A/N: Hey! Sorry for the time I took to update. Like I said, I was showing Paris around to my brother. We had an amazing time together.
Now I'm back at home. I could've updated a bit sooner (yesterday, actually), but I felt tired and I watched movies instead of writing ^^'
Anyway. Here's the chapter. I know it's not much after two weeks of waiting, but remember everything that happened in the last chapter. A bit of calm is good XD I'll make sure to update as soon as possible next time so you don't have to wait with that in-between moment for long.
See you next time, enjoy!
The volcano spewed out its flames and its lava without stopping. A large cloud of ashes was forming over the crater, and soon it would devastate the area. They had to move, but the feeling that something really bad had happened rooted Y/N to the spot. His legs refused to do as they were told. Something terrible.
After a moment, he managed to take his eyes off the scene and said, "We've got to go."
He grabbed Annabeth by the arm. She took a moment to react, transfixed as she was. Another to look away. One more to get a move on.
Next to her, Ethan was already good to go, though he leaned on his spear as if he needed a walking stick to stand up. "Percy. . . ."
"We've got to go," Y/N repeated. He tried not to bother with what Ethan mumbled. Too late. Now he knew that Percy had been in there, and that presently his body—if his body remained—was flying high up in the sky. He froze at the thought.
Annabeth's voice tore him away from his trance. "Where?"
He turned to her. Under any other circumstances, he would've hugged her and said how much he had missed her. Under any other circumstances, but not now. Now they had no time for that. The cloud of ashes was coming down on them, heavy as it was, and if they didn't run for cover . . . well, they'd better be far away before having to discover what would happen then. And of course, Annabeth had got that. He could see it in her eyes. She was who she was, always using logic. Especially when worried.
Y/N didn't like his own answer: "Into the Labyrinth."
Y/N led Annabeth and Ethan to a hole between two trees—the path he had taken out of the maze earlier. They went into the darkness, and he followed. He couldn't repress a shiver. It was always like that when he entered the Labyrinth. Since he had fallen inside at camp, he had come out several times, but always had to go back. Walking from Chicago to New York was not for him.
Darkness surrounded him again, but that wasn't really new. Then he heard a clicking sound, and a beam of light illuminated the tunnel. He looked around, and saw Annabeth holding a flashlight. Good for her.
"Which way?" Ethan asked.
"I don't know," Annabeth said. "We've lost the spider."
"The spider?" Y/N said.
"Not a real spider," Annabeth explained. "It's . . . complicated. We met Hephaestus, and he asked us to come and check here. It's his forge, you see. And there was that mechanical spider that guided us. But now we need to go find him without it. Tell him what happened."
Annabeth started along the tunnel, as if she knew the way—even though she had just admitted she didn't—but Y/N put his hand on her shoulder and stopped her. "Wait a second. Could you just explain to me what's going on? I want to know what happened. Where's everybody? I mean, you weren't the only ones to go into the Labyrinth, right? Ethan, you mentioned Percy. . . ." He hesitated. He already knew there was nothing to do for Percy. "But Grover and Tyson? Where are they?"
"They're fine," Ethan said. "Well, they should be. We split up when Grover and I sensed Pan's power. They went to look for him while Percy, Annabeth and I kept moving."
"You didn't go looking for Pan?" Y/N said, surprised.
"No," Ethan said. "That's not why I came on this quest. I came here to find you. Finding Daedalus is the secondary quest."
"So now you're looking for Daedalus?" Y/N repeated.
"Yes," Annabeth said. "Luke's looking for him, too, and if he finds him, he may well convince him to join the Titan's army. And then he could attack camp without having to worry about the barrier."
Suddenly she stopped and frowned. "I think it's this way."
And she headed down the tunnel, Y/N and Ethan on her heels, forced to follow her so as not to lose their only source of light.
Coming inside the room, Y/N squinted and held a hand before his eyes.
Thanks to some miracle, Annabeth had managed to lead them to Hephaestus's workshop. On the other hand, he'd been in the maze's darkness for so long that his eyes were no longer used to adapting so quickly to brightness, and the room was lit by so many lights and lamps.
When he stepped inside he nearly fell to the floor, tripping over a long cable. Luckily, he caught himself on what looked like a mechanical creature that was half horse in the front and half rooster in the back.
"Hey, careful with that," came a gruff voice from the other side of the machine. "I'm still working on it, it's fragile."
When Y/N saw Hephaestus, his first instinct was simply to do nothing. He just froze. On Olympus, the god had looked ugly; now he was something else. He was so . . . so something that Y/N couldn't even feel the need to back away.
At least, he looked like a man. He wore gray overalls and a metal leg brace, his beard and hair smoldering with fire. He was sitting clumsily at a worktable and drinking a Pepsi. Apparently, he had opened it too suddenly, because he had soda sprayed all over his work clothes.
Seeing Y/N, Hephaestus said, "Ah, you're replacing the other one?"
"The other one?" Y/N repeated. "You mean Percy?"
"Yeah, right. Where is he?"
Ethan swallowed. "H-he's—he's dead."
"Aaaah," Hephaestus said. He didn't seem any more affected than that. He was better with machines than with humans, all right. It was better for the gods if Percy never made it to his sixteenth birthday, all right. But he could have shown a little more emotion!
"You don't care, do you?" Y/N said bitterly.
Hephaestus looked at him. "We know each other, right?"
Y/N raised his eyebrows. "We met last winter. On Olympus. You voted to let us live."
"Hmm. . . ." Hephaestus scratched his beard. "Ah, yes, I remember. My mother's demigod son. Y/N, right?"
"Yeah."
"Well, Y/N, I guess that makes you the closest thing I have to a brother. And a brother who likes to get himself into trouble."
"And why is that?"
"You disappear out of Zeus's sight when you must be one of his least favorite demigods—and believe me, Zeus doesn't like to lose sight of those he's wary of—you stand up for the Ophiotauros against him, you nearly insult him every time you see him. . . . Shall I keep going? Your mere existence is enough to prove my point."
"You think I chose to be born?" Y/N retorted.
"Oh, but nobody chooses it," Hephaestus said. "Yet here we are. But let's not talk about the metaphysical, gives me a headache." As if to make his point clear, he scratched the top of his head.
"Let's get back to the point," the god went on. "Your friend is no longer here. Where are the other satyr and the Cyclops?"
"We encountered Pan's scent," Ethan explained. "They went to look for him."
"Pan?" Hephaestus said quizzically. "If they want to try and bring him back, let them try. Anyway, what did you find in my forge?"
"Telekhines," Annabeth said. "Lots of them. But the volcano erupted. They must have all been destroyed."
"Don't be so sure, girl," the god said. "Some vaporized. Some got away, no doubt. I don't think they'll be using my forge any time soon. On the other hand, neither will I. After that explosion, it's too dangerous."
"Why?" Y/N asked.
"Typhon," Hephaestus said. "The explosion may well cause him to stir in his sleep. I can't risk disturbing him any more than that. Even with all the gods united, he could defeat us."
"What should we do?" Ethan asked worriedly.
Hephaestus winced. "Don't ever ask an old cripple for advice, satyr. But I'll tell you this. I promised you an answer to your quest. I promised you the way to Daedalus. Well now, here's the thing. It has nothing to do with Ariadne's string. Not really. Sure, the string works. That's what the Titan's army will be after. But the best way through the maze . . . Theseus had the princess's help. And the princess was a regular mortal. Not a drop of god blood in her. But she was clever, and she could see. She could see very clearly. So what I'm saying—you need a mortal who can see through the Mist."
"And where can we find that?" Ethan asked.
"That's your job," Hephaestus said.
"Will Daedalus even help us?" Annabeth said.
"It isn't easy being a brilliant inventor," Hephaestus rumbled. "Always alone. Always misunderstood. Easy to turn bitter, make horrible mistakes. People are more difficult to work with than machines. And when you break a person, he can't be fixed."
Hephaestus brushed the last drops of Pepsi off his work clothes. "Daedalus started well enough. He helped the Princess Ariadne and Theseus because he felt sorry for them. He tried to do a good deed. And everything in his life went bad because of it. Was that fair?" The god shrugged. "I don't know if Daedalus will help you, girl, but don't judge someone until you've stood at his forge and worked with his hammer, eh?"
"You're not going to give us a bit more than that?" Y/N said.
Hephaestus winced. "You want advice, too? Well, I'll tell you this. You've met my wife?"
"Aphrodite."
"That's her. She's a tricky one, brother. Be careful of love. It'll twist your brain around and leave you thinking up is down and right is wrong."
Y/N thought about his meeting with Aphrodite, in the back of a white Cadillac in the desert last winter. She'd told him that she had taken a special interest in him, and she'd be making things hard for him in the romance department, just because she liked him.
"You're not the first to warn me," he said.
"I would've been surprised of the contrary. But that's not the most important part. Be especially careful of our mother. She certainly bore you to the world with many powers, but just as many curses. She wants you to be perfect in her eyes. And how so much it makes you limited."
"What do you mean?"
Hephaestus stood. "Goodbye, lads. You did well, destroying the telekhines. I'll always remember you for that."
"Answer me!" Y/N demanded.
But the god snapped his fingers, and a surge of light blinded him. He was in the center of a column of flame!
When Y/N opened his eyes again, he first saw the green grass at his feet waving in the wind. Then he felt the sea breeze blowing through the magical barrier of Camp Half-Blood. He touched the wooden railing in front of him, and looked up. He was in front of the Great House. He turned around and saw the whole camp, from the fighting arena to the bungalows to the woods. Everything was as it had been before he fell inside the Labyrinth. He would've believed that it all had been a daydream if not for his torn T-shirt.
Next to him, Annabeth and Ethan seemed just as taken aback by what had happened and the quick return as him.
The floor of the Great House balcony creaked, and Y/N turned around. Chiron was sitting in his wheelchair, dressed like a Latin teacher and with a blanket on his lap. A succession of emotions seemed to flow over his face at once—surprise and shock, understanding and joy, bewilderment and concern.
"Annabeth," he said. "Ethan. You're home. Y/N, thank the gods, you're alive."
Y/N smiled. "You didn't really think that maze had got me, did you?"
Relief flowed over Chiron's face. "No, of course not."
"Chiron." Annabeth's voice was grave. "We need to talk."
Chiron's face darkened. "Yes. Yes, we do. Come on, I think it's best if we go inside."
When they had finished telling Chiron everything that had happened at Mount St. Helens, they left the Great House.
"Go and rest," Chiron told them. "You'll need it."
Y/N decided not to go back to his cabin just yet. He didn't feel like going back to a confined place any time soon; he had missed fresh air for too long.
He walked down the hill to the fighting arena, ready to let off steam on a dummy or two.
Quintus was there, with Kitty O'Leary. A strange duo to see, playing Eat the Greek while the world seemed about to collapse on itself.
When Y/N came inside the arena, Quintus noticed him and widened his eyes. For a moment he seemed to think about what to say. Then he said, "So the Labyrinth didn't get you?
"It will take a lot more than what it showed me to finish me off," Y/N said.
Quintus smiled weakly. "With that mindset, no wonder you got away with it. Did you and the others manage to find Daedalus?"
Y/N darkened. "No."
"Ah," Quintus said. "So you'll have to go back."
He gripped Y/N's shoulder. "You know what? Don't lose faith. As long as you have it, you can always find your way back through the Labyrinth eventually. And here, take this."
Quintus handed Y/N a little silver tube. It was so cold that Y/N almost dropped it.
"A whistle?" he asked.
"A dog whistle," Quintus said. "For Mrs. O'Leary."
"Um, thanks, but—"
"How will it work in the maze? I'm not a hundred percent certain it will. But Mrs. O'Leary is a hellhound. She can appear when called, no matter how far away she is. I'd feel better knowing you had this. If you really need help, use it; but be careful, the whistle is made of Stygian ice."
"What ice?"
"From the River Styx. Very hard to craft. Very delicate. It cannot melt, but it will shatter when you blow it, so you can only use it once."
"Thanks," Y/N told Quintus. He slipped the freezing whistle into his pocket, promising himself that he would never use it. Because if he ever had to use it, then Mrs. O'Leary might not be enough to help.
Later, Y/N dashed off to find Annabeth.
As long as he'd been at camp, he'd never been inside the Athena cabin.
It was a silvery building, nothing fancy, with plain white curtains and a carved stone owl over the doorway. The owl's onyx eyes seemed to follow him as he walked closer.
"Hello?" he called inside.
Nobody answered. He stepped in and caught his breath. The place was a workshop for brainiac kids. The bunks were all pushed against one wall as if sleeping didn't matter very much. Most of the room was filled with workbenches and tables and sets of tools and weapons. The back of the room was a huge library crammed with old scrolls and leather-bound books and paperbacks. There was an architect's drafting table with a bunch of rulers and protractors, and some 3D models of buildings. Huge old war maps were plastered to the ceiling. Sets of armor hung under the windows, their bronze plates glinting in the sun.
Annabeth sat on her bed, staring at her knife.
"What are you doing?" Y/N said.
She jumped up from her bed. "Oh, Y/N . . . it's you."
"The one and only," he said jokingly. "How are you feeling?"
She tried a smile. "I'm okay . . . I guess. Well, not really. After everything that happened . . ." She hesitated and sat back down on her bed, her head low. "I completely failed that quest."
He came to stand next to her. "Not completely. We can still keep on like we always do. And I'm back. I'm glad to see you again."
And he hugged her, at last.