Chapter Nine: Derick Yuley
We ran as fast as we could. As soon as my brother had said, "Percy Jackson," everyone had fallen out of the trance we had been put in. Now, what with Avalon the daughter of Apollo running after us with her scary, glowing, magical, celestial bronze bow from her father, we were forced to run in the opposite direction and do exactly what Avalon told us to do before her moment of becoming insane: Get the Hades out of there.
Johnny stumbled as yet another arrow lodged itself into the ground at his feet. Annabeth pulled us into a dark room and shut the door. I heard a lock click right before something hit the door with a bang. I heard some shuffling before Annabeth pulled out her knife. A faint glow settled in upon us as we moved away from the door.
"What is wrong with her?" Dominic asked. Even though I didn't exactly care about Avalon much, in fact I practically detested her, I knew we had to get her to snap out of it, for Dominic's sake.
"Medea's a sorceress," Annabeth reminded him, "She can use magic."
"We still can't see a thing in this room," Johnny said, "Do you think there's a light somewhere in here?"
"I don't think so," Grover replied.
"Maybe we could use our swords," Annabeth said.
"Oh, yes," I snickered, "Let's all use our weapons as nightlights while Avalon hunts us to the death."
Johnny still took out his Greek Xiphos. Like other Xiphos, it was a double edged, single-handed, two foot long sword that he uses as if he had been born to use. Well, apparently, he used to take fencing class before it came out that he had cancer.
Yeah, anyways, Johnny was a supposed dueling prodigy and Avalon was still out of her mind and trying to kill us. Pounding was coming from behind the door, the door itself already nearly off its hinges.
"Alright," Grover said, "What are we going to do to get Avalon to stop trying to kill us?"
"Can we try getting her to remember things?" I offered, "I mean, we know her more than you two. If Medea put a spell on Avalon that's making her forget, we can jog her memory by saying a few things, right? If not..."
"We'll kill Medea if we can't jog her memory," Annabeth said as if it was normal for us to be talking about murdering someone.
"O-o-okay," I said, "A bit crazy, aren't we?"
"Yeah," Johnny added, "I don't know about killing her..."
Annabeth sighed. "This is a demigod's world, remember?" she said fiercely, "When Percy, Grover, and I went on our first quest, we were nearly killed several times. One time, we were nearly lulled by Medusa herself into becoming a few more of her statues. If we hadn't killed her, we'd be dead and the titans would've taken over New York and Mount Olympus long ago. Sometimes you need to-"
She quickly sheathed her blade when the door exploded. Everyone froze as the possessed Avalon entered the room, her bow drawn and casting a faint glow on the area around her. The light from the door nearly gave our position away, but we were saved by a few feet from the edge of the light. There was something about her that was different. It was either that or the light was playing tricks on us. I couldn't tell what it was, but-
"Her eyes!" Dominic gasped.
I instantly put my hands over his mouth. He instinctively put his hands over mine, aiming to pull me off him, but stopped when Avalon pointed her bow at us. I don't know how Dominic could see the small difference in Avalon's eye color, maybe it was because he spent most of his time gazing into them, but I was noticing it, too. Instead of her regular brown eyes, they were tinged a bit green. And they were glowing. Faintly, yes, but still glowing. If Avalon's bow wasn't scarey, her eyes definitely made her look spooky.
"Don't say anything," Annabeth said so quietly I barely heard.
It seemed like hours before Avalon turned away and marched out of the room through the other door. Annabeth dashed into the room where we had eaten. We all followed her and found her going through Avalon's bag. Dominic began saying something, but stopped when he saw Annabeth take out the box Avalon had been handed on the plane. Avalon had said that Medusa's head was in there, the same one from several years back when, like Annabeth said, Grover, Percy, and her had beheaded the beast that even I remembered vaguely as the snake headed woman who turned people to stone. I noticed someone else standing in the corner of the room. At first, I thought it was Prometheus, but then I saw he wasn't wearing a tuxedo. He was Epimethius, Titan of Afterthought. Dominic followed my line of sight.
"Where is Medea!?" he said angrily.
Johnny and I had to restrain him from trying to pulverize Epimethius.
"Dude, he's a Titan," Johnny said, "He'll probably flick you and you'll die."
After a moment, Dominic calmed down. I was surprised. Usually it was only me in our family who got seriously annoyed or, as in this case, was anything like protective.
"Where is she?" Annabeth asked Epimethius calmly.
He shrugged. "No idea," he said, "She went down that passageway."
Epimethius pointed down a side hall that none of us had seen before. Dominic immediately went over to the hall. Predictably, I ran after him. Inside the hall, there were several unlit torches in a metal bin. Johnny was arguing with Annabeth about staying and trying to jog Avalon's memory. If I knew anything, even he was a bit scared about going into the same room as her. I grabbed Dominic's arm before he could grab a torch.
"Dominic, maybe you should just rethink this for a moment," I said. He cut me off before I could continue.
"That's Avalon! She's possessed!" he snapped, "If there's something I'm going to do, it's stopping Medea from continuing whatever she's doing."
"Look, Annabeth," Johnny shouted from behind us, "I'm no good at dodging arrows from a child of Apollo, much less arrows going as fast as bullets! I think that our only chance is getting Medea to stop doing whatever she's doing, and I doubt she'll go without a sound."
"It isn't a good idea, everyone attacking Medea at the same time," Annabeth said, but she eventually had to agree to let everyone go after Medea. This whole time, the Titan Epimethius stood in the corner, looking like he only sort of regretted telling us where Medea had gone. Dominic picked up one of the torches and Johnny touched the tip of it and jumped back. A spark had ignited the gas on the top of the torch. My brother nearly dropped the torch in surprise. Annabeth looked as if she was calculating something, which is her normal expression, but she seemed almost foreboding. Either way, she picked up another torch and lit it with the fire on the other one.
Shadows danced across the walls as we walked through the passageway Medea had gone through. After a few minutes, we heard what sounded like feet pattering across the ground. I took out my sword. If it was Avalon, we'd at least try disarming her. The others had the same idea. But after a moment, the footsteps began receding in the other direction, so we decided to follow whoever it was. Soon we came to a door that was slightly ajar. There was light coming from under it, so we put our torches in the braziers nearby. We had barely turned back to the door when we saw Avalon with her bow drawn. Stupidly, I raised my sword in a defensive gesture. Surprisingly, I managed to split the arrow as it came at me. As the two halves curved to the sides and fell at my feet, a bright burst of light came from the magical arrow. As the light died away, I saw Avalon stumbling. I rushed over and began fumbling the bow out of her hands. She immediately regained her bearings and elbowed me in the face. I had to give it to her, Avalon packed a pretty good punch, but I was known for my skill of holding onto things. I could hold onto a crazed pegasus while it bucked in midair for hours.
Johnny began helping me with Avalon. We managed to push her against the wall. Using a technique we had been taught at camp, we slammed her wrist against the wall. Her bow fell to the ground and Johnny kicked it over to the others. Avalon lashed out with her knife. I had forgotten about that, as did Johnny. She clipped me on the side of my arm and Johnny just barely dodged her. As I stumbled back, Grover began playing music on his reed pipes, making vines grow from the wall and wrap around Avalon's wrists. She struggled with them, but it was a vain effort. I pressed my hand against the wound in my arm. Dominic was still recovering from the blast of light and seeing Avalon trying to attack us. And, I suppose, me being slashed by Avalon.
"Hmm," someone muttered from down the hall, "You're going to be a bit more troublesome than I thought at first."
We all turned to glare at Medea.
"Return Avalon back to normal!" Dominic demanded.
Medea chuckled darkly. "It's not my fault the gods don't want Epimethius and Prometheus near each other," she said, "I'm only doing my duty."
"I doubt that," Annabeth said, "If the gods knew about where Epimethius was, they would've taken care of him themselves."
She took one step forward and Annabeth yelled, "Look away!"
I saw Dominic cover Avalon's eyes before looked away, shutting my eyes. Everything was silent for a moment.
"It's alright," Annabeth said, "You can look."
I peeked at where Medea was. She was now a statue. Glancing at Annabeth, I saw that she had put Medusa's head back in the box. The vines around Avalon's wrists shrunk away and she nearly fell face first onto the ground, but she fell onto Dominic instead. He put her on the ground and gently patted her face.
"Avalon?" he said, "Avalon, please wake up."
She did nothing.
"Avalon? Please, don't be dead. Avalon? Just say something!"
Annabeth pushed forward and dribbled a bit of Nectar into Avalon's mouth. She didn't seem all too worried about Avalon, as if she knew... I pushed the thought of the card from Chiron's room out of my mind. There could be no way Avalon was immortal.
Avalon coughed and sat up, shaking. With Dominic's help, she stood up. And immediately stumbled to the nearest container, retching as if she had come down with a horrible flu. As expected, Dominic held her hair back.
"So, what now?" Johnny asked, "We find Epimethius again and talk him into coming back up to Rome?"
"No need," said a low voice behind us, "I'm already with you."
Epimethius walked out from the room nearby. Avalon stopped retching for a moment and wiped her mouth on her sleeve.
"Why don't we just get out of here as soon as possible?" she asked, "This place is starting to give me the creeps."
"Finally," I muttered.
We were about to turn around, when Avalon gasped and put her hand to her mouth.
"What?" Dominic asked.
"I... Did I..." She was looking at my arm. I had completely forgotten about Avalon slashing my arm. I was still bleeding, but I could barely feel the gash in the side of my arm.
"Um, yeah, you did that," I said.
She put her head in her hands.
"I can barely feel it," I told her, "Really."
Annabeth came over to me with a bit of Nectar. "Just drink a bit of this."
"I'm fine," I told her.
"Just drink some Nectar," she said again.
"I'll be fine," I said again, "Just give me some cloth and I'll wrap it up."
It took a bit longer to convince Annabeth to just get some cloth, but eventually I got my arm wrapped up.
Somehow, Avalon managed to find a way to the surface again, that didn't involve climbing up a steep, several hundred foot chute. My arm ached, but I guessed that we couldn't really do much about that. Avalon wasn't even looking at any of us. It was eerie how she had so suddenly adopted the I-am-ashamed attitude in less than two minutes. Dominic was worrying about her, obviously, and kept hounding her to say something. She didn't do anything except look away and walk around the perimeter of the Coliseum.
Annabeth was looking at Avalon worriedly also, but in a different way than my brother. She seemed almost saddened by a thought that was almost too dark to comprehend. I supposed that being a daughter of the goddess of wisdom and war and all made it so that she could comprehend those sort of things. It almost made me wonder if Annabeth knew about...
Don't think about it, I told myself. Don't even think about how that would be possible.
I guess being all ADHD kind of made the instructions a bit contradicting, though, because I went along and began thinking of immortality.
I had never seen Avalon bleed, first off. I had never even heard of a time when she had gotten hurt. Apparently, she had been through multiple battles with monsters, but hadn't even noticed. And that whole entire thing with her being able to hear a Titan's voice in her mind? Could a regular person deal with that amount of pressure and strain on their mind? My guess was no. They'd be driven insane before the power from that Titan overwhelmed them.
Avalon had always been a bit skittish when anyone even said the name Iapetus. The first time she had explained about how he was the Titan of Mortality, she and Annabeth had glanced at each other as if they were both thinking of something that was both horrid and applied to the subject of the Titan of Mortality.
I jogged up to Annabeth.
"Is Avalon immortal?" I whispered.
She was so shocked, she nearly tripped. The others were still too concerned about Avalon to notice. "No. Why would you think that?" Annabeth snapped.
I held her murderous gaze. "Is she immortal?" I repeated, "I know she's holding something back and it fits with the whole Iapetus thing. He's the Titan of Mortality and just his name freaks her out more than what happens when anyone says Kronos."
As if to prove my point, the area around us turned a sluggish gray. Our whole group looked around nervously, except Avalon, who continued to shuffle forwards.
"See!" I hissed, "She isn't afraid of the Titan who nearly destroyed the world, but she's afraid of the Titan of Mortality! Is she immortal?"
Annabeth's expression was stony. "Why don't you ask her yourself? I don't know."
I returned her annoyed expression. "I know you know, too. The way you two look at each other when something immortal related comes up – I don't see how the others haven't seen it yet."
She exhaled. "Are you going to continue badgering me about something I don't know?"
I couldn't believe her nerve. She obviously knew something! And she just lied to my face! Before I could even think of a retort, Avalon sat down on a bench and twirled her ring. Annabeth seemed to be able to prioritize her thoughts, because she ran up to Avalon and said, "Are you crazy? There are mortals around here!"
Avalon barely looked up as she took off her backpack and took out a white cloth. "Arcieri," she said with a perfect Italian accent, "It means 'archery'. I am sitting in front of an archery range." She began solemnly cleaning the dust off of her intricate bow.
I never really saw it before, but her bow didn't look ordinary anymore. Maybe it was the Mist that had just made it look normal or something, but now it looked like it was made out of pure gold, had swan heads at the tips of the bow, and had etches in it that made pictures. The pictures, however, seemed to swirl and make newer pictures. There was a lion, a snake with multiple heads (a hydra, was it called?), a half-bull, half-man hybrid that I knew as the minotaur, a three headed dog – there were many more, but what caught my eye wasn't most of the ones with monsters I hadn't even seen. What caught my eye, were the ones I had seen.
Orthrus, the two headed dog; Prometheus in his tuxedo; Epimethius with his baggy clothes; Medea and her glowing magic. It was all there. Once, the head of Medusa popped up and I flinched back, but it faded away and turned into something I vaguely remembered Rachel the Oracle had drawn: A cavern with three people standing at the bottom of two thrones with a gigantic man sitting in both of them. No one else noticed the bow's shifting pictures.
"Zeus isn't going to be happy," said a guy to my right.
Everyone looked over.
The guy had sandy, sun-kissed hair and brilliant blue eyes. He looked like the type of guy you'd see in a professional soccer team, or someone who just really liked hunting. When he smiled, his teeth nearly blinded me.
Avalon didn't even look up as she acknowledged him with a curt, "Apollo."
The god frowned at his daughter. "You could call me dad or something," he said, "Maybe something more poetic, like, Pere."
She looked up at that and spat out, "How about, Pazzo?"
I didn't know what she said, but apparently Apollo did. He looked at her as if he didn't know how to make her see that he cared about her.
"Kid, really," he said, "I knew that arrow wasn't going to hurt you-"
"Yeah, of course you did," Avalon grumbled, cleaning her bow with more force than necessary, "Because you know absolutely everything."
I thought Apollo was going to get angry at the point, maybe even zap one of us to dust in rage, but he only sighed. Just like how Avalon sometimes would, he rested his head against the brick wall, his hand tapping erratically as if he was aching to play a piano or pluck a lyre.
"You know I had to do that, Avalon," Apollo said exasperatedly, "And you know exactly why."
"Yeah, sure," she said, "You can just tell me there's something wrong with me and then burst into golden showers all you want." Avalon glared at him. "Not really a smart move if you want me as a friend."
"No matter what, you will never be an enemy of mine," Apollo said stubbornly.
Avalon started to retaliate, but Annabeth jumped in. "Sorry, Lord Apollo. Avalon was just possessed by Medea to kill us. She hasn't been in the best of moods."
He nodded, but refrained from saying "I know." Instead he looked at my arm. "I see. She involuntarily hurt you." Apollo poked where my wound was. I was expecting a sharp sting, but instead, a warm tingling sensation settled in. Rolling up my sleeve, I watched as the gash in my arm disappeared.
"Thanks," I said.
He smiled lightly. "It's nothing, being god of medicine and all. But really, smart move making Prometheus swear on the River Styx, though agreeing to do what he said..." Anxiously, the god glanced at the sky. "It being so recent to the Second Titan War, my father has been a bit more paranoid than usual. I cannot tell you whether or not his erratic behavior will grant you access through his realm again."
Talk of Zeus made Avalon's hand jerk. When I looked at her, I saw that her hands were pale. She twirled her bow a fraction of a second before she darted to a nearby trashcan and began retching again. Apollo shook his head sadly.
"Poor dear," he said, "It's worse when my children know these things. Most don't, but Avalon... she's different."
"She says she has dreams of the future," Johnny said, "Is that because she's your daughter?"
Apollo nodded. "The Fates can be cruel. She shouldn't have to be one of those who know."
"Know what?" I asked.
"Some of my children have a higher level of thinking," he said hollowly, "Some of them understand prophecies a bit more than others, especially when it includes them. With Iapetus hounding her every moment of every day, nothing is really going well for her."
For a moment, I thought about how I would react if I had been in Avalon's place. I could see how much strain this whole prophecy/quest/Iapetus thing was putting her under. She knew what several, if not all, of the lines the prophecy included. She probably knew something was going to happen to one of us, or maybe it was her who was going to get more bad luck. And with someone who wanted to kill everyone she knew speaking to her telepathically, no wonder she was angry and short tempered with everyone.
I had to say it, Avalon was pretty brave. She was barely even trained, knew that something bad was going to happen, and she was dealing with an evil lunatic who could access her mind at anytime he wanted, but she still took the quest. Her storming out of the Big House was now making sense to me.
Apollo shook his head. "Do not punish her for erratic actions," he said, "Avalon has enough trouble keeping her mind focused without having to see Iapetus's family wherever she goes."
We all nodded.
"After hearing what Prometheus has to say," Apollo continued, "go to an ocean shore and wait until dusk. Avalon will know what to do after that."
We all wanted to asked him about what he meant, but he just vanished as a ray of sun caught on him.
Avalon stopped retching after a moment. Using the white cloth she had been cleaning her bow with, she wiped vomit off of her mouth. After throwing away the cloth, Dominic helped her to get back over to the bench. My brother pulled out a water bottle for her and felt her forehead.
"You're burning up," he said.
"It happens with soul possession?" Avalon guessed.
"Maybe," Annabeth said, though she still sounded a bit worried.
"Prometheus is coming," I warned them, watching the Titan slowly walk over to us, "Be ready."
"Epimethius!" the Titan exclaimed, patting his brother on the shoulder, "It is good to see you."
"Likewise." Epimethius beamed at Prometheus.
Prometheus looked at us. "Thank you," he said, "I believe you all are in need of some information for your worries."
We all waited anxiously.
"Your friend is back in the U.S.," Prometheus told us, "I don't know exactly where, but I know that you should try the Grand Canyon."
"Why the Grand Canyon?" Grover asked. He sounded a bit upbeat, but I only put that down to him and his fondness towards rock climbing.
"During the Second Titan War," he said, "I overheard Kronos and few of the higher ranked individuals talking about the Grand Canyon. I don't know anything else other than the fact that the Grand Canyon is important. If there was a backup plan, only Kronos and a few selected individuals would know about it. I believe part of their plan is located in or around that place."
"Sounds like a good enough place to start," Dominic said.
"Wait," Annabeth said, "How should we trust you?"
"Ask Avalon," he replied, "She made me swear on the River Styx. Now, my brother and I must be going."
"Whoa, wait-" I began.
"Sorry, but that's all I can say," Prometheus said, "Now, goodbye."
There was a flash of light and the two brothers were gone. Avalon stood up shakily.
"How are we going to get to the Grand Canyon?" she asked, "And please don't say we're going to use another airplane."
"No airplanes," Grover agreed, "Maybe we could find a ship or something."
Avalon shivered. "Poseidon's domain," she muttered, "Great."
"Please don't tell me there's some feud going on between Apollo and Poseidon," Johnny said.
She didn't reply.
