Medvelelet
Not too sore, are you?
- Joined
- Feb 6, 2022
- Messages
- 340
- Likes received
- 4,046
-
The site has now migrated to Xenforo 2. If you see any issues with the forum operation, please post them in the feedback thread.
-
Due to issues with external spam filters, QQ is currently unable to send any mail to Microsoft E-mail addresses. This includes any account at live.com, hotmail.com or msn.com. Signing up to the forum with one of these addresses will result in your verification E-mail never arriving. For best results, please use a different E-mail provider for your QQ address.
-
The rules regarding NSFW links have been updated. See here for details.
Of Demigods and Wrackspurts (PJO/HP - Luna Lovegood)
- Thread starter Firewillreign
- Start date
MrTopHatSmith
Verified Scottish
- Joined
- Sep 2, 2021
- Messages
- 68
- Likes received
- 528
I can see luna, delirious from pain, half dead from blood loss pale as a poor ghost bed sheet, saying that with the most innocent "how's it going" smile in the whole world.
Chapter 8: The Ordeals Of The Labyrinth - Part 1
Firewillreign
Know what you're doing yet?
- Joined
- Sep 26, 2023
- Messages
- 192
- Likes received
- 4,650
Percy woke up slowly, nursing the mother of all headaches.
Naturally, his day got worse from there.
Crawling back to consciousness was hard. He wasn't usually a heavy sleeper - demigod dreams and all the omens and general nastiness that came with them tended to take the fun right out of zonking out, but this time around his mind seemed to cling to that dozy state of half-wakefulness that came right before the real thing and damn near refused to let go.
Eventually, he managed to blink his eyes open and dimly determined that he was flat on his back, in utter discomfort, and lying somewhere dark and unrecognizable.
He sighed deeply.
Yeah, this seemed about right.
It said a lot about his divine train wreck of a life that waking up and finding himself in strange, unfamiliar places while feeling like death warmed over wasn't exactly new. Heck, after three years and just as many equally deadly quests in this Greek hero shindig, it was well on its way to becoming a time-honored tradition, and not the fun kind either.
Which shouldn't ever be a surprise, not even a little. Percy wasn't always the smartest person in the room, but when it came to the gods and their messes, he didn't have to be to know that none of it was ever the fun kind.
Still, expecting the messes was one thing. Dealing with them was a whole other thing.
'Where?-' He tried to think dazedly, straining to remember what and/or where he'd gotten up to this time around before he made the terrible mistake of trying to sit up and immediately got smacked in the face with a tidal wave of pure misery.
Everything hurt. His bones creaked and muscles ached like they'd been trampled by a herd of rampaging centaurs. Every one of his organs from the neck down felt like they'd been replaced with paper maché and bruises, and the less said about the unholy pounding in his skull and between his eyes, the better.
"Di immortals." Hie rasped disbelievingly, throat dryer than course-grit sandpaper. Swallowing barely dimmed the sensation behind his tongue. It burned like he'd been gargling Greek fire. "What hit me?"
"About a hundred million tons of scrap metal and dumpster refuse." A familiar voice answered. "More or less."
He felt his eyes widen and he rolled onto his side, ignoring the way his everything screamed in protest of the sudden motion.
"Annabeth?"
The daughter of Athena smiled from where she was sitting slumped against a mortar-grey wall, tired but genuine, and raised her hand in a half-hearted salute.
"The one and only, seaweed brain."
The wave of relief that washed over him at the sight of her was practically a trained response after all these years. It was a heady feeling, and Percy let himself bask in it for a beat, let it dull the sharp edge of exhaustion and soreness that he could still almost taste, because every injury he'd ever taken on a quest always seemed to be competing to outdo the last and he'd take whatever break he could get.
No good thing lasts forever, though, or even very long at all with his luck, and it only took him about five seconds more to get over the sudden relief and the lingering haze from his not-so-blissful blackout.
He looked at Annabeth, really looked at her, and he felt his stomach drop. Even in the relative dark, she looked awful. Her skin was a little too pale, her eyes were a little too haggard, and there was a particularly vicious-looking ring of bruises across her forehead and trailing down the left side of her face. The right side wasn't half as bruised, but it made up for it with an ugly vertical gash trailing from her cheek and up, the skin a vile green at the torn edges and visibly inflamed. The wound was so bad that half her blonde curls on the side of the cut had gone reddish-brown with dried, crusted blood.
Gods.
It was the most awful state he'd ever seen Annabeth in, ever. Not even their time in the sea of monsters came close, and they'd survived a literal explosion point blank and sent days out on the sea, one step removed from sea-creature bait. She looked like she'd gone ten around with the entirety of the Ares cabin - or maybe just Clarrise on one of her off days with no one to referee.
"What happened to you?" He asked, horrified. "What happened to us?"
"I have no idea, Percy." Now that he was paying attention, even her voice sounded off. Woozy and off-kilter. "Bianca did something, I think, and then we fell."
"Fell?"
And then it all came back to him.
The prophecy, the quest, the escape, the gods.
And the lighting in the end right before the ground gave out and... nothing.
Nada. Zilch.
(Or was it Zeus?)
"Fell." He repeated, a bit dumbly, because it was either that or he'd start screaming and probably ruin his vocal cords for good "Fell where?"
"I don't know." Annabeth closed her eyes, and wasn't it telling, how miserable she sounded? "We must have been separated in the fall, and by the time I woke up, it was only the three of us. I don't know where the others are - I don't even know where we are."
...
Well. Well.
Ignoring the hollow feeling clawing at his gut, he panned his eyes across the room - no, not a room. This was the most obvious dungeon Percy had ever seen in his life. Bleak grey walls, cracked and uneven ground, no windows and no doors and only a single wax torch for lighting, and were those rusty chains hagging down from-!?
He stopped. "Wait, did you just say the three of us?"
Because there was him, Annabeth made two, so-
"Hi, Percy."
He turned on the spot, once again ignoring the pain arcing through his nerves to find Nico huddled behind him, hugging his knees and leaning against the wall across from him, inches away from a ridiculously massive door of burnished celestial bronze.
How had he missed him? How far off his game was he?
Nico gave a brave attempt at a smile when he stared, but it didn't reach his eyes and the wobble to his lips gave the game away. He didn't look anywhere near as banged up as Annabeth did, but that was about the only good thing he could say - the poor kid was so obviously scared out of his mind it hurt to look at.
Half their friends (and Zoë) were gone, the three of them were locked up the gods knew where and since he and Annabeth had no chance of lasting in a long fight with the state they were both in, that meant...that their backup was a ten-year-old who'd held a sword once in his life, in a mock-up war game, and never even used it.
Percy looked away. His head felt like it was filled with static, trying to put the pieces together in a way that didn't spell out a death sentence at least one of them, probably all of them, and failing harder than he ever had at any of his pre-algebra classes.
(And he'd killed one of his teachers that one time.)
"Fuck."
"Percy."
"Sorry." He muttered, entirely on reflex. He'd never been more sorry in his life. "Slipped out. Nico, pretend you didn't hear that."
"...okay."
"Right." His eyes flickered up to Annabeth. "Got a plan, wisegirl?"
"I don't have anything to work with. I'll figure something out when we know more. Until then?" Her smile was about as blank and dead as he was starting to feel on the inside. "Pray."
If that was meant to be a morbid joke, it fell flatter that paper.
Pray to who?
Most of the Olympians were out for their heads and the only one who clearly wasn't had been barbecued alla Zeus right in front of them and was nowhere to be seen. Luna's father was... something entirely out of Percy's frame of reference and Annabeth's mother and Hermes had been about five seconds from imprisoning them herself before it all went sideways in the most explosive way possible.
And his dad...
Percy swallowed
Poseidon had been, as always, nowhere to be seen. And this time, it hurt a lot worse than it ever did before.
CLANG
The three of them twisted and jumped in alarm when the door frame shook and rattled ominously, the sound of bolts sliding out of place
Nico shot to Percy's side so quickly he almost bowled them both over, and not a second too soon. The door swung in on its hinges, and searing light and noise thundered in.
A centaur in mismatched bronze armor stood in the doorway, eyes roving over the three of them sharply. Behind him, roars and chants sounded out, louder and louder until they all blended in a cacophony that reminded him of a sports stadium in the middle of a wild game.
"You're awake. Earlier than expected too, with those injuries." The centaur grinned, teeth barred maliciously. "Good. That means you're strong."
"Yeah, we are." Percy didn't stagger when he straightened, but it was a torturously near thing. He pulled Riptide out his pocket and uncapped it, raising his sword in a stance a hundred times more confident than he felt. "Now who the hell are you?"
The centaur didn't look the least bit bothered. If anything, he just looked even more excited.
Thrilled, even.
"I am the herald. You are to follow me. Now"
That...answered nothing at all. Typical.
"Where?" Percy took half a step back and bent at the knees, just a little. "And why?"
"Because my lord is courteous, and offers all strays an opportunity to greet their host in person. So you will follow me, demigods, and I will present you to him at once." The centaur's grin widened until it was nothing short of demented. "And then Lord Anteus the Earth-born will decide whether to grant you the privilege of battling in the Arena and earning blood and glory among the challengers, or kill you where you stand and claim your skulls in dedication to his father, the mighty Poseidon!"
...
"...What?"
"What the shit?" Thalia stared harder. "What the actual shit?"
"Eloquent."
When she woke up, she found a stranger looming over her. An older man, with short gray hair and a clipped gray beard. He'd been dressed in black mountain-climbing pants and a bronze breastplate over a dark shirt, and he'd smiled in greeting the second her eyes had focused on him.
"Hello. My name is Quintus."
Naturally, she did the reasonable thing and kicked him right in the face.
Being the first thing an unconscious demigod saw when they woke up disoriented from battle and injury was a good way to get stabbed, maimed, or just plain killed.
Still, this... Quintus had taken the hit with as good a grace as anyone could have. He hadn't kicked back or drawn a weapon and had let Thalia recover at her own pace, which was probably better than what she would have offered him had their roles been reversed.
She had been begrudgingly impressed.
And suspicious as all hell.
Never mind that she'd woken up in some kind of decommissioned forge with a mouthful of ambrosia being forced down her throat and Luna lying next to her, as equally dead to the world as she had been.
No demigod liked being vulnerable. It rankled.
That had been bad enough. But this...
"Where are my friends? And what is that." She whispered, pointing a finger at the... form of golden light and shimmering shapes that was stretched out on floor before them, the dull glow growing brighter and brighter by the second.
"Who," Quintus replied, gazing at her with familiar grey eyes. "Not what. Who. And the answer would be Apollo. It appears that your father truly has no originality."
"What?" The word burst out of her, not a little helplessly.
In response, Quintus shrugged.
Shrugged!
"Apollo has disobeyed Zeus," The name made something in Thalia howl. " previously, and the oh-so-just King of Olympus has punished the impudence by stripping him of his immortality on two separate occasions, each thousands of years apart. I suspect that this was supposed to be take three, so to speak, only the process was interrupted.
Thalia processed that, apart of her registering the disdain in his words, before filtering it out just like damn near everything about this mess. Instead, she'd asked-
"What does that mean? What's happening to him?"
And how bad is it?, was the unspoken addition.
"I have no idea, and while that is refreshing and I'd just love to linger behind and watch an Olympian receive some of the comeuppance they so richly deserve, I'd rather not take run the risk of disintegrating should his condition grow... out of hand."
"!?"
Whatever expression her face made right then, hade him smile.
Thalia hated that.
"No more talk now. You can have your answers in due time, daughter of Zeus. For now, it's time for us to go." And then he up and hefted Luna into his arms before looking at her expectantly. "Unless you have any more urgently pressing questions?"
She glared at him furiously.
Was he serious!?
"Ye-!"
"No, no, sorry, I didn't make myself clear. That was an entirely rhetorical question. It's time to go."
And then he turned and began to march away without another word.
Thalia stared after him in disbelief, before quickly breathing in and out.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Then something in her mind finally snapped, and the daughter of Zeus well and truly lost it.
"SON OF A BITCH!"
She lunged.
Bianca curled up in the darkness and cried.
It wasn't long ago that she'd woken up in the tunnel, covered in dust and dirt and utterly alone. She'd stumbled about, dimply noting the grey, outdated walls and the pool of murky water by her feet that seemed far too deep to be natural and tried to look for help.
It hadn't taken her long to remember what had happened, and what she'd done, and that's about the point where she broke down in tears and utterly lost it.
Nico. Luna. Annabeth. Zoë. Percy
She'd lost them all. She'd killed-
She choked on a sob and curled up deeper against the wall she was leaning on, lost in her own despair.
"Moo"
...
"Moo."
What?
Slowly, she lifted her head off the ground and stared, because she hadn't just heard a cow. She hadn't. Homicidal monsters and greek gods or no, there were lines.
And yet...
Sticking out of the pool of water not ten feet away from her was a cow. A cow's head, precisely, with faint scaled skin the color of blueberries and black, deep eyes completely lacking in malice.
Bianca stared with tear tracks running down her face, hopelessly lost and confused as the creature continued calling.
"Moo."
Abruptly, it dove beneath the water that shouldn't have been deep enough to hold it and resurface just as quickly, shaking its head every which way and nearly splattering her in water.
And when she raised her head again, her jaw dropped.
Because the cow was holding something in its mouth, balanced between its teeth.
A familiar silver bow.
"That's... That's Zoë's"
The realization was blinding.
"You know where she is."
"Moo."
She didn't know how the cow (the literal cow) managed to make a noise of agreement, but it somehow did.
And for the first time since she'd woken up in this nightmare, Bianca dared to hope.
"Can you show me the way?"
And somehow, it did.
As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.
Naturally, his day got worse from there.
Crawling back to consciousness was hard. He wasn't usually a heavy sleeper - demigod dreams and all the omens and general nastiness that came with them tended to take the fun right out of zonking out, but this time around his mind seemed to cling to that dozy state of half-wakefulness that came right before the real thing and damn near refused to let go.
Eventually, he managed to blink his eyes open and dimly determined that he was flat on his back, in utter discomfort, and lying somewhere dark and unrecognizable.
He sighed deeply.
Yeah, this seemed about right.
It said a lot about his divine train wreck of a life that waking up and finding himself in strange, unfamiliar places while feeling like death warmed over wasn't exactly new. Heck, after three years and just as many equally deadly quests in this Greek hero shindig, it was well on its way to becoming a time-honored tradition, and not the fun kind either.
Which shouldn't ever be a surprise, not even a little. Percy wasn't always the smartest person in the room, but when it came to the gods and their messes, he didn't have to be to know that none of it was ever the fun kind.
Still, expecting the messes was one thing. Dealing with them was a whole other thing.
'Where?-' He tried to think dazedly, straining to remember what and/or where he'd gotten up to this time around before he made the terrible mistake of trying to sit up and immediately got smacked in the face with a tidal wave of pure misery.
Everything hurt. His bones creaked and muscles ached like they'd been trampled by a herd of rampaging centaurs. Every one of his organs from the neck down felt like they'd been replaced with paper maché and bruises, and the less said about the unholy pounding in his skull and between his eyes, the better.
"Di immortals." Hie rasped disbelievingly, throat dryer than course-grit sandpaper. Swallowing barely dimmed the sensation behind his tongue. It burned like he'd been gargling Greek fire. "What hit me?"
"About a hundred million tons of scrap metal and dumpster refuse." A familiar voice answered. "More or less."
He felt his eyes widen and he rolled onto his side, ignoring the way his everything screamed in protest of the sudden motion.
"Annabeth?"
The daughter of Athena smiled from where she was sitting slumped against a mortar-grey wall, tired but genuine, and raised her hand in a half-hearted salute.
"The one and only, seaweed brain."
The wave of relief that washed over him at the sight of her was practically a trained response after all these years. It was a heady feeling, and Percy let himself bask in it for a beat, let it dull the sharp edge of exhaustion and soreness that he could still almost taste, because every injury he'd ever taken on a quest always seemed to be competing to outdo the last and he'd take whatever break he could get.
No good thing lasts forever, though, or even very long at all with his luck, and it only took him about five seconds more to get over the sudden relief and the lingering haze from his not-so-blissful blackout.
He looked at Annabeth, really looked at her, and he felt his stomach drop. Even in the relative dark, she looked awful. Her skin was a little too pale, her eyes were a little too haggard, and there was a particularly vicious-looking ring of bruises across her forehead and trailing down the left side of her face. The right side wasn't half as bruised, but it made up for it with an ugly vertical gash trailing from her cheek and up, the skin a vile green at the torn edges and visibly inflamed. The wound was so bad that half her blonde curls on the side of the cut had gone reddish-brown with dried, crusted blood.
Gods.
It was the most awful state he'd ever seen Annabeth in, ever. Not even their time in the sea of monsters came close, and they'd survived a literal explosion point blank and sent days out on the sea, one step removed from sea-creature bait. She looked like she'd gone ten around with the entirety of the Ares cabin - or maybe just Clarrise on one of her off days with no one to referee.
"What happened to you?" He asked, horrified. "What happened to us?"
"I have no idea, Percy." Now that he was paying attention, even her voice sounded off. Woozy and off-kilter. "Bianca did something, I think, and then we fell."
"Fell?"
And then it all came back to him.
The prophecy, the quest, the escape, the gods.
And the lighting in the end right before the ground gave out and... nothing.
Nada. Zilch.
(Or was it Zeus?)
"Fell." He repeated, a bit dumbly, because it was either that or he'd start screaming and probably ruin his vocal cords for good "Fell where?"
"I don't know." Annabeth closed her eyes, and wasn't it telling, how miserable she sounded? "We must have been separated in the fall, and by the time I woke up, it was only the three of us. I don't know where the others are - I don't even know where we are."
...
Well. Well.
Ignoring the hollow feeling clawing at his gut, he panned his eyes across the room - no, not a room. This was the most obvious dungeon Percy had ever seen in his life. Bleak grey walls, cracked and uneven ground, no windows and no doors and only a single wax torch for lighting, and were those rusty chains hagging down from-!?
He stopped. "Wait, did you just say the three of us?"
Because there was him, Annabeth made two, so-
"Hi, Percy."
He turned on the spot, once again ignoring the pain arcing through his nerves to find Nico huddled behind him, hugging his knees and leaning against the wall across from him, inches away from a ridiculously massive door of burnished celestial bronze.
How had he missed him? How far off his game was he?
Nico gave a brave attempt at a smile when he stared, but it didn't reach his eyes and the wobble to his lips gave the game away. He didn't look anywhere near as banged up as Annabeth did, but that was about the only good thing he could say - the poor kid was so obviously scared out of his mind it hurt to look at.
Half their friends (and Zoë) were gone, the three of them were locked up the gods knew where and since he and Annabeth had no chance of lasting in a long fight with the state they were both in, that meant...that their backup was a ten-year-old who'd held a sword once in his life, in a mock-up war game, and never even used it.
Percy looked away. His head felt like it was filled with static, trying to put the pieces together in a way that didn't spell out a death sentence at least one of them, probably all of them, and failing harder than he ever had at any of his pre-algebra classes.
(And he'd killed one of his teachers that one time.)
"Fuck."
"Percy."
"Sorry." He muttered, entirely on reflex. He'd never been more sorry in his life. "Slipped out. Nico, pretend you didn't hear that."
"...okay."
"Right." His eyes flickered up to Annabeth. "Got a plan, wisegirl?"
"I don't have anything to work with. I'll figure something out when we know more. Until then?" Her smile was about as blank and dead as he was starting to feel on the inside. "Pray."
If that was meant to be a morbid joke, it fell flatter that paper.
Pray to who?
Most of the Olympians were out for their heads and the only one who clearly wasn't had been barbecued alla Zeus right in front of them and was nowhere to be seen. Luna's father was... something entirely out of Percy's frame of reference and Annabeth's mother and Hermes had been about five seconds from imprisoning them herself before it all went sideways in the most explosive way possible.
And his dad...
Percy swallowed
Poseidon had been, as always, nowhere to be seen. And this time, it hurt a lot worse than it ever did before.
CLANG
The three of them twisted and jumped in alarm when the door frame shook and rattled ominously, the sound of bolts sliding out of place
Nico shot to Percy's side so quickly he almost bowled them both over, and not a second too soon. The door swung in on its hinges, and searing light and noise thundered in.
A centaur in mismatched bronze armor stood in the doorway, eyes roving over the three of them sharply. Behind him, roars and chants sounded out, louder and louder until they all blended in a cacophony that reminded him of a sports stadium in the middle of a wild game.
"You're awake. Earlier than expected too, with those injuries." The centaur grinned, teeth barred maliciously. "Good. That means you're strong."
"Yeah, we are." Percy didn't stagger when he straightened, but it was a torturously near thing. He pulled Riptide out his pocket and uncapped it, raising his sword in a stance a hundred times more confident than he felt. "Now who the hell are you?"
The centaur didn't look the least bit bothered. If anything, he just looked even more excited.
Thrilled, even.
"I am the herald. You are to follow me. Now"
That...answered nothing at all. Typical.
"Where?" Percy took half a step back and bent at the knees, just a little. "And why?"
"Because my lord is courteous, and offers all strays an opportunity to greet their host in person. So you will follow me, demigods, and I will present you to him at once." The centaur's grin widened until it was nothing short of demented. "And then Lord Anteus the Earth-born will decide whether to grant you the privilege of battling in the Arena and earning blood and glory among the challengers, or kill you where you stand and claim your skulls in dedication to his father, the mighty Poseidon!"
...
"...What?"
...
"What the shit?" Thalia stared harder. "What the actual shit?"
"Eloquent."
When she woke up, she found a stranger looming over her. An older man, with short gray hair and a clipped gray beard. He'd been dressed in black mountain-climbing pants and a bronze breastplate over a dark shirt, and he'd smiled in greeting the second her eyes had focused on him.
"Hello. My name is Quintus."
Naturally, she did the reasonable thing and kicked him right in the face.
Being the first thing an unconscious demigod saw when they woke up disoriented from battle and injury was a good way to get stabbed, maimed, or just plain killed.
Still, this... Quintus had taken the hit with as good a grace as anyone could have. He hadn't kicked back or drawn a weapon and had let Thalia recover at her own pace, which was probably better than what she would have offered him had their roles been reversed.
She had been begrudgingly impressed.
And suspicious as all hell.
Never mind that she'd woken up in some kind of decommissioned forge with a mouthful of ambrosia being forced down her throat and Luna lying next to her, as equally dead to the world as she had been.
No demigod liked being vulnerable. It rankled.
That had been bad enough. But this...
"Where are my friends? And what is that." She whispered, pointing a finger at the... form of golden light and shimmering shapes that was stretched out on floor before them, the dull glow growing brighter and brighter by the second.
"Who," Quintus replied, gazing at her with familiar grey eyes. "Not what. Who. And the answer would be Apollo. It appears that your father truly has no originality."
"What?" The word burst out of her, not a little helplessly.
In response, Quintus shrugged.
Shrugged!
"Apollo has disobeyed Zeus," The name made something in Thalia howl. " previously, and the oh-so-just King of Olympus has punished the impudence by stripping him of his immortality on two separate occasions, each thousands of years apart. I suspect that this was supposed to be take three, so to speak, only the process was interrupted.
Thalia processed that, apart of her registering the disdain in his words, before filtering it out just like damn near everything about this mess. Instead, she'd asked-
"What does that mean? What's happening to him?"
And how bad is it?, was the unspoken addition.
"I have no idea, and while that is refreshing and I'd just love to linger behind and watch an Olympian receive some of the comeuppance they so richly deserve, I'd rather not take run the risk of disintegrating should his condition grow... out of hand."
"!?"
Whatever expression her face made right then, hade him smile.
Thalia hated that.
"No more talk now. You can have your answers in due time, daughter of Zeus. For now, it's time for us to go." And then he up and hefted Luna into his arms before looking at her expectantly. "Unless you have any more urgently pressing questions?"
She glared at him furiously.
Was he serious!?
"Ye-!"
"No, no, sorry, I didn't make myself clear. That was an entirely rhetorical question. It's time to go."
And then he turned and began to march away without another word.
Thalia stared after him in disbelief, before quickly breathing in and out.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Then something in her mind finally snapped, and the daughter of Zeus well and truly lost it.
"SON OF A BITCH!"
She lunged.
...
Bianca curled up in the darkness and cried.
It wasn't long ago that she'd woken up in the tunnel, covered in dust and dirt and utterly alone. She'd stumbled about, dimply noting the grey, outdated walls and the pool of murky water by her feet that seemed far too deep to be natural and tried to look for help.
It hadn't taken her long to remember what had happened, and what she'd done, and that's about the point where she broke down in tears and utterly lost it.
Nico. Luna. Annabeth. Zoë. Percy
She'd lost them all. She'd killed-
She choked on a sob and curled up deeper against the wall she was leaning on, lost in her own despair.
"Moo"
...
"Moo."
What?
Slowly, she lifted her head off the ground and stared, because she hadn't just heard a cow. She hadn't. Homicidal monsters and greek gods or no, there were lines.
And yet...
Sticking out of the pool of water not ten feet away from her was a cow. A cow's head, precisely, with faint scaled skin the color of blueberries and black, deep eyes completely lacking in malice.
Bianca stared with tear tracks running down her face, hopelessly lost and confused as the creature continued calling.
"Moo."
Abruptly, it dove beneath the water that shouldn't have been deep enough to hold it and resurface just as quickly, shaking its head every which way and nearly splattering her in water.
And when she raised her head again, her jaw dropped.
Because the cow was holding something in its mouth, balanced between its teeth.
A familiar silver bow.
"That's... That's Zoë's"
The realization was blinding.
"You know where she is."
"Moo."
She didn't know how the cow (the literal cow) managed to make a noise of agreement, but it somehow did.
And for the first time since she'd woken up in this nightmare, Bianca dared to hope.
"Can you show me the way?"
And somehow, it did.
...
As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.
Last edited:
Medvelelet
Not too sore, are you?
- Joined
- Feb 6, 2022
- Messages
- 340
- Likes received
- 4,046
Apollo, the handsome thermonuclear bomb.
Iridesce
Versed in the lewd.
- Joined
- May 24, 2019
- Messages
- 2,225
- Likes received
- 19,661
More like fusion bomb because he's a sun god.
Medvelelet
Not too sore, are you?
- Joined
- Feb 6, 2022
- Messages
- 340
- Likes received
- 4,046
Either way its gonna get hot.
ArcanaVitae
Versed in the lewd.
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2021
- Messages
- 1,681
- Likes received
- 17,756
Nico is not at all ready for this, reminds me of that time Percy got sent on a quest when he was 12 with basically no training.
Percy expressed anger at Poseidon for being absent and pretty much useless but I have a feeling he's going to be a lot more mad at Poseidon over this how thing then he was in canon.
Why hello there I was expecting him but not this soon.
Zeus seems to like to strip immortality from Apollo for some reason.
Ah Bianca is blaming herself that sucks.
Akuma-Heika
The Devil Exists Within
- Joined
- Nov 7, 2016
- Messages
- 14,342
- Likes received
- 30,501
Nuclear bomb would include both fission and fusion bombs. All thermo does is indicate it is speced towards heat generation IIRC
Fable of the Unspoken Word
Possibly Insane
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2022
- Messages
- 983
- Likes received
- 7,242
Undertow of Sands has awoken my hatred of Artemis, but this version of Apollo still seems like a total bro. His history is still that of a douchebag but he's still a bro
Last edited:
Chapter 9: The Ordeals of The Labyrinth - Part 2
Firewillreign
Know what you're doing yet?
- Joined
- Sep 26, 2023
- Messages
- 192
- Likes received
- 4,650
Percy grit his teeth as centaur led the three of them out of the cell and into a long stretching tunnel with bricked walls and a low-hanging ceiling. The lighting was terrible - a few torches hung on the bricks to either side of them, but the flames were too low to do much of anything.
"Quickly now, little heroes." The centaur said lips pulled in a twisted smirk "The master awaits his new entertainment."
Percy considered making a move then, just to be spiteful. He hated it when monsters started to gloat - the general smugness just rubbed salt into the whole 'I'm going to try to gut and probably eat you now' wound, and the fact that most of the ones he'd tangled with tended to have terrible dental hygiene and often had bits of gods know what stuck between their teeth didn't make things any better.
He was still battered and bruised and aching all over, but he'd fought things bigger and meaner than a lone centaur on worse odds. He could feel Riptide pressed against the inside of his jean pocket just fine, and bad shape or no, three feet of celestial bronze at relatively close quarters was a great equalizer.
Then Nico stumbled at his side, and Percy abruptly remembered the real problem - the ten-year-old anvil of a handicap weighing him down.
Percy's eyes flickered to Annabeth on his left, and she shook her head ever so slightly.
Not now, the look in her eyes said, and Percy clenched his fists and hissed a curse under his breath so nasty his mom would have made him gargle soap three times a day for a week just to wash it out if she'd heard.
Neither he nor Annabeth were good enough to fight their way ahead, watch each other's backs and cart Nico to safety with them out of here.
They didn't even know where here was, or if the others were here as well - there was no way they could take the risk.
Damn it.
He forced himself to exhale and turned back to the centaur, whose smirk had grown into a full-blown gleeful grin, complete with - yeah, Percy called it - gnarly yellow teeth.
He'd probably caught that entire exchange and understood exactly what it meant.
"A wise choice. And right on time, too - our escort has arrived."
In front of them, the sound of heavy footsteps came closer. Two huge forms appeared out of the gloom — eight-foot-tall Laistrygonian giants with red eyes and fangs, dressed in pieces of battle-scraped bronze armor and leather cuirasses beneath them.
Somehow, from the hungry looks they gave him, Percy got the impression that these guys weren't on Larry the poultry-extrodinaire's christmas card list.
"Now march."
...
Up ahead, he could see bronze doors. They were about ten feet tall and emblazoned with a pair of crossed swords. From behind them came a muffled roar, like from a crowd.
"Oh, yes," The centaur sounded euphoric in a way that had Percy's stomach roiling - Chrion and the party ponies were a whole other ball game compared to this lunatic. "The games have just begun - the master always loves a fresh fighter."
"Who's your host?" Percy asked.
The centaur barred his teeth in delight "Oh, you'll see. You may very well earn his favor, Percy Jackson. He's your brother, after all."
"My what?"
He wasn't surprised that he knew his name - on some days, it seemed that every half-monstrous creature that ever crawled out of Tartarus knew who he was, but brother?
Immediately he thought of Tyson, but that was impossible.
One of the giants pushed past them then and opened the doors, letting light and cheers rush over them. Then he turned around and picked up Annabeth by her shirt and said, "You stay here."
"Hey!" she protested, but the guy was twice her size and could likely break her in half in the time it took Percy to lunge for him. The other had already put his hand around Nico's neck in silent warning.
"Go on then, demigod. Entertain us. We'll wait here with your friends to make sure you behave yourself as befitting the master's honored brother."
The way he said 'honored' sounded more like 'cursed'. Or maybe 'screwed' - those were almost one and the same.
Percy seethed, but there wasn't a damned thing he could do but play along, and everybody there knew it.
"I got this."
She nodded as much as she could with the grip the Laistrogonian had on her, lips pursing and eyes set in a grim, understanding slant. "Watch your back."
Nico was pale as milk and stiffer than a plank of wood, but he still tried to smile.
"Be careful, Percy."
Then the centaur urged him toward the doorway with a forceful wave of his hand, and Percy walked out onto the floor of an arena.
It wasn't the largest arena he'd ever been in, but considering the whole place was enclosed and almost definitely far underground, it was impressive - and that wasn't a compliment.
The dirt floor was circular, just big enough that you could drive a car around the rim if you pulled it really tight. In the center of the arena, a fight was going on between a giant hellhound - easily thrice the size of the one that had attacked him on his first year at Camp, and a dracaena.
Except for the size, the hellhound was more or less exactly what would have expected - a canine wall of bristling dark fur, red eyes and a mouth full of fangs nearly the size of his forearm, but it was the first time he'd seen a dracaena this close.
She wore bronze armor that stopped at her waist, and would've had a beautiful face, except her tongue was forked and her eyes were yellow with black slits for pupils. Below that, where her legs should've been were two massive snake trunks, mottled bronze and green.
She kept moving by a combination of slithering and lunging side to side as if she were on living skis, and she looked terrified. He'd seen and been in enough fights to realize she was trying to flank the hellhound and trying to keep its snapping jaws at bay with thrusts of a javelin, but it kept batting the clumsy jabs away with a paw wider than Percy's head was and snarling rabidly.
And the horribly one-sided battle wasn't the worst of it - not even close. Percy pulled his eyes off it for one second to look at the rest of the arena and nearly seized in panic.
"You've got to be kidding me."
The first tier of seats was twelve feet above the arena floor. Plain stone benches wrapped all the way around, and every seat was full. There were giants, dracaenae, centaurs, and stranger things: bat-winged demons and creatures that seemed half human and half you name it—bird, reptile, insect, mammal - and those were just the ones he could vaguely recognize.
But the creepiest things were the skulls. The arena was full of them. They ringed the edge of the railing. Three-foot-high piles of them decorated the steps between the benches. They grinned from pikes at the back of the stands and hung on chains from the ceiling like horrible chandeliers. Some of them looked very old—nothing but bleached-white bone. Others looked a lot fresher - still heavy with flesh and gore and crawling with writhing maggots-
Gods.
He looked away as his stomach roiled - and got a picture-perfect look at the most damning display of all.
In the middle of all this, proudly displayed on the side of the spectator's wall, was something that made no sense to him—a green banner with the trident of Poseidon in the center.
What was that doing in a horrible place like this?
What did his dad have to do with a horrible place like this?
Sitting below the banner, on a raised, elaborate diseased and in a seat of honor was the largest giant Percy had ever seen before. He must've been fifteen feet tall, easy, and so wide he took up three seats. He wore only a loincloth, like a sumo wrestler. His skin was leathery and dark red and tattooed with blue wave designs.
And his eyes? Black, beady, and naturally, focused dead center on Percy.
When he took a step back and twitched for Riptide in his pocket, still hyper-aware of the other two giants at his back, the one on the throne grinned nastily and turned back down to the fight beneath them.
Right in time for it to end.
The dracaena made to stab at it again. The hellhound slipped past the blow and clamped down on the shaft and heaved with its weight before pulling, yanking the snake woman off her feet and flinging her away like a rag doll. The javelin was knocked out of her grip right as she hit the dirt.
The hellhound snarled victoriously and advanced, hackles raising. The dracaena writhed in fear, but she couldn't get up. One of her arms was badly mangled.
She met Percy's eyes pleadingly "Help!"
He made to move, but a rough hand gripped his shoulder.
"If you value your friends' lives," the same damned centaur said, "you won't interfere. This isn't your fight yet, Jackson. Wait your turn."
Percy clenched his fists, trying to think of something, but it was already too late - The hellhound pounced.
He closed his eyes right as its jaws snapped shut and the arena was filled with the sound of wet, heavy tearing. When he opened them again, the dracaena was gone, disintegrated to dust that poured out from between the hellhound's teeth like golden sand.
The monsters in the stands roared their approval. On cue, a gate opened at the opposite end of the stadium and the hellhound bounded out in triumph.
That's when the red giant rose from his seat and raised his arms. Standing upright, he looked like the world's most monstrous sumo wrestler.
"A poor fighter, but good entertainment!" he bellowed, and the crowd surged with the words "Yet still nothing I haven't seen before! It is time for a new contestant."
He raised an arm and gestured to Percy.
"Mine own brother, Perseus Jackson, stands among us now! Perhaps he will prove mettle worthy of a child of the sea god!"
Percy stared like an idiot.
Tyson was one thing, but this guy?
"How are you a son of Poseidon?"
Which, in hindsight might have been the wrong thing to say, because the giant's expression darkened dangerously.
"I am his favorite son! His truest and most dedicated!" He boomed. "I am Anteus the giant-born! Behold, my temple to the Earthshaker, built from the skulls of all those I've killed in his name! Afford me the proper respect, or yours may soon join them!"
Percy stared in fresh horror at all the skulls—hundreds of them, at least—and the banner of Poseidon.
How could this be a temple for his dad? His dad was a nice guy - or, he was decent, as far as Olympians went.
He'd never ask for a Father's Day card, much less somebody's skull.
So where is he now?, a treacherous voice whispered at the back of his head. Where's Poseidon now, when you need him once again?
"Percy!" Annabeth yelled behind him. "His mother is Gaea! Gae—"
Her Laistrygonian captor clamped his hand over her mouth and cut her off, but Percy heard enough.
His mother is Gaea. The earth goddess. Annabeth was trying to tell him that was important, but Percy didn't know why. Maybe just because the guy had two godly parents. That would make him even harder to kill.
Because clearly, being fifteen feet tall with biceps bigger than basketballs wasn't enough of an advantage already.
"I've heard many a tale of you, fellow son of the sea!" Anteus smiled down from his dias. "Enemies and Allies old and new have sent word to me on your behalf. To kill you, to capture you - even to spare you and aid you on your way!"
What?
"But neither god nor Titan can command the fate of one who has not proved himself in this arena! Only I decide your fate! And so I will!"
Anteus raised a hand, and the gate at the end of the area rose again. This time, an entire horde of monsters marched out of the dark. Dracaena, giants, and some creature that looked like the unholy cross of a seal, a dog and something he didn't even want to imagine - and there were nearly a dozen of them all in all.
"Now, what weapons will you choose?"
"You're crazy, Antaeus," Percy said, but his eyes never left the horde coming his way. "If you think this is a good tribute, you know nothing about Poseidon."
"Ha!" Anteus sneered contemptuously, but he didn't rise to the bait. "Prove your worth and then we may speak, brother. Else your fellow half-bloods will join you in death and all your skulls sacrificed in glory to our father. Now arm yourself! Will you have axes? Shields? Nets? Flamethrowers?"
Percy pulled Riptide out of his pocket.
"Just my sword."
Laughter erupted from the monsters, but immediately Riptide appeared in his hands, and some of the voices in the crowd turned nervous. The bronze blade glowed with a faint light.
Anteus raised his hand for silence, and the arena held its breath.
"Round one!" The giant called gleefully. "Start!"
And just like that, the monsters surged toward him
Dad, He thought - prayed, as quickly as he ever had before, I know you're not supposed to interfere - and I know this quest is probably making things worse, but I'm in a really bad spot and I could use a sign right about now.
Anything.
...
There was no answer.
Somehow, Percy wasn't surprised. Something cold and bitter curled up in his gut, just before the first giant lunged for him with a sword he promptly began fighting for his life.
"Well." Luna Lovegood opened her mouth, paused and closed it again as she visibly tried to collect herself. "Well. This is... a mess."
Thalia shot her a look so flat if it had edges it would have cut air.
"You don't friggin say."
"I don't often, no." The other girl agreed, and the daughter of Zeus - and what a riot that turned out to be - twitched so hard blue-white sparks began to flicker between her fingertips. "I like to look on the bright side. Fewer wrackspurts that way.."
See, ignoring whatever that was at the end, that right there was the kind of holier-than though bullshit answer that would ordinarily have Thalia itching to stab someone.
Except, she got the distinct and entirely annoying impression that Lovegood meant it, which was almost as annoying and somehow the least of their problems right now.
"Except." Luna staggered to her feet and nearly tumbled over again. Thalia took a step forward to brace her. "I don't think there is a bright side."
"Quite."
Both of them turned to look at Quintus, who'd crossed his arms and kept to the far end of the abandoned forge ever since Thalia had made it clear she was one wrong move from running him through with her spear and lighting him up like a lamppost.
She'd already tried to, and she would have kept at it too, except that the man had offered ambrosia and nectar for both of them and still hadn't put one toe out of line yet.
"Well, metaphorically of course." The man craned his neck and gestured to the tunnel where they'd left Apollo behind, where the golden glow "I'm afraid that the god of the sun losing control of his material avatar and unraveling is going to be very bright. Cataclysmically so."
That again.
"You were serious." Thalia pursed her lips. "Apollo's about to explode."
"In a sense, yes."
Right. Naturally.
Why the fuck wouldn't he?
"How big an explosion?" She demanded. "Can we outrun it?
Because she was not dying here, like this, with Annabeth, Percy and all the others missing.
She was not dying at her bastard of a father's hand, no matter how indirectly - the great prophecy was one thing, but if the three fates thought they could do her in like this they could fuck right off and take their accursed miserable strings with them.
And Quintus shrugged. "You could walk out of this chamber with me and take five steps in any direction, and you'd find yourself clear of any danger. Unless you know exactly what you're doing, distance means very little in the Labyrinth."
The name niggled at her mind, but she didn't get to voice the obvious question - Luna beat her to it.
"I guess you'd know best, wouldn't you?" The other girl had finally pulled her concerned gaze off the literally melting god long enough to pin the shady ally of circumstance with a look. "Quintus."
There was a long pause, and the man abruptly went ramrod straight. Thalia snarled on instinct and hefted her spear.
"You know."
"I do." Luna seemed to understand whatever context it was that flew clear over Thalia's head. "My father makes a habit of teaching me all about the most notorious living souls determined to fly the final coup. You're near the top of that list."
"... I see." He whispered. "So it is true. I'd hardly believed it. Luna Lovegood... the daughter of Thanatos."
Luna pursed her lips. "That secret spread quickly."
"Secrets often do. And the more valuable they are, the faster they travel." The man regarded her grimly. "Of course, having the right informants helps too. And I have plenty - there are a great many forces searching for you, Miss Lovegood. You, and all your fellow questors."
"Is that how you found us?" Thalia growled, mostly to hide the fact that nearly every word in this conversation was loaded with implications that were flying clear over her head.
"I would have thought you of all people would seek to avoid me," Luna said. "He might not interfere on principle, but even then I wouldn't have expected you to risk drawing my father's conscious attention."
"I wouldn't and I'm not. I heard of you, yes, but I stumbled upon you entirely on accident." Quintus smiled humorlessly. "And believe it or not, at the moment your existence is the least stir-worthy. Your purpose, on the other hand..."
Luna inhaled sharply. "The prophecy."
"'Twelve at last pay the greatest price.'" Quintus hummed in agreement. "The reckoning of the Olympians has come at last. Even those who would ordinarily be skeptical over it harbor few doubts - not after that embarrassing display in Hephastus's dumping grounds. Now the beasts are crawling out of the depths to watch the hammer fall, and it promises to quite the display."
"Is that why you helped us?" Luna asked softly.
"Perhaps. I certainly want nothing in return, if that's what you're worried about." Quintus shrugged. "I will not interfere in your quest. Either you fail, and the status quo remains the same, or you succeed, and things get interesting."
There was nothing good about the way he said interesting
"Either way, I have no further stake in this game."
There was another low, meaningful pause.
"Though I suppose I can offer you one last, out of the goodness of my heart." He smiled wearily. "I expect you'll want a way to navigate out of the Labyrinth?"
"No."
Quintus blinked. "No?"
"No," Luna said firmly. Then she reached over, startled Thalia "We're going to help Apollo."
They were going to do what now?
Sure enough, she began to cart Thalia away towards the tunnel where they'd left the collapsed sun god, the harsh blinding glare stinging at their eyes.
Until Luna whispered something under her breath, and a wave of something settled over Thalia's skin. The glow - the part of it she could see - went dim enough to be bearable.
"There's nothing you can do," Quintus called behind them as they left him, but he didn't try to follow them.
Inside, they found Apollo. - Or at least the flickering body that should be Apollo, sprawled across the stone and shifting. With every blink, the features of the body melted and warped into new proportions - old, young, tall, short. His body shivered and pulsed and changed like wet clay that refused to dry.
"Zeus must have been trying to get him out of the way and keep him there. Only he didn't have the time to do it properly and I dragged him in after us as we fell." Luna dropped to her knees beside him. "This is ugly - It's as if his mind's been shattered and he doesn't have enough left to put himself back together."
...
What in Tartarus were they supposed to do about that?
"There's a spell," Luna murmured in answer to her silent question. "A last-ditch effort. Ordinarily I wouldn't dare try this on any immortal, much less a god, but we need him if we want to find the others in the Labyrinth, and we'll need him even more if the other gods come after us again."
Thalia had almost forgotten about that.
"That sounds good." She turned to look at Luna warily. "Not safe. Are you sure this is going to work?"
"Hardly." Luna said bluntly "I'm about to delve into the mind of an Olympian to put his psyche back together before his physical manifestation splinters and kills us all. If I make a single mistake, the sheer force of his unconscious presence will obliterate my mind and likely disintegrate my body. But I don't have any other choice."
...
Well. That was...
"I don't know what the fuck you expect me to say to that." She said, and that was the most honest she'd been all week.
"Bianca and Nico and the others are at stake, so wish me luck and guard my back until this is done." Luna smiled - or at least she tried to. the upward pull to her lips looked forced this time around. "Be wary of Quintus - I don't think he means us harm, but better safe than sorry."
And then she turned around and reached for Apollo's flickering head, ignoring the light and the heat haze shimmering off his skin.
"Legilimens."
...
Nothing happened.
Luna's hands were pressed to Apollo's head, but there was no change to him.
If anything, the heat and the light started to grow slightly worse.
Thalia cleared her throat and tried not to shift back in alarm. "Is something supposed to-"
"̸̡̺̹͚̃̑͗̀̇̕͝Ļ̴̢̼̥̝̝͈̮̫͔̑̐̈̒͐̐̈́͜͝e̵̞̦̎̑̈͆̃͋̏̓̈́̚͜ģ̴̧͈͓͉̩͍̤̩͈̒͋̍̒͌̃̍̾̊͆̊̈́i̴̢̨͕͓̫͙̯̯̬̯͗̈́̽̄̽͆͌̾͌͑̂̀̐̌̎l̴̢̛̪̙͙̞͉͈͍̮̘͚̲͙̀̀̈͐̇̊̊̒͆̄̑̕̕͜ï̴̳͔̹̬̆̓̀̂̕͘m̵̨̥͔̝̥͇̺̌̊͋͂͑̓̍̉̀̿̔e̶̢̛͌̔̍̐͋͋̊͌͘͝͝n̷͔͍̭̰̘̟̙̳̔̃͌͒̑́͘ͅš̶̯͇̦̬̞̺̺̩̺̹̭̝̜͋̏̾͋͜͠͝ͅ.̷̩͙͉͍̦́͂̿͌͝"̴̲͙̩̻̍̽̓̿͊̉̀͊̓̽͐͗
And then there was pain, white-hot and fiery and stabbed right into her brain. It was like nothing she'd ever imagined in her worst nightmare, and Thalia screamed and screamed and burned as she was hooked and pulled along into the fiery ocean that was the fallen god's mind.
As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it please be courteous.
If you feel like it, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi: Firewillreign
"Quickly now, little heroes." The centaur said lips pulled in a twisted smirk "The master awaits his new entertainment."
Percy considered making a move then, just to be spiteful. He hated it when monsters started to gloat - the general smugness just rubbed salt into the whole 'I'm going to try to gut and probably eat you now' wound, and the fact that most of the ones he'd tangled with tended to have terrible dental hygiene and often had bits of gods know what stuck between their teeth didn't make things any better.
He was still battered and bruised and aching all over, but he'd fought things bigger and meaner than a lone centaur on worse odds. He could feel Riptide pressed against the inside of his jean pocket just fine, and bad shape or no, three feet of celestial bronze at relatively close quarters was a great equalizer.
Then Nico stumbled at his side, and Percy abruptly remembered the real problem - the ten-year-old anvil of a handicap weighing him down.
Percy's eyes flickered to Annabeth on his left, and she shook her head ever so slightly.
Not now, the look in her eyes said, and Percy clenched his fists and hissed a curse under his breath so nasty his mom would have made him gargle soap three times a day for a week just to wash it out if she'd heard.
Neither he nor Annabeth were good enough to fight their way ahead, watch each other's backs and cart Nico to safety with them out of here.
They didn't even know where here was, or if the others were here as well - there was no way they could take the risk.
Damn it.
He forced himself to exhale and turned back to the centaur, whose smirk had grown into a full-blown gleeful grin, complete with - yeah, Percy called it - gnarly yellow teeth.
He'd probably caught that entire exchange and understood exactly what it meant.
"A wise choice. And right on time, too - our escort has arrived."
In front of them, the sound of heavy footsteps came closer. Two huge forms appeared out of the gloom — eight-foot-tall Laistrygonian giants with red eyes and fangs, dressed in pieces of battle-scraped bronze armor and leather cuirasses beneath them.
Somehow, from the hungry looks they gave him, Percy got the impression that these guys weren't on Larry the poultry-extrodinaire's christmas card list.
"Now march."
...
Up ahead, he could see bronze doors. They were about ten feet tall and emblazoned with a pair of crossed swords. From behind them came a muffled roar, like from a crowd.
"Oh, yes," The centaur sounded euphoric in a way that had Percy's stomach roiling - Chrion and the party ponies were a whole other ball game compared to this lunatic. "The games have just begun - the master always loves a fresh fighter."
"Who's your host?" Percy asked.
The centaur barred his teeth in delight "Oh, you'll see. You may very well earn his favor, Percy Jackson. He's your brother, after all."
"My what?"
He wasn't surprised that he knew his name - on some days, it seemed that every half-monstrous creature that ever crawled out of Tartarus knew who he was, but brother?
Immediately he thought of Tyson, but that was impossible.
One of the giants pushed past them then and opened the doors, letting light and cheers rush over them. Then he turned around and picked up Annabeth by her shirt and said, "You stay here."
"Hey!" she protested, but the guy was twice her size and could likely break her in half in the time it took Percy to lunge for him. The other had already put his hand around Nico's neck in silent warning.
"Go on then, demigod. Entertain us. We'll wait here with your friends to make sure you behave yourself as befitting the master's honored brother."
The way he said 'honored' sounded more like 'cursed'. Or maybe 'screwed' - those were almost one and the same.
Percy seethed, but there wasn't a damned thing he could do but play along, and everybody there knew it.
"I got this."
She nodded as much as she could with the grip the Laistrogonian had on her, lips pursing and eyes set in a grim, understanding slant. "Watch your back."
Nico was pale as milk and stiffer than a plank of wood, but he still tried to smile.
"Be careful, Percy."
Then the centaur urged him toward the doorway with a forceful wave of his hand, and Percy walked out onto the floor of an arena.
...
It wasn't the largest arena he'd ever been in, but considering the whole place was enclosed and almost definitely far underground, it was impressive - and that wasn't a compliment.
The dirt floor was circular, just big enough that you could drive a car around the rim if you pulled it really tight. In the center of the arena, a fight was going on between a giant hellhound - easily thrice the size of the one that had attacked him on his first year at Camp, and a dracaena.
Except for the size, the hellhound was more or less exactly what would have expected - a canine wall of bristling dark fur, red eyes and a mouth full of fangs nearly the size of his forearm, but it was the first time he'd seen a dracaena this close.
She wore bronze armor that stopped at her waist, and would've had a beautiful face, except her tongue was forked and her eyes were yellow with black slits for pupils. Below that, where her legs should've been were two massive snake trunks, mottled bronze and green.
She kept moving by a combination of slithering and lunging side to side as if she were on living skis, and she looked terrified. He'd seen and been in enough fights to realize she was trying to flank the hellhound and trying to keep its snapping jaws at bay with thrusts of a javelin, but it kept batting the clumsy jabs away with a paw wider than Percy's head was and snarling rabidly.
And the horribly one-sided battle wasn't the worst of it - not even close. Percy pulled his eyes off it for one second to look at the rest of the arena and nearly seized in panic.
"You've got to be kidding me."
The first tier of seats was twelve feet above the arena floor. Plain stone benches wrapped all the way around, and every seat was full. There were giants, dracaenae, centaurs, and stranger things: bat-winged demons and creatures that seemed half human and half you name it—bird, reptile, insect, mammal - and those were just the ones he could vaguely recognize.
But the creepiest things were the skulls. The arena was full of them. They ringed the edge of the railing. Three-foot-high piles of them decorated the steps between the benches. They grinned from pikes at the back of the stands and hung on chains from the ceiling like horrible chandeliers. Some of them looked very old—nothing but bleached-white bone. Others looked a lot fresher - still heavy with flesh and gore and crawling with writhing maggots-
Gods.
He looked away as his stomach roiled - and got a picture-perfect look at the most damning display of all.
In the middle of all this, proudly displayed on the side of the spectator's wall, was something that made no sense to him—a green banner with the trident of Poseidon in the center.
What was that doing in a horrible place like this?
What did his dad have to do with a horrible place like this?
Sitting below the banner, on a raised, elaborate diseased and in a seat of honor was the largest giant Percy had ever seen before. He must've been fifteen feet tall, easy, and so wide he took up three seats. He wore only a loincloth, like a sumo wrestler. His skin was leathery and dark red and tattooed with blue wave designs.
And his eyes? Black, beady, and naturally, focused dead center on Percy.
When he took a step back and twitched for Riptide in his pocket, still hyper-aware of the other two giants at his back, the one on the throne grinned nastily and turned back down to the fight beneath them.
Right in time for it to end.
The dracaena made to stab at it again. The hellhound slipped past the blow and clamped down on the shaft and heaved with its weight before pulling, yanking the snake woman off her feet and flinging her away like a rag doll. The javelin was knocked out of her grip right as she hit the dirt.
The hellhound snarled victoriously and advanced, hackles raising. The dracaena writhed in fear, but she couldn't get up. One of her arms was badly mangled.
She met Percy's eyes pleadingly "Help!"
He made to move, but a rough hand gripped his shoulder.
"If you value your friends' lives," the same damned centaur said, "you won't interfere. This isn't your fight yet, Jackson. Wait your turn."
Percy clenched his fists, trying to think of something, but it was already too late - The hellhound pounced.
He closed his eyes right as its jaws snapped shut and the arena was filled with the sound of wet, heavy tearing. When he opened them again, the dracaena was gone, disintegrated to dust that poured out from between the hellhound's teeth like golden sand.
The monsters in the stands roared their approval. On cue, a gate opened at the opposite end of the stadium and the hellhound bounded out in triumph.
That's when the red giant rose from his seat and raised his arms. Standing upright, he looked like the world's most monstrous sumo wrestler.
"A poor fighter, but good entertainment!" he bellowed, and the crowd surged with the words "Yet still nothing I haven't seen before! It is time for a new contestant."
He raised an arm and gestured to Percy.
"Mine own brother, Perseus Jackson, stands among us now! Perhaps he will prove mettle worthy of a child of the sea god!"
Percy stared like an idiot.
Tyson was one thing, but this guy?
"How are you a son of Poseidon?"
Which, in hindsight might have been the wrong thing to say, because the giant's expression darkened dangerously.
"I am his favorite son! His truest and most dedicated!" He boomed. "I am Anteus the giant-born! Behold, my temple to the Earthshaker, built from the skulls of all those I've killed in his name! Afford me the proper respect, or yours may soon join them!"
Percy stared in fresh horror at all the skulls—hundreds of them, at least—and the banner of Poseidon.
How could this be a temple for his dad? His dad was a nice guy - or, he was decent, as far as Olympians went.
He'd never ask for a Father's Day card, much less somebody's skull.
So where is he now?, a treacherous voice whispered at the back of his head. Where's Poseidon now, when you need him once again?
"Percy!" Annabeth yelled behind him. "His mother is Gaea! Gae—"
Her Laistrygonian captor clamped his hand over her mouth and cut her off, but Percy heard enough.
His mother is Gaea. The earth goddess. Annabeth was trying to tell him that was important, but Percy didn't know why. Maybe just because the guy had two godly parents. That would make him even harder to kill.
Because clearly, being fifteen feet tall with biceps bigger than basketballs wasn't enough of an advantage already.
"I've heard many a tale of you, fellow son of the sea!" Anteus smiled down from his dias. "Enemies and Allies old and new have sent word to me on your behalf. To kill you, to capture you - even to spare you and aid you on your way!"
What?
"But neither god nor Titan can command the fate of one who has not proved himself in this arena! Only I decide your fate! And so I will!"
Anteus raised a hand, and the gate at the end of the area rose again. This time, an entire horde of monsters marched out of the dark. Dracaena, giants, and some creature that looked like the unholy cross of a seal, a dog and something he didn't even want to imagine - and there were nearly a dozen of them all in all.
"Now, what weapons will you choose?"
"You're crazy, Antaeus," Percy said, but his eyes never left the horde coming his way. "If you think this is a good tribute, you know nothing about Poseidon."
"Ha!" Anteus sneered contemptuously, but he didn't rise to the bait. "Prove your worth and then we may speak, brother. Else your fellow half-bloods will join you in death and all your skulls sacrificed in glory to our father. Now arm yourself! Will you have axes? Shields? Nets? Flamethrowers?"
Percy pulled Riptide out of his pocket.
"Just my sword."
Laughter erupted from the monsters, but immediately Riptide appeared in his hands, and some of the voices in the crowd turned nervous. The bronze blade glowed with a faint light.
Anteus raised his hand for silence, and the arena held its breath.
"Round one!" The giant called gleefully. "Start!"
And just like that, the monsters surged toward him
Dad, He thought - prayed, as quickly as he ever had before, I know you're not supposed to interfere - and I know this quest is probably making things worse, but I'm in a really bad spot and I could use a sign right about now.
Anything.
...
There was no answer.
Somehow, Percy wasn't surprised. Something cold and bitter curled up in his gut, just before the first giant lunged for him with a sword he promptly began fighting for his life.
...
"Well." Luna Lovegood opened her mouth, paused and closed it again as she visibly tried to collect herself. "Well. This is... a mess."
Thalia shot her a look so flat if it had edges it would have cut air.
"You don't friggin say."
"I don't often, no." The other girl agreed, and the daughter of Zeus - and what a riot that turned out to be - twitched so hard blue-white sparks began to flicker between her fingertips. "I like to look on the bright side. Fewer wrackspurts that way.."
See, ignoring whatever that was at the end, that right there was the kind of holier-than though bullshit answer that would ordinarily have Thalia itching to stab someone.
Except, she got the distinct and entirely annoying impression that Lovegood meant it, which was almost as annoying and somehow the least of their problems right now.
"Except." Luna staggered to her feet and nearly tumbled over again. Thalia took a step forward to brace her. "I don't think there is a bright side."
"Quite."
Both of them turned to look at Quintus, who'd crossed his arms and kept to the far end of the abandoned forge ever since Thalia had made it clear she was one wrong move from running him through with her spear and lighting him up like a lamppost.
She'd already tried to, and she would have kept at it too, except that the man had offered ambrosia and nectar for both of them and still hadn't put one toe out of line yet.
"Well, metaphorically of course." The man craned his neck and gestured to the tunnel where they'd left Apollo behind, where the golden glow "I'm afraid that the god of the sun losing control of his material avatar and unraveling is going to be very bright. Cataclysmically so."
That again.
"You were serious." Thalia pursed her lips. "Apollo's about to explode."
"In a sense, yes."
Right. Naturally.
Why the fuck wouldn't he?
"How big an explosion?" She demanded. "Can we outrun it?
Because she was not dying here, like this, with Annabeth, Percy and all the others missing.
She was not dying at her bastard of a father's hand, no matter how indirectly - the great prophecy was one thing, but if the three fates thought they could do her in like this they could fuck right off and take their accursed miserable strings with them.
And Quintus shrugged. "You could walk out of this chamber with me and take five steps in any direction, and you'd find yourself clear of any danger. Unless you know exactly what you're doing, distance means very little in the Labyrinth."
The name niggled at her mind, but she didn't get to voice the obvious question - Luna beat her to it.
"I guess you'd know best, wouldn't you?" The other girl had finally pulled her concerned gaze off the literally melting god long enough to pin the shady ally of circumstance with a look. "Quintus."
There was a long pause, and the man abruptly went ramrod straight. Thalia snarled on instinct and hefted her spear.
"You know."
"I do." Luna seemed to understand whatever context it was that flew clear over Thalia's head. "My father makes a habit of teaching me all about the most notorious living souls determined to fly the final coup. You're near the top of that list."
"... I see." He whispered. "So it is true. I'd hardly believed it. Luna Lovegood... the daughter of Thanatos."
Luna pursed her lips. "That secret spread quickly."
"Secrets often do. And the more valuable they are, the faster they travel." The man regarded her grimly. "Of course, having the right informants helps too. And I have plenty - there are a great many forces searching for you, Miss Lovegood. You, and all your fellow questors."
"Is that how you found us?" Thalia growled, mostly to hide the fact that nearly every word in this conversation was loaded with implications that were flying clear over her head.
"I would have thought you of all people would seek to avoid me," Luna said. "He might not interfere on principle, but even then I wouldn't have expected you to risk drawing my father's conscious attention."
"I wouldn't and I'm not. I heard of you, yes, but I stumbled upon you entirely on accident." Quintus smiled humorlessly. "And believe it or not, at the moment your existence is the least stir-worthy. Your purpose, on the other hand..."
Luna inhaled sharply. "The prophecy."
"'Twelve at last pay the greatest price.'" Quintus hummed in agreement. "The reckoning of the Olympians has come at last. Even those who would ordinarily be skeptical over it harbor few doubts - not after that embarrassing display in Hephastus's dumping grounds. Now the beasts are crawling out of the depths to watch the hammer fall, and it promises to quite the display."
"Is that why you helped us?" Luna asked softly.
"Perhaps. I certainly want nothing in return, if that's what you're worried about." Quintus shrugged. "I will not interfere in your quest. Either you fail, and the status quo remains the same, or you succeed, and things get interesting."
There was nothing good about the way he said interesting
"Either way, I have no further stake in this game."
There was another low, meaningful pause.
"Though I suppose I can offer you one last, out of the goodness of my heart." He smiled wearily. "I expect you'll want a way to navigate out of the Labyrinth?"
"No."
Quintus blinked. "No?"
"No," Luna said firmly. Then she reached over, startled Thalia "We're going to help Apollo."
They were going to do what now?
Sure enough, she began to cart Thalia away towards the tunnel where they'd left the collapsed sun god, the harsh blinding glare stinging at their eyes.
Until Luna whispered something under her breath, and a wave of something settled over Thalia's skin. The glow - the part of it she could see - went dim enough to be bearable.
"There's nothing you can do," Quintus called behind them as they left him, but he didn't try to follow them.
Inside, they found Apollo. - Or at least the flickering body that should be Apollo, sprawled across the stone and shifting. With every blink, the features of the body melted and warped into new proportions - old, young, tall, short. His body shivered and pulsed and changed like wet clay that refused to dry.
"Zeus must have been trying to get him out of the way and keep him there. Only he didn't have the time to do it properly and I dragged him in after us as we fell." Luna dropped to her knees beside him. "This is ugly - It's as if his mind's been shattered and he doesn't have enough left to put himself back together."
...
What in Tartarus were they supposed to do about that?
"There's a spell," Luna murmured in answer to her silent question. "A last-ditch effort. Ordinarily I wouldn't dare try this on any immortal, much less a god, but we need him if we want to find the others in the Labyrinth, and we'll need him even more if the other gods come after us again."
Thalia had almost forgotten about that.
"That sounds good." She turned to look at Luna warily. "Not safe. Are you sure this is going to work?"
"Hardly." Luna said bluntly "I'm about to delve into the mind of an Olympian to put his psyche back together before his physical manifestation splinters and kills us all. If I make a single mistake, the sheer force of his unconscious presence will obliterate my mind and likely disintegrate my body. But I don't have any other choice."
...
Well. That was...
"I don't know what the fuck you expect me to say to that." She said, and that was the most honest she'd been all week.
"Bianca and Nico and the others are at stake, so wish me luck and guard my back until this is done." Luna smiled - or at least she tried to. the upward pull to her lips looked forced this time around. "Be wary of Quintus - I don't think he means us harm, but better safe than sorry."
And then she turned around and reached for Apollo's flickering head, ignoring the light and the heat haze shimmering off his skin.
"Legilimens."
...
Nothing happened.
Luna's hands were pressed to Apollo's head, but there was no change to him.
If anything, the heat and the light started to grow slightly worse.
Thalia cleared her throat and tried not to shift back in alarm. "Is something supposed to-"
"̸̡̺̹͚̃̑͗̀̇̕͝Ļ̴̢̼̥̝̝͈̮̫͔̑̐̈̒͐̐̈́͜͝e̵̞̦̎̑̈͆̃͋̏̓̈́̚͜ģ̴̧͈͓͉̩͍̤̩͈̒͋̍̒͌̃̍̾̊͆̊̈́i̴̢̨͕͓̫͙̯̯̬̯͗̈́̽̄̽͆͌̾͌͑̂̀̐̌̎l̴̢̛̪̙͙̞͉͈͍̮̘͚̲͙̀̀̈͐̇̊̊̒͆̄̑̕̕͜ï̴̳͔̹̬̆̓̀̂̕͘m̵̨̥͔̝̥͇̺̌̊͋͂͑̓̍̉̀̿̔e̶̢̛͌̔̍̐͋͋̊͌͘͝͝n̷͔͍̭̰̘̟̙̳̔̃͌͒̑́͘ͅš̶̯͇̦̬̞̺̺̩̺̹̭̝̜͋̏̾͋͜͠͝ͅ.̷̩͙͉͍̦́͂̿͌͝"̴̲͙̩̻̍̽̓̿͊̉̀͊̓̽͐͗
And then there was pain, white-hot and fiery and stabbed right into her brain. It was like nothing she'd ever imagined in her worst nightmare, and Thalia screamed and screamed and burned as she was hooked and pulled along into the fiery ocean that was the fallen god's mind.
...
As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it please be courteous.
If you feel like it, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi: Firewillreign
Last edited:
Lucho9
Shitposter extraordinary of memes
- Joined
- Jun 12, 2022
- Messages
- 1,670
- Likes received
- 37,092
She is getting used to Luna! Yey!
Nathaniel Carrion
NatetheGreat
- Joined
- Jul 23, 2020
- Messages
- 692
- Likes received
- 4,386
ArcanaVitae
Versed in the lewd.
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2021
- Messages
- 1,681
- Likes received
- 17,756
Percy isn't really happy about meeting his brother and I don't think anyone can really blame him for that.
Quintus/Daedalus is happy that they Olympians are finally getting what's coming to them but he's planing on staying out of it. He seems interested in Luna's status as a daughter of Thanatos and does seem to understandably want to avoid her father.
Luna piecing Apollo's mind back together is insanely dangerous, risky and badass.
Quintus/Daedalus is happy that they Olympians are finally getting what's coming to them but he's planing on staying out of it. He seems interested in Luna's status as a daughter of Thanatos and does seem to understandably want to avoid her father.
Luna piecing Apollo's mind back together is insanely dangerous, risky and badass.
DiabolicGod
Making the rounds.
- Joined
- Oct 10, 2020
- Messages
- 42
- Likes received
- 129
Pretty good, hope you finish the story
I do wonder what Luna really is in the context of monster, man, and god. After all we know she was adopted by Thanatos instead of being born normally to him. Was she made a demigoddess by him or is she just a new (to this world) kind of witch? How did Grover sense her at the start?
Luna could theoretically be a newborn spirit/monster/goddess/whatever based on the introduction afterall.
I do wonder what Luna really is in the context of monster, man, and god. After all we know she was adopted by Thanatos instead of being born normally to him. Was she made a demigoddess by him or is she just a new (to this world) kind of witch? How did Grover sense her at the start?
Luna could theoretically be a newborn spirit/monster/goddess/whatever based on the introduction afterall.
Shaedy Hoe
Thicc Shaedy
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2020
- Messages
- 1,938
- Likes received
- 14,890
*his
*move away from running him through
Great chapter, man.
Chapter 10: The Ordeals of The Labyrinth - Part 3
Firewillreign
Know what you're doing yet?
- Joined
- Sep 26, 2023
- Messages
- 192
- Likes received
- 4,650
"Moo!"
"I'm trying not to die here!" Bianca snapped at the insistent sound, only to flinch in guilt when the magical water cow - and after everything she'd been through, that part she no longer even blinked at - reared back in apparent hurt, a mournful crooning cry echoing down its muzzle.
"Sorry. Just... wait"
"Moo." Came the mollified answer.
That over and done with, she turned her attention back to the present nightmare - trying to shimmy her way across a narrow ledge and avoid tumbling into a pit so deep the bottom she could see was nothing more than a bed of darkness and the promise of a very messy end should her grip on the stones that jutted out of the ragged wall she was up against slip.
It wasn't even the first time she'd had to do this, but the third, and she was already so utterly sick and tired of the nightmare of it all. This accursed maze she'd found herself trapped in was such a blatant, unhinged death trap it was almost comical - like something out of an old Looney Tunes flick with a homicidal edge to everything.
Everywhere she turned, there was a nasty twist waiting for her among the dark, low-lit hallways. Corners that opened up over sharp drops and pits full of tar and bones, chambers where hooked blades dropped from above and would have gored her if she hadn't hit the ground flat, a room where the sound of sharp, hungry growls had sent her sprinting in the other direction and nearly impaling herself on a wall of rusty, crusted spikes that hadn't been there a second ago...
Gods.
"Moo."
The cow didn't suffer the same troubles, naturally, disappearing and reappearing at will.
Her heart had almost given out the first time she'd rounded a corner and found it gone, but it always returned sooner or later, half-submerged as it was now in the low pool of water it was constantly surrounded by.
Bianca had been following it zealously since the very moment it had shown up with Zoe's silver bow clenched between its teeth - and who knew how long ago that was now - and she still couldn't tell whether it was moving the water along with it wherever it went or sprouting it all on its lonesome, and at this point, she didn't much care.
She was just painfully grateful that it kept coming back
It might even have been helping - it always seemed to return right when Bianca was on the verge of taking a bad turn.
Bad being relative - every turn so far had been terrible, and the only respite Bianca had gotten where the very, very few times where she'd ended up in empty rooms or small, cramped but refreshingly safe nooks and crannies where she could stop and breathe, just for a second.
Even then, she didn't stay too long. Sticking in one spot for too long, no matter how safe it seemed hadn't worked out for her yet. After a while, she would start to hear things in the shadows and the spaces her eyes swore were empty - dragging, scrapping, and picking sounds, like something was digging through the rock trying to get at her.
She couldn't see a thing, but whenever she turned to look, she'd feel eyes on the back of her neck, and by the time she looked back again, the path ahead would have already shifted and changed.
Once, the walls themselves had literally tried to close in on her and she'd been so dazed with fear she'd have been pancaked into a blood smear had the damned mooing not startled her into moving.
If the cow didn't keep returning and urging her on every so often when her legs threatened to collapse out from underneath her, the hysterical stress that she could feel building up at the back of her skull would have likely driven her to another breakdown.
As it was, she was just barely holding on.
Compared to the rest of them, Bianca was nothing. No weapons training, no magic, not even the good sense not to listen to voices that spoke in her head and led her into tearing open the ground and dropping herself into hell.
Bar Nico, she was the least impressive of the seven, and even her little brother had ten times her grip on Greek mythology she did and - if there was even a smidge of justice in the universe at all - had to have at least one of the others to look after him.
Except for the cow, Bianca was alone and had nothing at all to help her… and yet she was still alive.
If even she could make it with the odds stacked so heavily against her, then so could the others.
So did the others, she reminded herself vehemently and started inching forward again.
She just had to keep moving and find them, starting with Zoë. One foot in front of the other, over and over again until the job was done, no matter how much her body ached and how badly she wanted to curl up into a ball and cry her eyes out.
Finally, she made it across the ledge, staggering onto solid ground, rounding her way past the cow before dropping to her knees and gasping for breath.
"Moo!"
"Please..." she rasped, the exhaustion hitting her like a tidal wave, and she fought the urge to dry heave viciously. "Just give me a second."
"Moo!"
There was something that rang different in the cry, more insistent, more urgent, more fearful, and a cold breeze ruffled her sweat-drenched hair.
Bianca's hackles rose immediately - she hadn't felt anything but warm, stifling air in all the time she'd been here - and she looked up.
Immediately she noticed that, somehow, in the time it took her knees to hit the ground, her surroundings had melted and warped into something entirely different.
Ruined walls bordered a square courtyard about the size of a tennis court. Three other gateways, one in the middle of each wall, led north, east, and west. In the center of the yard, two cobblestone paths intersected, making a cross. Mist hung in the air—hazy shreds of white that coiled and undulated as if they were alive, and rose up to form a dome that hid whatever sky that might have lay beyond - though she had a sinking feeling that it was yet another blank ceiling instead.
More importantly, two figures were standing at the intersection of the paths.
The first was a man, and if Bianca hadn't met a literal giant she would have thought that he was absurdly tall at seven feet. He was dressed in a dark tux, with long hair pulled back into a low ponytail that made the scars littering his face pop out that much more. His silver eyes gleamed with interest and something disturbingly like elation as he took in Bianca and the suddenly shock-still cow beside her.
The second figure hurt to look at.
At first, Bianca thought there were three of her. Three smoky, blurred images of a woman whose features she couldn't hope to place stood in place, shimmering over one another with every passing blink. And then something changed, and the three forms merged into one. She solidified into a young woman in a dark sleeveless gown.
Her golden hair was gathered into a high-set ponytail, Ancient Greek style. Her dress was so silky, it seemed to ripple, as if the cloth were ink spilling off her shoulders.
She looked no more than twenty, but Bianca knew by now that in a world of immortals, she could quite literally be old as dirt, and she regarded her with a gaze that had the inside of her mouth going drier than sandpaper.
"Well." The scarred man's voice was deep and melodious in a way, his "This is a pleasant surprise."
"Indeed. And as it was I who went to the trouble of arranging it, it remains mine and mine alone to enjoy."
She raised an arm, and while Bianca recoiled from the motion and the unsettlingly familiar voice, something like alarm flickered across his features.
"Now, hold on-"
"No. You'll have your chance in due time, Prometheus. Until then," She snapped her fingers, and the sound cracked like thunder. Bianca cringed so hard it was a miracle her spine didn't snap from the force of it, and the cow whimpered helplessly beside her. "Go."
The command hit the air with visible force. The shroud of mist heaved and billowed as though cut in a strong gust of wind, and the man - Prometheus - staggered back as his image flickered.
"Cousin," He sighed in resigned protest even as he faded into dispersing mist before her very eyes, his voice drifting off into the ether as he vanished. "Who's side are you on?"
"What a foolish question." The words were murmured into nothingness, right before she turned to Bianca.
"Hello?" The girl called nervously, because what else was she going to do? She was so, so lost.
The woman merely raised a brow.
"Hello, Bianca Di Angelo."
"Who are you?" Bianca's fingers twitched at her sides. "I mean…which goddess?
She was sure of that much. The mist, the magic she'd seen her do, to say nothing of the fact that Bianca could almost taste the power wafting off of her - and it wasn't pleasant.
"Ah." The woman nodded. "Let me give you some light."
She raised her hands. Suddenly she was holding two old-fashioned reed torches, guttering with fire. The mist receded to the edges of the courtyard. At the woman's sandaled feet, the two wispy streaks of it took on solid form. One was a black Labrador retriever. The other was a long, gray, furry rodent with a white mask around its face.
Was that a weasel?
The woman smiled serenely.
'"I am Hecate," she said. "Goddess or Titaness of magic - whichever you prefer, truly, for both titles are mine to claim by right. We have much to discuss."
...
Bianca stared.
Hecate stared back.
Even the cow stared.
The silence stretched on.
And on.
And on.
And on.
Until eventually, it didn't.
"Are you evil?" Bianca blurted out.
Immediately, she felt like an idiot.
What she'd meant to say was something along the lines of Are you going to hurt me, like nearly everything else has tried to do so far - but her stupid uncooperative brain was running on fumes and spat out the first thing that came to mind.
The Labrador didn't so much as twitch, but the weasel chittered and bared its teeth. Then it growled, and the sound was like the unholy melding of a rusty chainsaw and something dark and twisted that carved off ten years of her life and nearly blew her ears out right then and there.
"Peace, Gale. The girl means no offense." Hecate gave her a slow, measured look as her hands dropped and the torches vanished, and Bianca tried not to feel like she was looking through her skin. "The ordeals of the Labyrinth take their toll on even the most resilient of demigods, and she is yet far from that peak."
She didn't even have it in her to register the probable insult. The rodent glared at her with baleful red eyes like tiny coals, but it stayed silent.
"The Labyrinth?" She asked, partly out of confusion and mostly just for an excuse not to meet those eyes.
Something about that name, about Hecate's name as well niggled at her mind - some vague memory of one of Nico's mythomagic rants stirring at the back of her head, but for the life of her she couldn't get her hands on it.
"An arcane maze built long ago by a small man who flew too close to close to the sun and fell for it. Metaphorically speaking. His son and heir, on the other hand, did so rather literally." The goddess smiled humourlessly "Or so the stories go. In reality, the truth of the Labyrinth is infinitely more complex and nuanced than that, and utterly inconsequential to you at the present moment."
Hecate stepped forward and began to drift around Bianca, circling around her like a shark stalking its prey.
"In answer to your previous question, child, regarding my nature."
She tilted her head, and for a moment her image broke back into three ghostly, hazy figures.
"Many fear me." Three voices overlapped, before smoothing out into one articulate tenor. "But magic is neither good nor evil. It is a tool, like a knife. Is a knife evil? Only if the wielder is evil."
That was an answer, Bianca acknowledged, but just barely. There was nothing reassuring to be found in the ambivalence of that answer.
"Why are you here?" Bianca swallowed roughly. "What do you… what do you want?"
From me, she would have added, but she didn't think she had to.
"Many things, daughter of Hades. Many things indeed, exceedingly few of which are yours to know. But for now, an apology is due."
Bianca didn't hear the second part.
Daughter of Hades
Something in her brain fizzled and burned out, and there was a strange ringing in her ears.
Daughter of Hades.
It was official - she was a demigoddess, she had a divine parent, an important one… but that meant nothing to her.
But more than that…
She remembered. She knew now why Hecate's voice had been so familiar.
Daughter of Hades.
That damned voice.
"It was you!" She hissed, voice quivering in rage and tears springing into her eyes of their own violation. "It was you!"
Hecate had guided her into splitting apart the earth, triggering the avalanche of scrap and treasure that had dragged her down into this Labyrinth and scattering all her friends like pin bowls the gods only knew where.
"It was you!"
Hecate was unphased, though Gale the weasel began to hiss angrily before her mistress shot her a simple, quelling look.
"As I said. An apology is due." She pursed her lips. "Of a sort."
"An apology!?"
"My intervention was necessary," Hecate said flatly. "Zeus would have likely killed at least one of your number, perhaps even more. Thanatos would have acted to protect you on principle, for Luna Lovegood's sake if nothing else, but for all his folly the King of the Gods has power of his own, and Thanatos would not have been able to match it and protect all of you in so a mere, flickering fragment of an avatar constructed with such haste."
The goddess stopped and took a step in her direction.
"I have no time for your anger. Neither do you. Without my help, you will certainly die, and so will the rest of your companions."
Whatever Bianca was about to say to that - whatever she could say to that, when just about every word had and implication had flown clear over her head - died a sudden, violent death.
"What?" She whispered, hope blooming in her heart like spring had come early. "They're alive?"
The cold, detached nod was sweeter than any ambrosia and nectar could ever hope to be.
They were alive, and it was a fact.
"Why?" She whispered when regained, vision blurry with relief. "Why would you help?"
She wasn't expecting an answer - she didn't want one, even, when just the promise of her finding the others and making it out of this nightmare alive was enough to have her bawling pitifully, but Hecate offered one anyway.
"I am a goddess who values choice - my very domain is shaped by it. Yet I forced your hand and all but stole yours for a cause not your own. It would not due for Luna Lovegood to fall or suffer unduly so soon on her own path."
"What does Luna have to do with this?"
Hecate gave her another long, hard stare, her black eyes like empty voids drinking in all light.
Bianca couldn't meet them for long before ducking her head helplessly.
"Let me guess. It's not my concern?"
She winced when she was done - she hadn't meant for the words to sound so bitter and weak.
"Precisely." Bianca got the impression that Hecate was amused. "Suffice it to say that I am oathbound and very wary not to let my investments go to waste. I also have no wish at all to see what would become of this pantheon should Thanatos be made to reap his own child. Regardless, an overstep was made on my part, no matter how incidentally beneficial it was to your own purposes, and I prefer to settle my debts with haste."
Hecate snapped her fingers again, though this time not so thunderously. The mist still warped and surged forward like a beast being brought to heel, and it condensed and changed shape into something recognizable.
... Was that a backpack?
"Supplies," Hecate answered, before flickering her index finger at her so suddenly she flinched. "And for a weapon..."
Something heavy settled in Bianca's grip. It was a long triangular dagger with a leather grip, and the gleaming celestial bronze blade was wide at the base and stretched sharply to the point.
"It's name is Katoptris, the cursed looking-glass." The goddess intoned gravely. "Weild it with a sharp mind and clear purpose, and it will serve you well, but be wary not to be lost into the blade's reflection, for that way lies a danger of its very own."
Bianca considered asking for an explanation.
Then she thought better of it because it didn't matter.
For the first time since she'd woken up in the Labyrinth, she felt something close to the ghost of confidence, and she wasn't about to surrender it without a fight.
So instead she asked the most important question of all.
"Can any of this help me find my brother and my friends?" The plea slipped into her tone entirely on its own. "Can you?"
Hecate was unmoved.
"I will not send them to you, or you to them. There is a limit to how far even I can or will interfere, even on a favored one's behalf. But I will not have to. Stride forward with the same will that saw you to me, and you will discover what you seek in time."
...Bianca was starting to think that the gods, no matter how apparently 'helpful' they chose to be, just couldn't not be so cryptic that every other word out of their mouths made her brain hurt and her blood boil because there was nothing she could do about it.
How exactly was that vaguely comforting and yet unusable joke of a non-answer supposed to be helpful?
If Hecate noticed her reaction, she didn't show it.
"Hecuba will accompany you for a time."
Finally, the Labrador seemed to come to life. It barked sharply before trotting over to the cow, and Bianca almost did a spit-take as she remembered her other companion
It looked scared out of its grass-munching mind and was trembling like a leaf in the wind.
"And the Bane will do the rest." The word rolled off her tongue with deadly meaning, and the answering moo was an unmistakable whimper.
Bianca looked from the dog to the cow and back to the goddess.
"Bane?"
"The Ophiotaurus."
... Bianca wasn't going to ask. She wasn't.
Luna would explain it when she found her for a change.
"You walk," Hecate answered, and Bianca nearly screamed in frustrated outrage before the goddess blurred and was suddenly right there in her face. "But let me offer you one final piece of advice before all is said and done."
Her heartbeat went from sedate to critical in the time for her to inhale as those black eyes went inhumanely sharp.
"For your own sake, do not ever presume that Thanatos cares for you as anything more than his daughter's friend. Valuable, but compared to her, you are but dust and ash to be, Hades's will be damned, and he is not your ally. None of his ilk are." Hecate stepped back "Luckily for you, and for the vast majority of mortals you are likely to ever interact with in some way or another, the protogenos so very rarely stir from their slumber or choose to manifest a corporeal form. Ouranos was a lesson well learned, to say nothing of that utter catastrophe with Eros at the dawn of the first age."
Bianca blinked.
Eros? That… that was a name she did know. One of the only mythomagic cards Nico outright hated.
"Love." Hecate stared at her blankly "Eros is… the god of love, right?"
"…Yes." Slowly, the goddess grinned, her teeth barred and flickering in triplicates.
It was terrifying
"He is now. And what a tumble from grace that was. But that too, yet again, is not a matter for you or yours to concern yourselves with. Not for a while more, perhaps."
And then the goddess snapped her fingers for the third and final time, and she and everything vanished in a swirling burst of eldritch mist.
When the mist dispersed, Bianca staggered back, Katoptris still clenched between her fingers in a death grip.
"Moo!"
Beside her, the Ophiotaurus looked sick to its stomach - Bianca didn't bother questioning at what point she started understanding it well enough to name its expressions.
Hecuba the Labrador was the only one of them who stood unphased, though her hackles were raised as she growled at their surroundings.
Or rather, the lack of them.
There was nothing around the three of them, except for a low-hanging ceiling,
She opened the door and was immediately hit with a burst of heat and a scream of agony so monstrous she was nearly bowled herself. Instincts blaring in panic, she dropped to the ground and huddled beside the Ophiataurus at once.
"What was-?"
There was a clicking sound behind her, and all three of them rounded on the spot.
The door they'd just come through had vanished.
...
"Fuck."
"Moo." The Ophiotaurus agreed shakily, and even Hecuba chuffed lowly.
Cursing up a hurricane so nasty it would have probably stopped a hellhound's heart, Bianca turned back around and crept forward.
They'd stepped into some kind of massive domed chamber lit by torch lights, empty save for the stone stands that circled an empty platform far, far below them. Two massive shadowed and unguarded hallways led to somewhere Bianca couldn't see
And hanging in the middle of the chamber, suspended from the dome by a chain of celestial bronze hoisting her up by the manacled hands was none other than Zoë Nightshade.
"No."
The lieutenant of Artemis was in such a horrible state that Bianca couldn't even feel relief at the sight of her. Her clothes were torn and bloodied from the waist up, what visible skin she could see was mottled with green, sickening scrapes caked in dried blood, and her hair was matted with so much more of the stuff that it had changed to the color of rust.
It hung over her limp, lolling head in a macabre curtain, and only the unsteady movement of her chest and the rasping rattle Bianca could somehow hear despite the distance between them proved that she was even alive.
"What happened?" She whispered in complete horror, and moved to run towards her-
And then another deafening bellow of a scream thundered and Bianca was once again flat on the ground and hiding for all she was worth.
Damn. it. All.
The scream cut off, the last of it pattering out from the hallway it had come from, and silence blanketed them like a cloud of smog.
A long moment passed.
Then there were loud, ominous rhythmic thuds heading in their direction, and Bianca pressed herself even further down into the ground just as the ugliest, most disgusting monster she'd never imagined stepped out of the shadows.
It - she - a half-human body, like a centaur, but that comparison was probably the most offensive insult to Chiron and his kind anyone could ever make.
Her skin was reptilian and her lower half was scaled, fanged and clawed like what Bianca imagined a dragon would be, black with white stripes down her flank. Snakes surged across them, snapping at the air and hissing menacingly.
Enormous, monstrous wings grew out of her back, and beneath them an even larger scorpion tail that dripped green, crackling fluid that steamed where it hit the ground.
At the point where her halves meet, Bianca could see the skin bubbling and twisting into the shape of animal heads - bear, boar, wolves, and more things that she'd never even heard of.
Worst of all, she was hefting a gnarly, evil-looking abomination of a leather whip in one long, clawed hand, and Bianca suddenly knew exactly what had happened to Zoë.
The burst of rage was good.
It steadied her against the disgusted horror, right in time for the monster to speak.
"Still asleep, Huntress?" The monster's voice dread and vile poison translated into words. She was almost happy Zoë wasn't awake to hear it "Good. Regain what little strength you can muster, for you'll need it once more soon enough. I always love a challenge."
And then she turned and rumbled past the broken huntress, making for the opposite hallway and marching into the darkness.
Bianca waited until she couldn't hear footsteps any longer, before slowly turning towards her inhuman partners.
"I can't get Zoë down without... without time." She said hollowly.
She didn't even know how to start.
"We're going to have to fight that thing, aren't we?"
The Ophiotaurus looked at her like she was crazy, while Hecuba tilted her head and eyed her intensely.
Bianca could have sworn she heard the words in her head.
What do you think, moron?
... Bianca was being judged by a magic cow and an equally magic dog.
Oh gods, she wasn't just going to die horribly, was she?
She was going to die stupidly, and there were going to be witnesses.
Despite the situation, she found herself stifling a half-demented laugh, the kind that would have scored her a first class ticket to a mental ward back in the mortal world.
There really was nothing that could go well for her, was there?
"Might as well, then." She shot a small, wobbly smile at the Ophiotaurus and the Labrador side by side and started preparing to die right "Let's... let's get to work."
Look, a wild Hecate appears!
MORE PLOT!!! XD
As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.
If you feel like it, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi: Firewillreign
"I'm trying not to die here!" Bianca snapped at the insistent sound, only to flinch in guilt when the magical water cow - and after everything she'd been through, that part she no longer even blinked at - reared back in apparent hurt, a mournful crooning cry echoing down its muzzle.
"Sorry. Just... wait"
"Moo." Came the mollified answer.
That over and done with, she turned her attention back to the present nightmare - trying to shimmy her way across a narrow ledge and avoid tumbling into a pit so deep the bottom she could see was nothing more than a bed of darkness and the promise of a very messy end should her grip on the stones that jutted out of the ragged wall she was up against slip.
It wasn't even the first time she'd had to do this, but the third, and she was already so utterly sick and tired of the nightmare of it all. This accursed maze she'd found herself trapped in was such a blatant, unhinged death trap it was almost comical - like something out of an old Looney Tunes flick with a homicidal edge to everything.
Everywhere she turned, there was a nasty twist waiting for her among the dark, low-lit hallways. Corners that opened up over sharp drops and pits full of tar and bones, chambers where hooked blades dropped from above and would have gored her if she hadn't hit the ground flat, a room where the sound of sharp, hungry growls had sent her sprinting in the other direction and nearly impaling herself on a wall of rusty, crusted spikes that hadn't been there a second ago...
Gods.
"Moo."
The cow didn't suffer the same troubles, naturally, disappearing and reappearing at will.
Her heart had almost given out the first time she'd rounded a corner and found it gone, but it always returned sooner or later, half-submerged as it was now in the low pool of water it was constantly surrounded by.
Bianca had been following it zealously since the very moment it had shown up with Zoe's silver bow clenched between its teeth - and who knew how long ago that was now - and she still couldn't tell whether it was moving the water along with it wherever it went or sprouting it all on its lonesome, and at this point, she didn't much care.
She was just painfully grateful that it kept coming back
It might even have been helping - it always seemed to return right when Bianca was on the verge of taking a bad turn.
Bad being relative - every turn so far had been terrible, and the only respite Bianca had gotten where the very, very few times where she'd ended up in empty rooms or small, cramped but refreshingly safe nooks and crannies where she could stop and breathe, just for a second.
Even then, she didn't stay too long. Sticking in one spot for too long, no matter how safe it seemed hadn't worked out for her yet. After a while, she would start to hear things in the shadows and the spaces her eyes swore were empty - dragging, scrapping, and picking sounds, like something was digging through the rock trying to get at her.
She couldn't see a thing, but whenever she turned to look, she'd feel eyes on the back of her neck, and by the time she looked back again, the path ahead would have already shifted and changed.
Once, the walls themselves had literally tried to close in on her and she'd been so dazed with fear she'd have been pancaked into a blood smear had the damned mooing not startled her into moving.
If the cow didn't keep returning and urging her on every so often when her legs threatened to collapse out from underneath her, the hysterical stress that she could feel building up at the back of her skull would have likely driven her to another breakdown.
As it was, she was just barely holding on.
Compared to the rest of them, Bianca was nothing. No weapons training, no magic, not even the good sense not to listen to voices that spoke in her head and led her into tearing open the ground and dropping herself into hell.
Bar Nico, she was the least impressive of the seven, and even her little brother had ten times her grip on Greek mythology she did and - if there was even a smidge of justice in the universe at all - had to have at least one of the others to look after him.
Except for the cow, Bianca was alone and had nothing at all to help her… and yet she was still alive.
If even she could make it with the odds stacked so heavily against her, then so could the others.
So did the others, she reminded herself vehemently and started inching forward again.
She just had to keep moving and find them, starting with Zoë. One foot in front of the other, over and over again until the job was done, no matter how much her body ached and how badly she wanted to curl up into a ball and cry her eyes out.
Finally, she made it across the ledge, staggering onto solid ground, rounding her way past the cow before dropping to her knees and gasping for breath.
"Moo!"
"Please..." she rasped, the exhaustion hitting her like a tidal wave, and she fought the urge to dry heave viciously. "Just give me a second."
"Moo!"
There was something that rang different in the cry, more insistent, more urgent, more fearful, and a cold breeze ruffled her sweat-drenched hair.
Bianca's hackles rose immediately - she hadn't felt anything but warm, stifling air in all the time she'd been here - and she looked up.
Immediately she noticed that, somehow, in the time it took her knees to hit the ground, her surroundings had melted and warped into something entirely different.
Ruined walls bordered a square courtyard about the size of a tennis court. Three other gateways, one in the middle of each wall, led north, east, and west. In the center of the yard, two cobblestone paths intersected, making a cross. Mist hung in the air—hazy shreds of white that coiled and undulated as if they were alive, and rose up to form a dome that hid whatever sky that might have lay beyond - though she had a sinking feeling that it was yet another blank ceiling instead.
More importantly, two figures were standing at the intersection of the paths.
The first was a man, and if Bianca hadn't met a literal giant she would have thought that he was absurdly tall at seven feet. He was dressed in a dark tux, with long hair pulled back into a low ponytail that made the scars littering his face pop out that much more. His silver eyes gleamed with interest and something disturbingly like elation as he took in Bianca and the suddenly shock-still cow beside her.
The second figure hurt to look at.
At first, Bianca thought there were three of her. Three smoky, blurred images of a woman whose features she couldn't hope to place stood in place, shimmering over one another with every passing blink. And then something changed, and the three forms merged into one. She solidified into a young woman in a dark sleeveless gown.
Her golden hair was gathered into a high-set ponytail, Ancient Greek style. Her dress was so silky, it seemed to ripple, as if the cloth were ink spilling off her shoulders.
She looked no more than twenty, but Bianca knew by now that in a world of immortals, she could quite literally be old as dirt, and she regarded her with a gaze that had the inside of her mouth going drier than sandpaper.
"Well." The scarred man's voice was deep and melodious in a way, his "This is a pleasant surprise."
"Indeed. And as it was I who went to the trouble of arranging it, it remains mine and mine alone to enjoy."
She raised an arm, and while Bianca recoiled from the motion and the unsettlingly familiar voice, something like alarm flickered across his features.
"Now, hold on-"
"No. You'll have your chance in due time, Prometheus. Until then," She snapped her fingers, and the sound cracked like thunder. Bianca cringed so hard it was a miracle her spine didn't snap from the force of it, and the cow whimpered helplessly beside her. "Go."
The command hit the air with visible force. The shroud of mist heaved and billowed as though cut in a strong gust of wind, and the man - Prometheus - staggered back as his image flickered.
"Cousin," He sighed in resigned protest even as he faded into dispersing mist before her very eyes, his voice drifting off into the ether as he vanished. "Who's side are you on?"
"What a foolish question." The words were murmured into nothingness, right before she turned to Bianca.
"Hello?" The girl called nervously, because what else was she going to do? She was so, so lost.
The woman merely raised a brow.
"Hello, Bianca Di Angelo."
"Who are you?" Bianca's fingers twitched at her sides. "I mean…which goddess?
She was sure of that much. The mist, the magic she'd seen her do, to say nothing of the fact that Bianca could almost taste the power wafting off of her - and it wasn't pleasant.
"Ah." The woman nodded. "Let me give you some light."
She raised her hands. Suddenly she was holding two old-fashioned reed torches, guttering with fire. The mist receded to the edges of the courtyard. At the woman's sandaled feet, the two wispy streaks of it took on solid form. One was a black Labrador retriever. The other was a long, gray, furry rodent with a white mask around its face.
Was that a weasel?
The woman smiled serenely.
'"I am Hecate," she said. "Goddess or Titaness of magic - whichever you prefer, truly, for both titles are mine to claim by right. We have much to discuss."
...
Bianca stared.
Hecate stared back.
Even the cow stared.
The silence stretched on.
And on.
And on.
And on.
Until eventually, it didn't.
"Are you evil?" Bianca blurted out.
Immediately, she felt like an idiot.
What she'd meant to say was something along the lines of Are you going to hurt me, like nearly everything else has tried to do so far - but her stupid uncooperative brain was running on fumes and spat out the first thing that came to mind.
The Labrador didn't so much as twitch, but the weasel chittered and bared its teeth. Then it growled, and the sound was like the unholy melding of a rusty chainsaw and something dark and twisted that carved off ten years of her life and nearly blew her ears out right then and there.
"Peace, Gale. The girl means no offense." Hecate gave her a slow, measured look as her hands dropped and the torches vanished, and Bianca tried not to feel like she was looking through her skin. "The ordeals of the Labyrinth take their toll on even the most resilient of demigods, and she is yet far from that peak."
She didn't even have it in her to register the probable insult. The rodent glared at her with baleful red eyes like tiny coals, but it stayed silent.
"The Labyrinth?" She asked, partly out of confusion and mostly just for an excuse not to meet those eyes.
Something about that name, about Hecate's name as well niggled at her mind - some vague memory of one of Nico's mythomagic rants stirring at the back of her head, but for the life of her she couldn't get her hands on it.
"An arcane maze built long ago by a small man who flew too close to close to the sun and fell for it. Metaphorically speaking. His son and heir, on the other hand, did so rather literally." The goddess smiled humourlessly "Or so the stories go. In reality, the truth of the Labyrinth is infinitely more complex and nuanced than that, and utterly inconsequential to you at the present moment."
Hecate stepped forward and began to drift around Bianca, circling around her like a shark stalking its prey.
"In answer to your previous question, child, regarding my nature."
She tilted her head, and for a moment her image broke back into three ghostly, hazy figures.
"Many fear me." Three voices overlapped, before smoothing out into one articulate tenor. "But magic is neither good nor evil. It is a tool, like a knife. Is a knife evil? Only if the wielder is evil."
That was an answer, Bianca acknowledged, but just barely. There was nothing reassuring to be found in the ambivalence of that answer.
"Why are you here?" Bianca swallowed roughly. "What do you… what do you want?"
From me, she would have added, but she didn't think she had to.
"Many things, daughter of Hades. Many things indeed, exceedingly few of which are yours to know. But for now, an apology is due."
Bianca didn't hear the second part.
Daughter of Hades
Something in her brain fizzled and burned out, and there was a strange ringing in her ears.
Daughter of Hades.
It was official - she was a demigoddess, she had a divine parent, an important one… but that meant nothing to her.
But more than that…
She remembered. She knew now why Hecate's voice had been so familiar.
Daughter of Hades.
That damned voice.
"It was you!" She hissed, voice quivering in rage and tears springing into her eyes of their own violation. "It was you!"
Hecate had guided her into splitting apart the earth, triggering the avalanche of scrap and treasure that had dragged her down into this Labyrinth and scattering all her friends like pin bowls the gods only knew where.
"It was you!"
Hecate was unphased, though Gale the weasel began to hiss angrily before her mistress shot her a simple, quelling look.
"As I said. An apology is due." She pursed her lips. "Of a sort."
"An apology!?"
"My intervention was necessary," Hecate said flatly. "Zeus would have likely killed at least one of your number, perhaps even more. Thanatos would have acted to protect you on principle, for Luna Lovegood's sake if nothing else, but for all his folly the King of the Gods has power of his own, and Thanatos would not have been able to match it and protect all of you in so a mere, flickering fragment of an avatar constructed with such haste."
The goddess stopped and took a step in her direction.
"I have no time for your anger. Neither do you. Without my help, you will certainly die, and so will the rest of your companions."
Whatever Bianca was about to say to that - whatever she could say to that, when just about every word had and implication had flown clear over her head - died a sudden, violent death.
"What?" She whispered, hope blooming in her heart like spring had come early. "They're alive?"
The cold, detached nod was sweeter than any ambrosia and nectar could ever hope to be.
They were alive, and it was a fact.
"Why?" She whispered when regained, vision blurry with relief. "Why would you help?"
She wasn't expecting an answer - she didn't want one, even, when just the promise of her finding the others and making it out of this nightmare alive was enough to have her bawling pitifully, but Hecate offered one anyway.
"I am a goddess who values choice - my very domain is shaped by it. Yet I forced your hand and all but stole yours for a cause not your own. It would not due for Luna Lovegood to fall or suffer unduly so soon on her own path."
"What does Luna have to do with this?"
Hecate gave her another long, hard stare, her black eyes like empty voids drinking in all light.
Bianca couldn't meet them for long before ducking her head helplessly.
"Let me guess. It's not my concern?"
She winced when she was done - she hadn't meant for the words to sound so bitter and weak.
"Precisely." Bianca got the impression that Hecate was amused. "Suffice it to say that I am oathbound and very wary not to let my investments go to waste. I also have no wish at all to see what would become of this pantheon should Thanatos be made to reap his own child. Regardless, an overstep was made on my part, no matter how incidentally beneficial it was to your own purposes, and I prefer to settle my debts with haste."
Hecate snapped her fingers again, though this time not so thunderously. The mist still warped and surged forward like a beast being brought to heel, and it condensed and changed shape into something recognizable.
... Was that a backpack?
"Supplies," Hecate answered, before flickering her index finger at her so suddenly she flinched. "And for a weapon..."
Something heavy settled in Bianca's grip. It was a long triangular dagger with a leather grip, and the gleaming celestial bronze blade was wide at the base and stretched sharply to the point.
"It's name is Katoptris, the cursed looking-glass." The goddess intoned gravely. "Weild it with a sharp mind and clear purpose, and it will serve you well, but be wary not to be lost into the blade's reflection, for that way lies a danger of its very own."
Bianca considered asking for an explanation.
Then she thought better of it because it didn't matter.
For the first time since she'd woken up in the Labyrinth, she felt something close to the ghost of confidence, and she wasn't about to surrender it without a fight.
So instead she asked the most important question of all.
"Can any of this help me find my brother and my friends?" The plea slipped into her tone entirely on its own. "Can you?"
Hecate was unmoved.
"I will not send them to you, or you to them. There is a limit to how far even I can or will interfere, even on a favored one's behalf. But I will not have to. Stride forward with the same will that saw you to me, and you will discover what you seek in time."
...Bianca was starting to think that the gods, no matter how apparently 'helpful' they chose to be, just couldn't not be so cryptic that every other word out of their mouths made her brain hurt and her blood boil because there was nothing she could do about it.
How exactly was that vaguely comforting and yet unusable joke of a non-answer supposed to be helpful?
If Hecate noticed her reaction, she didn't show it.
"Hecuba will accompany you for a time."
Finally, the Labrador seemed to come to life. It barked sharply before trotting over to the cow, and Bianca almost did a spit-take as she remembered her other companion
It looked scared out of its grass-munching mind and was trembling like a leaf in the wind.
"And the Bane will do the rest." The word rolled off her tongue with deadly meaning, and the answering moo was an unmistakable whimper.
Bianca looked from the dog to the cow and back to the goddess.
"Bane?"
"The Ophiotaurus."
... Bianca wasn't going to ask. She wasn't.
Luna would explain it when she found her for a change.
"You walk," Hecate answered, and Bianca nearly screamed in frustrated outrage before the goddess blurred and was suddenly right there in her face. "But let me offer you one final piece of advice before all is said and done."
Her heartbeat went from sedate to critical in the time for her to inhale as those black eyes went inhumanely sharp.
"For your own sake, do not ever presume that Thanatos cares for you as anything more than his daughter's friend. Valuable, but compared to her, you are but dust and ash to be, Hades's will be damned, and he is not your ally. None of his ilk are." Hecate stepped back "Luckily for you, and for the vast majority of mortals you are likely to ever interact with in some way or another, the protogenos so very rarely stir from their slumber or choose to manifest a corporeal form. Ouranos was a lesson well learned, to say nothing of that utter catastrophe with Eros at the dawn of the first age."
Bianca blinked.
Eros? That… that was a name she did know. One of the only mythomagic cards Nico outright hated.
"Love." Hecate stared at her blankly "Eros is… the god of love, right?"
"…Yes." Slowly, the goddess grinned, her teeth barred and flickering in triplicates.
It was terrifying
"He is now. And what a tumble from grace that was. But that too, yet again, is not a matter for you or yours to concern yourselves with. Not for a while more, perhaps."
And then the goddess snapped her fingers for the third and final time, and she and everything vanished in a swirling burst of eldritch mist.
...
When the mist dispersed, Bianca staggered back, Katoptris still clenched between her fingers in a death grip.
"Moo!"
Beside her, the Ophiotaurus looked sick to its stomach - Bianca didn't bother questioning at what point she started understanding it well enough to name its expressions.
Hecuba the Labrador was the only one of them who stood unphased, though her hackles were raised as she growled at their surroundings.
Or rather, the lack of them.
There was nothing around the three of them, except for a low-hanging ceiling,
She opened the door and was immediately hit with a burst of heat and a scream of agony so monstrous she was nearly bowled herself. Instincts blaring in panic, she dropped to the ground and huddled beside the Ophiataurus at once.
"What was-?"
There was a clicking sound behind her, and all three of them rounded on the spot.
The door they'd just come through had vanished.
...
"Fuck."
"Moo." The Ophiotaurus agreed shakily, and even Hecuba chuffed lowly.
Cursing up a hurricane so nasty it would have probably stopped a hellhound's heart, Bianca turned back around and crept forward.
They'd stepped into some kind of massive domed chamber lit by torch lights, empty save for the stone stands that circled an empty platform far, far below them. Two massive shadowed and unguarded hallways led to somewhere Bianca couldn't see
And hanging in the middle of the chamber, suspended from the dome by a chain of celestial bronze hoisting her up by the manacled hands was none other than Zoë Nightshade.
"No."
The lieutenant of Artemis was in such a horrible state that Bianca couldn't even feel relief at the sight of her. Her clothes were torn and bloodied from the waist up, what visible skin she could see was mottled with green, sickening scrapes caked in dried blood, and her hair was matted with so much more of the stuff that it had changed to the color of rust.
It hung over her limp, lolling head in a macabre curtain, and only the unsteady movement of her chest and the rasping rattle Bianca could somehow hear despite the distance between them proved that she was even alive.
"What happened?" She whispered in complete horror, and moved to run towards her-
And then another deafening bellow of a scream thundered and Bianca was once again flat on the ground and hiding for all she was worth.
Damn. it. All.
The scream cut off, the last of it pattering out from the hallway it had come from, and silence blanketed them like a cloud of smog.
A long moment passed.
Then there were loud, ominous rhythmic thuds heading in their direction, and Bianca pressed herself even further down into the ground just as the ugliest, most disgusting monster she'd never imagined stepped out of the shadows.
It - she - a half-human body, like a centaur, but that comparison was probably the most offensive insult to Chiron and his kind anyone could ever make.
Her skin was reptilian and her lower half was scaled, fanged and clawed like what Bianca imagined a dragon would be, black with white stripes down her flank. Snakes surged across them, snapping at the air and hissing menacingly.
Enormous, monstrous wings grew out of her back, and beneath them an even larger scorpion tail that dripped green, crackling fluid that steamed where it hit the ground.
At the point where her halves meet, Bianca could see the skin bubbling and twisting into the shape of animal heads - bear, boar, wolves, and more things that she'd never even heard of.
Worst of all, she was hefting a gnarly, evil-looking abomination of a leather whip in one long, clawed hand, and Bianca suddenly knew exactly what had happened to Zoë.
The burst of rage was good.
It steadied her against the disgusted horror, right in time for the monster to speak.
"Still asleep, Huntress?" The monster's voice dread and vile poison translated into words. She was almost happy Zoë wasn't awake to hear it "Good. Regain what little strength you can muster, for you'll need it once more soon enough. I always love a challenge."
And then she turned and rumbled past the broken huntress, making for the opposite hallway and marching into the darkness.
Bianca waited until she couldn't hear footsteps any longer, before slowly turning towards her inhuman partners.
"I can't get Zoë down without... without time." She said hollowly.
She didn't even know how to start.
"We're going to have to fight that thing, aren't we?"
The Ophiotaurus looked at her like she was crazy, while Hecuba tilted her head and eyed her intensely.
Bianca could have sworn she heard the words in her head.
What do you think, moron?
... Bianca was being judged by a magic cow and an equally magic dog.
Oh gods, she wasn't just going to die horribly, was she?
She was going to die stupidly, and there were going to be witnesses.
Despite the situation, she found herself stifling a half-demented laugh, the kind that would have scored her a first class ticket to a mental ward back in the mortal world.
There really was nothing that could go well for her, was there?
"Might as well, then." She shot a small, wobbly smile at the Ophiotaurus and the Labrador side by side and started preparing to die right "Let's... let's get to work."
...
Look, a wild Hecate appears!
MORE PLOT!!! XD
As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.
If you feel like it, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi: Firewillreign
Last edited:
ArcanaVitae
Versed in the lewd.
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2021
- Messages
- 1,681
- Likes received
- 17,756
Bianca is understandable freaking out but honestly she's dealing with thing pretty well. Hecate seems to have stepped in to stop Luna from dying and forcing Thanatos to reap his kid which she thinks would make him go apeshit on the Greeks. Hecate may have helped Bianca but she interfered which took away Bianca's choice so Hecate felt she owed Bianca some help so she gave her some supplies and a guide.
So Prometheus is trying to figure out which side Hecate is on. Also Hecate implied that Eros had a fall to grace I'm guessing he used to be a primordial but got downgraded to a god.
So Prometheus is trying to figure out which side Hecate is on. Also Hecate implied that Eros had a fall to grace I'm guessing he used to be a primordial but got downgraded to a god.
Simonbob
Really? You don't say.
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2014
- Messages
- 1,075
- Likes received
- 11,881
True.
But.... It's also pretty obvious that Bianca's not ready for this. This does give her a chance to become so.
I wonder if Hades interactions with Hecate will be good or bad, after this? He does care about his kids, after all.
Chapter 11: The Ordeals of The Labyrinth - Part 4
New
Firewillreign
Know what you're doing yet?
- Joined
- Sep 26, 2023
- Messages
- 192
- Likes received
- 4,650
Thalia screamed.
She'd been screaming for some time too - a very, very small part of her mind that wasn't scrambled with terror recognized that much - and suspended by the feet as she was by a force she couldn't see and dangling over a chasm to what looked like literal Tartarus, she couldn't get herself to shut up and think.
It wasn't the pervasive darkness that pushed her past the edge, swirling around her in every which way and seemingly extending endlessly beyond that.
It wasn't the very literal river of flames and bubbling lava waiting below, the one source of infernal light that reeked of sulfur and ash and something borderline malevolent as it raged underneath her.
It wasn't even the knowledge that this was the third time in recent memory that she'd woken up to a disaster worse than the one that she'd blacked out to before - a real shitty trend, that.
No, it was the distance between her and the certain, extra-crispy death waiting below that got to her.
Every time she gathered the nerve to unscrew her eyes and look down, the space to the fiery inferno underneath seemed to warp and twist until her gut violently contorted with nausea and she was forced to dry heave desperately - and to no avail.
She was terrified of heights, more than any monster or god with a stick up their ass looking for a fight, and this?
It was her most humiliating, most pathetic fear made manifest - She'd rather take on a drakon with a toothpick than suffer this.
Hades damn it, She'd take on the three furies, again, and an entire army after them rather than go through this.
But there was nothing she could do - no way for her to tell how long it had been in this miserable state, and she couldn't think of a way out of it.
Thalia couldn't pull herself together long enough to even try.
Naturally, just as soon as the one half-what conscious part of her brain admitted that, the real nightmare hit the road hard.
Ringing out and echoing with pressure she could feel deep in her lungs, a chorus of voices began to sing.
Thalia Grace, Thalia Grace,
Wretched, Wretched, Thalia Grace!
It was a rotten, twisted melody. Thousands of clashing pitches and cadences forced into an unholy choir of taunting misery and evil, and the words they spewed were just as poisonous.
Daughter of The King, The Thunderer's Get,
Whelped to him from a broken pet!
The surface of the burning river began to churn more fiercely, fiery waters sloshing and frothing, and then hands began to emerge from the inferno.
Thalia stared as the limbs of all shapes and sizes, warped and deformed and tipped with claws and talons and writhing things she'd never dared imagine before, their flesh bubbling and sizzling as they rose up and out towards her.
Weak and feckless
Lost and worthless
Born a pawn to the games of fate
And in spite of all, she fails to be great!
Ten, twenty, thirty... more and more emerged with every passing second , growing upwards like a macabre tower straight out of the gnarliest imagination - and the grotesque chorus grew louder the closer they got to her.
Would be Hero, Fallen Low
Betrayed by kin, No greater foe!
Thalia Grace, Thalia Grace,
Truly Wretched Thalia Grace!
She flailed and tried to move, to do something - those things were not touching her, to Hades with that - but the effort was strangled in its cradle almost as soon as she got through the horrified revulsion, because where exactly was she going to go?
She was trapped.
Fuck.
Thy end is nigh, your string is frayed
You've lost your chance to wield the blade!
With that screech, the invisible force stringing her up vanished, and Thalia began to drop, a ragged wail welling up in her as fell directly into the terrible hold below.
Blind panic lit up in her chest, as the heat and the gods-damned stench of putrid rot clogged her nostrils, and true, desperate mortal terror threatened to end her when the roving limbs closed on her and began to drag her down into a hell that put all others to shame, fingers tightening brutally and skittering like insects over as they pulled and pulled and pulled.
Now brace and burn and greet the flame
Fall at last, and be unmade!
It was then, just as she could feel her heart swelling to the point of giving out-
"Relashio!"
-that she heard the most beautiful word she'd never learned in her entire life.
There was a pulse of power, and the limbs strangling her were blasted off with so much force that Thalia felt the ones nearest to her burst. Dimly, she thought she heard something screech in pain, but the thought was lost in the moment of breath-freezing free fall she experienced as the limbs holding her off the surface of the fiery river vanished and left her to tumble down-
"Accio!"
-Before the familiar voice rang out again and that same power seized her like an invisible fist and sent her careening towards a bank of rough-hewn but distinctly undeadly earth that hadn't been there a second before.
Thalia hit the ground roughly, flat on her back, but the impact was cushioned, somewhat, and she wouldn't have felt it regardless, not with the overwhelming relief of having gotten away from that evil coursing through her brain like a triple dose of adrenaline.
"There you are."
Luna Lovegood's face appeared in her vision, the other girl leaning over her with a stance that screamed tension and wariness.
"Up you get. There's no time to waste!"
She stared back into those silver eyes, heart jackhammering in her throat, mind screeching like a broken record.
"...I don't know whether I want to stab you or kiss you, Lovegood" Thalia said, in lieu of screaming hysterically. Again. "But watch your back anyway."
Luna's lips quirked up, tiredly amused even as her eyes remained alert.
"I'll keep it in mind."
A low, sharp growl cut through whatever it was she was going to say next.
Thalia's hackles rose and she shot up to her feet in a scramble, lips barred furiously as that same snarl rang out again.
The surface of the river was bubbling again, and. Only this time, the monsters came in full.
Snarling hell hounds, slithering dracaena, hideous chimera with multiple heads... Things Thalia had never even seen before, and all of them were rising from the flames, mouths frothing and rabid and ready for the hunt.
She'd just gotten her wish, then.
An entire army of monsters, far too many to fight. And they didn't feel like monsters if that made any sense at all.
They felt worse.
"What are these things?" Thalia whispered as they began to inch back, fists clenched so tightly that her knuckles popped out, stark white and shaking ever so slightly. She tried to keep the tremor out of her voice. "And where are we?"
"One of the many, many crevices of Apollo's mind," Luna said without missing a beat.
"What?"
"Our minds were drawn into Apollo's own when the connection I was trying to forge was... overwhelmed by his weight, so to speak." Luna didn't waste time trying to see if she understood, and Thalia had to swallow down enough questions to put a child of Athena to shame. "The only reason we weren't either expelled or disintegrated is because his consciousness is in shambles. Whatever Zeus did to him has shattered his sense of self and our slumbering selves have tangled with the jagged fragments."
She stretched out a hand towards the encroaching hoard. Thalia gawked when her stygian spear appeared in her hand, before scrambling to draw out her spear and expanding her Aegis.
The severed head of Medusa reflected in the gleaming bronze didn't feel as reassuring as it normally did, given that half the things emerging before their eyes looked to be uglier than the gorgon was, but it couldn't hurt to try.
"These things are... fear. Fears. And more." Luna nodded as if to reassure herself. "Negative emotions and ideas drawn from the three of us and made manifest. More yours than mine, I think. I tend to fear other things."
"So this is..." Thalia struggled to find the words, even as she kept her eyes on the emerging hoard. "A demigod dream."
"Something of its sort. But infinitely more dangerous. This isn't the realm of sleep." Luna said and dared to glance her way for a second. "We can get hurt, and suffer far worse things in here than in any mere dream. Don't let them touch you."
Fucking peachy.
"How do we get out?"
Survive now, freak the hades out later.
"I'm working on it." Luna admitted, "Have they said anything to you?"
Wretched, Wretched, Thalia Grace!
She swallowed. "No."
She was going to stab Apollo right in the face - and probably breakdown, assuming she didn't end up dead.
Whatever that would look like in this state.
Luna didn't comment on the obvious lie. The first monster - a hellhound twice as large and as mean as any Thalia had seen before fully emerged from the waves. It placed a pair of paws larger than her head against the shoreline and heaved itself up with a low snarl, fur bristling and dripping with molten flame.
"We need to find Apollo. However much of him remains whole." Luna said, The tip of her spear beginning to crackle with eldritch violet light. Thalia followed suit, the familiar smell of ozone banishing the scent of brimstone and ash as her own weapon sparked to life. "Get ready to run, on my mark."
Run where? Barring the lake, there was nothing but darkness surrounding them. She didn't try to argue the point, though, just readied her spear and her feet, bent her knees in preparation to move, and-
"I found you."
-It was all for nothing.
Thalia stiffened as the words rang over them, seemingly closing in from every which way, and Luna froze solid.
Even the monsters stilled.
Abruptly, her mind flashed right back to the answer Luna had given her.
"I fear other things."
What did a demigod have to fear, if not monsters?
As it turned out - and as just was their luck - the answer appeared behind them.
There was a figure standing right within striking range, six feet tall but seeming to tower beyond even that. They wore robes of black so deep they would have disappeared amongst the utter darkness caging them in if it wasn't for the mask they wore.
Pure silver, shaped like a skull, and all but gleaming with malice.
"Did you think you could flee forever, blood traitor? It's your turn to burn."
Luna went white.
Before Thalia could lunge and drive her spear forward, the masked figure snapped out an arm and brandished a length of pale wood, the tip pointed right at her.
"Ignus Infernum!"
And the wave of demonic Fiendfyre exploded towards them at point-blank range.
To borrow a quote from one of my favorite fics ever (This Bites By Xomniac):
"Matters have just left pear-shaped and escalated to the eldritch topographies of a taco warping through a tesseract."
And believe me - It's going to get worse!
Next Chapter: We get back to Percy and co, and escalation of all sorts occurs!
XD
As always leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it please be courteous.
She'd been screaming for some time too - a very, very small part of her mind that wasn't scrambled with terror recognized that much - and suspended by the feet as she was by a force she couldn't see and dangling over a chasm to what looked like literal Tartarus, she couldn't get herself to shut up and think.
It wasn't the pervasive darkness that pushed her past the edge, swirling around her in every which way and seemingly extending endlessly beyond that.
It wasn't the very literal river of flames and bubbling lava waiting below, the one source of infernal light that reeked of sulfur and ash and something borderline malevolent as it raged underneath her.
It wasn't even the knowledge that this was the third time in recent memory that she'd woken up to a disaster worse than the one that she'd blacked out to before - a real shitty trend, that.
No, it was the distance between her and the certain, extra-crispy death waiting below that got to her.
Every time she gathered the nerve to unscrew her eyes and look down, the space to the fiery inferno underneath seemed to warp and twist until her gut violently contorted with nausea and she was forced to dry heave desperately - and to no avail.
She was terrified of heights, more than any monster or god with a stick up their ass looking for a fight, and this?
It was her most humiliating, most pathetic fear made manifest - She'd rather take on a drakon with a toothpick than suffer this.
Hades damn it, She'd take on the three furies, again, and an entire army after them rather than go through this.
But there was nothing she could do - no way for her to tell how long it had been in this miserable state, and she couldn't think of a way out of it.
Thalia couldn't pull herself together long enough to even try.
Naturally, just as soon as the one half-what conscious part of her brain admitted that, the real nightmare hit the road hard.
Ringing out and echoing with pressure she could feel deep in her lungs, a chorus of voices began to sing.
Thalia Grace, Thalia Grace,
Wretched, Wretched, Thalia Grace!
It was a rotten, twisted melody. Thousands of clashing pitches and cadences forced into an unholy choir of taunting misery and evil, and the words they spewed were just as poisonous.
Daughter of The King, The Thunderer's Get,
Whelped to him from a broken pet!
The surface of the burning river began to churn more fiercely, fiery waters sloshing and frothing, and then hands began to emerge from the inferno.
Thalia stared as the limbs of all shapes and sizes, warped and deformed and tipped with claws and talons and writhing things she'd never dared imagine before, their flesh bubbling and sizzling as they rose up and out towards her.
Weak and feckless
Lost and worthless
Born a pawn to the games of fate
And in spite of all, she fails to be great!
Ten, twenty, thirty... more and more emerged with every passing second , growing upwards like a macabre tower straight out of the gnarliest imagination - and the grotesque chorus grew louder the closer they got to her.
Would be Hero, Fallen Low
Betrayed by kin, No greater foe!
Thalia Grace, Thalia Grace,
Truly Wretched Thalia Grace!
She flailed and tried to move, to do something - those things were not touching her, to Hades with that - but the effort was strangled in its cradle almost as soon as she got through the horrified revulsion, because where exactly was she going to go?
She was trapped.
Fuck.
Thy end is nigh, your string is frayed
You've lost your chance to wield the blade!
With that screech, the invisible force stringing her up vanished, and Thalia began to drop, a ragged wail welling up in her as fell directly into the terrible hold below.
Blind panic lit up in her chest, as the heat and the gods-damned stench of putrid rot clogged her nostrils, and true, desperate mortal terror threatened to end her when the roving limbs closed on her and began to drag her down into a hell that put all others to shame, fingers tightening brutally and skittering like insects over as they pulled and pulled and pulled.
Now brace and burn and greet the flame
Fall at last, and be unmade!
It was then, just as she could feel her heart swelling to the point of giving out-
"Relashio!"
-that she heard the most beautiful word she'd never learned in her entire life.
There was a pulse of power, and the limbs strangling her were blasted off with so much force that Thalia felt the ones nearest to her burst. Dimly, she thought she heard something screech in pain, but the thought was lost in the moment of breath-freezing free fall she experienced as the limbs holding her off the surface of the fiery river vanished and left her to tumble down-
"Accio!"
-Before the familiar voice rang out again and that same power seized her like an invisible fist and sent her careening towards a bank of rough-hewn but distinctly undeadly earth that hadn't been there a second before.
Thalia hit the ground roughly, flat on her back, but the impact was cushioned, somewhat, and she wouldn't have felt it regardless, not with the overwhelming relief of having gotten away from that evil coursing through her brain like a triple dose of adrenaline.
"There you are."
Luna Lovegood's face appeared in her vision, the other girl leaning over her with a stance that screamed tension and wariness.
"Up you get. There's no time to waste!"
She stared back into those silver eyes, heart jackhammering in her throat, mind screeching like a broken record.
"...I don't know whether I want to stab you or kiss you, Lovegood" Thalia said, in lieu of screaming hysterically. Again. "But watch your back anyway."
Luna's lips quirked up, tiredly amused even as her eyes remained alert.
"I'll keep it in mind."
A low, sharp growl cut through whatever it was she was going to say next.
Thalia's hackles rose and she shot up to her feet in a scramble, lips barred furiously as that same snarl rang out again.
The surface of the river was bubbling again, and. Only this time, the monsters came in full.
Snarling hell hounds, slithering dracaena, hideous chimera with multiple heads... Things Thalia had never even seen before, and all of them were rising from the flames, mouths frothing and rabid and ready for the hunt.
She'd just gotten her wish, then.
An entire army of monsters, far too many to fight. And they didn't feel like monsters if that made any sense at all.
They felt worse.
"What are these things?" Thalia whispered as they began to inch back, fists clenched so tightly that her knuckles popped out, stark white and shaking ever so slightly. She tried to keep the tremor out of her voice. "And where are we?"
"One of the many, many crevices of Apollo's mind," Luna said without missing a beat.
"What?"
"Our minds were drawn into Apollo's own when the connection I was trying to forge was... overwhelmed by his weight, so to speak." Luna didn't waste time trying to see if she understood, and Thalia had to swallow down enough questions to put a child of Athena to shame. "The only reason we weren't either expelled or disintegrated is because his consciousness is in shambles. Whatever Zeus did to him has shattered his sense of self and our slumbering selves have tangled with the jagged fragments."
She stretched out a hand towards the encroaching hoard. Thalia gawked when her stygian spear appeared in her hand, before scrambling to draw out her spear and expanding her Aegis.
The severed head of Medusa reflected in the gleaming bronze didn't feel as reassuring as it normally did, given that half the things emerging before their eyes looked to be uglier than the gorgon was, but it couldn't hurt to try.
"These things are... fear. Fears. And more." Luna nodded as if to reassure herself. "Negative emotions and ideas drawn from the three of us and made manifest. More yours than mine, I think. I tend to fear other things."
"So this is..." Thalia struggled to find the words, even as she kept her eyes on the emerging hoard. "A demigod dream."
"Something of its sort. But infinitely more dangerous. This isn't the realm of sleep." Luna said and dared to glance her way for a second. "We can get hurt, and suffer far worse things in here than in any mere dream. Don't let them touch you."
Fucking peachy.
"How do we get out?"
Survive now, freak the hades out later.
"I'm working on it." Luna admitted, "Have they said anything to you?"
Wretched, Wretched, Thalia Grace!
She swallowed. "No."
She was going to stab Apollo right in the face - and probably breakdown, assuming she didn't end up dead.
Whatever that would look like in this state.
Luna didn't comment on the obvious lie. The first monster - a hellhound twice as large and as mean as any Thalia had seen before fully emerged from the waves. It placed a pair of paws larger than her head against the shoreline and heaved itself up with a low snarl, fur bristling and dripping with molten flame.
"We need to find Apollo. However much of him remains whole." Luna said, The tip of her spear beginning to crackle with eldritch violet light. Thalia followed suit, the familiar smell of ozone banishing the scent of brimstone and ash as her own weapon sparked to life. "Get ready to run, on my mark."
Run where? Barring the lake, there was nothing but darkness surrounding them. She didn't try to argue the point, though, just readied her spear and her feet, bent her knees in preparation to move, and-
"I found you."
-It was all for nothing.
Thalia stiffened as the words rang over them, seemingly closing in from every which way, and Luna froze solid.
Even the monsters stilled.
Abruptly, her mind flashed right back to the answer Luna had given her.
"I fear other things."
What did a demigod have to fear, if not monsters?
As it turned out - and as just was their luck - the answer appeared behind them.
There was a figure standing right within striking range, six feet tall but seeming to tower beyond even that. They wore robes of black so deep they would have disappeared amongst the utter darkness caging them in if it wasn't for the mask they wore.
Pure silver, shaped like a skull, and all but gleaming with malice.
"Did you think you could flee forever, blood traitor? It's your turn to burn."
Luna went white.
Before Thalia could lunge and drive her spear forward, the masked figure snapped out an arm and brandished a length of pale wood, the tip pointed right at her.
"Ignus Infernum!"
And the wave of demonic Fiendfyre exploded towards them at point-blank range.
...
To borrow a quote from one of my favorite fics ever (This Bites By Xomniac):
"Matters have just left pear-shaped and escalated to the eldritch topographies of a taco warping through a tesseract."
And believe me - It's going to get worse!
Next Chapter: We get back to Percy and co, and escalation of all sorts occurs!
XD
As always leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it please be courteous.
Last edited:
ArcanaVitae
Versed in the lewd.
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2021
- Messages
- 1,681
- Likes received
- 17,756
Thalia is having a pretty rough time in Apollo's mind. Luna is also getting her trauma trigger through he whole Death Eater thing. Apollo's mind is pretty scary.
Morte_Perpetua
Know what you're doing yet?
- Joined
- Dec 10, 2021
- Messages
- 108
- Likes received
- 5,656
Erm, that just happened...
But wouldn't a patronus here be useful?
But wouldn't a patronus here be useful?