Chapter 38

-Talking Heads.

Clarisse.

Clarisse and Ethan sat in a small, abandoned workshop room across from eachother, sharing a ready-meal of tomato pasta from her rucksack.

Small rations, but if they both wanted to live, then this was the answer. They were down to two meals left. A bit of water. Clarisse would never not be thankful that the one good thing about time working differently down here was that food rations lasted longer. You were never hungry as much, rarely, anyway.

“It’s been like, two weeks,” Clarisse mumbled groggily, sucking on a squished tomato in her mouth. Savouring it. “And?” Ethan replied.

“And we’re getting no where. It can’t take this long to find an exit for you. Or to hear Luke’s men again. I haven’t heard them since I found you.”

Ethan sighed. “We just have to keep looking, Clarisse. If anyone knows that, it’s you.”

Clarisse huffed, leaning back against the wall.

She messed with her fingers- recently cut up from fighting some weird creatures bare hand. The Labyrinth had monsters that were never known to exist. Hell, or old animals that were supposed to be extinct. Like giant bugs. They… were terrifying.

With Ethan, one good thing now was that she had time to get sleep without being as aware. It was hard, yes, but not as hard.

Nobody could tell her it was this hard to find an exit in the Labyrinth. They had travelled miles, if Clarisse had to guess. In that time, Clarisse and Ethan had settled with eachother quite well. Clarisse had only threatened to kill Ethan five times, and she was quite proud of herself for that.

Ethan was an odd specimen, to her. Well- all boys were. But that’s not the point. He was extra odd. Too confident in his way around the Labyrinth or something. Or maybe he was just too cocky in general. Clarisse didn’t like the way he would tell her to wait at the start of some corridors while he searched them. She never did, ofcourse. That’s why he had been threatened to be killed five times.

Other than that, she supposed he wasn’t that bad. He looked friendly enough.

Well, when he had his eyepatch on.

“Clarisse?”

Clarisse snapped her head up, one of her fingers squishing a poor, small slice of tomato into oblivion.

“Can you stop being disgusting?”

“Lost track of though,” She chewed, wiping the remaining tomato onto the gravel floor. “Shut up.”

“I said which way do you want to go after this? Forward, or left?”

“Uh… forward.”

“Alright. Forward.”

She sighed, finishing off the last two pieces of her pasta in the slowest manner to ever exist.

‘When we find an exit, why don’t you just come with me? You know trying to find that girl is-“

“If you say suicide, I will try murder.”

Ethan rolled his eye, shaking his head off to the side.Clarisse had spilt why she was down here a few days ago to Ethan. He was right- not being able to trust eachother if they didn’t share why they were down here. They had gotten into a physical fight, rolling around and wasting energy over something stupid. Eventually, Ethan managed to get it out of her on why she was truly down here. ‘Looking for someone’, being Kayla Graves. Ugh, the questions that followed after that were horrible to answer.

“You know,” Ethan started, eating at his pasta equally as slow. “I never thought you’d go for someone like Kayla.”

“Go for?! I never said I liked her, you little shit, I said I respected her.”

“Like you respect some others in camp? Would you do this for them too?”

“Course. In honour of Ares.”

“This wasn’t in honour of Ares, was it?”

“Oh, will you shut. Up?”

Ethan grew a small smile on his face, turning it away to hide it.

“She just- she deserves someone finding her, alright? She- she-” Clarisse stuttered, causing Ethan to raise an eyebrow.

“Now it’s your turn to shut up, I’ve already heard enough. It’s painful.”

Clarisse scoffed, standing up like she was about to storm off like a toddler. Instead, she grabbed her spear and Kayla’s bag, packing her equipment back up. “Let’s move, dinner time is over.”

Even though Clarisse initiated the move, Ethan took over once again. That was the main thing they got into squabbles about. Leading. Clarisse was really trying to be a changed woman, but she knew at heart her hubris would never leave.

“I thought you said this was the way the sound of those men came from. And I agreed. You don’t wanna go down there.”

Ethan huffed, his sword ready to strike at anything that could pop out from the darkness. Yet he didn’t slow down. “No, that was the other one.”

“No it wasn’t,” Clarisse shook her head, kicking a small rock at Ethan’s heels. “That was this one. Cause the floor dips right… there. We just walked over it.”

“Maybe it’s tricking you.”

Clarisse slit her eyes. She didn’t like being told she was wrong. She was confident she wasn’t. “Maybe you’re tricking me.”

The shifting of his footsteps came to a stop as he turned around, the torch blaring in her face. “Don’t start. Again. Keep moving, will you? You’re slowing us down.”

“Slowing us down from what?”

“Clari-” Ethan was cut off by debris from the walls being knocked off with a giant shift. He took a small pebble to the head, regained his balance, and looked around. Clarisse did the same. Ha! That was one thing she might not have told Ethan yet.

The Labyrinth was rejecting her.

“Why does this keep happening?! Run!” He whined, making a dash for the end of the corridor, which was a lengthy run.

Clarisse overtook him in no time. Each man for themselves, she told herself. No way was the Labyrinth getting its way by successfully killing her.

But she only noticed she accidentally pushed Ethan into the wall when he yelled in annoyance. “Hey! Watch it!” He scrambled his hands against the wall to catch himself. His knees gave out, but with the adrenaline, he pushed himself up and started to sprint even further, catching clarisse up at the end of the tunnel.

There was just enough space in the closing corridor that fit the two of them, side by side, and they had a few yards left to go. The debris got heavier, thicker chunks of the walls threatening to put them out of their mysery one way or another. It made it hard to breathe with the dust, and see.

Clarisse felt his hands grasp her chest from behind as he grapled himself forward, giving him a leaping boost as he reached for the end to squeeze through the walls desperately.

Her life flashed before her eyes as the force just slightly knocked her back. It was different to when she was ever confronted by her Father, or when she ever battled mosters. She was confident this kniving little shit had just built her destiny and tucked her life up in less than a second. The way he let out a breath as he landed on his knees outside of the closing corridor, glancing back at her.

What a way to go out; being squished like a lemon at the end of a closing Labyrinth corridor. 

It was like everything slowed down. She swore she had enough time to say mental goodbyes to everyone she actually cared about in the last split second of her life.

But… that wasn’t alot of people to begin with. Maybe that was why she managed to do such a thing.

Her shoulders started to crush inwards, her leather armour scraping against the wall as she kept running. Any more, and her collarbone might snap from pressure.

In the last few yards, she leapt just like Ethan had.

But she didn’t make it.

Or… she did. She was still senient. And concious. So why did her head feel like it had just been slam dunked between two walls?

Her eyes shot closed as an ungodly, frightened sound came out of her mouth.

Pathetically, her first thought when she realised she was still alive was how embarrassing it was that someone had just heard that.

Clarisse’s body slammed back into the shut Labyrinth walls as they snapped together, a giant heap of her hair stuck inbetween the gap. Kayla’s backpack surived on her back- it was alot more flat due to the food they had eaten lately. Half of that had been full of food.

Ah, that’s why she thought her head had bee squished into smithereens. Because it almost had. That tracks.

Her breathing was hectic, her body nothing but vertically flat against the wall with how close the wall had been to trapping more than just her hair.

One, breathe, two, breathe‐

“Ethan!”

Ethan was gasping for breath, his knees shaking as he pulled himself up. His dagger was pointed at Clarisse from far away like he was scared. He should be. It was a dick move on his part.

“I,” He breathed. “Had to..”

Clarisse seethed, her face scrunching up like she might have been trying out the look of a pig. She whipped her dagger out of her back pocket, eyes glaring down at Ethan with the restrained position she was in. Oh, he was in for it. “Had to what?! Kill me?! We could have both made that without this happening!”

“Adrenaline, Clarisse- got the best of me.” He gasped, coughing. Clarisse kept her dagger pointed straight forwards, her arm extended fully.

“Get. Me. Out!”

Ethan was still regaining his balance and breathing. He wiped his mouth, rubbed his eyes. Took his sweet time.

He seemed too nonchalant with the fact his survival partner was stuck.

Finally, his eyes glared up at her through his eyelashes.

He didn’t look sorry.

“I was right.” Clarisse spat, trying to keep her body still to minimise head pain.

“You’re always right, apparently,” He quipped, dragging his feet ever so slightly closer. “When were you going to tell me the Labyrinth was rejecting you?”

She let out an animalistic sound. God, Ethan better be glad she wasn’t walking freely right now.

“And how do you know that?” She seethed.

“Why wouldn’t I? You think I’d go into the Labyrinth blind of knowledge for Kronos?”

Her lips twitched with a snarl. “You never escaped,” She pieced together angrily. “Then what are you doing wandering around like a lost kid?”

“Said it yourself. Got lost. Needed to survive somehow.”

“Well goodluck now! Without me, huh?!”

“I will, cause you were right. The men were this way. This worked out perfect,” He motioned to the catastrophe that Clarisse was in, coughing. “You we’re starting to ask risky questions, and some of my friends should be close now. And you’re easier to kill this way. But I should probably try and check first if Luke would want you bringing back in. You know, maybe you could be the perfect puzzle piece we need to get Kayla to work with us. She just keeps refusing… I mean, actually, it’s been a few weeks since I got lost. Maybe they finally got her to work for Kronos somehow.”

Clarisse’s mind had to recalibrate. “Luke has Kayla? All this time? You have her!”

“I guess you were right yet again.” Ethan cleared his throat.

“Oh, you better start praying I don’t gauge your other eye out and sew it onto a cyclops, you deranged boy!”

Wow, maybe she really was starting to sound like her father.

“Good luck with that,” Ethan replied bluntly as she made swings at the air. “While you’re all caught up.”

Clarisse paused her swinging stubbornly, letting out an absoloutely guttural, inhuman sound. The cogs in her brain could almost be seen actively working overtime for all of a second- before she started cutting at her own hair.

“Don’t even think-!” Ethan growled, charging at Clarisse with his dagger as she tried to break free.

Clarisse would have laughed at his stupid attempt to attack her. Especially when she was taller. A kick to the diaphragm served him well enough to get knocked onto the floor as she ragged out her own hair with the dagger. It hurt, but probably not as much as dying would.

Finally, it cut all the way through her hair, and within the same second, she slashed at Ethan’s face as he tried to get up in a daze. He sported a new gash on his cheek. Deep, already covering a quarter of his face in a crimson red. It went from one side of his jaw, over his nose, ending just underneath his eyepatch.

Ethan retaliated with no sound of pain, but instead slashed at Clarisse immediately after.

“The nerve!” Clarisse roared as her forearm spilt blood.

He scrambled back in defense, well back. “Those other men are gonna be here any minute. They heard all this!”

“Good! They can take me, and I’ll run my spear through every single one of you!” She yelled as Ethan moved further away.

“What spear. Wasn’t it on your back?”

Clarisse snapped her neck in the direction of the wall. Just above where her head had been, a very thin, very crushed version of the tip of her spear was poking through. Oh, she could have screamed.

She turned and gave herself all of a millisecond of focus time before sending her dagger right at Ethan, which plunged straight into his shoulder blade. He let out a breathy groan, not letting it stop his get away. Clarisse heard the sound of ripping flesh before it was dropped back onto the ground somewhere in the shadows, where he had ran away to.

She wiped the tears before they could even fall. That hadn’t happened in a while, since atleast being thirteen. Getting so angry that she couldn’t help tears. What a childish thing. Why were her tear ducts deceiving her like that? She groaned, unzipping Kayla’s bag in a hurry and pulling out a new dagger. She huffed and grabbed the torch that Ethan had dropped, using the combination to attempt at seeing a reflection.

From what she could see, her hair was in some sort of choppy, short shag, shorter at the front and turning into some sort of what felt like a rats tail in the back with an indescribable amount of layers.

Okay, maybe she thought about gay haircuts sometimes, but this was not the way she wanted to recieve one.

With a final huff, she shoved the dagger into into it’s holster, forced some ambrosia in her mouth and made way for any sign of Luke or his army.

They had it coming.

Please vote!!

So, remember in the books SPOILER!! But remember in the books in book 4 when we find out Clarisse’s hair is choppy and short yada yada I thought this would be a PERFECT way for it to happen. Like, we don’t know what happened down there with her in book 3 at all. We just know she DID come out a changed woman, for better or for worse😭 so as hard as this chapter was to write cause I literally did not know how to put my thoughts into words, I finally did and it’s very fun to read back. Imagine her hair however you want, im trying not to include hair colour for her cause I deadass cant decide if I want Dior hair or book Clarisse hair. So… imagine as you will ofc.

Ive been let down with chap 35 thats the least amount of votes I’ve gotten in a hot second💀 alr bro

Change of scenery coming soon ft Kayla’s unlucky ass