The Dragon's Daughter

viii. labyrinth and dragons

“Two steps back,” Annabeth advised. 

They stepped backwards together like they were in a minefield.

"Are you sure I can't just shadow-travel us out of here?"

"Too risky. There's three of us," Annabeth said. 

"I can do three," Elora said.

"On a scale from one to one hundred?" Percy asked.

"Ninety," she answered. 

“This is a good chance we have. Now help me examine the walls,” Annabeth said, breaking their convo. 

"What for?” 

“The mark of Daedalus,” she said.

 “Uh, okay. What kind of—” 

“Got it!” Elora said. She set her hand on the wall and pressed against a tiny fissure, which began to glow blue. A Greek symbol appeared, the Ancient Greek Delta. 

The roof slid open and they saw the night sky, stars blazing. It was a lot darker than it should’ve been. Metal ladder rungs appeared on the side of the wall, leading up, and she could hear people yelling their names. 

“Percy! Annabeth! Elora!” Tyson’s voice bellowed the loudest, but others were calling out too. 

They climbed their way out of the dark. 

☼︎☼︎❁☼︎☼︎

They made their way around the rocks and ran into Clarisse and a bunch of other campers carrying torches. 

“Where have you three been?” Clarisse demanded. “We’ve been looking forever.” 

“But we were gone only a few minutes,” Percy said.

Chiron trotted up, followed by Tyson and Grover. 

“Percy!” Tyson said. “You are okay?” 

“We’re fine,” he said. “We fell in a hole.” 

The others looked at him sceptically, then at Annabeth. Then at Elora.

 “Honest!” Percy said. 

"We did fall into a hole," Elora said. 

The campers nodded. 

Percy continued. “There were three scorpions after us, so we ran and hid in the rocks. But we were only gone a minute.”

“You’ve been missing for almost an hour,” Chiron said. “The game is over.” 

“Yeah,” Grover muttered. "None of us could find the red pouch."

The red pouch! Elora almost forgot about the hidden red pouch. I won. Right.

“A hole?” Clarisse said suspiciously. 

Annabeth took a deep breath. She looked around at the other campers. 

“Chiron…maybe we should talk about this at the Big House.” 

Clarisse gasped. “You found it, didn’t you?” 

Annabeth bit her lip. “I—Yeah. Yeah, we did.” 

A bunch of campers started asking questions, but Chiron raised his hand in silence. “Tonight is not the right time, and this is not the right place.” 

He stared at boulders as if he’d just noticed how dangerous they were. “All of you, back to your cabins. Get some sleep. A game well played, but curfew is past!” 

There was a lot of mumbling and complaints, but the campers drifted off.

“This explains a lot,” Clarisse said. “It explains what Luke is after.” 

“Wait a second,” Percy said. “What do you mean? What did we find?” 

“An entrance to the Labyrinth," Elora stated. 

"An invasion route straight into the heart of the camp," Annabeth added. 

☼︎☼︎❁☼︎☼︎

Chiron had insisted they talk about it in the morning. It was kind of like, Hey, your life’s in mortal danger. Sleep tight! 

Wonderful. 

It was hard to fall asleep. Harder than usual. She tossed and turned to no end. She even had a long talk with the Poseidon brothers about weapons. She got out snacks for the long discussion. Their talks lead to the game after Tyson went to bed.

"What do you think is in the red silk pouch?" Elora asked. She fished it out of its hiding place and tossed it a few times. 

"Laurels?" Percy asked. 

"Let's see." She opened the pouch and found laurels in it.

"They're always laurels," Elora sighed, "why can't they be drachmas? Or some kind of rare object?" 

"You got it?" Percy exclaimed when he saw the golden laurel she was holding up to the small lights provided by the fish ponies statues. "You won!"

"Yes to both," she said. She threw the laurel in Percy's direction. "Catch." 

"Woah." He caught it. "More warning next time." 

Hey dad, she called out, can you somehow make two duplicates of the laurel? 

Two of them appeared. 

Thanks, dad. 

"This has to be your what? Tenth?" Percy asked.

"Ask my mom. She keeps count," Elora answered. 

"That many," Percy said. 

"I do win a lot," Elora stated. "Keep it."

Percy choked. "The laurel? It's yours!" 

"Just keep it. You helped with the scorpions. It was teamwork."

"Annabeth?"

"She's gonna get one too." 

Elora wrote a quick note and sent the laurel and the note away to the Athena cabin. 

Percy soon followed Tyson to sleep, filling the room with snores. She was able to read a book from the library in her room back home thanks to her shadows. Think of it like a portal Dr Strange can make. 

Her books were about dragons so it was no wonder that she dreamt of them when sleep finally pulled her under. 

Large dragons flew in the air. They took off from the grassy hill below her. A white-coloured dragon dived down to the clear lake, splashing the dragons nearby. Some smaller ones were rolling down the hill, roasting trees and headbutting each other. 

A dark figure passed her head. She looked up and there she saw a dark blue Chinese dragon with scales that shimmered under the bright glare of the sun. It flew to the flock of western dragons and turned to her. 

"Hello," she murmured, amazed at the sight. "This is amazing."

The dragon turned its head to the right. 

"Can I touch you?" she asked, putting a palm out. She really wanted to touch it. Her self-control and rationalism were the only things keeping her from leaping off and attacking the dragon with hugs and pets. 

The flying serpent nudged her hand with its head. She glided her hands against its scales. 

"I never thought I could dream like this," she whispered. "This feels so real."

The image of the dragons in front of her wavered and a mirage of a goat appeared in front of her. 

"Soon," it said. And it vanished into thin air, taking the dragons with it.

☼︎☼︎❁☼︎☼︎
𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 • 𝐯𝐨𝐭𝐞 • 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐞
𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐤𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠!

𝐌𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐮𝐩𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐨𝐝𝐚𝐲!