✦ ༉‧₊˚⋆˚( ᵖᵉʳᶠᵉᶜᵗ ʷᵒʳˡᵈ )˚⁺✧₊˚.*♡

🍦— 006. the tongue of the old times.

VIVI DIDN'T KNOW her first ever quest as a daughter of Hermes would be this boring and confusing. The left tunnel was straight with no side exits, twists, or turns, but, it was a dead end. After sprinting a hundred yards, the group ran into an enormous boulder that completely blocked their path. Behind them, the sounds of dragging footsteps and heavy breathing echoed down the corridor. Something ─ definitely not human ─ was following them.

"Tyson," Percy said, "can you ─ "

"Yes!" he slammed his shoulder against the rock so hard the whole tunnel shook. Dust trickled from the stone ceiling.

"Hurry!" Grover said. "Don't bring the roof down, but hurry!"

The boulder finally gave way with a horrible grinding noise. Tyson pushed it into a small room and the group dashed through behind it.

"Close the entrance!" Annabeth said. 

They all got on the other side of the boulder and pushed. Whatever was chasing them wailed in frustration as they heaved the rock back into place and sealed the corridor.

"We trapped it," Percy said.

"We are trapped." Vivi said.

Everyone turned. They were in a twenty-foot-square cement room, and the opposite wall was covered with metal bars. They had tunneled straight into a cell.

"What in Hades?" Annabeth tugged on the bars.

They didn't budge. Through the bars there were rows of cells in a ring around a dark courtyard ─ at least three stories of metal doors and metal catwalks.

"A prison," Percy said. "Maybe Tyson can break ─ "

"Shh," said Grover. "Listen."

Somewhere above them, deep sobbing echoed through the building. There was another sound, too ─ a raspy voice muttering. . . how did Vivi understand that.

"What the fuck!" Vivi said. "That is not good."

Percy turned towards her, "You understand that?"

"I don't know how!"

Tyson's eye widened. "Can't be." he grabbed two bars on our cell door and bent them wide enough for even a Cyclops to slip through.

"Wait!" Grover called.

But Tyson wasn't about to wait. They ran after him. The prison was dark, only a few dim fluorescent lights flickering above.

"I know this place," Annabeth said. "This is Alcatraz."

"You mean that island near San Francisco?"

She nodded. "My school took a field trip here. It's like a museum."

Vivi knew that the Labyrinth changes its place, but, could they have travelled that much in such a short amount of time? It seemed impossible.

"Freeze," Grover warned. But Tyson kept going. Grover grabbed his arm and pulled him back with all his strength. "Stop, Tyson! Can't you see it?"

Vivi's stomach turned into knots. On the second-floor balcony, across the courtyard, was a monster more horrible than any other.

It was sort of like a centaur, with a woman's body from the waist up. But instead of a horse's lower body, it had the body of a dragon  ─ at least twenty feet long, black and scaly with enormous claws and a barbed tail. Her legsblooked like they were tangled in vines, but then the girl realized they were sprouting snakes, hundreds of vipers darting around, constantly looking for something to bite. The woman's hair was also made of snakes. Weirdest of all, around her waist, where the woman part met the dragon part, her skin bubbled and morphed, occasionally producing the heads of animals ─ a vicious wolf, a bear, a lion, as if she were wearing a belt of ever-changing creatures. 

"It's her," Tyson whimpered.

"Get down!" Grover said.

They crouched in the shadows, but the monster wasn't paying any attention to them. It seemed to be talking to someone inside a cell on the second floor. That's where the sobbing was coming from. The dragon woman's voice made Vivi's spine prickle.

"What's she saying?" Percy muttered. "What's that language?"

"The tongue of the old times." Tyson shivered. "What Mother Earth spoke to Titans and. . . her other children. Before the gods."

"You understand it?" Percy asked. "Can you translate?"

Tyson closed his eyes and began to speak in a horrible, raspy woman's voice. "You will work for the master or suffer."

Annabeth shuddered. "I hate it when he does that."

Vivi agreed. She remembers Annabeth telling her that all Cyclopes, including Tyson, had superhuman hearing and an uncanny ability to mimic voices. It was almost like he entered a trance when he spoke in other voices.

"I will not serve," Tyson said in a deep, wounded voice. He switched to the monster's voice: "Then I shall enjoy your pain, Briares." Tyson faltered when he said that name. Vivi wanted to aks if he was okay, but he kept on going, "If you thought your first imprisonment was unbearable, you have yet to feel true torment. Think on this until I return."

The dragon lady tromped toward the stairwell, vipers hissing around her legs like grass skirts. She spread wings that Vivi hadn't noticed before─ huge batwings she kept folded against her dragon back. She leaped off the catwalk and soared across the courtyard. Vivi and the rest crouched lower in the shadows. A hot sulfurous wind blasted her face as the monster flew over. Then she disappeared around the corner.

"H-h-horrible," Grover said. "I've never smelled any monster that strong."

"Cyclopes' worst nightmare," Tyson murmured. "Kampê."

"Who?"

Tyson swallowed. "Every Cyclops knows about her. Stories about her scare us when we're babies. She was our jailer in the bad years."

Annabeth nodded. "I remember now. When the Titans ruled, they imprisoned Gaea and Ouranos's earlier children ─ the Cyclopes and the Hekatonkheires."

"The Heka-what?" Percy asked.

"Hekatonkheires," Vivi said, "Keep up."

Percy rolled his eyes.

"The Hundred-Handed Ones," Annabeth said. "They called them that because.. . well, they had a hundred hands. They were elder brothers of the Cyclopes."

"Very powerful," Tyson said. "Wonderful! As tall as the sky. So strong they could break mountains!"

"Cool," Percy said. "Unless you're a mountain."

"Kampê was the jailer," he said. "She worked for Kronos. She kept our brothers locked up in Tartarus, tortured them always, until Zeus came. He killed Kampê and freed Cyclopes and Hundred-Handed-Ones to help fight against the Titans in the big war."

"And now Kampê is back,"

"Bad," Tyson summed up.

"So who's in that cell?" Percy asked. "You said a name ─ "

"Briares!" Tyson perked up. "He is a Hundred-Handed One. They are astall as the sky and ─ "

"Yeah," Percy said. "They break mountains."

Vivi pursed her lips and looked up at the cells above them, wondering how something as tall as the sky could fit in a tiny cell, and why he was crying.

"I guess we should check it out," Annabeth said, "before Kampê comes back."

Now, either Tyson lied ( which is not likely to happen ) or either the sky isn't tall. Briares was human-size and his skin was very pale, the color of milk. He wore a loincloth like a big diaper. His feet seemed too big for his body, with cracked dirty toenails, eight toes one ach foot. But the top half of his body was the weird part. His chest sprouted more arms than the girl could count, in rows, all around his body. The arms looked like normal arms, but there were so many of them, all tangled together, that his chest looked kind of like a forkful of spaghetti somebody had twirled together. Several of his hands were covering his face as he sobbed.

"Either the sky isn't as tall as it used to be," Percy muttered, "or he's short."

Tyson didn't pay any attention. He fell to his knees. "Briares!" he called.

The sobbing stopped.

"Great Hundred-Handed One!" Tyson said. "Help us!"

Briares looked up. His face was long and sad, with a crooked nose and bad teeth. He had deep brown eyes ─ completely brown with no whites or black pupils, like eyes formed out of clay. 

"Run while you can, Cyclops," Briares said miserably. "I cannot even help myself."

"You are a Hundred-Handed One!" Tyson insisted. "You can do anything!"

Briares wiped his nose with five or six hands. Several others were fidgeting with little pieces of metal and wood from a broken bed. The hands seemed to have a mind of their own. They built a toy boat out of wood, then disassembled it just as fast. Other hands were scratching at the cement floor for no apparent reason. Others were playing rock, paper, scissors. A few others were making ducky and doggie shadow puppets against the wall.

"I cannot," Briares moaned. "Kampê is back! The Titans will rise and throw us back into Tartarus."

"Put on your brave face!" Tyson said.

Immediately Briares's face morphed into something else. Same brown eyes, but otherwise totally different features. He had an upturned nose, arched eyebrows, and a weird smile, like he was trying to act brave. But then his face turned back to what it had been before.

"No good," he said. "My scared face keeps coming back."

"How did you do that?" Percy asked.

Annabeth elbowed the boy. "Don't be rude. The Hundred-Handed Ones have fifty different faces."

"Must make it hard to get a yearbook picture," Percy said.

Vivi face palmed herself.

Tyson was still entranced. "It will be okay, Briares! We will help you! Can I have your autograph?"

Briares sniffled. "Do you have one hundred pens?"

"Guys," Grover interrupted. "We have to get out of here. Kampê will be back. She'll sense us sooner or later."

"Break the bars," Annabeth said.

"Yes!" Tyson said, smiling proudly. "Briares can do it. He is very strong. Stronger than Cyclopes, even! Watch!"

Briares whimpered. A dozen of his hands started playing patty-cake, but none of them made any attempt to break the bars.

"If he's so strong," Percy said, "why is he stuck in jail?"

"How are you so insensitive?" Vivi said. 

"He's terrified," Annabeth whispered. "Kampê imprisoned him in Tartarus for thousands of years. How would you feel?"

The Hundred-Handed One covered his face again.

"Briares?" Tyson asked. "What. . . what is wrong? Show us your great strength!"

"Tyson," Annabeth said, "I think you'd better break the bars."

Tyson's smile melted slowly. "I will break the bars," he repeated. He grabbed the cell door and ripped it off its hinges like it was made of wet clay.

"Come on, Briares," Annabeth said. "Let's get you out of here."

She held out her hand. For a second, Briares's face morphed to a hopeful expression. Several of his arms reached out, but twice as many slapped them away. 

"I cannot," he said. "She will punish me."

"It's all right," Annabeth promised. "You fought the Titans before, and you won, remember?"

"I remember the war." Briares's face morphed again ─ furrowed brow and a pouting mouth.  "Lightning shook the world. We threw many rocks. The Titans and the monsters almost won. Now they are getting strong again. Kampê said so."

"Don't listen to her," Percy said. "Come on!"

He didn't move. 

"One game of rock, paper, scissors," Percy blurted out. "If I win, you come with us. If I lose, we'll leave you in jail."

Vivi and Annabeth looked at him like he was crazy ( which wouldn't be far from the truth ).

Briares's face morphed to doubtful. "I always win rock, paper, scissors."

"Then let's do it!"

Percy pounded his fist in his palm three times. Briares did the same with all one hundred hands, which sounded like an army marching three steps forward. He came up with a whole avalanche of rocks, a classroom set of scissors, and enough paper to make a fleet of airplanes.

"I told you," he said sadly. "I always ─ " his face morphed to confusion. "What is that you made?"

"A gun," Percy answered, showing him his finger gun. "A gun beats anything."

"That's not fair."

"I didn't say anything about fair. Kampê's not going to be fair if we hang around. She's going to blame you for ripping off the bars. Now come on!"

Briares sniffled. "Demigods are cheaters."

But he slowly rose to his feet and followed the group out of the cell. It was simple now: all they had to do was to get downstairs and find the Labyrinth entrance. But then Tyson froze. On the ground floor right below, Kampê was snarling at them.

"The other way," Percy said. 

They bolted down the catwalk. Briares was happy to follow them. In fact, he sprinted out front, a hundred arms waving in panic. Behind them, Vivi heard the sound of giant wings as Kampê took to the air. She hissed and growled in her ancient language ─ kill. 

They scrambled down the stairs, through a corridor, and past a guard's station ─ out into another block of prison cells.

"Left," Annabeth said. "I remember this from the tour."

No one argued. The group bursted outside and found themselves in the prison yard, ringed by security towers and barbed wire. After being inside so long, Vivi squinted in the daylight. Tourists were milling around, taking pictures. The wind whipped cold off the bay. In the south, San Francisco gleamed all white and beautiful, but in the north, over Mount Tamalpais, huge storm clouds swirled. 

"It's even worse," Annabeth said, gazing to the north. "The storms have been bad all year, but that ─ "

"Keep moving," Briares wailed. "She is behind us!"

They ran to the far end of the yard, as far from the cell-block as possible.

"Kampê's too big to get through the doors," Percy said hopefully.

"Don't ─ " Vivi begun.

Then the wall exploded.

" ─ jinx it."

Tourists screamed as Kampê appeared from the dust and rubble, her wings spread out as wide as the yard. She was holding two swords ─ long bronze scimitars that glowed with a weird greenish aura, boiling wisps of vapor that smelled sour and hot even across the yard.

"Poison!" Grover yelped. "Don't let those things touch you or. . ."

"Or we'll die?

"Well. . . after you shrivel slowly to dust, yes."

"Let's avoid the swords," Percy decided.

"Briares, fight!" Tyson urged. "Grow to full size!"

Instead, Briares looked like he was trying to shrink even smaller. He appeared to be wearing his absolutely terrified face. Kampê thundered toward them on her dragon legs, hundreds of snakes slithering around her body. 

"Run." Annabeth said.

There was no fighting this thing. They ran through the jail yard and out the gates of the prison, the monster right behind. Mortals screamed and ran. Emergency sirens began to blare. They hit the wharf just as a tour boat was unloading. The new group of visitors froze as they saw teenagers charging toward them, followed by a mob off rightened tourists, followed by. . . who knows what they saw through the Mist.

"The boat?" Grover asked.

"Too slow," Tyson said. "Back into the maze. Only chance."

"We need a diversion," Annabeth said.

Tyson ripped a metal lamppost out of the ground. "I will distract Kampê. You run ahead."

"I'll help you," Percy said.

"No," Tyson said. "You go. Poison will hurt Cyclopes. A lot of pain. But it won't kill."

"Are you sure?"

"Go, brother. I will meet you inside."

Vivi squeezed Percy's shoulder; like she used to whenever the bullies told shit about her. He looked at her. The same damn chocolate brown eyes that he couldn't forget for the past years were staring at his stormy blue ones.

She let go.

There was no time to argue. Vivi, Annabeth, Grover, and Percy each took one of Briares's hands and dragged him toward the concession stands while Tyson bellowed, lowered his pole, and charged Kampê like a jousting knight.

She'd been glaring at Briares, but Tyson got her attention as soon as he nailed her in the chest with the pole, pushing her back into the wall. She shrieked and slashed with her swords, slicing the pole to shreds. Poison dripped in pools all around her, sizzling into the cement. Tyson jumped back as Kampê's hair lashed and hissed, and the vipers around her legs darted their tongues in every direction. A lion popped out of the weird half-formed faces around her waist and roared.

As the group sprinted for the cellblocks, the last thing they managed to see was Tyson picking up a Dippin' Dots stand and throwing it at Kampê. Ice cream and poison exploded everywhere, all the little snakes in Kampê's hair dotted with tutti-frutti. They dashed back into the jail yard. 

"Can't make it," Briares huffed.

"Tyson is risking his life to help you!" Percy yelled at him. "You will make it."

As they reached the door of the cellblock, there was an angry roar. Glancing back, Vivi saw Tyson running toward them at full speed, Kampê right behind him. She was plastered in ice cream and T-shirts. One of the bear heads on her waist was now wearing a pair of crooked plastic Alcatraz sunglasses.

"Hurry!" Annabeth said, like they needed to be told that.

They finally found the cell where they'd come in, but the back wall was completely smooth ─ no sign of a boulder or anything.

"The mark!" Vivi said.

"There!"

Grover touched a tiny scratch, and it became a Greek L. The mark of Daedalus glowed blue, and the stone wall grinded open. Too slowly. Tyson was coming through the cellblock, Kampê's sword slashing out behind him, slicing indiscriminately through cell bars and stone walls. Percy pushed Briares inside the maze, then Vivi, Annabeth and Grover.

"You can do it!" Percy encouraged Tyson.

But it was impossible. Kampê was gaining. She raised her swords. Percy slapped his wrist watch and it spiraled into a bronze shield, which he threw it at the monster's face. The shield hit Kampê in the face and she faltered just long enough for Tyson to dive past Percy into the maze, with Percy right behind him. Kampê charged, but she was too late. The stone door closed and its magic sealed them in. 

The whole tunnel shook as Kampê pounded against it, roaring furiously. They didn't stick around to find out if she could get in. The group raced into the darkness, with Percy's hand slipping into Vivi's.

niki speaks!

new chapter of perfect world!
yay!
looks like i've been doing good
with the schedule on updating this book
every sunday night.

I've been writing some lessons for school
for the east three hours and my
hand will fall off.
but i'm almost done, thankfully.

hope you're having a great day/night
and enjoying the story so far!

question: what would percy and vivi's theme
song be??
let me know!

bye!