by Rick Riordan
“Uh…great,” Percy asked. “Where is here?”
“The verge of final death,” Akhlys said. “Where Night meets the void below Tartarus.”
Annabeth inched forward and peered over the cliff. “I thought there was nothing below Tartarus.”
“Oh, certainly there is.…” Akhlys coughed. “Even Tartarus had to rise from somewhere. This is the edge of the earliest darkness, which was my mother. Below lies the realm of Chaos, my father. Here, you are closer to nothingness than any mortal has ever been. Can you not feel it?”
Percy knew what she meant. The void seemed to be pulling at him, leaching the breath from his lungs and the oxygen from his blood. He looked at Annabeth and saw that her lips were tinged blue.
“We can’t stay here,” he said.
“No, indeed!” Akhlys said. “Don’t you feel the Death Mist? Even now, you pass between. Look!”
White smoke gathered around Percy’s feet. As it coiled up his legs, he realized the smoke wasn’t surrounding him. It was coming from him. His whole body was dissolving. He held up his hands and found they were fuzzy and indistinct. He couldn’t even tell how many fingers he had. Hopefully still ten.
He turned to Annabeth and stifled a yelp. “You’re—uh—”
He couldn’t say it. She looked dead.
Her skin was sallow, her eye sockets dark and sunken. Her beautiful hair had dried into a skein of cobwebs. She looked like she’d been stuck in a cool, dark mausoleum for decades, slowly withering into a desiccated husk. When she turned to look at him, her features momentarily blurred into mist.
Percy’s blood moved like sap in his veins.
For years, he had worried about Annabeth dying. When you were a demigod, that went with the territory. Most half-bloods didn’t live long. You always knew that the next monster you fought could be your last. But seeing Annabeth like this was too painful. He’d rather stand in the River Phlegethon, or get attacked by arai, or be trampled by giants.
“Oh, gods,” Annabeth sobbed. “Percy, the way you look…”
Percy studied his arms. All he saw were blobs of white mist, but he guessed that to Annabeth he looked like a corpse. He took a few steps, though it was difficult. His body felt insubstantial, like he was made of helium and cotton candy.
“I’ve looked better,” he decided. “I can’t move very well. But I’m all right.”
Akhlys clucked. “Oh, you’re definitely not all right.”
Percy frowned. “But we’ll pass unseen now? We can get to the Doors of Death?”
“Well, perhaps you could,” the goddess said, “if you lived that long, which you won’t.”
Akhlys spread her gnarled fingers. More plants bloomed along the edge of the pit—hemlock, nightshade, and oleander spreading toward Percy’s feet like a deadly carpet. “The Death Mist is not simply a disguise, you see. It is a state of being. I could not bring you this gift unless death followed—true death.”
“It’s a trap,” Annabeth said.
The goddess cackled. “Didn’t you expect me to betray you?”
“Yes,” Annabeth and Percy said together.
“Well, then, it was hardly a trap! More of an inevitability. Misery is inevitable. Pain is—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Percy growled. “Let’s get to the fighting.”
He drew Riptide, but the blade was made of smoke. When he slashed at Akhlys, the sword just floated across her like a gentle breeze.
The goddess’s ruined mouth split into a grin. “Did I forget to mention? You are only mist now—a shadow before death. Perhaps if you had time, you could learn to control your new form. But you do not have time. Since you cannot touch me, I fear any fight with Misery will be quite one-sided.”
Her fingernails grew into talons. Her jaw unhinged, and her yellow teeth elongated into fangs.
AKHLYS LUNGED AT PERCY, and for a split second he thought: Well, hey, I’m just smoke. She can’t touch me, right?
He imagined the Fates up in Olympus, laughing at his wishful thinking: LOL, NOOB!
The goddess’s claws raked across his chest and stung like boiling water.
Percy stumbled backward, but he wasn’t used to being smoky. His legs moved too slowly. His arms felt like tissue paper. In desperation, he threw his backpack at her, thinking maybe it would turn solid when it left his hand, but no such luck. It fell with a soft thud.
Akhlys snarled, crouching to spring. She would have bitten Percy’s face off if Annabeth hadn’t charged and screamed, “HEY!” right in the goddess’s ear.
Akhlys flinched, turning toward the sound.
She lashed out at Annabeth, but Annabeth was better at moving than Percy. Maybe she wasn’t feeling as smoky, or maybe she’d just had more combat training. She’d been at Camp Half-Blood since she was seven. Probably she’d had classes Percy never got, like How to Fight While Partially Made of Smoke.
Annabeth dove straight between the goddess’s legs and somersaulted to her feet. Akhlys turned and attacked, but Annabeth dodged again, like a matador.
Percy was so stunned, he lost a few precious seconds. He stared at corpse Annabeth, shrouded in mist but moving as fast and confidently as ever. Then it occurred to him why she was doing this: to buy them time. Which meant Percy needed to help.
He thought furiously, trying to come up with a way to defeat Misery. How could he fight when he couldn’t touch anything?
On Akhlys’s third attack, Annabeth wasn’t so lucky. She tried to veer aside, but the goddess grabbed Annabeth’s wrist and pulled her hard, sending her sprawling.
Before the goddess could pounce, Percy advanced, yelling and waving his sword. He still felt about as solid as a Kleenex, but his anger seemed to help him move faster.
“Hey, Happy!” he yelled.
Akhlys spun, dropping Annabeth’s arm. “Happy?” she demanded.
“Yeah!” He ducked as she swiped at his head. “You’re downright cheerful!”
“Arggh!” She lunged again, but she was off balance. Percy sidestepped and backed away, leading the goddess farther from Annabeth.
“Pleasant!” he called. “Delightful!”
The goddess snarled and winced. She stumbled after Percy. Each compliment seemed to hit her like sand in the face.
“I will kill you slowly!” she growled, her eyes and nose watering, blood dripping from her cheeks. “I will cut you into pieces as a sacrifice to Night!”
Annabeth struggled to her feet. She started rifling through her pack, no doubt looking for something that might help.
Percy wanted to give her more time. She was the brains. Better for him to get attacked while she came up with a brilliant plan.
“Cuddly!” Percy yelled. “Fuzzy, warm, and huggable!”
Akhlys made a growling, choking noise, like a cat having a seizure.
“A slow death!” she screamed. “A death from a thousand poisons!”
All around her, poisonous plants grew and burst like overfilled balloons. Green-and-white sap trickled out, collecting into pools, and began flowing across the ground toward Percy. The sweet-smelling fumes made his head feel wobbly.
“Percy!” Annabeth’s voice sounded far away. “Uh, hey, Miss Wonderful! Cheerful! Grins! Over here!”
But the goddess of misery was now fixated on Percy. He tried to retreat again. Unfortunately the poison ichor was flowing all around him now, making the ground steam and the air burn. Percy found himself stuck on an island of dust not much bigger than a shield. A few yards away, his backpack smoked and dissolved into a puddle of goo. Percy had nowhere to go.
He fell to one knee. He wanted to tell Annabeth to run, but he couldn’t speak. His throat was as dry as dead leaves.
He wished there were water in Tartarus—some nice pool he could jump into to heal himself, or maybe a river he could control. He’d settle for a bottle of Evian.
“You will feed the eternal darkness,” Akhlys said. “You will die in the arms of Night!”
He was dimly aware of
Annabeth shouting, throwing random pieces of drakon jerky at the goddess. The white-green poison kept pooling, little streams trickling from the plants as the venomous lake around him got wider and wider.
Lake, he thought. Streams. Water.
Probably it was just his brain getting fried from poison fumes, but he croaked out a laugh. Poison was liquid. If it moved like water, it must be partially water.
He remembered some science lecture about the human body being mostly water. He remembered extracting water from Jason’s lungs back in Rome.… If he could control that, then why not other liquids?
It was a crazy idea. Poseidon was the god of the sea, not of every liquid everywhere.
Then again, Tartarus had its own rules. Fire was drinkable. The ground was the body of a dark god. The air was acid, and demigods could be turned into smoky corpses.
So why not try? He had nothing left to lose.
He glared at the poison flood encroaching from all sides. He concentrated so hard that something inside him cracked—as if a crystal ball had shattered in his stomach.
Warmth flowed through him. The poison tide stopped.
The fumes blew away from him—back toward the goddess. The lake of poison rolled toward her in tiny waves and rivulets.
Akhlys shrieked. “What is this?”
“Poison,” Percy said. “That’s your specialty, right?”
He stood, his anger growing hotter in his gut. As the flood of venom rolled toward the goddess, the fumes began to make her cough. Her eyes watered even more.
Oh, good, Percy thought. More water.
Percy imagined her nose and throat filling with her own tears.
Akhlys gagged. “I—” The tide of venom reached her feet, sizzling like droplets on a hot iron. She wailed and stumbled back.
“Percy!” Annabeth called.
She’d retreated to the edge of the cliff, even though the poison wasn’t after her. She sounded terrified. It took Percy a moment to realize she was terrified of him.
“Stop…” she pleaded, her voice hoarse.
He didn’t want to stop. He wanted to choke this goddess. He wanted to watch her drown in her own poison. He wanted to see just how much misery Misery could take.
“Percy, please…” Annabeth’s face was still pale and corpse-like, but her eyes were the same as always. The anguish in them made Percy’s anger fade.
He turned to the goddess. He willed the poison to recede, creating a small path of retreat along the edge of the cliff.
“Leave!” he bellowed.
For an emaciated ghoul, Akhlys could run pretty fast when she wanted to. She scrambled along the path, fell on her face, and got up again, wailing as she sped into the dark.
As soon as she was gone, the pools of poison evaporated. The plants withered to dust and blew away.
Annabeth stumbled toward him. She looked like a corpse wreathed in smoke, but she felt solid enough when she gripped his arms.
“Percy, please don’t ever…” Her voice broke in a sob. “Some things aren’t meant to be controlled. Please.”
His whole body tingled with power, but the anger was subsiding. The broken glass inside him was beginning to smooth at the edges.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, okay.”
“We have to get away from this cliff,” Annabeth said. “If Akhlys brought us here as some kind of sacrifice…”
Percy tried to think. He was getting used to moving with the Death Mist around him. He felt more solid, more like himself. But his mind still felt stuffed with cotton.
“She said something about feeding us to the night,” he remembered. “What was that about?”
The temperature dropped. The abyss before them seemed to exhale.
Percy grabbed Annabeth and backed away from the edge as a presence emerged from the void—a form so vast and shadowy, he felt like he understood the concept of dark for the first time.
“I imagine,” said the darkness, in a feminine voice as soft as coffin lining, “that she meant Night, with a capital N. After all, I am the only one.”
THE WAY LEO FIGURED IT, he spent more time crashing than he did flying.
If there were a rewards card for frequent crashers, he’d be, like, double-platinum level.
He regained consciousness as he was free-falling through the clouds. He had a hazy memory of Khione taunting him right before he got shot into the sky. He hadn’t actually seen her, but he could never forget that snow witch’s voice. He had no idea how long he’d been gaining altitude, but at some point he must have passed out from the cold and the lack of oxygen. Now he was on his way down, heading for his biggest crash ever.
The clouds parted around him. He saw the glittering sea far, far below. No sign of the Argo II. No sign of any coastline, familiar or otherwise, except for one tiny island at the horizon.
Leo couldn’t fly. He had a couple of minutes at most before he’d hit the water and go ker-splat.
He decided he didn’t like that ending to the Epic Ballad of Leo.
He was still clutching the Archimedes sphere, which didn’t surprise him. Unconscious or not, he would never let go of his most valuable possession. With a little maneuvering, he managed to pull some duct tape from his tool belt and strap the sphere to his chest. That made him look like a low-budget Iron Man, but at least he had both hands free. He started to work, furiously tinkering with the sphere, pulling out anything he thought would help from his magic tool belt: a drop cloth, metal extenders, some string and grommets.
Working while falling was almost impossible. The wind roared in his ears. It kept ripping tools, screws, and canvas out of his hands, but finally he constructed a makeshift frame. He popped open a hatch on the sphere, teased out two wires, and connected them to his crossbar.
How long until he hit the water? Maybe a minute?
He turned the sphere’s control dial, and it whirred into action. More bronze wires shot from the orb, intuitively sensing what Leo needed. Cords laced up the canvas drop cloth. The frame began to expand on its own. Leo pulled out a can of kerosene and a rubber tube and lashed them to the thirsty new engine that the orb was helping him assemble.
Finally he made himself a rope halter and shifted so that the X-frame was attached to his back. The sea got closer and closer—a glittering expanse of slap-you-in-the-face death.
He yelled in defiance and punched the sphere’s override switch.
The engine coughed to life. The makeshift rotor turned. The canvas blades spun, but much too slowly. Leo’s head was pointed straight down at the sea—maybe thirty seconds to impact.
At least nobody’s around, he thought bitterly, or I’d be a demigod joke forever. What was the last thing to go through Leo’s mind? The Mediterranean.
Suddenly the orb got warm against his chest. The blades turned faster. The engine coughed, and Leo tilted sideways, slicing through the air.
“YES!” he yelled.
He had successfully created the world’s most dangerous personal helicopter.
He shot toward the island in the distance, but he was still falling much too fast. The blades shuddered. The canvas screamed.
The beach was only a few hundred yards away when the sphere turned lava-hot and the helicopter exploded, shooting flames in every direction. If he hadn’t been immune to fire, Leo would have been charcoal. As it was, the midair explosion probably saved his life. The blast flung Leo sideways while the bulk of his flaming contraption smashed into the shore at full speed with a massive KA-BOOM!
Leo opened his eyes, amazed to be alive. He was sitting in a bathtub-sized crater in the sand. A few yards away, a column of thick black smoke roiled into the sky from a much larger crater. The surrounding beach was peppered with smaller pieces of burning wreckage.
“My sphere.” Leo patted his chest. The sphere wasn’t there. His duct tape and rope halter had disintegrated.
He struggled to his feet. None of his bones seemed broken, which was good; but mostly he was worried about his Archim
edes sphere. If he’d destroyed his priceless artifact to make a flaming thirty-second helicopter, he was going to track down that stupid snow goddess Khione and smack her with a monkey wrench.
He staggered across the beach, wondering why there weren’t any tourists or hotels or boats in sight. The island seemed perfect for a resort, with blue water and soft white sand. Maybe it was uncharted. Did they still have uncharted islands in the world? Maybe Khione had blasted him out of the Mediterranean altogether. For all he knew, he was in Bora Bora.
The larger crater was about eight feet deep. At the bottom, the helicopter blades were still trying to turn. The engine belched smoke. The rotor croaked like a stepped-on frog, but dang—pretty impressive for a rush job.
The helicopter had apparently crashed onto something. The crater was littered with broken wooden furniture, shattered china plates, some half-melted pewter goblets, and burning linen napkins. Leo wasn’t sure why all that fancy stuff had been on the beach, but at least it meant that this place was inhabited, after all.
Finally he spotted the Archimedes sphere—steaming and charred but still intact, making unhappy clicking noises in the center of the wreckage.
“Sphere!” he yelled. “Come to Papa!”
He skidded to the bottom of the crater and snatched up the sphere. He collapsed, sat cross-legged, and cradled the device in his hands. The bronze surface was searing hot, but Leo didn’t care. It was still in one piece, which meant he could use it.
Now, if he could just figure out where he was, and how to get back to his friends.…
He was making a mental list of tools he might need when a girl’s voice interrupted him: “What are you doing? You blew up my dining table!”
Immediately Leo thought: Uh-oh.
He’d met a lot of goddesses, but the girl glaring down at him from the edge of the crater actually looked like a goddess.
She wore a sleeveless white Greek-style dress with a gold braided belt. Her hair was long, straight, and golden brown—almost the same cinnamon-toast color as Hazel’s, but the similarity to Hazel ended there. The girl’s face was milky pale, with dark, almond-shaped eyes and pouty lips. She looked maybe fifteen, about Leo’s age, and, sure, she was pretty; but with that angry expression on her face she reminded Leo of every popular girl in every school he’d ever attended—the ones who made fun of him, gossiped a lot, thought they were so superior, and basically did everything they could to make his life miserable.