WORLDS BEYOND ( pjo )

𝐯𝐢𝐢: delve into the darkness of an endless maze

Annabeth, Grover, Tyson and Kia stood by, fiddling with their various nick-knacks, waiting for Percy to come back. He had been pulled aside by Chiron, and with the solemn expression on his face, they all picked up the hint to not interrupt them.

Kia was nervous, of course; they'd be entering one of the most dangerous places in the entire mythical world. From what Kia had read in the old stories, prisoners of Minos, the king of Crete during the time the Labyrinth was built, were shoved into. It was relatively simple: if they were able to escape, well goody, but the maze was specially designed to weaken the victim to the thinnest their blood could be. At the centre, a beast called the Minotaur resided, one which Percy had already dealt with once and presumably escaped, but Kia doubted that the Minotaur would be the only horror that prevailed when they delved deeper.

Despite this, Kia could not say that she was the most nervous. Beside her, Annabeth kept asking the others for their flashlights to check if the batteries were fully stocked, bouncing on the heels of her feet, readjusting the straps of her backpack repeatedly. Even for an ADHD demigod, Annabeth was exceptionally jittery. She kept gnawing on her lips and picking at her index fingers' cuticles with her thumbs.

"Hey, Ann," Kia said. Annabeth was just as jumpy as Kia expected her to be. "On a scale of one to ten, how much do you think the vein on Katie's forehead is going to be bulging by the time we get back?"

Annabeth smiled weakly. "Eleven."

Kia shook her head fondly. "Travis and Connor are going to drive your cabin insane. Especially without you there."

"They'll have to deal with me when I'm back," Annabeth joked. She was still, understandably, very anxious, but she had stopped picking at her cuticles now. Kia found that distracting someone was the best way to bring down anxiety.

"Hey, Kiki!"

Speak of the devil. Well, devils, in this case.

Travis and Connor treaded down the hill, their regular pep in their steps with mirroring impish grins on their faces. Both of them held something behind their backs individually, which Kia did not trust at all. She had never been on the direct receiving end of one of their pranks or pickpocketing expeditions, but it was only because she had remained vigilant all this time. She could feel it though, her time was running out. No one was safe.

Connor came around and wrapped an arm around Kia's shoulder, pulling her closer. "Don't tell me you were going to leave without us, Kiki. That'd be so messed up!"

Travis came up on her other side, wrapping his own arm around her shoulder. This was just great. She was sandwiched between two of the most notoriously mischievous kids at camp. "Wouldn't wanna hurt us like that, would you, Kiki?"

"I've heard myself being referred to as Kiki thrice in the past thirty seconds. I think I want to hurt you both only slightly worse than that."

Travis laughed boisterously. "So much edge. You're, like, straight out of a Deftones song."

"That's a compliment."

"That it is!" Connor brought something out from behind him. "And because you're just so special to us, we got you this." It was a little box, that, when opened, revealed two simple bands made of some sort of iridescent stone.

Kia raised an eyebrow. "What are these?"

"Hecatolite," said Travis, picking up one of the bands in his hand and manoeuvring it underneath the sunlight. The stone the ring was made of glinted beautifully, all the colours known to man being expressed vividly with the light hitting and bouncing off it. "Otherwise known as moonstone, its a kind of crystal that has a bunch of cool meanings. We wanted to give you something before you left, so we, uh, decided on something that was considered a good omen for travellers."