Memories 25-27 | Skill 07

[divinewisdom]

Skill 07 / Other
Cursing in Ancient Greek
Hansel and Gretel, Day 244. Stale slice of bread.

It does exactly what you think it does. :|
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Memory 25 / Significant Negative
Losing Percy -- disappearance, the hero with one shoe.
Columbine, Day 241. Six pieces of popcorn. [1/6]

BASICALLY Percy goes missing and finally Hera tells Annabeth to go to the Grand Canyon and look for the hero with one shoe and that hero will have news of where Percy is!

Annabeth is distraught for six whole months and it's awful and why would you want to hang out with her? Because she's awful. She spends six whole months panicking and worrying.

Effects:
+ 100000 Percy Worrying
- 100 Hera feelings 8|
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Memory 26 / Significant Positive
We play the Game Show of Death.
Odile, Day 239. Ruby-colored crystal heart.

Nico summons Minos who yells at them for being jerks even though HE is the jerk, and then they talk to the ghost of Bianca DiAngelo. Bianca tells Nico that he should have given up on raising her from the dead, because he needs to let her go, and of course he gets angry. The next day they ask Nico to come with them on this quest and he says no.

Annabeth’s eyes lit up. “Can you help us?” Eurytion studied the cattle guard, and I got the feeling the subject of Daedalus’s workshop made him uncomfortable.

“Don’t know where it is. But Hephaestus probably would.”

“That’s what Hera said,” Annabeth agreed. “But how do we find Hephaestus?”

Eurytion pulled something from under the collar of his shirt. It was a necklace—a smooth silver disk on a silver chain. The disk had a depression on the middle, like a thumbprint. He handed it to Annabeth.

“Hephaestus comes here from time to time,” Eurytion said. “Studies the animals and such so he can make bronze automaton copies. Last time, I— uh—did him a favor. A little trick he wanted to play on my dad, Ares, and Aphrodite. He gave me that chain in gratitude. Said if I ever needed to find him, the disk would lead me to his forges. But only once.”

“And you’re giving it to me?” Annabeth asked. Eurytion blushed.

“I don’t need to see the forges, miss. Got enough to do here. Just press the button and you’ll be on your way.”

Annabeth pressed the button and the disk sprang to life. It grew eight metallic legs. Annabeth shrieked and dropped it, much to Eurytion’s confusion.

“Spider!” she screamed.

“She’s, um, a little scared of spiders,” Grover explained. “That old grudge between Athena and Arachne.”

“Oh.” Eurytion looked a little embarrassed. “Sorry, miss.” The spider scrambled to the cattle guard and disappeared between the bars.

“Hurry,” I said. “That thing’s not going to wait for us.” Annabeth wasn’t anxious to follow, but we didn’t have much choice. We said our good-byes to Eurytion, Tyson pulled the cattle guard off the hole, and we dropped back into the maze.

They go into the maze!

We ran down a marble tunnel, then dashed to the left and almost fell into an abyss. Tyson grabbed me and hauled me back before I could fall. The tunnel continued in front of us, but there was no floor for about a hundred feet, just gaping darkness and a series of iron rungs in the ceiling. The mechanical spider was about halfway across, swinging from bar to bar by shooting out metal web fiber.

“Monkey bars,” Annabeth said. “I’m great at these.” She leaped onto the first rung and started swinging her way across. She was scared of tiny spiders, but not of plummeting to her death from a set of monkey bars. Go figure. Annabeth got to the opposite side and ran after the spider. I followed. When I got across, I looked back and saw Tyson giving Grover a piggyback ride (or was it a goatyback ride?). the big guy made it across in three swings, which was a good thing since, just as he landed, the last iron bar ripped free under his weight.

We kept moving and passed a skeleton crumpled in the tunnel. It work the remains of a dress shirt, slacks, and a tie. The spider didn’t slow down. I slipped on a pile of wood scraps, but when I shined a light on them I realized they were pencils—hundreds of them, all broken in half.

The tunnel opened up onto a large room. A blazing light hit us. Once my eyes adjusted, the first thing I noticed were the skeletons. Dozens littered the floor around us. Some were old and bleached white. Others were more recent and a lot grosser. They didn’t smell quite as bad as Geryon’s stables, but almost.

Then I saw the monster. She stood on a glittery dais on the opposite side of the room. She had the body of a huge lion and the head of a woman. She would’ve been pretty, but her hair was tied back in a tight bun and she wore too much makeup, so she kind of reminded me of my third-grade choir teacher. She had a blue ribbon badge pinned to her chest that took me a moment to read: THIS MONSTER HAS BEEN RATED EXEMPLARY!

Tyson whimpered. “Sphinx.” I knew exactly why he was scared. When he was small, Tyson had been attacked by a Sphinx’s paws and disappeared.

Annabeth started forward, but the Sphinx roared, showing fangs in her otherwise human face. Bars came down on both tunnel exits, behind us and in front. Immediately the monster’s snarl turned into a brilliant smile.

“Welcome, lucky contestants!” she announced. “Get ready to play...ANSWER THAT RIDDLE!” Canned applause blasted from the ceiling, as if there were invisible loudspeakers. Spotlights swept across the room and reflected off the dais, throwing disco glitter over the skeletons on the floor.

“Fabulous prizes!” the Sphinx said. “Pass the test, and you get to advance! Fail, and I get to eat you! Who will be our contestant?”

Annabeth grabbed my arm. “I’ve got this,” she whispered. “I know what she’s going to ask.” I didn’t argue too hard. I didn’t want Annabeth getting devoured by a monster, but I figured if the Sphinx was going to ask riddles, Annabeth was the best one of us to try. She stepped forward to the contestant’s podium, which had a skeleton in a school uniform hunched over it. She pushed the skeleton out of the way, and it clattered to the floor.

“Sorry,” Annabeth told it.

“Welcome, Annabeth Chase!” the monster cried, though Annabeth hadn’t said her name. “Are you ready for your test?"

“Yes,” she said. “Ask your riddle.”

“Twenty riddles, actually!” the Sphinx said gleefully.

“What? But back in the old days—”

“Oh, we’ve raised our standards! To pass, you must show proficiency in all twenty. Isn’t that great?” Applause switched on and off like somebody turning a faucet. Annabeth glanced at me nervously. I gave her an encouraging nod.

“Okay,” she told the Sphinx. “I’m ready.”

The Sphinx then asks a bunch of random trivia questions, which makes Annabeth mad because she's supposed to ask the same question EVERY time! The Sphinx replies that so many people knew the answer that she had to raise her standards. Annabeth complains because it's no longer riddles, but dumb facts that you just have to know.

“Stop!” Annabeth insisted. “This is a stupid test.”

“Um, Annabeth,” Grover cut in nervously. “Maybe you should just, you know, finish first and complain later?”

“I’m a child of Athena,” she insisted. “And this is an insult to my intelligence. I won’t answer these questions.”

Part of me was impressed with her for standing up like that. But part of me thought her pride was going to get us all killed.

The spotlights glared. The Sphinx’s eyes glittered pure black. “Why then, my dear,” the monster said calmly. “If you won’t pass, you fail. And since we can’t allow any children to be held back, you’ll be EATEN!”

The Sphinx bared her claws, which gleamed like stainless steel. She pounced at the podium.

“No!” Tyson charged. He hates it when people threaten Annabeth, but I couldn’t believe he was being so brave, especially since he’d had such a bad experience with a Sphinx before. He tackled the Sphinx in midair and they crashed sideways into a pile of bones. This gave Annabeth just enough time to gather her wits and draw her knife.

Tyson got up, his shirt clawed to shreds. The Sphinx growled, looking for an opening. I drew Riptide and stepped in front of Annabeth.

“Turn invisible,” I told her.

“I can fight!”

“No!” I yelled. “The Sphinx is after you! Let us get it.”

As if to prove my point, the Sphinx knocked Tyson aside and tried to charge past me. Grover poked her in the eye with somebody’s leg bone. She screeched in pain. Annabeth put on her cap and vanished. The Sphinx pounced right were she’d been standing, but came up with empty paws.

“No fair!” the Sphinx wailed. “Cheater!”

With Annabeth no longer in sight, the Sphinx turned on me. I raised my sword, but before I could strike, Tyson ripped the monster’s grading machine out of the floor and threw it at the Sphinx’s head, ruining her hair bun. It landed in pieces all around her.

“My grading machine!” she cried. “I can’t be exemplary without my test scores!” The bars lifted from the exits. We all dashed for the far tunnel. I could only hope Annabeth was doing the same.

Effects:
• remembered her terror of spiders :c I'm scared of them so kowai...
• THIS IS AN INSULT TO MY INTELLIGENCE she's good at riddles and random trivia!
+ 1000 pride
+ 100 Percy stepped on my pride >:C
• Mostly just a feel good memory about how intelligent she is that she can do things like this, and also feels good about your friends being awesome man.


Memory 27 / Significant Positive
Taking a death blow for Seaweed Brain.
Dog and Cheshire, Day 249. Condiments. [1/3]

Annabeth and Percy ride Blackjack and Porkpie the Pegasii to the Williamsburg bridge, where the Apollo cabin is fighting the Minotaur. They find out that Ares didn't come after all; Clarisse is still butthurt about the loot thing. Percy steps forward to do the Big Dumb Hero thing, and Annabeth falls back to help with the defensive line. Percy asks for a kiss and she tells him she'll see about that when he gets back alive.

Blah blah fighting Percy ends up overextending the army and Annabeth yells at him to get back...

"Retreat!" I told my friends. "I'll hold them."

In a matter of seconds they were on me. Michael and his archers tried to retreat, but Annabeth stayed right beside me, fighting with her knife and mirrored shield as we slowly backed up the bridge.
Kronos's cavalry swirled around us, slashing and yelling insults. The Titan himself advanced
leisurely, like he had all the time in the world. Being the lord of time, I guess he did.
I tried to wound his men, not kill. That slowed me down, but these weren't monsters. They were
demigods who'd fallen under Kronos's spell. I couldn't see faces under l heir battle helmets, but some of them had probably been my friends. I slashed the legs off their horses and made the skeletal mounts disintegrate. After the first few demigods took a spill, the rest figured out they'd better dismount and fight me on foot.

Annabeth and I stayed shoulder to shoulder, facing opposite directions. A dark shape passed over me, and I dared to glance up. Blackjack and Porkpie were swooping in, kicking our enemies in the helmets and flying away like very large kamikaze pigeons.

We'd almost made it to the middle of the bridge when something strange happened. I felt a chill down my spine—like that old saying about someone walking on your grave. Behind me, Annabeth cried out in pain.

"Annabeth!" I turned in time to see her fall, clutching her arm. A demigod with a bloody knife stood
over her. In a flash I understood what had happened. He'd been trying to stab me. Judging from the position of his blade, he would've taken me—maybe by sheer luck—in the small of my back, my only weak point. Annabeth had intercepted the knife with her own body.

But why? She didn't know about my weak spot. No one did.

Annabeth gets taken away to their safe house, where she begins to die because there was poison on the blade that stabbed her. :'| That's where the memory ends.