[DanMachi/Percy Jackson] Prytaneum

Chapter 71: Boil part 1

I raced through the wreckage, following the trail Riptide had laid out for me—or I tried to, at least. It should have been simple; follow the path of destruction to find its source. The problem was, there wasn't a path of destruction; what seemed like the entire floor was reduced to wreckage. What's more, the paths through the Dungeon's middle floors were as twisted and labyrinthine as those above and far more unfamiliar. My first trip beneath the eighteenth floor and I was already getting lost—but I shouldn't be, I'd reviewed this with Eina at...at some point, even if I left most of the map work to Lili. I should know this.

And because I didn't, because I was wasting precious seconds, Riptide was getting further and further away.

The thought sent my heartbeat skittering and then pounding a moment later in sheer, directionless fury. I struck the wall of the dead-end I'd hit and the water struck it with me, cracks extending across the ceiling and floor as I knocked it down, choosing the most direct route through the labyrinth. And when that just led me into another hallway I didn't recognize, turning me around all the more, I just struck it until it broke as well.

It wasn't until I did that three more times, massive fists of water pounding the walls until the broke, that I realized I could target the floor instead and take the fast way down.

Or just call Mrs. O'Leary, I realized, pausing about a moment before I shattered the floor—and my arm—again. That would probably work, too.

Shaking myself as if it would help make my thoughts line up, I whistled once and the shadows writhed, my Hellhound friend stepping forth from the darkness. Mrs. O'Leary released a high-pitch whine when she saw me and I laid a hand on her side to calm her, at once tensing and relaxing at the sight of her. It occurred to me in that moment that if I didn't find Riptide soon, Mrs. O'Leary would be the only remaining tie to my past and that thought came to me like a kick in the balls and left me breathless.

"Mr. Jackson?" Came the voice of my other friend and I slowly looked up at Ryuu who now sat astride Mrs. O'Leary's back, her clothes soaking wet and looking cold. "...Are you okay?"

She seemed alright for the most part, or at least was better then I'd feared when I'd seen her on the ground, but somehow, it was hard to look at here—the sight of her sent a flash of...something, through me. Regret, maybe, or belated concern; I hadn't been thinking of her at all when I'd wrecked the island, having shot Mrs. O'Leary a glance and pushed her from my thoughts, nor had I paid much mind to anyone else. Aiz, Lulune, Loki Familia, everyone in the town...they hadn't played into the decision at all and I had no idea if they were okay. To say nothing of the fact that I'd dropped a lake straight down into the nineteenth floor. It would be a miracle if no one had gotten hurt—and yet, even knowing that, all I could worry about was Riptide. But when she looked at me, the first thing she did was ask if I was okay.

"I'm fine," I said, wiping harshly at my face and looking away from her.

"You don't look it, I'm afraid," she replied, sounding more than a bit concerned.

What? I wondered what she was talking about—but when I looked down at myself, I realized I was shaking. My clothes were torn and stained where my own shattered bones had perforated my skin, and even beyond that, I was looking...off. Too thin, too lean, like my body's healing hadn't finished adding at the meat back to my bones. I looked sick.

But I suppose that's the price I paid for shattering an island, a floor, and wielding a lake as a weapon. I was running hotter than I had since Manhattan, since before I'd died and been reborn, and I wasn't sure my body could take it. I wasn't in pain, per se, the waves rising up to swallow the sensation, but I felt warm, as if my blood were burning—or the ichor in my blood, perhaps. Odds were, that was bad.

"Nothing a bit of water won't fix," I told her, even though I'd been completely surrounded by water for the last five minutes or so. "I'll be fine."

Ryuu looked at me for a long, long moment, not even bothering to hide the skepticism in her gaze, the worry—but then she reached out a hand and helped pull me up onto Mrs. O'Leary's back. I left the lake waters only a touch reluctantly, but willed them to follow us after.

"What are we going to do?" Ryuu asked again, as willing to follow my lead now as before—and the risk of potentially losing another friend reminded me all the more that Ryuu was priceless. I clutched her hand tighter at that, thanking her without words as I stared ahead into the depths of the Dungeon.

"We have to find her," I said, patting Mrs. O'Leary on the back and feeling her obediently start to sniff at the ground. Given the circumstances, I trusted that I didn't have to tell her what we were after; of the two of us, I wasn't yet convinced she wasn't the smart one. "And then...then I'll talk to her."

"Talk to her?" Ryuu asked, furrowing her eyebrows ever so slightly. "Do you think she'll listen?"

I had no idea.

"We'll handle that as we come to it," I said.

"...Who is she?" Ryuu asked, and I was unspeakable grateful that she still used the word 'is.'

But wasn't that the question.

"She's...a friend, maybe," I said, closing my eyes. "And what's left of a friend, I guess—someone who gave their life to save me. Something that I trust, for sure. And the only thing I have left from my father and before. And something I trust and...I don't know, Ryuu, I don't know what to say or how to describe this or what's going on. But I can't lose anyone else; I've already lost more than I could ever afford. This is...a chance, maybe, and that might be all it is. But how far would you go if you had a chance to see them again?"

Ryuu look a deep, slow breath and closed her eyes for just a moment before nodding.

"I'd go until there was nothing left of me," she said, and maybe that was a warning. But it wasn't a refusal and a moment later, Mrs. O'Leary took off.

The floors passed by quickly on the back of someone who actually knew where they were going—especially when they all blended together, because they were all equally torn to pieces, ruined and silent. My first trip below the eighteenth floor was more eerie and unnerving than anything else, the beautiful underground forest I'd heard of nowhere in sight as we went deeper and deeper into the cavernous Dungeon depths. We ran from the twentieth all the way down to the twenty-seventh—and we didn't encounter a single monster doing it. Not even one. I covered more new floors in a day than I had since the start of my adventurer career, and far larger floors at that, and it was less difficult than a stroll through the first floor.

It was nerve-wracking—there was nothing left but the utter destruction of the floors themselves, and vast piles of ash. The Great Tree Labyrinth was as silent as a tomb, and it was enough to make even Ryuu tense up against me as we continued to track Riptide deeper. After was felt like a small eternity, we reached the entrance to the twenty-eighth floor uncontested, making my first trip from one safe floor to safe floor in a single day. There was a part of me that expected to run into the Floor Boss of the twenty-seventh, but even then there was nothing but a floor covered ankle deep in ashes.

Surprisingly, that didn't make me feel much better. On the other hand—

"She's here," I said, heartbeat picking up again as felt the Dungeon trembled—generally a bad sign, granted, but I'd make an exception in this case. I could hear the sound of breaking stone, loud enough to hear through the wall leading to the twenty-eighth, but disconcerting as that was, it meant that I wasn't too late. Without another moment of hesitation, I leapt off Mrs. O'Leary's back, jumping down into the water pooled by her ankles and making my way towards the door.

"Wait," Ryuu said, stopping me and making me look back at her. She reached into her cloak and removed both a magic sword—the magic sword I'd used most of on Revis and hadn't realized I'd lost afterwards; Ryuu must have taken it after I first went down—and her own wooden sword. "You're unarmed. Take these."

It was a good point, but it still almost made me stagger—the reminder that I was unarmed. I was never unarmed; I always had Riptide within easy reach, day or night. Except I didn't right now, and that realization had me staring at the proffered weapons with wide eyes.

But then I shook my head.

"No," I said. "I'm not going to fight her. I just want to talk."

And—it felt like it'd be wrong, somehow, to loose Riptide and immediately face her again, holding another sword.

"She might be a monster now," Ryuu warned. "You may not have a choice."

"I always have a choice," I said tiredly, casting a glance behind me into the flooded corridor I'd left in my wake. "Usually, I make bad ones and maybe this one is, too. But I'm making it anyway."

"Why?" Ryuu asked curiously and I was silent for a moment.

What was it that Cassandra had said? Something about a dragon and how 'no blade will stand before it'? Maybe that was part of the reason why, the prophecy I'd heard coming to fruition—I could say I was doing it because I had some kind of plan or feeling that it would all work out. But hell, I was a Greek demigod; I knew full well that it was a dumb idea to try and resist or go along with prophecies, so no, that wasn't why. Instead, if I was being honest, the reason was something far simpler.

"Because I don't want to," I said. "I don't want to hurt one of my friends."

Ryuu looked at me for a long moment before nodding and taking back the weapons.

"You might want to wait here; I'm not sure how she'll react to me, much less any strangers," I said, before nodding at the mostly useless magic sword. "Can you hold onto that for me, Ryuu? If something happens to me, you can even consider it payment?"

"I'll choose to ignore that statement," Ryuu said. "Since you insist you'll just be talking."

I flashed her a quick smile at that and almost managed to feel it, before turning away and walking into the second 'safe' floor of the Dungeon. I left the waters I'd drawn with me outside as well, figuring it counted as at least as much of a weapon as anything I could carry, and every step I took away from it seemed to cost me, drain me. It wasn't really, of course; all it was doing was revealing the exhaustion I truly felt, the pain that the waters had masked. I was exhausted and everything hurt as if I were sick, too. Clearly, I was in the perfect condition to face my sword-turned-monster; as first impressions went, I couldn't imagine this was going to be a good one, but then, she'd have seen me way, way worse. Either way, it didn't change anything; I'd made my decision and I'd talk to her if I had to do it on my last legs.

But even so, what I saw as I passed through the gate was enough to stop me in my tracks.

I could honestly say I had no idea what the twenty-eight floor was supposed to look like and it didn't seem like I'd be finding out today, because the floor I walked into had seen better days. Not like the rest of the floors I'd passed through, which had looked like a hurricane had just struck and left everyone to hope they had disaster insurance, but like it had just personally insulted Zeus. Any identifying features the floor fight have had had been burnt away, scoured clean to whatever counted as bedrock in the Dungeon by flames hot enough to leave me feeling as though I'd wandered into a blast furnace. Sparks flickered occasionally in the ashes of the floor, shining long enough to catch the eye and dying just as quickly, but there was nothing else on the floor to draw attention—except the gathering of monsters at the center.

Perhaps the first to catch me eye was the largest of creatures, a massive figure that must have been thirty feet tall while upright, dwarfing even the Goliath I'd fought—and that wasn't the only similarity it had to the creature. It's flesh, what I could see of it, was a deep black, reminding me of the creature the Dungeon had spawned to get at me before, and between that, it's stature, and the sheer musculature of its frame made me somehow certain that it wasn't a coincidence or something I was imagining; this creature was the second Floor Boss of the Dungeon. No, it was something more than that, something like the Black Goliath—an Irregular of its species raised beyond the strength of even a normal Floor Boss, something meant to destroy me.

And it was dead. Laid out on the ground, I couldn't even recognize what kind of creature it was supposed to be; the remains of its corpse were badly scorched, chunks of it torn completely violently away, and it had been disemboweled. Even its chest cavity was torn open wide, as if to present its magic stone up as an offering.

And if that was the case, the one meant to take that offering was clear. Hundreds of the plant monsters were gathered around a figure, as if in worship; one by one, they offered themselves up to her, opening their mouths wide to present the magic stones contained within, and one by one they were taken and left to crumble to dust. It was a horrifying display, and not just because of their presences—though where they had all come from I could only imagine—but because its purpose was obvious.

In the center of their congregation, I saw Riptide; different from before, now, but at once both just as familiar and just as alien. The bulk of her body was like that of a wingless dragon, as powerfully built as a mountain with heavy, armored scales that gleamed like Celestial Bronze, overlapping over heavy muscles. Each of its four limbs were as wide around as an oak tree and their gnashing claws gleamed like adamantine. Set at the front of its body, where a normal dragon's head might be, was what looked like what a nest of dozens—I was guessing an even hundred, because that was just the way my day was going—metallic pythons might look if the observer was high and also having a seizure; a bunch of the plant monsters had been taken in, subsumed into the creatures bulk, and altered to look more reptilian, but when they brushed against each other, which was constantly, they let loose sparks and the sound of sharpening swords. It made me think distinctly of Ladon and Ladon didn't make me think of anything good.

But above all that, set on shoulders like a bronze bull's, there was a golden flower blossom—an apple blossom—that stirred relentlessly as the hundred heads fed on the lives of the supplicant plant monsters. It shivered and shook as everything around it was devoured and reduced to ash, the crowd quickly thinned and erased, but when at last a bundle of heads at the center finished tearing into the massive gem of the Floor Boss, it went still—and opened.

I had to set a hand on the wall to keep myself from falling over at the sight, because as the petals parted, they revealed what I could honestly say was one of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen. From the waist up, set almost apart from the draconic body she was attached to, she looked like someone's fantasy of a Persian princess, all silken, dark hair and caramel skin, but for eyes that were perfect pools of glossy black, of reflective obsidian. She wore a dress of brilliant colors, trailing down over her arms and the swell of her chest to spread out over the petals around her waist, and as she was born, she threw her head back and let loose a cry of almost ecstatic joy that rang loud enough to hurt my ears and make my brain shake in my skull. It didn't matter, because I could do nothing but stare regardless.

She was gorgeous, even merged to the body of a horror, but more than that, she looked like the Hesperides. Like Zoe.

I told myself I was prepared for this, ready for it, but the sight alone was enough to shake me—and before I could recover, her head rolled languidly to look my way.

"Perseus..." She said, the sound of her voice ringing and echoing oddly in the barren chamber's air. "You kept me waiting."