madness and ecstasy // leo valdez

-expresso depresso-

Bob trudged forward. Percy felt obliged to follow despite the fact he could feel his shoulders sinking. The lump in his throat only got bigger. If nothing else, this area was less dark—not exactly light, but with more of a soupy white fog.

"Akhlys!" Bob called.

The creature raised her head, and Percy's stomach screamed, Help me!

Her body was bad enough. She looked like she'd been visited by all four horsemen on the apocalypse. Tears dripped down her face, as colourless and drooping as her hair. The only thing that stood out between the cracks of pity and layers of despair was the deep red scratched up and down her cheeks.

Percy couldn't stand to meet her eyes, so he lowered his gaze, eyelids heavy. Across the goddess's knees lay an ancient shield—a battered circle of wood and bronze, painted with the likeness of Akhlys herself holding a shield, so the image seemed to go on forever, smaller and smaller.

"That shield," Annabeth murmured. "That's his. I thought it was just a story."

"Oh, no," the wrinkled woman wailed. "The shield of Hercules. He painted me on its surface, so his enemies would see me in their final moments—the goddess of misery." She coughed so hard; it made Percy's own lungs hurt. "As if Hercules knew true misery. It's not even a good likeness!"

Percy gulped. When he and his friends had encountered Hercules at the Straits of Gibraltar, it hadn't gone well. The exchange had involved a lot of yelling, death threats, and high-velocity pineapples. He'd also been pushed over the side of the Argo II into a pod of dolphins by a violent grapevine. He still didn't know what that was all about.

"What's his shield doing here?" Percy asked.

The goddess stared at him with her wet milky eyes. Red polka dots formed on her dress once they'd dripped off her jaw. "He doesn't need it anymore, does he? It came here when his mortal body was burned. A reminder, I suppose, that no shield is sufficient. In the end, misery overtakes all of you... Even Hercules."

Hearing Akhlys speak, he no longer found it strange that she had clawed her own cheeks. In fact, it seemed a perfectly normal response to their situation. Percy inched closer to Annabeth, he needed to remember why they were here, he needed to remember why he shouldn't fall to his knees and stay there. He grabbed her hand and held it tight.

"Bob," Percy said thickly, "we shouldn't have come here."

From somewhere inside Bob's pockets, the skeleton kitten mewled in agreement. Teqi peered around Bob's legs, wide eyed, at the goddess on the ground. Small Bob's tiny claws appeared at the top of Bob's pocket, and then the feline was launching itself at Teqi's shoulder, landing with its fur puffed up heroically. Teqi pet Small Bob.

The Titan shifted and winced as if Small Bob was still clawing at him through the dusty blue fabric. "Akhlys controls the Death Mist," he insisted stubbornly. "She can hide you."

"Hide them?" Akhlys made a gurgling sound, and blood started to pool at the corners of her mouth. She was either laughing or choking to death. Percy couldn't imagine her laughing. Frankly, he couldn't imagine himself laughing either. Not here. Not near her. "Why would I do that?"

"They must reach the Doors of Death," Bob said. "To return to the mortal world."

"Impossible!" Akhlys lamented. "The armies of Tartarus will find you. They will kill you."

"Right," Teqi snorted, and Percy wasn't sure if he should admire her confidence in them or be worried. Small Bob batting at a strand of her dark hair like it was a feather on a stick.