"This is not going well," Icarus declared from where he had stopped at the head of the group.
After exiting the service tunnel, much to Leo's dissatisfaction at having to pass beneath the sign, they had simply looked down and noticed that two pairs of footprints had come from the left, so they headed to the right - following the path that Octavian and Nathan would have taken.
And then they had hit the first fork in the path.
"What do you mean?" Percy asked, sliding past a few bodies so he was level with his teammate who was staring at the floor with an uncertain look on his face.
"They're both glowing," Icarus responded. "The path to what you desire is supposed to be the one that glows, but both of them are glowing."
"Which means that what we desire is in two separate directions," Annabeth spoke up. "Think about it. We want to find Nathan and Octavian. That's path one. We also want to find the missing god. That's path two. We need to choose which one we want more."
"So we have to choose between catching a murderous traitor and finding a missing god?" Piper asked. "Great."
"Nico," Percy turned to locate his friend. "This should be your choice."
"You can't say that," Nico denied, shaking his head. "That's not fair. You can't ask me to make that decision because you know what I'll say. I'm biased about this."
"Look, I know we originally planned to go after Nathan and Octavian and I may be playing devil's advocate here with what I'm about to say." Jason held his hands up and looked guilty. "But wouldn't it make more sense to try and locate the god first, Nathan and Octavian second?"
Piper elbowed him in the ribs.
"Ouch, Pipes!" Jason yelped. "Can you at least let me defend my reasoning?"
"Do you genuinely have a defence?" Piper raised an eyebrow.
"Yes!" Jason nodded. "Look, Nathan and Octavian are on the side to Gaia, that's safe to assume."
"Well no shit, Sherlock," Apollo muttered under his breath.
"It is also safe to assume that it is Gaia who is responsible for kidnapping the god." Jason continued, ignoring Apollo. "And no doubt that is where Nathan and Octavian will be heading. The issue with following them is that no doubt they'll be getting lost and going in circles if Nathan cannot properly guide them. We follow the path to the god and we get there first, deal with whoever is holding him and lie in wait for Tweedledee and Tweedledum to show up."
"I can't believe Jason is the one making sense," Leo whispered. "Someone pinch me, Jason is actually making sense."
"He has a point," Nico agreed, though he looked slightly pained. "They'll probably be headed for whatever stronghold they've established within the maze."
"We can follow them there if you would prefer?" Percy offered.
"No," Nico shook his head. "We find the god first."
Apollo had moved up to the front of the group, standing close to Percy and Icarus. "We had better be making the right choice here," the god muttered so only they could hear him.
"We'll find them," Percy stated, determined. "All of them."
Icarus took the left.
"I feel like we've already walked through here four times," Leo announced after they passed through yet another room that had concerningly blank walls. "How long have we even been down here?"
"A few hours?" Percy responded, despite the fact he truly didn't know. Time passed differently down here, that much he knew for sure. He just didn't know how much time had passed.
"Are you saying it might have been a few hours or are you saying it has been a few hours?" Thalia asked, sounding bored out of her skull.
"It has been a little under five and a half hours since we entered the Maze, we have several hours left until the sun is supposed to set," Apollo announced to the group as if he was simply reading it off a clock.
"Is Solis' name actually Sol Dial?" Frank sounded mildly impressed.
"We keep him around to tell the time," Percy answered with a laugh.
"You keep me around for my pretty face," Apollo retorted. "And my wonderful sense of humour."
"I'd agree with that if your face was pretty," Percy shot back. "And we keep you around to laugh at you, not with you."
"I swear you're not this mean when it's just the two of us," Apollo pouted at him and he just rolled his eyes.
"Speaking of faces, how come you still hide yours?" Hazel asked.
Percy nearly tripped over thin air.
"Yeah, actually, why do you still hide your face?" Annabeth joined in. "We all saw it when Nathan pulled your hood down, even if you were wearing your mask. It only really works when the shadows of your hood aid to obscure."
"If what you saw was my actual visage, then I wouldn't be hiding," Percy responded. "A little trickery with the Mist can go a long way, even with demigods."
"So you're saying that what we saw wasn't you?" Frank asked.
"I'd rather the revelation of my identity be on my terms and not when Nathan decides to fight dirty and pull my hood down after losing," Percy sighed, repeating the same sentiment he had expressed to Leo after said incident.
"Which is why you've revealed your identity to nearly everyone on this team, bar Frank, Hazel, and I?" Annabeth asked.
Percy nearly tripped on thin air once more.
"How about we have this dispute in the next room with blank walls that we pass through?" He suggested, tiring of arguing as they walked.
"Fine," Annabeth retorted.
There was silence from then on.
"Aha!" Icarus broke the silence when he saw a doorway up ahead, knowing from the experience they had gained that it most likely led into a room of sorts.
Percy faltered in the doorway, recognising it in an instant.
Torches that burnt with an eternal flame lit up the room, positioned at intervals throughout three of the four walls. The fourth wall was a mosaic, its colour faded and tiles crumbling in places. On one of the walls, the torches were positioned on either side of a set of doors and this time they were both open and empty, void of anything that blocked their path. In the centre of the room was a fountain, dry and crumbling.
A small push from Nico forced him into the room and he had to wonder whether the Labyrinth had led them here on purpose. He also wondered how far away from Camp they really were. Behind him, Annabeth gasped. He forced himself to not turn around and witness the look on her face at the sight of the room where Hera had appeared to them, focusing his gaze on the fountain.
"This is a Roman mosaic," Jason said in a breathy tone as he examined the wall, reaching out with fingers that barely touched.
"This room is old," Apollo agreed, looking around wearily as if he expected his Roman counterpart to split from him and jump out of the fountain to ambush them.
"I've been here before," Annabeth announced. "With Percy."
"Seriously?" Thalia jerked back from the fountain.
"Those doors were locked," Annabeth gestured to the two paths. "They had chains on them and Janus appeared and told me I had to choose. Hera made him go away."
"Oh, so this is where you pissed off the Queen of the Gods enough that she dropped a statue on me?" Thalia raised a brow.
"It wasn't here," Annabeth shook her head. "This is where our disagreement probably began. Where she actually developed her grudge against me was back in Camp, by your tree actually, when I refused to thank her for her half assed attempts to 'help' us."
Thunder rumbled above, shaking a few small tiles loose from the ceiling.
Annabeth rolled her eyes.
"Reckon it's safe enough for us to camp in for the night?" Leo asked, poking around the fountain.
"I'd rather not."
Percy and Annabeth exchanged glances when they both uttered the same sentiment.
"Don't think that I've forgotten about that talk you promised us," Annabeth warned. "I may have gotten distracted but I'm not going to let it go."
"She can't hold it back anymore," Apollo muttered, apparently incapable of allowing the opportunity to pass by.
"And don't think we don't want to know who he is as well," Annabeth added, pointing at Apollo.
"Me?" Apollo glanced behind him, as if he was expecting someone other than who Percy now knew to call Mercury and Mercury's abnormally large nose.
"Yes, you." Annabeth nodded. "Do you think it escaped our notice that Icarus and Achilles seemed confused about who he was?"
"They were?" Jason asked Piper softly.
"News to me," Piper muttered back.
"We can't complete this Quest if we don't start to trust each other," Annabeth snapped. "I don't care which god you've brought along for this, I just want to know that when it comes to a fight, he'll have our backs."
"Miss Chase, I'm more than happy to watch several of the backs in this room," Apollo informed her with a bright smile. "Especially those belonging to pretty faces whose names begin with 'B' and end in 'lue'."
"You brought Apollo?" Thalia groaned, apparently identifying him from his inability to refrain from flirting. Percy stoically ignored the latter half of Apollo's sentence.
"Our father insisted, dear cousin," Apollo informed her, pushing down the hood and removing his mask. "Gods almighty, that feels better already." He shook his hair out, combing it through with his fingers. "I've got hood hair and I don't like it, anyone got a hairbrush? Preferably not a blue one, they remind me all too well of the ones my Oracle likes to throw at members of the Pantheon she's pissed off with."
"He was only supposed to be staying with us to keep an eye on Nathan and help out if Kronos visited again," Percy explained with a sigh, used to Apollo's rambunctious personality that had seemingly left several people speechless. "It was your mother's idea," he directed at Annabeth.
"We were bringing Bellerophon, Patroclus, Lee, and Nico in a cloak back, we figured why not slide Apollo in there too." Luke shrugged.
"And he's been living to irritate me ever since," Nico muttered.
"You know I already did that, Moonshine," Apollo laughed, having heard despite Nico's attempt to keep the comment quiet.
"It made sense to bring him along because well, he's a god." Percy shrugged. "A god who can help heal us, fight with us, and apparently double as a clock in the Labyrinth."
"I have many uses," Apollo purred, winking at him.
"And that is the only reason why I hesitated." Percy gestured to him. All of him.
"Oh Seashell, you love it really!" Apollo whined, crossing his arms. "You'll miss me when we're torn apart again, it'll be like the sea when it is separated from the sun by the clouds; you'll turn grey and cold, yearning for the rays of my smile to fall upon you once more."
"He's got a personal stake in this too," Nico spoke up, putting an end to Apollo's dramatic proclamations. "It's not just me who wants Will back."
"We all want him back," Jason pointed out gently.
"He's right," Apollo sounded serious, his playful pout having melted away. "I've got a personal stake in this, though I didn't know how personal it was until Blue found Nathan's diary. At first, I figured I'd tag along and honour the Oath I made to Will about looking after Nico. Now I'm doing that and more. I want my son back."
"And you?" Annabeth fixed her eyes on Percy. "Would you like to take the opportunity to be honest with us?"
"I don't think you realise what you're asking him to do," Apollo spoke softly, defending Percy without hesitation. "I didn't mind revealing that I was a god masquerading as a demigod because I only had something to gain from it; your trust and the ability to disappear for the check-ins my father has demanded from me without floundering for a ridiculous excuse. You're asking Blue to drop the illusion he has been comfortable behind since crossing the borders of your camp and you're taking away his ability to choose and control who has access to the knowledge of his identity."
"Three of us are operating blindly here," Annabeth argued. "We have to trust the word of the rest of you that Blue isn't a threat when we haven't been given the ability to gauge that ourselves. All we know is that he's scared of his identity being revealed due to a negative response and he has lied and concealed to maintain that."
"Annabeth-"
"Don't Annabeth me, di Angelo." Annabeth scowled at him. "If I didn't know exactly how you feel about Will, I'd be operating under the assumption that the two of you are sleeping together. And honestly, I'm becoming less and less convinced."
"That's not fair." Nico shook his head. "You just said it yourself, you know exactly how I feel about Will."
"I don't understand what else to think though Nico, that's the point!" Annabeth argued. "Everything about him is a contradiction! One minute I think I'm figuring him out but then Luke unmasks himself and blows all of my previous assumptions out of the water. You know him, Jason knows him, Thalia knows him. Hades, Grover knows him! Even Rachel knew who he was just by looking at him and I don't understand what I could be missing here. There's nobody I can think of that fits the description of him!" She pointed directly at Percy.
"You always did ignore the most obvious conclusions," Percy informed her softly. He had no other alternative planned in this scenario, he didn't know what else he could do. He reached up and removed his mask first, relying on the depths of the hood and the flickering of the torchlight to provide a cover of shadow. "Who do you think I am?"
"I don't know." Annabeth snarled desperately. "I can't figure it out, you're an enigma that I can't solve."
"Of all the people at camp, you were the one I was most worried about," Percy informed her. "I thought you'd clock my identity before I got within five metres of you, but instead you stood by Nathan's side and I passed by you without incident."
"Do not say that I stood at his side like an idiot." Annabeth retorted. "I may have stood there but he was the one who insinuated himself into my life, he was the one who came to stand by me when you entered our camp."
"Tell me Annabeth, just how did Nathan insinuate himself into your life?" Percy asked, stepping closer.
"He manipulated me." Annabeth shook her head. "Everyone knows what he did."
"Enlighten me," Percy requested. "Pretend I wasn't there. Pretend I wasn't there to see just how Nathan Burns insinuated himself into the life of Camp Half-Blood."
"Were you there?" Annabeth asked.
"I was on the outside looking in," Percy answered bitterly. "Or, at least, that's what it felt like. I had to stand there and watch as Nathan strolled straight into my home and bulldozed everything I thought I had. I had to stand by and watch as my friendships dwindled, as my responsibilities were taken away and given to him. I had to stand and watch as the relationship I had worked so hard to build with my father receded swiftly like the tide before a tsunami."
Annabeth had an expression of horror on her face, recognition flashing in her eyes.
"I had to stand by and watch you leave me as well." Percy reached up and pushed down his hood. "Tell me, when did you even realise I was gone?"