Percy POV
The good news was that the tunnel we went down was a straight shot, with no twists, turns, exits, nor did it end up diverging from the straight path. The bad news was that it was a dead end. This was definitely not good when something was chasing us or rather a few hundred somethings.
"Tyson, can you help me with this?" I asked my brother.
"Yes!" he said happily.
Together we punched through the wall with enough force to leave a thirty-foot wide opening. Everyone ran through, but the monsters were gaining on us. We were out of the labyrinth itself. With that, I threw Olethros as an ax into the maze and allowed it to use all the power I needed. I told everyone to move away from the maze entrance and tried to hide behind the wall.
Once I did, blue fire, plasma, and ice shot forth from the maze in a pressurized explosion of destruction. It was like a blue beam of light shot forth from the thirty-foot wide hole. It continued to shoot energy out for a few seconds before it began to slowly die down. I opened my hand, and Olethros flew back into it before turning it back into a coin.
"Okay, it's safe to move now," I told everyone.
Everyone moved from their spots on the wall and looked into the entrance. Patches of molten ice, it's a thing; believe it or not, that actually exists, blue lava, yellow lighting, and blue ice that looked like it had to be stolen from Antarctica were everywhere. It was like looking at a contradictory wasteland. Craters were on the ground, cracks on the walls, some of the tunnels were only piles of rubble and stone, it looked like a nuclear bomb went off, and all that was left was the contradicting things we were staring at. There were no entrances or turns left but only the chaos made from Olethros.
"What did you do?" Annabeth asked.
"I let all the powers of Olethros go off at the same time," I revealed. "I had to throw it a few dozen miles down the tunnel, or we would have all been destroyed by the blast."
"The initial blast was dozens of miles away?" Beckendorf asked in disbelief. "Can I please take a look at that thing when this quest is over?" he asked me, pointing to Olethros.
"I'll think about it," I told him.
"If you destroyed the labyrinth, how are we going to find Pan?" Grover asked.
"Give that thing a few minutes, and it will be back to normal. Daedalus made the labyrinth durable. It will fix itself in time for us to get back and when the coast is clear. Until then, we'll stay here," I told them.
"Where is here?" Silena asked.
We all looked at her and then tried to figure out our surroundings. We looked around and found ourselves in a cell. We were in a jail cell. We looked out the bars to see at least three stories of jail cells, each looking exactly the same.
"Prison. I'm in prison. Again," I muttered. "At least this time, I'm innocent. That has to count for something, right?"
"You've been to prison before?" Silena asked me in a whisper.
"I've been to prison-like thirteen times," I revealed.
"Why? Why did you go to prison so many times?"
"Weasel! It's because of that stupid weasel," I said with rage in my voice.
"Shh. Listen," Grover told us.
We did just that. We could hear a deep sobbing somewhere in prison. But it was combined with another voice; it was husky and deep. It spoke in an ancient language, but most of them couldn't make out what the voice was saying. I could. I wanted to leave; this was not good for us.
"Can't be," Tyson told us.
"Which 'can't be' are you referring to? The person crying or the person muttering in another language?" Beckendorf asked.
Tyson ran off, breaking through the cell and towards the sound. Grover tried to stop him, but Tyson was too fast. We chased after him, and Annabeth got a better look around the prison. She even told us that this was Alcatraz. I was actually surprised since I was never inside this place before. We were in San Francisco.
Grover told Tyson to stop, but Tyson continued on the way. Beckendorf went to stop him, but I noticed something. When I saw it, I grabbed Beckendorf and pushed him to the ground. I pulled Grover and Silena down, and Annabeth took the hint and did the same. Aperio and Aioniotita began to growl in the direction of what I saw.
"What's wrong?" Silena asked.
"A monster," I told them.
"Just one monster? We could handle that," Silena countered.
"Not this. I just might have a chance of beating that but I don't like the odds. The best we could do is escape and hopefully survive," I said seriously.
"You have to be kidding," Grover said worriedly. "Right? Please tell me you're joking."
"We have a better chance in the labyrinth and all the monsters in there fighting us at the same time than facing that monster," I said, pointing up from the cover.
I looked over to see that Tyson had gotten down under cover closer to us. He had the same distressed look on his face that I had. I'm guessing he could understand the old tongue as I could. Listening to this monster speak was sending shivers down my spine. This being was on par with primordials. She was the child of Nyx and Tartarus and had to be in charge of the creatures and monsters that single-handedly helped switch the first titan war in favor of Olympus. We know her big evil brother, and the Olympians are terrified of him, Typhon. The storm giant. While the other giants are banes of specific gods, Typhon is the bane of Olympus itself. He is the bane of all the Olympian gods put together; that is why it's nearly impossible to beat him. And I killed his wife.
Everyone peered from our cover and looked at the monster in question. She was like a centaur since her lower body wasn't human, unlike her top female half. She had snakes in her hair like Medusa. Her lower half was that of a dragon. Between the spaces of her dragon half and her upper body were the heads of several animals and other horrible creatures with gnashing teeth and predatory eyes. It was like looking at a monster from the beginning of time before the time shapes had been fully defined. She had a long scorpion tail. Oh, did I forget to mention that she was sixty feet tall!
"What the heck is that?" Silena screeched.
"I'm gonna need a bigger hammer," Beckendorf thought while looking at his hammer.
"I don't think there's a hammer big enough, Charlie," Silena told him.
He looked at her with a knowing smirk. Silena blushed for like five seconds. I knew that smirk; I made this joke with Aphrodite. We basically made these jokes. I am in love with the goddess of love, beauty, and sex; innuendos and dirty jokes were a given. I looked towards Beckendorf, and he looked down towards the ground.
"I know how to use this sword. Do you want me to make you its new sheath?" I asked.
"No, sir," Beckendorf said, scared.
"Good boy," I returned.
"What type of monster is that?" Annabeth asked.
"All cyclops now of her. Bad stories from older cyclops. Cyclopes' worst nightmare. She was our jailer in the bad times," Tyson said, looking downcast.
"When the titans were in charge, they put Gaea and Ouranus' earlier children in Tartarus and locked them in," Annabeth realized.
"The cyclopes and the hekatonkheires," Grover clarified. Everyone looked at him, surprised. "What? Those cyclops are actually vegan, and the hekatonkheires don't like how satyrs' taste, so I'm not on their all-you-can-eat menu. In my book, they are good. I like them."
"The hekatonkheires changed the tide of the war. With one hundred hands each, they threw boulders the size of mountains towards the titan," I told them. "The name of the jailer is Kampe. Sister to Typhon, child of Nyx and Tartarus. Basically, a death sentence that can breathe and walk."
"The other sound is coming from a cell. Who's that in the cell then?" Beckendorf asked.
"Briares, one of the hundred-handed ones," Tyson said happily.
"That can't be," I muttered. Silena and Annabeth heard me and turned to me, trying to figure out why I said that.
Kampe began arguing with Briares in the cell. The argument went as well as could be expected, and she stormed out of the room. Tyson started to run towards the cell. He was ready to meet one of his heroes. We went to follow him close behind.
"Why do you say that can't be one of the hekatonkheires?" Annabeth asked.
"They are ancient. They are older than the gods and are not okay with restricting themselves into smaller forms since they were restricted for thousands of years in Tartarus. The only reason they could fit in this prison is if something is wrong. Something has to be wrong with him, not just physically,"
When we got to the cell, we looked to see a guy with skin as white as milk. He wore a loincloth, and his feet were too big for his body. He had countless arms sprouting out of his body, and half of them were covering his body as he wept and cried. Tyson called out to him, and we could see his eyes. They were entirely brown with now sclera, the white parts of the eye, and no pupil.
"One hundred hand one, help us!" Tyson screamed with delight.
"How can I help you, young cyclops if I can't help myself?" Briares replied.
"You are strong. You can bend these bars. Show us!" Tyson said.
Briars grabbed the bars with his numerous hands and tried to pull them apart, but it did nothing. He tried with all his might to no avail. When he gave up, his hands began to play with each other. Several dozen played rock-paper-scissors, another couple made shadow puppets on the wall, another couple did magic tricks by taking off their thumb, then the rest started fighting each other.
"We have to go," Grover said with my lions meowing in agreement.
"Put on your brave face," Tyson told Briars. Briares' face began to morph, and the facial features were different than before. It was looking at a new face and person completely. But the face went back to its previous terrified expression.
Annabeth stuck out her hand and tried to convince him that he could leave with us, that he could escape. But convincing an immortal being with PTSD and trauma that it's an abusive jailer for thousands of years is not going to hurt you is not something you can accomplish in five minutes...or maybe...like ever.
"Tyson open the gate," I told him.
"I will open the gate," Tyson said sadly. He bent open the prison bars for Briares to escape from.
"I cannot leave. She will punish me," Briares told us.
"Let's play a game," I told him. Everyone looked at me like I was crazy. I turned Olethros into a coin and caught it in my hand as it fell down. "You win and your fifty heads can stay in the prison cell with the most dangerous monster to have ever eaten monster flesh. I win, you come with us with our tails between our legs. Deal?"
"I always win. Fifty heads, fifty voices, fifty choices," Briares replied.
"Deal?" I asked once more. Briars nodded to me. I flipped the coin as it rose high in the sky before beginning its descent. Briars had half his heads scream heads while the other half screamed tails.
Before I could catch it, it stopped. It did not land but simply just stood ascended above my hand, defying gravity. "Oh, I forgot to tell you I can stop that from falling," I revealed.
"You cheated," Briares told me.
"No, I didn't. I, supply, never told you the full aspect of the game. Any person who plays a game has to ask all the questions, and you had a lot but didn't think about asking them. If anything, you lost the game because you didn't know what you were playing. Sometimes, the games are rigged even before you decide to play," I told him. I could feel Athena being proud of me.
I was starting to get hopeful when Briares was getting up from his spot on the floor. He walked through the opened bars. Everything was perfect...until I looked down towards the ground floor. Kampe was standing there looking towards us, her head almost level with us. She was snarling and growling.
"Run," I said. If anyone said I sounded a few octaves higher than usual, I would deny it. It would be a lie, but I will deny it.
Kampe jumped towards us and slammed her arm into the catwalk, destroying the portion we had just run from. We continued to run as she used her force to destroy the catwalk behind us, just barely missing us. We continued to run, trying to survive the impossible fight. Briars didn't need the incentive and continued to run ahead of us.
She took out swords that dripped with poison. Once a drop of poison fell to the ground, it burned like acid. The blades were at least three times my size and twice as thick as my body. She made a long slash with her sword and cut through our catwalk and down the other two below us. The cuts were clean and looked burnt by acid. The few of us behind the sword slash jumped across the gap it left behind.
"Note to self don't ask her to cut my hair," Silena told us.
"You use swords to cut your hair?" Beckendorf said, jumping over the gap between the now two separate catwalks.
"It practically kills my split ends," she said while shrugging her shoulders.
"Silena, sweety, I'm more worried about her cutting off my hair rather than her cutting your hair," I told her.
Kampe began to fly in the air to catch up to us and continued to try to cut us in half with the swords the size of helicopter blades and as wide as a Basketball player's arm span.
"She's gone airborne!" Grover stretched.
"Thanks for stating the obvious, Goat boy!" Annabeth screamed.
"My pleasure!" Grover returned.
The swords came once more, and this time they would have cut off all our heads. I turned around just in time and turned Olethros into a spear. I used the spear to block the incoming swords. On the plus side, since Olethros isn't breakable, it took the entity of the force. On the negative side, I was sent careening off of the catwalk and into the other side of the prison due to me blocking the force.
I was embedded into the wall on the other side of the prison. A single rock fell on my head before I got up to dodge a scorpion tail from hitting me in the face. I rolled out of the way and then used the spears to block two swords coming towards me. I held the swords at bay as they pushed me deeper into the floor of the catwalk.
"Percy!" Selena screamed.
"Get to the entrance. I can't beat her, but I could buy us enough time to escape," I warned.
"Is that before or after you die?" Annabeth asked me.
"I was hoping before," I commented. "But I'll take what I can get."
Kampe continued to push me deeper into the ground, and before I knew it, I broke through one catwalk and fell onto another. I landed on my feet and rolled out of the way before the swords could land on me.
Once I landed on the ground, Kampe tried to use her sword to strike me. I used Olethros as a sword and blocked the incoming strikes made from the giant swords. Each strike pushed me back and broke the surrounding ground. I could not keep up in a battle of brute strength against a daughter of Gaea and Tartarus with all my godly strength.
I fired bolts of lighting from my Olethros sword. I froze the ground and made walls of ice to protect myself from incoming attacks. I used its fires to try to melt through the swords. None of my strategies worked, and I was the defense the entire time.
Her scorpion tail almost hit me, and when I dodged the strike, I was put in the way of one of her swords. I was able to use my golden arm to catch the strike. The swing began to slow down since I was holding it back. It finally stopped, and I surged forward to try and cut off her head.
She blocked the strike with the other sword quickly and backhanded me towards the ground. I slammed into the ground with enough force to leave a small crater with many cracks. I ran towards her once more, and she hit me down as if it was nothing.
She swung both her swords as I leaped between the two of them. She used her tail to try and stab me, but I jumped onto it and ran on top of it towards her upper body. I turned Olethros into an ax and, using lightning and ice, slammed the ax into Kampe. The force caused an icy explosion that blinded us with dry ice mist. I could feel electricity still in the air as the ice tried to freeze the pure plasma.
When the dry ice smoke dissipated, one could see actually frozen lighting surrounding like frozen branches from a tree. I littered the ground and led high into the sky. There were dozens, no, hundreds of these frozen lightning bolts across with us and made it look like we were in a horde of them.
Kampe looked fine. She didn't look injured in the slightest. It was as if the area around her had taken more damage than she. I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case. I mean, really, look at everything. I have the power of the titan of destruction and disaster, and this place looked like I had done just that. She stood tall and smiled when I looked around me to see that everything was worse off than she was. She was mocking me.
I noticed that Olethors was stuck in her chest between her...her...exposed assets. I might not have explained it before, but her top half was, in fact, naked. My Olethros was stuck between her baby monster feeders. My Olethros could precisely see her scaly skin, but she was so tuff it wouldn't be enough to kill her unless I hit somewhere vital.
I crouched down and opened my hand for Olethros to come back into it in blinding speed. I jumped back into the air and tried to hit her a second time as it came to me. I was going to do the same thing again.
This time she was ready for the counter. She got ready and flew out of the way of the incoming attack. When doing so, I was open to the worst counter to have ever been done to. Or so she thought. The moment she cut me in half I threw Olethros towards the wall, and when it got stuck, I opened my hand.
When I opened my hand, instead of Olethros coming towards me, I was drawn toward Olethros, changing my direction mid-air and causing Kampe to miss the swing completely. When she did, she caused her swords to slam into the ground and get stuck. The force of the missed blow shook the entire island.
With her swords stuck and her body hunched over, it left her neck wide open for an attack. I jumped off the wall that my ax was stuck in and forced my weapon out of the wall and with me. When I pulled my ax out, I pulled the ax back over my head and behind my back to give my next swing as much force as I could and slammed it down on her neck with the same force and power as I did before.
Before the attack hit her, I forced more power into the blade to cause a bigger explosion. The force was far stronger, and the blast was far more devastating. The ground broke apart, and I was now in a crater. Rubble rained down from above, and slowly the dry ice smoke went away. Once it was gone entirely, I could see that there were more frozen pieces of lightning.
Everything was quiet. I could see blood on the ground and knew it wasn't mine. I looked to where Kampe was and expected her to be decapitated. I thought her head was going to be on the ground but saw nothing but some blood. There was no way I destroyed her head. I had tried to cut off her head, not obliterate her head.
But when I finally saw her, I saw that she was okay. My Olethros had hurt her but not anything fatal. Some blood was coming off her neck, but it was not anything she needed to worry about. Olethros was embedded inside her neck but was not more than a foot deep.
"You've got to be kidding me. That's so not fair at all," I screamed at the universe.
Kampe grabbed me and threw me into a wall. She then flew towards the wall and crashed into me and the wall. She broke through the wall and caused both of us to crash through the wall and towards the outside. The wall was obliterated and left a near one hundred feet tall hole in the wall. We were now outside of the prison and now near the edge of the island.
I began to fall towards the ocean; I wanted this to happen. This might be my only chance to hurt her when in my element. Literally, before I could fall, not letting me in the water, Kampe grabbed me mid-fall and flew me hundreds of feet into the air. I could feel the lack of oxygen as we continued to rise higher into the air.
When we finally reached her desired height, she pulled me up to look into her face. She stared me down before giving me a wink. She made a kissy face, and I wanted to throw up. Who in their right mind wants to date the literal monster that tried to and is trying to kill you?
When she noticed I wouldn't accept her advances, she pulled me up and moved her arm back as if winding up before a throw. Then she threw me down towards the prison with all her strength. The force of her throw was so strong and fast that I actually caught on fire like a rocket on reentry. Thankfully, since I had my invincible Neiman lion's fur coat, it was taking all the heat for me.
Why I was falling, I opened my hand and caused Olethors to come towards me with the same speed and force. With Olethros came the thing it was attached to, which was Kampe. She was forced to descend down with Olethros flying towards me just as fast as I was returning to Earth.
Quickly the ground was getting closer, and finally, I slammed into the ground of the prison. The force destroyed some of the ceiling and the area I landed on. I got up, happy that my coat took almost all of the damage from the landing and the reentry fires. When I was getting up, I saw a sixty-foot wide ball of fire coming towards me.
"Son of a...." I didn't get to finish.
Kampe fell on top of me and crashed into the prison. The prison was nearly destroyed in a fiery explosion of giant female monster reentry. Half of the entire island was destroyed and shot back into the sea below. The prison was destroyed and left as a ruin, with only two of the initial walls remaining that made up the exterior.
I don't know anything that happened. All I could feel was pain, and all I could see was darkness. I was alive since before Kampe fell on me and crouched down and made sure my coat took the majority of the force. Everything that wasn't covered in my coat was in extreme agony.
Slowly the pressure on me went away. Kampe must have rolled off me or something. At least that's what I thought until bloodied up Kampe peeled me off the floor and growled at me when she brought me up to her bloodied and bruised face. She then threw me at a wall and caused me to crash down from one of the remaining catwalks.
Dust filled the area, and the fire burned. I hoped everyone was far enough away to not be directly affected by the explosion. I couldn't see much, and since everything was dusty and destroyed. I opened my hand, and Olethros flew back as an ax, and I used its glow from its electricity to see a bit. I was then staring down Kampe. I turned my ax into a spear, getting ready for the next bout.
I spun the spear several times in my hand. Lighting began to form around the spear before I threw it towards her with all my strength in my golden left arm. I threw it like a javelin, and it flew out of my hand like a bolt of lighting. It pushed her back about five feet; that's nothing where your a sixty-foot tall monster. She began to laugh at me when this happened.
"And now for the fireworks," I said with a smile.
When I said that, a bolt of lightning the size of five semi-trucks came from the sky and hit her. It was bigger than what I did against Marcus. It wasn't as big as what Zeus used to try and kill Marcus when fighting Talos, but it was massive in size. When the lighting went away, the ground around us was molten and the air still filled with static. But Kampe still stood tall as if nothing had happened.
"Son of a Medusa!" I screamed and tried to run away.
A sword came towards me and hit me in the back before sending me into a wall. The black lion's fur coat took all the damage from the sword-swinging hitting me in the back. But that's not what I was worried about, but I was thankful for not being cut in half. I went face-first into a steel beam and nearly blacked out.
My face was bruised and bloodied, and I could barely see. I was panting and was hurt badly. The black lion's fur coat protected my body and arms but did nothing for the exposed areas. I looked to see my right arm was broken, but I couldn't really tell since I was seeing double.
I tried to get up but could see that Kampe was going to kill me. I smiled at my impending death. A Spartan-worthy end, facing one, who could be argued to be the most dangerous female monster to ever be.
Before she could, something leaped onto her head. After a few seconds, I realized it was Aperio in full size. Aioniotita then jumped onto her body and began to bite and claw at her full-grown monster lion. While she was distracted, Tyson jumped from the catwalk and hit her in the stomach. With the three working together, it was enough to force her back several feet.
I could barely hear anything. It sounded like a distortion of everything around me. I could feel something grab onto me, and it took me too long to realize it was Beckendorf. He helped me up, and I could see that Annabeth was telling him to do something. Silena then used charm to speak to me, and my body willingly did as she said, even if I wasn't fully conscious. With my left imperial gold arm, I punched down a prison wall. It then revealed the ocean below.
Without a second thought, Beckendorf dropped me into the ocean. I fell hundreds of feet before landing hard into the sea. The winds hit my face, and I could see the ocean coming closer to it. I couldn't wait to be welcomed by my father's domain or rather my mother's. Poseidon liked the Atlantic Ocean more than the Pacific Ocean. Thalassa liked the Pacific Ocean more and would be more than willing to patch things up with me by fixing up my wounds.
The waters embraced me as my wounds healed quickly. I sunk a few hundred feet in the water before I was back to normal. My arm fixed; my vision fixed itself. Power surged back into me, and this time I knew I had enough power to buy us time to escape.
I surged up in front of the water and leaped out back into the air. Water bent around my Olethros spear, and when I twirled it around, the seas spun with it. When landed back into the cell and rushed towards Kampe. Hundreds of tons of water followed me.
"Get out of the way!" I screamed.
Aperio and Aioniotita jumped off. Aperio bit down on Tyson's shirt to get him off in time. I pointed the water towards Kampe as it crashed into her like an impossibly large wave. It shot her back into the other side of the prison. She couldn't fight back the continued pressurized water.
"Now, freeze," I said.
I then willed Olethros to freeze the water. This, with Olethros natural ability to freeze anything, caused the water to stop her in her tracks. It was like a giant glacier forced her towards the wall. It was enough to hold her back for the time being.
"Let's go!" I screamed.
Everyone got together and began running towards the exit towards the labyrinth. Everyone got into the maze, and Aperio and Aioniotita shrunk down just in time to make it in. I was the last one; go figure everything went wrong when I was about to be free.
Kampe broke her arm free and threw her sword towards me. The word quickly made its way towards me and sliced through the entrance into the maze. The sword got stuck, but the tip of the blade hit my back and sent me jerking forward towards the ground. I was perfectly fine since the sword hit my black coat. Beckendorf caught me before I could fall.
"Did I mention how much I love this coat," I said. With that, we ran deeper into the maze.