XLVIII
PERCY
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 backwards, 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 towards 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 dived 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 further 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 towards 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 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 towards the goddess. The lake of poison rolled towards her in tiny waves and rivulets.
Akhlys shrieked. ‘What is this?’
‘Poison,’ Percy said. ‘That’s your speciality, right?’
He stood, his anger growing hotter in his gut. As the flood of venom rolled towards 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 towards 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 wool.
‘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.’