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

Piece of Darkness II - Gambit

Chapter Ten

"Are you Death?"

IT'S THE SCYTHE, ISN'T IT. PEOPLE ALWAYS NOTICE THE SCYTHE.

–Terry Pratchett, 'The Fifth Elephant'

Death stood at the other end of the tunnel.

I'm not being dramatic or poetic here. Death - or Thanatos, as he is also known - was literally standing at the end of the tunnel, waiting to lead me across the arena.

I already knew what he looked like - I'd asked Nico about him once - but he was still quite a startling apparition. There was no stereotypically grim robes or shiny scythe, and his face was not ominously obscured by a dark hood. He was tall, muscular and tanned, with dark hair and gold eyes. He was clad in a simple tunic, and the only strange thing about his appearance was his purple-blue wings. They were folded demurely at his sides, but even still they gave him a majestic appearance. It was easy to see where the term "Angel of Death" originated.

His aura was a mixture of purple and gold, but it wasn't as aggressive as Hades' aura. It was, in fact, oddly soothing, and it gave Thanatos a very calming presence.

"Greetings, Cyrus Wright," he said quietly. His voice was equally soothing, with not a single harsh note while not being overly soft. "Please, follow me."

He turned and started walking across the arena, heading for the tunnel that led down into the maze. I followed, keeping a couple of steps back in case he suddenly opened those wings.

I glanced around as we walked. The silent, watching spirits were still there, of course, and Hades sat on a large balcony which was directly above the entrance to the maze. I couldn't make out the god's expression from this distance, but what I could see of his posture showed that he was watching intently. I cast around for my friends, but I couldn't see a hint of them anywhere. A shiver of alarm cut through me, and I quickly silenced it: I had to stay calm, or else I would end up in an incomprehensibly tricky situation.

Thanatos began to speak, telling me about what I was about to face. His voice was low, and he didn't look over his shoulder or turn his head to one side, but I heard him perfectly clearly nonetheless.

"The course you are about to enter has three sections. Each one contains a specific challenge which you must overcome to progress to the next. If you fail at any point during the maze, you will be immediately shadow-travelled out, and you will be disqualified from the Shadow Games. You successfully complete the Games by locating the exit at the end of the course. Your every move will be watched by Hades and the rest of the audience, but you will not see them. Do you understand?"

"Yes," I said shakily. I wondered what failure in the maze would entail. The rules Thanatos had set out made me feel a little more confident that I wouldn't end up dead at the end of all this, but my fear of the obstacles lurking in the course beneath us continued to grow.

Finally, we reached the entrance to the tunnel. Thanatos stopped just short of it, and turned to face me.

"You can, at this point, choose to withdraw from the Games," he said, surveying me emotionlessly with those unnerving gold eyes.

I thought quickly. I hadn't actually thought of just pulling out, but right then it seemed like a great idea. Then again, I felt pretty sure that none of the others had, so wouldn't I just look like a coward if I withdrew? However great my fear, my pride was greater.

"I don't want to withdraw," I told him.

"Very well," Thanatos said. He stepped to one side, leaving my way into the maze clear. "Good luck."

I swallowed shakily, and glanced around at the ghostly audience one last time, before stepping forward. Two steps, and I was at the edge of the tunnel. One step more, and I was in it.

I'd barely entered the tunnel - Thanatos was still only a foot away - when the ground lurched beneath me. I blinked, and I was suddenly in utter darkness.

I span around in alarm. All traces of the entrance to the course had vanished. I looked above me, but saw nothing but more darkness. My alarm began to skyrocket, and I fought to bring it to a halt by standing stock-still and taking a long, deep breath. Obviously I'd been brought directly into the maze. That was it. I wasn't dead. I just had to stay calm.

After a moment of this rationalisation, my fear ebbed away a little. Then, as soon as my mind cleared, the darkness around me also began to break up. A dull ambient light started to illuminate my surroundings, and soon I could see as much as five feet in front of me.

There wasn't much to see. Behind me, there was a dark stone wall. Above me, there was a dark stone ceiling. On either side of me—

You get the idea. I was in an another dim, stony tunnel.

I took another deep breath, and started walking. I couldn't hear a sound, nor smell a scent. There was nothing down here except the light that came from nowhere and the walls which hemmed me in. A jolt of fear ran through me as I imagined being stuck down here. It would be the worst possible death: slow, silent, almost painless. I'd probably go mad long before the starvation got to me.

I shook myself. Thinking like that was stupid. I had to focus on moving and keeping alert.

I walked on, always keeping a hand on my sword in case some terrible beast suddenly appeared before me. I was tempted to draw it, but it occurred to me that the noise of doing so could alert any of said terrible beasts to my presence.

Suddenly, with strange abruptness, I was standing at a fork in the tunnel. The passage had widened and now diverged into two different stony corridors. I frowned at them, thinking. Was this the first test? Or did this decide what kind of test I would face?

I shrugged, and decided to go on instinct, marching down the right-hand passage.

Two minutes later, I was standing at another intersection.

I frowned again. This fork looked very similar to the last one… But then it was difficult to tell, with the bad light. I took the right tunnel again.

Two minutes later, once more, I found myself at a fork.

Okay. This really looked like it was the same one. Thinking that perhaps I'd taken the wrong turn, I turned around, but behind me there was nothing except stone wall.

My alarm began to mount up again, but I gritted my teeth and pushed it away. Obviously there was no going backwards, so I was sure to find the right way by going forwards. For the sake of variety, I took the left tunnel.

Guess what happened after two minutes.

I cursed softly. This was serious creepy maze material. Was I trapped? Had I already failed?

No, I reasoned. I hadn't been shadow-travelled out, so I still had a chance.

Walking faster, I took the left tunnel again.

When I came back to the intersection, I didn't pause to think, but walked on into the right-hand tunnel. Still, I kept coming back to the same turning. I paused, and realised that I had to establish if this really was the same turning. I dug into my pockets. Unfortunately, I had no convenient piece of chalk or even a felt marker. All I could come up with was a scrap of paper. After a moment's consideration, I bent down and found a loose rock on the ground. I slipped the paper underneath it, and took the left passage.

When I came back to the fork, I bent down again and searched for the rock. Sure enough, I found it - and underneath lay my little piece of paper.

My thoughts reeled. Something really weird was making me go round and round in a circle. I glanced over my shoulder again, and still there was nothing behind except stone wall. Trying not to think too much, trying to hold back the tide of panic, I took the right tunnel.

I raced around and around, alternating tunnels, taking each one three times in a row, walking backwards down them, closing my eyes and walking randomly, crawling along on my hands and knees. I shouted at the tunnels, threw rocks down them, drew my sword, put it away again, and even looked for an overhead trapdoor.

Finally, I slumped down on the ground, momentarily exhausted.

This was insane. I simply could not get past this fork. My head was swimming - was I trapped here? I felt like a hamster on a wheel, except this was a wheel of doom. There had to be some solution, but I just couldn't see it. The fork returned and returned, always the same, never once varying. Every time, I found my piece of paper under the loose rock. I was stuck in an infinite loop, an unending nightmare of a tunnel. If only, I thought desperately, I could walk through walls.

Walk through walls.

Inspiration struck me.

What if I wasn't meant to go down one of the tunnels? What if there was another passage, hidden from view, which was the real way out?

I stood up slowly, staring, but not at the two tunnels which seemed to be malevolently tormenting me. No, I focussed on the sliver of wall that separated the openings of the two passages. I approached, almost tentatively, and rested my hand on it.

It was solid - cold and solid, unyielding rock. There was no way out there. I turned away.

But wait, I thought. What if it isn't solid? What if it's just an illusion?

I turned back to that slice of stone and reached deep down in my mind, drawing upon the full purity of my sight. It took an effort: I hadn't actively used my sight since last summer, when I'd needed it to help us escape from Wilson's cellar.

Immediately, my perception of the scene began to contort. It was a little dizzying, as the structure of the tunnels before me twisted. That wall that divided the two passages faded and the space between the two tunnels widened. My sight gradually showed me what the reality of the maze was, and a third tunnel came into view.

I gaped at it in astonishment. My concentration slipped, and this third passage started to fade away, but I refocussed, and it snapped back into view. Somehow, an illusion of shadows was hiding this escape route from my normal vision.

I stepped forward, moving into the passage. A whole new chamber opened up before me: far larger than the narrow passage which I'd been previously walking down. I let go of my sight and stepped further into the passage. It didn't vanish when the enhanced part of my sight faded back into the recesses of my mind, and as I walked on, no menacing intersection reappeared to taunt me.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief. My fear, which had been on the cusp of becoming uncontrollable, began to gradually fade out of the realms of sheer terror as I realised that I had passed the first section of the maze.

This new area was much less of a claustrophobe's nightmare. The ceilings were about fifteen feet high - rather than seven feet - and the passage was far wider. In the first tunnel, I couldn't stretch out my arms at all, but here I could do so without being anywhere near touching the sides.

After trudging along for a few minutes, I became aware of another new feature: there was a faint whispering in the air, too quiet to make out, but just loud enough to be audible when I stood still. It was eerie and ghostlike, with no discernible words, but it had a clear tone of aggression. I did what I could to block it out by walking a little more noisily, but it didn't go away.

My own thoughts began to grow darker. Even though I'd gotten through the first section, I started to feel increasingly pessimistic. All I could think of was that if the first part had been that hard, I surely wouldn't have a chance when it came to face the next challenge.

I paused. A chill ran down my spine as I realised that the whispering was growing louder and more aggressive. I still couldn't make out any words, but it didn't take a great leap of imagination to tell that whoever - or whatever - was speaking did not wish me a healthy and happy life.

Though it was a pretty bad moment for it, my sense of being persecuted by the universe reared its angsty head. I felt like shouting at the weird whisperman to take his bad attitude somewhere else. I had enough rubbish to deal with, what with having to walk through walls and all.

Remembering that I was being watched from above, I resisted the urge to start shouting. I walked on doggedly, trying to assume an air of disaffected uninterestedness, refusing to pay any further heed to the whispers. Perhaps they would simply go away if I ignored them aggressively enough.

(If only life were that simple.)

After a while, I noticed that the tunnel was growing larger still. The ceiling was getting higher and the passage was slowly widening out.

I began to feel a little edgier. Even though the small tunnel had been unpleasant, this wider space was even more worrying. There were far more crevices and shadows for monsters to hide in. My pace was slowing considerably as I kept checking every corner and every piece of darkness that could be harbouring a bloodthirsty beast.

Abruptly, the tunnel opened out into a vast chamber.

I stopped, gazing around in disbelief. I hadn't seen the opening into this chamber coming - one minute I'd been in the passage, the next I was here, in a massive cave big enough to hold a cathedral. I glanced over my shoulder, but sure enough, there was nothing to see except more stone wall.

I slowly turned in a complete circle, examining the chamber. Most of it was veiled in darkness - the dull ambient light that lit the main tunnel system didn't reach into most of this larger area. I could barely make out the ceiling because it was so dark, and it was only after a long moment of squinting that I saw an entrance back into the main tunnel in the wall directly opposite me. I started walking towards it, then stopped again as a chilling realisation struck me.

I'd been so carefully blocking out the whispering, I'd stopped paying attention to its increase in volume. Now, though, it was impossible to ignore. It had begun as a distant murmuring and had become loud and clear, and I realised why. The second I'd entered the chamber, the whispers had become a great deal clearer, and now they were coming from all around me.

All that time, I'd been walking directly towards the source of the whispers, and that source was right here in this chamber.

I gulped. The whispers were all in one voice - a low, angry one - and it was speaking in Ancient Greek. I wasn't even remotely fluent in the language of the gods, but I didn't need to be, because that shadowy voice was murmuring only one word, over and over.

Lightbringer.

I knew that word, and it meant nothing and yet everything. It was the word which, to me, embodied the mysteries that enveloped my life. It was the name which Jake Wilson had called me by the first time we'd met, and it was the name which had never quite left my mind.

Suddenly, there was a disturbance in the air on my left. I started to tense, readying for an attack, but I was way too slow. The darkness rippled around me and I was flung off my feet. I was thrown ten feet to the right - ten feet deeper into the darkness, into the shadows which the light could not penetrate.

The extensive training which I'd worked on with Percy kicked in and I managed to get onto my hands and knees before another wave tried to knock me back. This time, my centre of gravity was lower and I held firm. I staggered onto my feet and reached out with my sight just in time to sense a third ripple of shadow. I quickly stepped to one side, dodging the attack.

The whispers had paused during this, but now, as the strange, disembodied attack paused, they recommenced. I noticed a slight change in tone: the voice sounded angrier and, perhaps, a little surprised. I drew my sword, planted my feet firmly on the ground and waited.

Nothing came for a long moment. The initial dose of adrenaline began to ebb away and my fear crept back. What was out there? Was it some sort of omnipresent menace? How could I possibly get past that?

When no fresh attack came, I got impatient and decided to make a break for it. I started running for the exit.

I'd barely taken three steps when three pulses of shadow tore towards me. I ducked one, caught the edge of the second with my sword, but the third was too much. I tumbled to the ground and rolled along the ground for a few feet.

I paused before getting up again. Whatever monster was out there, I considered, it was using the darkness like a hand - grasping around me and flinging me about like a rag doll. I couldn't get past more than two of these strikes at once, so all I could do was make myself less of a target.

I jumped to my feet and took off again, this time running in a zig-zag pattern. It worked - for about two yards. Then another ripple came with greater force, and I was thrown to the ground.

I groaned, looking over at the exit. It was another twenty feet away. I'd never make it by walking. I was reduced, it seemed, to crawling, keeping as close to the ground as possible.

That didn't go too great either, I'd gotten a good couple of inches closer to the exit when my tormentor twisted the darkness around my ankles and dragged me back into the edges of the cave.

I thrashed around on the ground, trying to break free of the invisible creature's grip. It was like an iron fist had grasped around my legs, though I could barely feel it. My fear started to grow stronger and my will to keep going began to dwindle. What was the point? I should just let go, let myself be rescued from this madness.

I shook myself. No. I had to keep going. I would never forgive myself if I just gave up.

"Who are you?" I growled, almost involuntarily. "What are you?"

The darkness a few feet in front of me coalesced, bending and forming into a dim shape. As I watched, the shape gained definition, becoming clear: it was the form of a skeleton, and a seriously scary one at that. It was clad in cracked, dull armour, and a jagged sword hung loosely from a cord wrapped around its hips.

The creature's jaw creaked open, and that cold, ominous voice whispered, "I am Phrice, ancient spirit of horror, and you, Cyrus Wright, shall not leave this chamber with your mind intact."