The Car roared down the road. I was ramming the Car through the monsters that had surrounded us. Apollo was hanging on to the door for dear life. Meg was slashing away at things that had dared to climb on the roof of the car.
Let me explain.
As we roared down the road towards the East River, the demons had taken off after us. Thousands of flaming demons and imp-like beings were being poured out of the hole in the ground. Some were being created from the matter left by the giant rock monster after we had killed it by tearing away his hip.
...The Hydra should have sued them for copyright infringement.
Anyways, the matter of the fact remained that monsters were chasing us. And that we had to get away fast.
I floored down the accelerator. And the engine roared in agreement. And we shot off with even greater speed.
"How fast does this thing go", Apollo cried, unable to keep his real terror out of his voice. It was pretty sad, considering that he used to drive the sun chariot.
"Not as fast as I would like it to be", I shouted in glee, "But pretty damn fast!"
I spoke too soon. Because a monster had caught up with the car.
It wasn't easy for the monsters to avoid the flaming-hot exhaust of the engine. It ran on Greek fire. So it was to my surprise that a monster had not been melted by the gases coming out of the exhaust.
It caught the roof of the Car, trying to gain a footing in order to attack the car with its bare hands, but I did not give it a chance to do so. I swerved down the road, and made a hole in the wall. The shock was absorbed by the front bender, and whatever force did bleed through was cushioned by the Nemean lion pelt in front of me.
Its momentum flung it off the car. I stopped at a distance a little in front of where it had fallen down, made a loop and went in the same direction from where we had came. On passing the monster, I crushed it over with the Car. Which was good, because a group of similarly sized demons were standing in the front of the break in the wall.
I did not stop because Meg had shouted out, "Twenty bucks if you hit the demon in the centre!" So naturally, I obliged and took an opportunity to earn twenty bucks from a girl who was probably a street urchin.
It was all for my college savings, I swear.
The car didn't just hit the demon in the centre. It hit all the demons at one, and the closest nearest to the centre got hit with such a force that they were all flung away.
I kept driving the Car and turned my free hand towards Meg, and just said, "The twenty dollars?" The sounds of something scrabbling away at metal came down from the roof. Probably a monster trying to get a hold onto the moving Car.
She said, "Dude, you hit them all at once. You should have just hit the one in the middle." Sounds of nails scratching at metal hit our ears. Meg went to work. She stood on the backseat, over a cowering Apollo, and with a slash of her sword, cut off a chunk of the roof. With another slash she attacked the monster. 'A loose head bounced down the back window and into the mass of monsters that were chasing us and had almost caught up to us.
"It doesn't matter", I said shaking my head, "A deal is a deal." Monsters were coming at us from the direction of the East River. They were flanking us from the back and from the front. Meg was guarding the exposed back which had been ripped away by a couple of monsters that had managed to cover the distance between us and them. The Greek fire fumes were painfully ineffective against them. Makes sense since they were surviving being covered in flame.
An innumerable number of monstrous hands tried to grab at the back of the car. Golden swords flashed and cut them off.
"So all of this", came an indignant, fearful voice from down the backseat, as I rammed down the few demons at the front "Is a game to you?" A red mob could be seen at the front of the road.
"Well not a game per se.", I said, turning to the side towards the river, "But you gotta find happiness wherever you can, man!" I accelerated down A thin lane till the bridge, which it met at an oblique angle. With a jolt, the Car climbed over the divider at the starting point of the bridge. Apollo got crushed by the pelt which had fallen on him when we got up on the bridge.
"Besides", I continued, "Who are you to criticise us? Last time I saw you having "fun", you were killing enemy soldiers with a shotgun." Apollo said, "Germani. And that was different. I was shooting at them with a gun. You are doing it with a truck".
We raced down the bridge. Distantly I could see the skyline illuminated with a red glow. There was no traffic on the bridge, as the humans had probably got eaten by the army of monsters which were now chasing us.
There were no monsters chasing us from this side of the bridge. East river and I had an understanding between us. A pleasurable and intense understanding for him, I believe. Fresh water always seemed to give him orgasms.
The other side of the bridge was a different matter though.
Hundreds, if not thousands of monsters of all shapes and sizes and kinds were waiting for us. There were flying monsters, walking monsters, crawling monsters, burrowing monsters also monsters that were too horrible to do such simple things. Those were eldritch abominations. Those were the worst.
The horde in front of us, charged at us at a crazy speed. Thousands of monsters flew, ran, crawled, burrowed and jostled with each other, for, I want to believe, the honour of killing us.
"BRACE YOURSELF", I yelled out...and drove the Car over the side of the bridge.
Apollo had somehow found the spine to stand, and was currently screaming in my ear. Meg held on to the frame of the Car, and yelled, "LOOK OUT!"
Water rose up to meet the Car. It enveloped the Car in an all-encompassing hug, and then solidified under the wheels. It formed a sort of platform under the car, where it was stood securely and was running on the platform, which extended all the way up to the bank of the other side. The tension between the water molecules had been unnaturally strengthened, and could now support the weight of a five-ton beast.
I didn't even have to drive it.
I turned back to see how they were faring- and found out that Meg did not yell because we were falling into a river.
One of those burrowing things that had attacked us was poised up to sink its mouth into my flesh. Lightning-fast, it lunged at me with its lamprey-like mouth open, filled with rotating teeth. I was too slow to avoid it, but was slow enough that I had managed to turn away, and "only" latched on to my left shoulder.
Ripping-hot, droplets of pain seemed to invade my nerves. I cried out in pain. For a horrible moment, it seemed like I had lost control of the body to the pain, and did not feel any agony. Then the feeling of burning muscle returned. I had to steel my hands and rip away the burrowing worm, trying to burrow into my flesh.
I could feel warm blood squirting out of my wound, but my sensation was warped by adrenaline and I did not care. I whipped it against the door. Its spine cracked with a pleasing pop sound. Its head still struggled to bite me, but I rammed Riptide, while still in pen form, through the place where its head should have been. Its struggling stopped as all signs of life faded from its body.
I turned back, and saw that the side door was partially eaten, with another of these burrowing creatures struck in the window with an arrowhead in its brain. Muffled sounds came from the pelt, which had fallen down in the space between the front and the back seats. Probably Apollo. At the back of the Car, the cut up carcasses of these creatures were strewn about. Some of them were still moving, but Meg was working her way to rectify that.
She was slicing them all up into ribbons. Literally. She sported a bite wound in her calf, and was limping quite a bit. But it was not bleeding. She looked at me, and said, "Your shoulder gotta need some healing." The adrenaline had numbed the pain and I had totally forgotten about the wound left by the worms.
I tried to move my arm, but burning pain erupted from my shoulder. I clenched my teeth, and grabbing my arm, turned towards the dashboard. Blood spurted and torn muscles became agonized as I picked out all the teeth that had pierced through the muscle and got broken off. Summoning a spurt of water, I tried to the heal the wound inflicted. But, as much as the torn muscles got healed, the skin didn't join, and the upper layer of the flesh was still injured.
I climbed back from the driver's seat. Apollo was still struck beneath the pelt. I heaved it up. A sputtering and gasping Apollo emerged. I did not have enough time, so I yanked off the backpack from him forcefully. He sat down and struggled to breathe. From the bag I took out the iodine solution, and applied it to the wound. The sting of iodine doesn't bother you after a while.
"So", I said to Apollo, once he got the chance to recover his breath, "Do you have any idea of who is financing your capture?" I gave the medical bag to Meg who was cleaning her own injuries and popped a piece of ambroisia.
"How should I know", Apollo said, "It is the heroes who are supposed to do these things, right? Discovering the enemies of gods who have plotted and conspired against us? Fi-"
"Yeah", I interrupted him, "But this time we have no Oracle to give us clues. And this attack was too big. It is almost comparable to the last war that had happened here in New York. Whoever had the time, money, resources to do such a thing must be very powerful. Also he is tied to your situation"- I gestured at him- "Must be one of your ancient enemies or someone."
Apollo frowned. "I have no enemies. Everybody loves me!", he said. "Of course all those who had wronged me- I smited them", he added.
"Any "ancient" enemy? And I mean really ancient. Like when you were young", I asked. Apollo took offence to that.
"What do you mean, when I was young?! I am eternally youthful. I have had thousands of lovers every day till now! There is no other god who is as handsome and young as me."
"Any monsters then", I tried to placate him. "Any powerful monster that you had killed during the time when you were even more youthful? Anyone who is tied up to your past? Someone who can silence the Oracle?". I was grasping at straws here, but when you are in such a position, you will automatically do so.
Apollo suddenly became very, very quiet. His face paled. I got the implication that he had remembered that he had tried very hard to suppress.
"One", he blurt out, "I know of one such an enemy of mine. But it would not be possible for him to reclaim the Oracle. He is utterly destroyed. I made sure of it."
Reclaiming the Oracle? I had not done my homework, but I was sure that it was one of the Titans that owned the Delphi region, before Apollo took control of it. But, I had had to write Greek Gods, and there was something about when Apollo was born that I was forgetting...
"It's Python, isn't it?", I said. Apollo took a gulp and nodded.
"You're afraid of a simple snake monster? Man, the myths are-", I started, but got interrupted by Apollo.
"You don't know anything", he said, his voice almost trembling, but held steady with conviction and belief. "The myths does not say anything about Python! He was the most terrifying enemy that I had to face single-handedly."
"But you were a newly-born god, and still you managed to defeat it at the first try", I tried to break him out of his terrified shell, "And now you are experienced. I am sure that something can be done."
"You don't know the trials and tribulations that I had to suffer while fighting him", he said. "Besides", he gave a bitter smile, "I am not as powerful as I used to be."
That might have been underselling it.
"Don't worry", I told him, "Something will happen at the last second. Monsters like that always have a weakness, a weak point. It might end in a literal deus ex machina!"
"Hey", Meg interrupted, "The shore is coming near."
She was right. We had reached Glen Cove.
Once again, the legions of Tartarus were arranged in formation and were ready to welcome us on the coast. I really hate it when the infernal forces display a better grasp of logic and intuition than they should have.
I told them, "Hold on". My throat was really sore after all that yelling and screaming.
Meg flexed her arms, although there weren't enough muscles to show. Apollo partially covered himself with the pelt, and cocked the shotgun. I gripped the steering wheel tightly and put on my seatbelt. Something told me that this would be one heck of a ride.
The current of the platform of water was slowing down, ready to deposit us back on land. The East River didn't hold much power in this part of the country. But it still had enough for one last trick.
Before we could land, the water of the East River wiped out all monsters in a five-hundred yard radius.
It was basically a free real estate to drive a car.
Not all of the monsters died. One of them, a grey corpse jumped at an amazing speed onto the back of the Car and hissed, what it believed to be in a low whisper, "They will never get to Half-Blood. You must-"
The ground gave away before it could speak any further, or before Meg could kill it.
...
I was still regretting my decision to not shut the door in their faces earlier this dark morning.
A chasm had opened up below the car. The Car had fallen down, before even anyone could comprehend. Just a branch made out of countless vines was holding the Car from falling down completely and crushing us. We were hanging only by latching on to the frame of the car. The corpse monster was hanging from the twisted vines, above us. Before we could do anything, an ear-splitting bang of a small explosion could be heard, and the monster exploded into plant-products.
At the side, Apollo was holding the shotgun with its barrel smoking.
A sound of creaking and tearing snapped my focus back to the rope of brambles and woody vines. It was almost about to be torn. The ground of the chasm could be seen three hundred feet below. If we fell, then the Car would be crushed with us still inside it.
I killed the engine. At this point I realized that I could not save the Car. It was doomed to fall. The best I could do was to ensure that there was no explosion afterwards. Greek Fire was pretty volatile after all.
I opened the door on the side of the driver's seat. Seeing the fall, my throat tightened involuntary and my breath constricted. It was a fall that I did not want to experience. Ever.
I let myself out, careful to grab on to the frame of the door with all my strength. My feet dangled in free air. At this place there was no wind blowing past my ears. If I fell down here then there would be no witnesses, no funeral, nothing. Burials didn't count as I was already under the earth, and also because we didn't practice burials.
I had to clear all those morbid thoughts out of my mind. I didn't want to experience an existential crisis while climbing a dangling car.
I pulled up with all my strength. On the hood of the car, I could truly understand the situation. Walls of stone extended till infinity, and seemed to part its way for us. I could hear the sound of the rush of water behind the two walls of stone. Below, a thin line of a path could be seen separating the two walls. I realized one thing: that we were in deeper shit than we could have ever imagined.
We were trapped inside the Labyrinth.
...
"Hey", I called out to them, "Come out of the car."
Very reluctantly, the middle door opened. Meg was already hanging out of the car, and so she only climbed up till she reached the hood. Apollo came out, with the pelt wrapped around him and the backpack in his front. I felt sorry for him.
"Give me the pelt", I said to him. He flung it with all his strength towards me.
I caught it with a grunt. It was tremendously heavy. It was the skin and bones of a lion as big as a rhino, but still it felt heavy for it size. Without the heavy weight of the bones obstructing him, Apollo could easily climb out of the Car.
"See what I am about to do", I told them, "We will hang on to the vine, and I let the car fall. After the explosion occurs, I will encase us in water and cut down the vine and float us down. Any problem?"
"Yeah, dumbass", Meg said, "We could easily climb up and escape this place."
At that moment, the vine gave another creak, as if in response to her suggestion.
"Okay, Apollo any problem?", I asked him.
"No- no problem at all!", he squeaked out.
I told them to hold the branch securely. And then I cut down the part holding the car to the rope. I feel down and met the ground in twenty seconds and...there was no explosion.
Odd, since the Greek Fire was famed to cause explosions.
The cliff-sides broke through as water battered from the pipelines and ravaged the inside of the rocks. Water came rushing through, and formed a cocoon around our bodies. The water got suspended and, keeping a tight control over the water and straining my mind, I willed the water to slowly lower us. In a few minutes we meet the floor of the cave.
"So, what do we do now", Meg asked me, as soon as we reached down.
"We rest, recuperate", I said, "After that we will try to climb out of this place. We have nothing, so we must eat the ambroisia that we have to try to build our strength."
"And, if we fail to do so", Meg asked, "What will we do next?"
With a glance at the distance that stretched out in front of us, I said, "Then we must traverse the Labyrinth."
I half-expected Apollo to pale again, but with a shrug he muttered, "Well, if it isn't such a cheerful proposition." Gosh, I became proud of him.
Meg frowned, "What's so bad about it?"
Apollo gave a mad bark, "What's so wrong about it she says?" Once again, I became concerned about his sanity.
"Well it is a big winding maze full of death traps and constantly changing tunnels and what not that plague the under-surface of earth", I explained to her, "It also connects all places on earth, and a number of places not on earth. Oh, and it is also actively trying to trap and kill you."
Meg understood the problem.
"That is why I am not in love with the idea of navigating the Labyrinth. Travelling through it with the help of a clear-sighted is hard enough, now we have to do it by ourselves if we fail. I want you to conserve your strength. You are getting us out of here tomorrow."
"And what will you do", she asked me, "Juggle water-balls?"
"My water powers are hard enough to control, whereas you can just cause a piece of root to grow out of the soil. Not only that, splitting up the ambroisia supplies would be terribly inefficient. Nobody can get us out of here now. The monsters must have slaughtered everybody in that area. So we have to do everything ourselves."
Meg gave a grudging nod. She did not seem enthusiastic about being the heavy lifter.
"Now sleep", I told them. They dropped down like a sack of potatoes.
...
It was Meg's watch duty.
We couldn't go to sleep at the same time. Any monster worth his salt would have found and murdered us in our sleep. So we divided up watch duties between us. Meg got the short-stick, to say. She had to watch us between my turn, and Apollo's. So she could not get any uninterrupted sleep.
I lied down, trying to go to sleep. But I was too tired, too strung up after the day's events, and I was too tense to go to sleep. It was as if my body was permanently in a state of awareness, too much to go to sleep. So I feigned to be asleep, in order to sort out the memories of the morning.
There was something that didn't feel right. A memory of a monster and a girl got constantly replayed in my mind, the brain had decided that the key point to reveal the source of problem. After a while, I became bored. There were only so many things you could do in a situation like this.
That is when I heard the sword being revealed from its disguise.
Fucking called it.
Above Apollo, there stood a person with her swords raised, ready to plunge into him. The darkness of the maze caused a silhouette to form over her face made it difficult to recognize her. But I was pretty damn sure that it was Meg.
There were only so many girls in the corridor with us.
I gripped a piece of broken rock that had been near my hand, and flung it with all my strength towards the figure. It struck her in the middle and threw her off Apollo.
I rushed at the fallen figure, to finish this by stabbing her. But somehow, I tripped over something, and was caught by a couple of ropes that rapidly worked their way in binding my hands. Looking at them, I saw that they were vines, not branches.
Meg slowly stood up, blood dropping from her chest, where the small stone had lodged into her chest. Standing up, she made a grasping motion with her hand. Another branch wrapped around my throat, and slowly tightened, cutting off my oxygen supply.
I held down my breath, and fought with all my strength. But to no avail. The vine noose around my neck slowly tightened. The strength and the tension of the branches holding down my arms increased, with more and more branches wrapping around my hands.
Panicked, I channelled my power through the stone. A thin stream of water spurted, almost explosively, as it cut down the branch noose, missing my neck by the merest fraction of an inch. I took a deep gulp of breath. The water hose then tried to cut off my bonds, but they were too thick. However, it worked enough that I could tear the bonds with my arms.
She quickly backtracked, and screamed out, "Lester, shoot!"
The bang sound of a shot fired boomed all around in the thin space, causing my ears to bleed. I waited for the pain to come, but I felt none. Glancing back, I saw Apollo convulsing in pain. Confused, I looked back at Meg, and saw her shoulder bleeding profusely. Apollo had deliberately misinterpreted the command of his master and broke his condition, at least in spirit. Now he was being punished.
I tried to rush to her to finish the job. But then I found out that I could not do so. From my feet up, I was covered by a tangle of creepers and climbers. Some even had crawled and penetrated my skin, and now looked like it was sucking my bodily fluids. Meg slowly stood up.
"So your parents are those who have orchestrated this. Or have they been killed. Even then, they must have been a bad sort, teaching their kids to stab each other in the back", I desperately tried, in order to wrangle out some information from her before I could die.
"You seem awfully interested in my family. You want it? Fine, you'll get it. My father was a good man! He was killed! I did a mistake, which had awoken the Beast. For that, my father had to die!", she suddenly cried out, in a sudden moment of vulnerability.
"And you got adopted, huh", I asked, my voice slowly becoming more and more scatchy and weak. Getting one's vital fluids sucked out of you seemed to be bad for one's health. She nodded. "By the beast, no less", I added, sinking and grasping at straws here.
"He is not a bad person", she screamed out, "It is me who had awoken the Beast!"
"I know a bad case when I see one. The beast and he is the same person. He is the beast."
"No you don't understand!"
"Beast sounds like a nasty euphemism. Face it kid, you were working for your father's murderer all the time. And he died because of you!"
She suddenly cried out, rocking back and forth. In moments of strong emotions, the power spikes and the control over one's power becomes weak or strong, depending upon the situation. In moments of vulnerability, the control practically becomes zero.
And she was breaking down, thinking that she had inadvertently worked with her father's murderer, or that she was her father's murderer. I didn't care.
I ripped all the water and assorted fluids from the vines, and assimilated them back in my body. Immediately, I regained strength. Every organic tissue needs some kind of fluid to maintain the integrity of the structure. The vines didn't have any. It collapsed and broke down into dust.
I lunged at Meg, who was staring at me with open, horrified eyes, and stabbed her in the stomach, all through her back.
"If you had succeeded, hundreds of demigods would have died", I growled out, "For the sake of basic fucking human decency, tell me who is behind this little scheme of yours."
She nodded her head weakly, and whispered, "Nero". And then she spat in my face.
After that, what can I say? She died like a bitch.
...
Meg corpse turned to ash and left trophies of war.
I did not realize that even demigods left trophies when killed.
There were two golden rings, a branch of an unknown tree, and her rhinestone glasses.
What would I leave behind? A splash of water, maybe?
I walked over to Apollo. Strangely, his convulsions had subsided. I guessed that it related to Meg dying and shit. I gave him a hand to help him up.
"Thanks, Percy", he said, after he stood up. He was still hurt and weak. Just after I had helped him up, he had staggered, unable to support his weight. I made him sit on a rock, and retrieved the backpack for medical supplies. Specifically, ambroisia.
There were not many pieces left. I shook the bag, dangling it in air. Only a few dropped out. From the rock, Apollo said weakly, "What are you doing?"
"Meg, that bitch", I cursed, "She had eaten most of our ambroisia. But do not worry, there are still normal supplies left. Now we have to travel through the Labyrinth."
"Speaking of Meg", Apollo asked, "Did you really have to do that?"
"Do what", I asked, "I did many things to her".
"I mean gaslight her and all that", Apollo said.
"It's not gaslighting if it's true", I said, "Besides, she had me all wrapped up in soul-sucking vines. It was the only thing that I could've done."
"Percy..."
"The life of a random demigod playing an instrumental role in bringing down Western Civilisation and killing all demigods does not matter to me. But how did you know that she was trying to kill you."
"She told me "stay still"."
"This only proves that I was right in killing her."
Apollo shook his head. I told him to take some rest. I had a skin to peel, and some trophies to hoard.
...
We came across a huge snake corpse while travelling through the Labyrinth.
It was a Python. Surprise there. Someone had already done Apollo's work for him.
"May I take some of your time?"
The timing was so unexpected that it caused me to jump, before glaring at the person who had said it. Then my glare faltered. It was not a man. It was an amalgamation of a human, a lion and a snake.
Now, I've had my experiences with creatures those were the fusions of other creatures, but it was the first time that I have seen a human added to the mix.
"Who are you", I yelled out. No, I did not squeak.
"I AM THE ONE WHO UPHOLDS THE DUTY TO PROTECT REALITY AGAINST THOSE WHO MIGHT HARM IT." he(?) said, steadily ignoring me, and looking at Apollo.
"Now what do you want with us", I again yelled out, this time properly.
"I SMOTE THE PYTHON AND TOOK THE POWER OF THE FALSE ONES TO EMPOWER APOLLO."
Apollo frowned. "That means I get to be a god again?", he asked.
"THAT IS WHAT IT ENTRAILS."
"Hold on", I said, "There is always a catch. What is the catch?"
The being looked at me. Behind him, a glowing wall of yellow plasma rose. He just said, "HE WOULD HAVE TO PROTECT REALITY".
"That's it?", Apollo blurted out, as if he could not but be surprised that someone had made such an easy request. He was slowly working his way up in becoming a demigod.
"Yes"
"If you are so powerful", I asked him, "Can't you make a trunk to store all this loot"- I gestured at trophies that I had collected. Suddenly, I was more interested in hoarding things than ever.
The being made a grasping motion. Immediately, the walls of the Labyrinth seemed to bend, and from those wall, metals came out which got fashioned into a trunk, complete with a lock.
"THE PASSWORD IS 00000".
I put all the things inside the trunk, except for the rings. Meanwhile Apollo stood in a circle, where the plasma was slowly flowing into him.
And then everything went to hell. Not Hades.
A black circle opened in the middle of the room. And then all that I remember is falling into the hole.