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FIC: The Final Sacrifice, chpt 7
Title: The Final Sacrifice (Daughter of Wisdom 5)
Author: shiiki
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson, Luke Castellan, Thalia Grace, Charles Beckendorf/Silena Beauregard, Clarisse La Rue, Michael Yew, OCs, multiple others
Fandom: Percy Jackson
Word Count: WIP, estimated 100K+ (33 chapters planned)
Summary: The war on Olympus is heating up, and Annabeth Chase is right in the thick of it. Bad enough that she's gearing up for battle while wrestling with the emotional turmoil over two of her dearest friends that is turning her heart inside out. She doesn't need more mysterious glimpses about the Great Prophecy and how it connects to her own history. But in order to understand what lies in her future, Annabeth has to dig into the past. What she finds will shape her choices … and change the course of the final battle. An alternate PoV retelling of The Last Olympian. Part 5 of the Daughter of Wisdom series.
In this chapter
Chapter Title: I Do Some Disturbing Bedtime Reading
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Annabeth Chase, Percy Jackson, Halcyon Green, Hades, Luke Castellan, Kronos, Alabaster Torrington, OCs, characters from Greek mythology
Word Count: 3,971
Chapter Summary: Annabeth digs deeper into the mysterious diary.
Notes: The line about knives being for the bravest and quickest of fighters comes from TLO and The Diary of Luke Castellan.
Trojan War mythology differs on the fate of Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. The version I'm using is from Euripides's Iphigenia in Aulis: she was sent there under the pretence of wedding Achilles, only to be sacrificed to raise the winds for the ships to set sail for Troy. Variants suggest she was saved by Artemis at the last moment, replaced by a deer, or replaced by a princess, daughter of Helen by Theseus, who was the true Iphigenia called to be sacrificed. My version here draws from these, but is my fictional variant.
Back to Fic Content Page
I'd lost track of the number of times in my life I'd stood guard while my friends slept. In the days I travelled with Luke and Thalia from one safe house to another, I'd insisted on helping with night watches. One of them always stayed up with me. Thalia would tell me about the gods and the signs they sent us to help us stay alive. Luke had preferred to talk about fighting monsters. I'd wanted to learn how to use a sword like him, but he'd said I should start with a dagger.
'Knives are only for the bravest and quickest of fighters,' he'd insisted. 'They don't have the reach or power of a sword, but they're easy to conceal and they can find weak spots in your enemy's armour. It takes a clever warrior to use a knife. I have a feeling you're pretty clever.'
I'd eaten it all up. Even at seven, I'd known my heritage, and the legacy I had to live up to. The dagger Luke had handed me on our first meeting became my permanent talisman. The dagger said I was clever. The dagger meant I was a true daughter of Athena.
Of course, I knew now that Luke hadn't been entirely truthful. The sword was a more powerful and direct weapon, but that didn't mean you couldn't be crafty with it. Eventually, Luke did teach me sword-fighting at camp, along with a number of handy tricks. Knives were just a different weapon, with a different strategy.
But I got why he'd sweet-talked me into taking the dagger. At the time, I wouldn't have handled a sword proficiently. Better to give me something I could use. Easier to make me want it for myself.
'Cheeseburgers,' Percy muttered in his sleep. A thin line of drool trickled from the corner of his mouth. I grinned and suppressed the urge to help him wipe it away. It sounded like he was having a normal dream for once, though with demigods, you never know when a normal dream will morph into a nightmare. In his sleep, he looked twelve years old again, like the baffled kid who'd passed out on the porch of the Big House when we first met.
Gods, how many times had I watched him sleep? We'd been on quests together every summer since we were twelve. There'd been that crazy mission to the Underworld, then our voyage through the Sea of Monsters, and then our trek through the Labyrinth last summer. And now, here we were again.
Percy definitely wasn't the clueless twelve-year-old who'd stumbled into camp clutching a Minotaur horn any more. Oh sure, he still made those stupid jokes, and played dumb half the time, and cracked that roguish smile with the lopsided dimple that made my pulse quicken ...
Okay, I might as well admit (if only to myself) that I'd probably had a teensy crush on him for a while. Just a bit.
But he was still my best friend. Stupid, loyal, dependable Percy. My heart skipped when I remembered how he'd taken that hit from the demon pigeons for me earlier. I guess it didn't really mean anything. If I'd been in his position, I'd have done the same thing. We'd been saving each other for ages now. And last year, in the Labyrinth ...
My fingers found the key on my camp necklace and twisted it round the cord. Last summer had been the most confusing one in my life, and it wasn't just because we'd been lost in an impossible maze. First, Luke had come to San Francisco and begged me to run away with him-something that would have been a dream come true in the pre-Percy days when my grand plan was to Get A Quest and Make Luke Notice Me.
(Yeah, that was embarrassing to think about now.)
Then I'd lost my head in the depths of a pressurised volcano and gone and kissed Percy. I'd thought maybe, just maybe, he'd kissed me back, only Mount St Helens had erupted, taking Percy with it. By the time he returned to camp, he had a new girl (or possibly two-I was never entirely certain what had happened between him and the immortal goddess who'd nursed him back to health) and he acted like our kiss had never happened.
And to top the summer off, Luke had gotten himself possessed by an evil Titan. If there was a self-help book on How To Exorcise An Evil Time Lord From Your Ex-Crush's Body, I certainly hadn't found it yet.
I'd vowed at the end of summer to save both my friends-Luke and Percy. I'd already failed Luke once. My old crush on him had kept him from realising what was really going on with him until it was too late. I couldn't afford to let some stupid feelings for Percy muddle my brain, not with a war brewing this summer and the Great Prophecy looming over our heads, the one that promised to reap his soul. I needed to keep a clear head.
Except my brain didn't want to co-operate. It kept replaying the way Percy had protected me from the Stymphalian birds ... and then how good he'd looked after without his shirt on ...
'Get a grip, Annabeth,' I muttered.
Fortunately, I'd brought along a distraction. I found my flashlight and the green diary in my backpack, and picked up where I'd left off.
Halcyon Green and his sister had gotten to camp and settled into the Apollo cabin. He talked about their cabin mates' powers-archery, music, healing ... not so different from the present-day cabin seven kids. But no one else had the gift of prophecy. Cath gained popularity as the Oracle, since every camper wanted to go on a quest (I could relate). Halcyon started to get glimpses of the future, too, but his friends wouldn't believe him. He foretold one of them would get stuck in the Lotus Casino, but though she never turned up again, no one could be certain it had come true. Other predictions they wrote off as lucky guesses. And some were flat-out wrong, like when he prophesied that their head counsellor would get a windfall, but he lost big in the camp betting pool. The kids started to call him Hoaxer Hal after that.
Hal stopped reading futures. They went home to D.C. at the end of summer, and there, he had a dream. It read like many demigod dreams, starting on an unknown battlefield, though from the description, it might well have been a vision of the actual World War II frontlines. Except the field commander wielded a bronze bayonet and his aide played a golden pipe to marshal their men forward into battle. And when their soldiers routed the Nazis, the commander's weapon became a massive, jagged stick that crackled with electricity.
A lightning bolt.
Zeus and Apollo stood on the bloody battlefield, discussing an all-too-familiar prophecy.
'The sons of Hades are out of hand. We cannot let this happen again. And with the Great Prophecy your Oracle pronounced at the solstice-'
'Yeah, about that ...' Apollo twirled his pipe. 'I was thinking about the best way to tell ...'
Zeus made a scoffing noise, like he couldn't believe how dim-witted Apollo was. 'It rang through Olympus the moment it was made. You'd know that, if you hadn't been so pre-occupied with coddling your children.'
'It is just another prophecy, my lord. It may not come true for years and years.'
'No?'
'None of you have children under the age of sixteen. And if you guys really stop having, uh, you know, dalliances ...'
'Oh?' Zeus's voice grew low and dangerous. 'Our pact was a sham! We vowed on the Styx that we would have no more mortal children, but Hades deceived us.'
Apollo scratched his head. 'How? If you invoked Styx-' he shuddered, 'Hades is subject to her T&C's as much as the rest of us.'
'He already has more children. Two with the same mortal woman, in fact. A detail that he so conveniently hid when we made this pact.'
I had a pretty good idea where this was going. Until two years ago, two children of Hades had been hidden away in the Lotus Casino, frozen in time since the 1940s. Grover had found the di Angelo siblings at a school in Maine and called on Percy, Thalia, and me to help extract them. (Tl;dr: it turned into a huge fiasco, during which Bianca di Angelo and Thalia's predecessor, Zoë Nightshade, had perished, and Percy and I had taken it in turn to carry the sky. Yes, the actual sky. Our hair still had grey streaks from taking its weight.)
These days, Nico di Angelo was wandering around the country. Chiron said he occasionally popped up at camp, though he never stayed long. I didn't really know where he hung out most of the time. As the only son of the final brother in the Big Trio, Nico could potentially fulfil the Great Prophecy as well as Percy. Though since he was only about twelve, that would mean we'd be fighting this war for years.
Did Hal Green know something about the di Angelos, maybe a hint about whether Nico was fated to take on the role of the half-blood of the prophecy? Could this have been what Phoebe had meant by knowing understanding its history?
I read on. In Hal's dream, Zeus announced his intention to prevent the prophecy from centring on a child of Hades. Hal woke up retching (having had my share of stomach-turning dreams, I could relate to this, too). But his dream galvanised him to try and look into the future again. With Cath's help, he induced a vision: Hades checking Nico, Bianca, and their mother into a nearby hotel.
The Green siblings decided that they had to warn the di Angelos that Zeus had it in for them. They started to stake out the hotel after school every day, hoping to run into them. It was on Hal's watch that their surveillance paid off. He spotted Hades coming through the doors. In an act of bravery or stupidity-I wasn't sure which-he approached the Lord of the Dead.
That didn't go so well. The moment Hal mentioned Bianca and Nico, Hades nearly crushed his windpipe. If Cath hadn't run in, the diary would probably never have existed.
'Stop!' Cath yelled. She must have been watching from outside, because she appeared out of nowhere and tackled Hades. I wanted to scream, NO! but it was hard to convey the warning through my eyes when they were watering from the lack of air.
Hades turned. He raised his hand, possibly to smite her, but the wave of energy that filled the room washed over her with no effect that I could see.
'Leave him alone,' Cath insisted. 'He's not threatening you. He's trying to help.'
'Who are you?' Hades demanded. 'Why does my power not affect you?'
Cath straightened. When she replied, her voice took on a resounding quality-not the raspy cackle of the Delphic spirit, but not her usual soft lilt either.
'I am the Oracle of Delphi,' she said. 'Speaker of the prophecies of Phoebus Apollo.' Green mist swirled around her. It settled like a cloak on her shoulders, then subsided.
Hades looked taken aback. He stumbled away from us. The invisible hand released me. I clutched my throat, gasping and coughing.
'You are the Oracle,' Hades said. He stared at Cath as though he meant to bore holes in her with his blazing eyes.
Only the briefest flicker of her eyes towards me betrayed Cath's nervousness. 'Yes.'
'Speaker of this ... prophecy.'
'Yes.'
'And it speak of-my children?'
Cath shook her head. 'Not specifically, sir. It mentions a half-blood of the three eldest gods. But Zeus thinks it means your kids. Your younger kids, that is.'
Cath convinced Hades to take her words seriously, but a week later, things went wrong. The twins were walking home from school when there was an explosion at the site of the hotel. Zeus had struck.
After Hades's attack on Hal, Cath insisted he couldn't go check the hotel. 'He can't hurt me,' she pointed out. 'Protection of Delphi and all.' I read this with a grimace. I wouldn't have let my best friend in the world run off to face the Lord of the Dead on their own. And Hal shouldn't have either.
And then I heard the scream. It was terrible, a long, drawn-out cry that was Cath's and at the same time not. It didn't belong to this world. It ripped through my ears and sent me falling into a whirlpool of images ...
I saw Hades bent over the limp body of his girlfriend, cursing at the skies. I saw a plane tumbling from the air in a fiery blaze. I saw a pair of demigods sprinting from a burning mansion. I saw a pine tree on a windy hill, and a golden coffin in a black mausoleum. A giant throne room. Blood. So much blood, spreading across the ground in an ocean of red.
The screams stopped, and I was running so fast, I thought my lungs would burst.
I found her alone in the rubble, looking completely shell-shocked.
'Cath!' I grabbed her shoulders. 'What happened?'
Cath blinked at me slowly, coming out of a trance. At first I thought it'd be like her prophecies, where she wouldn't remember a word she'd uttered. Then she said, 'He-he cursed me.'
'What? I thought you said he couldn't-'
'Well, not me exactly. I don't think I'm cursed. I don't think he gives two hoot about me. It's more like ... the Oracle. He said-he swore that I'd never-well, the Oracle would never have another host. That as long as his children were cursed by my prophecy, she would languish inside me even after I withered and died.'
'What does that mean?'
Cath's voice sounded too tired, as though she'd already withered under Hades's curse. 'I don't know. He can't kill me. He said so himself. I guess I just have to be the Oracle forever.'
'Maybe we can fix this. You said it lasts as long as his children are cursed, right? If we work out the Great Prophecy, maybe we can un-curse them, and then you'll be free, too!'
'No!' Cath said sharply. 'We've done enough working things out. Don't you see, Hal? That's what started this whole thing. You asked me to look, and the Oracle and her prophecy found me.'
Guilt settled lumpily in my throat. 'But that wasn't our fault. You can't control the Oracle. Maybe she was already going to find you.'
'Exactly. We can't control the Fates. This is it, Hal. No more reading the future.'
'You're the Oracle. How are you going to get away from it?'
Cath's shoulders slumped. 'I've got no choice. But you do. Promise me you won't speak of the future to me again.'
'Summer reading homework?'
I slammed the book shut. Percy was lying on his side, propped up on his good arm. He looked like he'd been awake for a while. The idea that he might have been watching me for some time with that goofy smile on his face made my heart do the jitterbug.
'Er, no.' I wasn't really sure how to explain the diary. The stuff I'd just read about the Great Prophecy ... Percy didn't even know the full thing. Chiron had always been adamant that we keep it from him. And after reading about Hades's curse on the Oracle ... well, that seemed like a good reason not to talk about it.
'Just a book,' I said.
Percy didn't pursue the matter. He stretched and rolled into a sitting position. 'You must be tired. Why don't you get some rest? I'll take the next watch.'
I saw no reason to argue. I slipped the diary into my backpack, pulled the bag under my head, and closed my eyes.
Of course, I dreamed.
I was back on the windless cliff with the marble altar and stained rock. The moon was a large, cold eye in the quiet night, overlooking the valley where the Greek army slept, waiting to set sail for Troy.
One person wasn't asleep. A girl of maybe sixteen slipped out from one of the tents and made her way up the winding path to the clifftop. In her simple white chiton with her long brown hair loose around her shoulders, she looked like a ghost in the moonlight. In her arms, she carried a basket of fruit. She brought this to the marble altar, where she started a fire. Just as she was about to make her offering, a figure emerged from the shadows with a heavy sack over one shoulder.
'You should not have come.'
The girl jumped, dropping her basket. Fruit spilled everywhere. An apple rolled towards the warrior who had emerged. He stopped it with his foot.
'Oh, Achilles.' The girl put a hand over her heart. 'You scared me!'
Achilles picked up the apple and held it out to her. 'You are not safe here, Iphigenia.'
'I only came to make an offering to the goddess,' Iphigenia said. She took the apple and averted her eyes shyly. 'In-in view of our impending marriage.'
For a groom-to-be, Achilles showed no sign of anticipatory bliss. 'I do not just mean here. You should not have come to Aulis at all.'
'But-my father summoned me. He said we were to be married at once, before you set sail for Troy. He said our wedding would bring great fortune on the expedition.'
'It was a trap. You have not been summoned here to be married.' Achilles pointed to the slab of rock in front of the marble altar. The rust-red stain on its surface shone ominously in the moonlight.
Iphigenia took a step back. Her eyes opened in horror. 'My father-he wouldn't-'
'He had no choice. His men threatened to desert if the winds refuse to blow.'
'But then ...' Iphigenia rubbed at her bare arms. 'Surely you are worried about the winds, too?'
Achilles laid his sack on the marble slab and untied it. Inside was a fawn, bound by the legs. He pulled a dagger from his scabbard. Iphigenia gasped and covered her eyes with her hands, not daring to watch as Achilles stabbed the fawn in the heart. Blood poured from the wound, adding fresh rivulets to the rust patterns already etched in the rock's surface.
'A sacrifice,' Achilles cried to the sky. 'To honour the gods and raise the winds. I respect the gods, but I keep my promises, too.'
He turned to Iphigenia. 'When I agreed to our betrothal, I vowed to protect you. That vow precedes any promise I made to defend the virtue of another man's wife.' He held out the dagger to her, handle first. 'This dagger was given to me by Athena herself. Take it with you when you flee. It will protect you in my stead.'
Iphigenia was still as the marble. 'But-but where will I go?'
'It matters not, as long as you leave this place.' Achilles reached for her hand and placed the dagger securely in her palm. He closed her fingers around it, then brought her knuckles to his lips. 'Perhaps I will not have the honour of marrying you tomorrow. But my heart will be lighter knowing that you were not brought here in my name to die.'
Tears shone in Iphigenia's eyes. She stared at the dagger in her hands. Its blade glowed bronze in the moonlight, curved like my own. 'Thank you.'
She stood on her toes and kissed Achilles on the lips. Then she ran off into the woods.
'You will pay for that.'
Achilles turned. The priest, Calchas, was standing just below the rise of the hill. Backlit by the moonlight, he looked like an avenging angel. But Achilles seemed unperturbed. 'I did what needed to be done.'
'If you had done what was needed, you would have seen the girl to the altar at daybreak.'
'I sacrificed a fawn to the gods in her stead,' Achilles said. 'I will not have the blood of an innocent-an innocent I swore to protect-on my hands.'
'The Fates demand a life to set things right.' Calchas's voice resonated with power. 'If not hers, someone's. What I prophesied will be claimed. Be warned, Achilles. This decision will return to haunt you.'
Achilles laughed harshly. 'I am invincible, Calchas. The goddess Styx protects me. The gods themselves cannot touch me. Take your predictions of doom elsewhere.' He raised his hand. 'Do you feel that? It is the breeze. The winds are already changing. Your prophecy is wrong.'
The wind ruffled through my hair. Achilles was right: the air was moving, accelerating.
And then the dream shifted abruptly, just like it had before, as if someone had changed the channel.
I saw the cages of demigods again, only this time, I was inside the bars with the group of younger children. These were the ones too young to fight, whom Ethan Nakamura had condemned as monster chow. The older demigods were caged across a courtyard. This place was different from the previous dream, a loading dock between rows of abandoned warehouses with rusting iron roofs and walls with peeling paint.
There was something familiar about the place.
Everyone was asleep. The kids in my cage murmured, some crying out in their dreams. One of the girls hugged a teddy bear in her arms. Traces of tears shone on her cheeks. My throat constricted. She couldn't have been more than seven. For a second, her image blurred, and it was myself I saw, crouched under a sheet of corrugated tin, trembling as footsteps drew closer.
Wait.
This place.
I knew this place. It wasn't in Charleston. The warehouses, the loading dock-once upon a time, there'd been a stack of corrugated metal sheets propped up against the one of the walls, thick and heavy enough to hide a scared young demigod whose only weapon was a rusty hammer.
This was where I'd met Luke and Thalia, all those years ago.
But ... why were they here? Kronos has said they were going to Charleston. Unless they'd already been there and moved back up north ...
'Interesting.' Kronos's high, cold voice drifted across the courtyard. He was near the other cage, the one with the older demigods. It seemed more crowded in there tonight. He must have captured several others. 'I sent a surprise to Philadelphia earlier. My spy did not mention any friends already in Charleston.'
'I don't know, my lord.' The stringy form of Alabaster Torrington emerged from behind the other cage. 'Perhaps I should interrogate her, find out the connection-'
'No.' Luke appeared by Torrington's side. 'As long as they are all responding to the bait, it matters not. My brothers will take care of the others. If they will not join us, we will crush them.'
'Yes, sir. Can I ask ... why didn't we stay longer in Charleston? We could have-'
'It is not for you to understand. All you need to know is that there is something I seek. Something important to the war on Olympus. Charleston was a dead end. There are two possibilities left. One I will investigate tomorrow. The other ...' His voice trailed off. I imagined his lip curling in Luke's most scathing expression. 'If he did give it to the girl, then I must find her. Send someone in search of Thalia Grace.'
Chapter 8
Author: shiiki
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson, Luke Castellan, Thalia Grace, Charles Beckendorf/Silena Beauregard, Clarisse La Rue, Michael Yew, OCs, multiple others
Fandom: Percy Jackson
Word Count: WIP, estimated 100K+ (33 chapters planned)
Summary: The war on Olympus is heating up, and Annabeth Chase is right in the thick of it. Bad enough that she's gearing up for battle while wrestling with the emotional turmoil over two of her dearest friends that is turning her heart inside out. She doesn't need more mysterious glimpses about the Great Prophecy and how it connects to her own history. But in order to understand what lies in her future, Annabeth has to dig into the past. What she finds will shape her choices … and change the course of the final battle. An alternate PoV retelling of The Last Olympian. Part 5 of the Daughter of Wisdom series.
In this chapter
Chapter Title: I Do Some Disturbing Bedtime Reading
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Annabeth Chase, Percy Jackson, Halcyon Green, Hades, Luke Castellan, Kronos, Alabaster Torrington, OCs, characters from Greek mythology
Word Count: 3,971
Chapter Summary: Annabeth digs deeper into the mysterious diary.
Notes: The line about knives being for the bravest and quickest of fighters comes from TLO and The Diary of Luke Castellan.
Trojan War mythology differs on the fate of Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. The version I'm using is from Euripides's Iphigenia in Aulis: she was sent there under the pretence of wedding Achilles, only to be sacrificed to raise the winds for the ships to set sail for Troy. Variants suggest she was saved by Artemis at the last moment, replaced by a deer, or replaced by a princess, daughter of Helen by Theseus, who was the true Iphigenia called to be sacrificed. My version here draws from these, but is my fictional variant.
Back to Fic Content Page
I'd lost track of the number of times in my life I'd stood guard while my friends slept. In the days I travelled with Luke and Thalia from one safe house to another, I'd insisted on helping with night watches. One of them always stayed up with me. Thalia would tell me about the gods and the signs they sent us to help us stay alive. Luke had preferred to talk about fighting monsters. I'd wanted to learn how to use a sword like him, but he'd said I should start with a dagger.
'Knives are only for the bravest and quickest of fighters,' he'd insisted. 'They don't have the reach or power of a sword, but they're easy to conceal and they can find weak spots in your enemy's armour. It takes a clever warrior to use a knife. I have a feeling you're pretty clever.'
I'd eaten it all up. Even at seven, I'd known my heritage, and the legacy I had to live up to. The dagger Luke had handed me on our first meeting became my permanent talisman. The dagger said I was clever. The dagger meant I was a true daughter of Athena.
Of course, I knew now that Luke hadn't been entirely truthful. The sword was a more powerful and direct weapon, but that didn't mean you couldn't be crafty with it. Eventually, Luke did teach me sword-fighting at camp, along with a number of handy tricks. Knives were just a different weapon, with a different strategy.
But I got why he'd sweet-talked me into taking the dagger. At the time, I wouldn't have handled a sword proficiently. Better to give me something I could use. Easier to make me want it for myself.
'Cheeseburgers,' Percy muttered in his sleep. A thin line of drool trickled from the corner of his mouth. I grinned and suppressed the urge to help him wipe it away. It sounded like he was having a normal dream for once, though with demigods, you never know when a normal dream will morph into a nightmare. In his sleep, he looked twelve years old again, like the baffled kid who'd passed out on the porch of the Big House when we first met.
Gods, how many times had I watched him sleep? We'd been on quests together every summer since we were twelve. There'd been that crazy mission to the Underworld, then our voyage through the Sea of Monsters, and then our trek through the Labyrinth last summer. And now, here we were again.
Percy definitely wasn't the clueless twelve-year-old who'd stumbled into camp clutching a Minotaur horn any more. Oh sure, he still made those stupid jokes, and played dumb half the time, and cracked that roguish smile with the lopsided dimple that made my pulse quicken ...
Okay, I might as well admit (if only to myself) that I'd probably had a teensy crush on him for a while. Just a bit.
But he was still my best friend. Stupid, loyal, dependable Percy. My heart skipped when I remembered how he'd taken that hit from the demon pigeons for me earlier. I guess it didn't really mean anything. If I'd been in his position, I'd have done the same thing. We'd been saving each other for ages now. And last year, in the Labyrinth ...
My fingers found the key on my camp necklace and twisted it round the cord. Last summer had been the most confusing one in my life, and it wasn't just because we'd been lost in an impossible maze. First, Luke had come to San Francisco and begged me to run away with him-something that would have been a dream come true in the pre-Percy days when my grand plan was to Get A Quest and Make Luke Notice Me.
(Yeah, that was embarrassing to think about now.)
Then I'd lost my head in the depths of a pressurised volcano and gone and kissed Percy. I'd thought maybe, just maybe, he'd kissed me back, only Mount St Helens had erupted, taking Percy with it. By the time he returned to camp, he had a new girl (or possibly two-I was never entirely certain what had happened between him and the immortal goddess who'd nursed him back to health) and he acted like our kiss had never happened.
And to top the summer off, Luke had gotten himself possessed by an evil Titan. If there was a self-help book on How To Exorcise An Evil Time Lord From Your Ex-Crush's Body, I certainly hadn't found it yet.
I'd vowed at the end of summer to save both my friends-Luke and Percy. I'd already failed Luke once. My old crush on him had kept him from realising what was really going on with him until it was too late. I couldn't afford to let some stupid feelings for Percy muddle my brain, not with a war brewing this summer and the Great Prophecy looming over our heads, the one that promised to reap his soul. I needed to keep a clear head.
Except my brain didn't want to co-operate. It kept replaying the way Percy had protected me from the Stymphalian birds ... and then how good he'd looked after without his shirt on ...
'Get a grip, Annabeth,' I muttered.
Fortunately, I'd brought along a distraction. I found my flashlight and the green diary in my backpack, and picked up where I'd left off.
Halcyon Green and his sister had gotten to camp and settled into the Apollo cabin. He talked about their cabin mates' powers-archery, music, healing ... not so different from the present-day cabin seven kids. But no one else had the gift of prophecy. Cath gained popularity as the Oracle, since every camper wanted to go on a quest (I could relate). Halcyon started to get glimpses of the future, too, but his friends wouldn't believe him. He foretold one of them would get stuck in the Lotus Casino, but though she never turned up again, no one could be certain it had come true. Other predictions they wrote off as lucky guesses. And some were flat-out wrong, like when he prophesied that their head counsellor would get a windfall, but he lost big in the camp betting pool. The kids started to call him Hoaxer Hal after that.
Hal stopped reading futures. They went home to D.C. at the end of summer, and there, he had a dream. It read like many demigod dreams, starting on an unknown battlefield, though from the description, it might well have been a vision of the actual World War II frontlines. Except the field commander wielded a bronze bayonet and his aide played a golden pipe to marshal their men forward into battle. And when their soldiers routed the Nazis, the commander's weapon became a massive, jagged stick that crackled with electricity.
A lightning bolt.
Zeus and Apollo stood on the bloody battlefield, discussing an all-too-familiar prophecy.
'The sons of Hades are out of hand. We cannot let this happen again. And with the Great Prophecy your Oracle pronounced at the solstice-'
'Yeah, about that ...' Apollo twirled his pipe. 'I was thinking about the best way to tell ...'
Zeus made a scoffing noise, like he couldn't believe how dim-witted Apollo was. 'It rang through Olympus the moment it was made. You'd know that, if you hadn't been so pre-occupied with coddling your children.'
'It is just another prophecy, my lord. It may not come true for years and years.'
'No?'
'None of you have children under the age of sixteen. And if you guys really stop having, uh, you know, dalliances ...'
'Oh?' Zeus's voice grew low and dangerous. 'Our pact was a sham! We vowed on the Styx that we would have no more mortal children, but Hades deceived us.'
Apollo scratched his head. 'How? If you invoked Styx-' he shuddered, 'Hades is subject to her T&C's as much as the rest of us.'
'He already has more children. Two with the same mortal woman, in fact. A detail that he so conveniently hid when we made this pact.'
I had a pretty good idea where this was going. Until two years ago, two children of Hades had been hidden away in the Lotus Casino, frozen in time since the 1940s. Grover had found the di Angelo siblings at a school in Maine and called on Percy, Thalia, and me to help extract them. (Tl;dr: it turned into a huge fiasco, during which Bianca di Angelo and Thalia's predecessor, Zoë Nightshade, had perished, and Percy and I had taken it in turn to carry the sky. Yes, the actual sky. Our hair still had grey streaks from taking its weight.)
These days, Nico di Angelo was wandering around the country. Chiron said he occasionally popped up at camp, though he never stayed long. I didn't really know where he hung out most of the time. As the only son of the final brother in the Big Trio, Nico could potentially fulfil the Great Prophecy as well as Percy. Though since he was only about twelve, that would mean we'd be fighting this war for years.
Did Hal Green know something about the di Angelos, maybe a hint about whether Nico was fated to take on the role of the half-blood of the prophecy? Could this have been what Phoebe had meant by knowing understanding its history?
I read on. In Hal's dream, Zeus announced his intention to prevent the prophecy from centring on a child of Hades. Hal woke up retching (having had my share of stomach-turning dreams, I could relate to this, too). But his dream galvanised him to try and look into the future again. With Cath's help, he induced a vision: Hades checking Nico, Bianca, and their mother into a nearby hotel.
The Green siblings decided that they had to warn the di Angelos that Zeus had it in for them. They started to stake out the hotel after school every day, hoping to run into them. It was on Hal's watch that their surveillance paid off. He spotted Hades coming through the doors. In an act of bravery or stupidity-I wasn't sure which-he approached the Lord of the Dead.
That didn't go so well. The moment Hal mentioned Bianca and Nico, Hades nearly crushed his windpipe. If Cath hadn't run in, the diary would probably never have existed.
'Stop!' Cath yelled. She must have been watching from outside, because she appeared out of nowhere and tackled Hades. I wanted to scream, NO! but it was hard to convey the warning through my eyes when they were watering from the lack of air.
Hades turned. He raised his hand, possibly to smite her, but the wave of energy that filled the room washed over her with no effect that I could see.
'Leave him alone,' Cath insisted. 'He's not threatening you. He's trying to help.'
'Who are you?' Hades demanded. 'Why does my power not affect you?'
Cath straightened. When she replied, her voice took on a resounding quality-not the raspy cackle of the Delphic spirit, but not her usual soft lilt either.
'I am the Oracle of Delphi,' she said. 'Speaker of the prophecies of Phoebus Apollo.' Green mist swirled around her. It settled like a cloak on her shoulders, then subsided.
Hades looked taken aback. He stumbled away from us. The invisible hand released me. I clutched my throat, gasping and coughing.
'You are the Oracle,' Hades said. He stared at Cath as though he meant to bore holes in her with his blazing eyes.
Only the briefest flicker of her eyes towards me betrayed Cath's nervousness. 'Yes.'
'Speaker of this ... prophecy.'
'Yes.'
'And it speak of-my children?'
Cath shook her head. 'Not specifically, sir. It mentions a half-blood of the three eldest gods. But Zeus thinks it means your kids. Your younger kids, that is.'
Cath convinced Hades to take her words seriously, but a week later, things went wrong. The twins were walking home from school when there was an explosion at the site of the hotel. Zeus had struck.
After Hades's attack on Hal, Cath insisted he couldn't go check the hotel. 'He can't hurt me,' she pointed out. 'Protection of Delphi and all.' I read this with a grimace. I wouldn't have let my best friend in the world run off to face the Lord of the Dead on their own. And Hal shouldn't have either.
And then I heard the scream. It was terrible, a long, drawn-out cry that was Cath's and at the same time not. It didn't belong to this world. It ripped through my ears and sent me falling into a whirlpool of images ...
I saw Hades bent over the limp body of his girlfriend, cursing at the skies. I saw a plane tumbling from the air in a fiery blaze. I saw a pair of demigods sprinting from a burning mansion. I saw a pine tree on a windy hill, and a golden coffin in a black mausoleum. A giant throne room. Blood. So much blood, spreading across the ground in an ocean of red.
The screams stopped, and I was running so fast, I thought my lungs would burst.
I found her alone in the rubble, looking completely shell-shocked.
'Cath!' I grabbed her shoulders. 'What happened?'
Cath blinked at me slowly, coming out of a trance. At first I thought it'd be like her prophecies, where she wouldn't remember a word she'd uttered. Then she said, 'He-he cursed me.'
'What? I thought you said he couldn't-'
'Well, not me exactly. I don't think I'm cursed. I don't think he gives two hoot about me. It's more like ... the Oracle. He said-he swore that I'd never-well, the Oracle would never have another host. That as long as his children were cursed by my prophecy, she would languish inside me even after I withered and died.'
'What does that mean?'
Cath's voice sounded too tired, as though she'd already withered under Hades's curse. 'I don't know. He can't kill me. He said so himself. I guess I just have to be the Oracle forever.'
'Maybe we can fix this. You said it lasts as long as his children are cursed, right? If we work out the Great Prophecy, maybe we can un-curse them, and then you'll be free, too!'
'No!' Cath said sharply. 'We've done enough working things out. Don't you see, Hal? That's what started this whole thing. You asked me to look, and the Oracle and her prophecy found me.'
Guilt settled lumpily in my throat. 'But that wasn't our fault. You can't control the Oracle. Maybe she was already going to find you.'
'Exactly. We can't control the Fates. This is it, Hal. No more reading the future.'
'You're the Oracle. How are you going to get away from it?'
Cath's shoulders slumped. 'I've got no choice. But you do. Promise me you won't speak of the future to me again.'
'Summer reading homework?'
I slammed the book shut. Percy was lying on his side, propped up on his good arm. He looked like he'd been awake for a while. The idea that he might have been watching me for some time with that goofy smile on his face made my heart do the jitterbug.
'Er, no.' I wasn't really sure how to explain the diary. The stuff I'd just read about the Great Prophecy ... Percy didn't even know the full thing. Chiron had always been adamant that we keep it from him. And after reading about Hades's curse on the Oracle ... well, that seemed like a good reason not to talk about it.
'Just a book,' I said.
Percy didn't pursue the matter. He stretched and rolled into a sitting position. 'You must be tired. Why don't you get some rest? I'll take the next watch.'
I saw no reason to argue. I slipped the diary into my backpack, pulled the bag under my head, and closed my eyes.
Of course, I dreamed.
I was back on the windless cliff with the marble altar and stained rock. The moon was a large, cold eye in the quiet night, overlooking the valley where the Greek army slept, waiting to set sail for Troy.
One person wasn't asleep. A girl of maybe sixteen slipped out from one of the tents and made her way up the winding path to the clifftop. In her simple white chiton with her long brown hair loose around her shoulders, she looked like a ghost in the moonlight. In her arms, she carried a basket of fruit. She brought this to the marble altar, where she started a fire. Just as she was about to make her offering, a figure emerged from the shadows with a heavy sack over one shoulder.
'You should not have come.'
The girl jumped, dropping her basket. Fruit spilled everywhere. An apple rolled towards the warrior who had emerged. He stopped it with his foot.
'Oh, Achilles.' The girl put a hand over her heart. 'You scared me!'
Achilles picked up the apple and held it out to her. 'You are not safe here, Iphigenia.'
'I only came to make an offering to the goddess,' Iphigenia said. She took the apple and averted her eyes shyly. 'In-in view of our impending marriage.'
For a groom-to-be, Achilles showed no sign of anticipatory bliss. 'I do not just mean here. You should not have come to Aulis at all.'
'But-my father summoned me. He said we were to be married at once, before you set sail for Troy. He said our wedding would bring great fortune on the expedition.'
'It was a trap. You have not been summoned here to be married.' Achilles pointed to the slab of rock in front of the marble altar. The rust-red stain on its surface shone ominously in the moonlight.
Iphigenia took a step back. Her eyes opened in horror. 'My father-he wouldn't-'
'He had no choice. His men threatened to desert if the winds refuse to blow.'
'But then ...' Iphigenia rubbed at her bare arms. 'Surely you are worried about the winds, too?'
Achilles laid his sack on the marble slab and untied it. Inside was a fawn, bound by the legs. He pulled a dagger from his scabbard. Iphigenia gasped and covered her eyes with her hands, not daring to watch as Achilles stabbed the fawn in the heart. Blood poured from the wound, adding fresh rivulets to the rust patterns already etched in the rock's surface.
'A sacrifice,' Achilles cried to the sky. 'To honour the gods and raise the winds. I respect the gods, but I keep my promises, too.'
He turned to Iphigenia. 'When I agreed to our betrothal, I vowed to protect you. That vow precedes any promise I made to defend the virtue of another man's wife.' He held out the dagger to her, handle first. 'This dagger was given to me by Athena herself. Take it with you when you flee. It will protect you in my stead.'
Iphigenia was still as the marble. 'But-but where will I go?'
'It matters not, as long as you leave this place.' Achilles reached for her hand and placed the dagger securely in her palm. He closed her fingers around it, then brought her knuckles to his lips. 'Perhaps I will not have the honour of marrying you tomorrow. But my heart will be lighter knowing that you were not brought here in my name to die.'
Tears shone in Iphigenia's eyes. She stared at the dagger in her hands. Its blade glowed bronze in the moonlight, curved like my own. 'Thank you.'
She stood on her toes and kissed Achilles on the lips. Then she ran off into the woods.
'You will pay for that.'
Achilles turned. The priest, Calchas, was standing just below the rise of the hill. Backlit by the moonlight, he looked like an avenging angel. But Achilles seemed unperturbed. 'I did what needed to be done.'
'If you had done what was needed, you would have seen the girl to the altar at daybreak.'
'I sacrificed a fawn to the gods in her stead,' Achilles said. 'I will not have the blood of an innocent-an innocent I swore to protect-on my hands.'
'The Fates demand a life to set things right.' Calchas's voice resonated with power. 'If not hers, someone's. What I prophesied will be claimed. Be warned, Achilles. This decision will return to haunt you.'
Achilles laughed harshly. 'I am invincible, Calchas. The goddess Styx protects me. The gods themselves cannot touch me. Take your predictions of doom elsewhere.' He raised his hand. 'Do you feel that? It is the breeze. The winds are already changing. Your prophecy is wrong.'
The wind ruffled through my hair. Achilles was right: the air was moving, accelerating.
And then the dream shifted abruptly, just like it had before, as if someone had changed the channel.
I saw the cages of demigods again, only this time, I was inside the bars with the group of younger children. These were the ones too young to fight, whom Ethan Nakamura had condemned as monster chow. The older demigods were caged across a courtyard. This place was different from the previous dream, a loading dock between rows of abandoned warehouses with rusting iron roofs and walls with peeling paint.
There was something familiar about the place.
Everyone was asleep. The kids in my cage murmured, some crying out in their dreams. One of the girls hugged a teddy bear in her arms. Traces of tears shone on her cheeks. My throat constricted. She couldn't have been more than seven. For a second, her image blurred, and it was myself I saw, crouched under a sheet of corrugated tin, trembling as footsteps drew closer.
Wait.
This place.
I knew this place. It wasn't in Charleston. The warehouses, the loading dock-once upon a time, there'd been a stack of corrugated metal sheets propped up against the one of the walls, thick and heavy enough to hide a scared young demigod whose only weapon was a rusty hammer.
This was where I'd met Luke and Thalia, all those years ago.
But ... why were they here? Kronos has said they were going to Charleston. Unless they'd already been there and moved back up north ...
'Interesting.' Kronos's high, cold voice drifted across the courtyard. He was near the other cage, the one with the older demigods. It seemed more crowded in there tonight. He must have captured several others. 'I sent a surprise to Philadelphia earlier. My spy did not mention any friends already in Charleston.'
'I don't know, my lord.' The stringy form of Alabaster Torrington emerged from behind the other cage. 'Perhaps I should interrogate her, find out the connection-'
'No.' Luke appeared by Torrington's side. 'As long as they are all responding to the bait, it matters not. My brothers will take care of the others. If they will not join us, we will crush them.'
'Yes, sir. Can I ask ... why didn't we stay longer in Charleston? We could have-'
'It is not for you to understand. All you need to know is that there is something I seek. Something important to the war on Olympus. Charleston was a dead end. There are two possibilities left. One I will investigate tomorrow. The other ...' His voice trailed off. I imagined his lip curling in Luke's most scathing expression. 'If he did give it to the girl, then I must find her. Send someone in search of Thalia Grace.'
Chapter 8