Chapter Text
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kelli lunge, raking her talons across Annabeth’s arm. Annabeth screamed and fell.
Percy stumbled in her direction. The vampire on his back sank her teeth into his neck. Searing pain coursed through his body. His knees buckled.
Stay on your feet, he told himself. You have to beat them. Then the other vampire bit his sword arm, and Riptide clattered to the ground.
That was it. His luck had finally run out. Kelli loomed over Annabeth, savoring her moment of triumph. The other two empousai circled Percy, their mouths slavering, ready for another taste.
Then a shadow fell across Percy. A deep war cry bellowed from somewhere above, echoing across the plains of Tartarus, and the Minotaur dropped onto the battlefield.
XVI
PERCY
Percy thought he was hallucinating. It just wasn’t possible that a huge bovine figure could drop out of the sky and stomp Kelli flat, trampling her into a mound of monster dust.
But that’s exactly what happened. The Minotaur was ten feet tall, with a shaggy pelt of fur, glowing red eyes and muscular arms protruding from battered and dented up Greek armor. Around his torso, crossing over a jagged hole in his breastplate, was a crudely stitched satchel whose contents rattled as he moved. In his hand was a massive, double headed battle axe with a faintly glowing bronze and gold shaft, steel blades shaped like twin omegas; Ω, festooned with multicolored beaded necklaces like he had just come from a Mardi Gras parade.
Annabeth yelped and tried to crawl away, but the Minotaur wasn’t interested in her. He turned to the two remaining empousai, who stood over Percy.
One was foolish enough to attack. She lunged with the speed of a tiger, but she never stood a chance. The Minotaur moved even faster. With a single deadly swipe, he cut her to dust. The last vampire tried to run. The bull-man threw his axe like a massive boomerang (was there such a thing as a battle-axe-erang?). It sliced through the vampire and returned to his hand.
‘VICTORY!’ The Minotaur bellowed. As Percy’s brain short-circuited, processing the fact that the creature could speak, he saw the Minotaur grinning with delight and doing a little triumphant dance. ‘Take that, you temptresses!’ As he jitterbugged, like a flapper from the 1920s, a few of what Percy recognized as Camp Half-Blood necklaces went flying off the base of his axe blades into the wasteland around them.
Percy couldn’t speak. He couldn’t bring himself to believe that somebody, that the Minotaur, had come to their rescue. It couldn’t be real, right? One of the empousai had to have knocked him on the head or drunk more of his blood than he thought, and this was what his dying brain was conjuring up from a lack of oxygen. However, Annabeth looked just as shocked as he felt. His stomach sank to somewhere around his ankles in dread.
‘H-how ... W-why...?’ Annabeth stammered.
‘Please, don't be frightened,' said the Minotaur. 'I ... I come in peace. I’ve been tracking you two since you first landed down here,’ he grunted, hefting his axe to an upright position and leaning on it like a staff. His eyes dimmed from laser beam-red to a mellow, chocolate brown. ‘I would know the scent of Percy Jackson anywhere.” Despite his ferocious appearance, his voice was deep, smooth and surprisingly relaxing, like the narrator of an audiobook.
Annabeth crawled a little further away. Her arm was bleeding badly. ‘You... can talk? Tracked us? Why?’
Every molecule in Percy’s body screamed fight-or-flight, but he wasn’t in any condition to stand upright, let alone fight this guy.
The monster shook his head. ‘It figures that a demigod would assume I could not speak. I don't often speak to my foes in the heat of battle, but I have wanted to have words with you both for a very long time now. This is as good a time as any, for we each need something from the other.'
Then, the Minotaur frowned when he noticed Annabeth’s wounds. ‘As for what else I want... I want to help you. And to help myself in the process,' He put his battle axe back in its holster, which was strapped to his back.
'But,' he continued, 'there is no time for detailed explanations. Here, let me start by healing you. I know I have something somewhere in my bag.”
Annabeth flinched as he knelt next to her. The Minotaur began rummaging through his satchel, taking out random objects: a ball of purple yarn and some knitting needles, smudgy reading glasses with cracked lenses, a dagger, and several frayed and dirty handkerchiefs.
Percy was woozy with pain, but then he saw the Minotaur remove some old Gatorade bottles full of what looked like apple juice and glittery water, followed by a few plastic baggies with something beige mashed up inside of them.
The Minotaur caught Percy staring. ‘Ambrosia, unicorn horn draught and nectar,” he explained. ‘I scavenged them from the Fallen. War trophies taken by defeated monsters, who had them on their persons when they returned here. They didn't savor them for very long before I got to them. I knew you would need them. The Phlegethon can only do so much for a human.’
He thrust a bottle at Annabeth, who hesitated a moment, sniffing the contents before drinking. Her major wounds slowly faded along with some of her other blisters and scrapes. The bull-man saw Percy was too weak to hold anything on his own, so he held up a clump of ambrosia to Percy’s mouth, and in an instant, he was chewing it before he realized what he was doing. His mind immediately cleared as the taste of buttered popcorn washed over his tongue. For good measure, Doctor Bull-Dude made Percy take one sip each of the unicorn horn water, and nectar. The nectar tasted like his mom's fresh chocolate chip cookies, still warm from the oven. He was overcome with a pang of sadness, wondering if he'd ever taste the real thing again.
‘How do you feel?’ asked the Minotaur, tilting his massive head to one side as he helped Annabeth to her feet. ‘Do you think you can stand?’
‘Uh ... yeah,’ Percy managed, nervously. ‘Th-..thanks for the help. But...uh...we’d better be going now. Long way to go. Lots to do.’
His hand closed over Riptide, as he struggled to stand. He staggered, and the Minotaur caught him. His baseball mitt sized hands were surprisingly warm and gentle as he helped Percy regain his balance. The bull-man smelled faintly like warm leather; not like the rotten meat Percy was expecting. Maybe the poisonous air was playing tricks on his sense of smell.
‘Oh, I don’t advise you do that. You are both too weak. For a pair of demigods in enemy territory, you both make far too much noise. And if what I've heard from the other monsters is true, you need to get to the exit from this ghastly place as soon as possible. A Prophecy or something of the sort. You plainly need a guide.’
He snorted. ‘And a bodyguard. I could help you with that. You are not the only ones who want to leave Tartarus behind.’
Annabeth gave Percy a worried look, but he had no words to offer her.
‘I want to escape as badly as you. I know where the Doors of Death are. I've been through countless times over the last few thousand years and I know how they work.' He gave Percy and Annabeth a pointed look.
'Gaia's forces are assembling; I doubt we'll find it with any difficulty.' said the Minotaur, a grim smile on his bestial face. 'Getting close to the doors, however....i swear on the River Styx that I will do my best to keep you two safe on your journey and get you back home.’
Annabeth spoke up, haltingly. ‘You’re-... you’re going to come with us? How do we know you’re not answering Gaia’s call, like Kelli was? Or that you’re not going to kill us the second we get to the Doors?’
The Minotaur rolled his eyes. ‘Did I stutter, child? I thought you were a daughter of Athena! Any fool knows an oath on the Styx is binding! I promised to help you both reach the Doors in as much safety as I can provide. I will help you, if you can help me.’
Percy managed to croak out, ‘Help you? Help you to what? Go back up to the surface so you can slaughter us? So you can help Gaia destroy the world?’
The monster was quiet for several seconds, before he continued, softly, ‘Help me to be free of this life. I seek... I seek redemption ... and mercy. I received no summons from anybody; I swear this on the Styx as well. Gaia has not spoken to me yet. Perhaps she sees no use for your old enemy, twice-slain, in breaking you. I see no use in it myself. I want to be free of the life of a monster; to make my own choices, to be nobody’s puppet. To be Asterion again. This is an oath I swore on my own behalf.
‘Asterion,’ Annabeth whispered. ‘That-...’ she gulped, before resuming, a little louder. ‘That was your birth name, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ nodded the bull-man, shifting his weight on his hooves. ‘It was stolen from me the moment I was forced into the Labyrinth. I would reclaim it and live a new life, in peace.’
Percy didn’t know what to make of any of this. Sure, he knew about oaths on the Styx; his dad broke one when Percy was born. But he didn’t trust Asterion as far as he could throw him, which, even on a good day would have been impossible.
He shared a silent exchange with Annabeth;
You want to go with him?
No, but do we have a choice?
Asterion snorted in impatience. ‘Will you let me guide you? Time grows short.’
Percy stared up at Asterion, his eyes traveling over the hole he made the last time they fought. He remembered how he skewered the bull-man with the handle of his own axe, on the Williamsburg Bridge. ‘Yeah,’ he said, hollowly. ‘We’ll go with you.’
‘About time,’ huffed Asterion. ‘We must go before they find you. They are coming. Quickly, too.’
‘They?’ Annabeth asked.
Percy scanned the horizon. He saw no approaching monsters (besides the one standing two feet away from them) - nothing but the stark grey wasteland.
‘Yes,’ Asterion agreed. ‘But I know a way. Come on, you two. We have a difficult journey ahead of us.’