Disclaimer: I don't own Percy Jackson. All my fanfic writings are non-profit. 'Tis all for fun.


Piece of Darkness III - Middlegame


Chapter Seven


The Doctor: You know when grown-ups tell you, 'everything's going to be fine,' and you think they're probably lying to make you feel better?

Amelia Pond: Yes…

The Doctor: Everything's going be fine.

Doctor Who, 'The Eleventh Hour'


Sure enough, at breakfast the next morning Chiron announced that Annabeth and her companions had been given clearance to enter the Library of Olympus.

"The gods were reluctant to allow a half-blood to enter the vaults," Chiron said, looking around at us all. "However, when I explained the nature of the son of Chaos' threat, they decided that there was no other alternative."

He paused, waiting for his audience to take that in. Quite a few people looked confused: the full story about the battle with the spectres was trickling through camp, but slowly.

"Annabeth will bring two companions with her," he went on, rubbing his brow. "She chose these people according to her own criteria, without consulting anyone else."

Chiron let that one hang in the air for a moment. Presumably, he didn't want to be the one who got the blame when he announced that I was going. For the first time, I wondered who the other companion was. I hadn't really given it any thought since I'd talked to Annabeth. I would've guessed Percy, but she'd dismissed that as a possibility…

"Those two people are Cyrus Wright and Jane Welles," Chiron declared, finishing a little quickly, as though anxious to put distance between himself and the names of such undesirable quest companions.

There was a vaguely confused silence, just for a moment, as though people weren't quite sure if they'd heard what they thought they'd heard. Heck, it took me a second to actually understand what Chiron had said. Annabeth had chosen Jane? The daughter of Nyx had become as good a demigod as any, but she wasn't exactly the first person you'd think of when it came to retrieving arcane artefacts.

I looked across the pavilion, searching for her. Many demigods were frowning, though most did not look angry. I think a large number of them were just trying to remember who this Cyrus Wright guy was. I had been officially introduced to the campers (which was a long time ago now) but I didn't exactly go around getting to know everyone, so many of them had only a very vague concept of my existence.

I noticed a few dark expressions here and there, with some frowns coming in my direction. Zack and a few of his buddies were muttering mutinously amongst each other, but since Annabeth herself was sitting at the Athena table, they didn't speak out.

A number of people, I realised, actually looked quite happy. At first this confused me: did I actually have far more friends at camp than I knew? Then I understood. Jane was friendly with almost everyone, and she seemed to have introduced herself to almost every half-blood alive. As a result, she had a lot of people who supported her, and a whole lot more who wouldn't want to oppose her.

Finally, I found her. She was sitting at her table, her head tilted quizzically to one side as she looked at Chiron. I could understand her surprise - while Jane was certainly streetwise and smart when it came to being in the field, she wasn't really someone who liked to sit down with a good, heavy book. I had no idea why Annabeth was bringing her on this - but knowing the daughter of Athena, there had to be some plan behind it.

"I take it that there are no objections," Chiron said finally. He glanced pointedly at Zack and his knot of rebels, but they didn't return his cool gaze. A few murmurs of assent went around the pavilion, before Chiron went on, "Annabeth and her two companions should report to the Big House in two hours' time. Their preparations for this mission shall be facilitated by all campers."

He sat down, calmly shifting his attention back to finishing his breakfast. I felt a vague pressure across my shoulders, as though something was pressing upon me. I frowned, and glanced around me.

Sure enough, everyone at the Hermes cabin was staring at me as though I'd just fallen down out of the last raincloud.

I grinned.

"So, guys," I said, putting on an air of showmanship, and taking a dramatic sip from my cup, "did I tell you the story of how I defeated the son of Chaos' monstrous army of spectres during the Battle of the Lobby of the Empire State Building?"


I sat on my bed in the Hermes cabin, getting ready to visit the home of the gods.

The others were all, mercifully, gone to their classes and activities. Telling the dramatic story of the fight against Tartarus' ghosts turned out to be not such a great move, as it had encouraged the Hermes kids to ask as many questions they could possibly think of. You might imagine that the poster children for ADHD wouldn't be able to think up many questions, but that really isn't the case. My throat was still sore.

Anyway, I had another half-hour until it was time to head to the Big House. I didn't have anything else to do, so I was using that time to get my head in order. If there was one thing I'd learned from my experiences in the Underworld, it was the need for mental calm before going into action.

I'd developed a habit, particularly in the last year or two, of picturing the process of setting up a chessboard as I cleared my mind. All my thoughts, questions, doubts and fears were just pieces on the board. It was easy to focus too much on one or two of them, easy to become fixated on a particular issue, but when I set everything out on the board of my mind, things became much clearer.

There was always the chance that I was over-preparing, of course. We were only going to the Library of Olympus - it wasn't like we were going on a trip into the pit of Tartarus itself. We were going to go there, get the ritual, and leave. Simple.

Then why did I feel uneasy?

I started going through my pockets. I kept a lot of random things in here, so much so that whenever I was buying jeans, I had to make sure the pockets were awfully deep.

I had my cellphone, which didn't get much use when I was at camp. Only a few demigods had phones: Annabeth had told me that up until a couple years ago, it was too dangerous for half-bloods to have them, because monsters could somehow track the devices if they made a call. More recently, Hephaestus and Athena kids had found a way to make secure phones which couldn't be picked up by any nasties, but most half-bloods were still in the habit of avoiding cellphones.

I put my pens to one side, and sorted through the scraps of paper I always kept handy. Surprisingly, I didn't get many opportunities to use them when I was running around in the world of living legends. Still, you never know when you might need to write something down.

Then there was the old silver dollar Anna Fields had given me the previous summer, not long before I'd left for the Underworld. I'd never used it down there: Tartarus didn't really seem like the kind of guy you could pawn off with a bit of shiny metal. I didn't really have any reason to keep it, but something told me to hold onto it. I guess it would come in handy if I ran into a werewolf or something.

Finally, I came to the two items I'd picked up in the Fields of Silence.

First, there was the piece of labradorite that the spirit of self-knowledge, Amichanos, had given to me. It was such a small, innocuous little thing (like Ami herself, really), but it was unbelievably helpful. I didn't understand how or why it worked, but this small fragment of stone somehow made me calmer and more focussed whenever I held it in my hand. Most usefully, it helped to clarify and steady any use of my pure sight. It often felt like the stone was linking me to the stable power of the spirit herself.

I put that to one side, and paused, staring into space.

There was just one thing left to take out, and it was buried at the bottom of my pocket. It was something which I'd told no-one about - not my parents, not Jane, not even Alice, who'd been there at the Edge of the West when Nico had entrusted it to me.

I didn't know what it was. I didn't know what it meant. I often thought about opening it, but I could never bring myself to do more than hold it. Every time I looked at it, I thought of Nico di Angelo's final instruction.

"You need to keep this safe. Promise me. Promise me that you'll never let anyone touch it, or open it, or even see it."

With those words resounding in my mind, I withdrew the small, grey tin from my pocket.

It was a nondescript object, about the size of a pill box. It was made of two halves that were joined by a brittle-looking hinge. It bore no engravings or inscriptions, and was dulled with age. It was not thick or tall - it was just about big enough to contain my silver dollar.

Far, far more remarkable was its aura. Hardly any inanimate objects have auras, but this had one that rivalled that of a half-blood. It was pitch-black, so dark that it was a shade away from blue. It swathed the entire metal box like a lost storm-cloud, and it seemed to ever-so-slightly depress the space around it. Like the aura of a god, this dark halo bent reality around it, just a little, so that it did not seem to be truly of this world.

I turned it over and over in my hand. Apart from its aura, there was nothing remarkable about this little tin, with neither distinctive weight nor cliched magical hum. It always seemed a little colder than it should be, but outside of that, I couldn't see why or how it was important. To anyone without super-active sight, it would probably seem like a meaningless trinket.

There was always the possibility that it wasn't important, of course. That would be Nico all over, giving someone a bit of random junk and making them think it was a magic box which could save the world. Even now, his ghost could be watching me, laughing at his final joke.

His ghost.

The tin slipped from between my fingers, onto the bed, and I put my head in my hands.

Even I tried to avoid putting it in such stark terms, but that was the reality: Nico was probably dead. Even if Tartarus hadn't killed him instantly, it seemed incredibly unlikely that the son of Chaos would have kept the son of Hades alive for long, considering the insult Nico had paid him by helping Alice and me escape.

It wasn't simply Nico's quick, unstoppable death that troubled me. What scared me was how it could happen to any of us. Nico was one of the strongest half-bloods, probably second only to Percy. If he was such a pushover for Tartarus, what chance did I have? Me, a mortal who had nothing to set him apart from any other, except for a gift of pure sight which he could use to see through illusions, but not to overcome them.

What difference could I possibly make in a battle against such a powerful and remorseless being? It seemed as futile as fighting the wind. Surely I was fooling myself by thinking otherwise.

I tried to calm my mind. I'd thought about this many times, but I always got too caught up in my emotion. For once, I attempted to be more rational. If a person doesn't know what to do, I asked myself, what's the next step? When there's no solid ground before you, where do you walk?

The answer came to me softly and easily, as though it had been waiting for me to look for it.

All I had to do was seek out more information. To know my purpose, I had to know the full details of my situation.

I had to read the prontos profiteia itself. Since that was apparently the prophecy which set out my fate and the fate of Olympus, it was safe to say that it was a pretty important detail. I had to read it myself - maybe then I would understand things.

How the hell I would actually do that was another question entirely.


I got to the Big House a couple minutes late, having gotten delayed with my brooding. Annabeth and Jane were already there, along with Percy and Clarisse. The four of them stood around on the porch, talking quietly.

As I walked over, I reflected on the very deep difference between them and me. They were comfortable with this: fighting, planning, defending. That was their world, it was part of who they were. Me, on the other hand? I could just about use a knife.

Still, I thought, as I neared the porch steps, if everyone was a hero there'd be nothing to fight over.

"Hi, Cyrus," Annabeth said. She sat next to Jane on the porch seat.

"Hey," I nodded, glancing briefly at each half-blood as they all turned to look at and say hello to me. Jane still bore a slight expression of confusion, as though she'd been told she was actually a daughter of Apollo. Clarisse and Percy both seemed a little disappointed, as though they were unhappy not to be the ones going out into the field.

"Is Chiron here yet?" I asked, moving to lean against the porch railing.

"Not yet," Annabeth said, glancing at the front door of the farmhouse with a frown. "At least, I didn't see him come in."

"Hmm," I nodded vaguely. "So how are we getting into New York?"

"Argus'll drive you," Percy supplied helpfully. He stepped over to stand next to me. "He'll take you right to the doors of the Empire State Building."

"Great," I said drily. "Always wanted to go there. I hear it's a great place to visit this time of year."

We stood around for a while, waiting for the centaur to emerge to send us forth into the world. Percy and Clarisse talked a little, their conversation laden with in-jokes and references to events which only they understood. The most bizarre such reference was when Percy mentioned something about an exploding toilet and Clarisse gave a glare so dark, I thought she was going to literally stick the son of Poseidon's head through the wall.

I drummed my fingers on the porch railing, feeling a little irritated. If Chiron was sending us off on such an important mission, surely he'd have the decency to turn up on time.

As if reading my mind, Annabeth said suddenly, "It's not like Chiron to be so late. This is odd."

She exchanged slightly worried glances with Percy, Jane and I exchanged slightly confused glances, while Clarisse exchanged antagonistic glances with the wall.

"Maybe he's in his office or something," I suggested. "He could have lost track of the time. One of us could go check." I paused for a brief moment to see if anyone would volunteer, then said, "I'll go."

Without waiting for discussion, I marched through the door of the Big House.

I stopped in the hallway, letting the door fall shut behind me. At first it seemed to be quiet, but then the uneven, undulating sounds of people talking started to emerge from the silence. I strained my ears, trying to listen in. It sounded like two voices, and certainly one of them was Chiron. The other sounded familiar, but I couldn't quite place it…

Then Chiron's voice rose, quite abruptly, as though he'd lost patience with the other speaker.

"For Zeus' sake, Xavier, listen to sense."

Xavier. That had to be Xavier Graecus, the high priest of the Rheans. I hadn't known he was at camp, though he tended to come and go without too much notice. I edged a few steps forward, quietly.

"You don't understand, Chiron," Xavier's low, deep voice - also raised in anger - replied. "This goes deeper than you realise."

Behind me, I heard Percy's voice, suddenly growing nearer.

"—go check," he said as he pushed open the door. I whirled around and leapt across the floor towards him, pressing one finger urgently to my lips. His green eyes widened, but he said nothing, and stepped into the hall silently, easing the door shut.

"What is it?" he whispered, staring at me in alarm. One hand went into his pocket, no doubt for Riptide.

"Shh," I hissed, pointing with one finger towards the ceiling. "Don't move. Listen."

"I think it is you who does not have all the facts, Xavier," Chiron said, his tone now growing cold. It was strange to hear him so angry. There was a slight shifting noise, as though the centaur was moving across the room. "You do not appreciate the danger this ritual presents."

Percy's eyes widened, and he started to speak, but I motioned frantically for silence. He put a hand over his mouth, nodding apologetically.

"The ritual presents no danger," came Xavier's voice, much colder than the centaur's. "Only misuse can make it a weapon."

There was a pause. Perhaps the two of them were staring at each, trying to see which one was telling the full truth.

"You really believe that," I heard Chiron say finally. "You do. But you're wrong."

"No," was Xavier's reply. He sounded a little muffled, as though he was talking through clenched teeth. "You need to stop what you're doing, and you need to surrender the ritual to me. Only I and my fellow followers of Rhea can use it correctly."

There was a hint of a laugh in Chiron's voice when he said, "You can't be serious, Xavier. Surely you understand that this is impossible. A decoy of the ritual is our only chance."

"You have no chance," Xavier replied scornfully. "All anyone can hope to do is delay the Pit King's rise, and you do not have the knowledge to do even that."

There was another moment of silence, during which Percy and I stared at each other in total bewilderment. This conversation made no sense at all.

"I'm not giving you the ritual, Xavier," Chiron said, more quietly, almost regretfully. "I can't."

Another pause, but I could feel something building in the silence, a tension growing in the exchange.

"Very well," Xavier said, his voice growing louder, his tone growing darker. "You follow your orders, centaur, follow them as you have always done. I know you are wise, and I know that you have seen much, but this time your judgement is poor. The path you choose will lead only to disaster, I know it, and I am offering you a way out."

Chiron said nothing. I could well imagine the steely glare he was giving the Rhean priest. The centaur wasn't one to easily change his mind.

"I see," Xavier growled. "You have chosen your path. Do not seek my help when you fail."

The sharp, swift sound of sudden movement broke the surface of quiet that had enveloped the farmhouse. I looked at Percy with alarm, and he moved to open the door, but Xavier was already charging down the stairs. I turned towards him, half-expecting him to attack us or strike us down with a curse.

The Rhean priest seemed not to even notice us, however, but merely swept down the hall imperiously. The hem of his long robe fluttered around his feet, and his steely grey aura was whirling around him like a tornado. He walked with great purpose and authority, and his angry gaze lent him even more gravitas. Instinctively, Percy and I stepped out of his way, and he strode out the door and down the porch with neither a backwards nor sideways glance.

The others stared at him with unease and confusion as he stormed off towards Half-Blood Hill, but my attention was distracted by more sounds coming from behind. A moment later, Chiron trotted down the stairs, his expression deeply troubled. When he reached the hallway, he glanced up to see Percy and me watching him warily.

Chiron sighed, and tried to smile.

"Nothing is ever easy around here, is it?" he said ruefully.