MAIN TITLE: The Keeper of Fate

WARNINGS: See first chapter for warnings.

NOTES: Thanks to StarcallerPhoenix, chaSing b0b, Fangisnotmyfirstname, FlamePumpkin32 and angel2u for reviewing this chapter!

DISCLAIMER: I don't own the PJO series. Rick Riordan does. Also, the poem on the piece of paper is from Virgil's Aeneid (I'm not sure which translation, but the particular section I used is on Wikipedia somewhere) though I changed it a bit.

Chapter 23: We Face Down the Winged Exercise Balls of Death

The second I hear the band start up, I decide that I'm going to kill Apollo. I mean sure, that would probably make the sun disappear and yeah, the mortals would panic but really, if you could hear how awful this band is you wouldn't blame me.

Seriously, that jerk interrupts my perfectly wonderful dream where I'm lazing about on the couch, stuffing my face with pizza and chugging a five hundred millilitre bottle of coke while watching TV, and for what? To listen to some crappy band with a lead singer whose pants are so low that you can see his underwear.

Ugh. I turn my attention away from the idiots on the stage and instead search for the sun god. This is definitely all his fault. This entire concert just screams 'Apollo'. I push through the crowd, ignoring all the shrieking fans, craning my neck every which way. Finally, after five minutes of music blasting in my ears and dodging people who are crazily waving their hands in the air, I catch sight of a familiar blond-haired figure in jeans and a leather jacket standing apart from the rest of the crowd. What really gives him away, though, is that he's wearing Ray-Bans. At a concert. At night.

I break away from the crowd, and as I march over to Apollo he takes off his shades and flashes a huge grin at me. He stops smiling, however, when I punch him in the face.

"Hey! What was that for?" he demands, looking half bewildered and half livid. "My beautiful nose! What have you done to it?"

"Oh please, you're a god, like it even hurts at all," I snap back.

"Huh." He stops rubbing his precious nose. "You're right. It doesn't." His focus shifts back to me. "But still, why did you punch me? You know I could blast you to pieces for doing that?"

"This is a dream," I point out. "Not real."

"Ah," he says, all traces of anger fading away entirely as a sly smile makes its way across his face. "That's where you're wrong. Dreams are more real than you think. Sometimes they're even more real than reality."

"You're only saying that you're the god of dreams."

He stares at me like I've fatally wounded him. "Dess! Morpheus is the god of dreams! How could you confuse my fabulous self with that– that minor god?"

"Whatever. I meant prophecies. Same thing."

"It's not the same thing. Not at all. And you know it." He narrows his eyes at me.

"Whatever," I repeat. "What am I even doing here? What do you want?" Because he always wants something.

Apollo frowns at me. "That note I sent you a few days ago? You tore it up."

"I did." I glare fixedly at a strobe light several metres away, because his eyes are starting to flare like the sun and looking into them is kinda painful.

"Why?"

"Why?" I scoff. "Why do you think? Because it was completely useless."

"It was not–" he begins, his tone indignant.

"Uh, yeah, it was," I say. "Blah, blah, blah, you failed yet again, blah, blah, blah, you've only got one shot left. It's just–" I break off abruptly. I look him directly in the eye and continue, "Look, you sent me that first note after Luke found me in the forest a year ago. Now you send me one after I'm nearly caught by him in the Labyrinth. Why? What the hell was I supposed to do? Burst out of that wardrobe and try to run him through with my sword? That would be suicide."

He stares at me in exasperated surprise. "Of course that's not what you were supposed to do. Did you think I wanted you to kill him?"

"Um…yes?" I say uncertainly. "Isn't that what you want?"

"Zeus no!" he exclaims. "Honestly, Dess, if I wanted him dead, don't you think I could've gotten someone better for the job?"

Huh. That's a really good point. But what else could he want me to do? And why does it have to be me?

"Dess," Apollo groans, "I don't want you to kill him. You're just supposed to talk to him."

I stare. "Talk. You want me to talk to him."

The teen looks at me like I'm acting incredibly dumb. "Yeah. That first time in the forest – you could've tried a little harder to convince him to stay, you know. You shouldn't have stormed off like that. Your pride got the better of you. You know it true!" he adds hurriedly, noticing that I'm opening my mouth.

"And what about when I was in that wardrobe eavesdropping on him?" I ask, clenching my fists. "I was just supposed to charge out there and try to talk some sense into him, after all this time? It's still suicide! That thing – that empousai, Kelli – she would've killed me! And Luke would've joined her without a second thought!"

Apollo lets out a frustrated sigh. "I knew you were dense, Dess, but I didn't think you were this bad! Did you listen to a word Luke said down there? For some reason that I can't even fathom, he prefers you over that Kelli chick. Mmm, I had a vision of her – she's hot. Shame about the legs. And I guess the fact that she works for Kronos would be a problem too," he adds as an afterthought. He notices me staring at him as though he's mad. "Look, the point is, if you had shown yourself and Kelli tried to attack you, Luke would've backed you up."

"You can't know that for sure," I counter, my tone like acid.

"If that's what you want to believe. But I don't have much time left," he says, swiftly changing the subject. "Zeus will notice if I stay much longer, and he would be pissed if he knew how much I was interfering with – well, everything.

"What I really wanted to tell you: in about a year, you're going to get your last chance to convince Luke to come back to our side. You'll see him again before that, of course, but you won't have the opportunity to talk to him. Not sure why. Damn Fates messing with my reception.

"But Dess – when I say last chance, I mean last chance." His voice is suddenly urgent. "You blow it, that's it. Whoever is supposed to die will die. If the gods are supposed to fall, if Western Civilization is supposed to crumble to dust, if the world itself is supposed to come to an end – it will. There'll be no way to stop it."

For a moment I can only stare at him, stunned. "You're kidding, right? I can't possibly have that much of an impact!"

"You'd be surprised by how big an influence small decisions can have," Apollo says, his voice light-hearted again, his lips curving into a mysterious smile. "It's the butterfly effect. You're definitely not important enough to decide the fate of the world, but you can affect the people who are."

"Thanks a lot, Apollo. You always know just what to say," I tell him, too staggered by everything he's told me to really inject the proper amount of sarcasm into my tone.

"Anytime, sweetheart. Anytime." He winks, grins, and then slips his shades back on.

And then everything fades out.

When I finally manage to wrench my eyes open, I find that the fire has been extinguished and Clarisse is folding up her sleeping bag. As I sit up and stretch, yawning the entire time, Clarisse shoves her sleeping bag into her duffel and then rudely snatches mine away from me so she can pack it up too. I guess she's still grumpy about earlier. I woke her up for guard duty a few hours ago and she practically threw a fit. Mind you, I'm about twenty times worse, so I can't really complain.

I rummage through my bag for a water bottle and a plastic container of cereal. Normally I don't like dry cereal, but it's fruit loops so I don't really mind. Plus I'm freaking starving right now. I stuff my face for a couple of minutes and then remember what little manners I have. I take a swig of water to wash down the last of my breakfast and then ask Clarisse if she's eaten yet. She tells me she has, so I put the cereal away.

Now, most people brush their teeth and wash their face when they wake up, but obviously we don't have access to a sink. Or soap. Or a toothbrush and toothpaste. Still, we try to be as hygienic as possible. So it's only after we make several (pathetic) attempts at freshening up that we finally decide to leave the hexagon-shaped chamber we wandered into last night.

I take a little vial wrapped in one of my spare Camp Half-Blood T-shirts out of the front pocket of my knapsack. See, a couple of days ago we stumbled upon some sort of lab, and we were all excited 'cause we thought it was Daedalus', but of course it wasn't.

But anyways, we examined a lot of the test tubes in the lab and Clarisse found one with this weird, clear liquid that smelled really, really bad. Like rotten eggs mixed with an overload of cologne, combined with the odour you get when you spread peanut butter on Mr. Christie's chocolate chip cookies and put it in the microwave for five minutes.

We brought the vial with us because we figured it could mask that demigod smell that clings to us all the time. We don't use it on ourselves of course. We just use it to cover our trail, and so far it seems to be working.

"So where are we headed now?" I ask the daughter of Ares, after I've poured a couple of drops of the putrid liquid onto the ground. Automatically, we back away and start breathing through our mouths.

"No idea," Clarisse grumbles, as I wrap the vial back up in my T-shirt and put it back into my bag. "Down this damn corridor again, I guess."

Which is the answer I always get when I ask that question. I swear, all these tunnels are exactly the same. It doesn't matter if some have brick walls while others have stone, or if the floors are grimy and gravelly or spotless and smooth. It's still the same old Labyrinth day in and day out. All these tunnels that lead to nowhere and yet somehow everywhere. Forget bloodthirsty monsters and deadly traps; I bet it was the monotony that really drove Chris crazy. Not that I would say any of this to Clarisse. She'd kill me.

Anyways, after nearly an hour of dodging said bloodthirsty monsters and deadly traps, we reach a fork in the road. Both paths have gates that are made of what looks suspiciously like bone. The gate on the left has a series of worn, eerie looking bars, while the gate on the right has intricate designs and patterns and seems to shine even though there's no light hitting it. Hung up on the wall between the two gates is a piece of paper (or parchment or papyrus or whatever) with cursive writing on it.

Clarisse and I glance at each other. I shrug my shoulders, and then we walk up to the piece of paper and try to decipher the mess of squiggly lines. It takes us almost ten minutes, but we manage to figure it out. Well, most of it, that is. The ink is a little blotted in some places. Unfortunately, the blotted out words are probably the most important. This is what it says:

Two gates the silent house of Sleep adorn;
Of polished ivory this, that of transparent horn:
True visions through (it's blotted here) arise;
Through (and here too) pass deluding lies.

"So I'm guessing the gate on the left is the 'transparent horn' one, and the gate on the right is the 'polished ivory'," I state, feeling very thankful that neither gate is made of human bones like I thought.

"Great," Clarisse groans. "Now we have to choose which path to take, and if we choose wrong…"

"We'll most likely wind up dead," I finish for her.

"At least it's clear which one we should choose," Clarisse says, looking slightly mollified.

"Exactly." I nod. "Obviously we should choose the–"

"Horn," Clarisse declares, at the same time I conclude, "Ivory."

We look at each other.

"The horn, Clarisse, really? But the ivory's so shiny and pretty!"

"Which is why it's most likely the gate with the 'deluding lies'," Clarisse argues. "Most people would assume the ivory is the right gate because it looks nicer, but it's really just a trick. The horn is probably the one with 'true visions'."

I frown as I realize that she's probably right. People associate beauty with good things like truth, but the Labyrinth is designed to trip people up, so…

"You know," I say slowly, "this looks kind of familiar, the two gates and the poem. Through one gate lies truth, through the other false visions…" I ponder the phrase for a moment, trying to remember where I heard it. "I got it! This was in Class of the Titans, too!"

"Right," Clarisse says, skeptical and unimpressed. "So which gate is it?"

"It's–" I begin, and Clarisse perks up. "…I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know?" Clarisse demands.

"Well, uh, they didn't really say anything about horn or ivory in the episode," I tell her sheepishly. "So I'm not really sure which gate was the truth one. Actually, I don't really remember much about the episode to begin with. But one thing I do remember is these demons coming out of the gates and then giving one of the characters horrible nightmares."

"Do you think they actually exist?" Clarisse asks, looking almost afraid.

"Not sure." I frown. "You ever heard the name 'Oneiroi' before?"

"No," Clarisse says. Then, her eyes widening, she adds, "That wouldn't happen to be them, would it?"

Huh? I look in the direction she's pointing, only to see both gates burst open and creatures I assume to be the Oneiroi fly out.

Holy Styx. I mean, I knew they would look creepy, but this is just… See, in the Class of the Titans episode, the Oneiroi just looked like weird bat things. The real version, on the other hand… You know that annoying fairy from that Zelda game, Navi? Well, the Oneiroi look a little like that, except instead of being little spheres of blue light, they're… I don't think black describes them right. They look more like voids of darkness the size of exercise balls. And the wings – no cute fairy wings here. These are more like a skeleton's fingers with spider webs hanging between. …Actually, the more I think about it, they look nothing like Navi.

Simultaneously, the Oneiroi let out bloodcurdling shrieks – though I've no idea how that's possible, seeing as how they don't appear to have mouths. Then again, that never stopped Navi from giving annoying, unnecessary advice.

For a long moment, the creatures simply hover in the air before us, their high-pitched screeches nearly shattering our eardrums. Then, without warning, the closest Oneiroi dives at me, two more following behind it. I lift my sword to defend myself as Clarisse hefts her spear. I swing my sword when the monster is mere inches from me, but the bronze blade passes right through it.

Before I can blink away my shock, the Oneiroi slams into my chest. Only it's not like when you're hit with a baseball or a Hellhound's claw or Clarisse's spear. I don't feel the impact in just one place; I feel it everywhere.

At first it's like my entire body is being enveloped in pain. My muscles and veins all constrict. Then I go blind. My eyes aren't closed, but everything's so dark – except there's a strange brightness flickering at the edges of my vision, eating up the darkness.

It takes me a few seconds to realize that that brightness is actually fire. And it's not just the darkness that's being consumed by flames; there are buildings burning, too. Twelve cabins and one huge blue farmhouse – the Big House.

Camp. Camp is burning to the ground.

This can't be real. How am I seeing this? Camp is practically a world away. My eyes aren't even open. So then…this is a vision. But how do I know if it's real or not?

Through one gate lies truth, through the other false visions.

The gates are the key, but I don't know which one brings truth and which one brings lies.

Then I feel the shock of another Oneiroi hitting me. The image of my home being destroyed fades, and then it's like I'm flying over New York. How do I know it's New York? Simple. I can see the Empire State Building. To my horror, it's under attack. There are blue lights raining down on it like a meteor shower. They vanish when they get too close, though, so I guess the real problem is on the ground.

There's a battle raging on the streets of New York. Everywhere I look, there's bloodshed. Titans and monsters and demigods, wounding or maiming or killing kids in orange T-shirts. Hunters are dying left and right. I never got along with them very well, but they certainly don't deserve to die!

Another Oneiroi hits me, and the bloodstained battlefield is replaced by one last vision. It's Luke. Same old sandy blond hair, same old blinding white smile (only a lot more sinister looking).

But his eyes – his eyes are gold.

How the hell do eyes change colour like that? What happened to that bright shade of forget-me-not blue that I once loved so much?

Abruptly, my muscles and veins relax, the pain vanishes, and my sight returns. As I draw in a huge lungful of air, I realize I was holding my breath the entire time.

"Damn it! How are we supposed to kill these things?"

With a start, I realize the Clarisse is still stubbornly trying to fight the winged demons even though her spear passes right through them.

"Clarisse, stop! There's nothing you can do! Let's just get out of here!" I urge her, my voice oddly hoarse.

"Like hell!" Clarisse snarls. "After what they just did to you?"

"Clarisse, just forget it– Clarisse, don't!" I yell, as she completely abandons her weapon and charges at the nearest Oneiroi with her fists held high.

And then I see what she must've seen when the Oneiroi slammed into me. As I watch, all the visible veins in her body turn a startling shade of black – including the veins in her eye balls, which are bulging. Her entire form is shuddering violently. Her mouth is open in a silent scream of terror, and it doesn't look like she's breathing at all, either.

This is literally the creepiest thing I have ever seen in my life. Now I get why she was so determined to make them pay for what they did to me. Just watching Clarisse like this – strong, unshakeable Clarisse, now reduced to a quivering, vulnerable mess – fills me with so much rage that my head throbs.

A single thought breaks through all my red-hot fury.

What do I do?

I can't fight them. My sword doesn't harm them at all, and even as I stand here trying to find a solution, more of them fly out of the gates and swarm in around us. Some of them swoop down at Clarisse, while others turn towards me.

My first instinct is to run. And I'll admit it: I'm more than ready to follow that instinct. I back away from the Oneiroi, from the two gates, from Clarisse. She's my friend, but those visions… I can't go through that again.

I take another step back and prepare to run back down the corridor, though some small part of my brain is screaming at me to stay, to try to save Clarisse, just like she tried to save me.

But it doesn't make a difference, because one of the Oneiroi slams into me again, and this time it's not forcing a vision onto me, or robbing me of my sight, or making all my muscles constrict. This time it's just making throat constrict, cutting off my air supply.

This time it's killing me.

A random fact I got from Annabeth: humans can only last a few minutes without air before their brain cells die and they turn into vegetables.

How many minutes do I have left?

How many minutes does Clarisse have left?

Maybe this is karma or the gods or the Fates or whoever, punishing me for trying to abandon a friend in need instead of doing the right thing.

I think about Clarisse – and my brothers and Cheryl and Chiron – and my mother who really did love me once upon a time, and my father who I always hated for never being there – and Luke.

I think about what Apollo said in my dream, and what Luke himself said to Kelli. I think about Annabeth and Thalia, and how, despite everything Luke had done, they still believed in him.

And I realize that maybe I shouldn't have given up on him so easily. Maybe he wasn't just trying to get Kelli off his back like I thought. Maybe on that day in the forest years ago, when he asked me to come with him, he wanted me to come because he really did care. Because he didn't want to live without me, the same way that I didn't want to live without him.

But it's too late for maybes. All the mistakes I've ever made, all of my regrets, they're all buzzing around in my head, but it's too late.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I don't know who I'm apologizing to.

I think my vision is going blurry. I think my time's up.

Dad, I'm sorry.

The last thing I hear is the sound of rushing water.

And then everything fades out.

Author's Note: Reviews are appreciated. Hope you're all having a wonderful day!