I left the Labyrinth through the entrance in the Arizona desert near my mom's house. The desert hadn't changed. It was a sea of scorching hot sand, littered with spots of green and cacti.
Apollo's sun still shone. The sky was still blue and the desert was still hot but I felt different, more at peace. I began to trek back towards my mom's house.
"You're back! What are you doing here?" My mom had been drinking her earl grey tea in the living room when I walked in. "Chiron Iris-messaged me. You were- are injured! Why are you here?" She exclaimed.
"I snuck back into the Labyrinth." I explained. My mother's face went red.
"You. Did. What!" She gestured wildly at my bandages. "Look what happened last time. One of the demigods, the ones with blonde hair and violet eyes, told me that you almost went insane." My mom paused, her eyes widening in worry.
"Oh my gods! You are okay, right?" I smiled slightly at her, sitting down next to her.
"I'm fine. I went back and I did it. I beat the Labyrinth." She raised an eyebrow at me.
"You beat the Labyrinth? I'm not a Greek demigod but I do believe that a deadly living maze is very different from a game of football. I can't imagine what you went through there."
The smile slid off my face.
"It was horrible. It showed me some painful stuff but I got through it."
"Destroy it." I gave my mom an incredulous look. She met my stare head-on. "Destroy it, Clarisse. That creation made someone you cared about go insane, fatally injured you, and almost made you go insane." She grasped my shoulders. "You are a hero and that maze is evil. Destroy it."
I thought about the pain that the Labyrinth brought to me, to Chris, even to all those people in ancient Greece. It held the Minotaur who even Percy can admit was a horrible monster. My mom was right.
I hadn't been able to find the Labyrinth entrance to Camp. The next best thing would be to crush the Labyrinth before it hurt someone else and I had a few ideas how to go about it.
"Mom, where would I get a wrecking ball?"
In the end, it took some serious convincing, a medium-sized bribe, multiple death threats, and some minor Mist manipulation to convince the construction worker to let an unsupervised teenage girl drive his wrecking ball into the desert.
My mom insisted that she drove the machine since I was only 15 and didn't have a driver's license but I was going to be the one who pressed the button to smash this maze.
I didn't get to smash the maze. The entrance to the Labyrinth in the desert was surrounded by rocks. I used the wrecking ball to push them onto the doorway to crush it. A large cloud of dust emerged from the blow.
And when the dust dissipated, the labyrinth entrance had just moved a few feet away. My mom blinked. "Well, that was anticlimactic."
I glowered. "What just happened?" I tried again and the same thing happened. I was going for a third time when my mom stopped me.
"I do believe we promised that man we'd bring his machine back in an hour." I grumbled my complaints but went along with it. When we finally arrived home, my mom let me sleep in my own bed. It had never felt better.
In the morning, I Iris-messaged Chiron to let him know where I was. I got an earful about how I shouldn't have left and it was dangerous for me. Usually I would have been annoyed that he was lecturing me but this time, I noticed a small gleam of pride in his tone. It made me smile when he cut off the communication.
He sent a pegasus to pick me up and return me to Camp.
Will, Lee, Pollux, and Castor were furious. "What were you thinking!" Lee yelled. Will grabbed my arm to forcibly drag me back to the infirmary. Pollux and Castor trailed behind, glowering at my back. I only let Will touch me because I trusted him. He patched me up secretly when I didn't want people to know that I was hurt.
Lee was grumbling and yelling about stupid patients and how no one ever listened to their doctor. I realized that they looked how I must look when I got angry. I had to bite my lip to stop from laughing out loud which didn't help with convincing them that I wasn't insane.
My overprotective doctors forced me to stay in my bed for a week. I was surprised by the amount of visitors I received. Katie, her younger sister, Miranda, Beckendorf, and Silena all sat at my side for a while. My siblings mocked me relentlessly about being bedridden.
Then in the most satisfying turn of events, they beat up another camper for trying to make fun of that fact. Even the Stolls promised to lay off pranking me until Will decreed I was completely recovered, but my mind was preoccupied with a different son of Hermes.
After a week in bed, I was finally cleared and I immediately went to check on Chris. Will told me that he was gradually becoming worse. He wasn't eating, drinking, or sleeping. Chiron was considering removing him from the infirmary because rumors were spreading about the secret insane demigod. I insisted that I take over his care without caring what the other Apollo campers thought.
Annabeth and Chiron wanted to discuss my experience in the Labyrinth. We still needed to find the supposed entrance into the Labyrinth and stop Luke from getting the String of Ariadne.
Despite Chiron's protests, Annabeth would continue to research the Labyrinth from California. We all agreed that it wouldn't be safe to send another scout into the maze until we investigated it more. Annabeth was also trying to help her satyr-friend, Grover, find the lost god Pan. She believed that the Labyrinth held the answer. She was just as obsessed with the maze as she was when we started.
Me? I had dealt with that place for 4 months ever since my mom called me in December. I had been harassed by nosy gods, assaulted by malevolent spirits, and tormented by whatever being powered the labyrinth. I was done with it. I focused all of my attention on Chris.
