It was just after dawn when the quest group met at Zeus' fist.
As Percy had no one to say goodbye to, since his brother was coming with them, he was very surprised to see Cressida in tears as she stood at her brother's sides. Something felt different. Something felt off and she didn't want to leave them. And they felt the same as Pollux tightened her ponytail and Castor zipped up her jacket. It was small things they kept fussing over, much like the way Juniper did to Grover. Juniper had been crying again, but she was trying to keep it together for Grover's sake. She kept fussing with his clothes, straightening his Rasta cap and brushing goat fur off his shirt. He was dressed to hide his satyr form since they didn't know what they could encounter.
Chiron, Quintus and Mrs O'Leary stood with the other campers who'd come to wish them well, but there was too much activity for it to feel like a happy send-off. A couple of tents had been set up by the rocks for guard duty. Beckendorf and his siblings were working on a line of defensive spikes and trenches. Chiron had decided they needed to guard the Labyrinth exit at all times, just in case.
"Percy, you look terrible," Annabeth remarked as she checked her supply pack for the millionth time.
"He killed the water fountain last night," Tyson confided.
"What?" she asked.
But he had no time to explain as Chiron trotted over. "Well, it appears you are ready!"
And as Percy pulled Chiron over to the side to ask for a favour, Cressida turned to her brothers.
"Hey," Castor said as he wiped her face. "No tears. We'll be here when you get back."
"You held up the freaking sky!" Pollux reminded her. "A maze of madness should be cake for a daughter of madness."
"Exactly! You're gonna stop Luke..."
"And his army of stupid monsters."
"And then we are going to have a pinochle night like no other," Castor said and Pollux punched the air as Cressida turned her lips up.
"I have never been more in love with you than I am now," Pollux said endearingly as he leaned towards his brother. "Do you know how badly I'm in need of a pinochle night?!"
"Oh get off!" Castor groaned as he shoved his brother away. "And I'm thinking more about our baby sister's needs as she embarks on her fourth deadly quest before the age of fifteen."
"We're two years older, is she not much like the triplet we never had?"
"Shut up and hug me, you dummies," Cressida said with a small grin. But rather than hug them both at once, she hugged them one at a time, really savouring it.
"What do we say?" Pollux asked first as he held her.
"I'm the daughter of Dionysus. I can do this. I'm a badass."
"Very good. I'm very proud," Pollux said sarcastically as he kissed her cheek, and she rolled her eyes.
"You're just an ass, at least I'm a badass," she retorted as she kissed his cheek and he pulled away, a dramatically offended expression on his face as he turned to his brother.
"Cas! Cress is being mean! Yell at her," he whined, and Castor also rolled his eyes at him.
"If you didn't teach her to swear, you wouldn't be having this problem," he scolded before he wrapped Cressida in a hug, the two of them rocking from side to side as he squeezed her. "Who are you?"
"I am Cressida Lynn. I'm your baby sister and I can do anything."
"Now that is something to be proud of," he said proudly as he peppered her face in kisses.
"I love you guys," she said as Pollux couldn't help but wrap his two favourite people into a hug.
"We love you too, Cress," they sang.
"You guys ready to go?" came Annabeth's voice and they reluctantly let go.
"As ready as I'll ever be," Cressida answered before her best friend nodded and she called Percy over.
"Take care," Chiron told them. "And good hunting."
"You, too," Percy said and Cressida's brothers scoffed.
"As if anything is getting past us," Castor and Pollux said in unison as they busted out a pretty cool handshake with each other, the very one he'd seen Cressida do with them a few times.
And they stared at the crack between the boulders - the entrance that was about to swallow them.
"Well," Grover said nervously. "Goodbye, sunshine."
"Hello, rocks," Tyson agreed.
"Alright, folks. Step up for your maze madness protection," Cressida said as Annabeth approached her first. Cressida placed a single hand on Annabeth's forehead and a halo of flames formed. And when the flames died down, Annabeth did indeed feel different. "Warning," she said as she faced Grover next. "Side effects may include excessive pride and arrogance because really that's the only thing that can happen when I amplify your personality so you know who you are and can tell the difference between fantasy and reality and the maze's magic can't make you think otherwise."
Tyson was smiling as he lifted Cressida up into a hug so she could reach his forehead and she smiled before he gently set her down and she faced Percy.
"You can't, you know, like see everything inside my head, right?" Percy asked nervously and the smile on her face faded instantly.
"Don't worry, Jackass. I won't see whatever the hell else you're lying to me about."
And Percy just sighed before the warmth of her hand was pressed to his forehead and a halo of purple flames appeared above him.
It was exactly as she'd said. Pride. But not like hubris pride, more like, he knew who he was, and you couldn't tell him otherwise pride, no one could know him better than him type pride.
And, together, the five of them descended into darkness.
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They made it about thirty metres before they were hopelessly lost. The tunnel looked nothing like it did when Percy and Cressida had stumbled on it before. Even with the flashlights they had, the beams of light only showed them infinite darkness. He could definitely see how someone would go crazy walking endlessly in the maze and no matter how angry she was at him, he was very glad that Cressida was on this quest with them.
Annabeth tried her best to guide them. She had this idea that they should stick to the left wall.
"If we keep one hand on the left wall and follow it," she said, "we should be able to find our way out again by reversing course."
Unfortunately, as soon as she said that, the left wall disappeared. They were then standing in a circular chamber with eight tunnels leading out and no clue how they'd got there.
"Um, which way did we come in?" Grover said nervously.
"Just turn around," Annabeth said.
But they each turned to a different tunnel and none of them could decide which way led back to camp.
"Left walls are mean," Tyson said. "Which way now?"
Annabeth swept her flashlight beam over the archways of the eight tunnels and as far as anyone else could tell, they were identical. "That way," she said after a time.
"How do you know?" Percy asked.
"Deductive reasoning."
"So... you're guessing."
"Just come on," she said.
The tunnel she'd chosen narrowed quickly. The walls turned to grey cement, and the ceiling got so low that pretty soon they were hunched over and poor Tyson was forced to crawl.
Cressida's breathing was also heavy as it became more difficult to move but Grover was hyperventilating and it was the loudest sound in the maze.
"I can't stand it anymore," he whispered. "Are we there yet?"
"We've been down here maybe five minutes," Annabeth told him.
"It's been longer than that," Grover insisted. "And why would Pan be down here? This is the opposite of the wild!"
"It's a maze of madness, Grover," Cressida said, focusing on the things she knew rather than the tightness of the space she was in. "Its magic may not affect you right now but it can affect a million other things. Time, for instance. What feels like five minutes to us could be five hours outside."
And Grover's hyperventilating got worse as he thought about how quickly his week would go by.
"Maybe tell him a happy fact?" Percy suggested stupidly.
Clarisse had coined the name Maze of Madness and in the original story, 14 people were literally sacrificed to the maze every seven years - why on earth would a place like that have happy facts?
They kept shuffling forward and just before Cressida could snap at Percy or the tunnel would get so small that they'd be crushed, it opened into a huge room.
"Whoa," Percy gaped as he shone his light around.
The whole room was covered in mosaic tiles. The pictures were grimy and faded, but you could make out the colours.
The frieze showed the Olympian gods at a feast. There was Poseidon, with his trident, holding out grapes for Dionysus to turn into wine. Zeus was partying with satyrs, and Hermes was flying through the air in his winged sandals. The pictures were beautiful, but they weren't very accurate. Then again, these mosaics were probably mortal-made, and they'd always had an exaggerated perception of the gods.
Cressida couldn't help but run her fingers over the image of her father. It had been so long since she'd seen him. Asides from her quests, Cressida had never gone a day without seeing him since she met him.
"What is this place?" Percy muttered as he eyes the three-tiered fountain that looked as if it hadn't held water in a long time. "It looks-"
"Roman," Annabeth said. "Those mosaics are about two thousand years old."
"But how can they be Roman?"
"The same way that the ruins of Mount Othrys appeared in San Francisco. The same way Olympus is in New York. It all moves with the gods," Cressida said as she continued examining the mural.
"The Labyrinth is patchwork," Annabeth continued. "I told you, it's always expanding, adding pieces. It's the only work of architecture that grows by itself."
"You make it sound like it's alive."
A groaning noise echoed from the tunnel in front of them.
"Let's not talk about it being alive," Grover whimpered. "Please?"
"All right," Annabeth said. "Forward."
"Down the hall with the bad sounds?' Tyson said. Even he looked nervous.
"Yeah," Annabeth said. "The architecture is getting older. That's a good sign. Daedalus's workshop would be in the oldest part."
In theory, it was a good theory, but the maze was toying with them. Fifteen metres into the tunnel, it turned back to cement with brass pipes running down the sides and the walls were spray painted with graffiti.
"I'm thinking this is not Roman," Percy said.
"You're just full of helpful comments, aren't you?" Cressida said sarcastically as Annabeth took a deep breath before continuing on.
There was no sense to the way the maze changed. The cement changed to mud and then bricks and then back again. They entered a wine cellar, a bunch of dusty bottles on wooden racks as if they were in someone's basement, the ceiling turned into wooden planks with voices slipping between them as if they were under a bar.
Then they found their first skeleton.
He was dressed in white clothes, like some kind of uniform. A wooden crate of glass bottles sat next to him.
"A milkman," Annabeth said.
"What?" Percy asked.
"They used to deliver milk."
"Yeah, I know what they are, but... that was when my mom was little, like a million years ago. What's he doing here?"
"I don't think your mother would appreciate hearing that," Cressida said, her eyes still on the milkman but they were more analytical than scared.
"Some people wander in by mistake," Annabeth said. "Some come exploring on purpose and never make it back. A long time ago, the Cretans even sent people in here as human sacrifices."
"But that was to appease the Minotaur," Cressida said, now shining her torch on the ceiling as if she was trying to figure something out. "Fish Face, here, took care of that particular monster years ago."
Grover gulped. "He's been down here a long time." He pointed to the skeleton's bottles, which were coated with white dust. The skeleton's fingers were clawing at the brick wall, like he had died trying to get out.
"Mortals are even more susceptible to the maze's magic. Their minds are like clay, easy to mould, especially by ancient magic," Cressida said as if they couldn't possibly be standing in said maze.
"Only bones," Tyson said. "Don't worry, goat boy. The milkman is dead."
"The milkman doesn't bother me," Grover said. "It's the smell. Monsters. Can't you smell it?"
Tyson nodded. "Lots of monsters. But underground smells like that. Monsters and dead milk people."
"Oh, good," Grover whimpered. "I thought maybe I was wrong."
"We have to get deeper into the maze," Annabeth said. "There has to be a way to the centre."
She led them to the right, then the left, through a corridor of stainless steel like some kind of air shaft, and they arrived back in the Roman tile room with the fountain.
Except this time, they weren't alone.