Chapter 12

A Little Girl Beats Me Up

The next morning my head was packed full of thoughts. Shocking, I know.

In the shower, getting dressed, eating breakfast- the whole time I went over things again and again. What supplies I'd need. How to make sure I didn't mess this up. It wasn't until Daedalus, who'd given me nothing but space since our conversation the night before, sat me firmly down in front of a whiteboard that the thoughts slipped into the background.

"Planning time," was all he would say while setting up, as if that explained everything. Which I guess it did. Where I was going, how I'd get there, how long I'd stay… all of it was still up in the air to me.

Finally he pulled the cap off a green dry erase marker and set to writing. The first word was "Where" and beneath that he quickly scribbled "Antietam".

"Androktasiai," Daedalus said, "are attracted to sites of mass death. In Greece they trailed the Spartan armies. Throughout both World Wars they could be found along the frontlines. Since the West's shift to America, their options have been somewhat more limited. Rather than immerse themselves in current battles, they've been forced to settle for past ones."

He rapped the plastic end of his marker against the board. "Antietam, Maryland. Cite of the bloodiest battle in American history. Twenty-three thousand casualties in a single day. If an Androktasiai will be anywhere, they'll be here."

"Hold up," I said. "If?"

He shrugged. "I believe they're still out there, but it has been a long time since I laid eyes on one. There's always the chance that there actually are none left."

"Well, that's fantastic. You're really making me feel good about my chances here."

"I am confident," he said. "At least eighty percent. Probably closer to eighty-two point five. And if it turns out to be wrong, you'll just be using this a bit earlier than anticipated."

He reached into a pocket and pulled out something small and blue, tossing it to me. I caught it and found a small whistle made of what looked like ice and felt twice as cold.

"Keep an eye on that," Daedalus told me. "It's called Stygian Ice, straight from the River Styx. I've only got a few of them in reserve, and I've no wish to break out another just because one was misplaced. Blow it once, anywhere, and Mrs. O'Leary will come running. But be careful! It will break after use, so make sure to time it right. Once you use it, that's your only ride back."

"So even if I find the Androkasiai, I'll have to use it at some point?" I asked, pocketing the whistle to get it out of my freezing palm. "That eems like a waste if it's so valuable."

"It is a shame," Daedalus agreed. "But unfortunately, it's necessary. We've no way to know how long you'll be there. It could be anything from a month to several. And unless you'd like to try and take your chances finding your way back through the Labyrinth, this will have to do."

"Maybe," he said after a pause, "If I could've sent you with Ariadne's string, we would've had another option."

He trailed off, looking at me innocently, and I groaned.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry for giving away your toy."

"To demigods," he added. "The children of the exact beings I'm attempting to hide from."

"I know. I apologized for that already. Multiple times. But they won't use it to rat you out. They aren't like that."

"You're certain," he said, "I am not. Times change things, and people too. You never know what sort of offers they'll receive, if they even still hold it." He saw that I wasn't convinced and sighed. "You'll see."

With those words his eyes flicked across the room, over toward the typewriter-like machine that had kicked up a fuss the day before. I decided to move things back on topic before we got sucked further into the old argument.

"So Mrs. O'Leary takes me there, drops me off, and I find this possibly-there teacher," I listed off.

"In not so many words, yes."

"Great," I said. "Do you have any more crucial bits of info, or am I all ready to be seen off?"

"Just one."

Daedalus hunched down over the whiteboard and scrawled something in big letters. When he finished he stepped aside, revealing one succinct message:

Pack lots of underwear.

O-O-O-O-O

Unsurprisingly, shadow travel hadn't gotten any more fun in the half a decade since I'd experienced it. I came out the other side gasping and staggering, the muggy afternoon that enveloped me feeling like paradise after the frigid cold from moments before.

At my side Mrs. O'Leary barked, though it lacked the usual energy. Long-distance trips always left her a little tuckered. She looked up at me, asking the silent question.

"Go on," I told her. "I'll be fine from here girl."

She gave me the best lick she could manage, drenching four articles of clothing in one go. Then, with a final subdued bark, she leapt back into the shadow we'd come from and disappeared from sight.

With my ride gone I went over my things one more time. Spare clothes, a few bottles of water, and the Stygian Ice whistle. It was nestled at the bottom of my backpack, and that was where I left it, undisturbed.

I shifted aside a pair of pants and pulled out one of the bottles of water, zipping the bag shut and shouldering it when I was done. While the heat of the Maryland summer still felt like a blessing I knew that would change quickly. So I took a swig from the bottle, kept it at my side, and started to walk.

Mrs. O'Leary had dropped me just past the visitor's center, which I was thankful for. I could see price signs up behind me and I wasn't exactly in the mood to spend ten bucks on a day pass, even if Daedalus had packed me a fair chunk of emergency funds.

So instead I started down the path of shiny white gravel that wound onto the battlefield itself, two green banks running on either side with old-timey wooden fences at the crests.

It wasn't too crowded. Maybe because it was a Thursday, safe from weekend crowds. Tourists milled around here and there, some following after brown vested tour guides while others meandered aimlessly. Up ahead of me, behind a particularly harried-looking guide, was like a school trip. A bunch of elementary schoolers chatting and yelling and being as generally obnoxious as kids that age ought to be.

With no idea where to head, I settled on forward. Somewhere out here was an immortal spirit of violence. Now it was on me to find them.

I passed by a tour group and checked them out as stealthily as I could. The most interesting thing about them was a pair of moles on one of the guys' cheek, and I ruled them out.

Next up was an elderly couple. Somewhere in their seventies, they looked straight out of an advertisement for assisted living. The sort of wrinkly love birds that would stare into the camera with welcoming smiles and coax their fellow seniors into busting out the retirement funds. The woman was reminding the man that she'd packed sandwiches, and I ruled them out too. There was something peaceful about sandwiches that just didn't mesh with my image of manslaughter. Incarnations of violence, I was sure, would eat more along the lines of meatballs, or maybe something spicy.

For the next hour or so I worked my way further down the winding path, covertly sizing up group after group with nothing to show for it. And even still, I'd only covered a tiny sliver of the total area. It was just settling in what an enormous task this could be when a voice spoke behind me.

"Looking for something?"

I turned and found one of the field trip kids from earlier looking quizzically. A little girl with midnight black hair and a backpack with bright yellow straps. I shook my head.

"No, I'm just… enjoying the sights."

The sights were actually pretty dreary. Mostly it was just fields, little signs scattered here and there marking where some important event or another had happened a million years ago. Even the cannons, what should've been the ringer, looked so old and chipped that I wouldn't have been surprised if they fell apart in front of my eyes.

Despite all this the girl's face lit up.

"Isn't it wonderful?" she asked.

"Is it? I mean right, it totally is. Really interesting."

"Like right there," she pointed over my shoulder at a hill that looked exactly the same as all the others I'd seen. "That's where the Union army conducted a cavalry charge, straight at the Confederate lines. Do you have any idea how many died in that spot alone?"

Her smile didn't shrink a bit as she asked the question. In fact she was practically bouncing in place.

"No, I don't know."

"Thirty thousand," she said instantly. "Thir-ty thou-sand."

"That… really is a lot."

She giggled. "Oh it's tons. So, so many."

In the background I could see her class, pretty far away and getting further. She didn't seem to notice or care- and neither did they. No one spun around to collect their lost member. No one shouted for her to follow before she got left behind.

"Your class is leaving," I said.

"My what?" She looked down and blinked, as if noticing her own body for the first time. "Oh, I forgot about that. Don't worry, I can at least tell you about the Union's flanking tactics before seeing if I feel like catching up."

I frowned. "I appreciate it, but I'm kind of busy. I have to find someone."

"If they're worth finding they'll be over here." She turned and began skipping off across the white gravel. "Follow me."

I thought about not doing it, but I had a feeling that I should. Odd individuals tended to know other odd individuals, and if there was one thing I could count on my teacher being it was odd.

Despite my longer legs it was a challenge to keep up with the girl. Somewhere along the way she'd begun to whistle, giving sharp high notes between every skip. She seemed so out of place among somber tourists that I expected everyone to stop and stare, but no one gave her a second glance.

Or even a first. Everyone looked straight past her as if she weren't there. As if she didn't exist to them. Without slowing I slipped Aelia from my pocket, holding it in my fist to keep it both ready and out of sight. It didn't hurt to prepare for the worst.

When she finally came to a stop it was at a far more secluded area than any of the others I'd seen so far. Somewhere along the way the fences had ended, leaving the path to amble freely across on open meadow toward a patch of woods. A distance away ran a creek and, in the opposite direction, a lonely sign pointed out something that no one seemed to care enough about to pay a visit.

My guide was waiting for me to catch up, her head at a forty-five-degree angle. Now that the sun was hitting them, I could see specks of red mixed into her brown eyes.

"I thought you said there were people here?" I asked. The only ones I could see were a young couple helping themselves picnic at least 300 yards back the way we'd come. I shifted my grip on Aelia, making sure I could draw it on a moment's notice.

"I lied," said the girl, sounding utterly unremorseful. "Did you know, right where we're standing, the most blood was shed in the entire battle? Think of it all, gushing and velvety, painting this very ground."

I looked around, seeing if I was missing something. "Shouldn't there be, like, more stuff here? If it was so important then where're all the signs?"

"About a quarter of a mile that way." She pointed past me, away over the creek. "It's quite a sight, memorials and informational plaques every other step. Really their hearts are in the right place, even if they don't havethe right place."

"So you're saying they've got the history wrong?"

She nodded solemnly. "Dreadfully wrong."

"But how do you know?"

"Because," she said, smiling toothily, "I was there."

She jabbed a toe into the dirt and all around us noise sprung up. Men's voices screaming and the banging of gunpowder-induced explosions. The sounds of war. Specters rose up, rushing in every direction or already laying still on the ground.

"Whoa," I said, mesmerized by the scene. A man with sideburns and a handlebar mustache rushed by with a musket in his hands. I reached out to touch him but he passed straight through me, his shoulder parting and reknitting around my hand with a steaming hiss.

"This is what everyone is here for," said the girl, except she wasn't a girl anymore. Rather than a prepubescent squeak the voice was deep and baritone. When I looked over, I found a figure three times her originally height decked out like some sort of postapocalyptic raider.

On one of her broad shoulders was a leather pauldron outfitted with a huge spike. If I ever needed someone to shoulder-barge down a door, I knew who to call. Halfway down her torso, right around her ribs, her outfit changed from leather armor to camo fatigues, which themselves stretched down to her ankles where tightly laced combat boots took over. On her left hand she wore a fingerless glove, and on the right a rusted brass knuckle.

She had a rounded chin and meaty cheeks so wide they gave the term blockhead a new, literal meaning. Her nose was sharp and angular. Pencil-thin lips were pulled into a small smile. Along her forehead ran a steel headband decorated with spikes, from under which she was watching my face closely, judging my reaction to the events around us.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" she asked.

Just a few feet to my left a man found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, and went down screaming. I looked away, barely keeping my breakfast where it was supposed to be.

"This is how differences should be solved," she continued, nodding in agreement with her own words. "No talking, parlaying, politics, none of that bullshit. Just man against man, racing to inflict violence."

"It's terrible," I said. It felt like standing smack in the middle of a nightmare, only much more vivid and loud.

"It's honest is what it is." The woman crouched next to an image of a dead soldier and pressed a finger to the back of his head. "Private Laswell Corbel of Acushnet Massachusetts. A wife, two daughters, and a son back home, along with a profitable cobbling business. And he was willing to leave all that behind, so great was his desire to kill the confederates he despised. That is conviction."

Somewhere in my chest the first bits of anger flared. "Something tells me his family wouldn't see it that way."

"He would," she said, gesturing to the downed man. Then she pointed a finger at my chest. "You should."

"And why's that?"

She stood, rising to her full height- emphasis on full. She wasn't the tallest being I'd ever seen (that honor belonged to a certain pair of restaurant-playing Laistrygonian giants) but she wasn't a million miles off, just a foot-and-a-half or so. The cannon balls and musket pellets flying around us reflected in her red-speckled eyes, making them swim and flow like rivers of bloody mud.

"You're here," she said. "Here for me. Only one reason anyone does that, and it's to fight. To learn how to kill better, straight from the best." She spread her arms wide, as if trying to embrace every bit of the chaos around us in one massive bearhug. "This is it! What you see is what you seek, violence for violence's sake! If it isn't? Well, you're in the wrong place, kid."

Something in the way she said it, vaguely threatening, set my spine shivering. Anfisa formed in my hand. Insurance.

When she saw the sword, the woman nodded. "That's more like it. The right idea. But still not quite right."

Just like when she conjured the scenes of war she touched the ground, just this time with a hand instead of a foot. Pressing her palm flat against the dirt, she slowly clenched her fingers and drew it into the air. From the earth, through the puddles of illusory blood, rose a twelve-foot spear that would've looked comical in almost anyone else's hands.

The tip was a mottled mix of red and black, like the embers of a campfire that was about to die. The blade was thin, no wider than my hand held out flat, but that only made its glistening edges look all the more deadly. The weapon's shaft was entirely free of adornment- solid grey and as smooth as the paint on my stepfather's precious Camaro.

"Well?" She said, staring at me expectantly.

"Well what?"

"Are you going to ditch the toothpick," she nodded to my sword, "or am I going to have to force you to."

Truth be told, I really didn't want to. I could fight with a sword. I knew how to use it- when to slash, block and stab. With a spear? Well, I was almost as much of a threat to myself as to whoever I was fighting. If this did come to a fight, and I needed to protect myself from the violence-crazed quasi-immortal eyeing me like a snack, Anfisa was my best bet.

And yet, Daedalus had sent me here for a reason. I had a task to do. So, with a nervous few clicks of my hand, Anfisa morphed into Anthea. When she saw it, the woman gave a hearty nod and chuckled, a noise that sounded eerily similar to the booms from the nearby cannons.

"That's more like it!" She hoisted her spear with one hand, as if it were much lighter than it looked. "Now, the fun part!"

No more words. She came at me like a freight train, bursting through the specters between us as effortlessly as if they were branches on the tracks. I tried to strike first, lunging in to keep her from running me through with all that momentum.

Danger!

Giving into instinct I sprung to the side. The space where I'd stood was pierced a moment later, that absurdly long spear having reached over the distance while the woman was still steps away.

She gave a grin, revealing a mouth of unnaturally pearly teeth. "You aren't useless! Good!"

I carefully brushed dirt from my shoulder, watching her intently. She seemed to be waiting for me to come at her this time, content to watch me back. Problem was, I had no idea where to start. Her reach had mine beat by about two times- any attempt to get close was more likely to hurt me than her.

But at the same time, I had to do something. If she got up another head of steam I wasn't confident in my surviving the experience. So I pushed down the logical part of my brain, the part that was screaming that this was a bad idea, and charged.

I'd fought enemies bigger than me before, and I still remembered bits from Thalia's training. Both of those had one lesson in common: dodge, dodge, and dodge again. I tried to watch my opponent every step of the way, to see exactly when and where the first attack would be coming from.

There, above! I darted left, letting the spear pass beside me before going in for a stab of my own. Anthea moved closer and closer, homing in on the gap in her chest piece over the armpit.

The warning instinct blared through my head again. I did my best to duck, but it was already far too late. The shaft of her spear smashed into my shoulder like a staff, sending me skipping across the dry ground. I burst through a confederate corpse in a puff of smoke and smacked to a rest against a firm, very much corporeal Oaktree.

My world was sideways. Every heave of my chest sent needles up and down my body. Striding toward me were three of the behemoth woman, each of the copies wobbling and trading places in my blurry vision.

Somehow, I found my feet again. I don't know if it was my pride refusing to let me go down so easily, or fear of what would happen to me if I did. Whatever it was, I prayed it wouldn't run out.

The woman was taking a leisurely pace now, spear used like a walking stick rather than the deadly weapon it was. "So," she said, meandering to a stop, "you're still up. Better than the last few, at least. But is that everything?"

I didn't think; just moved. The ground between us disappeared, covered in a stumbling run. The only thought on my mind was hitting her. One good hit would be enough, then I could rest.

She looked bored as she went to fend me off with the same attack as before. When I dodged left, her expression didn't change. She went for the same sweeping that'd sent me into the tree. I jumped straight into the air, and her eyes widened.

Up, up, up. I put everything into getting as much height as I could. And when the spear shaft swung through the space I'd just been, I stepped on it, propelling myself at the wielder in a last, desperate strike for the head.

Her neck snapped to the side, ear pressing against her shoulder, my strike missing its mark. Mostly. A long, thin cut stretched the length of her cheek.

And then, before I could touch the ground again, a meaty hand caught my throat and suspended me in the air. Her other hand dropped her spear and grabbed my wrist, squashing the possibility of any follow-up attacks. My legs kicked uselessly, caught.

"Excellent!" she shouted. Blood was dribbling down her cheek, but she looked the happiest I'd seen her. "Fighting spirit, battle tactics, strong will. You… pass!"

She leaned in, close enough for me to feel her sticky breath on my face, thick like blood. "You can call me-"

Before she could finish I reared back. Gaining all the momentum I could in my trapped state, I channeled it all straight through my forehead into her face.

It felt like headbutting a steel wall. A headache set in before I'd even pulled back. But when I got a look at her the woman's nose was worse- distinctly flat with blood already dribbling out one nostril. If anything, her smile had grown.

"Andi," she said, "that's what you'll call me. And we, the two of us, have so much to do." She blinked, train of thought broken. "Right, before I forget."

She hucked me into the same tree I'd struck before, letting me thump into it a second painful time. Then she walked closer and crouched.

"There, now we're even. So, kid, two questions: You got a name, and are you ready to get started?"

Still panting I pulled my head up, taking in the raw excitement on her face. My whole body was torn to shreds, I was barely thinking straight, and she looked like she wanted round two about five seconds ago.

One clear thought cut through the haze in my head: this was going to be a long few months.

(-)

Next chapter, here you go. Additionally, if anyone's interested, I thought I'd mention that every chapter goes up a few days earlier on the Dark Lord Potter Work By Author for final feedback before the formal post. If you're interested in seeing the (slightly rough versions) of new chapters a bit early or want to give your own two cents (and maybe, if you make a good point, see it reflected in the final chapter) head on over. You've got to make an account to get access to the Work by Author section, but if you like fanfiction there's a good chance you'll like it there anyway. People can be a bit... rough around the edges at times, especially with newer members, but they're also funny, and you'd be hard-pressed to find better collections of quality stories.

Also, as a side note for those of you reading on this site, after the last chapter this story is officially my most viewed, and my most favorited work. Yay! That makes me feel accomplished. I hope to be fed many more gratifying numbers in the future, and I guess also thank all of you that're already here for, you know, making the entire thing possible. Now, onward!