table since I'd last been there. Apparently Hermes had dropped it off this week. Judging from the weird burn marks it had along the sides, I suspected it was a reject from his delivery business.

'We must determine whether Chris was in the Labyrinth by accident or intent,' Chiron said. 'If it is the latter, I fear there is something about it that interests the Titan lord-which can mean nothing good.'

'Don' you know?' Clarisse asked.

Chiron smiled sadly. 'I do not know everything, my dear. And Kronos is the master of secrets and deceptions. If he is searching for something in the Labyrinth, it will be another piece in his multi-layered plans.'

'How do you know he doesn't just want the Labyrinth itself? Like, to throw his enemies in it like they did in the story?' Clarisse raised her chin at my surprised look. 'I know some things, okay.'

'Because the Labyrinth is first and foremost a maze, and the goal of the maze archetype has always been to seek the centre-and whatever it holds.'

'The bull man!' Clarisse guessed. She pounded her fist on the ping-pong table, making the balls jump. 'I'll pulverise it!'

'It can't be the Minotaur,' I said. 'Percy killed it.' Besides, why would Kronos seek out the Minotaur specifically when he already had an army of equally deadly monsters to serve him?

Indeed, our most valuable weapon rises from Tartarus as we speak.

Was the weapon the giant had spoken of hiding in the Labyrinth?

After some discussion, we agreed that Clarisse would undertake the scouting mission on her own. I was a little disappointed by this. Even though I couldn't simply run off to Arizona in the middle of the school year, this was the Labyrinth. It was my area of expertise-who else knew more about its architecture and history? Who had designed the hedge maze by the art and crafts cabin in tribute to it? Would I ever get another chance to investigate the holy grail of architecture?

But Clarisse was the logical choice for a scout. Phoenix was her hometown, which gave her the best chance of navigating it in search of clues.

'Use your knowledge of the city,' Chiron told her. 'If the Labyrinth has indeed situated itself there, you may be able to discern what serves as its new centre without even entering the maze.'

'I'm not scared to go in,' Clarisse claimed, though I noticed she was gripping her spear more tightly than necessary. 'I'll just pulverise anything I meet in there.'

'The stories tell of dangers more subtle than the archetypal monsters,' Chiron said. 'If you must enter, do so with caution. Go no further in than you can remember how to get out.' He made Clarisse promise to stay out of the Labyrinth if possible.

'And I'd like you both to keep this mission to yourselves for now,' Chiron added. 'It will be dangerous enough for Clarisse without risking our enemies learning that she is spying on them.'

'Can't I tell Thalia?'

Chiron considered this for a moment. 'We'll see.'

I remembered then the other thing the giant in my dream had said: To find it, we will need a powerful half-blood. The Titan army was on the lookout for Thalia. No other half-blood was more powerful than her, except maybe Percy. Perhaps it was better that she didn't get involved. No need to help Kronos find her.

A shiver ran down my spine. The mysterious monster reporting to Luke and the giant had claimed to have found two half-bloods in the same school. I hadn't picked up on it before, but … there were two of us at St Catherine's. What were the odds of another school with two demigods?

'Where is Thalia, anyway?

'Mr D wanted a word with her.'

We found Thalia and Mr D outside, traipsing across the strawberry fields from the direction of the woods. Or rather, Thalia walked, while Mr D glided inches above the ground, causing the strawberries to engorge as he passed. The berries fell off the vines and collected in a woven basket that trotted along next to his floating feet.

Chiron took one look at the stony expression on Thalia's face and said quietly to me, 'I think Thalia may have enough to be troubled with right now.'

Thalia saw us on the back porch and ran to grab my arm.

'Can Annabeth come?' she asked Mr D.

Puzzled, I glanced between Chiron and Mr D. The latter looked supremely bored, and like he'd just gotten out of bed. Instead of his usual leopard-print track suit, he had on gold pyjamas with little purple dolphins swimming all over them. It looked totally out of place for a stroll in the woods, but then Mr D didn't exactly jog (or perform any form of exercise, for that matter) in his jogging suit either.

Mr D said, 'Olympus isn't a place you just visit unannounced, girl.' He clapped his hands and the strawberry-filled baskets came flying through the creeper vines to land neatly at his feet.

'She won't be unannounced, she'll be with me!'

Mr D gave us a long-suffering look. 'Oh, Hades if I care. If Father doesn't like it, he can just zap her.'

'Zap me?'

Chiron cleared his throat.

'He probably won't.' Mr D sounded like he didn't care either way. 'There's so much paperwork involved these days when we zap mortals. Rhea knows why Hades is so touchy about accidental deaths these days.' He gave us another baleful look. 'Then again, it might be worth it to get rid of some of you brats.'

With a flick of his wrist, the strawberry baskets leapt to the card table on the porch. He disappeared into the Big House without another word.

Chiron sighed. 'Argus will give you a ride into Manhattan. He can do the strawberry deliveries while you're there.'

Fifteen minutes later, we were back in the strawberry van, trundling down Old Farm Road.

'Are we really going to Mount Olympus?' I asked Thalia. I'd only gotten to see the home of the gods once before, on a rare winter field trip. The chance to examine all that ancient architecture again was one I wouldn't pass up, especially since Mr D and Chiron deemed my chances of being 'zapped' very slim.

'Yeah.' Thalia was nowhere near as thrilled by the prospect. Argus had turned the radio to her favourite station, but she wasn't even humming along. 'My dad wants to speak to me.'

I wondered why Zeus couldn't simply materialise at camp. Or infiltrate her dreams or something. The other gods did that regularly. Maybe the king of Olympus had certain restrictions. Now that I thought about it, none of the Big Three gods ever showed up at camp. It could have been because they had no demigod children-until Percy and Thalia, anyway-but maybe that wasn't the reason. After all, the goddess Artemis had no children, but she had stopped by with her band of eternal maidens at least once in my memory.

'Have you ever met your dad before?' How had Thalia found out about her parentage? As far as I knew, she'd never bene formally claimed. Yet when we'd met, she'd already known she was the daughter of Zeus. I'd never thought to ask her about it.

'Yeah,' said Thalia grimly.

'On Mount Olympus?'

'No, I've never been there.' Thalia plucked idly at a loose thread on her t-shirt. 'He used to come by a lot when I was a kid. Until … until he didn't. My mom-well, they fought a lot.'

It was weird to think about a mortal arguing with a god (though I guess my dad must have, when he'd tried to return me to Athena after she foisted me on him). I didn't know whether to be amazed that Thalia's mom had dared to fight with the king of the gods, or that Zeus had put up with it.

She must be a real force of nature. But then, so was Thalia.

'You never did tell me-when you went to find your mom in L.A., how did it go?'

Thalia yanked the stray thread from her t-shirt in a quick, violent motion. 'She died. When I was-you know. The tree.'

All of Argus's eyes except his normal two, which were fixed on the road, swivelled to Thalia in sympathy. My fingers drifted to the college ring on my camp necklace and toyed with it as I tried unsuccessfully to come up with something to say.

'It's fine,' Thalia said. 'It's not like I ever went back after I ran away. I just wanted to see if-well, there wasn't anything left.'

She reached forward and turned up the volume on the radio so that for the rest of the drive, the music was too loud for conversation.

The security guard at the Empire State Building gave us the special key card to Olympus as soon as Thalia said her name. The closer our elevator travelled to the magic 600th floor, the paler Thalia became. When the doors chimed open at the top, revealing the floating stone path that led from the elevator into the cloud-level city of the gods, she looked ready to puke over the side of it. I wondered if the mortals below would think it was bird poop.

'It'll be okay,' I told her. 'He's still your dad. He has to care about you.'

Thalia didn't answer. She lifted her chin resolutely as we crossed the floating path, keeping her eyes fixed on the majestic columns of the palace in the distance.

The streets of Olympus were just as busy as they'd been on my first visit. Immortals of all types and ages went about their daily business. Multi-fingered dactyls trotted by, pushing wooden carts filled with tools and raw metals. Satyrs lounged among the trees, playing their reed pipes and chasing the giggling dryads. Nephelae-cloud nymphs-drifted along like wispy ghosts. Hawkers who were probably minor gods lined the winding paths, flogging their wares.

The crowds thinned closer to the marble palace that was the official home of the twelve Olympians. (In actual fact, they were rarely all in residence there except during the Winter Solstice, when they had their annual council.) A pair of goddesses stood a little way from the steps that led into the main entrance, their honey-gold heads bent away from us as they argued.

'Wow,' Thalia said as we ascended the steps between the thick Doric columns that flanked the palace entrance. Inside, the throne room was at least five times the size of any mortal temple. The ceiling was so high, it could have been the sky itself. It was even painted an azure blue with streaks of gold crackling across it. Twelve thrones stood in a semicircle facing us, eleven of them empty. The occupied seat in the centre was the largest of all, made of blindingly white marble.

Zeus rose from his throne and came towards us. He must have been about six feet tall while seated, but he took mortal size when he approached. I guess that was a good sign.

Zeus nodded to Thalia, but frowned at me. 'I would speak to my daughter alone.'

Mindful of Mr D's threats about zapping, my legs bobbed in an awkward curtsey and I backed out of the throne room.

The two goddesses were still arguing near the palace steps when I came out. From this angle, I had a better view of one of them. She was familiar in the way runway models are-you get the sense you've seen them before, but can't possibly put name to face. Her features were an attractive blend of every girl I'd ever admired (and maybe even wished-very rarely, of course-I could look like). Silena Beauregard's china-blue eyes resided in the sweet heart-shape of Izzy's face, complemented by the lopsided single-cheek dimple that Percy had inherited from his mom. Soft waves of honey-gold curls framed this enchanting combination. It was a rich, vibrant colour, as opposed to my own airhead-blonde.

She was an artist's impression of the perfect woman. And I had most definitely met her before.

As soon as recognition set in, I crossed to the other side of the steps and ducked into the bushes, not wanting Aphrodite to see me. My only encounter with the goddess of love had involved a charmed pink scarf, a rehashing of the most embarrassing incident of my life, and some highly disturbing speculation on how she could 'spice up' my love life. I wasn't keen to draw her attention again, any more than I was to dredge up the Tunnel of Love debacle.

I could've sworn I'd met the other goddess before, too, even though her face remained turned away from me. There was something about the way her fingers hovered near her mouth when she talked …

As far as I could tell, their argument had something to do with stolen jewellery.

'… if I ever get my hands on that thieving-'

'Well, if you'd just keep a better eye on your things …' said Aprhodite.

'How in Zeus's name was I supposed to know it'd reform? I mean, Athena destroyed it ages ago!'

Their voices trailed away as they wanted off into the palace garden. I emerged from my hiding spot, brushing leaves out of my hair, and sat down on the palace steps. For a brief moment, I wondered what my mother had destroyed, but then my attention was diverted by the architectural smorgasbord that lay before me. Here at the peak of Mount Olympus, I had a birds-eye view of all the ancient monuments dotting the mountainside (not to mention the Manhattan cityscape, if I looked further down). These were all the structures that had stood the test of time. They'd been immortalised in civilisation by the beauty and longevity of their design, such that they were still copied and represented in the modern buildings of the city underneath.

I found my notebook and started to sketch the sights. I drew at random, picking from the assortment of designs available: the Doric columns of the Athena Parthenon; the guilloche mouldings on the Erechtheion; the friezes adorning the temples.

After a while, I stopped to examine my sketches. I hadn't paid much attention to where I'd positioned each individual sketch. They formed a convoluted sort of pattern on the page, with the gaps between columns and spires twisting like a …

Like a maze.

I stared at the page.

The Labyrinth wasn't represented on Mount Olympus, maybe because it hadn't been constructed as a paean to the gods. But it had appeared in my drawing anyway, hidden in the spaces between the structures, carving its way into their heart.

'Hey.'

I looked up. Thalia stood at the top of the steps, her audience with her dad over. I snapped by notebook shut and put it back in my bag.

'So what did he say?'

Thalia looked like she was wrestling with a tough decision. 'Stuff,' she said vaguely. 'It was kinda …' She shrugged. 'He asked how my training was going.'

As it seemed odd that Zeus would summon Thalia all the way here just for a fatherly chat about her life, I guessed there was something she wasn't telling me. I was about to pry further, but then I remembered what Chiron and I weren't telling Thalia about the Labyrinth.

I let it go. Knowledge could sometimes be a dangerous thing.

Only fifteen minutes had passed when we descended to ground level. Time in magical places always ran differently from the mortal world: just last summer, Percy and I had spent a few days in the Sea of Monsters, only to find a week had gone by in real life. More disturbingly, the year before, a couple of hours in a casino in Vegas had cost us five whole days. It was nice to experience the time discrepancy in reverse, though it meant we now had to wait for Argus to finish his deliveries and come back to fetch us.

Thalia didn't want to wait in the Empire State Building. 'I'm sick of skyscrapers,' she said. 'Let's go somewhere with trees.'

We made our way to Central Park, which was a brilliant splendour of fall glory. Trees were crowned red and gold, scattering leaves like largesse to the populace of children who stamped gleefully through the crisp piles. Joggers weaved through the paths, their track suits adding splashes of colour to the fall foliage. A few kids on scooters raced by, laughing, headed towards the park zoo. A little further up, a skateboarder was zooming across a junction, chased by a-

Shrill screams broke the tranquillity of the late morning scene.

An escaped zoo hippopotamus was barrelling through the park.

The boy on the skateboard pivoted and swerved sharply to avoid a jet of spit from the rampaging hippo. His skateboard hit a pothole and flipped, sending him flying. He grabbed a low-hanging tree branch and clung to it as the hippo stumbled under him. The hippo's rump thudded onto the discarded skateboard and it went skidding across the path, looking like some bizarre cartoon caricature. The skating hippo collided with another tree and fell off, looking dazed. It shook its head in a most un-hippopotamusly manner, rolled off the skateboard, and opened its mouth wide. The skateboard disappeared in a snap of its massive jaws.

'Hey! I saved all year for that!'

With an angry shout, Percy Jackson dropped from the tree and brandished his bronze sword at the hippo who'd eaten his skateboard.

Continue to chapter 8