Scatterbrain: Battle Of The Labyrinth Chapter 1

by MR Shiew

stuffed it under her door. And after I did this, I went back to the trebuchet workshop to check on them. The whole place was in a frantic state- evidently an army of medusae had invaded the workshop and destroyed 5 of the trebuchet frames- the total that had been built were 10 frames and now only 5 frames were left. Definitely one of Kronos’s schemes to stop us from beating back his and Gaia’s invasion of camp. Oh, and I forgot to say why they were invading camp- they wanted to get into the Labyrinth so they could control the forces of evil that were contained in it. That would be a huge catastrophe for the camp and for the whole world if there wasn’t any divine intervention. Really- just imagine a flood of various monsters and demons covering the whole earth, destroying anything that wasn’t allied with it. Back to the trebuchet workshop, which was now in a state of chaos with about 20 medusae rampaging through it-out of the original 100, 80 medusae had been killed and twenty were left. They weren’t too hard to kill- you just had to take off their heads and that finished them- but they were really hard to get near. They would either turn their hair into a seething mass of Inland Taipans/Fierce Snakes or stab you with a needle-sharp claw which could pierce almost anything except celestial bronze. So, the only two ways (if you didn’t want to get eaten by a bunch of taipans or spiked by a needle-sharp claw) to kill them was to shoot them from a distance with an arrow or throw a javelin/spear at them. That was it. Soon, I had all of them dead on the floor. I then assesed the situation and found that 6 of the trebuchet frames had been destroyed and 20 of the builders had been injured. After that, I sent the injured to First Aid, told the rest to clean up the debris and start building again.

  Some time later,six more trebuchet frames had been completed. That done, I told the 180 who were building the frames to complete the ten trebuchets before starting on more frames. That way, if any attack came early, we would at least be able to beat off some of it before it entered the base and destroyed anything important. And 999,999 giants was indeed lesser then 1,000,000 giants. Some hours later, the ten trebuchets were completed. Time to set them in place. Several of us pushed the trebuchets to the greatest concentration of giants, put pots of Greek fire into the slings, and fired. They arched high into the air and burst on the ground in the midst of the giants. A cloud of smoke billowed into the air seconds before a thunderous explosion which sent flaming material flying everywhere, setting more giants on fire. When the dust cleared, many of the giants were on fire and some were shredded to pieces from the blast. We reloaded and fired again. More giants died. And again. Yet more giants died. It got to when I decided that no more trebuchets were needed to beat them. And so I told the builders to stop. About two trebuchet frames had been completed since I had last checked on them. I then told them to complete those two frames and stop building. That was soon done. At that time, a minor incursion of empousas (which was soon slaughtered) pushed inside the camp, causing more turmoil. Casualties for us were 0 dead and 5 injured. At that time, I felt a minor earthquake under my feet. That probably meant monsters inside the Labyrinth were gathering To do what, we didn't know. But nine out of ten, it was probably related to the failed invasion. So we decided to go in and scout the Labyrimth. Not too many of us- about 20, including me. And if the monsters were indeed massing for an attack, we would have to take most of the camp inside and kill them. But what sort of siege artillery could we take inside? Definitely not trebuchets. Perhaps ballistas or onagers could be taken in- but that was only if we made them smaller then usual. Definitely not full-size ones, which could span almost 20 feet. A polybolos or a carroballista was a more viable option. What's more, the polybolos could shoot 11 bolts a second- about four times more then an ordinary ballista. But the problem was that the polybolos had too little power to pierce any sort of monster..A carroballista was also too large to fit into the small tunnels we expected to encouyou can phonnter in the Labyrinth. “Why must we use ancient weapons anyway?” asked Annabeth. “Well, for historical accuracy.” I said. “Notice what the trebuchets did to the giants?” “Yes, but trebs won't work in the Labyrinth.” she said. “Then what do you suggest we should use?” I asked. “Well, I suggest using chaiguns.” she said. “They're more mobile then ballistae and also can shoot almost 1000 times faster then them.” she said.”But where would we get a chaingun? And where would we get the enormous quantities of ammunition it needs? I asked. “I'm sure that Mr. Matthews has a few of them somewhere.” she said. “But he's currently in South America to get the lignum vitae I asked for.” I said. “C'mon we're not in the dark ages, you can phone him, can't you?” she asked. “Of course I can phone him.” I said. “But I don't have his phone number.” “Surely he couldn't have gone off to South America without telling you his phone number?” she asked. “Well, I don't know. Perhaps he might've left it somewhere in the camp.” I said. “Well, where might that “somewhere” be? She asked. “Don't know.......possibly in his office.” I said.

  ---------------------------------> CHAPTER 2