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Chapter Text

A brown-skinned boy with a purple crescent earring raced down the streets of New York. He dodged around pedestrians and tourists with the ease of a native. A skilled eye might have noticed his hands slipping into people’s pockets as he darted past them. 

Chasing the boy was a young adult with a jagged scar down his face, almost keeping pace with the boy.

Behind them followed a light-skinned dark-haired kid, maybe the same age as the first. He didn’t have the ease of navigation the first two kids had, getting stuck in crowds and waiting for lights, but the two in front of him stayed slow enough for him to keep up.

“Percy you jack-ass,” Luke called. “Give me back the marshmallows or I’ll tell Sally!” 

Percy dodged a harpy who swooped down at him from an awning, and kept going, “incoming!” 

Luke’s bronze dagger swung through the bird. 

Backbiter, the mortal killer, was under his bed in the apartment the trio was racing to. 

The chase lasted until Percy slammed through Sally’s door,  breaths coming fast and sharp. Luke and Ethan followed behind, piling into the pretty apartment. 

Sally’s child support had mysteriously doubled, in addition to her many promotions, and the family of four had moved from the small apartment on the busy street to a larger apartment– still on a busy street of course. The place was big enough for everyone to have their own room– important when all the kids in the house woke up heaving from nightmares. 

The one rule she enforced strictly was no deadly weapons in the apartment. That one had been brought in after Percy broke the china cabinet. Sally wanted them to try to live as normally as possible, but with three demigods in one house that could be hard.

Aside from breaking some plates, Percy had had the easiest time slipping back into his old routine, his ‘cousin’ joining the seventh grade with Percy.

It was harder to pay attention in class when Percy knew how little it mattered. During the first month of school, he barely tried, ignoring his teachers completely. Why should he care about pre-algebra when there were gods who could vote against his ability to live? 

It had taken Luke to break Percy from his detached state. 

“Percy, half-bloods don’t have long life experiences, so don’t waste your life,” Luke had said, the weight of the world on his shoulders. “Learning means you can live longer, and… you never know what you might like. My brother– Connor…” Luke sighed and shook his head. “Just make the best of your life, you have a caring mom and a place in the world, don’t throw that away.” 

Luke fit in too, albeit after some convincing from Sally. He’d enrolled in a local community college, with some help from the papers that mysteriously showed up on Sally’s desk, outlining a forged life. Luke Castellan was officially an ordinary 17-year-old, with straight A’s and a solid history in track.

The weird part was that Luke was 15 when he tried to overthrow Olympus, but he’d aged in the jar. And, he aged much slower than time. Luke was the only one who seemed to understand it.

“I think it’s because of my mom,” Luke told them all one night. “I get how time can be changed. And besides, I don’t feel fifteen.”

Instead of going out at night to kill monsters, Luke would sit in Sally’s room and talk to her. During the day he helped take care of Percy and Ethan, (“it’s just hanging out, mom! We don’t need a babysitter,”) and went to school. After dinner though, he would sit and talk to Sally for hours.

Percy had tried to take to eavesdropping on when Luke talked with his mom. It hadn’t worked. Luke seemed to have some sixth sense for eavesdroppers, either prompting Percy to bed because “I just need to talk some feelings out that you should not have to deal with. You have enough on your back as it is,” or letting Percy sit on the bed next to his brother and mom, and join in their conversation on what had been. Ethan joined too, after a while. He would give information on camp and what it was like growing up unclaimed. Mostly, it was still as bad as when Luke left.

Ethan would sit against the wall, some invisible hackles raised, trying to explain how he felt. “The point is, camp should have felt like home. It was okay, at first. Even though I didn’t have a strong smell, people thought I could be a real demigod. I kept everything my dad had told me quiet. But after time, people clued in on the fact I never did anything big, never got claimed. From then on, just derision came from the other cabins.” 

The trio would unpack their quest, how Percy and Ethan missed Grover, how so much had changed, and yet, so much hadn’t. 

Luke also regaled them with tales of Annabeth and Thalia, his best friends. 

“Thalia was the hothead, but she cared so much about our family,” he’d said. “She was a fighter and impulsive, but in a caring way. She was punk, and never thought twice about stepping in to help someone. She’d punch bullies with no mercy. Saved us plenty of times when we were on the streets, just the two of us. Saved us even more when Annie came along.”

“Annabeth?” Percy asked.

“She hated when we called her Annie, said nicknames didn’t show the real her . She picked her name herself, and if she’d really wanted us to stop we would, but it was like our special name.”

“What was she like?” Ethan leaned forwards, arms still wrapped around his knees.

“Annabeth was the most powerful out of any of us– maybe of any demigod on Earth. She was stubborn as hell and ambitious. She had pride, that kid. When we picked her up, she kept insisting that she needed to contribute the most and that she didn’t need charity. Took a while to get into her head that that’s just what friendship was. She’d get in her head that she could do something and then burn herself out in the process. But she was also just Annie, our sweet little sister.”

“And she picked her own name?” Ethan always sat with his back against the bed frame, but he scooched towards Luke. “Like, because…” he trailed off.

“Annie was a transexual,” Luke looked around like he was ready to fight any of them if they said something. “That’s when someone is born as a boy or girl but knows they’re the other one. Well, she's like, 90% a girl.” Luke laughed slightly, “we thought it was a Poseidon kid thing till we got to camp and found it was just Annabeth’s thing,” Luke looked around at them, poised to fight if needed. 

Sally smiled at him, “Luke, don’t worry. Things aren’t great nowadays, but I promise that we all support her, and any other transgender people.” 

Luke let out a relieved sigh, “Thanks, Sally.”

“Of course,” Sally held her hands out to Luke and Ethan. “You two both know that I love you as much as can be and that I will accept any part of you, right?”

Luke nodded.

Ethan sat in silence for a moment, then, looking down at his hands said “I can’t imagine wanting to be a girl. I mean, well,” he paused. “Ms. Sally, I’m like Annabeth but the other way,” Ethan got up, moving towards the door. “I can go if you want.” 

“Nonsense,” Sally Jackson never yelled, but she did take a firm tone in her voice whenever one of the kids in her house tried to apologize for existing, or when Ethan skipped breakfast or lunch so he wouldn’t ‘be a burden.’ “Ethan, we all accept you. Is there something that we should be doing for you medically? If you want to talk to me privately, that’s also fine.”

“At camp, I just got the testosterone from the Apollo cabin, but I was just planning to sacrifice things in the name of my mother so she would help me,” Ethan avoided Sally’s eyes. She had been trying to drill into his head that he was never a burden and that she took care of him because he was Percy’s friend, yes, but also because she cared about him.

“Nonsense,” Sally said again. “Here, I can set up appointments with a therapist as soon as they open tomorrow morning. I love you, Ethan, and we all support you.”

Ethan curled up. “If you’re sure,” he said, his eyes just poking through where he had hunched into his legs.

“Of course.” 

On Luke’s birthday on the twenty-fourth of September, the four of them went out to dinner. They sat around the table in the tiny cramped Thai place down the street. It was one of the few times the family had gone out without any monster attacks. It was nice to eat good food amid the hubbub of conversation and cooking. It reminded Percy a little of the dining pavilion at camp.

After dinner, they went for ice cream. The four of them ate their scoops, cold in the cold, but enjoying the sweet treat. 

“I’d never had ice cream before,” Ethan stared at his chocolate soft serve in excitement.

Percy had the same blue ice cream that he always got. He tried to imagine what it would have been like to go to camp as an eight-year-old. Back then he was just getting in trouble and stealing change. It was a far cry from going on a quest to stop the gods from going to war. 

Luke wolfed down his mint chocolate chip, looking at the empty cup proudly, “I was the one to add the little freezer in the Hermes cabin hideout. We would all hang out there after our trips to town and talk. That was nice.” 

Percy had learned about the hideout on one of the family’s trips. 

Percy couldn’t fly too much, but once a week or so the family of four would drive out to the countryside for a day out. They would picnic and talk and Percy would be free to swoop through the sky. It made him miss camp, where he could fly to his heart’s content. Ethan told him how during the school year there was a flying obstacle course set up for the Zeus kids. Percy loved the feeling of flying, but he also wished he had training. 

Luke provided them all with a different type of training. He showed them how to pick locks and how to lie convincingly to get out of situations. Ethan’s lying wasn’t great, but he was getting better. Sally and Percy excelled at it.

Luke would also teach just Percy, bringing him to fancy stores or carnivals and teaching him the tricks of the Hermes cabin.

“When I was a counselor all of us would go out once a week to town and practice,” Luke told Percy once as they looked through their pile of jewelry. “We kept the camp well supplied with anything a demigod could want.” 

He also taught Percy how to sell stolen things. The most important tricks though were the ones on how to use Hermes’ powers. 

Percy learned how to feel a lock and move the rods into alignment with just his mind, how to run silently as he ran fast, and how to use the mist to convince people he had a pass or a ticket or a violin. 

Whenever Percy asked about the people who were in the Hermes cabin, Luke would just shut down. They both knew that Zeus had probably killed those kids, and that knowledge hung heavy on Luke’s shoulders. 

Luke also speculated about where his family was. Not his mom, locked up in pain forever, but the family he’d found.

“I can’t be the only one out there,” Luke would say, running his hands through his blond hair. 

A memory nagged at Percy, some girl with dark hair and blond roots, maybe? But he could never catch the memory.

Ethan had the hardest time just catching up with the mortal world. 

He was ahead in some classes, and behind in others, the hallmark of a kid from Camp Half-Blood who chooses what he wants to study. He took notes in slightly wobbly ancient Greek, and he refused to let Percy help him cheat. 

Percy didn’t get it. 

Ethan had a lot of trouble adapting to a new set of rules. “I know what to do at camp,” he had grumbled to Percy once. “And what to do on quests. What I don’t get is how to act like a normal mortal. I haven’t even been in the mortal world since my dad decided– since I was a little kid.” 

What Ethan really struggled with was injustice, teachers having favorites, and bullies getting away with things. He didn’t like the confines of school, even though he liked the structure. 

For Eid-ul-Fitr, Sally and Ethan Iris messaged the Hermes cabin and invited them to join in the celebration. Luke was there officially as Sally’s-nephew-on-the-mortal-side-who-knows-about-the-gods so Ethan could invite kids from camp. Most people were away or preoccupied, but Lou Ellen and Butch came into the city.

A few cyclopes had to be slain, but soon the six of them were settled in the dining room, the table stacked high with Sally’s cooking. Collection of cookies and nuts served with smoked icy water with mistika, candy, juice, black tea with mint, and more food Percy couldn’t even see from his seat. The fun part, of course, was the little presents.  

Percy had always loved the sweets he got to eat during the holiday.

Sally’s parents had died when she was little, and the Uncle she was sent to live with had refused to teach her a lot of cultural things, saying he didn’t want her to speak an immigrant’s language. He had come over from Yemen a year after her parents but had struggled to fit in.

Sally and Percy didn’t fast during Ramadan, or observe any Muslim practices. However, they did have little celebrations throughout the year. 

“The food is delicious, Ms. Jackson,” Butch said softly. He was eleven, with ears that were a little bit more pointed than most people’s. He was also the one who was always tasked with displaying Emelina’s nightmares. Here, in the warm light from the kitchen and windows, he looked out of place, like a child lost in a store.  

“Please call me Sally,” Sally passed around the Bint al Sahn, a sweet prepared with butter-thin layers of dough drizzled with honey and nigella seeds. “You should eat.” 

Lou Ellen looked skinnier than she had when Percy saw her last. She kept looking around as though she expected a monster to come out at any moment. 

“How have you guys been?” Ethan was beaming in the presence of his friends. “How’s camp?”

“Most non-Hermes campers are off on quests or finally settling in here, Eeth. Castor and Pollux are off doing important stuff, and Thomas and Emelina are backup for some stuck-up Zeus kid, the usual school-year dramas. There is one big thing though. There’s a new daughter of Poseidon, a seventh one!”

“A seventh?” Sally asked.

“Poseidon only ever has six kids at camp and they all come when they’re pretty young. But Eliza, the new girl, she’s thirteen! She was in the Hermes cabin for like, five months before she was claimed. and she was claimed because she heals in water. And, she’s blonde.” Lou Ellen gave the information haltingly, still looking around warily. “Butch was there when she got claimed.”

Butch’s face turned a little red, but hen the redness vanished. Maybe it was just Percy’s imagination. “Yeah,” Butch looked down at his hands. 

 “They shared a bunk bed,” Lou Ellen told everyone, as though the information was the most important thing in the world. “But how are you, Ethan?”

“I’m going to a mortal school and it’s good, I guess.” Ethan shrugged, then brightened, “I did have ice cream though! It was really good. And I got a testosterone prescription!”

“Awesome!” Lou Ellen smiled as Ethan flapped his hands. “I’m so happy for you, Eeth. You deserve a normal life like this.”

There was an awkward silence after that before Sally asked “who wants me to paint some henna on your hands?”

Lou Ellen and Butch left a few hours later, after refusing to stay the night. 

“Too much potential for danger,” Lou Ellen had said as she rushed out the door. “Thank you, Ms. Jackson!” 

In March, Ethan finally opened up a bit about his life before he got to camp. 

Percy and Ethan were sitting in Ethan’s room. It had dark green walls and a metal bed frame Sally found abandoned somewhere. His sheets were a soft grey. On his walls he had a few photos: His first day of school, beaming after getting his testosterone prescription, him pointing at the snow with a face of shock. 

“Your mom is great,”

“You know my dad never really wanted me, I was just an exchange. So, when I was eight, I went to camp with Grover and– Allie and Alabaster.” Two names now tinged with weight. The dead girl and her evil brother. “They were my family,” Ethan continued. “And then Allie– happened and Grover split apart from us. Grover just didn’t get what it meant to be stuck in the Hermes cabin, how lonely it got. Alabaster was the one who would tuck me in and who looked after me. Grover got to live in the woods with all his satyr buds and sit at Mr. D’s table. He just didn’t get the way everyone treats you for being in the Hermes cabin. Even Chiron will sigh when he sees you because you aren’t one of the ones worth training ,” Ethan was on a roll, speaking faster and faster. “Mr. D pretends he doesn’t care, but he liked me, I think. I think he’s just mad that he can’t like, hang out with his kids.”

“Mr. D can’t spend time with Castor and Pollux?” 

“Yeah,” Ethan bit his tongue where it was sticking out of his mouth. A drop of blood welled up. “He brought them to camp and they sit at his table, but the great tyrant in the sky said it wouldn’t be in ‘the spirit of his punishment.’” Ethan rolled his eyes.

“That’s so unfair!” 

“He’s just keeping the balance,” Ethan was good at being mad at the gods, but whenever Percy criticized one, he would switch into defensive mode. “My dad didn’t need divine rules to ignore me.”

“I’m sorry,” Percy said. 

“The hard part was he used to do better before he– before– until he got worse.” 

“What happened?”

“My father had to put up with me because he made a deal with Nemesis. He’d call it his ‘deal with the devil.’” Ethan stared at his hands, picking at the skin around his index fingernails. Percy looked away from the scars still on his pinkies, Ethan’s sacrifice in the hotel. “There were a few good moments. I remember. Most of the time he spent with me he was just trying to prove how he was right, but when I was seven or so we went to the beach. The ocean’s waves were crazy, huge towers of water crashing down. We watched them together and he said, ‘Ethan, be like the tides. Never relent, just beat down the sand again and again.’ I got a rock before we left,” Ethan reached down into his jacket, revealing a pocket he’d sewed on. He pulled out a small black rock. “Alabaster enchanted it so I’d never lose it––” Ethan grimaced. Alabaster always seemed to slip into his speech, but it was a painful nerve he struck. 

When the weather got colder, Percy’s body tingled all the time, the effects of Alabaster’s terrible curse. Ethan kept offering to trade something to release him, but Percy refused. Sally refused as well, and any time Ethan mentioned trades Luke would simply insinuate that the best way to get things in life was to steal them.

“You know, Thalia, Annie, and I once stole from Victory herself,” Luke would say, as Ethan shoved his face into his hands.

“I know ,” Ethan would protest, as Luke launched into his story about a quest to steal Niké’s torch. 

“They made it the bead that year,” Luke would say, gesturing to a golden bead with a torch on it, resting as the second to last bead on his necklace. His four beads were completely different from Ethan’s. Besides the newest bead, Ethan had a bull, a tree on fire, a wave hit by lightning, and an explosion.  Luke had a sea serpent of some sort, a neon yellow bead the color of lightning covered in vines with little poison ivy leaves, a rock pile in the vague shape of a fist, and a centaur in a prom dress. 

Percy didn’t wear his camp necklace, the one bead announcing him as a spirit of doom was pushed to the back of his closet. Ethan still wore his. Ethan would fiddle with the five beads, but the paint remained bright as if they were new.

Then, Luke brought home some paint. 

He wouldn’t tell any of them where he got it, just that it would stick over the bead’s magic. Percy, Ethan, Luke, and Sally painted carefully on the beads, Sally helping when Percy’s hands shook slightly. Alabaster’s machinations still loved to reach around and make Percy feel powerless. That, on top of the circular burn from Apollo’s dumb watch, were the things that caused Percy the most day-to-day anger.

The results of the painting were a black bead with two white wings on it, one each for the two sons of Hermes. 

Ethan refused to put something representing him on the beads, and Percy gave up trying after a while. 

He put the necklace back on, adding little trinkets as he found (stole) them. He’d take off the trinkets as he collected new ones. Percy didn’t want the necklace to be too loud. 

Luke finished his freshman year of college with high grades, and as June approached, Percy’s school year was wrapping up too. 

Luke had thrived in college. He was planning on double majoring in theatre and accounting. 

“Sunny up there loves to claim his kids got all the acting talent,” Luke had explained, puffing up his chest in an imitation of a rather snooty Apollo. “But we know the truth. Hermes kids are great at performing, as long as we can convince ourselves it’s life or death. You know, my sister, Sophie, was a terrible actress but a great grifter. She could only act when she was on a job.” Percy had nodded, remembering his fight against Hephestus’ stupid trap.

When Percy asked about the business major, Luke would just say “your mother showed me how useful it can be.”

But as camp drew closer and closer, Percy felt anxiety coiling in him like a snake, wrapping him tighter and tighter till he was sure he wouldn’t be able to breathe.

Percy had left the Hermes cabin in Lou Ellen’s hands, but going back would mean facing everyone he left behind. 

And, going back to camp meant Percy would have to deal with the hatred everyone directed at him for being Hermes’ kid.

So here Percy was, sitting next to Ethan in the back of Sally’s car. Luke sat in the front, talking about his offer to intern at an art gallery. 

“It’s the way onwards to bigger and better things,” he said, waving his hands. 

“Like art theft?” Ethan stuck his tongue out at Luke.

“Kids,” Sally said. “Please be kind. Ethan, Luke’s art theft is between him and the paintings in his room.” 

 The four of them pulled up to Half-Blood hill and began taking their bags out. 

Percy had brought more clothes this year, which was nice. He’d brought Riptide, in pen form, just in case, and the glow stick Apollo had given him to charge it.He intended to make full use of it if needed. Sally had only needed to run the car (or rather, the celestial bronze spikes on the front of it) into two hellhounds on the journey. Luke packed his bag light, as did Ethan. 

“So, you three know the plan?” Sally asked firmly. 

Luke nodded, “I go to the Hermes Hideout and stay out of trouble.”

“We’re not to go on any quests and are just supposed to have a fun summer,” Ethan said. It was the exact wording Sally had used when she went over the plan with them, a fact that didn’t fly over the head of anyone in their little circle. 

“Make friends, have fun, and watch out for Alabaster,” Percy looked down at his hands. They didn’t shake that often anymore after he started going to physical therapy. 

“Correct,” Sally hugged all of them and said her goodbyes, and then the three half-bloods were by themselves on the hill.

Summer had begun. 

Camp smelled like sweet strawberries and in his whole passing-out-and-being-sick time, Percy hadn’t had to experience the chaos of move-in time at camp. He and Ethan entered the Hermes cabin to find it a mess, half-bloods running every which way, claiming beds and unpacking to the best of their abilities. 

Lou Ellen was directing everyone. She was good at being a counselor, better than Percy could have been. She still looked too thin though, dark circles under her eyes showing as she sat next to Georgie.

Georgie had grown since the end of last summer. He didn’t look like he was on the edge of death anymore. Through the chaos, Percy could see his friends. Lynx and Marcy were playing a card game on Marcy’s bunk, and Thomas and Emelina were both helping new kids tuck their sheets in. Even amid chaos, the Hermes cabins still felt like home. 

Lou Ellen smiled when she saw them and waved Ethan and Percy over.

“Eeth, I saved you your old bunk. Percy can have the top bunk if he wants. It’s his cabin after all.”

“Lou Ellen, it’s more your cabin than mine,” Percy threw his bag up and looked around. “How can I help?”

The cabin was in some sort of order by the time Chiron blew the conch for dinner. The Hermes cabin filed behind Lou Ellen and sat around their table. It was still the largest group of campers, but there weren’t as many people as Percy had last seen. And there were some new faces too.

Butch had disentangled himself from Eliza, the seventh daughter of Poseidon who everyone was talking about, and slid in next to Ethan, pulling him into a conversation with Lou Ellen, Thomas, and Emelina. 

Percy leant over to Marcy, “why are there only like… fifteen of us? We aren’t even falling off the table that much.”

“A lot of the minor gods’ kids return home for the year,” Marcy reminded him. “They’ll come in slowly over the next week or two.” 

Percy supposed that made sense.

“So, how have you been?” Percy got pulled headlong into a discussion with Marcy, Lynx, and Nova who he remembered meeting at the end of last summer. They regaled a tale of the winter solstice trip to Olympus, Chiron, and a bowl of noodles, which resulted in all of them getting dish duty for three months.

 Camp didn’t feel like home the way his apartment did, but it still felt like a home. Looking around, Percy recognized a lot of faces. He felt a little less like an outsider than he had.

After dinner, Percy begged for some time and went to find Luke in the woods, following the trail of sticks placed in a half circle. 

Percy found Luke standing downstream of where Alabaster had taken him, staring at small piles of rocks. 

So these were the tributes Alabaster had told Percy about. They didn’t look as ruined as Alabaster had said. As though maybe no one had desecrated their memory. 

It wasn’t like Alabaster had been above lying. 

Luke was staring at one, in particular, a small green doll resting on it. “That was Susan’s doll,” he said, voice barely loud enough for Percy to hear over the sounds of the water and the forest. “She was seven.”

Percy swung back into the swing of camp over the next two weeks, sparring with Ethan and meeting all the new kids coming in. He fielded a few questions about the bead on his necklace and snuck off to see Luke, but he also played capture the flag, snuck out of Ancient Greek to run poker with Lynx and Marcy, and flew up the climbing wall in what Mr. D described as “a way of victory that if you did not think of then you cannot combat,” which really meant Mr. D thought it was funny that a satyr lost the race up the slope.

He got to hang out with Caster and Pollux and excluded them from his new game of ‘get counselors in debt from card games and make them trade us shower time’ racket. 

Percy missed Grover so much that it hurt. Having Ethan was amazing, and Percy felt this kind of thing where he was like, excited or whatever when he saw Ethan, but that was normal. Percy missed his other friend. 

He hoped, at least, the search for Pan was going well.

Percy checked with Luke about reinstating the Hermes cabin trip to town. Luke was fully in support… provided Percy wouldn’t bring everyone to where he was camping out. 

“Maybe it is time for me to reveal myself to the Hermes cabin,” Luke said, dangling his legs into the water. “I’ll stand in the woods near you guys and come out if the time is right.” 

Percy wasn’t a huge fan of introducing everyone to Luke– there were so many things that could go wrong, after all– but he did want the Hermes cabin to be truly a home. 

At the next cabin meeting, Percy brought up the idea of sneaking out of camp and then going to the forest for some Hermes cabin time. Lou Ellen had proposed the motion, and three people tried to second it at once. It was a nearly unanimous vote. 

So, on Saturday, the Hermes cabin snuck out under the cover of darkness. 

Butch had begged until Lou Ellen let him bring Eliza along. 

Percy wasn’t a huge fan of a random daughter of the big three coming along, especially when he planned to introduce the cabin to Luke, but he was okay with waiting till she left for that.

According to Butch, when kids got claimed, they would move further and further from the Hermes cabin. ‘If they were good enough to get claimed, that must mean that they were better than the loser cabin. And, even if the old cabin members didn’t think that, their cabin mates would.’

Eliza was apparently a special case.

It was due in some part to the fact she wasn’t like a normal Poseidon kid. For starters, he never had more than six. More than that, she had blond hair and grey eyes, a trait of Athena, right?  But it was undeniably Poseidon’s trident that had flashed over her, according to campers. 

Butch was her closest friend and so Percy had seen her just hanging around a lot. When Butch was asked about Eliza’s claiming his face would go red, according to Ethan, but Percy had never seen Butch’s face change. 

Still, she was eventually welcomed along to the trip into town. 

The twenty members of the Hermes cabin squeezed into a cookie shop, and then, they all squeezed out and just sent Lou Ellen in with their orders. 

As they all walked back to camp, Percy stood alongside Eliza and Ethan. 

It was kind of weird. At school, Percy didn’t like any of the kids, and Ethan was his only friend. Here, though, he had friends. But Ethan still felt… different. That was just normal friendship, Percy reminded himself. He turned his attention to Eliza, who was slowly eating her sea salt caramel cookie. 

The Hermes cabin tromped through the woods, with a slight bit of subtlety and a whole lot of noise. Percy was glad that they (literally, thanks to Marcy and Lynx,) had luck on their side. They settled down on a pile of rocks. The rock pile looked like the ones on Luke’s necklace. Everyone in the cabin settled at different points on the rock. 

Ella, who was fourteen and maybe(?) the daughter of a wind spirit climbed to the top and the wind picked up a bit, blowing in circles around them like an air conditioning unit. Percy settled somewhere around the middle, noting the way the rocks shifted under him. If he looked through a hole and into the darkness he thought he could see a little glowing delta . Eliza, laughing at Ethan’s joke, pulled Percy back out to where everyone sat. 

Eliza had an intricate locket around her neck that she was fiddling with. She was fine, but Percy really wanted her to leave so he could call Luke over, and have him participate in the cabin festivities. But, Eliza was here. As Percy shifted his attention to her locket, his brain went on autopilot and played with the mechanism that kept it closed.

The locket opened, and a small piece of paper fell out. Eliza lunged for it but one of the gusts of wind carried it to Percy’s hand. 

It was a photo. The picture had aged with time, but the two people in it were still clearly recognizable to Percy.

Luke, and the girl from the hotel.

What was her name again? Percy could hear his heart beating in his ears as Eliza snatched the photo back. Her name was Thalia, wasn’t it?

Luke and Thalia. 

“Annie?” Luke called from the woods.

Chapter Text

Eliza Hunter had blonde hair and grey eyes. She arrived at camp mysteriously a week after campers woke up to see Half-Blood hill had a scar in it.

She was in the Hermes cabin for five months before she healed in the water, and Apollo didn’t claim her. She locked eyes with Butch, and then, Poseidon's trident flashed over her head.

It was madness. Poseidon never had more than six children at camp, even as they varied in age. He sometimes had only five, but another would soon join.

And, they all came when they were young.

It’s dangerous to be a big-three kid, even though your powers weren’t showstopping.

Eliza had looked so confused when Lou Ellen explained to her that sure, thirteen-year-old new campers were normal, but not if their father was Poseidon. Eliza had just shrugged. 

“My mom married this guy, he was…not great. She said his scent protected me until…” Eliza would let it trail off, as the year-round campers nodded their heads. 

Her power of healing seemed incredible at first, but the next few weeks revealed she didn’t have any more powers than the other Poseidon kids. Eliza Hunter was a mystery, at first, but soon she became just another part of camp life.

Eliza was best friends with Butch, a fact that the two of them took for granted and the rest of camp eyed suspiciously. There were only 37 year-round campers, and nineteen of them were children of the big three. Well, it was really just the big two. Still, at the end of the day, Zeus kids stuck with Zeus kids, and Poseidon kids stuck with Poseidon kids. 

Since she first arrived, Eliza had always felt just a bit off. Her slang seemed… off , but she always explained it as her being from California. 

Butch had noticed how she knew more about things than she seemed to, and how, even before she was claimed, people and plants moved towards her slightly, how her steps seemed to move the ground itself. 

What he didn’t understand was how no one else saw her power. To Butch, it was obvious that Eliza was powerful and well-versed in Greek myths. She knew how to read Greek, even as she pretended she had never seen it before. Eliza was as fast to answer questions as the Athena campers she resembled. She loved to talk about architecture the most. 

And Butch hadn’t thought that it was a coincidence that a daughter of the Earthshaker, who the ground seemed to draw away from, had arrived just a week after Half-Blood Hill split open. 

So, Butch had pulled Eliza aside one night, a few weeks before her claiming, and made her spill all her secrets.

And so, Butch had locked eyes with Annabeth Chase as she healed in the river, and prayed to every god and no god at all that his illusion of Poseidon’s symbol wouldn’t falter.

Annabeth Chase emerged from Half-Blood Hill in the dark of night, pushing the dirt off of her and disentangling herself from roots that had grown around her. She knew that she couldn’t go back to camp. There was a tree standing tall above it, a tree that couldn’t be younger than thirty years old. She could feel the spirit of the pine tree in her bones, and Annabeth Chase had never been someone who didn’t listen to reason, so she did the logical thing.

Annabeth hid in the forest around Camp Half-Blood for a week, watching the camper’s day-to-day life. She’d stolen a bag and clothes from town — the way Luke had taught her and Thalia to do so — and arrived as Eliza Hunter.

It was a gamble, but one Annabeth felt she needed to make.

Would Chiron recognize her? Would Dionysius? 

Would Luke and Thalia?

Annabeth didn’t know where her family was. The last thing she remembered was being trapped in a sphere of energy on Mount Olympus, powerless to escape, eyes locked with her mother, Poseidon.

In many ways, Annabeth arrived at Camp Half-Blood the same way she did everywhere else. She showed up and stuck around until she was kicked out. 

Her father hadn’t expected the woman he met on the beach would become pregnant with his child, not even telling him when the two were married. 

He had not guessed his wife would disappear one day, lost at sea, or that the mother of the child was a traditionally male god. That would, presumably, have been an awkward exchange, which was likely the reason Poseidon had simply left her on her father’s doorstep, with a short card explaining the situation.

And, when things went south with Annabeth's father, again and again, she had gone with Luke and Thalia. 

She didn’t know where they were, and that ate away at her. But, her first mission was to gather information and figure out what on earth had happened. 

Lou Ellen taught Annabeth the official story about what the rebellion had been. 

“Three kids were dissatisfied with their parents and made life terrible for everyone now. At least we got the tree.” There wasn’t any mention of what camp was really like, what the world was like, what the war was like. 

No mention of the other kids who were waiting at camp to back them up. 

Annabeth didn’t have an answer yet on why all of Poseidon’s kids looked the same. Back in her day, the six of them had looked completely different. Blond hair with grey eyes, red hair with green eyes, dark hair, and dark brown eyes, the only trait that would pick them out of a line-up was a kind of wildness in their eyes. It wasn’t the madness of Dionysus but a hunger for freedom. 

They all had powers much stronger than current Poseidon campers. Annabeth had always been the most powerful, but her siblings weren’t too far behind. The other six kids in the Poseidon cabin with Annabeth could all manipulate small amounts of water and talk to horses, but that was nothing compared to what it had been. When Annabeth was Penelope’s age her siblings had flooded islands. 

But in the wake of her rebellion, Zeus and Poseidon destroyed their children’s strength. 

When Annabeth had asked her new siblings why they didn’t try to heal themselves they’d scoffed at her like she was crazy. “We’d die,” Penelope had said, rolling her eyes. “You remember when father made us swear on the Styx to never try to advance our powers.”  

Annabeth nodded and cursed her mother in her head. 

Another difference since Annabeth had been imprisoned, Perseus Jackson was the first child of Hermes born since Susan Jane Bell. Annabeth remembered Susan, Luke’s youngest sister. Annabeth remembered a lot of people. 

During her first weeks at camp, it felt like she was in a haze of loss and grief. Annabeth had stumbled from the dining hall where she pushed food into the flames without prayer, to archery where her shots embedded themselves pointlessly in the ground.

It was better than the first time she’d tried to use a bow.

Annabeth remembered all the campers she had known, but she thought about Luke and Thalia the most. 

Thalia had been the one to teach Annabeth how to shoot a bow.

“Okay, Annie, just place your hands like this,” Thalia had said, positioning Annabeth’s hands on the bow that was just a bit too big for her eight-year-old frame. “Great job! Now, pull back. Fire!” Thalia had leaped aside to dodge Annabeth’s arrow, “you’ll learn, Annie.”

Annabeth could admit to herself that she really hadn’t learned. Daggers were always her strong suit, and swords were her natural habitat. Chiron had hinted once about a sword meant for her, but he’d also seen her hatred of the gods who left two nine-year-olds in charge of a seven-year-old with powers she couldn’t control. Her hatred of the gods who drove Luke’s mom to insanity and Thalia’s mother to destruction. So, Chiron had always been cautious about trusting Annabeth too much. It was probably smart.

Butch Walker had been there for Annabeth since day one when she arrived at camp. He’d helped her settle in and had helped her find decorations for their bunk bed. From there, he’d helped Annabeth get hormones. Butch had assured her that people were better about understanding gender and stuff at camp– and taught her more about they/them pronouns. While Butch was good with he or they, Annabeth preferred she (but only a little.) Butch had also sat with her when she woke up from nightmares. 

Ordinarily, Annabeth had dreamed the same way all of her mother’s children had dreamed, hopping around in time and space at the whims of the universe. 

Her nightmares while she slept in the Hermes cabin were all about the same thing.

In the dream, Annabeth was buried in the dirt, roots climbing around her and through her, disintegrating her body as she drowned in the earth. 

But Butch had sat with her and showed her where the cocoa mix was kept. In edited terms, she had told them about her life growing up. Annabeth had explained how her father and stepmother hadn’t understood her being a transexual and had blamed the fact her mother was a male god for it. It was a little awkward to try and hide the fact she was from thirty years ago and had spent her life growing up with Luke and Thalia, the dead rebels. 

“Monsters would break into my room every night,” Annabeth explained to Butch. “They would attack me and I would scream and cry but when my father or stepmother came up the wounds would have healed.”

“I thought you said your mother was the mortal parent,” Butch was sitting next to Annabeth on the bottom bunk, legs dangling. 

“I wasn’t sure how people would react to my…situation.”

“And you don’t know who she is?” 

“I can’t tell you right now.”

“That’s fair,” Butch said, before regaling Annabeth with the tale of how he arrived at camp, including him hurling himself into the lake, still trying to avoid a cyclops that had been stopped at the border. 

Then, in early November, Butch had seen Annabeth standing on the beach.

She had avoided going down to the wharf where the most important memories had been set. The ocean was always where her mind felt the clearest, though. Standing in the surf, Annabeth felt like herself. Annabeth remembered the day she had jumped behind Luke, jumped into the fight against the gods. 

Young Annabeth, only eleven and back from her father’s house, had thrown her necklace in the water. Annabeth remembered watching her father’s wedding band and her mother’s sea dollar sink slowly down. They hadn’t sunk quickly enough, and it had been too little for the storm swirling in her, so she had taken matters into her own hands.

Eleven-year-old Annabeth had shoved her hand out, forcing the Long Island Sound to recoil, spinning itself in circles to devour her necklace. She hadn’t paid attention to the hurricane forming around her. Annabeth had screamed at the ocean and thrown it . The water flew back and recoiled, coming back as tides always did. The saltwater had slammed over the beach but Annabeth stood in a sphere of her power. 

Thirteen-year-old Annabeth stood on the beach and cried as the ocean lapped at her ankles, pulling away from the sand to climb her shin. Salt to salt or whatever.

“Your mother…” Butch had trailed off, and Annabeth had nodded. 

“I’m not really anything I said I was.”

In the present moment, Annabeth was sitting on Zeus’ fist. Luke Castellan, her brother, her friend, and her family had just called her name. The two of them were supposed to be dead.

“Annie?” Luke called. 

Annabeth snatched her picture back from Perseus and placed her hand on her dagger. 

Perseus looked shocked, looking between her and the silhouette in the trees.

“Hermes cabin, I also brought this idea up to introduce someone,” Perseus said. 

Luke stepped out of the shadows.

He still had the same sandy-blond hair, blue eyes, and the same dimples. 

“I’m Percy’s brother, but don’t worry, I bite less than he does,” Luke gave one of his trademarked smiles. He tore his eyes away from Annabeth to look over the group, “you’ve all heard a lot about me, but not much of it is true. My name is Luke.”

Pandemonium. 

Every member of the Hermes cabin from Georgie to Lou Ellen tried to make their voice known, shouting over each other. Luke walked closer to Annabeth and tilted his head to her. 

How could Annabeth not run to him? Annabeth ran and hugged Luke. He smelled different than he had a year ago– or thirty years ago – but he was still her Luke. 

Lou Ellen finally got the cabin to some form of quiet, turning to Perseus. “Percy, how long have you had him here?” she asked.

Luke stepped in to answer for his brother, “I was freed from my prison during the quest last year through no choice of Percy’s. I know you all will have some hesitation to trust me, but I can promise I mean no camper any harm. I’ve been living with Percy and Ethan for the last year and haven’t caused any trouble besides stealing the odd bag of marshmallows from Perce.” 

Luke still had the same charisma. Thalia would joke he could sell someone their own watch without even stopping to give the watch back.

It took an hour to sort out Luke, and another hour for Annabeth to come forth and explain her place in it all. She had more sway than Luke, but it was still a bold choice of him and Perseus to come forward when new kids arrived at camp. 

The next few days settled the chaos, with Annabeth never separating herself from Luke. The chaos arrived back when Perseus spilled his next piece of information. 

“I think we saw Thalia on our quest when we were in this hotel in Las Vegas. It was a trap and stole time. I don’t know why or how she got there, but neither of you two knows how you got trapped either so it might be our best shot. I spent the last few days trying to remember everything. She had black hair with blonde roots and kept asking me if I’d seen her brother.” 

Percy told the whole Hermes cabin on Tuesday, as Luke tried to brainstorm reasons to leave camp.

“We need a quest, Annie,” Luke said, running his hands through his hair for the thousandth time. Back in their day, Luke, Annabeth, and Thalia would have been the natural pick for a quest, but this wasn’t the nineteen-seventies anymore. “How can we get a quest that only we can do? Something personal enough we can map things out.”

The opportunity fell into their laps only a few days later. Emelina woke up, looking around in panic. 

“Percy, you need to hear this,” she said, shaking Perseus awake. Annabeth had slept in the hidden room with Luke. Gods, Annabeth had missed him. Their family had been formed while trapped or on the run, but it was the best family she had ever known. 

Emelina stood in the room with Annabeth, Butch, Perseus, Ethan, and Luke. 

“It was Grover, he was in a maze,” a maze formed in front of their eyes, and they could see a brown-skinned satyr looking around. From the waist up, he looked like a typical gangly teenager with a peach-fuzz goatee and a bad case of acne. He was wearing a rasta cap, even underground with no one around to see his horns.

Annabeth had heard a bit about Grover Underwood.

He had brought Perseus Jackson to camp and gone on the quest to return the master bolt that everyone in the Hermes Cabin had said he didn’t steal, and that everyone in the Poseidon cabin said he did. He had set off on the typical satyr quest; He was trying to find Pan, the god of the wild. 

Grover reached for the wall, where a symbol like the one in Zeus’ fist glowed blue. “I’d been getting flashes but this dream was clear.” Grover ran down a cramped hall, the walls seeming to twist around him. He ran with a typical satyr gait but it was clear he was holding back from a full run, wincing back as if he expected to run into something. There was a root growing and when he saw it he broke into a grin. The grin faded when he heard sounds behind him, an echoing song.

“Percy,” Grover called, staring straight through the illusion. “Percy, you need to come here.”

“He’s been all over the country in a super short amount of time, he’s been in Boston, New York, Las Vegas,” Annabeth knew Luke focused in on the same thing Emelina said as she had. Las Vegas, the city where Thalia was. If they could get across the United States in just a day or two the trio could get back together. 

In her studies of architecture, Annabeth had read a lot about The Labyrinth. It was said to span the United States, under every major city. Any city you could look at, the Labyrinth would be right under the surface of the mortal world, a second skin. It had been growing for thousands of years, lacing its way under cities, connecting everything underground. The Labyrinth could lead you almost anywhere. It read your thoughts. It was designed to fool you, trick you, and kill you. She’d always thought that maybe she could navigate it though.

“You can get anywhere through the Labyrinth,” Annabeth said. If you don't get lost and die a horrible death.

Luke nodded, looking at the illusion appraisingly, “Annie, do you remember Laura?” 

Annabeth nodded, “the daughter of Athena. They found her in New Mexico, right?” 

“What?” Butch held his hand out to Annabeth and let the illusion fade.

Annabeth winced, she didn’t like to remember this story. “When I was ten, two— years ago, there was this daughter of Athena. She was next in line to be cabin leader.” Annabeth had grown up with one foot in the Athena cabin, and she’d always looked at Laura with admiration. 

“She sounds cool,” Butch said.

“She was,” Annabeth took their hand and squeezed it.

Luke took over, “she told me some things when I was watching over her, talked about someone who said he knew the way to find a path. La— she said there was a way if you could find someone who knew.”

“If you can convince Chiron that you can map it or something, maybe Perseus and Ethan could get a quest to save their friend. Maybe even just say you’ll find a way to map it and get Grover back,” and we could save Thalia .

“And if I made up a prophecy that says we’d need Annabeth to come along with you then Chiron couldn’t say no,” 

Perseus, of course, objected, “how can we get into the labyrinth?”

“None of us knew where Laura went in—” Luke admitted. 

“I know a lot about the Labyrinth,” Annabeth interrupted. “There’s the symbol of Daedalus at every entrance, a greek delta.” 

Perseus shifted, rolling the bead on his necklace in his fingers. It didn’t match the one on the other campers’ necklaces except for Ethan’s. “Guys, I saw a glowing delta in the rockpile.”

Chiron was surprisingly harsh when Perseus and Ethan brought a quest to find their friend before him. Annabeth remembered when everyone was pressured to go on quests, and the only strike against finding your friend was that it wouldn’t bring much glory to your parent’s name. Maybe it was just that Perseus had the gods’ eyes on him, but Annabeth had been watched since she was young and she had still gone on plenty of adventures. Still, Perseus had inherited something from his father and convinced Chiron. 

It helped when Annabeth mentioned the symbol of Daedalus. She hadn’t wanted to tell Chiron there was an entrance to the Labyrinth in the camp. Annabeth had worried he would probably want to send more experienced questers, but it had made him more solidly in favor of Percy and Ethan going. The one change that did occur was Chiron warning them all to keep it under wraps. It was probably good the fake prophecy would call for Annabeth, or she might not have been invited along. 

It felt like every morning Percy was woken up by being hit in the face with a wet fish. Grover was in danger and underground, somewhere Percy wouldn’t be able to run or fly. Not to mention his mom had told him not to go on any quests this time around. Luke had found Annabeth… but she seemed like she hated Percy. And now Percy was lying to Lorie about the prophecy she had just spoken.

“I wrote it down,” Percy showed Lorie the paper.

The seventh daughter of the sea

will accompany you to where you seek.

The labyrinth's paths wind and confuse

doorways lead to where you choose.

Map the paths, and find the way,

only then can you save the day.

Luke had spent hours on it, and it didn’t rhyme perfectly, but it was what they had.

Lorie raised an eyebrow at Percy, “Percy, I may not remember what I said, but I know a prophecy when I see one.” 

Percy did not have a backup plan. That was definitely a bad idea in hindsight. 

“It’s okay!” Lorie smiled, holding a teacup out to Percy. They were seated in her cave, beautiful tapestries all around. Added to the spun scenes depicting battles and celebrations and stories spanning years Percy could see Lorie had finished the tapestry he had seen the last time he was in her cave. It showed Percy rising above the upside-down skyline of Charlotte, North Carolina next to the burning corpse of the Bank of America corporate center. “I’ve been an oracle for almost fifteen years, at a certain point you learn to trust campers. And, this way, people will believe it.”

“What?”

“The reason why oracles are replaced after fifteen years is the curse gets too strong.”

“What will you do when your time is…done? When you finish.”

“I don’t know,” Lorie sipped her chamomile. “It’s weird to be fifteen and yet thirty.”

“I can’t even imagine being fifteen,” Percy tried to lighten the conversation. “So you’re… cursed?”

 “Have you heard the myth of Cassandra?” Lorie asked, sitting up straighter. “She could see the future, but no one would believe her prophecies. Mortals get longer, at least. There’s a reason children of Apollo aren’t oracles.”

“Like Thomas? He gets bits of old prophecies,” Percy always believed what Lorie said. He vowed that even if no one else believed her, he would. Percy remembered what Alabaster had said back when he had first arrived at camp, that what Lorie said was important half the time ‘ but the other half the time it’s just paranoia or something she made up that she mistakes for prophecy. ’ Percy had hoped then that if he heard a prophecy from Lorie he would know it for what it was. 

“If Thomas started giving glimpses of the future more often, then it might,” Lorie nodded.

Percy left the cave with mixed emotions. They had their permission for the quest, that was the important part. He hadn’t written down what Lorie had said in the cave because he had forgotten a pen or another sheet of paper, but it wasn’t that important to have exact wording. He remembered enough of it. 

Dionysus nodded when Percy relayed the prophecy, “well well, looks like you’ll be bringing Liesl along. She’s not too bad for a daughter of old fish breath.” 

“That’s it?” Percy had expected more pushback somehow, an offer to turn him into a rabbit, at least.   

“To navigate the labyrinth you’ll need to find someone who knows how. Look for Hephestus, he’ll be in his forge. It won’t be as easy as Liza hopes but it’s not like you’ll be watched on this quest,” Dionysus looked Percy in his eyes, and Percy remembered that he was the god of madness for a reason. In Mr. D’s eyes was the promise of a soldier on a battlefield who has never stopped fighting to the point where they can’t see the color of their friend’s armor, the promise of someone who could speak as loudly as they wanted but none of the words would make sense. “My father doesn’t know what he doesn’t watch. When you’ve left, tell Allie that I want to see her sister again too.”

“Thank you,” Percy didn’t quite know what to say to Mr. D admitting to knowing the truth about Annabeth.

“Don’t thank me, Perseus,” Dionysus shook his head, staring out over the strawberry fields. “And don’t involve my children in your futile battle.” 

Percy, Ethan, Annabeth, and Luke gathered in the Hermes cabin before they embarked on their quests. Percy had briefed them on Mr. D’s advice to find the forge of Hephestus, and they’d all gone off and packed bags. 

Percy’s had clothes and dried food and all that, along with his cards and spray paint. Ethan was carrying the first aid kit along with his clothes and food. Percy wasn’t sure what Annabeth had. They’d split up the cash and drachmas, but the plan was to not get separated. Annabeth had warned them it might be hard, the Labyrinth actively working against them at every step. 

Luke had his bronze dagger, a look-alike to one of Ethan’s— and Backbiter, of course. He’d put a variety of odds and ends into his bag, him and Annabeth swapping trinkets with familiarity. It was hard for their familiarity not to sting Percy a little, even as he worked to be happy for his brother. He just wished he could be enough. 

The whole Hermes cabin couldn’t wave them off at once, as the quest was supposed to be a secret, so it was just Lou Ellen and Butch there to hug them goodbye. Lynx and Marcy had left them all sets of dice for luck. 

“Don’t forget to call,” Lou Ellen hugged Ethan. “You both have hormones and clothes?”

“Lou,” Ethan said gently. Lou Ellen didn’t just look concerned when she asked that, she looked hopeless. “We will be okay, I promise,” Ethan smiled at her.

“Don’t forget to eat your terrible little rations,” Butch stuck his tongue out at Annabeth. “We will be enjoying our good food.” 

Another round of hugs was exchanged, and then the four questers set off.

Zeus’ fist looked like any other heap of rocks under the rising sun. 

“Do we just… go in? Or…” Percy looked for the crack in the rocks where he had seen the delta.

Nothing. 

The four not-quite-heroes circled the rocks, searching for any entrance. Finally, Percy kicked it in frustration. 

The boulders seemed to crack open a little, leaving a passage just large enough to squeeze into. Percy pushed down his claustrophobia and felt sure Luke was doing the same. He held out his hand to Ethan who took it, breath coming just slightly shakily. Ethan’s hand was colder than Percy’s, but Percy didn’t mind. Annabeth and Luke wedged in behind them, holding hands in a chain. And then, with a pop, they were through.

The entrance sealed behind them as though it had never been there, leaving the four standing on wet mossy cobblestone.

Thomas stared down at the prophecy he had written. It felt… newer than the others somehow. As if it had just been spoken.

What's lost will never be regained

to find it you must go through pain.

Inside the earth the cost is steep

as nature's hope goes to sleep.

Chapter Text

They made it a hundred feet before they were hopelessly lost. Luke turned on his flashlight, and Percy, Annabeth, and Ethan clustered behind him. The tunnel looked nothing like the one they had entered. Now it was round like a sewer, constructed of red brick with iron-barred portholes every ten feet.

Percy walked over to one of the portholes and Luke followed him with the light. It opened into infinite darkness. Percy thought he heard voices on the other side, but it may have been just the cold wind.

“I’ll try to guide us,” Annabeth said after Luke tripped for the fifth time. “If we keep one hand on the left wall and follow it, we should be able to find our way out again by reversing course.”

Unfortunately, as soon as she said that, the left wall disappeared.

The group found themselves in the middle of a circular chamber with eight tunnels leading out, and no idea where their original tunnel had gone.

“It’s okay, let’s just go back the way we came,” Annabeth spun around, looking at the dark, identical, foreboding tunnels.  “We just need to keep our heads.”

Percy cursed himself for not bringing a flashlight.

“That way,” Annabeth said, pointing to one of the identical tunnels.

“How did you figure that out?” Ethan asked.

“Deductive reasoning.”

“So you guessed.” Ethan looked around, “I’m getting a bad feeling.”

They entered the tunnel. The ceiling got so low that pretty soon they were hunching over. Luckily, it wasn’t longer than ten or twenty minutes of the four playing ‘Name as many fruits as you can,’ before the tunnel opened into a large room covered in mosaic tiles. The pictures were grimy and faded, but Percy could still make out the colors--red, blue, green, gold. The frieze showed the Olympian gods at a feast. 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.

In the middle of the room was a three-tiered fountain.

“No water has flown through that fountain in a long time,” Annabeth said. She abandoned the group to run towards it. “Look at this thing, it’s Roman. It’s around two thousand years old!” the pipes began to screech and squawk rustily as Annabeth closed her eyes in concentration. Dirty water poured out of the fountain, flowing down as though unaware that no water had creaked through those paths in centuries. “Sorry,” Annabeth apologized. “I don’t like to leave things broken when I know I can fix them.”

“Clearing out the path for that water is great, can you sense where it leads?” Luke looked at the water like he wasn’t sure what he’d see.

“Good idea!” Annabeth closed her eyes again. A second later her face screwed up in frustration. “The water just stops at a point like it comes from nothing! It doesn’t make sense,,” the water in the fountain paused in the air as Annabeth squeezed her fists. She looked as close to tears as Percy had seen her.

“Annie,” Luke walked over to Annabeth louder than he normally did, his feet connecting solidly with the floor till he stood next to her.

Annabeth exhaled slowly and released her fists, the water returning to its natural state.

“So, what are our clues to the location of the workshop?” Luke asked softly, still not touching her or getting closer.

Annabeth opened her eyes, nodding slowly. “The architecture getting older is good. Hephaestus is probably in an older part of the maze.”

“Okay, let’s try it.”

There were only two paths out of the room, and one of them looked much closer to crumbling than the other.

They followed Annabeth for another hour, the pathways twisting maddeningly around them. Despite the fact that every time she said something the labyrinth worked to directly contradict what it was she said, Annabeth kept stating facts about navigating.

“We just need to continue for another few hundred feet and we should find a crossroads,” Annabeth said as they rounded a bend to a dead end. They were in a decidedly new-fangled-looking portion of the maze, and they didn’t seem a single step closer to Hephaestus. And Hephaestus was their key to Grover.

 “What do you know, wise girl?” Percy finally snapped. Annabeth reminded him of the Athena campers, generally a nice lot but far too stubborn for their own good. And, he felt trapped underground like this.

“More than you,” Annabeth rounded on Percy, eyes full of fury. “I’ve spent plenty of time with ocean animals smarter than you, seaweed brain.”

“Percy, Annabeth,” Luke stepped forward and held his hands out. The floor had started to tremble, and Percy’s hand had begun to drift towards his sickle. “We don’t need to resort to name-calling of all things. I think we’re all getting frustrated and hungry in this maze, let’s look for a nice open space with no exits to the outside so we can sit down and camp.”

Percy lowered his hand. Ethan, who was right behind him, held out his hand and Percy squeezed it quickly. He could do this. He just needed to get out.

The party turned around and began ‘retracing’ their steps, walking on a path they’d never walked before. The tunnel seemed to be getting more cramped, and up ahead Percy could see a glowing blue delta.

Luke grinned as they walked past the greek letter and pressed it, allowing a passage to open to the outside where the setting sun was visible.

“All you have to do is say what it wants to hear,” Luke whispered to himself.

Luke, Percy, Ethan, and Annabeth practically fell onto the soft, dry summer earth. Percy unfurled his wings, letting the light breeze run through them.

“I’m sorry,” he said, not quite looking at Annabeth. His mom had emphasized the importance of repair in arguments.

“Me too,” Annabeth took a water bottle out of her bag and poured it on her head, shaking her hair from side to side. Luke watched her fondly. “That place,” she shook her head. “It sucks.”

“I could navigate it,” Ethan spoke up. Percy had just thought it was one of his quiet days, but no, it was Ethan being a self-sacrificing idiot again.

“No.” Luke walked over to Ethan. He had begun unzipping his bag and offered Ethan a small stick. “You can help set up protections around the campsite if you want.”

“It would be easy,” Ethan protested, but he dug his foot into the ground as he did so.

“What?” Annabeth asked. She had begun picking up rocks and brush for a fire but she stopped. “How would you navigate?”

“Nemesis powers,” Ethan turned his wrist so his tattoo showed, the scales flickering into sight. “I can trade built-up skills or body parts for abilities. I can trade by blood for one-time things too.”

“That’s useful.”

“And too much to ask in everything except life or death situations,” Luke said.

They set up camp in relative silence and then sat around the fire. Percy didn’t feel that tired, and he didn’t think anyone else felt too tired either.

Luke reached into his bag again, “family tradition time, the first night of the quest we talk and make s’mores!”

“What’s a s’more?” Ethan asked—to Percy’s horror—before cracking into a smile. “Kidding, I saw them in a show one time.”

“And, a new family moment, watching Ethan eat his first s’more,” Luke passed the bag of marshmallows to Annabeth, taking three for himself. “Eat up, growing half-bloods need their nutrients.” 

“Nutrients?” Annabeth passed Ethan the bag, sticking one on her stick and setting a marshmallow down next to her. Ethan took the marshmallow out of the bag nervously.

“It’s okay if you don’t like it,” Luke pulled a dark chocolate bar out of his bag and cracked it in half, tossing it across the fire to Ethan. Percy and Luke both knew how hard trying new foods with weird textures could be for Ethan. Luke pulled out a normal chocolate bar for the rest of them as Ethan passed the marshmallows to Percy. 

“Mom would get me blue marshmallows as a kid,” Percy stuck his marshmallow on the stick and watched as Luke held his first marshmallow above the fire at the highest point. “She worked at a candy shop part-time for a while I think, and she gave me a lot of blue candy.” 

Ethan held his marshmallow nervously, “where do I hold it so it won’t burn?” 

Annabeth, still holding hers near the center of the fire, grabbed the skewer from Ethan and adjusted it. “Here,” she held it in a place near hers. “The top of the fire where Luke is holding it is actually the hottest part, not a place where the heat begins to die down.” Ethan grabbed his stick back and moved the marshmallow out of the fire and to the top.

“I don’t think that the heat dies up there,” Luke swung his stick to hit Annabeth’s, nearly knocking Percy’s marshmallow off as well, “I like my marshmallows well cooked.” To prove his point, the marshmallow caught on fire. 

Luke pulled it out of the fire, grinning victoriously, and blew it out before squishing it between a graham cracker with some chocolate. 

Annabeth rotated her marshmallow carefully and constantly, never allowing the heat to touch any side for too long. 

Percy deemed his marshmallow cooked enough when it turned dark brown and crispy on the outside. He’d placed the chocolate on a graham cracker next to the fire to allow it to melt before he placed the marshmallow on it. Ethan had just pulled his marshmallow out and examined it, but Percy offered him a bit of his s’more. Ethan grimaced and shook his head, turning to his dark chocolate melting in a little cup at Annabeth’s suggestion, though he was glaring at her a little.

Luke’s third marshmallow caught fire and he stuck his tongue out at Annabeth, “Annie, you’ve always been one for precision.”

Annabeth admired her marshmallow, a light golden brown and slightly bubbly, “just wish I had a weapon to match.” It made something niggle in Percy’s brain, but he was distracted when Annabeth pulled the marshmallow off her stick and popped it in her mouth, instantly regretting it by the look on her face. Annabeth swung the stick to hit Luke with the middle part that hadn’t just been in the fire.

 “I remember the first quest we went on,” Annabeth said. “You, me, and Thals.” 

Percy leaned towards Ethan who was sipping from his chocolate cup. 

“That one was for cereal lady, right?” Luke stared into the fire. 

“Sent us to look for her missing thresher, didn’t bother to mention how many monsters it was guarded by” Annabeth drew her knees up.

“My favorite part was at the end when she didn’t even thank us properly, just said she wouldn’t kill us.”

Annabeth laughed, a little tension leaving her, “I liked when Thalia almost made her go back on that decision.”

“What?” Ethan, who had been not engaging with the story, couldn’t stop his shock. “How did she do that?”

“Five letter word we learned on the streets, well, she learned it from her mom. I learned it from her.”

Luke laughed, “Thals would always tell Annabeth to cover her ears before she went off on someone, even when Annabeth could hold her own. She knew that Annabeth shouldn’t have had to. Gods, none of us should have had to. How old were we on that quest?”

“I was the age you all are now,” Luke began. “Maybe twelve. You were only nine though. You shouldn’t have been able to come along, but we refused to leave you behind.”

“None of us should have had to go,” Annabeth scowled and Luke held his hand out. Percy could feel the hairs that had begun to grow on his arms stand up. “You shouldn’t have had to worry about a nine-year-old.”

“So you and Thalia took care of Annabeth?” Ethan asked Luke. He had a strange look on his face, almost like longing. 

“They found me when I ran away,” Annabeth wrapped her arms around her legs. “My step-mom was being herself and the monsters were being monsters and my dad wasn’t doing anything and it was too much, so I ran away. I wouldn’t have lasted three weeks. I had a change of clothes and a bag full of books but they took me in. I was seven.”

“I was eleven which felt like all grown up,” Luke put his arm around Annabeth. “Thalia was ten. We’d both been on the streets for over a year and had hideouts and weapons. We got to camp a year later but it was barely better.” 

“They thought I was an Athena kid,” Annabeth gestured to her hair. “They didn’t really have a head counselor system back then, it was more fend-for-yourself.”

“It’s weird how camp is both better and worse,” Luke squeezed his sister. “At least back in our day, no one was buried in the hill.”

“Alabaster and Allie were with me for two weeks, but after Allie died Alabaster was never the same,” Ethan leaned away from Percy and the fire. “He’d tuck me in at night though, and he was family. He just wasn’t there all the time.”

“Alabaster, Lou Ellen’s brother?” 

“He tried to kill Percy,” Ethan told Annabeth. “ ‘Wise girl.’ ”

“Ethan,” Luke began. “Annabeth has no way of knowing that.”

“What do you mean, ‘he wasn’t there all the time?’” Percy asked. He couldn’t tell in the dark, but he thought Ethan might have flushed. Ethan had talked about Alabaster before, but he had never said something like that.

“Just that he wasn’t there like that, like, he didn’t bring me on a quest, but camp is better now so it’s not the same.” 

Luke grabbed another marshmallow and passed it to Annabeth, “I don’t want to grab a stick, would you just hold it in the fire?” Annabeth rolled her eyes but, to Percy’s astonishment, she held her hand directly in the flame at the top until the marshmallow lit on fire.

“I did that the second time I went to my dad’s and my stepmom screamed,” Annabeth said. She had had to unwrap her arms to set the marshmallow alight, and she sat cross-legged on the cold ground, “so you never ran away Percy?” 

Percy felt almost guilty for his childhood, growing up with his loving mother, “no.”

“But he had a place open for us to stay in,” Luke held his arm out to Percy and pointed across the fire to Ethan. “I can’t wait for you and Thals to meet Sally Jackson.”

“The second time you went to your dad’s?” Ethan asked. He did that sometimes, asking something or responding to a question that had already passed.

Annabeth grimaced and shook her head, “it’s nothing. We should get our sleeping bags out.”

Percy took the first watch, telling Luke he could take the midnight watch. He flew above the campsite for a while, stretching his wings. Ethan and Luke fell asleep fast, but Annabeth kept twisting and turning. Finally, she sat up and stood next to Percy. 

“You can sleep if you want.” 

Percy didn’t really want to. He needed to get out everything that had seemed to settle in him, so instead, he sat down.

“I’m glad you found Luke,” he said.

“Me too,” Annabeth seemed lost in thought for a moment. “Want to hear about when I went back to my dad?” She shivered slightly in the cold.

Percy nodded and pulled his sleeping bag over to offer as a blanket and Annabeth pulled it over her knees. She sat there for a moment before she spoke.

“I thought I could go home for one summer. It was two years and five days ago — well more like thirty-two years ago but-”

Percy nodded, he understood from his school year spent with Luke how much it could hurt to have time messed up. 

“I was confident I could fight any monsters off, you know how it is when you’re eleven and can take on the world.” Her eyes didn’t smile, even as she lifted up the corners of her mouth at Percy. “My dad has just moved to this house in San Francisco with his wife who wasn’t a god in disguise and they had two normal children. The house was a mess, always creaky and—” Percy let her take a breath. “I thought, well, I spent enough time with the Athena Cabin, I could probably build it better.” He doesn’t want to hear this, doesn’t want to hear where it goes. 

“I built a little model in my room, a perfect house. It was perfect.” 

“What happened next?” 

“Everyone went to the beach, they did it for me because I loved the water, but I said I didn’t feel well and skipped at the last minute. I razed the house. My dad and his wife came home and all of our possessions were spinning in a hurricane, for safekeeping, you know?” Percy did not know, but he did know when to keep his mouth shut so he nodded. “I was assembling the house, piecing it together. It was supposed to have been the perfect gift to thank him for letting me back and trying to do better. He suggested that maybe when I ran away I had been right.” Annabeth bit her finger and then said the last part. “I wasn’t even able to make a new house like my model. I thought I could but I couldn’t, all I could do was tear things down.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“Wasn’t it?” Annabeth asked. She pulled the sleeping bag off of her knees. 

“Well,” Percy amended his previous statement. “You’ve grown since then.”

“I hope so.”

The four questers Iris messaged the Hermes cabin that morning before they entered the Labyrinth. The maze was kinder to them for the first ten minutes of walking along an old hallway…. until they hit the crossroads. 

The room opened up with small doors, each guarded by a creature Percy had never seen. 

“The one on the right is a–” Ethan began, but Annabeth cut him off.

“She’s a Sphinx.”

She stood on a glittery dais on the opposite side. She had the body of a huge lion and the head of a woman. She had a blue ribbon badge pinned to her chest that took Percy a moment to read: “This monster has been rated exemplary!”

“The Sphinx asks the riddle of man,” Annabeth stepped forward. “She’s probably the easier to deal with of the two.”

“What is the other one?” Luke whispered. 

The ‘Other one’ looked mad. It had the body of the deer and the torso of a man, but with a human shadow. He had enormous wings protruding from his back, which seemed as useless as Percy’s when they were underground. His top half was of a white man with brown hair and a polo shirt, wearing a distinctly angry expression.

“A Peryton,” Annabeth explained. “I’ve never seen a clear story on them though.” 

“I thought they weren’t Greek,” Ethan said. The Peryton stamped and the Sphinx looked up from her dias. 

“Perytons weren’t Greek, but Borge said that a sibyl said one would lead to the downfall of Rome, so—” Annabeth said before Ethan cut her off.

“Show-off.” 

The Sphinx came forward slightly, and spoke with the cadence of an announcer, “Welcome to Answer That Riddle! ” canned applause blasted from the ceiling as the Sphinx finished speaking. The Peryton kicked the ground, drawing attention away from the Sphinx for a brief moment.

“Come on, Darla. I was just about to explain my deal, see—”

The Sphinx continued as if she had not heard him. “Fabulous prizes!” the Sphinx said. “Pass the test, and you get to advance! Fail, and I get to eat you! Who will be our contestant?”

Annabeth grabbed Luke’s arm, “I've got this,” she whispered to the group. “I know what she's going to ask.”

“I could do it too,” Ethan protested. “And what if she asks something new, you don’t know any new things.”

“She won’t ask anything new, Nakamura,” Annabeth stepped forward. 

“Welcome, Annabeth Chase!” the monster cried, though Annabeth hadn't said her name. “Are you ready for your test?”

“Yes,” she said. “Ask your riddle.”

“Twenty riddles, actually!” the Sphinx said gleefully.

“What? But back in the old days–”

“Oh, we've raised our standards! To pass, you must show proficiency in all twenty. Isn't that great?”

Applause switched on and off like somebody turning a faucet. A drumroll sounded from above. The Sphinx's eyes glittered with excitement. “What... is the capital of Bulgaria?”

Annabeth frowned. “Sofia,” she said, “but–”.

“Correct!" More canned applause. The Sphinx smiled so widely her fangs showed. "Please be sure to mark your answer clearly on your test sheet with a number 2 pencil. "

"What?" Annabeth looked mystified. Then a test booklet appeared on the podium in front of her, along with a sharpened pencil.

"Make sure you bubble each answer clearly and stay inside the circle, " the Sphinx said. "If you have to erase, erase completely or the machine will not be able to read your answers. "

"What machine?" Annabeth asked.

The Sphinx pointed with her paw. Over by the spotlight was a bronze box with a bunch of gears and levers and a big Greek letter eta on the side, the mark of Hephaestus.

"Now, " said the Sphinx, "next question--"

"Wait a second, " Annabeth protested. "What about `What walks on four legs in the morning'?"

"I beg your pardon?" the Sphinx said, clearly annoyed now.

"The riddle about the man. He walks on four legs in the morning, like a baby, two legs in the afternoon, like an adult, and three legs in the evening, like an old man with a cane. That's the riddle you used to ask. "

Ethan smirked from next to Percy, then the Peryton rounded on them.

“You, boys,” the Peryton said, flapping his wings. The gust ruffled the Sphinx’s ribbon and she frowned at him.

“That is not classroom-appropriate behavior, Warren.” She turned back to Annabeth. “Exactly why we changed the test!" the Sphinx exclaimed. "You already knew the answer.”

The Peryton called Percy’s attention back, “the short one, you said you’d heard of us.”

Ethan didn't seem too pleased to be referred to as ‘the short one,’ but he nodded, “some books said you were travelers who died far from home.”

Warren shook his head, “I am not a CRUEL GRADER like SOMEONE but I do hate the misconceptions. I do not know where I came from, only my cause.” Percy had never heard someone sound so angry in such an over-the-top way. It was like when at camp they practiced identifying emotions, performing something to the max.

At the other doorway, the Sphinx was asking Annabeth, “second question, what is the square root of sixteen?"

“Four,” Annabeth said, “but–”

“Correct! Which U. S. President signed the Emancipation Proclamation?”

“Abraham Lincoln, but–”

“Correct! Riddle number four. How much–”

“Hold up!" Annabeth shouted. Percy wanted to tell her to stop complaining. She was doing great! She should just answer the questions so they could leave.

"These aren't riddles, " Annabeth said.

"What do you mean?" the Sphinx snapped. "Of course they are. This test material is specially designed--"

"It's just a bunch of dumb, random facts, " Annabeth insisted. "Riddles are supposed to make you think.” 

“Think?” the Sphinx frowned. “How am I supposed to test whether you can think? That's ridiculous! Now, how much force is required–”

“Stop!” Annabeth insisted. “This is a stupid test.”

Annabeth was about to get them all killed if the Peryton didn’t kill them first.

The spotlights glared. The Sphinx's eyes glittered pure black. "Why then, my dear, " the monster said calmly. "If you don't pass, you fail. And since we can't allow any children to be held back, you'll be EATEN!"

“A Peryton’s purpose is to kill a human, only then will our shadow reflect what we truly look like,” Darla lunged at the same time as Warren. Annabeth drew her daggers, Luke drew his sword and Ethan drew his. 

Percy’s brain stopped working. He should have gone for Óplo Tis Gis, but he found himself reaching for his pocket instead, uncapping Riptide. The deer man was charging at him, antlers lowered, all tips sharpened to points, great wings unfurled. 

The tide kept being ripped out from under him, Percy thought dimly as the light of Apollo flowed through him.  He should have saved the charge, he knew, but he was filled with anger for some reason and he needed it out, so Percy let the light flow through him.

It felt like Riptide was guiding his strokes as he swung, slicing up and through the Peryton with ease. Percy felt powerful and in control for the first time since they had entered the maze. He felt the power of the sun within him.

The Sphinx extended her claws, which shone like stainless steel as she pounced towards Annabeth. 

Ethan raced forwards to help, stabbing at the Sphinx as she fell. Annabeth’s dagger flashed too. It was strange, the Sphinx almost seemed to fall in slow motion, but it must have just been the heat of the moment. The two of them rolled out of the way as Luke ran over to help, but why would Luke run over? Percy was there. 

Percy stabbed the Sphinx and she disintegrated with a wail, Riptide lighting up the whole room for a glorious moment.

Then, the warmth left his body and he collapsed.

As he did, another bright flash emerged.

 It only took a minute or so for Percy to be able to sit up, but when he did he wished he didn’t. The power of Apollo had triggered the pain from Alabaster in his arms. He wished he’d brought a cream from the Apollo cabin like Ethan or Annabeth’s hormones.  

The man now standing between the locked doors had two faces. They pointed over either shoulder like a hammerhead shark’s eyes, so what was visible were two ears and two star-shaped sideburns. 

He was dressed like a New York City doorman: a long black overcoat, shiny shoes, and a black top-hat that somehow managed to stay on his double-wide head.

Annabeth stepped forward to address him, but the god with the double-wide head was yelling at a different member of their party.

“Well, Ethan?” said his left face. “Hurry up!”

“Don't mind him,” said the right face. “He's terribly rude. Right this way, sir.”

“What?” Ethan looked back and forth between the two faces. He was sitting on the floor with Percy, one hand on his shoulder to steady him. 

“The exits are closed,” Annabeth said.

“Duh,” the man's left face said.

“Where do they lead?” she asked.

“One probably leads the way you wish to go,” the right face said encouragingly. “The other leads to certain death.”

“I–I know who you are,” Annabeth said.

“Oh, you're a smart one!” The left face sneered. “But do you know which way to choose?” he turned to Ethan again.

“We know what you wrestle with every day,” the right face scolded. “We know your abilities. You will have to make your choice sooner or later. And the choice will determine what it is you determine. This is simply the first of many.”

“Leave him alone,” Percy tried to stand up, but his vision swam. “Who are you?”

“I'm your best friend,” the right face said.

“I'm your worst enemy,” the left face said.

“I'm Janus,” both faces said in harmony. “God of Doorways. Beginnings. Endings. Choices.”

“I'll see you soon enough, Perseus Jackson,” said the right face. “But for now it's Ethan’s turn.” He laughed giddily. “Such fun!”

“I don’t see any identifying marks on either door,” Annabeth said. “They seem identical, but if you want my advice–”

—SELF-HARM WARNING—

“Would you just SHUT UP?” Ethan yelled. He pulled his sword and turned his palm up, slicing across it and letting the blood drip on the ground. “I call upon the power of Nemesis to open the path we need.”

Janus disappeared and the left door creaked open. 

“Ethan, how could you?” Percy forced his tingling arms to reach towards his friend, to hit him, or to hug him he didn’t know. “We had a deal.”

The deal was the product of one too many blood sacrifices to Nemesis. Ethan had been able to get away with them in the winter, but as the weather grew warmer it had grown harder for him to hide the lines in the nook of his elbow. Sally Jackson did not accept her ward slicing open his skin in exchange for a better memory for a test the next day. 

The deal was that if Ethan needed something, he was to go to Sally and talk about it. It worked most of the time. 

END

“We needed a way out.”

“Ethan,” Percy pleaded. He stood up shakily.

Luke pursed his lips, “Ethe…” 

“How about ‘thank you for getting us out of that dilemma?”

“I don’t need to call on my mother to save me,” Annabeth said, adding fuel to the fire. 

“Should we–” Luke gestured down the illuminated hallway. “I think we should all take a deep breath, have a snack, and walk down the hallway to Hephaestus.”

The hallway did not lead to Hephaestus. 

Alabaster Torrington stood in a dark room, speaking to a figure cloaked in shadows. The room was medium-sized, with several doors connected to it. The call seemed as if an Iris message was passed through the darkness instead of the light, protecting the identity of the person Alabaster was talking to. Percy and his friends ducked behind a column at the front of the room to listen.

“-figuring out navigation. We have been working on gathering allies among the allies of the titans. And you’re working on getting word out about our side at camp?” Alabaster asked the shadowed figure. Alabaster sounded much older and more tired than he had a year ago when Percy first met him. 

“People are responsive,” the figure whispered back. Percy thought they sounded familiar, yet it could have been anyone at camp somehow. “The Hermes Cabin is the most responsive, of course, though after Perseus united the cabin they have become less open. I am working to undo those feelings of unity. The Zeus and Poseidon children are open but cannot rebel for fear of their oaths killing them. There are those who want to feel powerful, who feel they have been looked over far too long. I believe we shall have ten on our side by midsummer, not counting those already in our camp.

“Excellent,” Alabaster turned around to face where Percy was hiding. “Now, I’ve waited long enough to greet our guests. Long time, no see.”

Percy stayed behind the column. His arms hurt and he was mad at Ethan, he did not want to have to face Alabaster again, the person who’d hurt Ethan and who had injured his arms and legs. 

“Ethan, Perseus, I’ve been waiting for you.” Alabaster’s eyes had more purple in them than the last time Percy had seen them, the color seeping out of his iris and into the whites of his eyes, and they looked more detached. Unhinged. His beard had grown out and he looked much older than he had. “And you’ve brought the rebels. You know, it’s said that a half-blood more powerful than the gods— ”

“So you’re the asshole who tried to kill Percy?” Annabeth interrupted Alabaster and stepped out. He smiled with all his teeth, and Percy noticed how there seemed to be too many of them in his mouth. 

“He keeps getting in the way of our plan,” Alabaster shook his head sadly. “My Lord would prefer the Hermes cabin didn’t have someone to rally behind.”

“And what about me?” Ethan stepped out too, leaving Percy and Luke both standing alone behind their pillars. 

“Ethan, I never wanted you hurt,” Alabaster looked pained when he said it. 

“Great job on that.”

“Ethan, I’m not alone,” Alabaster looked around the dark room. “This is a private room for calls but I am discussing my allies at camp. You should know how many people hate their parents,” he stretched his arm towards Annabeth and Luke who was still bouncing from side to side, considering his next move. “ You should know how much half-bloods hate their parents. We are working to get the minor gods on our side too. Ethan, do you really think your mother supports Zeus? Do you think he brings balance?” 

Ethan faltered, “I don’t– Alabaster you tried to kill Percy.”

“Always the big challenge of a son of Nemesis,” Alabaster mused. “Too loyal to someone who doesn’t deserve it. In a minute these doors will open and monsters will flood in. You don’t have to die with Percy.”

“And what of us?” Luke stepped out to stand beside Annabeth. “If you think we will help you, you’re crazy.”

“Am I?” Alabaster locked eyes with Annabeth. “You two stood up for what was right before, stood with my master. He’s re-forming. The campers sent out a quest to heal the tree that began dying without a life force connected to it, and found just what we needed to put him together. We have dozens of demigods and hundreds of monsters. The choice is easy.”

“First of all, you tried to kill my little brother. Second, Kronos is as bad as the gods. Don’t you get it?” Luke stepped forwards, but Alabaster bringing a glow to his hands prevented him from continuing.

“You’re just swapping one set of masters for another,” Annabeth said, but she didn’t sound as convinced. “Besides, how are you enjoying the labyrinth? I heard something about figuring out navigation.”

Alabaster’s cool mask slipped for the first time, “our first attempt at navigation might not have been as successful as hoped, but we have discovered ways of navigation beyond yours, certainly. Now, I think it is time to see what you can do.” 

The doors burst open and the monsters poured out.

Percy pulled Óplo Tis Gis but even with Annabeth, it seemed like a losing fight. Four against seventy in a cave, there just wasn’t any way it could go well. They had just come from a fight, and his body hurt.

So Percy reached inside himself for his thread. It was waiting for him, wound up and shining a bright yellow. He looked at Luke and nodded, then ran for Ethan, trying to grab him as gently as possible while tugging deep within himself to get out of there.

Percy sprinted back the way he had come. Or at least, away from Alabaster’s hoard of monsters. He could hear Luke’s heavy breathing behind him, and they ran over cobblestones like a subway platform. After five minutes of running Annabeth did something to the hall behind them that cleared it enough that they could stop and pant. They stared down at the floor for a minute before Percy made out the bundle of cloth, and another minute before he recognized it.

It was a beaten-up rasta cap. 

“Grover–” Percy’s voice was lost in raspy breaths but Ethan saw where he was looking. 

“He was here.”

The four questers looked up towards the end of the hall for a sign of their friend and were instead met with a large ovular door that looked like a submarine hatch. It had metal rivets around the edges and a wheel for the doorknob with a Greek Eta in the middle, like the Eta in Waterland. Percy tried to push the memory of that trap out of his mind as he prepared to meet Hephaestus. 

Chapter Text

The room was enormous. It was filled with hydraulic lifts and whirring machinery, most that Percy couldn’t hope to recognize. The walls were covered in beautiful pieces of art. They were like tapestries if tapestries were made of hammered and painted metal, steel and copper intertwining and growing along the walls. Under the nearest lift was a man in grubby grey pants and one leg in a metal brace.

The lift held up a car modified almost beyond recognition. There was a scuttling sound and then a deep voice boomed from under the car, “well well, what do we have here?”

Percy had seen the god of the forge once before. It had been on the summer solstice when the gods voted on Percy’s life. Hephaestus had voted against Percy’s right to live, then. 

Hephaestus was less clean than he had been for the council of the gods. Far from his fine craftsman’s clothes, he was dressed in a sooty and oil-stained mechanics jumpsuit. His body was misshapen, with little braces and glowing Greek letters helping to support his large frame. 

His beard, dark and curly, had flames licking at it. As the four questers watched, Hephaestus ran his hand through his beard and a shower of sparks fell to the ground.

“Lord Hephaestus,” Ethan bowed his head. “Dionysus said we should look for you so as to learn how to navigate the Labyrinth.”

“I didn’t make you all, then?” Hephaestus asked.

“No, uh, sir,” Percy said. He was suddenly aware of the two fugitives in their group. “We’ve met.” 

“If I didn’t smash you to a pulp before I suppose that’s good enough for me now,” Hephaestus fiddled with something in his hand and tossed it into the air, the metal unfolding into a small screen. “Why are you trying to navigate the maze?”

“We want to find our friends,” Percy tried to put all of his desperation behind the words. “And, to map the labyrinth to protect the camp.”

Hephaestus laughed, “You amuse me, Perseus Jackson. It is not many half-bloods who state their intentions so plainly. I can help you, for a price.”

“There’s always a price, isn’t there,” Annabeth said bitterly.

Hephaestus turned his gaze on her. “And who might you be? I see the son of Hermes, the son of Nemesis, a boy who reeks of death, and some upstart daughter of Poseidon. Do you know what happened to the last daughter of Poseiden who crossed me?”

Annabeth flinched back and Hephaestus nodded, motioning to the screen. A map of the world appeared, and then zoomed in onto a small island, “this is Mount Etna, home to my favorite forge. It’s been taken over by Telekhines, nasty creatures. Clear the beasts and I will tell you how to navigate the maze.”

“Clear… the beasts?”

“Yes.” 

“All right,” Annabeth said. “How do we get there?”

Hephaestus clapped his hands. A mechanical spider came swinging down from the rafters. Annabeth flinched when it landed at her feet.

“My creation will show you the way,” Hephaestus said. “It is not far through the Labyrinth. And try to stay alive, will you? Humans are much more fragile than automatons.”

It didn’t take long for the tunnel to heat up. The stone walls began to glow slightly and the air felt like they were in an oven. Percy felt each step become a challenge. Ethan and Luke were struggling too. Only Annabeth seemed unaffected, moving quickly behind the scuttling creature. Child of Poseidon advantages at work once again.

“I might not like Hephaestus, but he was right, you three need to stay alive,” Luke said after another quarter-of-a-mile. “If things get bad in there, Percy, grab Ethan and run.”

So that was all Percy was good for, wasn’t it? He’d run from Alabaster and he was to run here. Without a gift from a god, he was just a kid who fled from his battles. 

“I will be right behind you with Annie if anything goes wrong,” Luke promised, as though he had forgotten that Percy could tell when he was lying.

The four emerged into a cavern the size of a super bowl stadium. There was no floor.

Hundreds of feet below was bubbling lava, overlooked by the network of metal bridges that crisscrossed the cavern. The questers stood on a rock ledge that circled around the cave. At the center of the network of bridges was a giant platform with… something in the center of it.

“Wait,” Percy stopped before they could investigate further. “Take this,” he pulled Riptide out of his pocket, offering it to Annabeth. “This was never meant for me anyway.”

The blade buzzed in his hand, as though it was happy to finally be given to someone who could really use it. Hermes had said ‘Riptide is a strong blade, but it was not made for someone like you. Hermes’ children, for all your wonderful qualities, don’t have a big elemental power. Right now it probably feels off-balance to you, that’s because it isn’t carrying a charge. Normally big three children, or really, Poseidon's children, use it. They control the water in the air unconsciously, making the blade an extension of water.’ He had been right. Riptide glowed when Annabeth held it, humming with power.

“Percy, are you sure?” Annabeth asked. “This is a powerful weapon.”

“It will do you more good than it ever did me,” Percy promised. He looked at Luke and Ethan who were watching the exchange silently, then at what the metal bridges were supporting.

It was an anvil the size of a house. Creatures moved around it, all too small to make out clearly. 

How were they supposed to clear the caverns of them? Percy had a sneaking suspicion that Hephaestus had given them an impossible challenge. Not that he would be the first god to do so. 

“Divide and conquer?” Ethan whispered. Luke wasn’t happy about it, but he allowed them to begin inching off. Annabeth and Ethan crept along the edge of the rocks while Luke cracked his neck.

“Perce, remember our lessons on remaining unseen?” 

Being unseen was harder than just pretending you had a right to be somewhere. Percy grabbed on his string and pulled , wrapping it around him. He followed Luke up the metal slowly.

It was hot. By the time they reached the first Telekhine Percy was sweating heavily and his eyes stung from the smoke. 

The Telekhine was a blend of a rat, a dog, and a sea lion. Its face was that of a dog with black snouts, brown eyes, and pointy ears. Looking around now Percy could see the others looked like it as well. Their bodies were sleek and black like sea mammals, with stubby legs that were half flipper, half foot, and humanlike hands with sharp claws. And they were all engaged in making weapons. 

Thankfully, none of them seemed smart enough to notice two sons of Hermes cloaked in their father’s powers. Percy wasn’t sure how they could sense a god, but not Hermes’ power, but Luke shook his head when he went to ask. 

They reached the center platform, surrounded on all sides by eight-foot-tall monsters and peeked over the cauldron. In the center of the platform stood four sea demons, but these were fully grown, at least eight feet tall. Their black skin glistened in the firelight as they worked, sparks flying as they took turns hammering on a long piece of glowing hot metal.

“The blade is almost complete,” one said. “It needs another cooling in blood to fuse the metals.”

“Aye,” a second said. “It shall be even sharper than before.”

Luke’s face went pale, “Percy,” he whispered. “I know what they’re making. The Telekhines helped make the weapons of the gods, the trident of Poseidon and the bolt of Zeus. They were going to make me a weapon way back when.”

Percy let the follow-up to that statement remain unsaid, hanging in the air between them. ‘And now they’re making a weapon for Alabaster.’

A door on the other side of the cavern burst open and Annabeth and Ethan ran out. It looked like their period of quiet was over. 

Annabeth and Ethan joined Percy and Luke in the center of the platforms, breaths coming quickly, “we wiped out a lot of the class.” Ethan explained. “But more are on their way.”

“It’s possible Hephaestus will take this information,” Luke made eye contact with Annabeth. “Percy, Ethan, and I can run out. Annabeth, you hold them off. Enact our exit plan.” 

“Won’t you be killed?” Percy asked. It wasn’t that he didn’t have faith in Annabeth, but he felt like she couldn’t do a lot with water powers while in a lava chamber, all the moisture sucked out of them by the eviscerating heat. 

“I can hold them off,” Annabeth promised. She hugged Luke and then pushed him. “Go!” 

Luke tried to pick up Ethan, but he was already climbing on Percy’s back. Percy was worn out from his use of powers but he reached within. This was do or die if he had ever felt it. He ran and didn’t look back. 

The labyrinth didn’t put up walls in front of them. After a few minutes, the mechanical spider appeared from somewhere and Percy and Luke followed it. Percy’s legs were burning, his chest aching in a way it had never ached in his life. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears. Mostly, he focused on keeping his footsteps steady. Ethan was clinging desperately to his back and he needed to keep both of them safe. 

It took a solid ten minutes of running for them to reach Hephaestus’ workshop. And it was accompanied by a giant BOOM . 

Percy felt a sinking feeling. He didn’t see a way for Annabeth to have gotten out.

Percy and Luke collapsed at the door to Hephaestus’ workshop and the mechanic opened the door, “it seems we have much to talk about, heroes.” 

On the screen, Mount Saint Helens smoldered. Hephaestus regarded it cooly. Mount St. Helens, a huge plume of fire and ash trailing into the sky. “Still uncertain about further eruptions,” the newscaster was saying. “Authorities have ordered the evacuation of almost half a million people as a precaution. Meanwhile, ash has fallen as far away as Lake Tahoe and Vancouver, and the entire Mount St. Helens area is closed to traffic within a hundred-mile radius. While no deaths have been reported, minor injuries and illnesses include–”

Hephaestus switched it off, “this is why we blocked the powers of Poseidon’s children.”

Percy stared at the blank bronze screen. Half a million people evacuated? Injuries. Illness. What had Annabeth done?

“The Telekhines were scattered,” the god told the group. “Some vaporized. Some got away, no doubt. I don't think they'll be using my forge any time soon. You all held up your end of the bargain. I promised you the way to navigate. Well now, here's the thing. It has nothing to do with Ariadne's string or any other simple tool. 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' 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--I think you know how to navigate the maze. You don’t need the string of Ariadne, you need her powers. The power of a clear-sighted mortal. Of course, it will be hard for you three to do things moving forward. Now that everyone knows of Eliza’s power she certainly won’t be able to return to camp, not with her cover—” Hephestus made a sound like an engine exploding. It took a minute for Percy to realize he was laughing. “Not with her cover blown . And you, son of Hermes, are still blamed for the theft of the master bolt.”

Percy looked back at the wreckage and didn’t say any of the things he was thinking. That Annabeth wouldn’t be able to return to camp for many reasons, not least because she was entering Hades’ realm. That he hadn’t stolen the stupid bolt and he’d gone on a whole quest to prove that. 

Ethan and Luke were silent as well, both sitting 

“You know she was the reason my uncle started making his kids all from the same blueprint? His daughter spent all those years in the Athena cabin and even though we–” Hephaestus gestured at himself, “can’t see in the same way mortals do, it was still useful for the kids to all look the same.”

“How do you see?” Ethan emerged from his shell for the first time since the smoking mountain had emerged on the screen. 

Hephaestus rubbed his ruddy hands together excitedly. He didn’t seem to understand the way the three demigods in front of him were feeling. “It’s about aura. The sons of Hermes have a kind of wily-golden tint but the older one also has a taint on him. We can normally see powers too, like if you’re a tied–” the god stopped. “I’ve said too much.” 

Percy searched the mechanic’s features for any trace of Beckendorf, and for a minute he saw some of that gentleness. But then it was gone. Beckendorf, though he shared dark skin and height with his father, was someone who you could tell from a look was kind. He had taught Percy about camp and helped him settle in, and Percy would always be grateful for that. 

But Beckenforf did have something else in common, that careful dropping and omission of information. Hephaestus wasn’t a god of information or secrets.

When Percy arrived at camp, Beckendorf told him about the conflict between Luke and the gods. What was it he had said?

“Thirty or forty years ago, Luke Castellan, the old head of the Hermes Cabin rebelled against the gods with two companions, Thalia Grace, daughter of Zeus, and Annabeth Chase, daughter of Poseidon. They failed, of course, but ever since Zeus and Poseidon’s kids had their powers seriously restricted, and Hermes swore an oath on the River Styx not to have another child. That’s one of the only parts we’re happy about, Hermes kids were all thieves and liars. The other good thing was when they erected the pine tree and the magical border around the camp after it all went down, probably because they felt bad. It’s a touchy subject around camp,” Percy could tell Beckindorf was omitting things, keeping something secret. “After Luke’s cronies destroyed the throne room of the gods, any powerful demigod has been carefully watched. Hephestus used to give a small fraction of his children the power to wield fire, and some rarer ones even the power to control metals, but since that day, no child of Hephestus has been born with those powers.”

“Even though no Hephestus kids were involved?” 

“Yeah, even now we have to submit blueprints for anything big we want to build and some god has to approve them.” Percy could hear the anger Beckendorf was trying to keep carefully concealed. “I had a dragon– ah, what’s past is past. Let’s get you a bed.”

And here Beckendorf’s father was, beginning to say something about being ‘tied’ and stopping, withholding information. 

“You heroes should be on your way,” Hepheastus’ back was turned now. Percy hadn’t even noticed him walking away. He stood in front of a twisted metal sculpture. It was a tall block of steel that had been hacked at and spun until it seemed unusable. “I can give you a guide to one destination of your choice. After that, you’ll have to find your own way.”

One destination… Thalia or Grover. Percy thought of Grover’s hat on the ground and of Thalia in the hotel, unaware her friend had died. He turned to Luke to talk it over, but before he could, Ethan interrupted.

“The Lotus Hotel and Casino, Los Angeles.” 

“What?” Percy turned towards where Ethan was sitting like a ghost. Hephaestus nodded.

“Very well,” Hephaestus fiddled with another metal creature, a small winged bird. Its wings looked like Percy’s. “This automaton will stop to rest as you mortals need and allow you to travel to the home of the Lotus Eaters. I cannot give you a way to escape them.”

“I can lead us out,” Ethan promised. He stepped up in Luke’s silence, filling the gap left by their older brother’s grief-stricken state. Percy’s eyes went to the scars where Ethan’s pinky fingernails would have been had he not traded them to get out of that hotel.

Hephaestus looked skeptical but kept his thoughts to himself, tossing the bird to Percy. What would it take for Ethan to be the one acknowledged first by a major god? 

The three of them collapsed outside the labyrinth. They wanted to travel onward but they all needed to rest, and break down. Luke took Backbiter and went in search of a fight, Ethan looked like he was trying to tear himself apart, and Percy kicked off for the sky. 

He hoped that he’d hit a plane, knock him or it out of the sky, and send the giant metal hunk in a tailspin, black smoke billowing. Maybe if he’d had Annabeth’s power, Percy would have destroyed everything. Maybe they all would have. Maybe they would have just sat there. But instead, Percy just flew in futility into clouds, trying to break the immaterial into smaller parts. 

Annabeth could be a know-it-all and Percy had been jealous of her history with Luke, but gods, he hadn’t wanted this. She had talked with him, she seemed cool. He wished he’d gotten to know her more. 

They called the Hermes cabin. Percy didn’t want to, but it wasn’t like they wouldn’t have seen news of a volcano exploding. And if Hephaestus had spoken truly, the gods all knew it was Annabeth who had done it, which meant the campers probably did too. 

Sure enough, red eyes greeted them. 

Everyone was seated on their bunks like they had been waiting for a call. Even though it couldn’t have been more than a few days, Georgie looked older. Lou Ellen and Butch were leaning against each other on Lou Ellen’s bunk, Emelina sitting cross-legged at their feet. Above them were Lynx and Marcy. Thomas, Ali, Bf, Nova, Ore, everyone was there, as though they had known the call would come. Or it was just morning in the cabin, Percy reminded himself.

“Ethan, you’re alive!” Lou Ellen let out a shaky breath as the hazy image solidified. “We were all so worried about you and Percy.” 

Next to her, Butch turned away. The Iris message flickered for a moment, as though the morning haze had started to clear. Percy understood how Butch felt. They had been the one who knew Annabeth best while at camp.
“We got the details on where to find the Lotus Hotel from Hephaestus,” Luke said roughly. His shirt had blood on it that he had refused to wash off, but he crossed his arms over it when Ali looked at him reproachfully. “We’re going to get Thalia soon.”

A blonde girl with blue eyes poked her head into the frame. She had a cheerleader’s smile and beamed at the questers with joy, completely out of touch with the mood, “so, you’re Ethan and Percy and Luke?”

“And you are?” Ethan cocked his head with less hostility than Percy expected. 

“Kimberly,” Lou Ellen explained. “She arrived three weeks ago Tuesday.” 

There was something about Kimberly’s vibe that was…off. Percy couldn’t quite explain it, it was like she made his skin itch, even from far away. Wait— three weeks ago?

And then, of course, a roar sounded. 

It was a hellhound the size of a building. 

“Got to go,” Ethan swiped his hand through the rainbow and the message vanished. The hellhound was just across the park from them, with a great foaming mouth and red eyes. It tensed and then jumped toward them.

“Scatter!” Luke yelled. Percy and Ethan ran towards a small grove of trees, pulling their weapons. The hound turned towards the sound of Luke’s voice, and Luke waved Backbiter at it. “You like that, huh bud? There’s more where it came from.” The hound pounced at Luke and he rolled out of the way, slashing at its side. The blade bounced harmlessly off of it, and for a moment the three questers stood in shocked silence. Then the hellhound bit at Luke’s arm. 

He got his actual arm out of the way in time, thank the gods. Still, Percy could see a scrap of fabric in the hellhound’s teeth.

“It’s impenetrable,” Ethan said as Luke tried to slash again. He took two steps towards Luke, then waved his arms. “Luke, come over here! We need to get back in the Labyrinth.”

“Occupied,” Luke shouted, but he seemed to be trying to come to them. “Get the entrance open.”

The trio sprinted through the entrance as soon as it opened, leaving the hellhound behind. 

They followed Hephaestus’ creation for half an hour before they heard the snuffling. Somewhere behind them in the darkness, there was something…sniffing. 

“Keep your eyes forward,” Luke instructed, but he didn’t sound too sure. Percy couldn’t help turning back though and thought he could see red eyes, a black nose pointed in the air, sniffing. Searching. It had dark fur and red eyes and looked like the beast from the creek that day when Percy was claimed. 

They just kept walking. 

The Lotus Hotel and Casino looked the same as Percy remembered. No one was going in or out, but the glittering chrome doors were open, spilling out air conditioning that smelled like lotus blossoms. It was time to re-enter the belly of the beast and leave behind the beast that had been chasing them.

This time, they had a plan. Percy, Ethan, and Luke left the Los Angeles heat behind for the cool air conditioning of the trap. They each happily accepted the infinite credit cards from the bellhop, and then looked around the lobby. Thalia had pale skin and black hair with blonde roots that had grown out a few inches.

“Where was she?” Luke asked, looking around the giant map. There were hundreds of floors of rooms, along with tens of floors of amusement parks, waterslides, arcades, games, parks, and gyms, Percy could even see classrooms listed on the map. 

“She was next to Meenah Peixes’ Guide to Thieving Life. It was this game where you traveled the galaxy and either played as the empress trying to feed people to her dragon creature or tried to stop her by stealing from her, it was a tabletop roleplaying game, and it was cool. It was on the third floor.”

It wasn’t like they had anything better to do in the Lotus Hotel and Casino.

Luke’s breath caught the second he saw her. 

“Thals and I, we were like a married couple. I was never…” Luke fidgeted with the lock in his hands. “I was never interested in people the way you’re supposed to be. But Thalia and I were going to grow old together, you know? We’d make plans for when we were older. We were going to get a house and let half-bloods stop through and get off the streets.”

Percy, Ethan, and Sally were sitting on Sally’s bed, watching Luke talk. It was mid-December. Winter had inched its cold fingers around New York and the trees outside the apartment had frost on their ends. The four were wrapped in blankets, cups of hot chai in their hands. 

Thalia Grace didn’t look up from Time Crisis II, a large red arcade game with a gun attached. She tapped at a petal with her foot, a character ducking to avoid bullets. 

Luke rolled his neck and shook his shoulders, then walked towards her. 

“Wait!” Percy tried to stop him– they hadn’t discussed what to do next – but Luke would not be dissuaded. 

“Thals,” Luke said softly. He stood behind Thalia as she finished her round, and she rounded on him, confusion in her eyes.

“Who are you?” 

Luke looked away. 

Thalia couldn’t have been more than fourteen or so, around the same age as Annabeth and Percy. She was in a soft faded blue sweater and loose jeans. She looked like a thousand other girls somewhere in the world, hardly the punk legend who had called Demeter a bitch and who wanted to take down the gods. 

“What did they do to you?” Luke said, almost to himself. 

Ethan stepped forward, “what Luke means is we were sent here to help you. You remember your brother, Jason?” 

Thalia’s posture went from relaxed to alert in a millisecond, “have you seen him?” 

“Thalia, what year were you born?” 

Thalia frowned, “why? And where is Jason?” 

Luke took a step back.

“Thalia, what year were you born?” 

“I don’t—” Thalia looked on the verge of tears suddenly. “I don’t remember.”

The lights went out. 

“1957,” Luke said. “December twenty-second, 1957.” 

The hound followed the scent of death. Not the boy who was trapped in the underworld, the scents of the two that his master wanted. 

It took them twenty minutes to get to Thalia’s hotel room. In that time they mainly tried to navigate the blackout. Apparently, there was an electrical surge. You would think that a hotel meant to keep demigods trapped there could handle a daughter of Zeus, but apparently not. 

Thalia’s room was bare, a single suitcase lying open at the foot of her bed with clothes scattered everywhere.

“Sorry for the mess,” Thalia put her hands in her pockets awkwardly. “Now, what’s going on?”

“What do you remember?” Luke asked pleadingly. 

“I was at the beach with my dad and he said I needed to stay somewhere for a while. That was three months ago or so. A few days in Jason was brought in and I was so happy. Then after two months someone came and took him like you’re taking me. That’s what’s happening, right?”

“Not exactly,” Ethan looked at Luke, for permission, to let him know what he was doing, to apologize, maybe. “Thalia, that wasn’t three months ago. It was thirty years ago. You were put in this hotel because it keeps you trapped in time and your father, Zeus, the king of the gods, wanted to hide you. And imprison you.”

“Imprison me?” Thalia sat on her emperor-size mattress. She looked tiny in the center of it. Ethan sat down at the foot of the bed, and Luke stood in the doorway like he wanted to flee. Percy wasn’t sure where to stand so he stood in the middle. “This place is wonderful.”

 “Thalia Beryl Grace,” Luke pleaded. If Thalia had any feelings about her full name, she didn’t show them. She just looked sad and confused and overwhelmed. 

“What Luke is trying to say is that that’s the point of the Lotus Hotel,” Ethan said. “It traps you here forever in this timeless liminal place, content to play games and do nothing.”

“So why should I leave?” Thalia crossed her arms and suddenly Percy could see the electricity in her blue eyes, the proud sit of her spine, the stubbornness in her jaw. She looked more like the Thalia from Luke’s stories. “I’m happy here.”

“Are you?” Percy tried to channel his mom as he asked it. 

Thalia’s chin fell, “I miss Jason. It isn’t too lonely, I have friends, but it’s still lonely somehow. Like something is missing. Without him.”

“Because you’re missing yourself,” Luke added. “Not even just a piece, all of it. Everything that made you Thalia.”

That was the wrong thing to say. 

The lights flickered again, and Ethan shooed Luke and Percy out into the hallway. As soon as they stepped away from Ethan, Percy felt the layer of fog trying to pull itself over his brain. There was a delicious smell coming from somewhere, beeping noises, and whoops of joy. Percy looked down the long hotel hallway, the carpet patterned with zigzag lines and felt adrenaline pumping in his veins. It wasn’t in a bad way though.

“Race you to the end of the hall,” he called, before taking off. 

Luke chased Percy down the hall that seemed to never end. They both seemed to have superhuman endurance, even more than usual because Percy felt like he could run forever. The hallway blurred, rooms flashing by. There was no end to the hallway, it seemed. The pair kept running. There was no end to the hallway. 

And then, there was a beast. And Percy wondered how long he and Luke had been running for. 

Percy's body sprang into action before his mind, jerking back and away from the hound. Percy drew Óplo Tis Gis and Luke drew Backbiter, but instead of attacking the hellhound simply faded into the shadows, leaving the two sons of Hermes alone in the long empty hallway.

It took them an hour to run back, panting heavily. The whole time they needed to focus on not losing themselves to the hotel. Percy felt like he was going to die by the end of it. If the run down the hall had been freedom, this was the burden of Atlas. 

Thalia and Ethan were sitting on Thalia’s bed still, her suitcase packed at the foot of it. 

“Thank the gods, you’re alive,” Ethan tried to get up from the bed, crawling across it. His hands were shaking and his hair was on end. “Gods, this is a mess isn’t it.” 

“How’s—” Percy gestured towards Thalia. “How’s she doing?” 

“I’m doing fine, thank you very much,” Thalia said. “Ethan was just explaining about the wonders of the modern world. He told me all about roller coasters and how much better they are nowadays, and I told him I’m afraid of heights. He did say that there’s a community out there and that even if you don’t know where Jason is that there are more siblings of mine to find.”

“Not full-blooded ones, but yes.” 

“So you’ll come?” Luke asked. Percy was wondering about that as well. “We don’t want to be in this place any longer than we have to be, I think.”

“We need to find Grover,” Percy added. “He’s our satyr friend— that’s a half-goat, half-human— and he’s in danger.” 

“Let’s go save him then,” Thalia hadn’t perked up at any promises of the outside world, but at a quest to lead she seemed happy. Then, she remembered that she had zero experience in the mythological world. “What does he need saving from?” 

“So you’d come?” Ethan checked. “I was already on board. I just need to say my goodbyes.” 

“We’ve already been here a while,” Percy didn’t want to cut Thalia’s goodbyes short, but he and Luke had lost two hours to the hallway. He didn’t know if Ethan’s power would carry over to them, but if the malicious bad luck that followed them had anything to say about it, it probably wouldn’t. “How long will it take?”

“Not too long,” Thalia motioned for Ethan to grab her bag and then left the room. “What are you waiting for?” 

It took them an hour and a half to get through Thalia’s list of friends. They were all sorts of people, not just guests. Percy stood there as Thalia embraced bellhops who had helped her search for her brother, bellhops she had made friends with through late-night soda runs, and, of course, the kids with who she played tabletop roleplaying games with. Bianca Di Angelo took the longest. It was obvious to Percy how much it frustrated Thalia to no end how long it took to get her friends to look up from their games. What had once been normal when she had all the time in the world was now odd. When Bianca refused to leave the hotel with her, despite Luke warning Thalia that it was far from likely, was when Thalia had scared Percy the most, more than when she shut the power off. 

“Bianca, you will leave the hotel,” Thalia ordered, authority infused in her voice. She spoke like a general on the battlefield. It was enough for Bianca to step away from the table, nodding her head. But the Lotus Hotel had a strong jaw and its teeth were plainly sunk deep into the girl dressed in clothing that couldn’t have been from a decade later than the nineteen-forties. 

“I can’t, Thali,” her accent was European, though Percy couldn’t have guessed where even if he’d been given a map. “I have Nico to look after.”

“Nico could come with us,” Thalia promised.

“Thalia,” Ethan hissed. “We can’t bring mortals with us. It will just put them in danger.”

“I can’t,” Bianca said, and that was that. 

The four left the hotel in somber spirits, Ethan rolling Thalia’s light blue suitcase behind him as the bellhops made valiant attempts to promise them all platinum-diamond-rose-champion-of-the-galaxy-gift-bag-reward-tier prizes. 

They exited the sweet, cool air conditioning to the hot Las Vegas sun and made a bee-line for the newspaper rack. The month in the Labyrinth and the time in the hotel put them at…

“August third,” Percy hoped his mom wasn’t too worried about them. The summer was two-thirds of the way over, but it felt like their adventure was just beginning.

“We’re well into the new millennium,” Thalia looked like she still couldn’t believe it. “I don’t feel like I was born fourty years ago.”

“That’s because you were born fifty years ago.” 

“Gee, thanks,” Thalia looked around again. “How do we enter the labyrinth again?” 

“We just look for a glowing Delta,” Ethan explained.

Luke hung back as Percy, Ethan, and Thalia ran their hands over Los Angeles walls, his eyes never leaving Thalia. 

The hellhound nosed at its prizes, the two children of Hades it had been sent to find. The son of Hecate would be happy to have them.

Chapter Text

The four of them walked through the labyrinth for a while, stumbling over the roughly hewn bricks at times, but still walking. It felt like they were just going from one time-twisting place to another. From unending walls of the hotel that all looked the same to unending walls of the labyrinth that twisted and changed maliciously. They didn’t talk for a solid two hours, rare for four demigods with ADHD, but that was what grief would do. 

Luke had spent the walk looking at Thalia like a kicked puppy. Thalia spent it walking straight ahead as though she knew where she was going and was leading them all there. Percy just looked at Ethan and thought about what it would be like to lose him too. 

Luke finally cracked when they decided to leave the labyrinth and set up a camp for the night, “Thalia, please,” he said. “Thalia, don’t you remember our  years together?” 

The labyrinth wall opened, and the sun was setting over a harbor, rays reflecting on the sea.

“I know my months with Jason were actually years,” Thalia said carefully. “I remember Jason as a child, and taking care of him. I assume our mother helped and that’s just out of reach, but I feel love nearby, and a blonde face. I remember a birthday party, maybe? I don’t remember you.” 

“You must .” Percy had never heard Luke sound so broken, not even in his most private of late night conversations with Sally. 

Thalia pulled authority around her like a cloak, standing taller, looking almost regal. She and Luke had been the same age, before all this, Percy remembered. He wondered, for a moment, how old Hades would say Luke was. How old Thalia was. How much of a difference there was between them now. Thalia was shorter, with dark hair but blonde roots like Luke. They didn’t look a shred alike, though. Luke’s face was light and open, a hint of mischief always waiting to glimmer. Thalia looked like a storm cloud shoved in the body of a human girl. “You don’t order me around,” she said. Her tone was icy, and the air felt colder. “I do not know you, and I am not yet sure if I will thank you for taking me from the hotel. What I do know is you should leave me be.” 

It was like back in the hotel when she had tried to order Bianca to leave, the same power and authority. Percy saw why people followed Zeus without question. If this was what a fraction of his power looked like…

Luke stepped back into the Labyrinth, looking like he’d been physically pushed. “That was a line you never crossed. You should never cross,” Luke had to grit it out. Then, he looked away from Thalia, still cloaked in a cloud of power, lightning sparking in her blue eyes. 

Percy held his hand out to Ethan who squeezed it. 

“Let’s set up camp?” 

They didn’t make s’mores that night. 

Percy lay there and listened to Ethan’s breath as he fell asleep. Luke and Thalia were on opposite sides of the camp, Thalia closer to the fire, Luke far away. Ethan was in the middle. 

Percy hoped Ethan wouldn't always stay caught in the middle of things. He remembered when Janus had told Ethan he would have to make a choice someday. Was this the choice? 

Morning dawned harshly, Apollo’s rays hot and humid. The breeze from the nearby harbor smelled like brine. Percy awoke to Luke making pancakes and Ethan curled in a ball in his sleeping bag. Thalia was sitting on her bag, repacking her belongings. They were mostly branded souvenirs from the Lotus Hotel and Casino, but a few mementos of a past life seemed mixed in there. A small child’s shirt with a lightning bolt on it that must have belonged to her brother stood out, more worn than anything else there.

The four packed up their campsite for the morning, silence broken by Ethan talking first to Thalia, then Luke, then Thalia, then Luke, then… Thalia  

“Ethan!” Percy finally snapped after watching Ethan ask the same question twice. “I’m here too.” 

Ethan turned guiltily from where he stood next to Thalia, a rolled up sleeping bag in his hands.  Percy regretted snapping at him immediately, but then a little evil part of his brain that   wanted nothing more than for Ethan to pay attention to him, and for everything to be perfect, just hungered for more. Maybe it was selfish, but he missed when the quest was just him and Ethan and Grover. Grover, who he needed to find. Grover, who was missing in the Labyrinth, who’s hat they’d found covered in muck, who had called out to Percy at the beginning of the summer through a dream. And Percy hadn’t responded, too busy finding Thalia, who wasn’t even what they had been looking for. Percy could relate to Luke in missing his friend, but they were on their way to try to help Grover. They were on their way to go get Grover. They were going to find Grover—

“I’m sorry,” Ethan said, and he sounded broken when he did so. “I just got. I don’t know. I don’t know, okay?” he took a step toward Percy, then another.

Percy couldn’t stay mad at Ethan. Or if he could, it was for something worse than looking like a kicked puppy. So he held his arms out to his friend and let Ethan come toward him. Ethan dropped the sleeping bag to accept Percy’s hug, but an unrolled sleeping bag was more than worth the feeling of someone slotting into your arms. 

What wasn’t worth it, was leaving Luke and Thalia without a middle man. Percy had thought Ethan ridiculous for standing literally between them, but when he looked up from his hug, sparks were shooting through the air.

A crack of thunder echoed through the sky, and rain soaked the campsite. 

Luke’s pancakes would have to wait for another day, it seemed. 

“I. AM. NOT. WHO YOU REMEMBER.” Thalia had literally risen in the air, shrouded in her fury. A dark cloud spun around her. 

“Fuck you, Thals,” Luke kicked the ground. “Gods, why can’t this be easy. Why can’t I get my family back? Why can’t I get my friends back? Annie died and what, you don’t even remember her? How is that fair? Why do I alone have to mourn her?” 

“So you want me to suffer?” Thalia looked incensed. 

“I want you to be the person I was missing! Brave! And kind! You were always the one kids looked up to! You were always cool! And now you’re some spoiled hotel girl who orders people around without care for what they want. What happened to ‘No gods, no masters?’ You’re just like Them now. And,” Luke pulled out his trump card, “I know all the stories you told me about Jason. I know how you raised him. And you’ll never know. Unless you fucking remember.” 

“Stop!” Percy tried to yell, but a literal hurricane was swirling around Thalia and Luke, starting to block them off from sight. 

“I wish you’d never found me,” Thalia spat. Lightning hit a nearby tree and Percy and Ethan dove for cover. 

“So do I.” Luke yelled back. 

The winds blew harder, nearly knocking Luke down. Percy could see how he was straining to stand against them. 

And, off in the harbor, he could see a glimpse of something else.

It looked like a boat, traveling in a little bubble almost. What a curious thing. 

“Ethan, look,” Percy pointed out. He felt weirdly calm. Maybe the lightning had sent him to Hades and the boat was Charon, ready to laugh eternally. Percy hoped it wasn’t that.

“Is that a boat?” Ethan asked. 

“It looks like it,” Percy was glued to the ground by the wind and the rain, but he pushed himself to crawl towards the shoreline. 

“Percy, that’s probably a bad idea, what if she hits the water with a bolt,” Ethan was probably right but Percy kept going. 

It was definitely a boat, cutting through the storm without any trouble. And sitting on the prow was someone with blonde hair. Could it be? 

Further down the beach another thunderclap sounded.

“Luke,” Ethan shouted, as lightning shot down. 

But it didn’t seem that Thalia had much control, or Luke was too fast, because it seemed to miss him by a mile. 

And then, the storm came to a halt.

The rain seemed to pause in the sky as Annabeth walked onto the beach. She wore the same clothes she had when Mount St. Helens had exploded, but without a scratch on them. Even she herself looked no worse-for-wear. Percy could have sworn she was tanner, even, but he brushed that away as a side effect of the explosion. 

The important part was, she had paused Thalia’s storm in the sky, and was currently glaring at Percy.

“What did you do to my friends?” 

Annabeth had been having a rough few weeks. She’d blown up a volcano, almost died, crash-landed on an island, met Calypso (yes that Calypso), fallen for her, and had to choose her friends over the one chance at peace she’d ever been offered. 

And now, as she approached the shore, she was pretty sure Zeus had found her. Annabeth had learned to recognize storms that came from Zeus or his children, the zing in the air, the way the thunder could come before or after the lightning. So when she saw the storm in the sky, she knew the king of the gods had found her. 

Calypso had hoped the enchantment on the boat would keep her safe until they were on land, but when did anything work out for a half-blood? 

Then, Annabeth saw the girl in the storm. 

Thalia looked both older and younger, surrounded by a storm, wearing a sweater, missing her punk makeup and spiky hair. She looked like some random girl off the street, but Annabeth could recognize the girl who raised her from a mile away. She knew her sister. She knew Thalia . 

Stopping the storm was easier than it should have been.

Annabeth had seen Thalia train. She could make storms like this with ease, they both could. But this storm? This storm felt almost… sloppy. Like it was an accident that had gotten out of hand. 

“Thals? Luke? What’s going on?” Annabeth called. 

Luke peeled away from a tree where he was blending in, and Annabeth saw the lightning scorched ground a few yards away. 

It was Ethan who stepped forward. 

“Thalia doesn’t remember anything before the hotel,” he began. Thalia slowly descended back to earth as he spoke. “And Luke…. Luke does.” 

Percy could see as Annabeth’s expression crumpled. The rain didn’t fall, but it quivered in the air as though it would very much like to. 

“Thals?” Annabeth asked, and Percy watched her eyes flick from Thalia to Ethan to Luke to Percy himself, then back again. “Do you really not remember?”

Thalia looked like she was going to murder someone the next time she had the chance. “I don’t, and I don’t need people looking at me like not remembering is destroying their lives.”

Annabeth looked like perhaps the raindrops had fallen, and landed just in her eyes. 

Luke sighed and went over to her, “that’s what this mess was about. We all missed you but I missed Thals and kept asking her about things. Like Ol’ Grain Face. You remember Mrs. Cereal, right?” Luke laughed but it held no mirth. The fight had drained out of him, leaving him sadder than Percy had seen him before. 

“Of course,” Annabeth said. 

“And I don’t and that’s final.” Thalia planted her feet on the ground finally. 

Percy reached his hand out for Ethan’s, looking for his friend for some comfort, though his friend was nowhere near. This felt like a moment they weren’t supposed to witness, and yet, were. He looked across the clearing toward him. 

Instead of hitting Ethan’s hand, like some cruel god willed it, Percy’s hand connected with a stone. He looked down at the glowing Delta. And the Labyrinth opened under him. 

Annabeth dove for Percy, catching him as they fell, but still falling down in a way they hadn’t before. 

Ethan was moving in a time vortex, he was sure of it. Percy fell in slow motion, and yet faster than Ethan could ever have hoped to move. He just watched. 

Annabeth moved with similar speed to Percy. It made sense. She was the closest to him. And yet, to Ethan, it all felt absurd. Like this was some great comedy, and he would wake up any second and see the Amphitheater cheering. 

But he just watched, with Thalia and Luke, as their friends fell into the labyrinth. 

Chapter Text

Percy’s back hit the hard stone floor and for a minute he couldn’t breathe, wind knocked fully out of him. He was in the Labyrinth. (And so was the very alive Annabeth! His brain supplied.) Well, at least it was where they needed to be to find Grover.

The hard landing had not done wonders for Percy’s body. As he stood, he felt the remnants of the damage from when Alabaster almost killed him, and the damage from harassing a god’s power through Riptide when he’d faced the Peryton and the Sphinx so long ago.

Annabeth stood up too. She, at least, had her bag on her. Percy’s was back at the campsite. 

Annabeth uncapped Riptide, the faint glow illuminating the cavern. The cave floor was mushy and wet from the water dripping off the stalactites. There were small footprints —hoofprints—leading off to the left.

"We have to follow Grover," Percy said. "He went that way. It must have been recently.”

“How do you even know it was Grover,” Annabeth asked. She put down her bag carefully on a harder part of the ground and riffled through it, taking inventory. 

Percy had been through too much already that day. He’d left his bag, with his precious water from Narcissus, the water he’d been having some thoughts about what to use it on, as well as all his clothes and food. At least he had his sickle in earring form, as always. 

“Because we found his beaten up cap in the Labyrinth, he must be here! And even if those footprints aren’t his, I’ll search every inch of this maze looking for him.” Percy started walking without waiting for Annabeth. 

She followed.

The way down the tunnel was treacherous, sloping at weird angles and slimy with moisture. Half the time they were slipping and sliding rather than walking.

When the pair finally got to the bottom of a slope, they found themselves in a large cave with huge stalagmite columns, some tall enough to make contact with the stalactites hanging down towards them. Through the center of the room ran an underground river, and lying by the banks was Grover, his eyes closed.

He wasn't moving.

Percy tugged on his string as he ran. He didn’t care that it only saved him half a second, or that the slippery ground wasn’t the best place to run, he needed to get to Grover. Percy pulled Grover’s head into his lap. 

Grover wasn’t dead, thank the gods, but his body trembled in Percy’s lap like he was freezing. 

“Grover,” Percy pleaded. “Wake up.” 

And Grover woke up. 

Percy hadn’t seen his friend, face to face, since he left on his quest for Pan. Grover looked older. Satyrs didn’t age as quickly as humans, but Percy would guess he was around 14 in human years. He looked worn and haggard from his time exploring. 

“Splurg!” His eyelids fluttered. “Percy? Where…”

“It’s okay,” Percy said. “You were looking for Pan and something must have happened. Are you okay?”

Annabeth shone her flashlight around the cavern. The rocks glittered. At the far end was the entrance to another cave, flanked by gigantic columns of crystal that looked like diamonds. And beyond that entrance…

“I remember the presence of Pan,” Grover said. His voice was full of awe. 

Percy looked where the flashlight beam’s light bounced and seemed to shimmer. “Something powerful is just beyond that doorway.”

Grover stood up, leaning heavily on Percy to do so. He looked at Annabeth curiously, “who are you?”

“I’m–” Annabeth took a moment to decide. “I’m Annabeth Chase, daughter of Poseidon.”

Grover’s eyes went wide, “it’s my honor. I’ve always thought it was cool how you actually went and fought for what you believe in. That’s why I’ve looked so hard for Pan. The world has so much wrong with it, and only a god could have any hope of fixing all the horror and injustice.”

“Grover went with me on the quest for the bolt and is the one who brought me to camp, he’s the truest friend I could have hoped for.” Percy said. 

Together the three waded across the underground river. The current was strong. The water came up to their waists.

Percy’s teeth started chattering when Annabeth facepalmed, “oh, I forgot. I’m sorry.” With a wave of her hand, Annabeth parted the freezing river. As Grover stared at her in awe, she said, “I think we're in Carlsbad Caverns, maybe an unexplored section.”

“What?” Percy asked. 

“The caves, they have a distinct pattern. And the water carries traces of minerals in a certain way. I think we’re under New Mexico.”

They got out of the water and kept walking. As the crystal pillars loomed larger, Percy started to feel the power emanating from the next room. He’s been in the presence of gods before, but this was different. His skin tingled with living energy. His weariness fell away, as if He’s just gotten a good night's sleep. He could feel him growing stronger, like one of those plants in a time-lapse video. And the scent coming from the cave was nothing like the dank wet underground. It smelled of trees and flowers and a warm summer day.

Grover whimpered with excitement. Percy was too stunned to talk. Even Annabeth seemed speechless. 

They stepped into the cave.

“Wow,” Percy said. 

The walls glittered with crystals—red, green, and blue. In the strange light, beautiful plants grew—giant orchids, star-shaped flowers, vines bursting with orange and purple berries that crept among the crystals. The cave floor was covered with green moss. Overhead, the ceiling was higher than a cathedral, sparkling like a galaxy of stars. In the center of the cave stood a Roman-style bed, gilded wood shaped like a curly U, with velvet cushions.

Animals lounged around it—but they were animals that shouldn't have been alive. There was a dodo bird, something that looked like a cross between a wolf and a tiger, a huge rodent like the mother of all guinea pigs, and roaming behind the bed, picking berries with its trunk, was a wooly mammoth.

On the bed lay an old satyr. He watched the group as they approached, his eyes as blue as the sky. His curly hair was white and so was his pointed beard. Even the goat fur on his legs was frosted with gray. His horns were enormous— glossy brown and curved. There was no way he could've hidden those under a hat the way Grover did. Around his neck hung a set of reed pipes.

Grover fell to his knees in front of the bed. “Lord Pan!”

The god smiled kindly, but there was sadness in his eyes. “Grover, my dear, brave satyr. I have waited a very long time for you.”

“I... got lost,” Grover apologized.

Pan laughed. It was a wonderful sound, like the first breeze of springtime, filling the whole cavern with hope. The tiger-wolf sighed and rested his head on the god's knee. The dodo bird pecked affectionately at the god's hooves, making a strange sound in the back of its bill. Percy could swear it was humming "It's a Small World."

Still, Pan looked tired. His whole form shimmered as if he were made of Mist. 

Percy wasn’t sure if he should kneel. Grover was, Annabeth definitely wasn’t, but it seemed polite to the god. He bent one knee to the God of the Wild. 

“This is the most beautiful place!” Annabeth said. “It's better than any building ever designed.” Percy supposed that counted as deference. 

“I am glad you like it, dear,” Pan said. “It is one of the last wild places. My realm above is gone, I'm afraid. Only pockets remain. Tiny pieces of life. This one shall stay undisturbed... For a little longer.”

“My lord,” Grover said, “please, you must come back with me! The Elders will never believe it! They'll be overjoyed! You can save the wild!”

Pan placed his hand on Grover's head and ruffled his curly hair. “You are so young, Grover. So good and true. I think I chose well.”

“Chose?” Grover said. “I–I don't understand.”

Pan's image flickered, momentarily turning to smoke. The giant guinea pig scuttled under the bed with a terrified squeal. The wooly mammoth grunted nervously. The dodo stuck her head under her wing. Then Pan re-formed.

“I have slept many eons,” the god said forlornly. “My dreams have been dark. I wake fitfully, and each time my waking is shorter. Now we are near the end.”

“What?” Grover cried. “But no! You're right here!”

“My dear satyr,” Pan said. “I tried to tell the world, two thousand years ago. I announced it to Lysas, a satyr very much like you. He lived in Ephesos, and he tried to spread the word.”

Annabeth's eyes widened. “The old story. A sailor passing by the coast of Ephesos heard a voice crying from the shore, ‘Tell them the great god Pan is dead.’ Though there are other things he could have heard, of course.” 

“But that wasn't true!” Grover said.

“Your kind never believed it,” Pan said. “You sweet, stubborn satyrs refused to accept my passing. And I love you for that, but you only delayed the inevitable.”

“No,” Grover cried. 

“Do you know what it means to be a god?” Pan asked. “Son of Hermes, I know you can sense the strings. Immortals are not like you, woven into the tapestry of fate yet able to change things, changing each line of the weft. An immortal instead races along a closed circle, doomed to repeat everything over and over.”

“So you should stay forever,” Grover pleaded.

“Even immortality cannot last forever when your thread fades,” Pan sighed. “And I would not want it to. Immortality is no gift. And as the wild has faded, so have I.”

“But without you, the wild can never return.” 

“Grover, my realm is gone, but as an immortal I could never have saved it. That is why you have freedom. That is why you are not stuck on a loop. Do you know why you are the first satyr to have found me?” 

“Dumb luck?” 

“More than that. You have a good heart. That is why I need you to carry a message. You must go back to the council. You must tell the satyrs, and the dryads, and the other spirits of nature, that the great god Pan is dead. Tell them of my passing. Because they must stop waiting for me to save them. I cannot. The only salvation you must make yourself. Each of you must take up my calling.”

“But... No!” Grover whimpered.

“Be strong,” Pan said. “You have found me. And now you must release me. You must carry on my spirit. It can no longer be carried by a god. It must be taken up by all of you. There is one more reason you found me, though. A reason you should carry news of to your camp.”

“What is it?” Grover asked through tears. 

“Of all previous searchers who have not returned, most have been eaten by the cyclops Polyphemus. He was luring satyrs with the aura of the golden fleece. When the tree at camp began to die without a life-force bolstering it, the demigod Alabaster and his allies piggybacked on their quest for the fleece and stole it to use for their own machinations. But this is simply a piece of the puzzle. The son of Hecate can kill the cyclops. And you, son of Pan, can heal nature in so many ways.” 

Pan turned his clear blue eyes on Percy, and Percy realized Pan wasn’t just talking about satyrs when he said everyone had a part to play. Humans and Demigods were included in that.

“Son of Hermes, you have wings like a bird and a spirit meant for the skies and the stars. Be careful you do not become like Icarus, those who have wings often fly too high, too fast. The sun is a beautiful place, but admire immortality and strength from a distance, lest it overwhelm you.” 

Pan turned his head to Annabeth next. “Daughter of the sea, you are strong and untamable, much like nature itself,” the god gave a short laugh, then continued. “You have so much pressure on your back, and it is okay not to bear all the burden. You can let others in.” Pan turned back to Grover. “My dear satyr,” Pan said kindly, “will you carry my message?”

“I can’t,” Grover looked heartbroken.

“You can,” Pan said. “You are the strongest and the bravest. Your heart is true. You have believed in me more than anyone ever has, which is why you must bring the message, and why you must be the first to release me.”

“I don't want to.”

“I know,” Pan sighed. “Pan means all. The spirit of the wild must pass to all of you now. You must tell each one you meet: if you would find Pan, take up Pan's spirit. Remake the wild, a little at a time, each in your own corner of the world. You cannot wait for anyone else, even a god, to do that for you.”

Grover wiped his eyes. Then slowly he stood. “I've spent my whole life looking for you. Now... I release you.”

Pan smiled. “Thank you, dear satyr. My final blessing.” He closed his eyes, and the god dissolved. White mist divided into wisps of energy, but this kind of energy wasn't scary. It filled the room. A curl of smoke went straight into Percy’s mouth, and Grover's and Annabeth’s. But Percy thought a little more of it went into Grover. The crystals dimmed. The animals gave the group a sad look. The dodo sighed. Then they all turned gray and crumbled to dust. The vines withered. And they were alone in a dark cave, with an empty bed.

Grover took a deep breath.

“Are... Are you okay?” Percy asked him. He looked older and sadder. 

“We should go now,” Grover said, “and tell them. The great god Pan is dead.”

Ethan had not had a good week, maybe ever. Okay, That was definitely a lie. He had loved his school year with Ms. Jackson. But on quests? These really, really, really sucked. And now Percy had fallen into the Labyrinth, and even as he, Luke, and Thalia jumped in, Ethan had a sneaking worry that they wouldn’t be able to find Percy without a big sacrifice. 

The three had been walking for a little with no luck, Ethan just wanted to break the tension too.

“My dad. He was better when I was younger than when I was older. I mean, he always did his duty to me. And I did my duty to him. Until the end. But that came later. When I was young, he was nice, sometimes. He didn’t call me his deal with the devil, at least.” Ethan had just been trying to talk to break the air, but the words were pouring out. He knew Luke knew most of this, but he couldn’t imagine what Thalia must think of him. The boy who couldn’t even make it nine years in his own father’s house. “I have the rock from when we went to the ocean, and he told me to be like the tides.”

“Go with the flow type?” Thalia asked.

“Never relent, just beat down the sand again and again,” Ethan walked faster, so he didn’t have to see Thalia’s face. He knew what people thought of it, but it was one of his best memories. “My best memory of my dad is when I was really young, like four or something. I’d had some demigod nightmare and was crying, and he comforted me without asking anything in return.”

“Jason used to have bad nightmares,” Ethan hadn’t expected Thalia to respond, but her voice floated through the Labyrinth walls. “Every night, he’d cry for…something. I don’t know what. I just know I’d take him and hug him and say, ‘it’ll all be okay, Jace’ and then we’d watch storms on our ceiling.” 

Picturing Thalia’s mortal brother watching storms brought a smile to Ethan, as Luke spoke as well. “When I was in charge of the Hermes Cabin it was right after I’d arrived at camp, I’d gotten used to Annabeth having night terrors and T– and everything else. But at camp, suddenly I was responsible for everyone. There weren’t head counselors back then, just whoever the group decided was most qualified. I did it, of course. It was weird though. But I loved those kids.” Luke shook his head and Ethan could see his fond smile. 

“My dad, at that moment I felt he loved me. Later I knew he grew to not, but I always could hold on to that memory of him having once loved me. That and going to the beach with him.”

“And now you have me, and I love you,” Luke said. 

“Yeah,” Ethan said. It wasn’t the same as if it was his dad. 

Thalia remained quiet for the next while. 

They kept calling Percy and Annabeth’s names with no avail, stopping occasionally for fear of monsters. But nothing was happening, they couldn’t find their friends. 

Then, they stepped out into a large room with a brilliant fountain in the middle, light arcing through its misty waters, and Ethan brightened.

“We can call the Hermes cabin!” 

Luke dug through his bag for a drachma. He had Percy’s bag slung over one shoulder too, a grim reminder of everything they needed to find. But Percy would be okay, right? He was smart. He couldn’t get lost forever. Ethan cared so much about Percy, so much it hurt in truth. Percy couldn’t get lost. 

“Oh Iris, goddess of the rainbow, show us the Hermes Cabin at Camp Half-Blood,” Ethan said, and the cabin flickered into view. 

It was nighttime at Camp because most of the cabin seemed to be asleep. Only Lou Ellen sat awake, sitting cross-legged on her bunk. Her brown hair looked stringier than it had, like she hadn’t washed it recently. 

“Lou!” Ethan called, then realized it was nighttime. “What’s up?” 

Lou Ellen brightened a bit when she saw them, though something about her still felt off. Ethan couldn’t really pinpoint what, though. He wasn't great at that, figuring out what was going on with people. 

“Hey Eeth, hey Luke, and are you Thalia?”

“Good to see you, Lou Ellen,” Luke greeted. Thalia waved regally. 

“Where are Percy and Eliza?” 

Ethan saw Luke’s scowl. He knew what that face meant. He’d learned scowls at his father’s knee. Ethan hated when people were sad or angry. And Ethan knew he probably looked just as upset.

“Percy fell in the Labyrinth, we don’t know where he or Annabeth might be. We’re looking but—” Luke’s voice broke off. 

“Where are you guys?” Lou Ellen asked. 

“We’re somewhere in the Labyrinth, in a big room with a fountain, which is great because we could call you!” Ethan took up the quest of responding. “Though, who knows where we’ll be next, what city or state.” 

“I’ve heard the floor in the Labyrinth can have cool runes on it, are there any on the floor there?” 

Ethan looked down at the floor, “there’s a prayer to Poseidon in Latin scrawled in the stone, but nothing magical. The prayer is great, though, Lord Poseidon.”

Lou Ellen laughed, but it wasn’t her nice, good laugh, “I’d better go to bed, but I’ll tell everyone you send your regards.” She lay down and slashed her hand through the message. 

“That was weird,” Thalia said. 

“Lou Ellen can be like that,” Luke replied. They didn’t have time to reflect, though, because the Labyrinth twisted around them.

Ethan was no longer in the large, beautiful, open room. He was in the underworld. He knew it, in his soul. 

Thalia had no idea where she was. It didn’t feel familiar and yet felt like it was meant to, in the ways that everything felt. 

Luke was in the Hermes cabin. It was a beautiful sunny day. 

Luke watched as the door to the cabin opened, kids pouring in one at a time. Susan, the youngest at seven, cute enough to get away with murder by virtue of everyone deciding no one with a face as cute as hers could possibly have done anything wrong, Connor and Travis, the mischief twins, Albert, who pretended to be above all the goofs but could pull the best pranks out of anyone in the cabin— all Luke’s siblings came in the door in a rush. Luke loved them all to death. They were joking and laughing.

Luke felt sadness rise in his throat for some reason. But why? It was just a normal day with his siblings. Susan was holding hands with Albert and Becca, letting— or really— making the pair swing her in the air with each step they took. 

“I’m flying, Luke!” Susan swung again and Luke laughed. 

“You sure are, Susan. Think you’ll be a pilot someday?” It was like the air had gotten colder somehow. Luke could have sworn the sun was shining a few moments ago, but the clouds in the sky were dark and promised storms to come.

“Maybe I would have been,” Susan’s voice came from the walls of the cabin, the air, the ground. Everyone disappeared as if they had never been there at all. “If you hadn’t killed me !” Luke saw her doll on the ground, the green bundle of scrap fabric. Then he heard his other siblings too. 

“You killed us,” Albert said.

“You killed us,” Becca said.

“You killed us,” James said.

“You killed us.”

“You killed us.”

“You killed us.”

And Luke remembered.

And he screamed. 

And then he was on the ground, Percy standing next to him.

“Luke, are you okay?” Percy asked. “I was lost, but then I heard you scream, and then you were just lying on the ground.” 

Luke grabbed Percy’s hand. He didn’t want to show his brother how shaken he was. “Yeah, must have been some weird demigod thing.” His limbs felt slow and unmoving. Percy helped haul him up. Luke’s balance felt off-kilter. 

Then, half-way between lying down and standing, Percy shoved him back down. Luke stared up at his brother in shock, “Perce, what?”

“You’re a bad brother, Luke. You made my life miserable before it even began! I never wanted to take you to my home, you know that? You were never wanted. You only hurt people. And you thought you deserved a family? Deserved people to love you? Pathetic.” And then Percy left Luke lying on the ground, his limbs too heavy to move. 

Thalia had no idea where she was. It didn’t feel familiar and yet felt like it was meant to, in the ways that everything felt. 

She saw a house in the distance and started walking toward it. 

A woman opened the door. She looked just like Thalia wished she did, blonde hair that fell in waves down to her shoulders and a soft yet powerful aura. “Thalia, you’re back! I’ve missed you.” The woman held out her arms for a hug.

Thalia hugged the woman and stepped inside, filing away the weirdness in her brain. 

There was a cozy living room with ten or twelve people sitting all around, piled up on couches and chairs. 

“We’re so glad you’re here!” one of them said. 

“It’s good to have you back,” said another.

Thalia felt her heart catch in her throat. She didn’t know these people. She didn’t know the person at the door. 

An older woman in the middle of the room stood up, “Oh Thalia Beryl Grace, it’s good to have you back.”

“Who are you?” Thalia couldn’t stop herself from asking. 

The woman frowned, her brow wrinkling. “Is this some prank your friends are having you play? I told Luke I don’t like those jokes.”

“No,” Thalia shook her head. “Who are you!”

“I’m your mother, Thalia,” the woman replied. “Of course you know me. I raised you. Don’t you remember our years together?” 

“If you don’t remember her, what about me?” asked the young man next to her mother. He had dark hair and blue eyes. “Remember how we went on a quest together to save the world? We fought for the gods, Thalia. You must remember.”

“I—”

“Or me,” said another girl. “We fought on the same battlefield. We watched my sister die, and you promised me you would carry her memory.”

“I don’t remember anything,” Thalia was on the verge of tears, the room felt like it was spinning.

“What about me?” asked another person. “Remember how you would stand up for people? Remember how you said you’d never change?”

“Remember your punk outfits?” asked a small child, coming up to tug on Thalia’s sleeve. “I always thought you were so cool! You said you would never let me down.”

“You must remember how you always spoke back to authority,” added a man old enough to be her grandfather. “I was your principal, kindergarten through sixth grade. You sure did give us a run for our money.”

Thalia spun around to run. She made it to the door before the woman she’d hugged put her hand out. 

“It’s okay, Thalia,” the woman said. “It’s okay to not remember them. You always know the one thing that matters.”

“What’s that?”

“Who I am, silly,” the woman smiled. “After all, I’m you , and how could you forget who you are?” 

Thalia ran out the door and through the field. It seemed to go on forever, but that was fine. She would just keep running.

Ethan was no longer in the large, beautiful, open room. He was in the underworld. He knew it, in his soul. 

He was on the banks of a river he had been on before. Craggy rocks and black volcanic sand. Ethan appeared here every night in his dreams. He knew the script just as well as he knew he could not change it. 

Lady Styx emerged from her river. She was a girl with gray skin and a dress made of rushing water. She was the first who had gone to Zeus’ side. She was the oath all in the godly world swore on.

She was Ethan’s tormentor.

Ethan was frozen in place on the edge of the river. One step closer, and he’d be in it, his soul ripped away. One step further and he’d be safe. But when could a demigod ever be safe? When could Ethan ever be safe?

Instead of her normal catchphrases, instead of reminding him that someday he would “make an oath you’ll never be able to keep, and then I’ll wash your godliness away and delight in the sweet taste,” this Styx laughed.

“Oh, Ethan, I can see the questions in you,” she said. She didn’t have the same aura of power as usual either, but Ethan was frozen in place, some other aura of power warping his mind. “You wonder why I haven’t brought up the oath you will make in the future. It’s simple, really. Just reflect. You’ve made too many already, you have too many debts. You, Ethan Nakamura,” Lady Styx flowed up to him, her incorporeal finger an inch away from his face. “You already owe too much and can never repay them.”

“I will bring balance. I will always repay my debts.” Ethan didn’t know why he talked back, but Styx just continued as though he hadn’t said anything.

“You will never be enough, never bring balance. You have already failed,” Styx’s finger drew closer and closer until it touched him, water flowing over him, washing him down toward the water.

Ethan fell under the water and felt it pull at him, felt his soul wash and wash away. 

The water pushed everything, including his pockets.

And the small black stone in the inside pocket that Ethan had sewn himself rolled out and down into his hand.

Ethan felt the stone. This wasn’t right, was it? If this was the river Styx, his soul should be washing away faster. He should be losing himself. Instead, he just felt pinned there and hopeless. But he had the stone in his hand.

Ethan remembered that day at the beach, his father telling him to “never relent.” 

“I call upon Nemesis to witness this sacrifice,” Ethan knew Percy would hate this, but it had to be done.

Nemesis didn’t appear, but Ethan felt her presence, so he continued.

“For the ability to escape this, to free my friends, for clarity, I trade this rock, my memory of my father at the beach.”

The rock disappeared, and so did everything else Ethan saw.

Instead, he was face-to-face with a foggy creature with a cackling smile. Dimly, Ethan could remember the lessons on the Oneiroi, dream-spirits, at camp. This was Epiales, the spirit of nightmares.

Ethan drew his blades and swung at the daimon. His skills were back where they had been before he had traded his built-up skill with his right hand to Nemesis over a year ago in exchange for ambidexterity, but Epiales vanished, leaving Luke and Thalia staring dumbstruck at Ethan.

“How did you–” Thalia began.

“Ethan, what did you do,” Luke looked concerned. “Please tell me you didn’t–”

And Nemesis finally appeared. She didn’t have a big flash or a poof of smoke, just suddenly there was a goddess in front of Ethan. He knelt. 

“My lady.”

Percy felt the labyrinth shift around him. It felt, as much as a labyrinth could feel, like it was laughing somehow. He didn’t understand at first, as he, Grover, and Annabeth walked, until they emerged behind Ethan and…. Nemesis. She was talking to him and Percy could hear every word clearly.

“My son. I am sorry. I gifted you with the most powerful gift I can give a child of mine, the ability to sacrifice yourself for power, for revenge.”

Ethan went stark white, Percy couldn’t even hear him breathing. “I thought—” Ethan coughed like he wanted to throw up, like he wanted everything inside of him out. “I thought all of us could do it.” 

Nemesis smiled at him, proudly. “No. You were to be my finest creation. In exchange for an eye, I could give you the power to defeat an army. For an arm, I could give you an army of your own. You’ve already made sacrifices and reaped the benefits.” Ethan thought of his first sacrifice, holding out a bloody horn to his mother on top of a hill grown from a buried girl. 

He thought of the rush of power he’d felt.

“For all your good memories, I could make you into the most powerful demigod to have ever lived. I could make you more powerful than the gods.”

Ethan remembered what Alabaster had said, that line of the prophecy, “ a half-blood more powerful than the gods .”

For a minute, Ethan considered it. He’d seen the toll it was taking on Percy, what if he cut off his arm and sacrificed every good memory he’d ever had? He would do it for Percy in a moment, sacrifice it all so the beautiful shining boy he loved would smile. But he knew Percy would never want that. Percy, who had been against sacrifices from the very beginning. 

“No,” Ethan said finally, voice shaking. “I don’t want your power.”

Nemesis looked at him, disappointed, but unsurprised. “You will change your mind,” she said. “One day you will come to me and ask for my help. Janus knows it. I know it. Even you, deep down, know you will ask for that help. And I will give it to you. Consider it. I’ll give you one final gift, in conjunction with—or maybe against—Styx. For a cost, you can absolve the oaths of others.” And with a flash, his mother was gone.

Ethan turned to see Percy, Annabeth, and Grover standing there.

No, Ethan had not had a good week, maybe ever.