[1] something new | pjo

xl. forty

A FEW HOURS IN THE LABYRINTH AND THEY WALKED STRAIGHT INTO A TRAP.

Annabeth, Rachel, Daphne, and Percy were so exhausted that they made camp right there in the huge room. Percy found some scrap wood and they started a fire. Shadows danced off the columns rising around us like trees.

"Something was wrong with Luke," Annabeth muttered, poking at the fire with her knife. "Did you notice the way he was acting?"

"He looked pretty pleased to me," Percy said. "Like he'd spent a nice day torturing heroes."

"That's not true! There was something wrong with him. He looked...nervous. He told his monsters to spare me. He wanted to tell me something."

"Probably, 'Hi, Annabeth! Sit here with me and watch while I tear your friends apart. It'll be fun!'"

"You're impossible," Annabeth grumbled. She sheathed her dagger and looked at Rachel. "So which way now, Sacagawea?"

"Are you sure you still want to follow her?" Daphne asked while Annabeth just shrugged.

Rachel didn't respond right away. She'd become quieter since the arena.

Whenever Annabeth or Daphne made a sarcastic comment, Rachel hardly bothered to answer. She'd burned the tip of a stick in the fire and was using it to draw ash figures on the floor, images of the monsters we'd seen. With a few strokes, she caught the likeness of a dracaena perfectly.

"We'll follow the path," she said. "The brightness on the floor."

"The brightness that led us straight into a trap?" Daphne asked.

"Lay off her, Daph," Percy said. "She's doing the best she can."

Daphne looked strangely at Percy, "Whatever, I'm going to consult to someone I can trust, that wouldn't dare any harm come to me, or tried to lead us to our death,"

Annabeth stood, "The fire's getting low. I'll go look for some more scraps while you guys talk strategy." And she marched off into the shadows.

Rachel drew another figure with her stick—an ashy Antaeus dangling from his chains.

"They both usually not like this," Percy told her. "Especially Daphne, I don't know what her problem is."

"I can hear you Perce," Daphne said, "I'm still here,"

Rachel raised her eyebrows. "Are you sure you don't know?"

"What do you mean?"

"Boys," she muttered. "Totally blind."

"Hey, don't you get on my case, too! Look, I'm sorry I got you involved in this."

"No, you were right," she said. "I can see the path. I can't explain it, but it's really clear." She pointed toward the other end of the room, into the darkness. "The workshop is that way. The heart of the maze. We're very close now. I don't know why the path led through that arena. I—I'm sorry about that. I thought you were going to die."

She sounded like she was close to crying.

"Hey, I'm usually about to die," Percy promised. "Don't feel bad."

She studied my face. "So you do this every summer? Fight monsters? Save the world? Don't you ever get to do just, you know, normal stuff?"

I'd never really thought about it like that. The last time I'd had something like a normal life had been...well, never. "Half-bloods get used to it, I guess. Or maybe not used to it, but..." I shifted uncomfortably. "What about you? What do you do normally?"