Mari didn't know how long she travelled in the hellhound's mouth. With each bound, she nearly slammed into the hellhound's hard palate. Her crocs slipped against the slobbery tonsils. It was like the most disgusting roller coaster ride on earth.
Finally they stopped, and the hellhound spat her out.
Quick as she could, Mari rolled away. Far, far away. She kept rolling until she hit a pair of feet. She looked up to see the tense face of Annabeth Chase. Annabeth knelt but then scooted away. Mari couldn't blame her. She was absolutely covered in hellhound saliva. Arms, legs, it was even in her hair. She didn't think all the showers in the world would be enough to make the feeling go away.
"You okay?" Annabeth asked.
"I'm... definitely a cat person. That was horrible." Mari turned to point at the giant hellhound, but there was nothing to point to. The hellhound was gone. Shame bubbled up in her stomach. Horrifying or not, the hellhound had saved her life. Mari didn't want it dead. Just in permanent obedience school. Maybe.
Mari looked around. The labyrinth had led them to an old room. Dusty marble columns lined the walls, interspersed with badly lit torches. It was huge, the size of the entire dining pavilion at camp, and there was even a crack down the middle of the floor mirroring the one that Mari now knew to be the work of Nico Di Angelo. The crack looked recent. Mari wondered if seismic activity was an issue in the labyrinth. This certainly didn't look structurally sound.
"You people are crazy." Ethan Nakamura collapsed into a heap on the floor, pulling off his helmet. His sweaty face looked shiny in the lights.
"Yes," Mari agreed. "Yes, we are."
Annabeth turned towards him, face sharpening in recognition. "I remember you! You were one of the undetermined kids in the Hermes cabin, years ago."
"Yeah." Ethan nodded. "You're Annabeth, the smart one. That's Mari, the one who went missing. I remember."
"Oi!" Mari glared at Ethan. That was not how she'd like to be described.
"What happened to your eye?" Annabeth asked. Ethan looked away. Whatever the answer was, he clearly didn't feel like sharing it.
"You must be the half-blood from my dream," Percy told Ethan. He walked over, the redhead following. Mari felt a flush of sympathy. She must be new to all this, because she seemed pretty spooked.
"What dream?" Mari asked Percy.
"I had a dream a couple of nights ago, before we went back into the labyrinth. It was of Luke and his army in the labyrinth. You were there too, but Luke wasn't focused on you. He'd cornered a-"
"Halfblood," Mari finished. Her heart dropped. That was when she'd told Luke that Mason was dead to distract him. "Did, um, did you see anything else, after that?"
"No." Percy shook his head. "I woke up before I saw who it was. I thought it was Nico, but-"
"Who's Nico?" Ethan asked.
"Never mind." Annabeth tactfully swerved the conversation away, fixing Ethan with a very unimpressed look. "Why were you trying to join up with the wrong side?"
"There is no right side," Ethan scoffed. "The gods never cared about us. Why shouldn't I-"
"Sign up for an army that makes you fight to the death for entertainment?" Annabeth asked. "Gee, I wonder."
"Luke held him at sword point, too, if we're keeping count." Mari had to swipe her hair out of her face as she talked, so she didn't get hellhound saliva in her mouth. "My sword. He stole it."
"Your sword is on your wrist." Annabeth said.
"Huh?!" Mari held her hand in front of her face, and sure enough, Drys was wound around her wrist. The ends of the bracelet were sloppily tied in place, but there nonetheless. But that shouldn't have been possible. Luke was many things, and while despicable was definitely one of those things, stupid was not. He wouldn't give Mari her sword back. Which meant someone must have stolen it. A memory flashed through Mari's mind - that girl who'd chained her to the railing in Antaeus's arena, Lou Ellen. There had been a flash of bronze between those chain links, hadn't there? At the time, Mari thought she'd imagined it, but now she wasn't so sure. But why would Lou Ellen...?
"I'm not going to argue with either of you." Ethan stumbled to his feet, even though he was clearly still exhausted. "Thanks for the help, but I'm out of here."
"We're going after Daedalus." Percy held out a hand to Ethan, just as he had in Antaeus's murder arena. "Come with us. Once we get through, you'll be welcome back at camp."
"You really are crazy if you think Daedalus will help you," Ethan spat.
"He has to," Annabeth said. "We'll make him listen."
"Yeah, well." Ethan glared at them. "Good luck with that."
"Ethan, please," Mari said. "Percy's right, you could still come back. It isn't too late. Luke Castellan doesn't care about you or what you want. He was fine with you dying back there, as long as he got Antaeus to agree to let his monster army through. You saw that. You don't have to go back. Chiron won't punish you and the gods... well, they probably won't even notice. And we won't put you in a position where you have to die for a monster's entertainment. But going back to Luke isn't the answer."
"Wow, why didn't I think of that?" Ethan scoffed. "Oh, wait. I did. I know what I'm signing up for. But I guess it's easy to see it so black and white when you didn't spend years sleeping on the floor of an overcrowded cabin. Or did you forget what that was like after you were claimed?"
"Wait!" Percy grabbed Ethan's arm as he was leaving. "You're just going to head off alone into the maze? That's a great way to get killed."
Ethan stared at Percy with an expression so intense that for a second Mari thought that the unclaimed demigod was going to try to beat Percy into the ground. Percy would win, for sure, but it would still be awful. Ethan kept his scorching gaze on Percy for an uncomfortably long time.
"You shouldn't have spared me, Jackson," he finally said. "Mercy has no place in this war." Ethan turned to her. "Neither does trust."
With that, Ethan Nakamura fled the room, leaving them alone.
➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶
"Juniper said she saw Quintus sneak off into the labyrinth with you slung over his back," Annabeth said. "She would've tried to help but he was too fast. That wasn't a good enough reason to stop Michael Yew from trying to strangle her, though."
"Casper Hillow had to hold him back. What happened, Mari?"
They had decided to make camp right there in the gym, too tired to continue. Hopefully Ethan wouldn't tattle to Luke about their location. Annabeth and Percy had taken charge of laying out sleeping bags, and they'd even found some scrap wood for a fire. The redhead had found half a dozen packets of instant ramen behind a column. Truthfully, Mari had no idea what instant ramen was doing in a room like this, but she wasn't going to question it. Maybe a delivery person got lost down here and dropped their package or something. They didn't have enough water to boil but Mari had eaten this brand a lot at Jean's when she was a kid, so she knew you could have this stuff raw.
Percy caught a packet and tore into it, stuffing uncooked noodles into his mouth. The redhead broke into hers with equal enthusiasm, but Annabeth didn't touch her ramen.
"Exactly what it looks like," Mari said. "I was leaving the infirmary and the arse stabbed my arm with a syringe. Next thing I know, I'm waking up in the labyrinth and he's taking me to Luke. I should be asking the same question, actually."
She turned to Percy. "You were dead."
"I got better," Percy said. "I, um, kind of..."
"He crashed his own funeral," Annabeth said.
Mari choked on the water she'd been chugging to try and get rid of the taste of hellhound spit. A part of her wanted to wrap Percy in a bearhug. The only reason she didn't was that she was covered in saliva and he definitely wouldn't appreciate that.
She'd really thought he was dead, and this felt like a miracle. But a different part of her wanted to cry. Why did he get to live, but Mason didn't? It wasn't fair.
She coughed again. The redhead thumped her on the back.
Once Mari was done, she turned to the girl. She would have stuck a hand out to shake but she was still kind of... slobbery.
"Sorry, I don't think we've met before. What's your name?"
"Rachel Dare."
Mari wasn't sure why, but as soon as the redhead spoke, Mari felt a shock go up her spine. Like her instincts, but deeper. Mari didn't know why and she certainly didn't know how, but she had the strangest feeling that whoever this 'Rachel Dare' girl was, she was going to be incredibly important.
"Who's your godly parent?" Mari asked.
"Oh." Rachel's cheeks went red, like she was embarrassed about something. "I don't-"
"Sorry." Mari slapped a gross hand to her equally gross forehead. "Look, there are a lot of unclaimed kids at camp. It's not anything to be ashamed of-"
"I'm mortal!" Rachel blurted out.
"Uh... come again?" Mari asked.
"I'm mortal," Rachel said. "Percy invited me on this quest. He said I could help. You're Marion, right? Marion Carter? Apollo's daughter? I'm kind of... your replacement. You were gone and they needed someone, so..."
Rachel did jazz hands, like she was trying to lighten the mood. It didn't work.
"I'm sorry." Mari held up a hand, glaring at Percy. She didn't know why she suddenly felt so protective over a random girl she'd never even met before, but the thought of Rachel getting hurt did not spell out good things. It would make the future bad. Very bad. Only, Mari didn't have a clue what that meant.
"You brought a mortal into the labyrinth?!"
Next to her, Annabeth looked incredibly vindicated.
"She can navigate the labyrinth!" Percy said. "Like you won't believe. Rachel knows exactly where to go. In Ancient times, Ariadne did the same thing, right?"
"I don't care if she was born with a gps built into her brain. She could get seriously hurt!" Mari snapped. "Does she even have a weapon? Does she know how to use one?!"
"She can speak for herself," Rachel said. "I wanted to come. I wanted to help."
"We don't need your help." Annabeth glared at Rachel.
"Haven't we had this conversation already?" Percy threw his hands up in the air. He turned to Mari again, eyes pleading. "Look, she can navigate the labyrinth. Better than you can. No offence. She's the one who led us to this room. You were there, you've seen it."
"I didn't see much of anything. I was a little busy trying not to get swallowed alive." Mari lifted her saliva-coated arms to illustrate her point. "And it's not my fault Quintus decided to kidnap me and bring me to Luke so he could give me front row seats to a murder show!"
"Something was wrong with Luke." Annabeth poked at the fire with the blade of her knife. "Did you notice the way he was acting?"
"He looked pretty pleased to me," Percy muttered. "Like he'd spent a nice day torturing heroes."
"That's not true!" Annabeth insisted. "There was something wrong with him. He looked... nervous. He told his monsters to spare me, and Mari, even though she insulted him."
"I'm sorry about that, by the way,." Mari said. Annabeth looked at her hopefully, but Mari held up a hand. "Not for him. But I'm sorry I said that to him in front of you. I know you guys were... close."
Annabeth's face fell, and she stared into the fire. "He wanted to tell me something."
"Probably, Hi, Annabeth! Sit here with me and watch while I tear your friends apart! It'll be fun!"
"Percy!" Mari snapped.
"You're impossible." Annabeth sheathed her sword with trembling hands and turned to Rachel. "Which way now, 'oh-so-holy-guide'?"
Rachel didn't respond for a couple minutes. She used a burned twig to draw a perfect replica of a dracaena on the floor. Mari hadn't known Rachel was an artist. The redhead definitely had a lot of talent. She even got the scales. Mari almost expected the monster to pop up from the sketch and try to do her in. She shuddered. There was something haunted about the look in Rachel's eyes. Mari supposed that it was a lot to take in for a mortal. If she were Rachel, she'd probably be a little lost for words, too.
Eventually, Rachel spoke. "We follow the path," she said. "The brightness on the floor."
"You mean the same brightness that led us straight into a trap?" Annabeth asked.
"Lay off her, Annabeth," Percy said. "She's doing the best she can."
"Fine."
Annabeth stood, nudging the packet of Ramen away with her foot. She turned to Mari. "Come on, I think I saw a broken fountain while I was collecting fire wood. I have a couple of tissues. We should get you cleaned up. That saliva cannot be comfortable."
It wasn't. Mari stood, cringing at the wet patch her legs had left on the floor.
"Oh!" Rachel stood, taking a massive green fabric tote bag with her. She held it up with an awkward smile. "This might help. I'm part of a group that does volunteer art projects for kids, and once a month we dress as living statues at Times Square for funding donations. I was kind of in the middle of it when Percy called me, so I had to scrub all the gold paint off myself quick. There's still a bunch of cleaning products in there, mostly unused stuff. There's even dry shampoo."
"You do volunteer art?" Mari asked. "What kind of-"
"Yeah, thanks. I'll help Mari while you guys talk strategy." Annabeth took the bag from Rachel and strode away without another word.
"Um... thanks. For the soap." Mari nodded towards Rachel and followed Annabeth to the other end of the room. True to Annabeth's word, there was a fountain of cracked stone built into the wall, hidden behind a column. It wasn't running, but Mari and Annabeth kicked at it until the water started trickling from the spout. That probably didn't do wonders for the structural integrity of the room, but, covered in hellhound slobber as she was, Mari couldn't bring herself to care.
True to her word, Rachel's tote bag of wonders had a hoard of washing supplies. Mari rolled up her sleeves and scrubbed her arms and legs raw with extra-strength makeup wipes, and Annabeth massaged the entire contents of Rachel's bottle of soap into her hair. Mari was pretty sure Annabeth didn't have to use all of Rachel's stuff, and she was also sure it was deliberate, but she didn't stop her. Mari dunked her head under the weak trickle of water. When she came back up for air, Annabeth had a listless expression on her face.
"Are you okay?" Mari asked.
"Why wouldn't I be? It's my quest. Chiron gave it to me. I know everything there is to know about the labyrinth, but Rachel comes along and she can do everything I- everything effortlessly. That's good. It's good for the quest."
"You're good for the quest," Mari told her. "You're the third smartest person I know. I say third because Will and Drew would never forgive me if I didn't."
"Well, I'm glad someone seems to think so. When we met with Rachel to ask her to be our guide, she called me Annabelle."
"Oh." Mari winced. "Uh, I mean, at least Annabelle is a pretty name? Better than whatever Mr D would come up with."
Annabeth splashed water in Mari's face for that one, but she looked a little better.
There wasn't much to be done about Mari's pyjamas. They were absolutely ruined with hellhound spit, but Annabeth did find a huge metallic gold overcoat that went to Mari's knees. Apparently Rachel's golden statue act came with a wardrobe to match. It shimmered in the dim lights on the walls. Terribly garish, but it looked like solid gold, so her Dad probably would've got a kick out of it. The outfit was still wildly impractical, but better than nothing. Mari shrugged it on over her destroyed clothes. Annabeth tossed her a blue plastic hairbrush from Rachel's bag of wonders, and Mari ran it through her damp waves, relieved that the saliva was gone.
"What did you mean, about your older brother being dead?"
Mari froze, brush halfway through a bad tangle.
"I don't want to talk about it."
"You said that you were there, when he died." Annabeth looked concerned. "Is that why you've been-"
"Annabeth!" Mari interrupted her. Suddenly, her eyes stung. Mari almost dropped the brush because her hands were shaking so badly. She didn't want Annabeth to notice anything else off about her, so she forced a smile. "I'm fine. I don't wanna talk about it."
"You can tell me. I won't say-"
"OW!" Mari gasped at the pain in her scalp. In an effort to stop her hands from shaking as she brushed her hair, she'd been a lot rougher than she'd intended, and she'd yanked.
"I didn't want to tell anyone." Mari ripped the torn strands of hair from the bristles as she spoke. "I- it was an accident. Please."
"Oh," said Annabeth. "Alright." There wasn't really much else to say. Annabeth's gaze caught something behind Mari, and she huffed in annoyance. "Great. Rachel Dare is waving us back. Come on."
They put everything back in Rachel's bag and headed over to where Rachel had curled up by the dying fire, using her backpack as a pillow. Percy was sat next to her, looking like he was deep in thought.
"I'll take first watch,." Annabeth offered.
"Fine by me. Can I use your sleeping bag?" Annabeth nodded, and Mari dropped onto it like a flailing bird. "If my Dad's chariot doesn't wake me up first, you guys can go ahead and do it when we're nearly dying again."
Mari closed her eyes. She thought about what Ethan Nakamura had said. Sleeping on the floor of an overcrowded cabin wasn't... uncommon. All unclaimed kids stayed in the Hermes cabin. Children of the minor gods, too, since they didn't have cabins at Camp Half-Blood. Casper had been in Cabin Eleven his whole life, and Hypnos had claimed him on his first ever day at camp. But after a couple of months at camp, if you weren't claimed then that wasn't likely to change.
Sometimes it happened. Michael had been in cabin eleven for six months before Apollo acknowledged him as his son. That was how he'd spent so much time with Casper in the first place, since the two of them had slept cuddled together on the floor. Michael still snuck into Cabin Eleven to do that sometimes. When Mari had first gotten to camp, before she'd been claimed, she'd slept on the floor, too. In a ratty old sleeping bag. She remembered the next part of what Ethan had said.
"Or did you forget about that when you were claimed?"
Mari was ashamed to say, she had.
Mari remembered being upset at how unfair it was, six long years ago before she ever even set foot on Circe's island. But with everything that happened to her, she kind of just forgot. How lucky for her, that she had the luxury of forgetting.
And gods. Adela was a daughter of Hekate. Who was a minor goddess. That meant that if Adela wasn't in the big house, she would've been sleeping on the floor, too. Scrap that, she had slept on the floor, before she left camp and snuck into the underworld. Mari tried to imagine a tiny, six-year-old Adela curled up and shivering in a threadbare sleeping bag with way too many holes in it. The image made her feel sick.
For once, sleep overtook her quickly.
➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶
Mari had told Annabeth and Percy to wake her up when they were all nearly dying, but she didn't expect them to actually do it.
"Earthquake!" Annabeth yelled.
Pieces of marble dust were tumbling from the ceiling like meteors. The floor shook, and the crack across the middle was getting bigger by the second, shaping up to be a really great substitute for the lava pit at camp. Apparently, Mari had been right to question the structural safety of the room. She shot up and ran.
The four of them sprinted across to a far tunnel at the end of the gymnasium. Mari had to duck out of the way of a chunk of marble the size of her head. Just as they made it to the corridor, the columns toppled down behind them. They kept going as the room collapsed into a huge cloud of dust. After a couple of minutes, the cloud dissipated, revealing a side passage.
"There!" Rachel stumbled towards it. All that running must have been hard for a mortal.
They followed her to a shiny metal hallway, like something out of Star Trek (although Will would probably be able to list off a ton of differences). Fluorescents lit the ceiling as they went. The others were covering their eyes and squinting at the sudden light change but Mari didn't have an issue with it. "This way," Rachel began to speed up. "We're close!"
"This is so wrong." Annabeth shook her head as they ran after Rachel. "The workshop should be in the oldest section of the maze. This can't-" Annabeth's words tapered off at the sight of the door in front of them. Huge metal hermetic doors stood in the middle of the corridor. Carved into the centre, on a celestial bronze plate, was the mark of Daedalus.
"Apparently it can." Mari whispered.
"We're here," said Rachel. "Daedalus's workshop."
"Annabeth should open it," Mari suggested. "It's her quest, after all."
Annabeth placed her hand on the Δ, and it glowed a bright blue, before the doors hissed open and a gust of air burst out at them.
"So much for ancient architecture," Percy mumbled. Mari resisted the urge to kick him in the shins. Annabeth had spent months planning this quest, and he might not have been there for it, but couldn't he see he was hurting her?
They stepped through the doors, which sealed behind them, airtight. The room was huge, flooded with sunlight from gigantic windows that took up an entire wall. Mari ran to them, pressing her hands to the glass and letting the sunlight filter onto her skin. For her it had only been a few hours but she'd missed the sun.
She gazed out at the view - it was positively breath taking. In the distance, huge mountains towered over the landscape. Mari recognised the landscape but she couldn't remember their names - it was something obvious. Below, a valley of tanned orange rocks were clustered around a green forest. The rocks were a shape Mari hadn't ever seen before. Mari gasped as she registered how high up they were. They had to be at least a hundred - no, two hundred meters up.
Leaving the view, Mari scanned the workshop around her. It was any artist's dream. The natural light was prefect for painting, and there was plenty of space. At regular intervals across the shiny stone floors were workbenches, littered with notes and sketches and half-done plans for inventions. There was a circular set of stairs leading to a loft on the first floor. Wait, no, second floor. Americans didn't have the ground floor, did they? The loft was full of easels, some of them containing what looked like lost paintings from the Renaissance. In fact, there were more than a few historical pieces scattered around the place. Mari was glad the British Museum didn't know about Daedalus - they'd probably cart the entire workshop off and refuse to give it back. There was a rack at the far end of the loft, full of jars of sizzling Greek fire. But the most beautiful sight of all were the sets of bronze and silver wings that hung on the walls, as if a swarm of fairies had shed their skin and left it as a gift.
"Di Immortales!" Annabeth's mouth hung open as she stared at a sketch. "He's a genius! Look at the curves on this building."
"And an artist," said Rachel. "Those wings are amazing!"
"Have you guys seen these?" Mari stared at a collection of artwork, hung on the wall. Instead of signing his name, Daedalus had drawn a scratchy Δ into the corner of the painting. One of them was on a girl in a dark purple chiton, sitting on an ornate balcony over an Ancient Roman city. It was from a very, very long time ago, and the girl was probably long dead or had never existed. Still, she kind of reminded Mari of Adela. The glossy dark hair, the curl of the lips that mirrored the slight smile Adela gave Mari sometimes, when she didn't realise Mari was looking...
Mari gulped. "I think this one's enamel. She's- uh, it's beautiful!"
"Where are we?" Percy asked.
"In paradise,." Mari whispered.
"Hm. A worthy guess, Marion, but no," a voice said, from the top floor lift. "We are in Colorado Springs. The Garden of the Gods, to be more specific."
Mari whirled around. Standing at the top of the stairs, looking entirely at ease for someone who'd broken into the home of the world's most elusive inventor, was Quintus the freelance kidnapper.
Mari snarled, drawing Drys.
Quintus looked completely at-ease. Apparently he hadn't lost any sleep after betraying them all. There was a spring in his step as he descended the top two stairs, and his clothes looked freshly ironed. Speaking of, he was still wearing his Camp Half-Blood T-shirt. That left a bitter taste in Mari's mouth. If Mari had to name anybody other than Luke who did not deserve to wear that shirt, it was Quintus the sword-master-turned-kidnapper.
"You!" Annabeth snarled. "What have you done with Daedalus?"
"Trust me, my dear." Quintus smiled. "You don't want to meet him."
"Look, Mr. Traitor." Annabeth drew her sword and glared at Quintus. "I didn't fight a dragon woman, a three-bodied man and a homicidal Sphinx just to see you. Now where is Daedalus?!"
"You think I'm an agent of Kronos," Quintus said. "That I work for Luke."
"Well, duh," said Annabeth.
"You're an intelligent girl." Quintus reached the bottom step, and shook his head like he was disappointed in Annabeth somehow. "But you're wrong. I work only for myself."
"Luke mentioned you. Geryon knew about you, too," Percy said. "You've been to his ranch."
"That's where you got those scorpion monsters!" Mari gasped. "The crates were labelled with 'The Triple A Ranch', weren't they?"
"Of course. I've been almost everywhere. Even here."
Quintus strolled over to the huge windows, as if he was completely oblivious of the fact that all of them, bar Rachel Dare, had their swords drawn. He put a hand to the glass, smiling.
"The view changes from day to day, but it's always somewhere high up. Yesterday it was a skyscraper overlooking Manhattan. The day before that, there was a beautiful view of Lake Michigan. But it keeps coming back to the garden of the gods. I think the labyrinth likes it here. A fitting name, I suppose."
"Is that an illusion out there?" Percy asked. "Like a projection or something?"
"No," Rachel said. "It's real. We're really in Colorado."
"You have clear vision, don't you?" Quintus stared at Rachel, eyes shining with interest like she was some kind of robot he hadn't quite figured out the mechanics of yet. "You remind me of another mortal girl I once knew. A princess who came to great grief."
Mari stepped in front of Rachel, frowning. "I really don't think Lady Ariadne would appreciate the compliment coming from someone like you."
"Ah yes, Marion Carter." Quintus nodded. "I suppose that these days, you would know more about Ariadne's opinions than I. You were an interesting anomaly, my dear. A demigoddess who is almost able to navigate the labyrinth. Almost. Admittedly I didn't believe such a thing was possible when Luke told me of your exploits last winter. Tell me, was it difficult, learning to use the mist for navigation under Circe? Does it still hurt? Because, I've been doing a few research projects of my own into the idea, and, from what I can gather, as long as you insist on being afraid of your abilities it should be excruciati-"
"Enough games!" Percy snapped. "What have you done with Daedalus?"
"My boy," Quintus said. "You need lessons from your redheaded friend in seeing clearly. I am Daedalus."
╱╲❀╱╲❀╱╲
Hannah Murray as Marion Carter
Leah Jeffries as Annabeth Chase
Walker Scobell as Percy Jackson
Kanata Hongo as Ethan Nakamura
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◦•≫ MEME TIME :D ≪•◦