From here on out, I'll be posting chapters every five days. There is going to be a period of roughly two weeks where I will have a lot less writing time, so I'll aim to build a buffer. I would like to thank everyone for their understanding.
Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Americans who are reading this. There's not much else to say, really - enjoy!
Snail mail. Don't you just hate it?
As Annabeth sat up in bed, she lamented the fact that she couldn't just send Percy an email, or better yet, a phone call. He'd have a harder time ignoring it then.
Although they had defeated Gaea two months ago, that didn't mean that there were no longer any occupational hazards of being a half-blood. Monsters still lurked in the darkness, or broad daylight for that matter.
And for some reason, use of electronic technology was like sending up a giant fireworks display spelling out your exact name and location. The more famous your godly parent was, the more risk you ran by doing so.
So it was good old-fashioned pen and paper that Annabeth used to craft the letter. Being a child of Athena, Annabeth was quite accustomed to anything academic, though her dyslexia wasn't going anywhere. But that just meant her brain was wired for Ancient Greek.
The others in her cabin were trying to sleep, but their head counselor (a title to which Annabeth had been promoted after the war against the giants) could not. Working long into the night as she tried to find the right words to use, the teenage girl gritted her teeth in frustration.
"Dear Seaweed Brain", she began, whispering as quietly as she could while still hearing her own voice. Her father had always told her that, before sending an email or letter, it was advisable to speak the words aloud. That way, you'd have a better idea of how the text sounded to your target audience.
Annabeth crossed out "Seaweed Brain" and wrote "Percy" in its place. The former was a pet name she often used for him, typically when she was in a romantic mood. Tonight wasn't one of those nights, though - how could it be when she hadn't heard from him in a month?
She shook her head. If Percy would rather be referred to in that affectionate manner, he could earn it by actually being an attentive boyfriend for once. How could he have changed so much in such a short time, and for that matter, why?
More than once, she had to hold back a sneeze. The cabin could really become drafty and dusty during the year's cooler months. Camp Half-Blood had near-perfect climate control; unless Chiron, the camp director, wanted snow to fall on the common green, it wouldn't.
Of course, something could happen that would disrupt this process. It would be a nasty surprise, albeit the sort of "nasty surprise" half-bloods experienced often. At some point, it ceased to be a "surprise", and the words "regular occurrence" were far more fitting.
But nobody wanted to think about their near-inevitable gruesome death. Eventually, you just had to grin and bear it. And with the son of the sea god by her side, Annabeth would be able to enjoy life.
But Percy wasn't here to witness the seasons change. As far as Annabeth knew, he was back in New York City working on his GED - he hadn't been able to sever all ties to the mortal world.
I mean, seriously. He's ghosting me again - this is starting to give me flashbacks to last December.
Annabeth didn't even want to ponder what had happened last year. Percy had vanished then as well - only, as much as she despised Hera, the exchange between camps had been necessary. Without it, they would not have been able to defeat the giants.
For all she knew, Percy's absence now might herald pain in the future. Of course, not being with the one she loved was already a form of suffering, but the last time he'd been gone, they'd ended up on the Quest of Seven, which had included a trek through Tartarus, the darkest corner of the Underworld.
It had also included the loss of Leo Valdez. Every time Annabeth thought back to that battle two months ago, she pictured the giant golden explosion that had sent him to an early grave.
Or so Nico di Angelo insisted. Truth be told, Jason and Piper hadn't been able to accept that their friend was no longer in the land of the living. They wanted to keep on looking, and so did Annabeth.
If I were Leo, I wouldn't want Annabeth and all her friends to give up on finding me. We have to treat others the way we'd like to be treated - that's the golden rule.
It was well past midnight when Annabeth finished writing her letter. It had cost her valuable sleep, but as a perfectionist, there was no alternative.
For the last time, as her eyelids had a harder time staying open, she read the letter aloud to herself, quieter than a mouse.
Dear Percy,
It has been a solid month since I last heard from you. If it wasn't your intention to ghost me for good, I would appreciate a reply as soon as possible. Neither of us can forget the last time I didn't hear from you for this long.
I hope that high school is going fine. It is for me, at least - but as a child of Athena, that much shouldn't be surprising. I would make a Seaweed Brain joke, but I just don't feel like it.
Things at Camp Half-Blood are…well, more of the same, really. It's been two months since the war against Gaea ended, but we're still mourning the dead. And there sure were a lot of them!
Jason and Piper keep arguing about when it'll be time to go back to Los Angeles. They don't want to admit it, but after two months with no sign of Leo, it seems unlikely that our prayers will be answered. At some point, as painful as it is, we will have to cut our losses. Enough will be enough.
Nico, meanwhile, is adjusting well to life at camp. He and Will seem to be more comfortable as a couple now, and they hold hands openly. I'm happy for both of them.
Speaking of Nico, he insists Leo is dead. I trust that sixth sense of his, but Nico also tells me that something feels different about his death. Still, it's best not to get our hopes up too high.
I hope you will reply soon, and I would like to once again wish you well.
Sincerely,
Annabeth
Annabeth put the letter in its designated envelope, for a "naked letter", as some would call it, was no good. Once again, she wished she could have sent Percy an email, but that just wasn't in the cards.
A shame, too. A letter could get thrown out with the rest of the mail. If he keeps ignoring me, maybe I'll have to take matters into my own hands.
There were no clocks inside the factory, nor were there any windows. This is to say that Leo had no sense of time inside the chamber, but once he woke up, he found Hazel sitting over him looking even more bushed than she had been before.
"Morning," Hazel said softly, wearing a smile that was clearly forced.
"Good morning, Hazel!" Leo replied, trying to put some energy into his voice. It was hard, though - stress was more contagious than a stomach virus.
"Whoa," the girl mouthed. "A bit easier, okay? You startled me."
"I'm sorry about that," Leo said, putting his hands in the air. His heart sank as he realized that he'd jeopardized his chance to start on a good foot with Hazel.
Fortunately, she didn't seem too bothered by it. "Let's just have a quick breakfast, okay? And then we'll keep looking for a way out of this place."
From this vantage point, Leo could see several doors, though he kept a careful eye on one of them. This, of course, was the door he'd entered from, the one that guaranteed a fiery grave if opened.
Leo pointed to an identical door on the other side of the room. "That's where we'll exit. The other one's a trap."
Hazel nodded as she removed some granola bars and beef jerky from her backpack. It was then that Leo noticed the letters on her purple T-shirt.
He didn't know why they hadn't jumped out to him at first, but Hazel's shirt contained the golden text SPQR right across the chest. For some reason, those letters rang some bells, though he had no idea where he'd seen them.
"Hey, Hazel?" he asked cautiously.
The girl glared at Leo, dropping the granola bar she'd been holding. "Yes, Leo?"
"What's with the letters on your shirt? What do they mean?"
"SPQR? Well, I don't know" she admitted. "But I feel like I should know. At some point, I knew exactly what they meant…".
Hazel trailed off, and Leo knew instinctively that he shouldn't push her any further down this path. Judging by her expression, she had mixed emotions about whatever was in her past. Now wasn't the best time to delve into that.
After their rather pitiful breakfast (which was still heavenly by the low standards of this subterranean world), the pair stood back up, Hazel donning her backpack.
Leo had offered to carry it for a while, an offer that was flatly declined. Hazel's exact words were, "You're too scrawny, and besides, it's my backpack. Not that I don't trust you, but I don't trust you."
So Hazel set the pace as they made their way down the tunnel. More than once, the path curved left or right, but it wasn't until about a mile in that they reached their first fork in the road.
"Which way do we go?" Hazel wondered aloud.
"I was going to ask you precisely that."
The girl rolled her eyes. "Well, this quest, if you can call it that, doesn't make any sense. If we're indeed in an underground maze of sorts, how are we supposed to find our way to the end?"
"I think there's an algorithm for that. Just keep your hand on the right wall and use trial and error."
"That would take too long," Hazel protested. "We don't have enough to eat or drink to sustain such a long journey."
"Well, what's the alternative?"
"I don't know. Explore for a while and hope we get lucky?"
"Whatever. I trust you," Leo replied caustically.
They ended up selecting the right path. Both sides of the fork looked basically identical; they had essentially chosen it at random. They alternated directions at each intersection until they reached another one of those doors.
This door, however, was different from the others. It appeared far more rustic, as though it had belonged to the Earth from the very beginning. It was clearly not entirely man-made, but it still contained the same triangular symbol.
"I guess we should just open the door," Leo said, perhaps unnecessarily.
Hazel turned around, looking at him blankly. "Do you have another idea?"
"No, I don't," he admitted. "Let's see what's on the other side."
As it turned out, the other side of the door contained a foul stench, the likes of which Leo couldn't remember ever smelling. (Though, to be fair, he couldn't recall anything else either.)
"What is this? Old Faithful?" he exclaimed, plugging his nose with his right hand.
"I don't know," Hazel responded. "I have a bad feeling about this, though."
Leo could only imagine what horrors lay in the darkness (and yes, it was near-total darkness on the other side of the door.) He half-expected to end up trekking across human skulls, hearing the bones crack as they were stepped on. Needless to say, that wasn't something he wanted to witness.
The first thing he became aware of upon crossing the threshold, besides the pungent odor, was the fact that his stomach felt sour almost immediately. Perhaps this was merely because of the smell, but he still had to move heaven and Earth not to puke all over the place.
The ground made an odd squelching noise with each foot placed upon it, and that's when Leo realized that the floor was most likely the culprit.
"Do you think we're walking in piles of dog shit?" Leo enquired, curling his nose in disgust.
Hazel shook her head. "How would a dog get all the way down here? Or produce that amount of… yeah, let's forget it."
Truth be told, the stench was more akin to rotten eggs than pet waste. But that didn't make it any more pleasant; on the contrary, vomit rose in Leo's throat, and it was all he could do to hold it together.
As Hazel heard Leo retch, the girl turned to face him. "You are not throwing up on me" she insisted.
Leo was doubled over, gagging, trying his best to close his throat so that the puke didn't rise out of his esophagus. He was ultimately unsuccessful, however, doing the technicolor yawn all over the corridor.
Hazel groaned, which Leo didn't exactly appreciate. She could have at least held his hair back - it was curling all over the place! But once he'd emptied his stomach, Hazel didn't say anything else.
They continued walking eventually, and the pair reached a giant, dark chamber about a quarter mile wide. There were several shelves jutting out over a pitch-black chasm, a seemingly bottomless pit.
Hazel shivered. "I really don't like the look of this place, Leo."
Leo rolled his eyes. You could have at least thought about that before you decided to lead me willy-nilly down the corridor!
Then again, she didn't know anything more than I do. It's the blind leading the blind, always has been.
"Why not?" Leo asked. "Is it, I don't know, the black void down there?"
Hazel grimaced. "It's not just a void, Leo. That hole goes all the way down to the Underworld; at least, I think it does."
"You can't be serious," the boy muttered. "The Underworld?"
"Don't ask me how I know that," Hazel snapped. "For all I know, the Underworld could be a metaphor. That doesn't change the fact that you don't want to fall in! It could go all the way to Tartarus!"
The word Tartarus, like so many other words from the recent past, seemed to be important. But Leo just couldn't place where he'd heard it before.
"You mean… tartar sauce? I've never had that before. How is it?"
Hazel shook her head, swiveling around as though about to punch Leo in the face. However, as she did so, she lost her balance, tumbling backwards along a "bridge" of sorts that extended the width of the chasm.
Leo gasped, as did Hazel. The girl seemed to fall in slow motion, floating across the bridge. The boy sprang forward to catch Hazel, but he was struck by just how high he jumped - a good three or four feet in the air, even without trying.
Leo was able to grab Hazel's wrist before she tumbled off the edge of the bridge. But it was a close thing; it took all of Leo's upper body strength (which wasn't very much) not to get dragged down with her.
Now he'd fallen to his knees, Hazel holding on by just her fingertips. Everything had happened so fast, but Leo would have to think even faster.
What's the right amount of force to use in order to pull her up onto the bridge, while not propelling myself over the other ledge?
"This place must have really low gravity," Leo realized aloud.
"No shit!" Hazel exclaimed. "Now, help me get up, please. If I fall into Tartarus, you'll be all alone in the maze. And you don't want that, do you?"
"You sure know how to convince me, don't you?" Leo responded. He did, however, pull tightly on Hazel's wrist, digging in deeper with his knees so as not to get pulled forward.
Low gravity did have its benefits. Hazel's body weight felt like nothing as Leo hoisted her upward. Overall, though, the benefits did not outweigh the drawbacks, especially with how queasy Leo once more felt.
Hazel let loose a sigh of relief once back on "solid" ground. "Thanks" she said softly. "I really appreciate it - that was scary!"
"Hey, it's no problem," Leo responded, wiping the sweat off his brow. His voice was somewhat weak, though, because holding back more vomit remained an uphill battle.
What Leo didn't mention, of course, was that his assistance of Hazel hadn't been entirely altruistic. He'd had an ulterior motive; namely, ensuring that he wasn't alone in the maze. Being the only one navigating it would have been catastrophic, to say the least.
"Well, we'd better keep going," Hazel responded, chuckling nervously. "I don't want to stay here one more minute. The presence of death here isn't exactly comforting."
Leo frowned. "What do you mean by that? I don't see any skulls or anything."
"Well, if you fall in…never mind, I don't want to think about falling in. Because I didn't fall in. Thank you once more, Leo Valdez."
The boy blushed, which was just enough to send him barreling off the puke ledge. He leaned forward and threw up until he fell to his knees again.
"Jesus Christ, Leo," Hazel responded, rolling her eyes. She did hold Leo's hair back, though, so that was something.
First she's thanking me for saving her life, then she's castigating me for something I can't control. Which is it? Does she care about me or not?
That doesn't matter. I know that I should be somewhere else. And it's certainly not here.