One of these days I should just translate a chapter to French. Same effect.

Chapter 6: Stabbing a CPR Dummy

Annabeth made sure to dream of Greece late one night, mid-fall. Besides having the benefit of going somewhere so relaxing, she had also found plans for a great abandoned Grecian temple last time she was in the underground of Egypt.

Allegedly, if she'd read her hieroglyphics right, there was a magical treasure buried in the tomb of the golden king. An uncataloged magical item. Little was known of its capabilities and that made finding all the more enticing.

She had awoken on the concrete road of Volos and instantly set off. The Pagasetic Gulf to her left, and the quaint greek buildings to her right. Scorching under the full afternoon sun that glinted off the waves. While she made her way to the nightclub located just shy of the gulf, she had Percy on her brain.

She'd caught him staring at her six times throughout the week. Six. Her little crushing heart was going mad with throbs but her head was filled with simmering anger.

All she had to do was look pretty for him to look at her.

So not worth it.

For being in such a prime spot in the city, the nightclub was tacky and tasteless. Dead neon signs towered above its doors and graffiti layered every inch of the walls. Or maybe it was 'street art', Annabeth couldn't ever really bring herself to care enough to try and understand the two. She got inside by kicking in the weak door flanking the left of the building. Setting off an alarm instantly that seemed to make the air vibrate with its intensity. Annabeth was used to such alarms and plowed into the building.

The dance floor was vacant, dark, and so quiet it felt as if you could hear the echo of where feet once partied. Beyond the sound systems, wedged in the corner, hidden by a banner advertising an old dance competition, there was a broom closet. Right below that floor, that's where she had to get in.

This was where things got difficult.
With a tight chest, Annabeth shouldered her back pack and clasped her dreamscape amulet. Feeling the magic course under her fingers, envisioning it pulse up her arm and into her neck. Feeding into her mind and filling it with light. Her eyes glowed grey as she gorged on the magic. Forcing it into the one spell she knew.

"Ykoops Sdrow Sdrawkcab, Ykoops Sdrow Sdrawkcab, Ykoops Sdrow Sdrawkcab!" She chanted under breath.

She kept her focus away from the floor. Away from her feet which were fast dissolving into the grimy beige tiles. Letting herself sink away as if an explorer accepting his quicksand fate.

"Ykoops Sdrow Sdrawkcab!"

She sank lower and lower. Finally being engulfed completely by the earth. Drifting through solids in a very ghostlike way. Praying at the back of her mind that there was indeed a cavern below her or else she'd eventually lose focus and turn solid again amongst the worms.

There.

Her vision cleared. Below her was stable rock and cobblestone road torn up in odd places and patched in others. Lit by her magic as her feet hit the ground. Fatigue encased her in a fog when the energy slipped away through her finger tips. Making her drop to the stone but she was determined to continue.

Groggily she fished around her bag and yanked out a flashlight. No sooner had the beams hit the roof of the tunnel then did she make out an ugly sagging mop of flesh a few feet in front of her. A face. Crawling with bugs and crumbling with rot. One side of the face was completely sheared off showing the gleaming white skull underneath and the maggots that nested in the brain through the hollow eyes. The other eye flicked at her, following every movement of her jelly legs. Cautiously, the thing ampled forward on four disjointed limbs just as Annabeth stumbled back. An icicle threaded right down her spine and tingled off every nerve. She felt that if she even so much as swallowed wrong the ghastly creature would jump at her with its very intact fangs and find the arteries in her neck. Why did they always have to have intact fangs?

An undead monkey. She realized. Or ape?

She was never really clear on what separated those two things either. Maybe it had something to do with the tail?

Or lack thereof. She made a mental note to research monkeys when she got home. IF she got home.

"Ooooh" said the beast.

"Oooooooh" echoed a thousand different voices all around her. Never before had she felt so small. If only she could reach her machete in her backpack. If only she'd been more prepared. The monkey seemed to be reaching for something behind him as well. In unison they pulled out their weapons. Annabeht holding her old rusty, and frankly dull machete blade, meanwhile the ape- monkey thing pulled out a… a clipboard.

"Ooooh Oohhh AAAAAHHH." It screamed and danced forward. A thousand pattering footsteps clattered around the rocky cave. Annabeth held her blade up, her heart pumping to the beat of their odd dance. Hundreds of more undead monkey's shimmied into the light of her flashlight. Throwing jazz hands and pounding the floor with their feet.

Just when she thought they would all pounce and shred every fiber of muscle off her bones, the leader monkey held out his clipboard and the cavern grew eerily quiet. A thousand eyes glinted with her flashlight light as they watched her in a deep anticipation.

Breathe. She reached for the clipboard. Shocked to see legible words printed on the top. Just breathe.

"We are…" she read aloud. Trembling from stomach to crown. "Pleased to announce you, the first mortal to enter our lair, as the winner of our PRIZED STASH OF SALT?!"

This couldn't be real.

"SERIOUSLY!? SALT? AGAIN?!" Annabeth threw down the clipboard. "NO MORE SALT! I'M SICK OF SALT! I'LL CUT OFF ANYONE'S HEAD IF THEY TRY AND GIVE ME SALT!"

"Oooh?"

"Yeah. No. NO SALT." Annabeth stepped on the clipboard and shouldered her way past the first monkey. Not paying attention to his broken hearted expression tearing up his one good eye.

"OOOOHHHH AAHH AH AH AH!" The cry went up from the back of the group. Annabeth was no genius monkey interpreter but she was pretty sure it could only mean one thing: Attack.

With a shout she scrambled forward. Following the disheveled cobblestone path, jumping over small streams and puddles as thousands of monkey feet thundered after her. Hot gasps of their hungry breaths brushed against her ankles as she ran, spurring her on to go faster. When a monkey got close enough to lick her calf she slashed out backwards with her machete and revelled at the yowl that followed.

One leaped from the stalactites and squared her right on the shoulders. Stumbling, she thrashed her arms about, trying to dislodge it. Screaming and swiping as it burned her cheeks and neck with scratches.

At last she snatched it by its bare bone neck and flung it behind her, raining maggots down her shirt and into the pockets of her back pack.

"STUPID GENIE!" she shrieked while shaking her shirt. The monkey's answered her scream with a shout of their own. Empowered by her apparent show of weakness she guessed. She was too mad to be scared anymore.

Before her, down the length of a tunnel, she finally saw an end. A glow. A shimmering lake. As smooth and glass-like as a mirror but deep with rectangle boulders. She could see all the way to the bottom, where a light shone in its depths.

Breathlessly she leapt for it. Grazing her ankle on the last monkey mouth before her face met the water. Kerplunking through the surface and letting herself sink as deep as she could go. She felt the rush of energy burn her legs together, and felt the fizz of smoke rise from her new tail but she didn't open her eyes.

When her lungs burned against her chest and she couldn't go a second longer, she released her air. Watching the bubbles sparkle in the blue light when they fled for the surface.

Breathe. She hoped she could. Come on! Breathe! She better be able to.

Unable to resist anymore she filled her lungs with water, expecting to choke and die. But no. It satisfied her aching throat. It felt just like breathing air, but heavier. Sharper.

Laughing, Annabeth peered up through the water to see the wall of undead monkeys chatter and scream at the lake. Not daring to set foot in it, knowing that they'd sink.

The cobbled road continued on the lake's floor. Down, down, down to another little cave. Full of twists and turns and probably sweet glowy lights from squishy cute magic sea slugs.

I don't know. I don't want to focus on this part.

The point is, she went down and far down. Slipping into a stream of moving water before long and somehow ending up in a current. Swimming was like dragging a lead coat with her feet. She still hadn't figured out the whole 'tail' thing and was quite frankly bad at it. When she thought she couldn't go any further there was a break in the water. Air appeared.

She was in a waterfall into another cavern and plunged headfirst down its arch of sparkling water.

Light poured from the top of this cavern. Thousands of enchanted crystals glowed so blue it was as if the sky had curled up to live in this cave. Over the mirroresque waters, in the center of the second lake there was a white marble gazebo on top of a small shrubless isle.

Annabeth swam for it and circled it twice. Wary from the streams of red that dripped from its rusty grounds and into the water.

Annabeth landed on a beach of shells, stained with red. Unfortunately, she had to drag her dumb tail from the water all the way up to the marble gazebo. Sliming through trails of what she now identified as blood.

A being was groaning from the great marble floor ahead of her. As she neared she could make out the grotesque spectacle.

A body was lying in a very large pool of crimson blood. Moaning in agony because all four of his limbs were missing and he was spouting blood from every gaping hole in his body. Eyes, ears, nose, mouth and belly button included.

"Uhhh, do you need any help?" Annabeth asked kindly.

The man stopped and smiled up at her. "No thank you, I'm just fine. Have a pleasant day." Before returning to his deep grovelling moans.

"Are you sure?" she tilted her head at him. "You seem a bit… disarmed."

"Well if you insist." The man waggled around his armless shoulders and legless thighs, squirting hot blood over every surface in the gazebo including Annabeth's face. Trying, apparently, to rearrange himself so he could look at her better.

In disgust she used her sleeve to clean her face.

"You see my dilemma is that I know how to be dying, but I, Koalemos, don't actually know how to die." Koalemos said innocently.

"You don't know how to die?" Annabeth pushed herself upright farther to squint down at him. Thinking perhaps he was a very poor monster in disguise. She wished she had her legs so she could prod him with her foot.

"Embarrassing, isn't it? All my friends figured out how to die on their first try and here I am still suffering a thousand years later."

Annabeth blinked. For a moment she considered turning around and flopping herself back to the water. This looked like a royal waste of time.

"Right…" she said. "I'm sorry to hear that but I can't help you. I'm not sure how to die either."

Koalemos sighed, truly saddened. "I guessed as much. Anyways, you must be here for the blade of one use."

Magical artifact. Magical artifact!

"The blade of one use?" Annabeth echoed. Truth be told, it didn't exactly have the most promising name.

"Yeah, it's up on that altar over there." He jutted his chin in the direction of the altar. "Legend says that this blade was made for one particular use. And if so be it that the wielder uses the blade for the use it was so made, then the wielder will be blessed with happiness of all the stars in the daytime sky."

Annabeth shifted her arms. Her palms were getting sore from holding her upper body upright and it was becoming more and more clear that this 'not-a-corpse' was a whack job.

"All the stars in the daytime sky… so just the one? Use the blade for the one use it was made to do and you'll be blessed by the sun?"

"I don't know, something like that." Koalemos shrugged.

Poof, her legs returned, and Annabeth stretched to her full height. Towering over Koalemos and finally setting her eyes on the blade. A short greek dagger made of celestial bronze and sitting haphazardly on the altar as if it were tossed there instead of placed.

Annabeth picked it up gingerly, and then eyed the man at her feet. A loose idea in the back of her head.

"What if it's one use is to kill you?" she asked.

Koalemos's face grew stony and pale. Then, in a spit of fire like the fuse of TNT, he fizzled with pure joy.

"Oh please stab me!" He sounded like a boy on christmas. "Stab me! Stab me!"

She gave the man what he wanted. Violently, she thrusted the blade down and forced it through the layers of skin and fat. Slicing through muscles and viens with a sickly sschitnk before it the tip was buried in the velvet soft tissue of the heart. For a solid minute she stood still, dagger in hand, watching him the blood bubble up through the clean rectangular cut and pour down onto the white marble. Every ounce of colour seemed to finally be exhausted from his body, and a stillness solidified in his torso. Death, Annabeth was sure of it, was coming.

But his eye twitched.

"Ow," Koalemos finally said. "That really hurt… and didn't work apparently"

"Apparently," Annabeth shrugged. "But it was worth a shot, right?"

"I guess."

Koalemos glanced down at his new wound, gurgling with flow, dejectedly. Clearly he'd been dealt a bad hand at birth. Or a bad shoulder at least. Poor guy.

Annabeth pressed a hand to her chest. Drumming her dreamscape amulet with her fingers and sending tingles spiraling down her body. "I best be off."

"Nice to meet you young lady! Thanks for trying to kill me at least!" Koalemos said before she dissipated.

She woke up.

Y'all know who Koalemos is in greek myths, right?