Death and Shadows

Ch.12 A Titan and a God

~Nico's POV~

Jumping out a window five hundred feet aboveground is not usually my idea of an escape plan. Especially when it involved doing something I was not meant to do.

I plummeted toward the valley and the red rocks below. I was pretty sure I was going to see my dad sooner than he thought, as Lia yelled from somewhere, "Spread your arms! Keep them extended!"

The small part of my brain that wasn't engulfed in panic heard her, and my arms responded. As soon as I spread them out, the wings stiffened, caught the wind, and my decent slowed. I soared downward, but at a controlled angle, like a kite in a dive.

Experimentally, I flapped my arms once. I arced into the sky, the wind whistling in my ears.

From below I could hear Percy yell, "Yeah!"

He voiced what I had in mind. The feeling was unbelievable. After getting the hang of it, I felt like the wings were part of my body. I could soar and swoop and dive anywhere I wanted to. I wondered if that was how Lia felt whenever she flew.

I turned and saw everyone else- Rachel, Annabeth, and Lia spiraled beside me with Percy flying below us. Behind me, smoke billowed from the windows of Daedalus's workshop.

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

"How long?" Rachel cried.

"I don't want to find out!" Annabeth said.

We swooped down toward a beautiful garden. Percy did a complete circle around one of the rock spires and freaked out a couple climbers.

"Spread your arms back as far as you can to land!" Lia called out.

Everyone listened to her. Then the five of us soared across the valley over a road, and landed on the terrace of the visitor center. Surprisingly, none of us with the synthetic wings crashed. It was late afternoon and the place looked pretty empty, but everyone- except for Lia- ripped off our wings as quickly as we could. Lia looked crestfallen about putting her wings away, but she did so anyway. Looking at my own, I could see Annabeth was right. 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 the trash bin outside the cafeteria.

Percy 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 must have moved," Annabeth guessed. "There's no telling where."

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

Annabeth gazed at the summit of the mountain in the distance. "Maybe we can't. If Daedalus died...he said his life force was tied to the Labyrinth. The whole thing might've been destroyed. Maybe that will stop Luke's invasion."

Once again, I had no idea what Annabeth was talking about but an invasion didn't sound good.

"No," I said. "He isn't dead."

"Yeah, he's still alive somehow," Lia added.

"How do can you guys be sure?" Percy said.

"We know when people die. I don't know if it's the same for Lia, but it's this feeling I get, like a buzzing in my ears," I said.

"Daughter of death here," Lia reminded. "And it's more or less the same way as Nico. I get a ringing in my ears and I get this certain feeling in my stomach."