"................. Do you have to keep following me?"
The boy, who refused to tell me his name, spun on his heels and stared at me. We were standing in another junction in the labyrinth. The cavern we stood in glowed softly under the green light of mushrooms. The cavern was damp and covered in a soft layer of moss and water dripped from the rocks overhead. We had entered this place through a service tunnel to our right. Another entrance, similar to the service tunnel behind us, was positioned next to it.
I shrugged, glancing at the entrance to our left. "We are going the same way."
The boy extended his hand towards the four pathways ahead of us. "Which way are you going down?"
I shrugged again and readjusted my praetor cloak. I glanced again at the entrance of the left tunnel behind us, feeling as though we were being watched. "That's none of your business."
The boy squinted. "If you follow me down the same way again, I'll hurt you."
I smirked. "Sure."
The boy went down the pathway to the right and I followed him. He spun around and drew his black sword. "ENOUGH! Leave me alone!"
I sighed and rested on the stone wall nearby. "Dude. We are both lost. We've fought like four sets of monster together already, I've saved you three times already, can't you just trust me?"
The boy slapped his forehead and dramatically pulled his hand down over his face in frustration. "I don't care if you can't handle yourself down here. I don't care if you get where you need to go. I don't care about YOU. All I want is to find Justice and her crew. Your wearing purple, I assume you are on the same team. We can see each other at her base camp or whatever. Since you seem to CARE so much about where I'm going."
The disappointment I felt when he mentioned Justice and how he wanted to find her weighed heavy on my chest. "You did not just say you wanted to find Justice..........."
The boy gripped his sword tighter. "So? You are a part of Justice's crew, right...."
The two of us stared at each other, neither making a move. My instincts, honed by Lupa, were telling me to prepare myself for conflict. However, despite my urge to attack first, I restrained myself. I took a deep breath and took a few steps back, trying to de-escalate the situation.
The boy, with his black sword still pointed at me, began walking backwards towards the pathway he had chosen.
I could have let him go, faced him at a later date, but something told me not to. I thought back to when we were first met. I had stumbled along on a ritual this boy and a number of ghost were performing. The boy had a desperate look in his eyes as he chanted in a ancient tongue to a Happy Meal box from McDonald's placed in a empty pit shaped like a coffin. I didn't understand anything he or the ghost were saying, except a single name.
Bianca Di Angelo.
Ghost.
Ritual.
Ancient chants.
Happy Meals.
Trying to find Justice.
I pieced each of the hints together while the two of us stared at each other. The boy had began turning towards the pathway, but I stopped him.
"Justice won't be able to bring her back." I finally said.
The boy stopped, his back still facing me. "What did you say?"
I pulled my coin and played with it in my hand. "Justice and Luke said they could bring her back from the dead. You don't seem like the trusting type of person, so you tried to do it alone. You failed. Now your desperate, so your hoping to strike a deal with Justice for your sisters life in exchange for your services." I flipped the coin and caught it, it landed on heads. "She can't help you, but I can."
The boy turned around, his eyes red with anger...... and grief. "How do you know all of this?"
I looked him in the eye. "Justice made a lot of promises to a lot of vulnerable demigods in my camp. And a lot of my campers followed her, believing the same lie she told you."
The boy gritted his teeth and stomped over to me, he stopped in front of me, his dark black eyes locked with my own. If he wasn't so short, we would be eye to eye right now. "You think I'm weak. Just like every one else. I don't need anyone to bring my sister back. I WILL bring her back. Besides, if Justice can't help me, what can you do to help me?"
I kept my eyes locked with his. "Tell you the truth. Bianca's gone and she's never coming back."
I was not expecting this kid to have a mean push kick, but he did.
I stumbled backwards, having to roll on my back and back to my feet to prevent myself from falling flat on my back.
"LIAR! I'M THE SON OF HADES, I CAN BRING HER BACK!" The boy shouted.
What came next was genuinely terrifying. Now usually, when demigods used their powers, their eyes glowed a certain color. For example, according to Reyna, my eyes glowed electric blue when I used my Jupiter powers or whatever. Reyna's eyes glowed purple and Gwen's would glow golden.
This boy.... His black eyes rolled to the back of his head and his eyes glowed a haunting white color. The mushrooms around us dimmed, as the presence of death weighed heavy.
The boy, his eyes no longer visible, took a deep breath to steady himself. "If you.... I will...... This is your last warning!"
Despite his super scary bad vibes, I gritted my teeth and held my ground. I took my coin out of my pocket, the boy tensed, waiting for my next move. "Go ahead!" He shouted. "Give me an excuse to kill you!"
I threw the coins to the ground. "I'm not fighting you. If you want to kill me, you can try. But I'm not letting you follow Luke or Justice."
The air became colder and my breathing became more labored. The boys skull became more visible with each passing second as his skin became more transparent. "Final warning." He said again.
I steeled myself. "You can try and scare me all you want, but I can see right through you. You don't want to hurt me. You don't want to hurt anyone." I got on my knees. "I lost someone too. My sister, when I was young. We were separated by the gods. I....... I don't know what happened to her. She could be dead....."
My voice trailed off as I tried to fight the urge not to cry. As I spoke, the air became warmer and the boy's aura of death faded. "Why do you still fight for the gods?" He asked quietly.
I wiped my eyes. "I don't fight for them. I've never even met a god before. I fight for my fellow legionnaires. For my.... Friends." The first person to pop in my head was Reyna, despite me still being upset with her. Then there was Gwen, Sam, Bronk and so on.
I looked up at him, his black eyes having returned. "I believe there is a way to change the way the gods do things. To make the lives of all demigods better. But the way Justice and Luke are going about it.... Campaigning for war and death. That's not the way. And as much as I miss my sister........ I couldn't sacrifice the world to bring her back and I don't think she would want me too."
The boy stared at me, his ghostly aura having faded. "I would give anything to bring her back." He said quietly, but I could sense a hint of doubt in his voice, as if he were pondering how much he would be willing to sacrifice.
The boy sheathed his sword.
I let out a small sigh of relief. I stood up and stepped forward to him and extended my hand. "Now can we start from the top? You already know I'm Jason, but-"
I was cut short, by...... Something? Something or someone slapped my hand down, but I couldn't see who had done so. Something kneed me in the gut, grabbed my hair to pull me back up and then scooped me under my arms and slammed me to the ground.
The boy stumbled backwards. "What the hades are you doing?" He exclaimed.
I gasped. "Me!? Get this ghost off-"
Something that felt like a foot slammed against the side of my head while they twisted my right arm.
"Where did the coins go!?" A voice said over me.
The "thing" holding me removed their baseball cap and they were in fact a real person. A young girl, about my age, stood with her left foot on the right side of my face as she twisted my right arm with both of her hands. She had long, blonde curly hair tied up and stormy grey eyes. Eyes that reminded me a lot of Medusa's (long story). She wore an orange T-Shirt that read "Camp Half-Blood" and Jean shorts with a bronze knife strapped on her left leg. Her black converses smelled like dirt and mushrooms.
"Annabeth!?" The boy exclaimed. "What the hades are you doing here?"
The girl, named Annabeth, turned her attention to the boy. "Your welcome, Nico. If I hadn't stepped in, who knows what this guy would have done to you." She turned her attention back to me. "Where is the coin!?"
I tried to answer her, but she was pressing her foot a little to hard on my face. Out of fear she wouldn't let me plead my case, I summoned the winds around me and launched her and myself into the air.
Annabeth landed on her feet after a perfect back flip, I remained in the air, wiping dirt out of my face.
The boy, Nico, had his mouth wide open. "You can fly?" He said with almost child like innocence.
Annabeth drew a bronze dagger from her leg. "Nico, focus up. He's a Roman, he can't be trusted."
She said the word Roman with enough venom to kill Hannibal the elephant.
I pulled both coins out of my pocket.
"AHA!" The girl exclaimed. "I knew it came-"
I threw the coins at her feet.
Instead of being dumbfounded, like I would have hoped, she tackled Nico heroically while shouting. "Get down!"
The two of them landed with a hard thud on the mossy ground.
I spit dirt out of my mouth. "No you....." I groaned in frustration, trying not to say any bad words Dakota taught me. "That coin turns into a weapon! Nico, tell her."
Nico pushed her off of him. "Yeah, Annabeth, it turns into a sword. Plus don't call me Nico, we are not on a first name bases yet."
"Thank you!" I exclaimed. "Wait what? Really Nico?"
The girl got up and dusted herself off. "I didn't know that," she said nonchalantly, but I could see her cheeks getting darker in the low light of the mushrooms.
She turned to me, her eyes still defiant. "Just because you've disarmed yourself doesn't mean your not a threat. Clearly, because you can fly. How do we know if we can trust you?"
"Whoa," Nico interjected and made a T symbol with his hands. "There is no 'we' in this situation. It's just..... us? Wait-"
Annabeth shushed him and turned her attention back to me. "Enough with the fake sob story. You want us to trust you, then you tell us why a Praetor, a high ranking official of the legion, is doing wandering around the labyrinth? Especially since many of Justice's forces are also down here."
I blinked. "How... " I readjusted my Praetor badge, prepared to accuse her of working with Luke, but I stopped myself. She was just as concerned with Justice as I was. "How do you know I'm a Praetor?"
The girl crossed her arms. "I did my homework, the badge and cloak give it all away. But your not the one asking the questions here. Why are you down here?"
I sighed and descended to the ground, but wisely kept my distance from her. "This is a big misunderstanding. I'm not your enemy. My name is Jason, I'm a Praetor of the twelfth fulmentia and a son of Jupiter."
Her eyes widen. "Jupiter? The Roman incarnation of Zeus? That can't be, the big three took an oath to never have children after World War Two."
Nico sighed and kicked some moss. "Thanks for reminding me."
I shrugged. "Looks like the Roman version of my dad didn't seem to care about that oath. Neither did Neptune, since the other Praetor in my camp is his son."
Annabeth nearly choked. "Neptune? Oh no no no, this isn't right." The girl bit the tip of her thumb. "Percy was supposed to be.... Especially after Thalia joined the hunters...."
Nico groaned behind her at the mention of Percy. I on the other hand nearly had a heart attack at the mention of Thalia.
"You know Thalia!?" I asked her. "Thalia Grace!? That's my sister!"
The girl scoffed. "Duh, she is a daughter of Zeus..... But are Jupiter and Zeus consider two separate beings? I wonder-"
I rushed forward, but was cut short when she pointed her dagger in my direction. Her expression went from guarded to confusion. "Why are you crying?"
I wiped my tears. "My name is Jason Grace. She is MY sister."