The Burning Maze

I mimed shooting a blowgun, then pointed in Medea’s direction.

Piper stared at me like I was crazy. I couldn’t blame her. Even if Medea didn’t bat away the dart with a gust of wind, the missile would never make it through that swirling wall of heat. I could only shrug and mouth the words Trust me. I asked my arrow.

What Piper thought of that, I couldn’t tell, but she unslung her blowgun.

Meanwhile, across the parking garage, Meg taunted Medea in typical Meg fashion.

“DUMMY!” she yelled.

Medea sent out a vertical blade of heat, though judging from her aim, she was trying to scare Meg rather than kill her.

“Come out and stop this foolishness, dear!” she called, filling her words with concern. “I don’t want to hurt you, but the Titan is hard to control!”

I ground my teeth. Her words were a little too close to Nero’s mind games, holding Meg in check with the threat of his alter ego, the Beast. I just hoped Meg couldn’t hear a word through her smoldering wildflower earbuds.

While Medea had her back turned, looking for Meg, Piper stepped into the open.

She took her shot.

The dart flew straight through the wall of fire and speared Medea between the shoulder blades. How? I can only speculate. Perhaps, being a Cherokee weapon, it was not subject to the rules of Greek magic. Perhaps, just as Celestial bronze will pass straight through regular mortals, not recognizing them as legitimate targets, the fires of Helios could not be bothered to disintegrate a puny blowgun dart.

Whatever the case, the sorceress arched her back and screamed. She turned, glowering, then reached behind her and pulled out the missile. She stared at it incredulously. “A blowgun dart? Are you kidding me?”

The fires continued to swirl around her, but none shot toward Piper. Medea staggered. Her eyes crossed.

“And it’s poison?” The sorceress laughed, her voice tinged with hysteria. “You would try to poison me, the world’s foremost expert on poisons? There is no poison I can’t cure! You cannot—”

She dropped to her knees. Green spittle flew from her mouth. “Wh-what is this concoction?”

“Compliments of my Grandpa Tom,” Piper said. “Old family recipe.”

Medea’s complexion turned as pale as the fire. She forced out a few words, interspersed with gagging. “You think…changes anything? My power…doesn’t summon Helios….I hold him back!”

She fell over sideways. Rather than dissipating, the cone of fire swirled even more furiously around her.

“Run,” I croaked. Then I yelled for all I was worth, “RUN NOW!”

We were halfway back to the corridor when the parking lot behind us went supernova.

I am not sure how we got out of the maze.

Lacking any evidence to the contrary, I will credit my own courage and fortitude. Yes, that must have been it. Having escaped the worst of the Titan’s heat, I bravely supported Piper and Meg and exhorted them to keep going. Smoking and half-conscious but still alive, we stumbled through the corridors, retracing our steps until we arrived at the freight elevator. With one last heroic burst of strength, I flipped the lever and we ascended.

We spilled into the sunlight—regular sunlight, not the vicious zombie sunlight of a quasi-dead Titan—and collapsed on the sidewalk. Grover’s shocked face hovered over me.

“Hot,” I whimpered.

Grover pulled out his panpipe. He began to play, and I lost consciousness.

In my dreams, I found myself at a party in ancient Rome. Caligula had just opened his newest palace at the base of the Palatine Hill, making a daring architectural statement by knocking out the back wall of the Temple of Castor and Pollux and using it as his front entrance. Since Caligula considered himself a god, he saw no problem with this, but the Roman elites were horrified. This was sacrilege akin to setting up a big-screen TV on a church altar and having a Super Bowl party with communion wine.

That didn’t stop the crowd from attending the festivities. Some gods had even shown up (in disguise). How could we resist such an audacious, blasphemous party with free appetizers? Throngs of costumed revelers moved through vast torchlit halls. In every corner, musicians played songs from across the empire: Gaul, Hispania, Greece, Egypt.

I myself was dressed as a gladiator. (Back then, with my godly physique, I could totally pull that off.) I mingled with senators who were disguised as slave girls, slave girls who were disguised as senators, a few unimaginative toga ghosts, and a couple of enterprising patricians who had crafted the world’s first two-man donkey costume.

Personally, I did not mind the sacrilegious temple/palace. It wasn’t my temple, after all. And in those first years of the Roman Empire, I found the Caesars refreshingly risqué. Besides, why should we gods punish our biggest benefactors?

When the emperors expanded their power, they expanded our power. Rome had spread our influence across a huge part of the world. Now we Olympians were the gods of the empire! Move over, Horus. Forget about it, Marduk. The Olympians were ascendant!

We weren’t about to mess with success just because the emperors got big-headed, especially when they modeled their arrogance after ours.

I wandered the party incognito, enjoying being among all the pretty people, when he finally appeared: the young emperor himself, in a golden chariot pulled by his favorite white stallion, Incitatus.

Flanked by praetorian guards—the only people not in costume—Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus was buck naked, painted in gold from head to foot, with a spiky crown of sun rays across his brow. He was pretending to be me, obviously. But when I saw him, my first feeling wasn’t anger. It was admiration. This beautiful, shameless mortal pulled off the role perfectly.

“I am the New Sun!” he announced, beaming at the crowd as if his smile were responsible for all the warmth in the world. “I am Helios. I am Apollo. I am Caesar. You may now bask in my light!”

Nervous applause from the crowd. Should they grovel? Should they laugh? It was always hard to tell with Caligula, and if you got it wrong, you usually died.

The emperor climbed down from his chariot. His horse was led to the hors d’oeuvres table while Caligula and his guards made their way through the crowd.

Caligula stopped and shook hands with a senator dressed as a slave. “You look lovely, Cassius Agrippa! Will you be my slave, then?”

The senator bowed. “I am your loyal servant, Caesar.”

“Excellent!” Caligula turned to his guards. “You heard the man. He is now my slave. Take him to my slave master. Confiscate all his property and money. Let his family go free, though. I’m feeling generous.”

The senator spluttered, but he could not form the words to protest. Two guards hustled him away as Caligula called after him, “Thank you for your loyalty!”

The crowd shifted like a herd of cattle in a thunderstorm. Those who had been surging forward, anxious to catch the emperor’s eye and perhaps win his favor, now tried their best to melt into the pack.

“It’s a bad night,” some whispered in warning to their colleagues. “He’s having a bad night.”

“Marcus Philo!” cried the emperor, cornering a poor young man who had been attempting to hide behind the two-man donkey. “Come out here, you scoundrel!”