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FIC: The Impossible Maze, Chpt 12
Title: The Impossible Maze (Daughter of Wisdom 4)
Author: shiiki
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Annabeth Chase, Percy Jackson, Luke Castellan, Tyson, Grover Underwood, Rachel Dare, Nico di Angelo, various others, Gen with developing Percy/Annabeth
Fandom: Percy Jackson
Summary: Annabeth Chase has finally gotten her chance to lead a quest, but the stakes have never been so high. With war on the horizon, she and her friends must navigate the Labyrinth to find its creator and convince him to help Camp Half-Blood. But the Labyrinth is more than just a physical maze-in its twist and turns, Annabeth must not only confront the Titan army’s monsters, but her own fears, hopes, and scariest of all, her developing feelings for her best friend. An alternate PoV retelling of The Battle of the Labyrinth.
In this chapter
Chapter Title: We Spring A Prison Inmate
Rating: PG
Characters: Annabeth Chase, Percy Jackson, Grover Underwood, Tyson, Kampê, Briares
Word Count: 4,104
Chapter Summary: Annabeth, Percy, Grover, and Tyson wreck Alcatraz.
Notes: The references to Annabeth's past visit to Alcatraz are expanded in Chapter 26 of my previous story, The Necklace of Harmonia. Thank you to strawberrygirl2000 for her help with Ameri-picking this chapter!
Back to Fic Content Page
It wasn't long before we heard the monster Grover and Tyson had sensed. It was something large and panting, shuffling through the passage like it had a massive bulk to drag along. Maybe it had a better sense of direction, or maybe it was following our scent, because the noise kept getting louder as it gained on us.
Of course, now that we could have done with a few twists and turns to evade the monster, the Labyrinth decided to make our tunnel straight and narrow. Worse still, it ended abruptly, trapping us between a massive boulder and the approaching monster.
Thank the gods for Tyson. He rammed the boulder with all his superhuman strength. It took him a few shoves, but he finally got it to move several feet, allowing us to squeeze through into the room behind.
'Close the entrance!'
We all helped Tyson roll the boulder back in place. Before we shut off the passage, I got a brief glimpse of something with lots of teeth and scales screaming in disappointment at being denied its prey.
We leant against the boulder, breathing hard. Then I saw the metal bars that lined the other side of the wall.
'We trapped ourselves,' Grover moaned.
I ran to the bars and looked out. 'What in Hades?'
To my utter shock, we were no longer in the Labyrinth. At least, I didn't think we were.
We were on the ground floor of a circular prison. Rows of cells just like ours encircled the central courtyard, spiralling up to the ceiling of the building. Our cell was empty, but some of the others had displays in them: hard beds, washstands, wax figurines depicting old inmates.
I knew this place. I'd been here on a school trip in February. But … it was impossible.
We hadn't been walking long enough.
Percy ran his hands along the bars of our cell. 'Maybe Tyson can-'
Grover shushed us. He tilted his head to one side, listening intently.
I heard a pained, desperate sobbing, a keening that rang with unmitigated suffering. Over it came the eerie rasp of a cruel voice. It was something from out of this world, a different language, but one I'd heard before, ancient and heavy with magic.
I could almost feel a cold, sucking wind from a deep, dark pit.
'Can't be!' Tyson gasped. He yanked two of the cell bars apart and squeezed through the hole, thundering down the prison catwalk.
'This is Alcatraz,' I told the others. Even though it didn't seem possible that we'd made it all the way to San Francisco, there was no mistaking the old prison museum.
And this wasn't good. The last I'd known, the Titans had taken over this island.
Either the museum tours hadn't started, or they were finished for the day. Nobody was around to notice four kids breaking out of a cell and racing up the stairs. We chased Tyson to the second-floor catwalk. Against all odds, it was Grover who caught him.
'Stop, Tyson!' He tugged on Tyson's arm and got dragged several feet along the catwalk. Scuff marks appeared in the floor where he tried to dig his hooves in. It slowed Tyson just enough for Percy and me to grab him, too. 'Can't you see it?'
We all followed Grover's finger. The monster on the balcony was twenty feet long, with a tail that trailed over the edge of the railing. She was a dozen terrible creatures at once: snake spitting in her hair, carnivorous heads growling at her waist, a scaly dragon's body. One look at her and I knew she'd be featuring in my nightmares for a month.
It was she who had spoken in that raspy, ancient tongue.
'Can you translate?' Percy asked Tyson.
I braced myself. Even though I knew it was just Tyson, the mimicry always freaked me out. It reminded me too much of the Cyclops in Brooklyn who had trapped Thalia, Luke, and Grover by pretending to be each of us in turn.
'You will work for the master or suffer,' Tyson said in the monster lady's voice. Then he switched to the voice of her prisoner: 'I will not serve.'
I shuddered as he returned to the monster lady's persona. Tyson was too good with his imitations. I would have been happy with just a basic translation.
'Then I shall enjoy your pain, Br-Briares.' Tyson stumbled over the name. I had a feeling his stutter wasn't part of the original statement. 'If you thought your first imprisonment was unbearable, you have yet to feel true torment. Think on this until I return.'
Briares's sobbing increased as the monster lady turned away. We ducked below the railings on our side of the catwalk, shrinking into the shadows. Fortunately, the monster lady didn't notice us. She launched herself off the balcony. The whoosh of her leathery wings swept up a stinging wind as she glided down to the courtyard. She slipped around a corner, out of sight.
Grover wrinkled his nose. 'Horrible. I've never smelt any monster that strong.'
Tyson rocked back and forth, hugging himself. 'Cyclopes' worst nightmare … Kampê.'
The name struck a chord. Another ancient monster, this one older than the gods … And there had been an ally Athena and Artemis had been searching for here in the spring …
'She was our jailer in the bad years,' Tyson said.
'I remember now.' In the age before the Olympians, the Titans had imprisoned the first children of Gaia and Ouranos-the Cyclopes and the Hekatonkheires. During the first Titan War, Zeus had slain Kampê and freed her prisoners. As I explained this to Percy and Grover, it dawned on me who must be in that cell, weeping piteously.
This Briares must be one of the three legendary Hekatonkheires. With their hundred hands and incredible strength, they'd been instrumental in turning the tide against the Titans.
'I guess we should check it out before Kampê comes back,' I suggested.
Briares looked nothing like a mighty giant. The famous hundred hands sprouted all over his torso, but the ones at his front were wringing each other, or tearing at his wispy hair, or covering his face as he wept into them. The hands at his back reminded me of pre-schoolers amusing themselves while their parents argued. Several were shaping scrap metal into little robots that would have occupied my stepbrothers for hours. Others were playing finger games with one another.
Tyson knelt before the Hekatonkheire and called his name reverently. 'Great Hundred-handed One, help us!'
Even Briares's face made me think of a child. His eyes were cartoonish brown dots pasted under an elongated forehead. His voice came slow and sad: 'Run while you can, Cyclops. I cannot even help myself.'
Tyson was torn between dissolving into hero-worship and coaxing Briares to fight. Neither helped. Briares had shrunk into a shadow of his former self. I didn't know what Kampê had done to him, but she clearly had him good and cowed.
'Guys,' Grover said nervously, 'we have to get out of here. Kampê will be back. She'll sense us sooner or later.'
'Break the bars.' I meant for Tyson to do it, but Tyson grinned at Briares.
'Briares can do it. He is very strong. Stronger than Cyclopes, even! Watch!'
We watched. Briares didn't even attempt to touch the bars.
'If he's so strong, why is he stuck in jail?' Percy asked.
I couldn't believe he was being so obnoxious. Poor Briares had the air of an abused child. 'He's terrified,' I said, jabbing him with my elbow. How would Percy feel, being back under the thumb of a jailer who had once imprisoned him in Tartarus for thousands of years?
'Tyson, I think you'd better break the bars,' I said.
Tyson gave Briares another pained glance. When Briares still didn't move, Tyson finally tore the cell door out of the wall.
I put my hand into the cell. 'Come on, Briares. Let's get you out of here.'
Five hands reached out tentatively for mine. Before we could touch, his other hands batted his outstretched ones away. Briares trembled. 'I cannot. She will punish me.'
The sorrow in his voice melted my heart. I leaned forward, kneeling before him like he was a small child. 'It's all right. You fought the Titans before, and you won, remember?'
'I remember the war.' Briares's eyes wavered. So did his voice, as he recounted his memories. He didn't move to follow us.
Grover's eyes darted anxiously around the courtyard, searching for any sign of Kampê's return. I exchanged a look with Percy. If Briares really wouldn't follow us, there wasn't much we could do.
'One game of rock, paper, scissors,' Percy said suddenly. I stared at him. How in Hades was that going to help anyone?
Percy pushed forward into the cell. 'If I win, you come with us. If I lose, we'll leave you in jail.'
'I always win rock, paper, scissors,' Briares said. I could see his point-with his hundred hands, he could easily field all three at a go.
This didn't faze Percy. I didn't know if he actually had a plan, or if he'd just gone crazy. They shook their fists-a hundred and one of them-and came up with …
I blinked. Percy had shaped his thumb and index finger like-
'A gun beats anything,' he said.
I almost laughed. Unorthodox as it was, it worked. Briares didn't look happy, but he upheld the bargain. Trust Percy to find a crazy, out-of-the-box solution.
We were just a little too late, though. A loud thump hit the ground floor. Kampê had returned, and she was not happy with our jailbreak attempt.
Now that we'd sprung Briares, he was only too eager to run. We dashed along the catwalk. Kampê launched herself into the air after us, not bothering with the stairs.
I dragged the others down the stairwell, forcing Kampê to alter course mid-flight. There was a side corridor here, if I recalled correctly. We sprinted through it to another block, arriving just around the corner from the entrance, where all the tours started.
'Left!' I gasped. 'I remember this from the tour.'
We smashed through the main door into the prison yard, where a crowd of tourists were gathering for their prison tour. Their cameras flashed at us. Compared to the darkness of the Labyrinth, even the overcast skies over the bay seemed impossibly bright at first. Then I realised how bad the storms really were. In the two weeks since I'd left, the thunderclouds had extended across the Bay Area, like an ink spill had seeped across the sky.
I started to comment on this, and Briares nearly bowled me over. 'Keep moving! She is behind us!'
'Kampê's too big to get through the doors,' Percy said.
She was, but that didn't stop her. Instead of using the doors, Kampê simply bashed straight through the walls. They crumpled like sliced onions. Then I saw what she'd used to slash her way out. She had a pair of bronze scimitars-matching swords with wicked, curved blades. Something sizzled from them, a weird green mist that sent spirals of smoke curling into the air.
Grover gasped. 'Poison! Don't let those things touch you or …'
'Or we'll die?' Percy said helpfully.
'Well, after you shrivel slowly to dust, yes.'
There was no fighting her. Even if Briares had been prepared to fight, which he wasn't, it was just too risky.
'Run!' I shouted.
A new boatload of tourists had just docked at the wharf. They'd definitely chosen the wrong day for a visit. I momentarily considered the possibility of commandeering the ferry, but it didn't travel very fast. And taking to the seas beneath a flying monster wasn't the wisest course of action.
'Back into the maze!' Tyson said. 'Only chance.'
The only way back was through Kampê. 'We need a diversion,' I said.
'I will distract Kampê,' Tyson announced. He'd acquired a metal bar from somewhere and was wielding it like a club. There was a lamp on the end; he must have ripped the streetlight right out of the ground. 'You run around, back to the prison.'
Percy pulled Riptide from his pocket. 'I'll help you.'
Tyson shook his head and urged us on. He assured us that the poison would hurt, but wouldn't kill him.
I didn't like it. Tyson had already sacrificed himself for us on several previous occasions. It was a miracle that none of those had killed him. It wasn't fair to keep putting him in this position. But what choice did we have?
Choose, Annabeth.
I forced Janus out of my head. 'Come on,' I said.
Briares was cowering in the a corner. I grabbed his hand-one of them, anyway-and tugged him back towards the prison block. Percy and Grover helped me guide him past Kampê, whom Tyson had charged with his lamppost. The sound of her screech was awful, like the mutilated screams of a dozen dying crows.
The poisonous scimitars flashed through the air. Tyson's lamppost fell to the ground in chopped up pieces.
We were only halfway across the jail yard.
'Can't make it,' Briares muttered.
Percy's face was tight with fury. 'Tyson is risking his life to help you! You will make it!'
Footsteps thundered behind us. Tyson was running pell-mell for us and the prison. He must have thrown everything he could find at Kampê. She was covered in what looked like half the merchandise from the prison gift shop and the contents of all the ice cream tubs from the tourist concession stand. It hadn't improved her mood.
'Hurry!' I gasped.
We swung through gaggles of screaming tourists, into the dim cell block. Kampê's scimitars hit the fluorescent lighting overhead, plunging us into semi-darkness as we found our cell with the bent bars.
'Look for the mark!' I ordered.
Grover found it first. I slammed my palm over his. The glowing Delta activated under our touch. The back of the cell opened up. As soon as the gap was wide enough, we dove through it, dragging Briares with us. The Labyrinth entrance slid shut just after Percy and Tyson barrelled in, right in Kampê's face.
Her furious howl followed us all the way down the tunnel, shaking its very foundations. We didn't stop running until the echo of it faded.
We stopped to catch our breaths in a room filled with walls of rushing water, just like the vision in my prophecy. The water thundered out of pipes in the ceiling, forming a falling curtain between us and a central pit. I'd never been to the Niagara Falls in northern New York, but I thought it might look something like this.
Briares doused his face in the waterfall. 'This pit goes straight to Tartarus. I should jump in and save you trouble.'
I shivered and stepped back involuntarily. I didn't know if Briares was serious, but I'd had more than enough experience with pits leading to Tartarus. 'Don't talk like that,' I said sharply.
Briares hung his head miserably. He looked as though he hadn't really left his Alcatraz prison.
'You can come back to camp with us.' I tried for a gentler tone. 'You can help us prepare. You know more about fighting Titans than anybody.'
Briares wrung a dozen of his hands. 'I have nothing to offer. I have lost everything.'
His grief was as sharp and fresh as the sheets of water tumbling down around us. As we pressed him further, we discovered why.
He was the last of his kind.
I caught Percy's eye. He was dumbfounded, like he couldn't believe anything could just fade-not only die, but vanish completely from the collective unconscious. I knew how he felt. We were so used to the gods always being there, a permanent presence that had been around before we were born and would continue after we died. But immortality had its limits. Archetypes could only survive as long as they remained valid in society.
'Kronos isn't fading,' Percy told Briares. 'He's still in a coffin, but he's reforming in there. I've seen it. It's gold, and has awful pictures all over. He was supposed to disappear, but he didn't, because he still got people to believe in him, and fight for him.'
Luke.
He had vowed to tear Olympus down piece by piece. Did he know that it would take more than that? That Kronos didn't just mean to take over Olympus? To win, he had to erase the entire world and start anew. You couldn't get rid of the gods unless you removed all their traces from the fabric of society.
Starting with their demigod children.
Now Percy was telling Briares about Luke's plan, and how we had to stop him. Briares just kept shaking his head sadly, convinced of his own inability to help.
'Maybe that's why monsters fade. Maybe it's not about what the mortals believe. Maybe it's because you give up on yourself.'
If Percy thought this might goad Briares into action, he was sorely mistaken. Briares turned away, his anguish thicker than ever, and slunk off without a word. He disappeared into a dark tunnel.
We stood in the room of falling water for a while, listening to the sound of Tyson's sobs mingling with the flow of the waterfall. Our failure to convince Briares to join us left a bitter taste in my mouth.
Light shimmered through the falling water, casting our faces in an unearthly glow. It made Percy, Tyson, and Grover look uncannily like the Oracle's impression of them as they delivered the lines of my prophecy.
The child of Athena's final stand.
As if I needed a reminder that this was my quest, my responsibility. My job to stop Luke before he could do something irreversible.
'Come on, guys,' I said. I didn't know if the pit really led to Tartarus, but I wanted to get away from it nonetheless. 'Let's find a better place to camp for the night.'
We continued on our way, down a deep, sloping tunnel. The sound of the waterfalls followed us down the passage, roaring in our ears at first, then fading to a muffled trickle, like the water source was creeping through the walls alongside us. They'd become really old now, crackled marble that looked like it had been weathered by years of harsh Mediterranean sunlight and salt spray. Dark, rust-coloured smears ran across them.
Tyson was still crying. He was so miserable, Grover forgot he was terrified of Cyclopes and walked alongside him, trying to cheer him up. I fell into step beside them and slipped my hand into Tyson's. He looked at me and attempted a watery smile.
Percy walked ahead of us, lighting the way with Riptide. At the next fork, he gave me an expectant look.
Again, I saw the shadow of Janus, one face leering into each path. Choose, Annabeth.
I pushed him away. We had a quest to complete. I couldn't lead if I was worrying incessantly about what-ifs.
I put my hand against the wall. The passage on our right had crude etchings, like ancient war décor. It was probably the better path.
We carried on. There was a light at the end of this tunnel. It widened into a stone corridor with bronze braziers lining the walls. The glow of the torches threw eerie shadows around us.
I studied the walls. They were still made of weathered marble, huge blocks of it piled all the way up. I couldn't make out the ceiling. We'd been wandering along this old section for a while now, and the architecture hadn't changed much. It was a good sign. Maybe it was only the outer layers that were random and haphazard from growing in the thousands of years since the original Labyrinth had been constructed. Maybe we had finally entered the heart of the maze, a more consistent structure. We must be close to our goal now.
Cheered by this thought, I suggested we make camp. I didn't feel much like sleeping, but the others probably needed a break. Tyson had finally stopped crying. He and Grover shuffled into the bronze light, looking exhausted. I told them to take a rest while I kept watch.
I picked a spot under one of the bronze torches and directed my flashlight beam into the darkened corridors. I could hear Grover's snoring, and the low murmur of Percy and Tyson's voices. After a while, they faded away. Tyson's loud, rattling snores joined Grover's.
Something slid over the ground behind me.
'Hey.' Percy had pulled his bedroll over.
'You should sleep.'
He took a seat inches from me. 'Can't. You doing all right?'
I studied my hands in the flickering light of the torches. 'Sure. First day leading the quest. Just great.'
I knew he didn't believe me for a second. But he just smiled and said, 'We'll get there. We'll find the workshop before Luke does.'
Luke was probably down here somewhere as well. I guessed he'd entered from San Francisco, but that gave me no clue as to how far he might have progressed within the magical spaces of the maze.
'I just wish the quest was logical. I mean, we're travelling, but we have no idea where we'll end up.' I spread my arms. 'How can you walk from New York to California in a day?'
Percy shrugged. 'Space isn't the same in the maze.'
He'd adjusted pretty quickly to that idea. 'I know, I know,' I sighed. 'It's just …' In the dim interior of the maze, surrounded by ancient walls and paths I couldn't fathom, it was hard to keep up a veneer of confidence.
And this was Percy. I lied to him about as well as I lied to myself.
'Percy, I was kidding myself,' I admitted. 'All that planning and reading-' I had long lost track of our possible position on any of my maps.
Percy had been right all along, when he'd said that my research wasn't enough. I guess I'd known it, too. But I'd convinced myself I could do it. Why did I always do that?
'You're doing great,' Percy said. 'Besides, we never know what we're doing. It always works out.' He thought for a moment, then reminded me of our quest last summer, and the one before that: all the times we'd run into something unexpected and worked our way out of it.
All the stuff I'd solved. Percy had done just as much, but he was careful to pick examples where I'd prevailed, just to buoy me up. I smiled gratefully.
This was why I needed him here. Percy was the one friend I could rely on when things got tough. When I was with him, I could believe that between the two of us, we'd find the answer.
Hera's unhelpful response to my wish crept into my head.
'Percy, what did Hera mean when she said you knew the way to get through the maze?'
He looked like I'd just sprung a pop quiz on him that he'd failed. 'I don't know. Honestly.'
'You'd tell me if you did?'
'Sure.' He pursed his lips. 'Maybe …'
'Maybe what?'
He twisted his hands in his lap. 'Maybe if you told me the last line of the prophecy, it would help.'
My insides shrivelled. The tunnels were silent, anticipatory like the calm before a storm. The shadowy light turned Percy's face almost into a stranger's. I closed my eyes and looked away. I couldn't tell him. Not now.
'What about the choice Janus mentioned?' Percy pressed on. 'Hera said-'
'Stop!' I shuddered. The flash of steel appeared again above his head. I blinked and it was gone, but there was the echo of Janus's voice: choose.
Percy looked taken aback.
'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I'm-I'm just stressed.' I wanted to claim I didn't know what Hera was talking about either, but my mind drifted to Luke, standing on my doorstep. 'You choose him.'
I'd made the right choice, hadn't I?
Percy found my hand. Ordinarily, this might have made me flustered, wondering what he meant by it, but down here, with the maze shifting around us, it was a welcome gesture of comfort. He squeezed my fingers once before letting go.
The strain of our day caught up to me at last. My adrenaline seeped away. When Percy offered to take first watch instead, I didn't argue.
Chapter 13
Author: shiiki
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Annabeth Chase, Percy Jackson, Luke Castellan, Tyson, Grover Underwood, Rachel Dare, Nico di Angelo, various others, Gen with developing Percy/Annabeth
Fandom: Percy Jackson
Summary: Annabeth Chase has finally gotten her chance to lead a quest, but the stakes have never been so high. With war on the horizon, she and her friends must navigate the Labyrinth to find its creator and convince him to help Camp Half-Blood. But the Labyrinth is more than just a physical maze-in its twist and turns, Annabeth must not only confront the Titan army’s monsters, but her own fears, hopes, and scariest of all, her developing feelings for her best friend. An alternate PoV retelling of The Battle of the Labyrinth.
In this chapter
Chapter Title: We Spring A Prison Inmate
Rating: PG
Characters: Annabeth Chase, Percy Jackson, Grover Underwood, Tyson, Kampê, Briares
Word Count: 4,104
Chapter Summary: Annabeth, Percy, Grover, and Tyson wreck Alcatraz.
Notes: The references to Annabeth's past visit to Alcatraz are expanded in Chapter 26 of my previous story, The Necklace of Harmonia. Thank you to strawberrygirl2000 for her help with Ameri-picking this chapter!
Back to Fic Content Page
It wasn't long before we heard the monster Grover and Tyson had sensed. It was something large and panting, shuffling through the passage like it had a massive bulk to drag along. Maybe it had a better sense of direction, or maybe it was following our scent, because the noise kept getting louder as it gained on us.
Of course, now that we could have done with a few twists and turns to evade the monster, the Labyrinth decided to make our tunnel straight and narrow. Worse still, it ended abruptly, trapping us between a massive boulder and the approaching monster.
Thank the gods for Tyson. He rammed the boulder with all his superhuman strength. It took him a few shoves, but he finally got it to move several feet, allowing us to squeeze through into the room behind.
'Close the entrance!'
We all helped Tyson roll the boulder back in place. Before we shut off the passage, I got a brief glimpse of something with lots of teeth and scales screaming in disappointment at being denied its prey.
We leant against the boulder, breathing hard. Then I saw the metal bars that lined the other side of the wall.
'We trapped ourselves,' Grover moaned.
I ran to the bars and looked out. 'What in Hades?'
To my utter shock, we were no longer in the Labyrinth. At least, I didn't think we were.
We were on the ground floor of a circular prison. Rows of cells just like ours encircled the central courtyard, spiralling up to the ceiling of the building. Our cell was empty, but some of the others had displays in them: hard beds, washstands, wax figurines depicting old inmates.
I knew this place. I'd been here on a school trip in February. But … it was impossible.
We hadn't been walking long enough.
Percy ran his hands along the bars of our cell. 'Maybe Tyson can-'
Grover shushed us. He tilted his head to one side, listening intently.
I heard a pained, desperate sobbing, a keening that rang with unmitigated suffering. Over it came the eerie rasp of a cruel voice. It was something from out of this world, a different language, but one I'd heard before, ancient and heavy with magic.
I could almost feel a cold, sucking wind from a deep, dark pit.
'Can't be!' Tyson gasped. He yanked two of the cell bars apart and squeezed through the hole, thundering down the prison catwalk.
'This is Alcatraz,' I told the others. Even though it didn't seem possible that we'd made it all the way to San Francisco, there was no mistaking the old prison museum.
And this wasn't good. The last I'd known, the Titans had taken over this island.
Either the museum tours hadn't started, or they were finished for the day. Nobody was around to notice four kids breaking out of a cell and racing up the stairs. We chased Tyson to the second-floor catwalk. Against all odds, it was Grover who caught him.
'Stop, Tyson!' He tugged on Tyson's arm and got dragged several feet along the catwalk. Scuff marks appeared in the floor where he tried to dig his hooves in. It slowed Tyson just enough for Percy and me to grab him, too. 'Can't you see it?'
We all followed Grover's finger. The monster on the balcony was twenty feet long, with a tail that trailed over the edge of the railing. She was a dozen terrible creatures at once: snake spitting in her hair, carnivorous heads growling at her waist, a scaly dragon's body. One look at her and I knew she'd be featuring in my nightmares for a month.
It was she who had spoken in that raspy, ancient tongue.
'Can you translate?' Percy asked Tyson.
I braced myself. Even though I knew it was just Tyson, the mimicry always freaked me out. It reminded me too much of the Cyclops in Brooklyn who had trapped Thalia, Luke, and Grover by pretending to be each of us in turn.
'You will work for the master or suffer,' Tyson said in the monster lady's voice. Then he switched to the voice of her prisoner: 'I will not serve.'
I shuddered as he returned to the monster lady's persona. Tyson was too good with his imitations. I would have been happy with just a basic translation.
'Then I shall enjoy your pain, Br-Briares.' Tyson stumbled over the name. I had a feeling his stutter wasn't part of the original statement. 'If you thought your first imprisonment was unbearable, you have yet to feel true torment. Think on this until I return.'
Briares's sobbing increased as the monster lady turned away. We ducked below the railings on our side of the catwalk, shrinking into the shadows. Fortunately, the monster lady didn't notice us. She launched herself off the balcony. The whoosh of her leathery wings swept up a stinging wind as she glided down to the courtyard. She slipped around a corner, out of sight.
Grover wrinkled his nose. 'Horrible. I've never smelt any monster that strong.'
Tyson rocked back and forth, hugging himself. 'Cyclopes' worst nightmare … Kampê.'
The name struck a chord. Another ancient monster, this one older than the gods … And there had been an ally Athena and Artemis had been searching for here in the spring …
'She was our jailer in the bad years,' Tyson said.
'I remember now.' In the age before the Olympians, the Titans had imprisoned the first children of Gaia and Ouranos-the Cyclopes and the Hekatonkheires. During the first Titan War, Zeus had slain Kampê and freed her prisoners. As I explained this to Percy and Grover, it dawned on me who must be in that cell, weeping piteously.
This Briares must be one of the three legendary Hekatonkheires. With their hundred hands and incredible strength, they'd been instrumental in turning the tide against the Titans.
'I guess we should check it out before Kampê comes back,' I suggested.
Briares looked nothing like a mighty giant. The famous hundred hands sprouted all over his torso, but the ones at his front were wringing each other, or tearing at his wispy hair, or covering his face as he wept into them. The hands at his back reminded me of pre-schoolers amusing themselves while their parents argued. Several were shaping scrap metal into little robots that would have occupied my stepbrothers for hours. Others were playing finger games with one another.
Tyson knelt before the Hekatonkheire and called his name reverently. 'Great Hundred-handed One, help us!'
Even Briares's face made me think of a child. His eyes were cartoonish brown dots pasted under an elongated forehead. His voice came slow and sad: 'Run while you can, Cyclops. I cannot even help myself.'
Tyson was torn between dissolving into hero-worship and coaxing Briares to fight. Neither helped. Briares had shrunk into a shadow of his former self. I didn't know what Kampê had done to him, but she clearly had him good and cowed.
'Guys,' Grover said nervously, 'we have to get out of here. Kampê will be back. She'll sense us sooner or later.'
'Break the bars.' I meant for Tyson to do it, but Tyson grinned at Briares.
'Briares can do it. He is very strong. Stronger than Cyclopes, even! Watch!'
We watched. Briares didn't even attempt to touch the bars.
'If he's so strong, why is he stuck in jail?' Percy asked.
I couldn't believe he was being so obnoxious. Poor Briares had the air of an abused child. 'He's terrified,' I said, jabbing him with my elbow. How would Percy feel, being back under the thumb of a jailer who had once imprisoned him in Tartarus for thousands of years?
'Tyson, I think you'd better break the bars,' I said.
Tyson gave Briares another pained glance. When Briares still didn't move, Tyson finally tore the cell door out of the wall.
I put my hand into the cell. 'Come on, Briares. Let's get you out of here.'
Five hands reached out tentatively for mine. Before we could touch, his other hands batted his outstretched ones away. Briares trembled. 'I cannot. She will punish me.'
The sorrow in his voice melted my heart. I leaned forward, kneeling before him like he was a small child. 'It's all right. You fought the Titans before, and you won, remember?'
'I remember the war.' Briares's eyes wavered. So did his voice, as he recounted his memories. He didn't move to follow us.
Grover's eyes darted anxiously around the courtyard, searching for any sign of Kampê's return. I exchanged a look with Percy. If Briares really wouldn't follow us, there wasn't much we could do.
'One game of rock, paper, scissors,' Percy said suddenly. I stared at him. How in Hades was that going to help anyone?
Percy pushed forward into the cell. 'If I win, you come with us. If I lose, we'll leave you in jail.'
'I always win rock, paper, scissors,' Briares said. I could see his point-with his hundred hands, he could easily field all three at a go.
This didn't faze Percy. I didn't know if he actually had a plan, or if he'd just gone crazy. They shook their fists-a hundred and one of them-and came up with …
I blinked. Percy had shaped his thumb and index finger like-
'A gun beats anything,' he said.
I almost laughed. Unorthodox as it was, it worked. Briares didn't look happy, but he upheld the bargain. Trust Percy to find a crazy, out-of-the-box solution.
We were just a little too late, though. A loud thump hit the ground floor. Kampê had returned, and she was not happy with our jailbreak attempt.
Now that we'd sprung Briares, he was only too eager to run. We dashed along the catwalk. Kampê launched herself into the air after us, not bothering with the stairs.
I dragged the others down the stairwell, forcing Kampê to alter course mid-flight. There was a side corridor here, if I recalled correctly. We sprinted through it to another block, arriving just around the corner from the entrance, where all the tours started.
'Left!' I gasped. 'I remember this from the tour.'
We smashed through the main door into the prison yard, where a crowd of tourists were gathering for their prison tour. Their cameras flashed at us. Compared to the darkness of the Labyrinth, even the overcast skies over the bay seemed impossibly bright at first. Then I realised how bad the storms really were. In the two weeks since I'd left, the thunderclouds had extended across the Bay Area, like an ink spill had seeped across the sky.
I started to comment on this, and Briares nearly bowled me over. 'Keep moving! She is behind us!'
'Kampê's too big to get through the doors,' Percy said.
She was, but that didn't stop her. Instead of using the doors, Kampê simply bashed straight through the walls. They crumpled like sliced onions. Then I saw what she'd used to slash her way out. She had a pair of bronze scimitars-matching swords with wicked, curved blades. Something sizzled from them, a weird green mist that sent spirals of smoke curling into the air.
Grover gasped. 'Poison! Don't let those things touch you or …'
'Or we'll die?' Percy said helpfully.
'Well, after you shrivel slowly to dust, yes.'
There was no fighting her. Even if Briares had been prepared to fight, which he wasn't, it was just too risky.
'Run!' I shouted.
A new boatload of tourists had just docked at the wharf. They'd definitely chosen the wrong day for a visit. I momentarily considered the possibility of commandeering the ferry, but it didn't travel very fast. And taking to the seas beneath a flying monster wasn't the wisest course of action.
'Back into the maze!' Tyson said. 'Only chance.'
The only way back was through Kampê. 'We need a diversion,' I said.
'I will distract Kampê,' Tyson announced. He'd acquired a metal bar from somewhere and was wielding it like a club. There was a lamp on the end; he must have ripped the streetlight right out of the ground. 'You run around, back to the prison.'
Percy pulled Riptide from his pocket. 'I'll help you.'
Tyson shook his head and urged us on. He assured us that the poison would hurt, but wouldn't kill him.
I didn't like it. Tyson had already sacrificed himself for us on several previous occasions. It was a miracle that none of those had killed him. It wasn't fair to keep putting him in this position. But what choice did we have?
Choose, Annabeth.
I forced Janus out of my head. 'Come on,' I said.
Briares was cowering in the a corner. I grabbed his hand-one of them, anyway-and tugged him back towards the prison block. Percy and Grover helped me guide him past Kampê, whom Tyson had charged with his lamppost. The sound of her screech was awful, like the mutilated screams of a dozen dying crows.
The poisonous scimitars flashed through the air. Tyson's lamppost fell to the ground in chopped up pieces.
We were only halfway across the jail yard.
'Can't make it,' Briares muttered.
Percy's face was tight with fury. 'Tyson is risking his life to help you! You will make it!'
Footsteps thundered behind us. Tyson was running pell-mell for us and the prison. He must have thrown everything he could find at Kampê. She was covered in what looked like half the merchandise from the prison gift shop and the contents of all the ice cream tubs from the tourist concession stand. It hadn't improved her mood.
'Hurry!' I gasped.
We swung through gaggles of screaming tourists, into the dim cell block. Kampê's scimitars hit the fluorescent lighting overhead, plunging us into semi-darkness as we found our cell with the bent bars.
'Look for the mark!' I ordered.
Grover found it first. I slammed my palm over his. The glowing Delta activated under our touch. The back of the cell opened up. As soon as the gap was wide enough, we dove through it, dragging Briares with us. The Labyrinth entrance slid shut just after Percy and Tyson barrelled in, right in Kampê's face.
Her furious howl followed us all the way down the tunnel, shaking its very foundations. We didn't stop running until the echo of it faded.
We stopped to catch our breaths in a room filled with walls of rushing water, just like the vision in my prophecy. The water thundered out of pipes in the ceiling, forming a falling curtain between us and a central pit. I'd never been to the Niagara Falls in northern New York, but I thought it might look something like this.
Briares doused his face in the waterfall. 'This pit goes straight to Tartarus. I should jump in and save you trouble.'
I shivered and stepped back involuntarily. I didn't know if Briares was serious, but I'd had more than enough experience with pits leading to Tartarus. 'Don't talk like that,' I said sharply.
Briares hung his head miserably. He looked as though he hadn't really left his Alcatraz prison.
'You can come back to camp with us.' I tried for a gentler tone. 'You can help us prepare. You know more about fighting Titans than anybody.'
Briares wrung a dozen of his hands. 'I have nothing to offer. I have lost everything.'
His grief was as sharp and fresh as the sheets of water tumbling down around us. As we pressed him further, we discovered why.
He was the last of his kind.
I caught Percy's eye. He was dumbfounded, like he couldn't believe anything could just fade-not only die, but vanish completely from the collective unconscious. I knew how he felt. We were so used to the gods always being there, a permanent presence that had been around before we were born and would continue after we died. But immortality had its limits. Archetypes could only survive as long as they remained valid in society.
'Kronos isn't fading,' Percy told Briares. 'He's still in a coffin, but he's reforming in there. I've seen it. It's gold, and has awful pictures all over. He was supposed to disappear, but he didn't, because he still got people to believe in him, and fight for him.'
Luke.
He had vowed to tear Olympus down piece by piece. Did he know that it would take more than that? That Kronos didn't just mean to take over Olympus? To win, he had to erase the entire world and start anew. You couldn't get rid of the gods unless you removed all their traces from the fabric of society.
Starting with their demigod children.
Now Percy was telling Briares about Luke's plan, and how we had to stop him. Briares just kept shaking his head sadly, convinced of his own inability to help.
'Maybe that's why monsters fade. Maybe it's not about what the mortals believe. Maybe it's because you give up on yourself.'
If Percy thought this might goad Briares into action, he was sorely mistaken. Briares turned away, his anguish thicker than ever, and slunk off without a word. He disappeared into a dark tunnel.
We stood in the room of falling water for a while, listening to the sound of Tyson's sobs mingling with the flow of the waterfall. Our failure to convince Briares to join us left a bitter taste in my mouth.
Light shimmered through the falling water, casting our faces in an unearthly glow. It made Percy, Tyson, and Grover look uncannily like the Oracle's impression of them as they delivered the lines of my prophecy.
The child of Athena's final stand.
As if I needed a reminder that this was my quest, my responsibility. My job to stop Luke before he could do something irreversible.
'Come on, guys,' I said. I didn't know if the pit really led to Tartarus, but I wanted to get away from it nonetheless. 'Let's find a better place to camp for the night.'
We continued on our way, down a deep, sloping tunnel. The sound of the waterfalls followed us down the passage, roaring in our ears at first, then fading to a muffled trickle, like the water source was creeping through the walls alongside us. They'd become really old now, crackled marble that looked like it had been weathered by years of harsh Mediterranean sunlight and salt spray. Dark, rust-coloured smears ran across them.
Tyson was still crying. He was so miserable, Grover forgot he was terrified of Cyclopes and walked alongside him, trying to cheer him up. I fell into step beside them and slipped my hand into Tyson's. He looked at me and attempted a watery smile.
Percy walked ahead of us, lighting the way with Riptide. At the next fork, he gave me an expectant look.
Again, I saw the shadow of Janus, one face leering into each path. Choose, Annabeth.
I pushed him away. We had a quest to complete. I couldn't lead if I was worrying incessantly about what-ifs.
I put my hand against the wall. The passage on our right had crude etchings, like ancient war décor. It was probably the better path.
We carried on. There was a light at the end of this tunnel. It widened into a stone corridor with bronze braziers lining the walls. The glow of the torches threw eerie shadows around us.
I studied the walls. They were still made of weathered marble, huge blocks of it piled all the way up. I couldn't make out the ceiling. We'd been wandering along this old section for a while now, and the architecture hadn't changed much. It was a good sign. Maybe it was only the outer layers that were random and haphazard from growing in the thousands of years since the original Labyrinth had been constructed. Maybe we had finally entered the heart of the maze, a more consistent structure. We must be close to our goal now.
Cheered by this thought, I suggested we make camp. I didn't feel much like sleeping, but the others probably needed a break. Tyson had finally stopped crying. He and Grover shuffled into the bronze light, looking exhausted. I told them to take a rest while I kept watch.
I picked a spot under one of the bronze torches and directed my flashlight beam into the darkened corridors. I could hear Grover's snoring, and the low murmur of Percy and Tyson's voices. After a while, they faded away. Tyson's loud, rattling snores joined Grover's.
Something slid over the ground behind me.
'Hey.' Percy had pulled his bedroll over.
'You should sleep.'
He took a seat inches from me. 'Can't. You doing all right?'
I studied my hands in the flickering light of the torches. 'Sure. First day leading the quest. Just great.'
I knew he didn't believe me for a second. But he just smiled and said, 'We'll get there. We'll find the workshop before Luke does.'
Luke was probably down here somewhere as well. I guessed he'd entered from San Francisco, but that gave me no clue as to how far he might have progressed within the magical spaces of the maze.
'I just wish the quest was logical. I mean, we're travelling, but we have no idea where we'll end up.' I spread my arms. 'How can you walk from New York to California in a day?'
Percy shrugged. 'Space isn't the same in the maze.'
He'd adjusted pretty quickly to that idea. 'I know, I know,' I sighed. 'It's just …' In the dim interior of the maze, surrounded by ancient walls and paths I couldn't fathom, it was hard to keep up a veneer of confidence.
And this was Percy. I lied to him about as well as I lied to myself.
'Percy, I was kidding myself,' I admitted. 'All that planning and reading-' I had long lost track of our possible position on any of my maps.
Percy had been right all along, when he'd said that my research wasn't enough. I guess I'd known it, too. But I'd convinced myself I could do it. Why did I always do that?
'You're doing great,' Percy said. 'Besides, we never know what we're doing. It always works out.' He thought for a moment, then reminded me of our quest last summer, and the one before that: all the times we'd run into something unexpected and worked our way out of it.
All the stuff I'd solved. Percy had done just as much, but he was careful to pick examples where I'd prevailed, just to buoy me up. I smiled gratefully.
This was why I needed him here. Percy was the one friend I could rely on when things got tough. When I was with him, I could believe that between the two of us, we'd find the answer.
Hera's unhelpful response to my wish crept into my head.
'Percy, what did Hera mean when she said you knew the way to get through the maze?'
He looked like I'd just sprung a pop quiz on him that he'd failed. 'I don't know. Honestly.'
'You'd tell me if you did?'
'Sure.' He pursed his lips. 'Maybe …'
'Maybe what?'
He twisted his hands in his lap. 'Maybe if you told me the last line of the prophecy, it would help.'
My insides shrivelled. The tunnels were silent, anticipatory like the calm before a storm. The shadowy light turned Percy's face almost into a stranger's. I closed my eyes and looked away. I couldn't tell him. Not now.
'What about the choice Janus mentioned?' Percy pressed on. 'Hera said-'
'Stop!' I shuddered. The flash of steel appeared again above his head. I blinked and it was gone, but there was the echo of Janus's voice: choose.
Percy looked taken aback.
'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I'm-I'm just stressed.' I wanted to claim I didn't know what Hera was talking about either, but my mind drifted to Luke, standing on my doorstep. 'You choose him.'
I'd made the right choice, hadn't I?
Percy found my hand. Ordinarily, this might have made me flustered, wondering what he meant by it, but down here, with the maze shifting around us, it was a welcome gesture of comfort. He squeezed my fingers once before letting go.
The strain of our day caught up to me at last. My adrenaline seeped away. When Percy offered to take first watch instead, I didn't argue.
Chapter 13