──── chapter five

{ 🔮 }  · stupid decisions, but what's new? . ݁ ٬٬ ࣪

LOCATOR SPELLS DIDN'T SEEM to work and it was driving Endora insane. She tried to cast one to help them find Daedalus easier, but whenever she tried, it pointed straight back to the Camp.

"What is happening!" Endora puffed out in frustration. She let Percy wrap bandage around the cut on her palm as she watched the trail of blood moving to where the Camp Half-blood is located on the map. "How is it and why is it going back?"

"Has this happened before?" Percy asked.

Endora shook her head, "My spells always work unless someone puts some type of a blocking spells. . . which I think somehow Nico did."

"Let's get moving then," Annabeth said, standing up from her spot next to Endora, "Maybe try again later. But that is weird."

The left tunnel was straight with no side exits, twists, or turns, but, it was a dead end. After sprinting a hundred yards, the group ran into an enormous boulder that completely blocked their path. Behind them, the sounds of dragging footsteps and heavy breathing echoed down the corridor. Something ─ definitely not human ─ was following them.

"Tyson," Percy said, "can you ─ "

"Yes!" he slammed his shoulder against the rock so hard the whole tunnel shook. Dust trickled from the stone ceiling.

"Hurry!" Grover said. "Don't bring the roof down, but hurry!"

The boulder finally gave way with a horrible grinding noise. Tyson pushed it into a small room and the group dashed through behind it.

"Close the entrance!" Annabeth said. 

Endora trusted her hand up, black magic surrounded the boulder and lifted it, placing it back its in original place. Whatever was chasing them wailed in frustration as they heaved the rock back into place and sealed the corridor.

"We trapped it," Percy said.

"Or trapped ourselves," Grover said.

"You mean I trapped it," Endora said.

They ignored her, turning around to look at their surrounding.

"You were amazing, Endy." Percy said, standing next to her, his hand brushing against hers.

Endora pulled her hand away, letting the blue flames appear around her fingers, "Thanks." she muttered under her breath, enough for him to hear. She could see a small smile appearing on his face ─ even if small, it was there.

The brunette finally looked around to see where they ended up. They were in a twenty-foot-square cement room, and the opposite wall was covered with metal bars. They had tunneled straight into a cell.

"What the fuck?" Annabeth tugged on the bars. They didn't budge. Through the bars they could see rows of cells in a ring around a dark courtyard ─ at least three stories of metal doors and metal catwalks.  

"A prison," Percy said. "Maybe Tyson can break ─ "

"Shh," said Grover. "Listen."

Somewhere above them, deep sobbing echoed through the building. There was another sound, too ─ a raspy voice muttering something that the girl couldn't make out. The words were strange, like rocks in a tumbler. 

Tyson's eye widened. "Can't be."

"What?" Percy asked. 

He grabbed two bars on our cell door and bent them wide enough for even a Cyclops to slip through.

"Wait!" Grover called.

But Tyson wasn't about to wait. They ran after him. The prison was dark, only a few dim fluorescent lights flickering above.

"I know this place," Annabeth said. "This is Alcatraz."

"You mean that island near San Francisco?"

She nodded. "My school took a field trip here. It's like a museum."

It didn't seem possible that they could've popped out of the Labyrinth on the other side of the country, but was Endora actually surprised? No. The Labyrinth was an unpredictable invention.

"Freeze," Grover warned. But Tyson kept going. Grover grabbed his arm and pulled him back with all his strength. "Stop, Tyson! Can't you see it?"

Endora looked where he was pointing, and her stomach did a somersault. On the second-floor balcony, across the courtyard, was a monster more horrible than anything she'd ever seen before.

It was sort of like a centaur, with a woman's body from the waist up. But instead of a horse's lower body, it had the body of a dragon  ─ at least twenty feet long, black and scaly with enormous claws and a barbed tail. Her legs looked like they were tangled in vines, but then the girl realized they were sprouting snakes, hundreds of vipers darting around, constantly looking for something to bite. The woman's hair was also made of snakes. Weirdest of all, around her waist, where the woman part met the dragon part, her skin bubbled and morphed, occasionally producing the heads of animals ─ a vicious wolf, a bear, a lion, as if she were wearing a belt of ever-changing creatures. 

"It's her," Tyson whimpered.

"Get down!" Grover said.

They crouched in the shadows, and Endora let the blue flames disappear from her hand. The monster wasn't paying any attention to them. It seemed to be talking to someone inside a cell on the second floor. That's where the sobbing was coming from. The dragon woman said something in her weird rumbling language.

"What's she saying?" Percy muttered. "What's that language?"

"The tongue of the old times." Tyson shivered. "What Mother Earth spoke to Titans and. . . her other children. Before the gods."

"You understand it?" Percy asked. "Can you translate?"

Tyson closed his eyes and began to speak in a horrible, raspy woman's voice. "You will work for the master or suffer."

Annabeth shuddered. "I hate it when he does that."

Like all Cyclopes, Tyson had superhuman hearing and an uncanny ability to mimic voices. It was almost like he entered a trance when he spoke into her voices.

He switched to the monster's voice: "Then I shall enjoy your pain, Briares." Tyson faltered when he said that name. Endora'd never heard him break character when he was mimicking somebody, but he let out a strangled gulp. Then he continued in the monster's voice. "If you thought your first imprisonment was unbearable, you have yet to feel true torment. Think on this until I return."

The dragon lady tromped toward the stairwell, vipers hissing around her legs like grass skirts. She spread wings that Endora hadn't noticed before ─ huge batwings she kept folded against her dragon back. She leaped off the catwalk and soared across the courtyard. Endora and the rest crouched lower in the shadows. A hot sulfurous wind blasted her face as the monster flew over. Then she disappeared around the corner.

"H-h-horrible," Grover said. "I've never smelled any monster that strong."

"Cyclopes' worst nightmare," Tyson murmured. "Kampê."

Endora paled slightly.

"Who?"

Tyson swallowed. "Every Cyclops knows about her. Stories about her scare us when we're babies. She was our jailer in the bad years."

Annabeth nodded. "I remember now. When the Titans ruled, they imprisoned Gaea and Ouranos's earlier children ─ the Cyclopes and the Hekatonkheires."

"The Heka-what?" Percy asked.

"The Hundred-Handed Ones," Endora said. "They called them that because. . . well, they had a hundred hands. They were elder brothers of the Cyclopes."

"Very powerful," Tyson said. "Wonderful! As tall as the sky. So strong they could break mountains!"

"Cool," Percy said. "Unless you're a mountain."

"Kampê was the jailer," he said. "She worked for Kronos. She kept our brothers locked up in Tartarus, tortured them always, until Zeus came. He killed Kampê and freed Cyclopes and Hundred-Handed-Ones to help fight against the Titans in the big war."

"And now Kampê is back,"

"Bad," Tyson summed up.

"So who's in that cell?" Percy asked. "You said a name ─ "

"Briares!" Tyson perked up. "He is a Hundred-Handed One. They are as tall as the sky and ─ "

"Yeah," Percy said. "They break mountains."

Endora looked up at the cells above them, wondering how something as tall as the sky could fit in a tiny cell, and why he was crying.

"I guess we should check it out," Annabeth said, "before Kampê comes back."

As they approached the cell, the weeping got louder. When Endora first saw the creature inside, she wasn't sure what she was looking at. Briares was human-size and his skin was very pale, the color of milk. He wore a loincloth like a big diaper. His feet seemed too big for his body, with cracked dirty toenails, eight toes one on each foot. But the top half of his body was the weird part. His chest sprouted more arms than the girl could count, in rows, all around his body. The arms looked like normal arms, but there were so many of them, all tangled together, that his chest looked kind of like a forkful of spaghetti somebody had twirled together. Several of his hands were covering his face as he sobbed.

"Either the sky isn't as tall as it used to be," Percy muttered, "or he's short."

Endora pinched him in the arm, making the boy let out a yelp. He glared down at her, rubbing his arm where Endora had pinched him. "Be polite." she whispered to him.

Tyson didn't pay any attention. He fell to his knees. "Briares!" he called.

The sobbing stopped.

"Great Hundred-Handed One!" Tyson said. "Help us!"

Briares looked up. His face was long and sad, with a crooked nose and bad teeth. He had deep brown eyes ─ completely brown with no whites or black pupils, like eyes formed out of clay. 

"Run while you can, Cyclops," Briares said miserably. "I cannot even help myself."

"You are a Hundred-Handed One!" Tyson insisted. "You can do anything!"

Briares wiped his nose with five or six hands. Several others were fidgeting with little pieces of metal and wood from a broken bed. The hands seemed to have a mind of their own. They built a toy boat out of wood, then disassembled it just as fast. Other hands were scratching at the cement floor for no apparent reason. Others were playing rock, paper, scissors. A few others were making ducky and doggie shadow puppets against the wall.

"I cannot," Briares moaned. "Kampê is back! The Titans will rise and throw us back into Tartarus."

"Put on your brave face!" Tyson said.

Immediately Briares's face morphed into something else. Same brown eyes, but otherwise totally different features. He had an upturned nose, arched eyebrows, and a weird smile, like he was trying to act brave. But then his face turned back to what it had been before.

"No good," he said. "My scared face keeps coming back."

"How did you do that?" Percy asked.

Annabeth elbowed the boy on the opposite side where Endora pinched him. "Don't be rude. The Hundred-Handed Ones have fifty different faces."

"Must make it hard to get a yearbook picture," Percy said.

"Percy!" Endora scolded, pinching his arm again.

"Stop pinching me!" Percy complained, a pout of his face as he rubbed his arm once more.

Tyson was still entranced. "It will be okay, Briares! We will help you! Can I have your autograph?"

Briares sniffled. "Do you have one hundred pens?"

"Guys," Grover interrupted. "We have to get out of here. Kampê will be back. She'll sense us sooner or later."

"Break the bars," Annabeth said.

"Yes!" Tyson said, smiling proudly. "Briares can do it. He is very strong. Stronger than Cyclopes, even! Watch!"

Briares whimpered. A dozen of his hands started playing patty-cake, but none of them made any attempt to break the bars.

"If he's so strong," Percy said, "why is he stuck in jail?"

Endora pinched him once more, "He's terrified," she whispered. "Kampê imprisoned him in Tartarus for thousands of years. How would you feel?"

The Hundred-Handed One covered his face again.

"Briares?" Tyson asked. "What. . . what is wrong? Show us your great strength!"

"Tyson," Annabeth said softly, "I think you'd better break the bars."

Tyson's smile melted slowly. "I will break the bars," he repeated. He grabbed the cell door and ripped it off its hinges like it was made of wet clay.

"Come on, Briares," Annabeth said. "Let's get you out of here."

She held out her hand. For a second, Briares's face morphed to a hopeful expression. Several of his arms reached out, but twice as many slapped them away. 

"I cannot," he said. "She will punish me."

"It's all right," Endora said, coming forward and outstretching her hand for him to take. "You fought the Titans before, and you won, remember?"

"I remember the war." Briares's face morphed again ─ furrowed brow and a pouting mouth.  "Lightning shook the world. We threw many rocks. The Titans and the monsters almost won. Now they are getting strong again. Kampê said so."

"Don't listen to her," Endora said in a soft voice. Her voice rang throughout the space, calming everyone around her. "Come with us. You're going to be safe with us. She will not hurt you. Come with us."

Another hand reached forward, but many slapped it back, his face morphing to one of the worry, "Some children of Hecate can mirror other abilities. I can not trust you. I can not trust the charmspeak."

Endora retrieved her hand, a small frown settled on her face. She knew she could mirror other demigods' abilities, but no one once questioned her. Her charmspeak had always been powerful, not as powerful as one of children of Aphrodite, but close enough. It irked her that it didn't work on Briares.

"One game of rock, paper, scissors," Percy blurted out. "If I win, you come with us. If I lose, we'll leave you in jail."

Endora and Annabeth looked at him like he was crazy.

Briares's face morphed to doubtful. "I always win rock, paper, scissors."

"Then let's do it!"

Percy pounded his fist in his palm three times. Briares did the same with all one hundred hands, which sounded like an army marching three steps forward. He came up with a whole avalanche of rocks, a classroom set of scissors, and enough paper to make a fleet of airplanes.

"I told you," he said sadly. "I always ─ " his face morphed to confusion. "What is that you made?"

"A gun," Percy answered, showing him his finger gun. "A gun beats anything."

"That's not fair."

"I didn't say anything about fair. Kampê's not going to be fair if we hang around. She's going to blame you for ripping off the bars. Now come on!"

Briares sniffled. "Demigods are cheaters."

But he slowly rose to his feet and followed the group out of the cell. It was simple now: all they had to do was to get downstairs and find the Labyrinth entrance. But then Tyson froze. On the ground floor right below, Kampê was snarling at them.

"The other way," Percy said. 

They bolted down the catwalk. Briares was happy to follow them. In fact, he sprinted out front, a hundred arms waving in panic. Behind them, Endora heard the sound of giant wings as Kampê took to the air. She hissed and growled in her ancient language ─ kill. 

They scrambled down the stairs, through a corridor, and past a guard's station ─ out into another block of prison cells.

"Left," Annabeth said. "I remember this from the tour."

They burst outside and found ourselves in the prison yard, ringed by security towers and barbed wire. After being inside for so long, the daylight almost blinded the girl. Tourists were milling around, taking pictures. The wind whipped cold off the bay. In the south, San Francisco gleamed all white and beautiful, but in the north, over Mount Tamalpais, huge storm clouds swirled. The whole sky seemed like a black top spinning from the mountain where Atlas was imprisoned, and where the Titan palace of Mount Othrys was rising anew. It was hard to believe the tourists couldn't see the supernatural storm brewing, but they didn't give any hint that anything was wrong.

"It's even worse," Annabeth said, gazing to the north. "The storms have been bad all year, but that ─ "

"Keep moving," Briares wailed. "She is behind us!"

They ran to the far end of the yard, as far from the cell-block as possible.

"Kampê's too big to get through the doors," Percy said hopefully.

Then the wall exploded.

Endora glared at him, "Nice going. Ever heard of a jinx?"

Tourists screamed as Kampê appeared from the dust and rubble, her wings spread out as wide as the yard. She was holding two swords ─ long bronze scimitars that glowed with a weird greenish aura, boiling wisps of vapor that smelled sour and hot even across the yard.

"Poison!" Grover yelped. "Don't let those things touch you or. . ."

"Or we'll die?

"Well. . . after you shrivel slowly to dust, yes."

"Let's avoid the swords," Percy decided.

"Briares, fight!" Tyson urged. "Grow to full size!"

Instead, Briares looked like he was trying to shrink even smaller. He appeared to be wearing his absolutely terrified face. Kampê thundered toward them on her dragon legs, hundreds of snakes slithering around her body. 

"Run." Annabeth said.

There was no fighting this thing. They ran through the jail yard and out the gates of the prison, the monster right behind. Mortals screamed and ran. Emergency sirens began to blare. They hit the wharf just as a tour boat was unloading. The new group of visitors froze as they saw teenagers charging toward them, followed by a mob off frightened tourists, followed by. . . who knows what they saw through the Mist.

"The boat?" Grover asked.

"Too slow," Tyson said. "Back into the maze. Only chance."

"We need a diversion," Endora said.

Tyson ripped a metal lamppost out of the ground. "I will distract Kampê. You run ahead."

"I'll help you," Percy said.

"No," Tyson said. "You go. Poison will hurt Cyclopes. A lot of pain. But it won't kill."

"Are you sure?"

"Go, brother. I will meet you inside."

There was no time to argue. Annabeth, Grover, and Percy each took one of Briares's hands and dragged him toward the concession stands. 

But Endora stood her ground ─ and her friends in all panic, didn't notice the girl staying.

Tyson turned towards the girl in confusion and panic clear on his face. He watched her hands swirling around each other, a ball of black magic appearing in her hands as black sparks flew from it. She was determinate to help the young Cyclops. She will not fail.

"Why are you not running?" Tyson asked.

Endora didn't meet his eyes, her glare settled on the creature, "Going to help you, of course."

Tyson shook his head, "No! You will get killed!"

The brunette laughed, "It's not my time to die, Tyson." she said in a blank tone, "The gods would love that to happen, but fate says no."

The Cyclops swallowed, "Brother will be very mad at Dora she let herself to danger. I will be very sad if something happens to Dora. Dora must not die!"

"Deal."

Kampê had been glaring at Briares, but Tyson got her attention as soon as he nailed her in the chest with the pole, pushing her back into the wall. She shrieked and slashed with her swords, slicing the pole to shreds. Poison dripped in pools all around her, sizzling into the cement. Tyson jumped back as Kampê's hair lashed and hissed, and the vipers around her legs darted their tongues in every direction. A lion popped out of the weird half-formed faces around her waist and roared.

"Hey, dragon bitch!" Endora yelled, gaining the monster's attention, "Over here!"

The monster shrieked and whipped her body towards the young demigod. The sphere of pure black mist that consumed her hands became bigger and bigger, whips of black magic aching for freedom of their prison. The girl kept her stare on the monster as she let the magic from her body be drained to the sphere, ignoring the battle of four voices occupying her mind, fighting for her consciousness. Darling, don't let it tempt you. You are stronger than you truly think. You are born to fight and lead. It's your destiny to win. The Hollow wanted to flare up. To ravage everything, like always. Endora couldn't have that. She had to protect her friends. Her power needed to listen to her. It fought, almost giving into the temptation of the darkness that burned in deep parts of her soul. It didn't want to be controlled. Yet, Endora will find a way to.

She let the magic loose.

Kampê froze as the blast hit her. The monster let out horrifying yelp as her body came in contact with the magic the girl created. Her wings folded into her body, trying to shield herself from the impact Endora's magic caused. Her body slammed into the wall, mouth agape as her body curved with the impact that the burning magic caused.

Endora had never used this much magic in her life as being a demigod; not even last winter when she fought her brother. But that was different. That time, she didn't want to use her full protentional, too afraid to cause harm to the boy. They were family after all.

The growing pain surged though out her head, and Endora felt herself slowly going in and out of consciousness. She never liked to admit that she was weak, because she wasn't and she knew that; her siblings knew, her friends knew, even gods themselves knew. But she still sometimes gave up with the battle of Ancient voices fighting in her mind, three of the voices trying to keep the girl from giving into the darkness of the fourth.

"You can do it!" she heard someone yelling.

She didn't know who or from where ─ her mind, around her, she didn't know.

Endora felt the familiar substance running down her face, down to her mouth making her taste it on her lips. Metallic, a taste she could recognize all too well. Her legs gave up, her body fallen to the side in slow motion but never meeting the ground. Big hands grabbed her before she hit the ground and the girl let the Cyclops pick her up carry her as the three voices slowly won the battle, yet she was too exhausted to react.

Endora passed out.

niki speaks!

endora knows she shouldn't exhaust
herself, yet she still does it. . .
that's just how she is.
i honestly love this chapter,
the little fight, interactions and everything.

been looking for some colleges that i
could try and get in
many majors that i like, but won't be able
to get in cause of entery exam
but we'll see.

have a nice day/night!
bye!