6 I Climb the Wall of Doom

The lightning struck only a few inches away from my face. When I opened my eyes all that was left was a burned patch of grass, and a note. All eyes on me again, I bent forward and picked up the note. With difficulty I read:

Succeeding challenge one was only the start,

Now you're route with the others will part

Follow the forest path and ignore the others call,

That'll lead you to the challenge of the unclimbable wall

While the last two lines of the riddle kind of freaked me out I didn't waste any time and ran to the path on my right that lead into the forest. Of course I couldn't resist looking back to wink at Clarisse. Again. Priceless.

I started jogging along the forest part, while looking at the note in my hand. I just needed to follow the path and that would bring me to my next challenge. After running for some time I heard some noises coming out of the forest and suddenly a big shrieking sound of an animal in pain filled the air. My first reaction was to go and help, I mean, if an animal was making that kind of noise it was in some serious pain, but as I wandered of the path I froze in my steps. I was still clutching the note in my hands and suddenly the sentence ignore the others call jumped out at me. There was an animal calling for my help. The only question was, was it really just an animal. As I backed away from the sound towards the path again, the sound grew louder and louder until the wailing turned into a wild roar that pierced through my brain. Before whatever was making that noise could get to me, I started running and got the hell out of there.

After having escaped the thing of which I really did not want to know what it was, I jogged steadily for about two hours. I was on edge, still half-expecting some creepy creature or Clarisse to jump out of the bushes and attack me Atilla-the-Hun style, but nothing happened. After another hour of walking and after having to fight my way through some really pain in the ass thorn bushes, I finally reached challenge two, the challenge of the unclimbable wall.

I had never been a bad climber. I mean I was quick, pretty alethic, and while climbing the lava wall at camp I had always made it out alive with only a few scratches here and there. Yeah Grover always beat me, but hey, the guys half mountain goat so that doesn't really count.

However what I saw here made my heartbeat speed up.

A wall at least three times as high as the wall on camp stood before me. Lava streamed down the sides like water and big rocks casually fell down now and again. Real rocks. The I'm-going-to-squash-you-like-a-fly kind of rocks. Examining the rock wall itself more closely I noticed there weren't a lot of ridges to stand on or hold on to. I even thought I caught a glimpse of a snake tail or something along one of the little cave-like holes in the wall. This was the kind of challenge I had expected, and dreaded. But what had to be done had to be done.

Taking a deep breath, I started to climb the wall very carefully. One step at a time. And it really wasn't that bad. Not counting that one time that a rock the size of Mount Everest almost squashed me. Or that a short time after that, I burned my hand when I accidentally grabbed a ridge that was filled with hot steaming lava. Or when I almost fell because I'm a moron and thought there was a ridge to hold on to, when in reality there really wasn't. Okay, maybe it wasn't going so great after all, but hey I was still alive, which meant one point for Percy and zero points for the big fat wall.

As I reached halfway, I heard some noises below me and looked down to see what was happening, which is not a very good idea considering I didn't enjoy heights and I was on a huge wall. As I became nauseated noticing the space between me and the forest floor, I saw something else. Clarisse had begun climbing the wall. She was advancing fast, dodging lava and rocks like it was something she did every day. Which wouldn't really surprise me but still, the girl had some serious climbing skills. As she quickly closed the space between me and her, I saw one of her sisters get into huge trouble. The girl had somehow gotten herself stuck between a stream of lava and an avalanche of falling rocks. Bad enough as that was, it looked like some snake like thing had wrapped itself around her ankle, and tried to pull her loose from the wall. She shrieked and now Clarisse looked down too. For one short moment I actually thought she was going to help. But she looked up again and started climbing while her sister down below, started crying for help.

I knew the girl didn't deserve my help. I mean she was a daughter of Ares and my competition and really there was no reason at all for me to help her. But as I saw her struggling to keep on the wall my mind screamed at me to help her. So while Clarisse caught up with me and climbed on to the top, I carefully and quickly started to descend the rock wall, hoping I would be fast enough to help the girl.

Luckily I got there in time. As the girl let go of the wall to start her deadly fall to the ground, I caught her hand and swung her to the side. After we both almost got squashed by another ginormous rock I was able to set her onto a ridge safely. 'Are you okay?' I asked. 'Fine, I didn't need your help anyways' she snapped back. 'You're kidding, right' I replied as she ignored me and started climbing again. 'I just saved your life!' I yelled at her. She looked down at me, and did something I didn't expect: she gave me the finger. I mean, I wasn't expecting a hug or a parade or anything but a simple, thank you Percy for saving my life while also risking yours in the process would have been appreciated. However, as we were sort of in the middle of climbing the wall of doom we didn't actually have time to talk about why her wrestler mother never taught her manners, and in silence we climbed on. Soon our ways split and my anger made for good motivation to get to the top ahead of her. When I was almost there I looked back and watched her climb. The girl was a really bad climber, and when I say really bad I mean really bad, as in my great-grandmother would have been a better climber than her kind of bad. She was still only half-way to the top and got herself stuck in a place with no ridges to advance on. But I wasn't helping her this time, I mean I had ADD but I wasn't stupid. I turned my attention to climbing the wall again. When I reached the top fairly unscathed and feeling pretty good about myself, I realized there was no one in sight. Clarisse was long gone.