BONES

"old enemy"

     LOSING HER SIGHT HAD BEEN BAD ENOUGH. Being isolated from Ariadne had been horrible.

But now that she could see again, watching her die slowly from Medusa's curse and being unable to do anything about it—that was the worst curse of all.

Bob slung Ariadne over his shoulder like a bag of sports equipment while the skeleton kitten Small Bob curled up on Ariadne's back and purred. Bob lumbered along at a fast pace, even for a Titan, which made it almost impossible for Annabeth to keep up.

Her Ming's rattled. Her skin had started to blister again. She probably needed another drink of fire water, but they'd left the River Phlegethon behind. Her body was so sore and battered that she'd forgotten what it was like not to be in pain.

"How much longer?" she wheezed.

"Almost too long," Bob called back. "But maybe not."

The landscape changed again. They were still going downhill, which should have made traveling easier, but the ground slopes at just the wrong angle—too steep to jog, too treacherous to let her guard down even for a moment. The surface was sometimes loose gravel, sometimes patches of slime. Annabeth stepped around random bristles sharp enough to impale her foot, and clusters of...well, not rocks exactly. More like warts the size of watermelons. If Annabeth had to guess she supposed Bob was leading her down the length of Tartarus's large intestine.

The air got thicker and stank sewage. The darkness maybe wasn't quite as intense, but she could only see Bob because of the glint of his white hair and the point of his spear. She noticed he hadn't retracted the spearhead on his broom since their fight with the arai. That didn't reassure her.

Ariadne flopped around, causing the kitten to readjust his nest in the small of Ariadne's back. Occasionally Ariadne would groan in pain, and Annabeth felt like a fist was squeezing her heart.

She thought about how Ariadne was apart of Percy's daydream of New Rome—the two of them settling down there, going to college together. At first, the idea of losing her two best friends among Romans had appalled her.

Now she is willing to accept it, if she also got to do it with Andrea, her poor girlfriend who was most definitely worried and wanting to wring her neck.

She had to concentrate on the present, putting one foot in front of the other, taking this downhill intestinal hike one giant wart at a time.

Her knees felt warm and wobbly, like wire hangers bent to the point of snapping. Ariadne groaned and muttered something she couldn't make out.

Bob stopped suddenly. "Look."

Ahead in the gloom, the terrain leveled out into a black swamp. Sulphur-yellow mist hung in the air. Even without sunlight, there were actual plants—clumps of reeds, scrawny leafless trees, even a few sickly-looking flowers blooming in the muck. Mossy trails wound between bubbling tar pits. Directly in front of Annabeth, sunk into the bog, were footprints the size of trash can lids, with long, pointed toes.

Sadly, Annabeth was pretty sure she knew what had made them. "Drakon?"

"Yes." Bob grinned at her. "That is good!"

"Uh...why?"

"Because we are close."

Annabeth wanted to scream. She hated being at the mercy of a Titan—especially one who was slowly recovering his memory and bringing them to see a 'good' giant.

But Bob had Ariadne. If she hesitated, she would lose them in the dark. She hurried after him, hopping from most patch to moss patch and praying to Athena that she didn't fall in a sinkhole.

At least the terrain forced Bob to go more slowly. Once Annabeth caught up, she could walk right behind him and keep an eye on Ariadne, who was muttering deliriously, her forehead dangerously hot. Several times she mumbled Percy. The kitten just purred louder and snuggled up.

Finally the yellow mist patted, revealing a muddy clearing like an island in the muck. The ground was dotted with stunted trees and wart mounds. In the  entre loomed a large, domed but made of bones and greenish leather. Smoke rose from a home in the top. The entrance was covered with curtains of scaly reptile skin and, flanking the entrance, two torches made from colossal femur bones burned bright yellow.

What really caught Annabeth's attention was the drakon skull. Fifty yards into the clearing, about halfway to the hut, a massive oak tree jutted from the ground at a forty-five degree angle. The jaws of a drakon skull encircled the trunk, as if the oak tree were the dead monster's tongue.

"Yes," Bob murmured. "This is very good."

Before she could protest, Small Bob arched his back and hissed. Behind them, a mighty roar echoed through the swamp—a sound Annabeth had last heard in the Battle of Manhattan.

She turned and saw the drakon charging towards them.

***

     ARIADNE ALMOST HAD A HEART ATTACK AT THE SIGHT OF THE GIANT ABOVE HER. He was about twenty feet tall—typical giant height—with a humanoid upper body and scaly reptilian legs, like a bipedal dinosaur. He wore only a shirt stitched together from sheep hides and green-spotted leather. His skin was cherry-red; his beard and hair the collie of iron rust, braided with tufts of grass, leaves and swamp flowers.

Her mouth was warm and the delicious taste of broth filled her throat. Eyes fluttered in delight while she struggled to sit up, her body spiked with adrenaline. The giants handled her with surprising gentleness, murmuring words of encouragement she barely missed.

She spotted Annabeth and gave her a drunken grin. "Feel great."

Surprisingly, her eyes were wide and focused.

"It should have put her in a few hours of sleep," Damasen pronounced, who was just introduced to Ariadne by a sobbing Annabeth. "Huh."

Annabeth continued to cry into her hair. "Thank you," she said.

Damasen stared at her mournfully. "Oh, don't thank me. You're still doomed. And I require payment for my services."

Ariadne's mouth went dry. "Uh...what sort of payment?"

Her voice was sore, her limbs stiff and kind dizzy but she was alive.

"A story." The giant's glittered. "It gets boring in Tartarus. You can tell me your story while we at, eh?"

Ariadne liked that. She ate three bowls before Annabeth even took a sip of her first, and she felt a bit self conscious but considering the situation she was taking advantage of it. Although she felt uneasy telling a giant about their plans. Still, Damasen was a good host. He'd saved Ariadne. His drakon-meat stew was excellent. His hut was warm and comfortable, and for the first time since plunging into Tartarus Ariadne felt like she could relax. Which was ironic, since she was having dinner with a Titan and a giant.

Annabeth told Damasen about her life and her adventures with Ariadne, who nodded and added expressions before explaining her own stories.

"Ariadne was trying to do something good," Annabeth promised Bob. "She knows it's not right."

Bob washed his bowl with his squirt bottle and rag.

Damasen made a rolling gesture with his spoon. "Continue your story, Annabeth Chase."

She explained about their quest in the Argo II. When she got to the part about stopping Gaia from walking, she faltered. "She's, um...she's your mom, right?"

Damasen scraped his bowl. His face was covered with old poison burns, gouges and scar tissue, so it looked like the surface of an asteroid.

"Yes," he said. "And Tartarus is my father." He gestures around the hut. "As you can see, I was a disappointment to my parents. They expected...more from me."

Ariadne nodded in understanding. She had disappointed many people, so she could compare notes with him. Besides, how could you leave home and ever be independent of your parents, when they ig weakly encompassed the entire world.

"So..." she said. "You don't mind us fighting your mom?"

Damasen snorted like a bull. "Best of luck. At present, it's my father you should worry about. With him opposing you, you have no chance to survive."

"Opposing us how?" she asked.

"All of this." Damasen cracked a drakon bone and used a splinter as a toothpick. "All that you see is the body of Tartarus, or at least one manifestation of it. He knows you are here. He tried to thwart your progress at every step. My brethren hunt you. It is remarkable you have lived this long, even with the help of Iapetus."

Bob scowled when he heard his name. "The defeated ones hunt us, yes. They will be close behind now."

Damasen spat out his toothpick. "I can obscure your path for a while, long enough for you to rest. I have power in this swamp. But eventually they will catch you."

"My friends must reach the Doors of Death," Bob said. "That is the way out."

"Impossible," Damasen muttered. "The Doors are too well guarded."

Annabeth sat forward. "But you know where they are?"

"Of course. All of Tartarus flows down to one place: his heart. The Doors of Death are there. But you cannot make it there alive with only Iapetus."

"Then come with us," Ariadne said. "Help us."

"HA!"

Annabeth jumped. In the soft bed, Ariadne muttered in possible delirium. "Ha, ha, ha."

"Child of Dionysus," the giant said, "I am not your friend. I helped mortals once, and you see where it got me."

"You helped mortals?" Annabeth knew a lot about Greek legends, but she drew a total blank on the name Damasen. "I—I don't understand."

"Bad story," Bob explained. "Good giants have bad stories. Damasen was created to oppose Ares."

"Yes," the giant agreed. "Like all my brethren, I was born to answer a certain god. My foe was Ares. But Ares was a god of war. And so when I was born—"

"You were his opposite," Ariadne guessed. "You were peaceful."

"Peaceful for a giant, at least." Damasen sighed. "I wandered the fields of Maeonia, in the land you now call Turkey. I tended my sheep and collected my herbs. It was a good life. But u would not fight the gifs. My mother and father cursed me for that. The final insult: one day the Maeonian drakon killed a human sheppard, a friend of mine, so I hunted the creature down and slew it, thrusting a tree straight through its mouth. I used the power of the earth to regrow the tree's roots, planting the drakon firmly in the ground. I made sure it would terrorize mortals no more. That was a deed Gaia could not forgive."

"Because you helped someone?"

"Yes." Damasen looked ashamed. "Gaia opened the earth, and I was consumed, exiled here in the belly of my father Tartarus, where all the useless flotsam collects—all the bits of creation he does not care for." The giant plucked a flower out of his hair and regarded it absently. "They let me live, tending my sheep, collecting my herbs, so I might know the uselessness of the life I chose. Every day—of what passes for day in this lightless place—the Maeonian drakon reforms and attacks me. Killing it is my endless task."

Ariadne gazed around the gut, trying to imagine how many aeons Damasen had been exiled here—slaying the drakon, collecting its bones and hide and meat, knowing it would attack again the next day. She could barely imagine surviving a week in Tartarus. Exiling your own son here for centuries—that was beyond cruel.

"Break the curse," Annabeth and Ariadne both blurted out. "Come with us."

Damasen chuckled sourly. "As simple as that. Don't you think I've tried to leave this place? It is impossible. No matter which direction I travel, I end up here again. The swamp is the only thing I know—the only destination I can imagine. No, little demigods. My curse has overtaken me. I have no hope left."

"No hope," Bob echoed.

"There must be a way."

Ariadne placed her bowl down. "Bob had a lean to reach the Doors of Death," she insisted. "He said we could hide in some sort of Death Mist."

"Death Mist?" Damasen scowled at Bob. "You would take them to Akhlys?"

"It is the only way," Bob said.

"You will die," Damasen said. "Painfully. In darkness. Akhlys trusts no one and helps no one."

Bob looked like he wanted to argue, but he pressed his lips together and remained silent.

"Is there another way?" Annabeth asked.

"No," Damasen said. "The Death Mist...that is the best plan. Unfortunately, it is a terrible plan."

Her mouth went dry. Amethyst eyes scoured the giant's eyes for hope, but found none.

Annabeth said something that fell on her ringing ears, exhaustion seeping into her every wound where stone once infested her body.

"Get some sleep," the giant said. "I will prepare supplies for your journey. I am sorry, but I cannot do more."

Ariadne wanted to argue, but, as soon as he said sleep, her body betrayed her, despite her resolution to never sleep in Tartarus again. The medicine Damasen fed her before must have kicked in, and the fire made a pleasant crackling sound. The herbs in the air reminded her of the hills around Camp Half-Blood in the summer, when the satyrs and naiads gathered wild plants in the lazy afternoons.

"Yeah, sleep..." she agreed.

Bob scooped Annabeth up like a rag doll. She didn't protest. He set her next to Ariadne on the giant's bed, and they closed their eyes.

authors note:

ITS BEEN TOO LONG

IVE BEEN SO BUSY. What's crazy is that I started this series right before my freshman year, and I'm now a month into my senior year. I'm losing my mind.

I'm sorry it's been delayed for months, but a girl has got responsibilities sadly. I love you all and let me know how you like it!

Q: How are you guys?

A: Im doing well! Homecoming is in a couple of weeks and I get to see Sabrina Carpenter in Chicago in October!

Love you guys!