by Rick Riordan
‘It’s begun,’ Hazel said.
‘What has?’ Leo asked.
When the next flash happened, Hazel’s gold eyes darkened like foil in fire. ‘Gaia’s final push,’ she said. ‘The Doors of Death are working overtime. Her forces are entering the mortal world en masse.’
‘We’ll never make it,’ Nico said. ‘By the time we arrive, there’ll be too many monsters to fight.’
Jason set his jaw. ‘We’ll defeat them. And we’ll make it there fast. We’ve got Leo back. He’ll give us the speed we need.’
He turned to his friend. ‘Or is that just hot air?’
Leo managed a crooked grin. His eyes seemed to say: Thanks.
‘Time to fly, boys and girls,’ he said. ‘Uncle Leo’s still got a few tricks up his sleeves!’
LXI
PERCY
Percy wasn’t dead yet, but he was already tired of being a corpse.
As they trudged towards the heart of Tartarus, he kept glancing down at his body, wondering how it could belong to him. His arms looked like bleached leather pulled over sticks. His skeletal legs seemed to dissolve into smoke with every step. He’d learned to move normally within the Death Mist, more or less, but the magical shroud still made him feel like he was wrapped in a coat of helium.
He worried that the Death Mist might cling to him forever, even if they somehow managed to survive Tartarus. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life looking like an extra from The Walking Dead.
Percy tried to focus on something else, but there was no safe direction to look.
Under his feet, the ground glistened a nauseating purple, pulsing with webs of veins. In the dim red light of the blood clouds, Death Mist Annabeth looked like a freshly risen zombie.
Ahead of them was the most depressing view of all.
Spread to the horizon was an army of monsters – flocks of winged arai, tribes of lumbering Cyclopes, clusters of floating evil spirits. Thousands of baddies, maybe tens of thousands, all milling restlessly, pressing against one another, growling and fighting for space – like the locker area of an overcrowded school between classes, if all the students were ’roid-raging mutants who smelled really bad.
Bob led them towards the edge of the army. He made no effort to hide, not that it would have done any good. Being ten feet tall and glowing silver, Bob didn’t do stealth very well.
About thirty yards from the nearest monsters, Bob turned to face Percy.
‘Stay quiet and stay behind me,’ he advised. ‘They will not notice you.’
‘We hope,’ Percy muttered.
On the Titan’s shoulder, Small Bob woke up from a nap. He purred seismically and arched his back, turning skeletal then back to calico. At least he didn’t seem nervous.
Annabeth examined her own zombie hands. ‘Bob, if we’re invisible … how can you see us? I mean, you’re technically, you know …’
‘Yes,’ Bob said. ‘But we are friends.’
‘Nyx and her children could see us,’ Annabeth said.
Bob shrugged. ‘That was in Nyx’s realm. That is different.’
‘Uh … right.’ Annabeth didn’t sound reassured, but they were here now. They didn’t have any choice but to try.
Percy stared at the swarm of vicious monsters. ‘Well, at least we won’t have to worry about bumping into any other friends in this crowd.’
Bob grinned. ‘Yes, that is good news! Now, let’s go. Death is close.’
‘The Doors of Death are close,’ Annabeth corrected. ‘Let’s watch the phrasing.’
They plunged into the crowd. Percy trembled so badly he was afraid the Death Mist would shake right off him. He’d seen large groups of monsters before. He’d fought an army of them during the Battle of Manhattan. But this was different.
Whenever he’d fought monsters in the mortal world, Percy at least knew he was defending his home. That gave him courage, no matter how bad the odds were. Here, Percy was the invader. He didn’t belong in this multitude of monsters any more than the Minotaur belonged in Penn Station at rush hour.
A few feet away, a group of empousai tore into the carcass of a gryphon while other gryphons flew around them, squawking in outrage. A six-armed Earthborn and a Laistrygonian giant pummelled each other with rocks, though Percy wasn’t sure if they were fighting or just messing around. A dark wisp of smoke – Percy guessed it must be an eidolon – seeped into a Cyclops, made the monster hit himself in the face, then drifted off to possess another victim.
Annabeth whispered, ‘Percy, look.’
A stone’s throw away, a guy in a cowboy outfit was cracking a whip at some fire-breathing horses. The wrangler wore a Stetson hat on his greasy hair, an extra-large set of jeans and a pair of black leather boots. From the side, he might have passed for human – until he turned, and Percy saw that his upper body was split into three different chests, each one dressed in a different colour Western shirt.
It was definitely Geryon, who had tried to kill Percy two years ago in Texas. Apparently the evil rancher was anxious to break in a new herd. The idea of that guy riding out of the Doors of Death made Percy’s sides hurt all over again. His ribs throbbed where the arai had unleashed Geryon’s dying curse back in the forest. He wanted to march up to the three-bodied rancher, smack him in the face and yell, Thanks a lot, Tex!
Sadly, he couldn’t.
How many other old enemies were in this crowd? Percy began to realize that every battle he’d ever won had only been a temporary victory. No matter how strong or lucky he was, no matter how many monsters he destroyed, Percy would eventually fail. He was only one mortal. He would get too old, too weak, or too slow. He would die. And these monsters … they lasted forever. They just kept coming back. Maybe it would take them months or years to re-form, maybe even centuries. But they would be reborn.
Seeing them assembled in Tartarus, Percy felt as hopeless as the spirits in the River Cocytus. So what if he was a hero? So what if he did something brave? Evil was always here, regenerating, bubbling under the surface. Percy was no more than a minor annoyance to these immortal beings. They just had to outwait him. Some day, Percy’s sons or daughters might have to face them all over again.
Sons and daughters.
The thought jarred him. As quickly as hopelessness had overtaken him, it disappeared. He glanced at Annabeth. She still looked like a misty corpse, but he imagined her true appearance – her grey eyes full of determination, her blonde hair pulled back in a bandanna, her face weary and streaked with grime, but as beautiful as ever.
Okay, maybe monsters kept coming back forever. But so did demigods. Generation after generation, Camp Half-Blood had endured. And Camp Jupiter. Even separately, the two camps had survived. Now, if the Greeks and Romans could come together, they would be even stronger.
There was still hope. He and Annabeth had come this far. The Doors of Death were almost within reach.
Sons and daughters. A ridiculous thought. An awesome thought. Right there in the middle of Tartarus, Percy grinned.
‘What’s wrong?’ Annabeth whispered.
With his zombie Death Mist disguise, Percy probably looked like he was grimacing in pain.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I was just –’
Somewhere in front of them, a deep voice bellowed: ‘IAPETUS!’
LXII
PERCY
A Titan strode towards them, casually kicking lesser monsters out of his way. He was roughly the same height as Bob, with elaborate Stygian iron armour, a single diamond blazing in the centre of his breastplate. His eyes were blue-white, like core samples from a glacier and just as cold. His hair was the same colour, cut military style. A battle helmet shaped like a bear’s head was tucked under his arm. From his belt hung a sword the size of a surfboard.
Despite his battle scars, the Titan’s face was handsome and strangely familiar. Percy was pretty sure he’d never seen the guy before, but his eyes and his smile reminded Percy of someone …
The Titan stopped in f
ront of Bob. He clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Iapetus! Don’t tell me you don’t recognize your own brother!’
‘No!’ Bob agreed nervously. ‘I won’t tell you that.’
The other Titan threw back his head and laughed. ‘I heard you were thrown into the Lethe. Must’ve been terrible! We all knew you would heal eventually. It’s Koios! Koios!’
‘Of course,’ Bob said. ‘Koios, Titan of …’
‘The North!’ Koios said.
‘I know!’ Bob shouted.
They laughed together and took turns hitting each other in the arm.
Apparently miffed by all the jostling, Small Bob crawled onto Bob’s head and began making a nest in the Titan’s silver hair.
‘Poor old Iapetus,’ said Koios. ‘They must have laid you low indeed. Look at you! A broom? A servant’s uniform? A cat in your hair? Truly, Hades must pay for these insults. Who was that demigod who took your memory? Bah! We must rip him to pieces, you and I, eh?’
‘Ha-ha.’ Bob swallowed. ‘Yes, indeed. Rip him to pieces.’
Percy’s fingers closed around his pen. He didn’t think much of Bob’s brother, even without the rip him to pieces threat. Compared to Bob’s simple way of speaking, Koios sounded like he was reciting Shakespeare. That alone was enough to make Percy irritated.
He was ready to uncap Riptide if he had to, but so far Koios didn’t seem to have noticed him. And Bob hadn’t betrayed them yet, though he’d had plenty of opportunities.
‘Ah, it’s good to see you …’ Koios drummed his fingers on his bear’s-head helmet. ‘You remember what fun we had in the old days?’
‘Of course!’ Bob chirped. ‘When we, uh …’
‘Holding down our father Ouranos,’ Koios said.
‘Yes! We loved wrestling with Dad …’
‘We restrained him.’
‘That’s what I meant!’
‘While Kronos cut him to pieces with his scythe.’
‘Yes, ha-ha.’ Bob looked mildly ill. ‘What fun.’
‘You grabbed Father’s right foot, as I recall,’ Koios said. ‘And Ouranos kicked you in the face as he struggled. How we used to tease you about that!’
‘Silly me,’ Bob agreed.
‘Sadly, our brother Kronos was dissolved by those impudent demigods.’ Koios heaved a sigh. ‘Bits and pieces of his essence remain, but nothing you could put together again. I suppose some injuries even Tartarus cannot heal.’
‘Alas!’
‘But the rest of us have another chance to shine, eh?’ He leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘These giants may think they will rule. Let them be our shock troops and destroy the Olympians – all well and good. But once the Earth Mother is awake she will remember that we are her eldest children. Mark my words. The Titans will yet rule the cosmos.’
‘Hmm,’ Bob said. ‘The giants may not like that.’
‘Spit on what they like,’ Koios said. ‘They’ve already passed through the Doors of Death, anyway, back to the mortal world. Polybotes was the last one, not half an hour ago, still grumbling about missing his prey. Apparently some demigods he was after got swallowed by Nyx. Never see them again, I wager!’
Annabeth gripped Percy’s wrist. Through the Death Mist, he couldn’t read her expression very well, but he saw the alarm in her eyes.
If the giants had already passed through the Doors, then at least they wouldn’t be hunting through Tartarus for Percy and Annabeth. Unfortunately, that also meant their friends in the mortal world were in even greater danger. All of the earlier fights with the giants had been in vain. Their enemies would be reborn as strong as ever.
‘Well!’ Koios drew his massive sword. The blade radiated a cold deeper than the Hubbard Glacier. ‘I must be off. Leto should have regenerated by now. I will convince her to fight.’
‘Of course,’ Bob murmured. ‘Leto.’
Koios laughed. ‘You’ve forgotten my daughter, as well? I suppose it’s been too long since you’ve seen her. The peaceful ones like her always take the longest to re-form. This time, though, I’m sure Leto will fight for vengeance. The way Zeus treated her, after she bore him those fine twins? Outrageous!’
Percy almost grunted out loud.
The twins.
He remembered the name Leto: the mother of Apollo and Artemis. This guy Koios looked vaguely familiar because he had Artemis’s cold eyes and Apollo’s smile. The Titan was their grandfather, Leto’s father. The idea gave Percy a migraine.
‘Well! I’ll see you in the mortal world!’ Koios chest-bumped Bob, almost knocking the cat off his head. ‘Oh, and our two other brothers are guarding this side of the Doors, so you’ll see them soon enough!’
‘I will?’
‘Count on it!’ Koios lumbered off, almost knocking over Percy and Annabeth as they scrambled out of his way.
Before the crowd of monsters could fill the empty space, Percy motioned for Bob to lean in.
‘You okay, big guy?’ Percy whispered.
Bob frowned. ‘I do not know. In all this –’ he gestured around them – ‘what is the meaning of okay?’
Fair point, Percy thought.
Annabeth peered towards the Doors of Death, though the crowd of monsters blocked them from view. ‘Did I hear correctly? Two more Titans guarding our exit? That’s not good.’
Percy looked at Bob. The Titan’s distant expression worried him.
‘Do you remember Koios?’ he asked gently. ‘All that stuff he was talking about?’
Bob gripped his broom. ‘When he told it, I remembered. He handed me my past like … like a spear. But I do not know if I should take it. Is it still mine, if I do not want it?’
‘No,’ Annabeth said firmly. ‘Bob, you’re different now. You’re better.’
The kitten jumped off Bob’s head. He circled the Titan’s feet, bumping his head against the Titan’s trouser cuffs. Bob didn’t seem to notice.
Percy wished he could be as certain as Annabeth. He wished he could tell Bob with absolute confidence that he should forget about his past.
But Percy understood Bob’s confusion. He remembered the day he’d opened his eyes at the Wolf House in California, his memory wiped clean by Hera. If somebody had been waiting for Percy when he first woke up, if they’d convinced Percy that his name was Bob and he was a friend of the Titans and the giants … would Percy have believed it? Would he have felt betrayed once he found out his true identity?
This is different, he told himself. We’re the good guys.
But were they? Percy had left Bob in Hades’s palace, at the mercy of a new master who hated him. Percy didn’t feel like he had much right to tell Bob what to do now – even if their lives depended on it.
‘I think you can choose, Bob,’ Percy ventured. ‘Take the parts of Iapetus’s past that you want to keep. Leave the rest. Your future is what matters.’
‘Future …’ Bob mused. ‘That is a mortal concept. I am not meant to change, Percy Friend.’ He gazed around him at the horde of monsters. ‘We are the same … forever.’
‘If you were the same,’ Percy said, ‘Annabeth and I would be dead already. Maybe we weren’t meant to be friends, but we are. You’ve been the best friend we could ask for.’
Bob’s silver eyes looked darker than usual. He held out his hand, and Small Bob the kitten jumped into it. The Titan rose to his full height. ‘Let us go, then, friends. Not much further.’
Stomping on Tartarus’s heart wasn’t nearly as much fun as it sounded.
The purplish ground was slippery and constantly pulsing. It looked flat from a distance, but up close it was made of folds and ridges that got harder to navigate the further they walked. Gnarled lumps of red arteries and blue veins gave Percy some footholds when he had to climb, but the going was slow.
And, of course, the monsters were everywhere. Packs of hellhounds prowled the plains, baying and snarling and attacking any monster that dropped its guard. Arai wheeled overhead on leathery wings, making ghastly dark silhouettes in the poiso
n clouds.
Percy stumbled. His hand touched a red artery, and a tingling sensation went up his arm. ‘There’s water in here,’ he said. ‘Actual water.’
Bob grunted. ‘One of the five rivers. His blood.’
‘His blood?’ Annabeth stepped away from the nearest clump of veins. ‘I knew the Underworld rivers all emptied into Tartarus, but –’
‘Yes,’ Bob agreed. ‘They all flow through his heart.’
Percy traced his hand across a web of capillaries. Was the water of the Styx flowing beneath his fingers, or maybe the Lethe? If one of those veins popped when he stepped on it … Percy shuddered. He realized he was taking a stroll across the most dangerous circulatory system in the universe.
‘We should hurry,’ Annabeth said. ‘If we can’t …’
Her voice trailed off.
Ahead of them, jagged streaks of darkness tore through the air – like lightning, except pure black.
‘The Doors,’ Bob said. ‘Must be a large group going through.’
Percy’s mouth tasted like gorgon’s blood. Even if his friends from the Argo II managed to find the other side of the Doors of Death, how could they possibly fight the waves of monsters that were coming through, especially if all the giants were already waiting for them?
‘Do all the monsters go through the House of Hades?’ he asked. ‘How big is that place?’
Bob shrugged. ‘Perhaps they are sent elsewhere when they step through. The House of Hades is in the earth, yes? That is Gaia’s realm. She could send her minions wherever she wishes.’
Percy’s spirits sank. Monsters coming through the Doors of Death to threaten his friends at Epirus – that was bad enough. Now he imagined the ground on the mortal side as one big subway system, depositing giants and other nasties anywhere Gaia wanted them to go – Camp Half-Blood, Camp Jupiter or in the path of the Argo II before it could even reach Epirus.
‘If Gaia has that much power,’ Annabeth asked, ‘couldn’t she control where we end up?’
Percy really hated that question. Sometimes he wished Annabeth weren’t so smart.
Bob scratched his chin. ‘You are not monsters. It may be different for you.’