Author Note: This is only a work of fan fiction, not the real deal. I take no credit for the elements similar to and originating from the book The Lost Hero and the actual The Son of Neptune; all the credit goes to Rick Riordan alone.
Critical reviews are always appreciated.
Chapter 7: Curses
"Something's not right," Hazel warned me, as I started to assemble a battle plan in my head. How was I supposed to fight two hunks of rock and mud? "Where's Cesara?"
"Probably still trying to get here. She didn't get a prophecy, remember? That must have slowed her down," I said. "Hazel, I need you to try and slow down the spires with as much vegetation as possible." I looked at Meg. She was staring at the spires with a quizzical expression on her face, examining the set and spacing of the columns. With a harassed sigh, I moved on, thinking that the ancient being would be of no help. "Bobby, use your flaming sword to cut through the left spire base. Reyna, use explosive arrows to blast away the right-hand spire at the foundations." My team jogged towards the pillars, trying to stay upright as the ground lurched. The giants rose another few inches, upsetting the dirt around the bases.
I summoned all my power over the water, trying to see if I could do something – maybe create a giant mud hole that would suck the giants back under. I pulled groundwater to the surface and melted the snow, soaking the loamy dirt in seconds. The gurgling flow of the water as it formed sludgy bubbles sucked at the feet of my friends as they worked to destroy the spires. But the bases themselves didn't budge.
I felt useless. I didn't know what I could do, besides hack at them with a sword. In my helplessness, I looked to Meg; her expression was different – darker and much more determined. "Can you help?" I asked her, almost begging.
"Being the creation of the queen goddess does have its benefits," she replied vaguely, and stepped forward. Her hands rose like the walking dead, splaying out her fingers, the muscles sticking up under her skin as tension spread through her whole body. She squeezed her eyes shut and bowed her head in utter concentration, whimpering slightly when the ground began to shift. The upset earth felt more uncontrolled than the shakes caused by the giants rising, more like a real earthquake. I suddenly realized it felt like more than that to me – I could feel the various strata of rock splitting, the soil trembling as it fell asunder, the molten metals far below pushing the mass of earth to each side. I felt each sheet of stone and clay shift as it rumbled in a massive earthquake – and knew that if I tried, I could produce the same effect with my powers. Long after I had begun to sense those changes in the earth below, the topsoil split to reveal a widening rift roaring towards the twin spires. Meg stood at the origin of the fissure, concentrating hard to push it forward. The tear in the ground – hundreds of feet deep – gaped like an open mouth as it tried to swallow the spires.
Reyna, Bobby and Hazel jumped out of the way and ran from the expanding chasm. I pulled the groundwater out from the mud, hardening the earth below them and enabling me to create a wave that pushed them out of harm's way. Once they were safe from the precipice, I let the water rush into the chasm of the splitting earth.
But Meg was having issues. Instead of widening further and causing the spires to sink out of existence, the mouth of dirt spat the spires back toward the sky, some unseen force struggling with her power. In an unhappy epiphany, I realized that Gaea was using her might of the earth to close the gap and spit forth the encapsulated giants with even greater speed. At that, I summoned my power – my power over earthquakes. The unique pain took me by surprise, and my knees buckled. Using my power to create an earthquake spawned the sensation of a hammer pounding on my head; I was used to just the pull in my gut caused by working with the ocean. Despite the pain, the earth responded weakly to my call, providing a little aid to Meg's massive strength. Together, we waged war on Gaea's huge control over the earth, suspending the spires in the mud in a perpetual tug-of-war.
We held that way for several moments, pushing hard to keep the gap open. My brain tolled with each beat of a steadily growing headache, my muscles turning to rubber as I struggled with my new ability. When Meg finally yelled over her shoulder, I realized that she had sunk to her knees as well. "This isn't going to work!" she yelled. "We have to let go, or Gaea will sap all our energy and kill us!" I nodded numbly, releasing my hold on the earth.
The ground crashed together. The rift sewed together as quickly as it had torn apart, leaving no evidence of our struggles but the increased speed of the rising giants. Bobby, Reyna, and Hazel sprinted towards us, helping us to our shaky feet. Just as I reclaimed my footing, the ground gave an almighty lurch. The clay towers burst apart, sending hardened mud showering heavily down on us; we "duck and cover"-ed, crouching as we watched the massive beasts lumber from their cages.
Hazel gasped, showing her truly brave personality as she shouted her next few words: "Ugh! Those are the most hideous things I've ever seen!" Even though she was right – melted, lumpy blobs squashed together to form semi-human silhouettes – I wished she hadn't said anything. The monsters turned to face us, grinning brutally.
"Demigods!" one rumbled. It sounded like a dissonant combination of percussive instruments all crashed together at once, magnified by about a thousand. "Magnificent. Mother treats us well, feeding us silly little creatures like this." The larger one leaned down, presumably to pick us up and have a mid-afternoon snack.
"Really?" I shouted, feeling small and hopeless. But my voice boomed against the brobdingnagian figures in front of me, rebounding back with intense ferocity I didn't feel. "I think she must not like you at all. Because she gave you to me!" I bellowed. The giant froze, then drew back his hand. He leaned down closer, to inspect me with his bulbous eyes.
"Oh, demigod? Why is it you wish me to fear you? You are six feet tall-" that wasn't true, I was five foot ten, but it wasn't like I was going to tell him that – "and weak, while I am five times your height and stronger than I have ever been." He chuckled, the sound grating jarringly against my eardrums. I thought disjointedly, I wish I had earplugs, though at the moment it seemed a little unimportant.
"You think size matters? I am the chosen of the gods!" I shouted, working hard to make my voice level with the volume of his. Apparently it was working, because my friends had all covered their ears and started a major staring fest. I jogged forward to stand between the giant brutes, motioning discretely for the rest to follow me. They did, extremely warily, but they did. That meant more to me than anything they could say: They trusted me explicitly with their lives. Sounding supremely braggadocious, I continued loudly, "I am invincible against attack, I am stronger than Heracles, I am the slayer of Hyperion!" – This memory came back to me rather fuzzily, my mind's eye capturing only the fiery form of the Titan being beaten into submission by Riptide, gale force winds and rain – "My strength outbalances both of yours put together. I will have fun destroying you!"
At legion camp, we had discussed the giants in stories told at dinner. They had always seemed fierce and intelligent and clever enough to take down the gods, terrifying in their perfect knowledge of how to destroy modern civilization. We had laughed off the trepidation we felt at the mention of their names in the comfort of knowing they had been extinguished several millennia ago – but here, they were on either side of me, very large, very strong and very alive. But I found some relief in the fact that – these two at least – were not nearly as intelligent or clever as the old stories led us to believe. At my boasting, they both swelled with rage, not bothering to think.
The two giants glared down at us, each seeming to plot his own personal revenge (Believe me, you don't wanna know how I knew they were both guys. Let me just say that tattered loincloths leave a lot to be desired in privacy). Within a few milliseconds of each other, the twins roared into the afternoon sun, lifting their heads back into the sky.
This next part I'm not sure I'll ever be able to describe accurately. Somehow, I knew something really, really horrible was about to happen. I pushed everyone to the ground, yelled at them to cover their heads. Time seemed to slow to sludge and dampen sound, leaving us swimming in the impossible moment before an explosion. Then, with a sonic boom of destructive power I can't even begin to describe, the twins let forth a blast of pure energy that ricocheted against their bodies. It soared over our heads, skimming across the top of my hair. I glanced up in time to see the giants falling backwards, suspended in the air, killed by their own attacks. An eternity later, their bodies fell to the earth with a crash nearly equaling the quake Meg and I had created.
When the shaking stopped, I pushed to a crouch. The others followed my lead, uncovering their heads to see the damage. In the thick silence, Bobby said softly, "Did they just kill each other?"
He was answered by the disintegration of the giant bodies. Golden ash swirled around us in the clearing, blurring the air with the reflective specks as they were swept north-east by the wind. I sat back on my heels and watched the solid wall of gold churn in the cyclone of air, barely able to see the others through the thickness of the ash. When the dust dissipated enough for me to see, I stood and helped the others to their feet.
"That was surreal," Hazel said apathetically, and brushed off her pants.
"I've never seen a Gigante use an aura blast before," Meg said slowly. "And certainly not to inadvertently kill another Gigante."
"Wait…" Hazel said, her eyes narrowing. "You may not have seen it, Meg, but this has happened before." She stood to her full height, the same gleam in her eye that she got when she told the myths.
"You're right," Reyna said, latching on to Hazel's train of thought. They both left me behind, though.
"What are you talking about?" I asked bluntly.
"In the first Giant War, there were nineteen giants. Those intended to replace the twelve Olympian gods, those intended to take down four other major gods, and three to quell human and demigod resistance; but two of the giants responsible for crushing the humans – Otus and Ephialtes – accidentally killed each other in battle. They fell early in the war, leaving only one giant, Leon, to try and deal with the humans and demigods. That's why demigods were able to participate so much in the war; Leon couldn't control them. The deaths of Otus and Ephialtes were instrumental to the success of the war effort."
"So… we wasted our time in coming here?" Bobby asked, clearly feeling miffed.
"Yes and no," Reyna said. "If we hadn't come to this site, there wouldn't have been any reason for the giants to attack, so they wouldn't have ended up killing each other. Then again, every minute we stand here yapping about it is one less minute we have to take down our actual targets."
"Then we need to move. We have to take down the giants we were assigned. Anybody see a deimone?" I asked. We divided up by gender and wandered the clearing, searching for some sign of the helpful spirits. We walked in circles for ten minutes, peering into the surrounding woods and lifting brush aside.
When the girls had gone their own way, Bobby said quietly, "That thing you did with the earthquake was really cool. Why didn't you tell us you could do that?"
"Because I couldn't, up until just then. Besides, most of it was Meg. That chick's got some crazy powers." I chuckled self-consciously.
"You're saying you discovered a new power and managed to use it? That's ridiculous. You're even stronger that I thought." He sounded jealous, a little wistful. He wouldn't meet my gaze.
"I'm really not," I said humbly. "I just get lucky. A lot."
He turned to me, his eyes blazing with fire – and I mean literally. I had the vague recollection of meeting Ares and receiving the same loathing look. I had no idea what I'd done to provoke such a response out of the usually-mild-mannered son of Mars. He spat, "Really? I don't think so. I think you're holding out on us. You want to let us get hurt, then swoop to the rescue look good doing it. You want to make us owe you. You've done that every time we've fought beside you so far, and I'm getting pretty sick of it." He gestured to the severe scarring I knew was hidden under his shirt.
I couldn't stop the look of disbelief that wormed onto my face. "Look, I'm just trying to do my best. I can't remember who I am or what my powers are, so if stuff like this happens, it's not my intention, all right? I'm working on instinct and hazy memories of how to fight, and –"
"Well it's not working!" Bobby yelled at me, throwing his arms in the air. "I mean, yeah, you can do great stuff. Yet you suck at teamwork. You're always interfering, making it impossible for me to do my job. You never let any of the rest of us fight!"
Anger bubbled in the pit of my stomach. I sucked in a deep breath, trying to calm myself before I caused an earthquake or something. "I'm just trying to keep you alive!" I shouted. The earth started to tremble.
"That's my point!" Bobby yelled back. "You don't have to! Trust me for once. Believe it or not, I was a demigod before you came to camp! I've had training, and I've taken down my fair share of monsters, too. The Titan War saw to that. It would help if you acted like I was worth your time. It would help if you acted like I'm every bit as good as you!"
I stopped, the anger dying out of me completely. The Titan War. I grabbed at my bead necklace, yanking the black bead into my sight. Green letters glittered on the surface, names converged on my eyes. Charles Beckendorf. My head spun, and my hand went to my temple. Silena Beauregard. I gripped my head, thinking hard through my empty memories. Michael Yew. The names swirled into faces, so close, so close… Luke Castellan.
I saw a boy – a man - with golden hair and blue eyes begging me for something. His scarred face pleaded with me, and I felt something shift in my hand as I gave it to him. Luke's hand went to his side, and suddenly he was falling, screaming in pain, dying. Golden energy pulsed around him as he died, and I wondered if I had caused this, caused this much pain to a close friend. Because I knew he was my friend, regardless of dark things he'd done in the past…
"Typical," Bobby scoffed, breaking my focus. "I say one thing, and amnesia boy goes off on a theatrical trance."
My head yanked up and I looked at him emptily. The loss of my stream of memories stung like a physical blow. I had come so close to knowing… The pain of that important day – the fulfillment of the last Great Prophecy – ached in my heart, a realization of what I had suffered, what I had lost. The day I became a deity's hero. The day I almost became a god.
Apparently Bobby saw something disturbing in my expression. He dropped his long-suffering act and backed up a few steps, a strange expression contorting his features. "Uh… Percy?"
I didn't say anything. I just stared at him blankly. "You're right. I'm sorry. I should trust you more. After all, I can't lose any more friends…" I drifted off, going back to staring at the bead. The letters still clearly spelled out the names of the dead, but it no longer gleamed with the magic of a fresh realization. The blunt ache of lost friends and dead heroes was all that remained. "You can count on me. I'll let you do your own thing."
"Uh – I didn't know – Is something wrong? Are you okay?" Bobby asked me, his attempts to reconnect with me failing. I was staring at the bead, thinking of all the burial shrouds I'd seen crumbling in the drifting smoke of the final fire. All the bodies I'd seen littered along the sides of the streets of Manhattan.
"I'm fine," I said hollowly. Luke died in my eyes again. And again. "Let's keep going." I realized I had given Luke the weapon to kill himself, let him sacrifice his soul for the safety of Olympus. I watched Kronos' spirit dissipate and fracture, returning to a state of half-life-half-death, but Luke's body still lay in the throne room, cold and empty…
A sudden flash of a vision came back to me. Michael Yew, crouched on the wire of a suspension bridge. I cracked the bridge open with Riptide, sending a shockwave up the cables and Michael into the river below. The vision was foggy, almost like a dream: I couldn't tell if this was a memory or some fabricated reality I had created in the days after the war to explain the archer's death. I walked forward, my feet dragging as if weighed down by the memories.
Bobby lagged at my heels for a while, uncertain. I ignored him, the memories flashing to my attention with greater speed and intensity. I saw my friends in a huddled war-party of forty, cheering the tribute, "For Olympus!" My mind flashed back to the dead in the Empire State Building. The bodies, the death. The golden drachma pressed onto cold eyelids, the burning shrouds. Silena in Clarisse la Rue's battle armor, her melting flesh swamped with drakon venom. The drakon itself, first screaming as it slithered on the side of a building, then scraping as it's husk rubbed along the pavement behind Clarisse's chariot. Annabeth lying on a hotel bed, Lee Fletcher bandaging her bleeding arm. Thalia, daughter of Zeus, crushed beneath a statue of Hera. My father, Poseidon, raging against the massive storm Typhon. The entirety of the war came back to me in those few garbled moments; my physical self treading slowly through the snow of the clearing, but my mind far, far away, in the suspended time of Manhattan.
A hand touched me on the shoulder, pulling me to the present. I surfaced from the memories, trying to reorient myself. Bobby was on my right side, looking at me with concern. "Dude. Are you okay?"
"Uh… yes?" I wasn't sure. "Memories."
"Your whole body was trembling. They must've been bad," he said, still watching my expression.
"Yeah," I mumbled dazedly, "Yeah, you could say that."
"You know you can tell me, right? I'm sorry if I was a jerk. I didn't…"
I stopped him. "We're cool, okay? It was my bad." I offered a hand. We shook on it and did that awkward-man-hug thing the guys at legion camp were prone to.
"Cool as ice," Bobby confirmed with a conciliatory smile.
At that moment, mist floated through the woods towards us. I turned to face it, waiting calmly for its approach while Bobby turned away and called for the girls. They came running. I thought it was strange until Reyna panted, "Meg had an idea… for the request."
Meg walked into the fog, before it had even fully formed, and stated clearly, "We seek a guide to the nearest sacred staff, then to the rising ground of Gration and Damysos." I glanced at Bobby and mouthed, Sacred staff? He shrugged, looking just as nonplussed as I felt. The fog solidified and swooped to the west, slinking through the piney trees.
We chased after it eagerly, winding through the wilderness. "Sacred staff?" I asked no one in particular.
"The line 'seek farther, deity's hero, for relic of your horror' of your prophecy," Meg said shortly, "probably means a relic sacred to a god. Sacred relics can be used to evoke the power of god if obtained by force from a shrine or temple. If we find one, it might be the only way to kill the giants."
I thought about the line for a second, then said with a sinking sensation in my stomach, "But why would it be a relic of my horror?"
"I don't know. Do you fear the gods or something?" Reyna asked.
"No," I said reflexively. "But some of them are pretty ugly."
"It doesn't necessarily have to be Percy," Bobby said, his voice almost apologetic towards me. But he brought up a valid point, and I didn't even want it to mean me, anyway. "It just says 'deity's hero'. It could be you, Reyna. You've done a ton for the gods, and it would be your horror, because you have to take down a giant meant to crush your godly parent."
"I haven't done enough to be considered a hero of the gods," Reyna disagreed. "On the other hand, Percy apparently killed Hyperion."
Bobby's expression seemed to say, Was that part of your boasting true?, so I nodded. "Wildfires and droughts are ten times less likely in America, now," I said with a halfhearted shrug.
"Well no matter who the prophecy meant, a sacred staff is our best bet," Hazel said.
We walked on in silence, keeping our eyes on the deimone ahead. A stray thought hit me, and I voiced it. "Does anyone know where we are?"
A puzzled silence met my words. "No," Reyna admitted.
After we passed a rogue grizzly, four separate lynx, a herd of moose, and vast flocks of honking geese, it seemed pretty obvious from the taiga flora and endemic wildlife that we were somewhere wild and far north – the Minnesota/Ontario border, southern Alaska, the Kodiak Archipelago. Somebody might as well of hung up a sign: YOU ARE IN CANADA NOW. PREPARE TO FREEZE TO DEATH. Snow dotted the ground in thin patches, blocked from the earth by the thick pine boughs above. We walked in silence, hungering for a proper meal and something to drink – our breakfast this morning seemed farther away than it was. The relative silence we kept as we walked broke occasionally with loud stomach grumbles. I thought my stomach would leap out of my torso in full lion form, it was growling so loudly. My throat ached with thirst almost as much as my temple throbbed with memory pains.
I was furious with my mind. Why couldn't I remember everything? The war came back to me clearly, but everything before that was still vague and empty. I pushed the boundaries of my mind, demanding more, demanding to know about my life at Camp Half-Blood – I had remembered its name, but nothing else about it – but my brain stubbornly refused to allow any more information loose. I was left with a deep pool of triumph and misery in my mind, having no cheerful memories to blunt to blow of such horrible visions.
I finally abandoned my attempts to know more, kneading my hands together in barely suppressed frustration. I slowly became aware of my increasing thirst. I started to worry less about my past and more about my present. Once my tongue started feeling like sandpaper, my focus shifted entirely. I leaned my head back to catch snowmelt in my mouth, tried anything to push back the drought in my throat. The others were in similar condition; none of us had a water bottle. Our mouths hung half-way open as we chased the deimone and tried not to pant too noticeably.
When I finally caved and seriously considered a search for water, a glittering fresh water spring appeared before us. Cool spring water burbled over smooth layers of grey slate. Fifty small fountains streamed in thin arcs along the edges into the center of the pool. I squinted at it, unable to believe my eyes. Still, I lived with real Greco-Roman myths every day; I wanted to say "Nothing is too unlikely for demigods," and then plunge my head into the water and take a good, long drink. Yet my instincts cautioned me: the adrenaline and weariness I felt from my encounter with Fortune still buzzed in my veins. I sensed a negative energy in the water that I couldn't explain. Before anyone could make a mistake, I warned, "Nobody go near it."
"But-" Hazel protested.
"Nowhere near it!" I ordered, sounding terse. The others backed up as I motioned for them to skirt around its edge.
When we turned to chase the escaping deimone, a female voice called after us. "Hello, demigods." We turned to face a beautiful woman; she gazed at us, sitting on the stone edge of the pool with her flowing white skirts billowing in the water behind her. Her greeting hummed in the air like a bell tone. Though my powers over water told me to back away slowly, I was drawn forward by her mesmerizing voice. My friends followed, picking their way across the needle-strewn path to the glistening pool. Reyna glanced at me, her face full of a question; she frowned and shifted her head slightly side to side. Run? she seemed to ask.
Meg had other plans. "Greetings, nymph. How may we help you?" she asked, slipping into her older dialect.
For a moment, the nymph's face twisted in a sour expression so violent, it would've made Ares run to Hera in fear; then it resolved and she appeared composed and blissful. "I wish to tell you that I am no nymph. In my day, mortals called me Andromeda, the most beautiful maiden in the land and wife of a great hero. I ask that you do not compare me with lowly nymphs, who have proven themselves to be rather vain about their homely looks." The dangerous tone dropped out of her voice, and she greeted us cordially, "Regardless, I am quite lonely and thirst for companionship. Would you like to stay with me for a while?" Her terrifying expression had already faded into the suspicious back of my mind.
I looked at Reyna. My subconscious wanted to scream, Back away, back away, back away, but the calm lapping of the waters assuaged me into lazy submission. I watched as some form of recognition flashed across Reyna's eyes, the understanding pushing her to step forward towards the lady. "Of course we would. My name's Reyna. This is Hazel, Bobby, Megara, and Perseus." I could tell from the way she pronounced my name that she wanted Andromeda to pick up on it.
And the woman did. Her eyes immediately flicked to me and raked over my body. She smiled warmly, approaching and holding her arms out to me. "It is good to see my husband left a legacy worth remembering. Perhaps you have heard of his deeds? He slew Medusa, that cursed gorgon, and saved me from the clutches of Cetos, the great Kraken. Are you worthy of your namesake?" Her dangerous eyes glared into mine.
Then I remembered the hero she'd been married to – the original Perseus. I remembered my fight with the gorgons – multiple fights, really – and how they mentioned me smelling like Medusa's blood. While I couldn't picture myself lopping of the snake-woman's head, I trusted the nose of those monsters. They'd proven to be shockingly accurate. "He slew one gorgon. I've killed all three," I said boldly.
Andromeda's demeanor shifted slightly. She welcomed us towards the pool. "Well then, by all means, do drink. These waters are good for rest and rejuvenation. Indeed, if you are blessed, the gods will guide you to the one fountain that sprays waters of healing." There were nearly fifty small arcs of water streaming into the pool from the edges. A rogue thought came to me. Could it heal my amnesia? Finding the one fountain with healing properties would take a while, but I was determined to try. It could give me my memory back. I knew it.
Meg stepped towards the pool first, because she was closest, and leaned down to drink. Just as her fingers broke the surface, an inky substance appeared in the base of the pool and spread through the water. Meg tried to jerk away, cursing in ancient Greek, but black tendrils of vapor burst from the rippling surface and tangled around her fingers. They wrapped around her arms, swarming her struggling body. She screamed at Andromeda, her voice piercing the air. "Katára sas!" Curse you!
I ran forward, but a shield of energy burst from the hero's wife and blew us all backwards. She was smiling cruelly, the same violent expression from earlier twisting across her perfect mouth. "Of course, you can be unlucky, too. The pool of Hermaphroditus will destroy you for your mistake."
I slammed my fist against the invisible barrier, watching threads of dark energy tangle around Meg's thrashing body. Her movements slowed and stopped as the filaments spread, causing paralysis where they touched. I threw a helpless look to Reyna. She stared back at me, wide-eyed and voiceless. Hazel's voice burst into the air at a full bellow: "Just because she insulted your beauty? You monster!" The fiery girl beat at the barrier with her hands and an army of tree roots and wild animals. The bears, moose, and lynx we'd seen seemed to flood from nowhere. They thrashed against the barrier, making the clear dome flash with strain.
I was so caught up in the display of power that I almost missed the raging girl's point: Andromeda was killing Meg out of insulted vanity. I remembered her volatile expression and her words: I ask that you do not compare me with lowly nymphs, who have proven themselves to be rather vain about their homely looks... Anger and injustice thrummed through me, and I blasted the force field with as much water as I could pull from the snow around me. Bobby drew his slice-anything-with-flaming-awesomeness sword and slashed at the energy field. Reyna unloaded fifty explosive arrows straight into the force field. Nothing put a dent in it. We watched, horrified, as Meg rapidly slid into the oily depths of the pool. "What are you doing to her?" I yelled at the princess.
"This is the pool of Hermaphroditus, son of Venus. The immortal nymph of these waters, Salmacis, fused herself into his body out of adoration for his beauty. Venus' son cursed the pool in his fury. Now demons live in the water," the woman said calmly, like she sacrificed people to the pool every day. "They lack hosts. When appropriate vessels touch the water – that is, ancient beings – the demons take control and destroy their souls from the inside out." Andromeda still had that evil grin ripped across her teeth. "The demon will turn Megara into a marauding ghoul doomed to haunt the Underworld forever," she said, throwing her shiny flaxen hair over her shoulder.
"I – won't – let – that – happen!" I bellowed, marking every word with a blast of ice against the field. We finally broke through, shattering the raw energy like it was glass. Andromeda smiled wider, pointing into the pool. It was empty and clear, Meg's body nowhere to be found.
"Follow her if you dare," Andromeda said. "But you will not like what you find." With a disgustingly self-satisfied expression, she whistled. A pegasus galloped out of the air, landed long enough for the woman to board and the horse to make eye contact with me. I'm sorry sir, but I am bound to this woman as a gift from your namesake. If it were up to me, I would leave her to your devices, the pegasus thought to me. It's white feathers shone in the morning light as it apologized to me. Then it turned its sorrowful eyes to the sky and swept from my gaze.
That was new, I thought, weirded out by having a winged horse talking in my head.
"What do we do?" asked Hazel, sounding outraged. I could tell from her tone that she was already sure of what we were going to do. She was just asking permission.
I gave her the answer we all wanted. "We go to the Underworld, of course."
None of us knew how to get to the Underworld. Bobby had been once, but had traveled through the main entrance out west. Reyna, as a child of the god of light and warmth, had never been. She hated all dark, cold, and cramped spaces; she only agreed to go because Meg needed us. After all, if it weren't for us, she would still be alive and hiding in her cozy little home in Wyoming.
Hazel knew the earth better than the rest of us. She took first watch, nursing an idea that she wouldn't tell us, in case it was a dud. She said she didn't want to get our hopes up, but it seemed more like she was afraid of the possibility of it working. She said down with her legs crossed and started to meditate, looking strangely like those statues of the enlightened Buddha underneath the banyan tree.
Bobby laid down to take a quick nap on the padding of pine needles while Hazel thought. Reyna declined a chance to rest, insisting on pacing the edge of the pool, staring into its depths. I sat against a tree, thinking about the pool. If I had the guts to do it, I might be able to find the one healing fountain in the spring. Then again, the spring had demons in it ready to attack immortals. What if I qualified, with my invincible curse? What if there were other qualities of the spring that Andromeda had failed to mention?
Without meaning to, I nodded into a light doze. Flashes of memories came back to me: nothing solid enough to trigger a full flood of memories, but just strong enough to tantalize my brain. My mind finally wore down and gave out, to tired of remembering to try any more in my sleep. I slept in blank darkness until Reyna shook me awake.
"Hazel's found a way," she said. As I got to my feet, I noticed the spring was still there; yet I stuck by my decision to avoid the waters. The possibility of regaining my memories wasn't worth the trouble.
Hazel motioned me towards her. A deimone floated by her side, ready to travel at her word. "Percy, if you can crack the ground open with your powers, I can form the earth into a tunnel. I think that the deimone can guide us along a path to the Underworld."
The worried tone of her voice gave me pause. "And if this doesn't work?"
"Then we'll all be crushed by collapsing earth and end up in the Underworld anyway," she said, trying to stay cheerful. "Whenever you're ready, Percy."
"Great," I muttered. I closed my eyes and pictured the earth cracking open enough to create a rough tunnel. A timpani picked up a pounding beat in my head, slamming painfully against my temple. For a moment, nothing happened, and I struggled with the earth futilely; then, with a noise like bone breaking, the ground ripped open. I heard Hermaphroditus' spring fall through the ground into the void, shattering and spraying water everywhere. When I opened my eyes, a pit as large as a basketball court fell away in front of us, deeper than my eyes could see.
Hazel started to sing, her voice meandering into the pit. Mud reshaped into a tube, tree roots and clay cracking as they snaked across the ground. A tunnel took form in front of us, climbing down into the darkness. Hazel motioned me forward as she sang, saying with her eyes, You're the one that can see in utter darkness. I grabbed Hazel's hand, she grabbed Bobby's, and he grabbed Reyna's; in our train, we forayed into the darkness. I mutely guided my friends along, barely able to make out hazy shapes in the blackness. I followed the whispery rustlings of the spirit as it floated in front of me, its misty body brushing against the walls as we went. We walked for ages, turning occasionally but always sloping downward, Hazel's song ringing in our sensory-devoid ears.
The situation brought back the inkling of a memory – descending into the Underworld with a different escort. It was one of my more vague memories, so I discarded it and walked on.
Gradually the slope flattened. Our tunnel connected to a shady cavern, where the area was luminous enough that the others could see. We let go of our train of connected hands and looked around. The deimone dissipated. Hazel stopped singing, leaving us in dreary silence. Nothing stirred in the cavern.
After a moment, I made out a group of shades – the souls of the dead – glowing faintly in a huddle at the far edge of the cavern. I made my way towards them, peeling my eyes open as far as they would go in an attempt to see better. When we made it to the group, the shades opened an isle for us to pass. "Why are they looking at us like that?" I asked in a low voice.
Bobby answered. "The dead want to touch the living, because they think it'll make them feel alive again. If they do touch you, they start to suck the life out of you. It's really, really dangerous," he said. As we wandered through the shades, I saw them leaning towards us like flowers to the light. He continued, "Pluto passed a law about a thousand year ago forbidding the dead to get within ten feet of the living. Just in case he's visited by his demigod children."
"I always thought Had – Pluto wasn't very fond of his demigod children. If I remember right, he pretty much wanted to kill his last son," I said, thinking inexplicably of a skull-clad youth with a black iron sword.
I got another one of those weird looks that I was prone to receiving. Apparently my views on the myths were too weird for these guys. Then Bobby faced the edge of the cavern and continued walking through the shades. I followed, glancing into the transparent faces of the dead.
The cavern enlarged into another, much larger cavern. The twenty foot long stalactites hanging from the ceiling were far enough away that they looked like ants crawling on the roof. The fields of the Underworld extended infinitely to every side, filled with lost souls and order-maintaining demons. Because I couldn't remember what the Underworld looked like when I was a Greek demigod, I had nothing to compare this Roman version to; still, I could tell it was different. Five rivers wound across the plains in front of the obsidian walls of Erebos. Four of the rivers guarded the walls, like additional boundary lines, and one cut across them, flowing slowly in midair towards the gates of Hades' kingdom. I saw the ferryman Charon poling down that river towards the walls. I could see the three-headed hound Cerberus from here, though I thought that was a little strange. He took the form of a giant, disciplined, and ferociously snarling Doberman Pinscher. Three lines of shades waited in rigid lines beneath his legs.
"The five rivers. We have to use Acheron – the river of the ferryman – to get across the four others," Reyna murmured. "I've never seen the rivers in person before."
"Wait," I said, alarmed. "Acheron… that translates to…"
"Woe," Bobby confirmed with a nod. "Woe cuts across everything else. We have to use Woe to cross the Cocytus, Phlegethon, Lethe, and Styx. Or we can wade across them, but that pretty much guarantees you'll go insane and have permanent amnesia."
I glanced around, taking in the situation. Underneath the floating waters of Acheron, a rickety bridge spanned the width of each of the rivers. "Or we can just walk across," I offered with the slightest hint of impudent irony. The others noticed the bridges that hadn't been there a few seconds before and blinked in surprise.
"The Underworld adjusts to the needs of its inhabitants," Hazel guessed. I shrugged, assuming that was as good of an explanation as we were going to get.
I crossed the plain of dead ghost grass to the first bridge. The oily waters of Acheron flowed above us, suspended eerily in the air. I set foot on the plank bridge, testing its strength. It didn't seem weak, so I motioned for the rest to follow me. They did, stepping slowly onto the rickety boards. We edged across the bridge, hoping the wood didn't collapse. The current of his river flowed rapidly beneath us, shades screaming beneath the surface, their tear-filled eyes crying up at us.
At the halfway point, a male nymph blossomed from the waters beneath us and took form on the bridge. He stared at me, his eyes full of pain. I watched my worst memories of loss and grief burn in his eyes, searing the visions into my mind. He turned to Reyna, his eyes branding images into her mind with intensity only remembered visions can have. "Reyna Marcellus," he said, his voice cold. "In your life, you have experienced the pain of Lamentation. You and your party may pass." Cocytus, I realized. Lamentation: He's the spirit of misery and human sorrow. I saw Reyna bow to him as we passed, her eyes full of tears. I wanted to ask what Cocytus was talking about, but decided to hold my tongue. Anything that could reduce Reyna to tears was none of my business and would probably make me run for my life.
The short walk to the next bridge seemed to take forever. Each step weighed heavily on us as we each remembered horrible moments in our lives: the death of friends, family members, the suffering of others. The stray memory of Annabeth holding up the weight of the sky came to me. I saw her hair turning grey as I watched, her face crying out with pain. I shook my head and blinked, struggling to move on.
We finally reached the next bridge, which was slightly more transparent and ghostly. Since we knew what to expect this time, we marched straight up to the peak of the bridge and waited for the nymph to appear. He swirled into existence just as we expected, his expression detached. Phlegethon stared at us, his eyes alight with a terrible fire. His river, once peaceful in its oily black currents, suddenly caught fire. The water blazed with five foot flames, the blue and white line of conflagration cutting severely across the dead plain. Tendrils of fire licked at the bridge, and though it refused to burn, we all huddled up together to face the horror. Phlegethon murmured, "To a storm of fire, the world must fall. Remember that, demigods. Remember that." He seemed to stare at Hazel for an inordinate amount of time, making her shudder and struggle with some terrible thought. Then it struck me – if everything caught fire, wildlife and plants would be completely wiped out. I felt for her as she envisioned a dreadful future.
He dripped back into the river, the oily inferno sputtering out.
We proceeded again, even more cautious. I could've sworn my eyebrows had been scorched off by the mystical fire. When we reached the next river, I watched its murky white waters with trepidation. I knew this river. The Lethe. Oblivion incarnate. An almost entirely transparent bridge spanned the width of its lazily swirling waters. We all shared a look before I stepped out onto the ghost-bridge. The rest followed slowly, taking each step with extreme care as they struggled not to look down into the milky water. Bobby stopped at my shoulder as we watched Lady Oblivion churn into being, her body solidifying out of the hazy waters. She measured each of us in turn, her eyes moving slowly from one demigod to the next. When she looked at me, I swore I could feel her presence in my mind, probing, searing at the edges. She stopped at Bobby, staring into his eyes for longer than the rest of us.
"Bobby Hargrove," she said, as if tasting the name on her tongue. "You try to forget. You try to avoid remembering. You do not sleep. To let your past go, you must embrace it. I fear there is no other way. I will not help you on your mission to ignore the past. Do not dare to drink my waters. For you, the memories will only strengthen." With that, she gave us one last intrigued study, then dropped into the river below.
I looked at Bobby. He was shaking, his face white. I almost opened my mouth the ask, but then thought better of it. Instead, I gripped his shoulder comfortingly and said, "Come on. One more river to go." Bobby looked at me, his expression full of appreciation for my tact.
We walked on.
I stopped at the final river. It glistened with pollution. Forsaken dreams, ideas, lives, and childhoods drifted through the water. The bridge shimmered, almost non-existent. When Hazel stepped forward to cross the bridge, I held her back. "No," I said. My voice carried far in the silence of the Underworld. The distant screams of souls being tortured in the Fields of Punishment harmonized in the background. "I'll go across first. If I fall through, it's okay. But if you do…" I glanced at the waters again. "The river can destroy you. I'll go first." Hazel accepted this logic as reasonable and stepped back willingly.
I walked forward, onto the bridge. It held my weight, though I'll never know how. I stepped lightly towards the midpoint of the bridge.
Lady Styx shot from the water with speed unrivaled by the other river spirits. She towered above me, at least seven feet tall, the eddies of her watery body churning in agitation. The water was black and oily, like Phlegethon's waters, but stray bits of human materials floated to the skin of her body. The head of a doll surfaced briefly on her forehead like a pimple, then receded. Several college diplomas popped to the surface of her crossed arms before sinking back into the river. "No living mortals may pass this point," she said, her voice like steel. Her polluted-water eyes looked at me with ageless misery. I suppose that's what you get for being the barrier between life and death. When you see as many dead guys as she does, its probably natural to start feeling uber depressed.
"We're here to find a friend," I said stubbornly.
"No living mortals may pass this point. I am the lady of the river Styx, the boundary water between the worlds of the living and the dead. It is my duty to inform you: You may not pass into Erebos," she said.
I didn't come this far to give up. I glared into her stormy eyes, and insisted, "You have to let us pass. We need to save a friend. She doesn't belong down here."
"I know the friend of which you speak, demigod," Styx assured me. "She cannot return to the world of the living. She is a danger to herself." Styx looked towards the lines of shades moving into the world of the dead. I noticed all three harpies struggling with a shade. The shade preformed several bits of magic, summoning clouds to create weapons and lash at her jailers. She screamed wordlessly, but the tone was clear: Let me go! "She is beyond your help."
I backed off of the bridge, boiling with anger. I wasn't giving up yet. I yelled at Styx: "If you don't let me across, I'm going to wade across your river and get her myself!"
"You can't, demigod. Even fools should know that. My waters sever the soul from the body," Styx said, looking confident.
Well, I was about to shatter that confidence. I rushed into the river, stomping through the waist-high water. It stung in a familiar way, but couldn't affect me. I had already bathed in the waters once – doing it again was downright easy. "I told you I would cross, Styx. Are you going to help me, or make this difficult?" I demanded of her.
The nymph frowned, recognition dawning dangerously across her face. "Perseus Jackson," she growled, flowing straight through the bridge and coming to hover before me. "You are too bold for your own good."
"Will you help us or not?" I demanded. I knew that to get Meg back into the world of the living, we would need Styx's consent. Styx waved to the harpies; I saw them pick up Meg by the armpits and fly in our direction. Meg was struggling against their grimy claws.
"You will one day regret bathing in my river," Styx said regally, glaring down at me. I stared right back, challenging her. "But I concede. I can help you. In order to rescue a soul from the confines of Death, one whom I have cursed must will to have the blessing annulled." Words popped into my head, whispering, aching to be voiced. Rescind your gift, Lady Styx, nymph of the river… I barely managed to keep my mouth shut. "You can return Meg to the world of the living in return for your invulnerability. If you do, you will be spared the pain of bearing my curse, and Megara will be granted a second life." Styx studied me as more words slithered into my mind and the harpies grew closer with a demonized Meg. Deny the spirit of Megara entrance to the Underworld…
When Meg caught sight of me, she stopped fighting. The harpies sat her down on the opposite side of the river. She stared at me, visibly struggling with a demon in her mind. "Percy? You came for me?" she asked. A demonic whisper accompanied her voice, saying words that she wasn't mouthing. "I will tear you to shreds, silly humans…"
"Of course," I managed to say. "We all came. To set you free." Meg scanned the living side of the river, seeing Reyna, Bobby, and Hazel standing on the shore.
"I can't return, Percy," Meg said. The final words of the necessary incantation wormed into my head ...And send her back to us, alive and whole. I wanted to say the words, but I couldn't let my curse go that easily. It had saved my life multiple times. Yet I knew I had to do it, to save the girl we had gotten killed. I had to whatever it took to save her life. "Don't do it, Percy," Meg said, her voice full of warning. "I am indebted to Hades. I died, just like I told you around the camp fire. I escaped the Underworld recently when Gaea was trying to release Medea, and she pronounced the witch's name wrong. Hades has had me marked for death since I escaped." Somehow, this revelation wasn't altogether surprising. Still, the guilt of her death weighed heavily on me. "Go, Percy. You can't save me. You'll need your curse in the future anyway."
"But - " I protested.
"I will vanquish you all, harpies!" She screamed abruptly, glaring at Alecto. Then Meg blinked as she fought for control of her soul. The demon was driving her to pieces. "Besides," she said, her eyes glazed, "I'm finally happy. Apollo can't chase me here. He isn't allowed in the land of the dead."
Unwillingly, I nodded, trying to understand her reasoning. Meg fell into insanity from the demon from attacking her soul; the harpies picked her up and swooped into the air. Her flailing body harassed the squawking harpies all the way across the walls of Erebos. The flaming torches along the tops of the walls illuminated her passage into death. I slogged from the river, emerging totally dry but defeated. I walked to the others. Their mouths were pulled into lines of regret.
"That went well," I said with acidic sarcasm. Nobody objected. We turned to leave, resigned to the fact that we would have to continue the quest without Meg.
"Perseus," Styx called. I turned to face her, waiting. She chose her words carefully. Her brow knitted in the face I had come to pair with people who had very, very bad news. Still, that didn't prepare me for her words. "Of those who have tested my curse, you have been the most resilient. I do not believe your luck will last much longer."
Note: "To a storm of fire," is an intentional character mistake.