Chapter 34

-Depeche Mode.

Clarisse didn’t stop running until her legs threatened mutiny and her lungs burned. The corridor was longer than she would have expected; she didn’t see the end until she crashed into a wall from running for her life a little too fast.

The stone wall closed behind her with a deafening sound like the world cracking it’s fingers. The Labyrinth’s way of saying she wasn’t leaving any time soon. Now where the corridor once stood was replaced with a smooth stone face.

Clarisse pushed herself up against a wall, rolling her shoulder with a grunt, head rolled back.

“Rude.” She rasped.

She glanced back once again to where she had just ran from. No cracks, no seams. The Labyrinth had made itself clear: you’re not leaving now.

Clarisse choked as a cough rose up her throat, the lumps of dust she had swallowed giving an uncomfy feeling in her chest. Labyrinth dust. Yum.

She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hands, wincing as her shoulder cracked. With a fed up, stern action, she took it in a tight grip and shoved it back into place. The dislocation healed with a gruesome crack.

She stood slowly, rolling her neck and adjusting the backpack on her shoulders. Her spear was jabbed into the wall besides her. What was that? Instinct? Worry that her gorgeous spear would get ruined despite the fact she was running from death? She was stupid, wasn’t she? She had thrown it into the wall infront of her like a touchdown in rugby when jumping out of the closing wall to make sure it would be okay.

“Hi baby, glad you’re okay. Thanks…” She whispered, yanking it out of the wall and keeping it to her side.

Clarisse scanned the corridor she had landed in. This one was slightly wider than the other one. Just as long, if not longer. There was a faint flicker of light on the distance, but she couldn’t see the source. A torch, maybe? It was unmoving. There was a slight, almost polite shift from a far away wall. She wondered what type of monsters she would run into down here.

Walking forwards, her footsteps echoed back wrong. She couldn’t tell if it was her mind playing tricks on her. If the bash on her head from the grate was worse than it felt. The echo of her steps was slower, like a glitch. The amount of times she looked behind her in fear it was someone else, well, she had lost count. This place was way too senient.

“Yeah, me and you are gonna have problems.” She whispered, lining the stone wall with her spear instinctively as she walked.

The corridor bent gently to the left, thrn the right, then split in two directions at the end. Besides her was a torch hammered into the wall, flickering confidently. No gust of air moved it. Clarisse theorised those torches are what could show which corridors were ‘safe’ and which ones were not.

Clarisse contemplated which corridor to take as she slipped her flash light out of Kayla’s side pocket. On the right, there was nothing. A pitch black abyss. On the left, there was another torch at the end of the corridor. Clarisse swallowed.

Victory did not come without work.

Without a second thought, she marched in the direction of the dark abyss, jaw set, shoulders squared. It felt like walking into Tartarus and daring it to blink first.

Well, Clarisse wished it was as easy as she made it out to be in her head.

It was not.

An hour into her journey in the Labyrinth, it seemed to have already mapped out her personality. Her steps, her future choices. It was smart. Senient. It knew how she moved, and why. Clarisse was half convinced her brother, Phobos, had come for a round two to try and ruin her life when she saw Ares. But why would he come down here? Gods couldn’t even enter the Labyrinth, could they? Or… they knew better that to do such a thing.

The corridor shifted- the pitch black managed a red tint, if that was even possible.

Her father had come charging at her out of the dark in a fast paced walk, his sword dragging along the ground. Too long to be real. And her father wasn’t that tall, either. His cheekbones… no. Like someone remembered incorrectly.

And Clarisse knew Ares face very, very well.

His voice echoed her name like a curse. And followed it was a threat to kill-  her worse fear. Phobos knew that, and apparently the Labyrinth did too.

“I can sense your fear, Clarisse, hide it.” He ordered. When he got so close, he seemed to walk in place. Like a video that hadn’t finished loading properly. The Labyrinth wasn’t all that smart, clearly. He got just close enough to step out of the shadows, armour shiny- too shiny. Too clean. No worn look. That was not her father.

“You’re not real,”

“I am very real, are you losing your mind? Why wouldn’t I be? Instead of questioning what’s real, question your actions, Clarisse. Seriously,” He scoffed, looking away. His eyes seemed distant no matter where they looked. Like the Labyrinth didn’t know where to place them properly. “Not worth it, I’m telling you. Getting yourself killed. Putting shame on us again. And here I thought my only daughter in the Ares cabin at the moment might make history.”

Clarisse bristled. How did it know her like that? Her aims and goals. Her insecurities. Her fears. It was scary to admit to herself that it knew all this. That it was right.

“Shut up, you know nothing! I’m not scared of you.”

“You’re wasting time,” The illusion carried on. The voice was too even. Not enough emotion. Her father was never short of emotion.

Regardless, Clarisse’s chest tightened.

“Running through tunnels, chasing someone who thinks of you the same as everyone else. Worthless.”

“Yeah?” Clarisse took a step forward. A stone met her boot, skidding off infront of her. It made it’s way to Ares, going right through his foot.

Ah, grounding.

“This is you, not him. These stone walls, this place. You can’t fool me!”

The illusion didn’t react. The Labyrinth, however, reacted by narrowing the hall way. Any heat present pressed inwards. Ares repeated himself. His lips were half a beat off as he spoke. “You’re wasting‐”

Clarisse plunged the butt of her spear into the illusion, watching it turn to black dust and returning back to the Labyrinth’s walls and floors.

“I don’t take orders from echoes. Wrong lesson. Pulled him cause I might hesitate?” Clarisse spoke to thin air, now. God… maybe it was easy to lose your mind in here. “Wrong lesson. He made me charge, not stop. You’re trying to make me stop.”

Clarisse stepped through any remaining dust, wafting it away. The Labyrinth walls expanded, the redness in the air vanished.

Stupid Labyrinth.

Her feet made confident strides to nowhere. Any corridor she saw first.

“Stupid thing.” She muttered, keeping her spear close.

The corridor she strided down closed in ever so slightly- a faint push. Clarisse was ready to bolt at first as if it would move in on her, but it didn’t. It just became smaller. On both sides.

Any corridor she turned down seemed to do the same thing. It irked her out, confused her. What was it doing? It wasn’t doing this before she defeated the hallucination.

Like a predator moving in its prey, enclosing it and making it’s area smaller. Clarisse did not appreciate it.

“You’re gonna reject me,” She whispered, glancing around. The wall on her left shifted closer in a slow effort. Almost like a reply. Clarisse tried not to let her own words get to her. Actually taking time to think about the answer she was certain about would not make her any more confident.

Rejection was not how it sounded. When Clarisse first heard of Labyrinth rejection, she imagined it like a piercing. Jewellery being pushed out of a hole. Maybe some random hole would open up and you were forced to fall through it somehow. The Labyrinth didn’t want you there, right? It was for the best. But no, it wasn’t that simple. When was it ever?

If the Labyrinth rejected you, it meant it would work against you until it got rid. In whatever way possible. She remembered in Annabeth’s notes, the way it was described simply- rejection can cause severe psychosis. That was because of the tricks the Labyrinth played to try and get rid of you. Until eventually, it would kill you. Walls would close wherever you would walk, monsters were drawn to you like there was a beacon attached at your hip.

Well, Clarisse had really pissed it off when she defeated the hallucination, hadn’t she?

“Where am I supposed to rest now?” Clarisse whispered, taking a step down another corridor, which ever so slightly closed in on her.

She came to a pause after three more corridors did the same thing yet again. Where the hell was she? All the same lengths, same material. Did different parts of the Labyrinth even have names? Clarisse let out a very audible groan, shaking her head as she took the rucksack off her back. “Whatever. Dinner time.”

It was probably the most silent dinner Clarisse had ever experienced. No screaming brothers, or clanging if cutlery. If she closed her eyes she could imagine for just a second that she wasn’t in the Labyrinth, instead having a nice, calm dinner somewhere silent.

Except the fact she was eating pasta bolognese in the form of mushed up slop made it much harder to imagine she was somewhere nice.

Little padded footsteps echoed from afar in some different, distant corridor. It made Clarisse stay extra quiet. Whatever it had been, it sounded fast. And busy. Ghostly shadows passed by as they showed themselves on the walls. Clarisse found an odd bit of comfort in them; they were lost, too. Lost and forgotten.

She hoped Kayla wasn’t one of those spirits.

When she finished her food, she ate a tiny bit of ambrosia and pulled her hair up in a tight low bun, resuming her quest.

She turned back to the wall that she had marked with her spear with a sigh to get herself going. When the mark wasn’t there, she did a double take.

“Oh, come on!” She whined, quickly putting a hand over her mouth and rubbing her face. Damn, rejection hurt.

She packed up her items and shoved them back in Kayla’s rucksack, storming off. Now she was really lost. Her spear marks didn’t even stick around, how was she supposed to do anything?!

Clarisse refused to admit the last four hours after eating sent her spiraling. That would give the Labyrinth all the power. Had it been four hours? Ten minutes? Ten hours? She only knew because her watch stated four hours. But it was impossible to kep track of time down here any other way.

It was only once in that walk she came across something interesting other than shifting walls. A room. No door, old and work-shop style. One of Daedalus’ old workshops? She recalled Annabeth’s words on him. She was obsessed, to sum it up.

Clarisse stepped in wearily. It was insanely dusty, like nothing had been moved in thousands of years. Nothing was left behind bar the usual workshop tables. Everything else was gone. Nothing but two large workshop benches and a few broken wooden planks lined with dust and more cobwebs than Clarisse had seen in her entire life.

The walls didn’t shift as she stepped in. She could have cheered. Okay, so abandoned rooms were somewhat safe- that wasn’t in Annabeth’s notes.

Clarisse wasted no time in setting up for safety. She pushed one of the large work benches against the door way after flipping it onto its side as quiet as she could to barricade herself in. Rest, she yearned for rest. Rest was survival. She couldn’t do anything if she was being rejected by the Labyrinth and without sleep.

Clarisse cleared her throat, placing the rucksack to one side. She loosened her armour straps instead of taking them off, and slid down the far wall with a grunt to get comfy. Her spear stayed in her hand, like always.

Sleep did not come, like Clarisse expected. Rest did, however. A good hour or so of shut eyes, out of contact with reality just enough to be able to sit for an hour and forget she was awake.

The silence didn’t make it any easier; no shifting walls, no random whispers. The Labyrinth had gone silent. It couldn’t get to her in here. It couldn’t taunt her with death. So instead, it watched her. It had gone quiet to watch.

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I hope you’re all enjoying so far🙂‍↕️ the Labyrinth chapters are seriously the hardest of what im trying to write so far, I’ve got a bunch of chaps ready to be published in 3-4 day intervals ofc but a little bit of writers block has come along that I hope goes away soon😭