FIC: The Necklace of Harmonia, chpt 17

[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: I Break The Olympic Weightlifting Record
Rating: PG
Characters: Annabeth Chase, Luke Castellan, Atlas, Athena, OC
Word Count: 3,777

Chapter Summary: Annabeth gets handed a heavy task.

Notes: Most of the dialogue where Annabeth takes the sky from Luke is, of course, from Percy Jackson and the Titan's Curse, although I've played very liberally with the perspective.

'Annie' is a loose reference to Sophocles's Antigone, who is Ismene's sister. In the actual play, Ismene does not have such an expanded role as I have depicted here; this is completely my embellishment. The temple where Izzy sacrificed the necklace is based on the Temple of Athena Pronaia at Delphi.

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When I woke up, my first thought was that I must still be dreaming.

I was alone in the dark. There was no sign of my captors. At first, I thought I was inside a cavern. It took me a moment to realise that I was just surrounded by a fog so thick, it seemed like a solid wall.

Where had I encountered fog like this before?

I was lying on a slanted path near the top of a hill. Fog rolled around it, thickening like inky soup at the foot of the slope. There was something unsettling about the way it churned, like a bottomless cesspool waiting to devour anyone who fell in. It reminded me of the horrible chasm in the Underworld that sucked you straight into Tartarus-the gaol to which the worst monsters were condemned.

Above, there was a point where the fog thinned, giving a tiny glimpse of a starry sky. I got to my feet, still weak and unsteady from the manticore's poison, and headed upwards, away from the terrifying pit below.

The ache in my body and my shortness of breath confirmed that this wasn't just a dream. After several laborious minutes of climbing, I came to a clearing littered with black marble. Large columns lay toppled across cracked stone and broken walls. Smaller pieces of debris were strewn all over the ground.

I knew then why all of this seemed like a dream. I had dreamt of this place before, months ago. It had been twilight and the central agora had been set up for a council of twelve. I'd thought the ancient ruins existed only in dreams and memories, but here it was, a real place after all.

Or a reformed place.

Why was I here? Where were Thorn and his lackeys?

The silence was so intense, it seemed to prickle on my skin. It was as if the earth had opened up and swallowed everyone who should have been here. Spooked, I called out. Even facing Thorn was preferable to being alone in this godforsaken place.

Someone moaned.

The sound was coming from further up the hill. I crawled over a broken marble wall blocking my way and carried on climbing until I reached the crest. Here, the fog took on a swirling, rushing quality. It funnelled down from the night sky, centring on a shuddering figure at its apex. A man was on his knees, his head and shoulders hunched until he was nearly bent double. His hands were at the level of his ears, pushing up against a heavy weight. He let out a groan that was raw with pain. Slowly, he raised his head.

I inhaled sharply as my eyes met Luke's pleading gaze.

'Annabeth!' His voice was ragged and hoarse. Sweat rolled off his forehead, which was the colour of whey. He'd lost an alarming amount of weight since the last time I'd seen him. His skin seemed to sag off his thin frame. He appeared to be tinted grey, from his once-sandy hair to his shivering skin. 'Help me,' he begged. 'Please!'

I ran to him at once. The closer I got, the more the air seemed to bear down upon me, like the sky itself was closing in.

The sky.

I stared at Luke, at his haggard face, his torn clothes-worn through as though from constant rubbing against the load on his back. His back arched as he struggled just to hold his position.

It seemed impossible that he could be carrying the sky on his back-logic, for one, dictated that I shouldn't be able to stand in front of him while it compressed him into an ever-lowering crouch. But I could think of no other explanation.

How had this happened?

'They left me here,' Luke answered, and I realised I'd wondered aloud. My hand was trembling. It had reached out to him of its own accord. It wavered in the air, inches from his face.

I withdrew it and touched my own cheek, finding it wet. I hadn't even noticed the tears falling from my eyes.

'Please,' Luke gasped. He strained, grinding his teeth as he tried in vain to straighten his back. His hands fell to the rocky ground. The ceiling of fog closed the gap, sitting right on his neck, pushing his head down. 'It's killing me.'

'Luke,' I whispered. My heart tugged at me to help, but there were so many questions swirling in my head, just like the fog surrounding him. I needed to know what was going on, where we were, why I was here, who Luke was working for, how I could even help … why I should.

If this was indeed the sky, it was an impossible situation. I'd never be able to lift it off him. If it wasn't … Could it be a trap?

I still didn't understand how Luke could be here. The last I'd known, Luke had been with his giant ally, the mysterious General who had wanted me dead.

The General. I'd seen him in a dream, listening with Luke to Thorn's report. Luke had been standing in my exact position, next to the giant who had stooped as though under a heavy load. This heavy load. It was him-the original bearer of the sky, the Titan Atlas. He was the General.

Had they punished Luke because he'd stopped them from killing me? Or was it part of some greater plan?

You think like a strategist, boy, the General had said.

'Why-why should I trust you?'

Luke's answer nearly cracked my heart in two. 'You shouldn't,' he rasped. With great difficulty, he lifted his head to look up at me. I felt my knees bend, lowering myself to meet his gaze. 'I've been-terrible to you.' He closed his eyes briefly. 'But, if you don't help me, I'll die.'

As if to prove his point, he slid another inch lower. The air escaped his lungs in a pained sigh, like each breath was being slowly crushed out of him.

'You were right-all along,' he breathed, so softly that I had to lean closer to hear. 'I should never have … I know I don't deserve your help, but … I don't want to die …'

He was crushed so low now that there was practically nothing between the funnel of fog and the earth-just the sliver of his thin body pressed flat against the rocky ground. There was a tremor beneath us, like the beginning of an earthquake.

The sky above the fog shuddered. Bits began to split off from it, thudding to the ground in large chunks of rock. I was startled by how solid it was-a real ceiling that did need to be held in place.

What would happen if nothing was left to hold it?

Luke cried out in pain. A jagged crack appeared in the black ceiling of sky. A series of images seemed to play on fast-forward: the sky descending like the lid of the box, only to jerk to a stop on the shoulders of a giant; a crowd holding a collective breath and releasing it when the stars retreated upwards.

And then the sky was falling, little pieces crumbling around Luke as the large, cracked ceiling shook, ready to cave in at any moment. He had no chance to escape; it would collapse and crush the life out of him.

It was just like when I'd jumped Thorn to stop the manticore from killing Percy and Thalia. I didn't stop to consider the futility of taking on a burden that only a Titan could bear. I didn't weigh the chances that this could be a trap. I simply acted, darting forward and squeezing myself under the column of fog pressing down on Luke. Maybe I thought that together, we would have a better chance to hold it up.

More likely, I simply couldn't bear to watch my friend killed in front of me.

The ceiling of sky smashed down on us. I raised my arms over our heads, palms facing up, in a desperate attempt to stop it.

Miraculously, we weren't crushed. The sky landed against my hands, jarring my wrists worse than the time I'd fallen from the camp lava wall straight into a handspring. I thought my joints might snap from the force of it, but somehow, they held on. I was a wedge, shoved between sky and earth, barely keeping a gap between them.

I did the only thing I could think of. With a Herculean effort (literally, I guess, since Hercules had been the first demigod to attempt this), I staggered to my knees. Then, dragging one leg forward into a lunge, I pushed up like an Olympic lifter. There was no describing how heavy it was. I could add up the heaviest weights I'd ever carried in my entire life and I doubt the sum would even come close to a tenth of what this thing weighed.

My whole body shook uncontrollably. I wasn't going to manage it. How could I? I was one girl-smaller than Luke, smaller than Hercules, and infinitely smaller than the Titan whose burden this was supposed to be.

But if I didn't, I'd be crushed. Luke would be crushed. We would both die here, and I would have failed to save us.

Sweat poured down my face. I was wheezing and panting harder than I'd ever done in my life-and this was counting all the monsters I'd outrun and all the crazy cliffs I'd climbed. Incredibly, the sky lifted. It balanced against my shoulders like the world's heaviest barbell.

Luke lay at my feet, so still that I feared I'd been too late. Then he groaned and rolled out from under the column of sky on my shoulders.

'Luke,' I breathed. Talking was a challenge. Every breath I took was a struggle. With every exhalation, the sky seemed to bear down on me harder, crushing the air from my lungs. I didn't even know how I was standing.

Luke got slowly to his feet. 'Thanks,' he said, gulping in great, shuddering breaths.

'Help me hold it,' I pleaded. The strain in my arms and back was unbearable.

Luke straightened and looked at me directly. The emotions that swirled in his eyes were messier than the column of fog around us. There was fear and guilt, but also cold calculation and a sickening flash of triumph. 'I knew I could count on you,' he said hoarsely.

My arms shook, and it wasn't just from the impossible weight they bore. Luke was turning, taking a step away from me. He was leaving.

No-he couldn't me leaving me. Not after I'd saved his life.

'Help me!' I begged again.

Luke hesitated. He looked back and I saw the indecision in his eyes, hovering over the flurry of complex emotions underneath. 'Don't worry, your help is on the way,' he promised. 'It's-it's all part of the plan.'

He smiled weakly, like he was trying to convince us both. It wasn't any comfort. Whatever he had in mind-even if he had a way to make this right in the end-there were clearly so many layers to the plan that it couldn't be Luke alone orchestrating it.

It was the poisoning of Thalia's tree all over again-layer upon layer of deception, beginning with one terrible betrayal. He must have looked exactly like this when he'd injected poison into her trunk last summer.

This wasn't the Luke I'd just rushed in to save. It couldn't be.

Tears mingled with the sweat on my face and fell to the ground at my feet. Luke turned like he couldn't bear to look. Of course he couldn't. It was how he'd known I'd take the load. Even suspecting it was a trap, I couldn't have done anything else. He knew I couldn't have stood there and watched him die, no matter what he'd done.

Luke raised his head. 'In the meantime …' His mouth moved silently, as though in prayer. Still not looking at me, he whispered, 'Try not to die.'

He disappeared down the hill.

+++

I didn't know how long I stood there, with every muscle in my body shaking like a leaf. Luke's betrayal seemed to double the weight of the sky, until I folded in on myself, trembling and crying. My knees buckled and hit the stony ground. The sky shuddered as it had earlier, when it threatened to collapse on Luke.

He didn't return.

He hadn't said how long I had to hang on. I didn't think I could manage even a minute longer.

Then the ground began to glow.

The shock distracted me momentarily from the untenable pressure pushing me down. I gasped as I locked eyes on my dagger. Its celestial bronze glow was shining through the heavy darkness.

How could it be here? The last I'd known, it had been stuck in Thorn's mane when I'd stabbed him. My dagger wasn't magic like Percy's sword; it couldn't reappear if I'd lost it.

Yet here it was, glowing on the ground. And even more impossibly, rising to hover in the air, level with my eyes. I couldn't believe it. I had to be seeing things. Maybe I'd already been crushed to death and this was some pre-afterlife hallucination.

But wasn't I already accomplishing something impossible? I had the sky on my back. What was one more impossible thing?

Hallucination or not, my dagger was a comforting presence. Besides its warm, soothing glow, it seemed to issue a steady stream of encouragement: 'Hang on, don't let go, we'll find you-just hold on!' The voices were a mix of everyone I had ever loved-everyone who loved me.

I knew it was probably just my own wishful thinking. I wanted them to help me, to save me before my limbs gave out and the sky collapsed on me. But no one except Luke knew where I was. The last anyone had seen of me, I'd been tumbling to my death on the back of a killer manticore. They probably thought I was dead, either dashed against the bottom of the cliff, or slain by the manticore.

Thorn would have killed me, if it hadn't been for Luke.

Luke's plan. I still didn't know what it was. Could I hold out until the help he promised arrived?

How long had Luke held the sky before I found him?

These thoughts just made me weaker. I focused instead on the knife and its steady, encouraging glow.

And the voices. Although they could not lift the sky from my shoulders, they made the weight less difficult to bear.

'Take heart, Annabeth,' Chiron murmured.

'You're my brave girl,' my father said.

'We're coming for you,' Thalia promised.

'Don't give up!' Grover insisted.

'I'll find you, Annabeth.' Percy's voice was so clear, I could almost see him standing before me, a fierce promise in his green eyes.

In fact, there was an image in front of me. Reflected in the shiny surface of my blade was a single eye-my own reflection, maybe? But then I saw the pale, almost colourless iris, and the light sprinkle of freckles on the fair skin under it.

'Hold on, Annie.' It was Izzy's voice, though I had never heard her sound so earnest. She'd also never called me Annie before. 'I'm going to break the spell, and then you can come out.'

Puzzled, I stared harder into the blade. The reflection zoomed out, showing me Izzy's whole face, staring through the opening of a cave. Inside was another girl, as dark as Izzy was fair, but who shared the same pale eyes and large, bumpy nose. I understood then-Izzy wasn't talking to me. This was a vision, a memory like the ones I'd seen in my dreams.

A boulder rolled over the cave entrance, shutting Izzy's sister away from the sunlight. I watched Izzy run off, clutching a package to her chest. She was dressed differently, in an old-fashioned chiton dating back thousands of years. Her flaxen hair was in braids piled atop her head instead of pulled back into a ponytail. But her face was exactly the same as the one I'd seen a few weeks ago-exactly the same as it would be for the rest of her life.

The image grew larger, like it was sucking me into a different world. I could see the whole countryside-a maze of trees, a winding river, a mountainside. Izzy wound through the forest, which twisted and turned in such a labyrinthine manner, I wondered how she could tell where she was going. She forded the river and stumbled up the mountain slope, one hand pressed to her side as though holding back a stitch. The other hugged her package tight, like it was a baby she didn't dare drop.

A circular, open-air temple sat on the stormy mountaintop, encircled by a ring of standing stones. Each was carved in the image of a sternly beautiful goddess, with the imprint of an owl etched into her stone chest. The statues seemed to turn their faces as Izzy passed among them.

My breath caught in my throat. One of my mother's stone statues was looking directly at me. I heard in my head, 'Focus, Annabeth. Watch and hang on.'

I kept watching. It didn't really matter what the knife was showing me, whether this was relevant or just some random history. Having something to focus on other than my screaming muscles and the ache travelling down my spine seemed to lessen the pressure of the sky. It kept me steady beneath my burden.

Izzy reached the centre of the temple, where a raised mound was surrounded by a low marble wall. She emptied her package onto the altar. Out slithered the jewel-encrusted golden necklace with the snake-head clasps: the Necklace of Harmonia.

'Hear me, O goddess of wisdom!' she cried. From inside her chiton, she drew a bronze dagger not unlike my own and raised it high above her head. 'This dagger has seen the bloodshed and destruction of the line of Thebes. I present it as a sacrifice, to lift the curse that this necklace has wrought on my family, and beg for your protection.' She struck the necklace dead centre with the dagger.

Lightning arched through the sky with a rumble that I'd always associated with oaths on the Styx, or the wrath of the gods. The sky clouded over. Rain began to fall, intensifying into a torrential downpour so thick I could no longer see Izzy or the temple.

Then I heard a different voice, from a scene I'd replayed a thousand times in my nightmares.

Thalia stood at the crest of Half-Blood Hill, shouting, 'Go, Luke! Get Annabeth to safety. I'll hold them off!'

Luke's face swam into view, streaked with grime. 'We'll fight together-'

Thalia shook her head vehemently. 'They're after me. I'm sick of running. You guys can make it.'

'Thalia …'

'We're her family now,' Thalia reminded him. 'You promised.'

Her words echoed around me: Promised, promised, promised …

The next flash of lightning was so bright, it whited out the entire scene. When it resolved, I was staring into the calm face of my mother. She smiled at me, more tenderly than I had ever seen her look before.

'You are strong, my daughter,' she said. She reached out as if to smooth my hair, but before her hand could reach me, her image dissolved, fading into the contours of a dusty attic. A boy stood facing a mummified husk of a girl, his hands clasped in supplication.

'How can I save her?' Percy asked the Oracle.

He turned away and became Luke, standing over me in the rain, blinking back tears as the tree that had once been Thalia stretched its branches towards the sky. 'There's still me. I'm your family.' he said.

The celestial bronze glow faded, but Luke didn't. I kept staring at him. He looked so solid, I would have sworn that if my hands were free, I could reach out and touch him.

I blinked. How delirious was I? My dagger was no longer in front of me, but I could feel it under my sleeve, warm and comforting against my skin.

Then I realised I was staring at Luke-the real Luke, with his hard eyes and scarred cheek. He still looked haggard and grey, like the colour had been washed out of him. He seemed relieved to find me still standing.

'Impressive,' boomed a voice. 'Who would have thought-a daughter of Athena.'

I squinted into the darkness, only to find it was no longer pitch black. While I had been immersed in my knife's visions, the sun had risen, casting little pink fingers of dawn through the overcast gloom. A hulking figure was approaching me, dressed in an impeccably tailored suit. What was it with immortals and formal wear? A good twenty feet tall and thick with muscle, from his beefy arms to his elephantine legs, he looked like he'd been built to carry the weight that now rested on my back.

'Our spies report that the Hunters are at Camp Half-Blood,' Luke said. 'The plan-'

Atlas laughed. It had a cruel ring that sent shivers down my already trembling spine. There was no way he was the help Luke had promised me.

'Yes,' he said. 'This may work after all. You may be right, Luke. Perhaps the girl is not entirely useless after all.' He weighed me with a critical glance, taking in my crumpled posture, my shallow breathing, my struggle against his burden. I wanted to spit in his face, only I didn't have the energy to work up the saliva. 'In fact, she has held it longer than I believed possible. Longer than you could have, I warrant.'

Luke said nothing.

Atlas laughed again and turned away. 'Come,' he said. 'It is time for you to prove yourself. You will be part of the hunting party.'

He strolled away down the mountain path, utterly unconcerned about my fate.

Whatever strength my knife had bestowed seemed to desert me. My knees were weaker than ever, shaking worse than a leaf in a hurricane.

'Luke,' I called weakly.

He hesitated, fingers clenching and unclenching at his side. Slowly, he turned to me.

'A little longer,' he said softly. 'Just a little longer, Annabeth. I-I promise.'

And he left me again, with his final words echoing in my aching head.

Chapter 18