νεκρός || Annabeth Chase x Fem!OC

Vol. 3-32: I DO think your friend is mentally unwell

ANNABETH

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Jumping out a window five hundred feet above ground is not usually my idea of fun. Especially when I'm wearing bronze wings that Daedalus is not known for constructing very well.

At least I knew what I was doing. Percy, on the other hand, flapped his wings like a duck. He plummeted toward the valley and the red rocks below. I was pretty sure he was going to become a grease spot in the Garden of the Gods, as I yelled, "Spread your arms! Keep them extended."

He managed to calm himself down enough to listen to me. It only makes sense that he panicked more than the rest of us. He's not supposed to be in the air because of a certain king of the gods. As soon as Percy spread his arms out, the wings stiffened, caught the wind, and his descent slowed. He soared downward, but at a controlled angle, like a kite in a dive.

Experimentally, he flapped his arms once. He arced into the sky, a bright smile on his face. "Yeah!"

The rest of us were much more contained and descended in a careful spiral. I glanced at Nico, who looked really irritated, since he had to focus extra hard to control his wings. In turn, he had a black cat digging her claws into his aviator jacket as she held on for dear life. I giggled as "Oedipuss" meowed indignantly, but the good feeling left when I realized my wings didn't feel so good, and Daedalus's workshop was smoking like crazy above us.

"Land!" I yelled. "These wings won't last forever."

"How long?" Rachel asked.

"I don't want to find out!" I replied.

We swooped down toward the Garden of the Gods. Percy did a complete circle around one of the rock spires and freaked out a couple of climbers. Then the five of us soared across the valley, over a road, and landed on the terrace of the visitor center. It was late afternoon and the place looked pretty empty, but we ripped off our wings as quickly as we could. Looking at them, I could see I was right to trust my gut. The self-adhesive seals that bound the wings to our backs were already melting, and we were shedding bronze feathers. It seemed a shame, but we couldn't fix them, and couldn't leave them around for the mortals, so we stuffed the wings in trash bins outside the cafeteria.

Tempest turned back into a human. "Why can bro simply not make wings?"

Nico yelled angrily and held up his coat. "You ripped my damn clothes!" Rachel flinched at his voice. She flinches a lot. It's annoying.

"Cry about it."

I used the tourist binocular camera to look up at the hill where Daedalus's workshop had been, but it had vanished. No more smoke. No broken windows. Just the side of a hill.

"The workshop moved," I guessed. "There's no telling where."

"So what do we do now?" Percy asked. "How do we get back in the maze?"

I sighed, gazing at the summit of Pikes Peak in the distance. "Maybe we can't. If Daedalus died... he said his life force was tied into the Labyrinth. The whole thing might've been destroyed. Maybe that will stop Luke's invasion."

I thought about Grover and Tyson, still down there somewhere. And Daedalus... even though he'd done some terrible things and put everybody I cared about at risk, it seemed like a pretty horrible way to die.