Breakfast at camp half blood was more chatty than usual. A dragon had been spotted at the edge of camp in the morning, and the Apollo cabin scared it off while it was prowling our barriers. Chink in the armor with the most skilled archers in the world. Simple as that.
"It's still out there," Lee warned us during annoucments. "Twenty arrows in its hide, and we just made it mad. The thing was thirty feet long and bright green. Its eyes—“
He shuddered.
"You did well, Lee." Chiron patted him on the shoulder. “Everyone stay alert, but stay calm. This has happened before."
"Aye," Quintus said from the head table. "And it will happen again. More and more frequently."
The campers murmured among themselves. I picked at my plate, looking at Percy as I usually did. I would love to talk to him, but Rachel’s face flashed before my eyes and my comfortable stare at Percy turned into a stony glare. (I would like to say it didn’t turn back into a comfortable stare…)
Everyone knew the rumors: Luke and his army of monsters were planning an invasion of the camp. Most of us expected it to happen this summer, but no one knew how or when. It didn't help that our attendance was down. We only had about eighty campers. Three years ago, when percy had started, there had been more than a hundred. Some had died. Some had joined Luke. Some had just disappeared.
"This is a good reason for new war games," Quintus said.
"Yes.. " Chiron said. "Well, enough announcements. “Let us bless this meal and eat." He raised his goblet. "To the gods!"
We all raised our glasses and repeated the blessing.
The Poseidon table went first, in order of the gods birth, and I watched Percy go up and scrape his food into the fire.
I glanced at Grover, who was also watching Percy and chewing on his shirt. I knew he was nervous because of his decision, and my heart squeezed with sympathy.
Chiron walked up to Grover and startled him. He talked to him and gestured to Percy’s table, where Tyson and Percy were talking solemnly now.
Grover and Chiron walked over to their table. My Athena cabin brain turned on and I figured that Chiron wanted Percy to convince him to go through the labyrinth to find Pan. Good luck with that Chiron.
I needed to be part of that conversation too though…and Chiron knows that!
I slid next to Percy. Everyone at the table—no everyone in the room— stared at me in awe.
This is one of those things that I most literally did not care at all about.
“I’ll tell you what it’s about. The labyrinth.”
Percy stated at me, dumbfounded.
I forgave him for everything about Rachel and our movie thing at that moment.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” he said.
“We need to talk,” I shot back.
“But the rules…”
“Look,” I said.” Grover is in trouble. There’s only one way we can figure to help him. It’s the labyrinth. That’s what Clarisse and I have been investigating.”
Percy shifted his weight.
I realized how close we were sitting and I’m pretty sure my face went red, but I shoved it away. This was a serious talk and I needed to focus.
“You me a the maze where they kept the Minotaur in the old days?” Percy asked.
“Exactly.”
"So ... it's not under the king's palace in Crete ar more," he guessed. "The Labyrinth is under some building in America."
I rolled her eyes. He was so smart, but so dumb . "Under a building? Please, Percy. The Labyrinth is huge. It wouldn't fit under a single city, much less a building.”
“So is the labyrinth part of the underworld?”
"No." I frowned. "Well, there may be passages from the Labyrinth down into the Underworld. I'm not sure. But the Underworld is way, way down. The Labyrinth is right under the surface of the mortal world, kind of like a second skin. It's been growing for thousands of years, lacing its way under Western cities, connecting everything together underground. You can get anywhere through the Labyrinth."
“If you don’t get lost,” Grover muttered, reminding me of his prescience. “And die a horrible death.”
“Grover, there has to be a way,” I said, rolling my eyes. We had talked this through before, but I guess we were going through it again. “Clarisse lived.”
“Barely! And the other guy—“
“He was driven insane. He didn’t die.”
“Oh joy. That makes me feel so much better.”
“Whoa,” Percy said, getting that cute confused look in his eye.
WHOA. Not cute! Sorry!
*note to editors: edit that out:
“Whoa,” Percy said, getting that confused look in his eyes.
Thank you!
“Whoa,” Percy said, getting that confused look in his eyes, “back up. Whats this about clarisse and a crazy guy?”
I glanced over toward the Ares table. Clarisse was watching us like she knew what we were talking about, but then she fixed her eyes on her breakfast plate.
“Last year," I said, lowering my voice, "Clarisse went on a mission for Chiron."
“I remember," Percy said. "It was secret."
"It was secret," Annabeth agreed, “because she found Chris Rodriguez."
"The guy from the Hermes cabin?"
“Yeah," I said. "Last summer he just appeared in Phoenix, Arizona, near Clarisse's mom's house."
"What do you mean he just appeared?"
"He was wandering around the desert, in a hundred and twenty degrees, in full Greek armor, babbling about string."
"String," he said.
"He'd been driven completely insane. Clarisse brought him back to her mom's house so the mortals wouldn't institutionalize him. She tried to nurse him back to health. Chiron came out and interviewed him, but it wasn't much good. The only thing they got out of him: Luke's men have been exploring the Labyrinth."
"Okay," I asked. "Why were they exploring the Labyrinth?"
"We weren't sure,"I said. "That's why Clarisse went on a scouting expedition. Chiron kept things hushed up because he didn't want anyone panicking. He got me involved because ... well, the Labyrinth has always been one of my favorite subjects. The architecture involved—" My brain lit up as I thought about all the architecture, but Percy winced at my expression. "The builder, Daedalus, was a genius. But the point is, the Labyrinth has entrances everywhere. If Luke could figure out how to navigate it, he could move his army around with incredible speed."
"Except it's a maze, right?"
"Full of horrible traps" Grover agreed. "Dead ends. Illusions. Psychotic goat-killing monsters."
“But not if you had Ariadne’s string.” I explained. "In the old days, Ariadne's string guided Theseus out of the maze. It was a navigation instrument of some kind, invented by Daedalus. And Chris Rodriguez was mumbling about string."
"So Luke is trying to find Ariadne's string," Percy said.”Why? What's he planning?"
“I don't know. I thought maybe he wanted to invade camp through the maze, but that doesn't make any sense. The closest entrances Clarisse found were in Manhattan, which wouldn't help Luke get past our borders. Clarisse explored a little way into the tunnels, but ... it was very dangerous. She had some close calls. I researched everything I could find about Daedalus. Im afraid it didn't help much. I don't understand exactly what Luke's planning, but I do know this: the Labyrinth might be the key to Grover's problem."
Percy blinked and got that cu—confused look. "You think Pan is underground?"
"It would explain why he's been impossible to find!" Grover shuddered. "Satyrs hate going underground. No searcher would ever try going in that place. No flowers. No sunshine. No coffee shops!"
"But," I said, "the Labyrinth can lead you almost anywhere. It reads your thoughts. It was designed to fool you, to trick you and kill you; but if you can make the labyrinth work for you—“
“It could lead you to the wild god,” Percy said, realization dawning on his face.
“I can’t do it.” Grover hugged his stomach. “Just thinking about it makes me want to throw up my silverware.”
“Grover, it may be your last chance,” I said. “The council is serious. One week or you learn to tap dance!”
Quintus cleared his throat. I needed to go back to my table.
“We’ll talk later.” I squeezed Percy’s arm. “Convince him, will you?”
As I walked back to the Athena table, I felt everyone’s eyes on me. Like I cared. The only pair of eyes that I cared about feeling on me in that moment were Percy’s.
*can we edit that out? Thanks.
וןםפוןםפוןפֶֶםון time skip וןםפוןםפוןפֶֶםון
"Right," Quintus said, standing on the head dining table. "Gather 'round."
He was dressed in black leather and bronze. In the torchlight, his gray hair made him look like a ghost. Mrs.
O'Leary bounded happily around him, foraging for dinner scraps.
"You will be in teams of two," Quintus announced.
When everybody started talking and trying to grab their friends, he yelled: "Which have already been chosen!"
"AWWWWW!" everybody complained.
"Your goal is simple: collect the gold laurels without dying. The wreath is wrapped in a silk package, tied to the back of one of the monsters. There are six monsters. Each has a silk package. Only one holds the laurels. You must find the wreath before the other teams. And, of course... you will have to slay the monster to get it, and stay alive." The crowd started murmuring excitedly. The task sounded pretty straightforward. Hey, wed all slain monsters before. That's what we trained for.
"I will now announce your partners," Quintus said. “There will be no trading. No switching, No complaining"
"Aroooof!" Mrs. O'Leary buried her face in a plate of pizza.
Quintus got out a scroll and began reading off assignments. They were all good matches, and it seemed they weren’t trying to split up pairs, like they usually did in schools. Beckendorf and silena, the still brothers, clarisse with Lee fletcher, me with Percy—
Wait what? Yes! Me and Percy!
“Nice,” Percy said, grinning at me.
“Your armor is crooked,” I said, keeping my cool. I reached up and fixed his straps, trying not to think too much about where her hands were placed.
“Grover underwood with Tyson.”
Grover jumped and took on a look of fear. They both broke out in a chatter of complaints.
“No complaining!” Quintus demanded. “Get with your partner. You have two minutes to prepare.”
Tyson and Grover gave looks to Percy.
“They’ll be fine,” I said. “Come on, let’s worry about how we’re going to stay alive.”
When we got to the woods, it was still bright. The large trees shadows gave the place a cool nighttime look. Percy and I found tracks nearly the moment the game started. They showed lots of legs, so we started off on the trail.
We wandered around, but when we thought we found something, it turned out to be the stoll brothers. When they passed, we went deeper into the woods.
I was the first to realize where we were standing.
“This is where we stopped looking.”
We were standing on a large rock. Last summer, we were looking for Nico di Angelo and here Percy had convinced us to not tell Chiron about Nico’s heritage when we gave up the search.
And we still didn’t have any lead as to where Nico might be.
“I saw him last night.”
I knit my eyebrows. Sometimes demigod dreams could show us things. “What do you mean?”
Percy explained how he got an iris message from someone showing him Nico.
“He’s summoning the dead?” I asked, dumbfounded. “That’s not good.”
“The ghost was giving him bad advice,” Percy defended. “Telling him to take revenge.”
“Yeah spirits are never good advisors. They’ve got their own agendas. Old grudges. And they resent the living.”
“He’s going to come after me,” Percy said, slight fear creeping into his voice. “The spirit mentioned a maze.”
“That settles it,” I said, nodding. “ we have to figure out the labyrinth.”
“Maybe,” Percy said, shifting. “But who sent the iris message? If Nico didn’t know I was there—“
A branch snapped, making both of us jump. Something large was moving near us.
“That’s not the stoll brothers,” I whispered.
We drew our swords.
We travelled to Zeus’s Fist, a giant pile of boulders in the middle of the forest. Campers often came here on hunting expeditions.
“Over there,” I whispered.
“No, wait, behind us,” Percy said. A thought struck that there might be multiple monsters coming for us, but I brushed it away when fear tickled my spine.
We gripped our swords and circling the Fist, when someone behind us said, “Hi.”
We jumped and immediately went into action, whirling around and nearly decapitating—! Juniper the tree nymph.
“Put those down!” She yelped. “Dryads don’t like sharp blades, okay?”
“Juniper,” I exhaled, relieved. “What are you doing here?”
As an Athena kid, I took note of her. It was clear something was bothering her, as always was with dryads, and she didn’t seem to know what was happening or that we may or may not be surrounded by monsters at the moment.
“I live here.”
Percy put his sword down. “In the rocks?”
I rolled my eyes as juniper explained that she lives in the juniper tree obviously. So smart, but so dumb.
“Are you guys busy?” Juniper asked.
“Well, we’re in the middle of this game against a bunch of monsters and we’re trying not to die.”
Junipers eyebrows creased.
“We’re not busy,” I said. “What’s wrong juniper?”
She sniffled and wiped her sleeve on her eyes.
“It’s Grover. He seems so distraught. All year he’s been out looking for pan. Every time he comes back, it’s worse. I thought maybe, at first, he was seeing another tree.”
She burst into tears.
Oh so that’s what it was. I could relate. Girl stuff. “No! I’m sure that’s not it.”
“He had a crush on a blueberry bush once.”
“Juniper,” I assured, “Grover would never even look at another tree. He’s just stressed out about his searchers license.”
“He can’t go underground! You can’t let him.”
I had the urge to convince her otherwise. “It might be the only way to help him; if we just knew where to start.”
“Ah,” juniper said, wiping a tear from her eye, “about that…”
All it took was one rustle from around us for juniper to yell, “Hide!” and poof into green mist, going back to her tree most likely.
Percy and I turned cautiously. sure enough, coming out of the woods was a glistening amber insect, ten feet long, with jagged pincers, an armored tail, and a stinger as long as my sword. A scorpion. Tied to its back was a red silk package.
"One of us gets behind it," I said, as the thing clattered toward us. As a daughter of Athena, I usually planned everything out the moment something went wrong. My brain did just that on habit. “Cuts off its tail while the other distracts it in front.”
"I’ll take point," percy said. "You've got the invisibility hat." We'd fought together so many times we knew each other's moves. We could do this, easy.
Then two other scorpions came out of the woods.
I struggle with anxiety. It’s true. All girls do. Unless you’re really lucky. And at moments like these, when my challenges double, or in this case, triple, that special anxiety came and froze me in fear.
But I’m an Athena kid, so it helps that I’m only frozen with fear for a millisecond before my pride and brain gets the better of me and starts thinking about all the different scenarios and strategies.
“Three?” I said. “That’s not possible! The whole woods, and half the monsters come at us?!”
I also get angry easily. I’m getting angry in this scene. There’s no way I’m getting targeted by monsters again. It’s always me! Always me…
The scorpions came toward us swiping their tails and Percy and I put our backs against the boulder.
“Climb?” Percy asked.
“No time,” I pointed out.
The scorpions were surrounding us and closing in with high time. Their mouths foamed and their beady eyes seemed to be following me. I got flashbacks of the days when I was on the run with Thalia and Luke. Running from monsters.
“Look out!” I said, parrying a stinger with a whip of my blade. We clambered sideways along the boulders, but the scorpions followed us. I stabbed at the scorpion, gliding my blade along its stinger and taking a swipe.
Percy and I moved and slashed at the scorpions, gliding along the boulder. We came to a split in the boulders. A small cave.
“In there!” Percy said.
I sliced a scorpion and looked at him like he was crazy, because he probably was. “In there? It’s too narrow!”
“I’ll cover you. Go!”
I ducked behind him and squeezed through the two boulders.
I swear the large pit that I fell into had not been there! There was no pit! No pit at all or anything!
I yelped and grabbed his armor straps as we fell into the pit (that hadn’t been there before!)
We were in a cave. A dark one. In the woods.
Together. In a dark cave. I was in a dark cave with Percy Jackson.
The hole to the outside closed.
Darkness.
Our breathing echoed against stone. It was wet and cold. We were sitting on bricks. Percy used his sword as a small use of light.
“It’s a long room,” Percy muttered. And so it was. But not quite…
I gripped his arm. “It’s not a room. It’s a corridor.”
It just didn’t feel enclosed, like a room would. A breeze told me that beyond the walls, there had to be something rather than rock or pavement.
Percy took a step, right before I tugged on his arm and stopped him. “Don’t take another step. We need to find the exit.”
My Athena brain turned on the minute the lights went out, and if we were where I thought we were, then we needed to get out of there and fast.
“It’s okay,” Percy said, noticing the fear in my voice that I couldn’t keep out. “It’s right—“
His voice trailed off as he realized that the exit had disappeared and we really were in an enclosed corridor. Just us together. If I could squeal about being trapped in a corridor that might be the labyrinth, I would.
I slipped my hand into Percy’s. It wasn’t weird, so we don’t need to edit that out. His palm grew soft against mine.
(This is a friend moment only, guys, okay?!)
His hand gave me a sense of safety and my mind betrayed me and nearly hugged him to feel more of that safety, but I rejected the thought and held back.
“Two steps back,” I whispered.
We stepped back in sync.
“Okay,” I said. If we really were in the labyrinth, we needed to look for the mark of Daedalus. “Help me examine the walls.”
“What for?”
“The mark of Daedalus.”
So slow. He was so slow.
“Uh, okay,” he said, proving his slowness. “What kind of—“
I ignored him, skimming my hand against the wall and—
“Got it!”I said, exhaling. I pressed my hand against the wall, making a Greek delta in the wall appear.
The roof slid open and we saw night sky where there was supposed to be light sky. A thought crossed my mind about the labyrinth again, and I figured Percy and I would need to talk to Chiron immediately, game or no game.
People were calling our names. Tysons booming voice echoed the most. Percy glanced at me nervously. What happened? Then we started climbing.
When we were out of the corridor, we immediately ran into clarisse and a gang of kids following her. They were all carrying torches.
“Where have you two been?” Clarisse demanded. “We’ve been looking forever.”
“We were only gone a few minutes,” Percy shot back.
Chiron trotted up, followed by Tyson and Grover. He shot me a look and I winked. Talk to him in private.
“Percy! You are okay?” Tyson asked worriedly.
“We’re fine. we fell in a hole.”
I smiled apologetically at the skeptical glances coming our way.
“Honest!” Percy said. “There were three scorpions after us, so we ran and hid in the rocks. But we were only gone for a minute.”
“You’ve been missing for almost an hour,” Chiron said, eyebrows creasing. “The game is over.”
“Yeah,” Grover said. “We would’ve won, but a cyclops sat on me.”
“Was an accident!” Tyson protested. He sneezed.
I shared a look with Clarisse and an understanding passed between us.
“A hole?” Clarisse asked suspiciously, shooting a look at Chiron.
I took a deep breath. “Chiron, maybe we should talk about this in the big house.”
Clarisse gasped. “You found it, don’t you?”
“I—yeah. Yeah, we did.”
Everyone’s questions overlapped over each other when I revealed what I believed to be true. Percy gave me his confused (and only confused) look. Chiron raised his hand for silence and everyone went quiet. “Tonight is not the right time, and this is not the right place. All of you, back to your boulders. Get some sleep. A game well played, but curfew is past.”
Everyone mumbled and complained, groaning and scattering to their cabins. People glanced Percy’s and i’s way, giving us suspicious looks.
“This,” Clarisse said, “explains a lot. It’s explains what Luke is after.”
“Wait a second,” Percy said, (he still had that really cute confused look on his face that I adore.
(Can we edit that out?)
“What do you mean?” Percy continued. “What did we find?”
I turned to him gravely. If we really did find an entrance to the labyrinth, our camp was doomed. “An entrance to the labyrinth. An invasion route straight into the heart of the camp.”
