"Did you really have to kick him in the head?" Mari asked Clarisse.
"What, would you have preferred I let him arrest us and ruin the whole quest before it even starts?" the other girl retorted.
Mari frowned. That wasn't what she meant at all, and both of them knew it. Why was Clarisse being so mean?
"Come on. Ariadne said time works differently in the Labyrinth, right? For all we know, it could have been an hour outside already. Let's move," Clarisse said.
"Well, we could always crack open the door to check how much time has passed, for reference," Mari suggested, turning around to open it. But the door was gone. "...Or not." Mari tried to sound enthusiastic, but she got what Ariadne meant now, when she said that the Labyrinth was designed to be confusing and kill its occupants.
She just hoped she could actually navigate this place, or else she was nothing but dead weight to the entire quest.
They picked a random direction and started walking. As they did, the passage around them shifted from the greenish-blue stone of the statue of Liberty to a more marble-y texture. Broken columns started popping up along the walls, some of them still attacked to crumbling friezes. Mari could imagine that it was once beautiful. The friezes would have run along the side of the ceiling, and the columns would have shone in the light the torches which occasionally appeared. She wondered what had happened. An earthquake, maybe? Was the Labyrinth even effected by earthquakes?
From the way the older girl kept a tight grip on Mari's backpack, Mari could tell Clarisse was just as spooked by the door vanishing as she was. Ariadne had said was that it was incredibly difficult to escape the Labyrinth as a group, and almost impossible to do it alone.
The passage shifted into three, right in front of their eyes. It was almost like the Labyrinth was showing off.
"Which way should we go?" Clarisse asked.
"Can I have a minute?" Mari tried to sit down on the floor.
Clarisse huffed. "What, do you need to take a little rest instead of saving our lives?"
Mari scowled. "No, but this is probably going to be tiring. I need to be sat down. It will make it faster."
"Fine," Clarisse responded, though she still kept an iron grip on Mari's backpack.
Mari tried to remember what Circe had said. She barely even recalled the lesson, so it wasn't very easy.
Spread out the mist around you, as far as you can, my dear.
Mari shivered. She gathered the mist and pushed it to the end of each fork in the path. That alone gave her the beginnings of a killer headache.
She could kind of... feel the mist. Like, she could feel every crevice in the walls of every pathway the mist she was controlling touched. There was a little family of mice living in a crack in the wall.
What was the next thing?
Now. Transfer your prophetic abilities into the mist. Now, Marion, I am losing my patience!
Mari cringed and pushed. She didn't know how else to describe it. She shoved her instincts into the mist. It didn't feel at all natural, but it worked. The mist around her became more... floaty. She kind of felt floaty, too. Wait, nope. That was her feeling light-headed.
The passages felt different, somehow. Two of them felt just the same as they did before in the mist, but the third felt... fresher. Like it was calling out to her. Mari pointed to the left. "That way."
Clarisse grabbed her shoulders and pulled her up. "Okay, so stop." Her voice sounded shaky.
Mari took a deep breath, and let her instincts flow back into her. Then, her control over the mist faded. She sagged into Clarisse, who just managed to catch her.
Mari breathed a sigh of relief. She could do it. She could navigate the Labyrinth. Kind of. Maybe, this way, she could actually be helpful. Clarisse wouldn't be angry at her anymore.
"What the Hades was that?!" Clarisse dragged Mari along as she spoke.
Mari was confused. She'd done it, so why was Clarisse still mad? Was it because she'd taken too long? Or maybe she was getting blood on the floor from her nose.
"That! You looked like you were going to pass out!" Clarisse snarled. "Can you do this or not?"
"I just did it!" Mari protested. Clarisse didn't seem to care.
The path looked newer than the one before. Mari had been to London once with her ex-foster-brother, and they'd gone back to Paddington Station using the tube. This passageway looked exactly like that. It even smelled vaguely of fuel. That kind of surprised Mari, since she'd been assuming that the older-looking passages were safer. But maybe, since the newer-looking ones hadn't been around for as long, they'd be less crumbly.
Mari heard a monster shriek from one of the corridors she hadn't chosen, increasing her confidence that she was leading them the right way. "Do we even know what the string looks like?" Mari asked.
The older girl shook her head. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it." She stopped in her tracks, and Mari nearly bumped into her. "Look."
There was a door on the side of the hallway, with another Delta in the middle. It was made of metal, like it was sealed for something airtight.
"Do your 'instincts' have any helpful information right about now?" Clarisse asked.
Mari shook her head. "What if we just go on? It's probably not going to take us to Ariadne's string. I mean, why would the string be outside of the Labyrinth?"
Clarisse shrugged. "No idea. But why would this appear if it wasn't important?"
Um, because it's the labyrinth? was what Mari wanted to say, but Clarisse was already pulling the door open before she could.
Clarisse screamed and fell through.
Mari rushed forward, terror clenching her chest. What if Clarisse was dead? How was Mari supposed to get out? What was she supposed to tell Chiron? It had barely been an hour.
Just as she was about to reach the door, Mari blinked and it was far away again. She pushed her legs faster, but the same thing happened. The labyrinth was trying to separate them.
A familiar hand grasped at the edge of the door. "Pull me up, idiot!" Clarisse shrieked.
"What?" Mari couldn't hear what Clarisse was saying. It was as if she was being blocked by some kind of really strong wind.
"Pull me up!" Clarisse sounded a lot more panicked now.
Mari leapt at the door before it could jump away from her again, catching herself on the frame so that she didn't fall through. She glanced down, and really wished she hadn't.
The Labyrinth had given them a door in the middle of the sky.
There were clouds, below them. In the distance, Mari thought she could just about make out a plane. Clarisse was hanging onto the bottom of the door, her face and knuckles red. If she was a daughter of any god but Ares, she probably would have fallen already.
"Stop gawking and pull me up!" Clarisse yelled.
Mari crouched down and held out a hand to Clarisse, but the other girl refused to take it.
"What are you doing? Grab!" Mari yelled, her voice falling away into the air. The wind whipped her hair at her face.
"You're not going to be able to haul me up that way! Figure something else out!" Clarisse cried.
How the fuck was she supposed to do that? If she couldn't pull Clarisse up because she'd just fall herself, what was she meant to do? Whip up some kind of makeshift parachute with her backpack?
"Why are you just standing there?! DO SOMETHING!" Clarisse screamed as her hand started slipping.
"Like what?" Mari yelled back.
"Something!" Clarisse's hand was nearly half off he edge, but somehow she was holding on.
"I can't do anything! Why would you open the door in the first place?!" Mari cried.
"I didn't know it would open INTO THE EMPTY SKY!" Clarisse roared, and looked like she was about to say something else before her hand completely slipped off the railing.
Mari screamed and reached out, but it was too late. She couldn't see Clarisse anymore, she could just hear a scream on the wind.
"No!" she shrieked, leaning out as far as she dared.
She didn't do what's she did next on purpose. It was automatic, like when someone accidentally touched a hair straightener and whips their hand away.
She pushed her hand down and pulled up with the mist, with all the strength she could muster.
The screaming stopped.
Mari didn't know if that was because Clarisse was somehow okay, or if it was because Clarisse was out of hearing range, but she didn't want to look and break her concentration, or look and get her hopes dashed. She just kept pulling, and pulling.
A small nest-like structure floated into view, made up entirely of the mist. Lying on top of that structure was a very confused looking Clarisse.
"How are you doing that?" she asked. Her voice was shaky.
"I don't know!" Mari called.
"Well, keep doing it!"
Yeah, duh, Mari thought.
She took as deep a breath as she could, and pulled towards her, taking a wobbly step back as she did so. Her head was starting to hurt. A lot.
She probably shouldn't have taken a step back, because the door apparently thought that was a great opportunity to try and make things even worse. It started to close, as fast as it could against the wind.
Clarisse's expression dropped, and she looked ready to jump across the gap. But the gap was too far for even her to make it.
"Ah!" Mari grunted as she pulled the mist as hard as she possibly could, towards her.
The mist dissipated.
That probably would have been a bad thing if it didn't dissipate right after Clarisse sailed through the doors.
Unfortunately, Mari might have put a little too much effort into it, since Clarisse crashed right into the other side of the wall and crumpled into a heap on the ground.
The doors groaned closed behind them both, and disappeared.
"Clarisse?" Mari felt a little bit lightheaded as she crawled towards the girl.
Clarisse wasn't moving. At all. Her head was lolled to the side and her mouth was open, like she was still screaming. There was a purple egg-shaped bruise on her forehead.
"Clarisse, wake up!"
Mari put her hands on the bruise, and tried to hum. She really tried. But she didn't quite remember the right time to pray to her father, and given the fact that she could have used a lot of healing in the last few years and barely got it, he was probably the picky type.
Predictably, it didn't work and made her a lot more tired anyway.
"Come one, wake up you stupid idiot! Who the fuck opens a door in a magical death maze without checking it's safe first, anyway?!" She was a little hysterical.
Mari tried again with the healing. She still couldn't remember the tune and it didn't work. Clarisse couldn't be dead. That wouldn't be fair. The fates wouldn't let her survive a near-deadly fall only to die from getting her head bumped extra hard. They liked drama.
Mari bit her lip, and then slapped Clarisse across the face.
"Gah!" The older girl spluttered awake, her hand going to her forehead. Then she winced and pulled it away. "We probably shouldn't open doors without checking first," Clarisse breathed.
Mari wanted to hug her and scream at her at the same time. "Yeah. That's what I said." she murmured.
"I need this healed," Clarisse said, still not moving. Mari looked at her hands. They felt stiff and chapped, even though the skin was smooth. "I can't. I already tried twice."
Clarisse rolled her eyes. "I meant Ambrosia, you idiot."
Ambrosia! Seriously, how did Mari spend minutes frantically trying to heal Clarisse but forget about Ambrosia?
"Here." Mari dug through her backpack and pulled out one of her sealed shot glasses of nectar. She uncapped it and turned around to where Clarisse was already taking a bite of Ambrosia.
"Why did you let me get this out when you had your own all along? I can't reseal this!" Mari complained.
Clarisse finished chewing and shrugged. "Not my problem. Just drink it yourself if it's that valuable to you."
"But- I'm not injured!" Mari spluttered.
Clarisse gave her a side-eye. "You're bleeding from your nose and you're paler than the clouds I just fell through. Drink the damn nectar, punk."
Mari glared at Clarisse and gulped the nectar. It tasted of Jaffa cakes. Oh how she missed Jaffa cakes.
Her headache cleared up almost instantly and her nosebleed stopped. She sat back and put her chin in her palms.
"You okay now?" Clarisse asked her.
Mari nodded. "You?"
"Yeah, then let's go. We have crap to do. We've wasted enough time." Clarisse pushed up from the wall. Her head-bump was just a light red bruise now. Other than that she seemed fine.
"You mean you've wasted enough time," Mari muttered.
Either Clarisse hadn't heard or she had decided not to comment.
They continued down the winding pathways, which thankfully didn't get much longer or twistier than before. Maybe the Labyrinth was tired, or bored. Mari was more than fine with the inactivity either way.
Eventually, though, they found an even more disturbing discovery. Or rather, Clarisse found it and turned around to cover Mari's eyes before she could see it.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Mari asked.
"Nothing. Trust me and keep walking," Clarisse grunted. Her voice was different, though. It was higher in pitch. Clarisse sounded... horrified.
Then Mari began to smell something. "Glah! What the fuck is that?" She covered her nose and mouth with both of her hands as she spoke. It was worse than rotten eggs and dead fish mixed together. Her stomach was churning.
"Walk!" Clarisse barked.
"No! Tell me what the Hades that is!" Mari demanded.
What if it was a monster egg or something? Or, Mari might be able to see it and get some kind of feeling about what to do.
"Trust me, smartass, I'm doing you a huge favour. Now walk."
Mari didn't trust Clarisse. Well, sure, she trusted her to keep her alive when the situation inevitably came to that, but she didn't trust Clarisse not to refuse to show her something useful just so she could look good.
"Show me!" Mari demanded.
Clarisse thwacked the back of her head with her hand, and used the shock to drag Mari away from whatever she'd refused to show her.
"Hey! I could trip!" Mari protested but she was ignored.
She felt them round a corner and Clarisse uncovered her eyes. Mari glanced behind her and realised why. Whatever Clarisse had seen, the Labyrinth had cut them off from it. There was just a reddish-brown stone wall where it had once been. Mari then remembered that she didn't have a single solitary clue where either of them were. They could be under Utah, for all it mattered. That was a horrifying thought. "Clarisse, what was that?"
Clarisse shook her head. Her eyes were glassy. "Trust me, for once. You don't want to know."
Mari pouted.
She didn't want to agree with Clarisse. She'd much rather stick her tongue out or call Clarisse names or something. But something about the way Clarisse's eyes looked... maybe she was right. After all, Mari had fought a little bit but if she was being honest with herself (which she was 70% of the time) she hadn't really tried that she'd to shake the older girl off. Maybe it was because intrinsically, she somehow knew Clarisse was right. She really don't want to see whatever that was. Deep down, she knew it was probably a person, and a wave of terrible sadness washed over her.
"Fine." She turned and marched along the Labyrinth. She was only slightly peeved when Clarisse caught up to her within a total of 17 seconds and matched her strides. But what she felt most for Clarisse then was gratitude.
— SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE —
Adela was absolutely done with all the monsters. She'd long known they'd get worse when she turned eleven but this was getting ridiculous. In the last week she had been attacked by a dracaena and three hellhounds. She just wanted to sleep, but she didn't have anywhere safe to do that. She'd tried tying herself to a tree branch in Golden Gate Park, hoping that no monster who smelled her would be able to fly or climb, only to wake up to a hellhound peeing on the tree.
To make things even worse, she hadn't eaten in a day and a half. She was trying to ration food so that she didn't have to steal as much, but that obviously wasn't going too well. The park wasn't offering much.
"Those any good?" an old woman asked her, probably referring to the dried mango slices Adela was munching. She'd had three packets, but given two of them away to a skinny-looking boy sleeping under a bench the night before. His name was Leo. She'd chucked them at him instead of handing them and run away before he could accidentally touch her arm, or worse...
"I guess. I don't really like mangoes," Adela confessed, stuffing another in her mouth.
The woman was looked as if she was ancient. She had so many wrinkles that Adela couldn't make out the lines of her forehead. She was sitting on a stool outside of an old green caravan, with a pot of tea brewing over a kettle next to her. Adela wondered how she hadn't been arrested for illegal parking.
"Well, little one, if you don't want them I have a huge pot of tomato soup cooking inside, and some bread baking. I'll trade you. I love mangoes." The lady gestured towards the open door to the caravan, where light was spilling out onto the grass.
Adela sniffed and a warm, savoury smell filled her nose. Her mouth watered. She couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten something warm. Had it been a year ago, when she'd stolen a pepperoni pizza that a teenager had left on their porch? Yes, that was it. That pizza had lasted for a week. But that had been a whole year...
She stopped herself as she stepped towards the old lady. For all she knew, this was a trap and the lady was a monster, waiting to drag her into the caravan and eat her alive.
"I'm okay, thanks." She stuck one hand behand her leg and flexed her finger, feeling somewhat comforted by the cold metal of the dagger in her hand.
The old woman smiled, as if she knew something that Adela didn't. Adela didn't like that smile, at all.
"You're a demigoddess," the woman said. "Aren't you."
Adela whipped her dagger out and brandished it at the woman "Stay the Hades away from me, or I swear to the gods I will send you back to Tartarus before you can even try."
The woman didn't move, though she did look surprised about something. Adela wasn't sure what. She just kept on pouring her tea. "Don't worry, little one. I'm not a monster. My mother is Fort-Tyche."
Adela frowned. If she was telling the truth, how could this woman possibly have survived this long on her own? That caravan didn't look very secure. If a monster wanted, it could easily rip the top right off and eat the old woman in her sleep, and she looked too frail to ever put up a decent fight. There was a reason demigods usually didn't live much longer then five years out of camp.
As if reading her thoughts, the woman wound a hand around her collar and pulled out a necklace, with a little bronze bull charm. "The monsters can't get near me without becoming disorientated and turning around. It was a gift from my mother, for saving the scales of her sister, Nemesis from a pack of hellhounds who wanted to drag it down to Tartarus. It also stops me getting arrested for illegal parking."
Adela gulped. She had never heard of a demigoddess who could take on a whole pack of hellhounds on her own. The lady must have been terrifying at her best.
"Do you think there are more of those necklaces?" Adela asked.
The old woman shook her head, her eyes downcast. "No. I tried to give it to a little boy once, when I was still strong enough to hold my own, and a month later it appeared in front of me with his severed hand. My mother later told me the necklace only works on me. When I die, it will lose its power."
Adela gulped. Of course it was one-use-only. Nothing could ever be that easy. The gods would never let something to actually help their children be around for too long.
"Why the bull?" Adela asked. They reminded her of when she was little. She'd lived in Madrid for her first four years until her Dad moved them both to San Francisco. Every July, they'd take the train to Pamplona and stay for a two weeks to watch the bull run. They'd stay in a huge hotel and her Dad would order them patatas bravas whilst they watched.
"It's Minoan," the woman answered. She sighed again, looking at Adela's mangoes. "Are you sure you don't want to swap?I haven't had dried mangoes in such a long time."
Adela considered her options. She couldn't imagine a monster would invite her to dinner before killing her, right? Most were either too lazy or too uncreative to come up with something that elaborate.
"What does the soup have in it? Other than tomato?" Adela asked. The old woman beamed at her. "Pepper flakes, rosemary and a red onion. It's a very old family recipe."
Adela wondered if she was making the wrong decision. She supposed that if she was, at least he wouldn't be alive to regret it for very long. That was an awfully morbid thought for an eleven year old to have.
"Okay. We can swap."
The woman looked like if she were younger, she'd have been jumping for joy. "Excellent!"