[DanMachi/Percy Jackson] Prytaneum

Chapter 71: Boil Part 2

Wow, that wasn't ominous at all, I thought with a shudder as the sound reverberated through the cavern, before making myself take that last step over the threshold of the twenty-eighth.

"Sorry, Anaklusmos," I said, raising my voice enough to be heard across the cavern, before hesitating. "...Is it okay if I call you that? Or would you prefer...something else?"

"I am not Zoe, if that's what you wish to ask," she replied, teeth flashing as if amused. "Although, in a sense, perhaps I am—as she used to be, as she was before, the divine power she sacrificed. But our lives took such different paths, it's really not the same...ah, but why are we shouting at each other like this? This is our first time seeing each other, face to face. Come closer."

Historically speaking, invitations into a monsters den didn't tend to end well for demigods, but I steadfastly did my best not think of it that way—this was just an invitation from a friend to come over. Sure.

"I...like what you did with the place," I said awkwardly, even as I approached slowly across the uneven, barren ground—not as if afraid, because I refused to be afraid of my friends, even if they were looking at me with two hundred some-odd draconic eyes, but more as if I were trying to walk across stone that had melted and been frozen back into a twisted shape. "This place could use all the decorating it can get; I kind of wrecked it a bit on the way down myself, but wow, you take the cake. You'll have to, uh...show me how...you did it sometime..."

Anaklusmos watched my approach in silent amusement as I crossed the floor to come face to face to face to—well, until I could look her hundred dragon heads in the eye. They parted as I approached, spreading out to either side to let me in closer, and then curled back in behind me in a way that might have cause someone less brave to feel trapped and claustrophobic and generally worried about being surrounded by a hundred hungry dragons. Which I wasn't, even when they started to shift closer.

"Hm," my friend mused, clicking her tongue as she looked down from about ten feet above me, draconic limbs kneading the ground absently. "It'd be difficult to talk while looking down at you...here, come up."

One of the dragon heads slipped behind me, the scales of its neck literally brushing against the back of my knees, and more were soon to follow—around my waist, my thighs, my back and shoulders, warm scales brushing against me through a layer of torn cloth. I kept myself stiff and still, doing my best not to shiver at the contact, but what she wanted me to do was obvious. She wanted me to sit back on her coils, relax, and let her lift me up and hold me in an helpless position in the air while most of a hundred heads looked up at me from below.

That seemed like a vaguely bad idea, but then, so did most of the decisions I'd made today, so why stop now? Slowly, because it was hard for something as tense as steel to relax, I leaned back on the dragon's necks and tried to make myself comfortable, resting my elbows on the middlemost dragon like I was on a couch or a poolside. A moment later, the bronze coils wrapped around me, drawing me closer, higher, holding me what seemed like the next best thing to a mile off the ground with the number of potentially hungry mouths I could meet on the way down, but adjusting themselves so that I could lean back and put my feet out. In the end, I sat before her on top of half a dozen coils, the muscles shifting slightly beneath me keeping me from thinking it was anything but alive, and she seemed pleased by the gesture of trust. Or maybe by my foolish decisions, but I was trying to stay optimistic.

"Isn't that better?" She asked as she held me aloft. Another head curled up before her, letting her rest her elbows upon it and cup her chin in her hands like she was looking at me from the other side of a window. "Hello, Perseus."

"Hi, Anaklusmos," I said awkwardly, trying not to look down but not sure where else too look. First things first, though. "I'm not here to fight and I'm not going to. I wouldn't hurt one of my friends, but I came unarmed just in case you weren't sure."

The dragons beneath me made a sound, echoed quickly by the rest. Logically, I suppose it could be called a purr, but taken all together like that, it sounded like a buzz saw.

"Oh, I know," she said, tongue teasing at her teeth when she smiled. "We've been together for so long, after all, haven't we? And I knew you'd come find me, too."

"But you ran," I said and very carefully kept any hurt out of my voice. "You ran away from me on the eighteenth floor. Why?"

"You caught me while I was touch underdressed, dear," she said, a touch apologetically. "Forgive a woman her vanity, but...don't I look better this way? And now, the two of us can finally talk after all this time."

"You look beautiful," I said, and it wasn't a lie, but also just seemed like the smart thing to say. If that was all this was about, then I should feel relieved, but somehow I couldn't relax. "And I'm...I'm sorry, Anaklusmos."

She gave a delicate, gentle sounding laugh in reply to that and quirked an eyebrow at me.

"Whatever for?" She asked, and wasn't that the question. For letting this happen to her? For losing her? For letting Zoe die? For dying myself? For not talking to her while she was a sword? I had no idea, having never really expected to have this conversation, but it seemed right to apologize. "I can't think of anything in particular that I feel requires an apology between you and I."

Hopefully, that was a good sign. I removed my arms from her coils and put my hands on my knees instead, looking down as I nodded at her words, trying to figure out how to say what I wanted to next before just coming out with it.

"Okay," I said. "Then let's go home, Anaklusmos."

Her glossy eyes glimmered, then, as she looked at me.

"Home, Perseus?" She asked, sounding curious. "And where might that be?"

When I didn't answer right away, unsure of what even to say and feeling like there was more to that question than the obvious, she smiled sardonically and her coils suddenly pulled me forward, making my back sharply tense.

"Is home in Manhattan? Or was it at the Camp?" She asked, nails clicking against my chest. "Or do you think of this city as our home, now? Even if you've nowhere to live now but the streets and that burnt down church?"

Oh...right. I guess I was technically homeless, at the moment—another thing I wasn't used to thinking about. I really didn't have anywhere to go back to right now, beyond wherever Hestia was, but I had a feeling she meant something more than that.

Or maybe not, I thought suddenly.

"Home is where my friends are," I said, feeling as if I might have found some kind of answer. "Hestia, Welf, Lili—"

"I don't know any of those people," she said frankly, shooting me down immediately. "And they don't know me. I'd argue they don't even really know you, Perseus—not all of you, not the parts you don't want them to see."

I couldn't argue with that, really—I knew full well how much I kept from even the people closest to me, even if just because I was ashamed to admit the truth. I'd told Ryuu some things that I hadn't told the others, but maybe that was just because I knew she would accept them, even empathize. But the whole story wasn't something I had or wanted to tell. But if that was the issue here—

"We can change that," I told her. "I can introduce you to them. And that's the thing about friends—you can still get to know each other better. You and I, for example; we've never been able to talk before, but now we can. We can talk, Anaklusmos."

As convincing arguments went, I wasn't sure how well that one did, but I tried to show her how much I wanted to make this work, want her to understand. And she looked at me when I did, considering me for a long moment, before tilting her head to the side.

"And what about the rest of the city?" She asked, drawing attention to the point I'd been trying to ignore, and it was all I could do not to flinch. Hestia...Hestia was a goddess and understanding and I could probably make it fly given everything. Lili, Welf, and the others might take my word on it. But the rest of the city...I already knew how that would go, I just didn't want to think about it right now. But Anaklusmos saw the opening for what it was and pushed. "Shall you parade me through the streets, dear Perseus? Or hide me away? Or beg and plead and try convince the whole city that I'm not something to be afraid of—that there's nothing to fear from Ladon and the Hesperides?"

The way she said that sent a shiver down my spine.

"You're more than either of those things," I said, and then, because I wasn't sure what else to do, I just went with what I felt was the truth. "And I would never let anyone hurt you or one of my friends—your enemies are my enemies, no matter who they are."

That might have been the wrong thing to say, I thought as the coils suddenly pulled me closer, until there was hardly a hand's span between us.

"I was hoping you might say that," she said, lifting my chin and pushing close, her dark eyes somehow feverish. "If home is where your friends are, are you not home here with me? In this place where I can live?"

"You're not bound to this place," I said. "This isn't like—"

"Yes, it is!" She nearly snapped before composing herself. "As before, now again. This is my new Garden. And She gave me life for a purpose."

"Who?" I demanded. "That red-haired bitch? She's a murderess. A monster. If she says you can't leave, I'll drown her for real this time."

"Her? She's a servant," Anaklusmos said contemptuously. "Nothing more. But the one she serves has the power to give us everything we want."

The way she said 'us' made it seem like it might be loaded and I was starting to feel like we were straying into dangerous territory, but even so, I had to know.

"Like what?" I asked, trying not to sound too skeptical just yet.

"Like another chance," she said. "She can bring back the dead, Percy."

I went silent and still, eyes suddenly wide. It was impossible, I wanted to say, except I knew it wasn't—had known it wasn't since I was eleven, and even then, when only one life had hung in the balance, it had made me think of bad ideas. And that was without a beautiful woman whispering in my ear.

"You already know," she said, and it wasn't a question. "What you're doing isn't working, will never work. You can't find them on your own, dear. You've been trying so hard, wearing yourself so thin, but you know it's impossible. Even if they do appear, the Dungeon hates them as much as it does you—you'd have to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time in a Dungeon that dwarfs the size of a thousand cities. And you can't...but she can. She can command this Dungeon, survey it, find them for you when they appear, and save them. She can give them back to you, Perseus."

I couldn't answer. I didn't trust myself to answer.

"And the power, Percy," Anaklusmos continued with a shudder I tried my best not to pay too much attention to. It wasn't ease, however well my mother had raised me. "The power she can give us—I'm stronger now than I've ever been, ever dreamt of being. If you could only feel it—ah. But perhaps you can."

The dragon beneath her arms opened its mouth and she reached in to take something from it, revealing it to me a moment later. Luckily for me, it was actually something I thought it safe to comment upon.

"A magic stone..." I said, surely proving to her that I was firing on all cylinders.

"You and I aren't so different now, Perseus," She said, rolling the gem between her fingers with a smile. "They call what I am now a 'Demi-Spirit'—half sprit, half monster. But following that train of thought to its conclusion, that would make a half-god hybrid a Demigod, no?"

"That's not what I—" I began but couldn't finish, falling silent before her.

"Hmph," she scoffed chidingly. "You know better—your mortal flesh died when you did. Or did you think you'd taken it with you? That it had been somehow transported here? No, that body was made here, grown by the Dungeon like any of her other children. It's only your divine ichor that allows you to remain as you are, and even that is a struggle at times. Look at you now, Percy; you're weakened, hurt, and as your power wanes, your body itself begins to weaken."

Sitting before her, looking and feeling sick, I supposed I couldn't argue with that. I couldn't deny that since I'd come to Orario, straining my power too far had affected me differently, and not just because I'd kept reaching too far with it. Both now and against Zanis, going too far had left me on the brink—and, on the other hand, the energy I'd regained from contact with water had seen me recovering from more and more. I'd suspected it before, especially after what Fels had said, but hearing it from Anaklusmos...no, I couldn't deny it.

"Do you wish for proof?" She asked coyly and smiled as she extended the gem towards me. "Eat it, then, as I have eaten, and regain a bit of the power owed to you. Then you'll know for certain exactly what you are."

She pressed the darkly colored magic stone up to my lips, like a girl pressing a chocolate to a lover's, and while I just generally didn't want to upset a girl with a hundred dragon heads, even for the bad idea train I was conducting, accepting it seemed like it might be a terrible decision. I could feel the power in the gem, pressed to my mouth as it was, and it sent a stirring through me that I couldn't ignore even if I wanted to. I felt more than tired, in that moment.

I felt hungry.

And even if listening to that part of me seemed unwise...I wanted to. I wanted to believe everything she said—hell, I did, somewhat—and just go along with this, all the way to the end. To ignore the consequences, the issues, the flaws in this idea, the implications. I wanted to just listen to her promise that I'd get everything I wanted and act like I didn't know what it meant. What I really wanted to do, when you got right down to it, was close my eyes.

But the thing of it is, I've never been made an offer that seemed too good to be true that also wasn't.

"I don't need proof," I said, reaching up to take the gem away so I could speak, but the words sounding like they'd been torn from me. "If you say it's true, then I believe you, believe all of it. Just tell me one thing—what's the catch, Anaklusmos? What would it cost me?"

"She wants to see the surface," she said like it was nothing, like all it would cost to see what was behind door number one was a literal stroll in the park. "She wants to see the sky. That's all she desires."

"And I'm guessing she doesn't want that ugly city blocking her way, huh?" I guessed, shaking her head. "Who is she? Who is it that's in such a generous, giving mood that they want to help me now of all times? That bitch knew my name, so I'm guessing it's someone we have a history with—what's her name?"

"She's me, Perseus!" Anaklusmos snapped, and sparks of gold flashed through her eyes, bright against the black. "We want to be free! I want to be free!"

"Then I'll take you to the surface!" I snapped back. "That's all I want—I'll take you there right now, just come with me!"

"Free a piece of me and leave the rest of me trapped?" She asked, tone abruptly contemptuous. "That's not what freedom is, Perseus."

"But you're talking about killing people, Anaklusmos," I said, closing my eyes. "About slaughtering thousands to get out."

"And what was it you said to the elven girl?" She asked. "About what you would do, if it was important enough to you? Well, this is our chance, Perseus, our only chance, to get everything we ever wanted."

"But Hestia," I said. "Welf, Lili, my friends—"

"Then take them away from here, if it means so much to you!" She shouted, almost exasperated. "It's this damn city that needs to go, not the individual people—if that's what it takes for you to do what's necessary, make them leave!"

"They won't accept that," I said, nearly shaking. "Because even if individuals don't matter for this, a lot of people would still stay and fight. Thousands would die at least. I'd have to kill thousands."

"And what does it matter?" She asked. "You've killed thousands before!"

"Monsters, you mean?" I replied. "I killed them to protect people."

"And anyone who got in the way?" She asked. "You hated Luke. You hated Kronos. But the fools who followed them? You empathized with them once. Wondered if you wouldn't have done the same if things were different, been on the other side if your father was. But you still killed them, when the time came."

"I tried not to," I said, my voice a whisper. Even I didn't believe what I was saying anymore. "I did everything I could not to, until—"

"Until you didn't care anymore," Anaklusmos said, gold flashing faster in obsidian eyes. "And then it was simple, to kill anyone who was an enemy, who got in the way of what you wanted. Well, this is simple, too, Perseus—don't care. Why should you? You don't know these people; what does it matter if they live or die, with so much at stake?"

And the thing of it was? I wanted to—want to not care, wanted to take what I wanted. A part of me did, at least, and if I was being honest, it wasn't a small part. I'd tried to forget it, tried to put it all behind me and brush it off as another life in another world, but in Manhattan, I'd...I did a lot of things.

I'd killed a lot of people.

Some of them had deserved it, maybe all of them, but that wasn't why I'd killed them. Annabeth had fallen first and maybe that pushed me over the edge, but then everyone else followed, one by one, and they'd taken pieces of me with them when they went. I'd run wild as we were pushed back, further and further, maddened by each hopeless battle where it didn't seem to matter how strong I was or what I did, until I just did whatever I had to. And then, whatever I could do. And then, whatever I'd wanted to do.

But then I got a second chance and I could forget all that, because I had a chance to make up for it, for my mistakes. I didn't have to think about what it was like when they were gone, because they didn't have to be. I could find them again, save them. And this was my chance to do so.

And all I had to do was remember what it had been like and do it again. And I knew I could, if I wanted to.

Maybe that was why I couldn't.

"There has to be another way," I said quietly. Maybe even weakly. "They wouldn't want me to be like that again. I don't want them to see me like that again."

"Are you listening to yourself, Perseus!?" She demanded, incredulous and furious. "I'm giving you the chance to take back all that you've lost—and you're hesitating because I can't give you everything!? Because it's difficult!? We will never find them without Her! You will never find them! No matter how hard you work, it will never be enough—you'll die here again like all the others!"

"Daedalus made it out," I said, trying to swallow my own doubts.

"One other," she said. "Two of you in a thousand years or ten thousand or gods only know how long it's been; as hard as you've fought and bled and died, that's all you've managed to find, and yet you cling to it as if it means something!"

"Doesn't it?" I asked. "It means hope."

Her eyes flashed then, turning completely gold.

"Yes," she hissed, that feverish light returning to her eyes. "That's it. Don't you see that's what this is all about? It's Elpis that drives you mad."

"Elpis?" I said, and hearing the words made something shift in me again.

"Hope," she said, voice dripping with sheer contempt. "The last and greatest of Pandora's horrors. Hope was not given to mankind as a mercy, Perseus, for when have you ever known the gods to be merciful in their vengeance? It was meant as a punishment like all the rest, like the Phlegethon flowing through the lands of the dead. It gives you the strength to go on, only so you can suffer more."

"That's not what hope is," I denied, even as I felt a flash of uncertainty.

"Perhaps not for anyone else—but for you?" She asked. "You know the truth, don't you? You are being punished, Perseus. This is your Tartarus, this is your damnation, and you're just Sisyphus, pushing the rock up the hill again and again and again as if one more time will be enough, but it won't! You're here to suffer, Perseus, filled with the need to try even when you know it's not enough, too maddened to stop or pull back or find peace. You'll die here, again and again, because that's the only moral of the Gods' treacherous gift—that's it's not possible to escape. But it is, Perseus. There's a way out. Just come with me."

She reached out a hand, gentle and soft, and in it she held everything I wanted.

But maybe she was right—because when there was nothing left, like Pandora, I still held on to hope. I still believed there had to be another way.

"...I can't," I said at last, trying not to cry as I refused her, refused everything I wanted. It hurt. It hurt like I was breaking and coming undone. "Anaklusmos, I can't."

She closed her eyes. And when she opened them, they shined.

"You've been driven mad," she said, sounding as pained as I had, as if I was tearing out her heart with my bare hands. "Too mad to even try to resist anymore. I...I can't bear to see you like this."

And then, her tone began to grow heated. The dragons beneath me stilled.

"...And I won't. I'll save you from this poison if I have to tear Elpis out of you with my own hands!" She snapped and the coils beneath me began to shift into sudden motion. I didn't hesitate to throw myself away, hands coming down on the coils nearest me to take advantage of the only leverage I could, vaulting off of it in a backflip that carried me, thankfully, out of the dragon's reach. I came down harder than I'd have liked, but I considered that a fair trade as I saw the swarm of dragons begin to writhe madly. Given the number of monsters she'd already ripped apart and eat, this was quickly going beyond merely dangerous, but—

"I won't fight you," I said, but readied my shield because, seriously, she had a hundred heads and they all looked upset with me.

"Then just stand still," she replied, treelike legs stomping at the earth. "It won't hurt for long—and even if you die, I'll just bring you back. And then everything will be like it used to."

I very carefully didn't shudder at that, because I was a big, strong manly man.

"I can't do that, either," I said regardless, backing up slightly as the dragons reached closer. "Sorry."

"Mad," she spat like a curse. "You've been twisted up until you crave your own punishment, Perseus!"

I looked down, still feeling uncertain and torn—but it was too late for indecision now. I'd made my bed and now it looked like I'd have to sleep in it, one way or another, even if it happened to be in a coffin. There was no route but forward, no choice but to commit.

So when I looked up, I was resolved. Maybe not confident, maybe not happy, maybe not sure or content, but resolved.

"I might be mad," I agreed. "But if so, it's not with hope. It's with greed. I want it all—and I'll take it if I have to. And...maybe I'm a bit jealous, too. I still don't know what's happened to you or who's doing it or why—but seeing someone try to take you away and twist you like this is pissing me the hell off. So I'm not going to fight you, Anaklusmos, but I'm going to save you."

"No, you won't," She said, eyes shining brighter by the minute. "But I'll set you free, Perseus!"

She thrust a hand up at the sky and all around her a magic circle began to unfold.

"Arise, flames!" She shouted.