Medea murdered her children, and she blames Aphrodite.

Her heels click against the tiles as she strides through the entrance to the hotel ballroom selected for this meeting. She is irritated. Impatient. She despises going to these, but the emperor was busy (as if she herself has not been holed up in her potion room for days) and insisted she act as his emissary. An inconvenience, but she supposes if there were ever a conference she might be interested in attending, it would be today's.

Emperor Nero has already arrived. He is lounged on one of the three purple sofas arranged to face one another in the center of the ballroom. A golden rug bearing the symbol of the Triumvirate lay beneath a parlor table laden with wine and hors d'oeuvres. A large woman stands close behind him, hands on the pommels of her twin blades as she watches Medea approach with narrow eyes.

Adorable. As if those silly little blades could ever pose a threat to a sorcerous.

"Your majesty," Medea greets coolly, nodding to the stout man and taking her own place on the couch set out for her employer. She crosses her ankles and looks down her nose at Nero. "How long it has been."

"Lady Medea," He nods. Nero eyes her appreciatively from head to toe, making her clench her teeth in irritation. "You are looking...alive."

"Quite," She snips.

No thanks to the gods.

"Tell me," Nero begins, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. "Do you know why our colleague has called this surprise meeting?"

Medea raises an eyebrow. "I do not."

"Really?"

"I was ordered to attend, so here I am. I do not question Caligula's wishes."

He smiles meanly at her. "What a good little witch you are, minding your master so dutifully."

Indignation flares in Medea's chest, but, before she can hiss a scathing response back, the doors swing open once again, and their final attendee marches into the ballroom.

Medea much prefers Commodus to Nero, but both are rather insufferable. The youngest of the emperors is once again dressed in little more than a tight fitting pair of spandex. His chest is exposed and his beard oiled.

That isn't what Medea's gaze finds first, though. What she sees pulls her eyebrows to the chandelier, and she pulls in a surprised gasp.

Burns scar the upper half of his face. Like the kind one might get from spending far too much time in the sun. And, when he opens his eyelids...

The man's eyes have melted from their sockets.

Commodus comes to stand before them, hands balanced on the shoulders of two of his disgusting little headless guards. He curls a lip and sighs.

"My colleagues," He nods.

"What in Rome's name happened to you?" Nero chokes, looking ready to start waving his handkerchief at Commodus in disgust.

The younger man scoffs in offense and pulls a pair of sunglasses from...Medea would rather not consider where he was keeping those, actually. He hides his empty eye sockets behind the Versace frames and sprawls out onto his couch.

"Apollo happened," He huffs.

Medea leans forward. "Apollo did this? I was under the impression he is currently mortal."

"As was I..." Nero mutters.

Commodus makes a disgusted sound and crosses his arms like a child. "Well, obviously he still holds some divinity!"

"Is this the reason you've called us here?" Medea asks, still examining Commodus' burnt face with interest.

How a mortal body can still contain the power of the sun...extraordinary. She is more certain than ever that her spell will prove fruitful. All she needs is to get Apollo into the heart of the maze.

"Not exactly," Commodus grumbles. He looks away like a petulant teen. What the purpose of such an action is, Medea has no idea. The man has no eyes. "Actually, I...Well, you see, I have something to inform you all of."

"Oh?" Nero sighs, clearly having lost interest.

Medea doesn't blame him. They're in the center of the country, and Nero possesses no ability to self-travel. Jet fuel is expensive. He's likely regretting ever agreeing to this conference.

If they hadn't gone through such trouble silencing communications throughout the country, this certainly could have been an email.

"What is it, Commodus?" Medea prompts, examining her nails. "Some of us do have work to return to, you know."

"Brewing more poisons, are you, priestess?"

"Would you like to find out, Nero?"

"I have so missed your charm, my dear."

Commodus clears his throat, wringing his hands. Medea and Nero both look to him expectantly. He opens his mouth.

"Well..."

Two Days Earlier

Leo is closer to exploding than he has been since he roasted Mother Earth like a corncob. If Jo weren't standing in between them, he's certain he'd have already fried Lityerses to ash.

"Give me one reason not to cook you right now, bendejo!" Leo screams, pushing forward against Jo's restraining hand on his chest.

"Leo, calm down!" Jo commands.

Emmie is still examining the Throne of Memory, Georgina curled in her lap and muttering dazed nonsense. Meg disappeared somewhere with that weird little peach thing immediately after Lit broke the news. Sssssarah and the others are sitting on their stools, wide eyed while they watch all this go down over dinner.

Cal is shouting right by Leo's side.

"This is all because of you!" She yells, face red with anger. "And, you want us to believe you had some sort of moral epiphany?!"

"I don't give a drakon's scaly asshole what you believe," Lit scowls. "I'm not staying anyway. I only brought you this shit because it's what she would have wanted."

"What she would have wanted?!" Leo snaps. "She's not fucking dead, pinche idiota!"

"She got herself caught. There wasn't anything I could-"

"Me vale verga!"

"-do. Once those cuffs go on, they don't come off."

"You should have stopped it th-!"

"I KNOW!" Lityerses' lid blows, and he shoves around Jo to get in Leo's face. That's totally fine by him. "I FUCKING TRIED, ALRIGHT?!"

"YOU LEFT HER WITH THAT CREEP!"

"YOU WERE HERE ON YOUR ASS, WHO ARE YOU TO-"

"¡CHINGA TU MADRE!"

"-TALK?! I'VE BEEN PATCHING HER UP FOR WEEKS-"

Leo swings at the guy, aiming a flaming fist right for his ugly fucking nose. Lityerses dodges it and buries a knee in Leo's stomach. He doubles over to cough. Then, he uses the new position to charge forward and tackle Lit around the middle. They both go crashing to the floor, and Leo wastes no time in slamming his knuckles into the bastard's face.

"Leo, stop!"

"Why are you defending him?!"

"Calypso, get out of the way!"

"No!"

"¡Vuelve al infierno!" Leo spits, slamming his fist down into Lit's nose.

He has never felt so angry in his life.

Leo knows he's weak, but right now that doesn't seem to be an issue. The rage boiling through the lining of his gut must have given him super-strength or something, because now Leo's knuckles are painted red, and he's about to beat this motherfucker all the way back down to Hades.

Jo disagrees.

"LEO!" Arms circle around Leo's midsection and lift him clear off the floor. He flails and snarls like a feral bobcat, but the former Hunter just hauls him across the room. "You need to cool off! I'll come get you in a while! Waystation, don't let him back in!"

She yanks open a door and tosses him out onto the rooftop gardens. It slams shut before he gets the chance to dart around her. The lock clicks, and Leo is left up there to stew in the spring humidity.

"I know this is going to sound terrible, but..." Olujime says cautiously, eying Apollo's sullen form and Lityerses' still bleeding nose. "If the cuffs are the root of the problem, could we not...cut them off?"

"The cuffs?" Sssssarah questions.

"...Her arms..."

"Jamie!"

"Just hypothetically."

"And take more limbs from her?" Calypso scoffs, looking disgusted by the mere suggestion. "Why not just take her other leg while you're at it? Or a kidney? Or-"

"It was just a question," Olujime sighs.

"I will not hear of it!"

"Okay, okay!"

"Ssssso, what can we do for her?" asks Sssssarah softly.

The group turns to Apollo. He looks up sheepishly.

"Well?" Jo asks. "You're the only one who was in Rome the last time this happened. What do you know?"

He cringes. "Well, um...I certainly don't know how to free her-"

Calypso laughs humorlessly, throwing up her arms.

"But," Apollo continues. "I do know there were times when Lucius would lose control of Achillea. Times when he would be too preoccupied to maintain his hold on her, and she would regain her free will."

The group exchanges a look. Emmie, a mumbling Georgina nestled in her lap, nods. "Alright. Would that be something within our realm of possibility?"

The former god opens his mouth to respond, but Lityerses' bitter voice cuts him off.

"No."

The group turns to him where he's still sitting on the floor of the Waystation, wiping the blood from his face onto the bandana from his hair. He rolls his eyes at the sudden attention.

"That was back when there was one emperor. There are three now," He explains. "Even if she gets away from Commodus, all it would take is getting too close to either of the others for her to fall back into this mess. Better to just leave her where she is."

"Leave her?!" Calypso snaps, fuming. "Why are you so intent on abandoning our friend?"

"She's my friend too," Lit argues.

"As if we'd believe that!"

"I don't CARE what you believe!" He roars, throwing the bandana roughly onto the floor. Lit points at the door. "The fact is, right now she's with Commodus. His only real use for her is tossing her into a football stadium for some entertainment. She's doing well at that. She's good at it. Which means, she's safe."

Emmie and Jo exchange a sad look. Calypso's anger falters. Sssssarah and Olujime look away awkwardly, and Apollo shrinks in his chair. Lityerses continues heatedly, getting to his feet.

"Do you really want to take the chance that she gets stuck serving a creep like Nero instead? Or whoever the other guy is?"

The room has gone mostly silent, only interrupted by the gentle whirring of the machines in Jo's forge. Lityerses looks around at each of them, eyebrows raised in challenge. He waits for someone to respond to his question. None of them seem to have an answer.

He nods.

"Yeah. Exactly." Lit grips the pommel of his sword and turns for the door.

"Where do you think you're going?!" Calypso shouts after him.

He just flips her off over his shoulder with one hand and uses the other to turn the handle. "This ain't my problem anymore. I'm fucking leaving."

Lit pulls open the door and nearly walks straight into a brick wall. He screeches to a stop last second before doing so.

Jo snorts, hand on her wife's shoulder. "Looks like the Waystation disagrees."

Over Lityerses' irritated growl, Apollo perks up and speaks quickly. "Look, Meg and I still need to speak with the Oracle of Trophonius. Perhaps our time there might shed some light on how to help Juliette."

"There is no way to help her," Lit insists angrily.

"Why don't we try out the Throne right now and see," Jo suggests.

Emmie looks at her nervously. The two women seem to have an unspoken conversation. Then, Emmie sighs, nods, and lifts Georgina into her arms, approaching the Throne of Mnemosyne.

Leo punches the metal door.

"Fuck!"

He rakes a tremoring hand through his hair. It gets caught on the forgotten goggles on his forehead. His fingers are stuck underneath the band. Leo loses his temper again, yanking them off, storming to the edge of the roof, and just chucking them. They barely go ten feet before plummeting down to shatter on the asphalt.

The sound of breaking glass makes him burst into tears.

Leo slumps to his knees, leaning against the brick railing of the roof, and cries.

Because, what the fuck?

What the fuck did a bunch of dumb kids like them ever do to deserve all this? Leo's never been a saint. He won't act like most of the stuff that's happened to him wasn't totally his fault, but come on.

Haven't they been through enough by now? Leo died.

He was dumb enough to think that, maybe, something like that might actually earn him a little bit of a reward. Even if it was just one day to hang out with his bros. One school day. Like they'd planned.

Plus, Leo may have been the self-destructor of his own life, but Julie?

His homegirl, Julie? Princesa?

The only person who ever looked at him right off the bat and saw something special?

Never.

Fuck!

What in Hades is Leo going to tell Jason?

What a great homecoming that's gonna be.

'Oh hey, bro, been a while. Yeah, I'm back from the dead. Oh, by the way, your girlfriend (you know, the love of your life?) yeah, I let a crazy psycho god-emperor turn her into a meat puppet.'

Leo will be lucky if Jason doesn't just stab him right there.

"You cry like a pig."

Leo's sobs stop abruptly. Slowly, he looks to the right, wiping his nose on the too long sleeve of his borrowed workshirt. He rolls his eyes at Meg where she's sitting on one of the benches, peach monster snuggled in her lap.

"Thanks," He snorts irritably. Well, excuse Leo. He would have gone back to pretending he's perfectly happy if he'd known he had an audience.

The kid just stares at him. He looks back out to the street, sniffling, and rests his chin on his arms atop the railing.

Leo screwed everything up the day he fireballed. He'd been trying to help. He was stupid to think that he could ever be the hero for once.

Now, his friends are scattered across the country. It's been half a year since he's seen any of them, and now Julie's-

...And, now this.

Leo buries his face into his bruised hands. This is all his fucking fault. Just like always.

"Oink, oink."

He pauses.

Meg makes a snorting grunting noise. Leo looks over at her in bewilderment, and she's got a finger pressed against the tip of her nose, pushing it up like a pig's.

"Oink," She repeats.

"Do you mind?" Leo asks.

Meg rolls her eyes. "I do. You're being annoying."

"Yeah, that's kind of my thing, kid."

"Well, be annoying quieter. Or go away," She commands, turning to scowl at the night.

Leo watches her adjust the now sleeping baby peach demon thing so it's snoring in a ball on her criss-cross legs. She's patting its head absently. She looks irritated.

Irritated, but not sad.

It makes Leo mad again.

"This all happened 'cause she wanted to save you, you know," Leo huffs. Meg just raises an uninterested eyebrow at him, and he throws his arms up in frustration. "Do you really not care?! She loved you!"

"Loves."

"And, she did all this so you wouldn't have to go back to-Come again?"

Leo blinks at her. She rolls her eyes and pats a drum solo on the sleeping peach's back.

"Loves," Meg repeats, scowling. "She's not dead."

Leo's arms drop back down to his sides. He takes in the kid in front of him.

Honestly, she kinda scares him a little. Yes, he knows she's, like, twelve. But, she's almost taller than him, carries around two huge gold swords, and she's the only person Leo's ever known who can roast him into speechlessness the same way he does to others. Plus, he's a little concerned he's being replaced as the comic relief, and that makes Meg intimidating.

Her being Julie's little sister still makes zero sense to him. Leo honestly can't think of anyone more different to his cheerleader friend, except maybe Nico. Right now, though, Meg's frowning at him disapprovingly, eye twitching in irritation as she glares at him like he's the dumbest person alive.

Leo is starting to see some family resemblance.

"I know that," He huffs, turning to lean back against the wall and cross his arms, knees to his chest. "But, she is kinda screwed. At least while the emperors are alive."

Meg shrugs, finger in her nose. "So, let's kill the emperors."

"Gee, great idea. I'll get started on that right away," Leo scoffs.

The kid rolls her eyes again and flicks the juicy booger she collected off the side of the roof. "You sure complain a lot."

"You sure complain a lot," He mimics.

"Why don't you just, like, build something to fix it?" Meg asks in annoyance, moving on to the second nostril.

Leo kicks at the grass of the garden. "What the Hades am I gonna do?"

"Well, it was your dad who made the stupid things, right?"

He pauses.

Leo's stomach starts to churn. Like Festus' does after too much hot sauce. He turns slowly to Meg in dread. "It was?"

She flicks another booger. "I mean, I think so. That's what Apollo said."

"But, why would Dad-?"

"How should I know?"

"But, you said-"

"Do I look like a encycl-ency-...a book?"

"You brought it up!"

Meg shrugs.

Leo stares at the girl. She doesn't look quite as nonchalant as he'd first thought. Yeah, she's kicked back and using her weird pet's back to tap out the drumbeats of the music playing at the restaurant across the street, but she's also clenching her teeth. He can tell because it's something Julie does too. When she's scared, but doesn't want to admit it.

His hands find his toolbelt. The magic toolbelt that his dad gave him.

Leo's key to anything he needs to make.

He looks back at the door Jo slammed in his face. The setup downstairs is freakin' amazing. Fixing Festus up had been a breeze with the wicked forge here. If there were ever a time that Leo might be able to do the impossible...

He gets to his feet and crosses the roof. He looks down. He'll need to go outside and grab those goggles, huh?

He's got a princess to rescue.

Trophonius' voice hissing from the throat of an eight year old girl might be one of the most disturbing things Apollo has witnessed. But, no part of what his long dead son has to say turns his blood to ice quite like his parting words.

"Bring the girl. Your master," Georgina grins widely, eyes blank and black. "Perhaps you will both survive. Perhaps I shall get to watch you suffer the same fate as I.

"I wonder, father," Trophonius muses. "To whom will you pray as you wash your family's blood from your palms?"

There was a night about a month after the war with Gaea came to an end when Annabeth decided to sleep over. They'd decided to watch some stupid movie of Percy's, and it had gotten too late for her to hail a taxi safely. Sally had insisted.

"No need for unnecessary danger," She had said. "You kids have been practically living together for months anyhow."

It had been a joke, but it was true. Annabeth had agreed gratefully, and Sally and Paul had gone off to bed, leaving the three of them to their movie in the living room.

Eventually, that movie went to credits. The lights were dark, the home screen of whatever streaming service they'd been using glowing blue against their faces on the couch. Percy had been snoring since the first twenty minutes of the film. He'd shoved his socked feet into Julie's space and cuddled his head into Annabeth's lap as his girlfriend pretended to be annoyed, but ran her fingers gently through his hair anyway.

The white streak across his bangs was handled with particular care. Juliette had peered at the girl as she cradled strands of her brother's hair between her thumb and forefinger, looking down at him with a fierce protectiveness more befitting a lion than an owl. Like the boy snoring against her stomach wasn't a warrior who had faced down gods and titans. Like he was the most fragile, precious thing to ever exist in this world. Like if she looked away for too long, his heart might go still without her noticing.

That was the way they were sitting the first and last time Julie ever heard Annabeth talk about Tartarus.

With a quiet, inexpressive voice, the older girl had drawn out a map in words.

Rivers of fire. Rivers of souls. Of damnation. Of suffering. Of blood.

Cliffsides overlooking the blistering pustules which birthed the horrors which tried at every turn to tear the two of them apart. Physically or emotionally. From the outside in or the inside out.

Forests of pure shadow. Veins filled with acid. The darkest blacks and emptiest voids ever to be known.

An atmosphere which turned their lungs to throbbing, exposed organs and burned their skin raw from the barest contact.

A god who oversaw it all. Who birthed it all. Who was it all.

Who made the unbreakable Perseus Jackson drop his sword.

Most of all, Annabeth told Julie about the fall.

She recounted nine days of crushing blackness. Of scorching heat. Of hunger and dehydration so severe that neither of them could cry for risk of drying their bodies out completely. Nine days that Percy spent slowing down their sweat glands. Recycling the water in their blood vessels. Reaching inside both of their bodies with his powers so that, if their never ending descent ever did come to an end, they might still be alive.

Nine days clinging to the only reason either of them had left to bother. Nine days that Annabeth only managed to keep count of through how long it took for the dim light of her backlit wristwatch to run out of batteries.

Talking through it all seemed to have helped. She seemed calmer after each panic attack that Percy seemed to unconsciously manage to coach her through, snuggling closer in his sleep with every change in Annabeth's breathing. Maybe he could hear it. Maybe he wasn't asleep. Maybe they'd just been through so much together for so long that his body could sense when hers was out of balance. Maybe he could feel the blood rush through her veins quicker when she began to panic.

Juliette had been both awed and sickened by the sight of their close connection and the reasons why it was formed. Long after Annabeth fell into a restless sleep as well, wrapped in Percy's arms, ear pressed over the left side of his chest to listen to the thumping of his heartbeat, Julie stayed awake and stared into the darkest corner of the room.

What was it like?

To fall for days, no end in sight and only the person in your arms left to live for?

What was it like for time to stretch so monotonously that days could only be counted by the dimming of the only source of light available to you?

What was it like to do all of that alone?

Julie had stared into the darkness of the room and wondered. She'd stared into the one light streak in her brother's dark hair and hoped she'd never have to know.

She'd been through a lot up until that point, and never had Julie ever shied away from anything.

But, a fall for nine days seemed like something she might not have made it to the end of. Not alone. She isn't Nico. She isn't strong like him.

It took Annabeth and Percy nine days to descend into Hell.

She isn't able to count them herself, but that's all it takes Juliette too.

A/N

Hey, loves!

A bit of a long wait for such a short chapter, I know. Don't worry, though, the next one is already half written and will hopefully be out in the next few days. I just had to work out the kinks in this transition here into the uh...unfortunate next major plotline (iykyk)

Stay tuned! We're getting into The Burning Maze, and I am so ready to have my boy Jason back.

For...a bit. Heh. OKAY, BYE!