Still, Damasen was a good host. He’d saved Percy. His drakon-meat stew was excellent (especially compared to firewater). His hut was warm and comfortable, and for the first time since plunging into Tartarus, Annabeth felt like she could relax. Which was ironic, since she was having dinner with a Titan and a giant.
She told Damasen about her life and her adventures with Percy. She explained how Percy had met Bob, wiped his memory in the River Lethe, and left him in the care of Hades.
“Percy was trying to do something good,” she promised Bob. “He didn’t know Hades would be such a creep. ”
Even to her, it didn’t sound convincing. Hades was always a creep.
She thought about what the arai had said—how Nico di Angelo had been the only person to visit Bob in the palace of the Underworld. Nico was one of the least outgoing, least friendly demigods Annabeth knew. Yet he’d been kind to Bob. By convincing Bob that Percy was a friend, Nico had inadvertently saved their lives. Annabeth wondered if she would ever figure that guy out.
Bob washed his bowl with his squirt bottle and rag.
Damasen made a rolling gesture with his spoon. “Continue your story, Annabeth Chase. ”
She explained about their quest in the Argo II. When she got to the part about stopping Gaea from waking, she faltered. “She’s, um…she’s your mom, right?”
Damasen scraped his bowl. His face was covered with old poison burns, gouges, and scar tissue, so it looked like the surface of an asteroid.
“Yes,” he said. “And Tartarus is my father. ” He gestured around the hut. “As you can see, I was a disappointment to my parents. They expected…more from me. ”
Annabeth couldn’t quite wrap her mind around the fact that she was sharing soup with a twenty-foot-tall lizard-legged man whose parents were Earth and the Pit of Darkness.
Olympian gods were hard enough to imagine as parents, but at least they resembled humans. The old primordial gods like Gaea and Tartarus… How could you leave home and ever be independent of your parents, when they literally encompassed the entire world?
“So…” she said. “You don’t mind us fighting your mom?”
Damasen snorted like a bull. “Best of luck. At present, it’s my father you should worry about. With him opposing you, you have no chance to survive. ”
Suddenly Annabeth didn’t feel so hungry. She put her bowl on the floor. Small Bob came over to check it out.
“Opposing us how?” she asked.
“All of this. ” Damasen cracked a drakon bone and used a splinter as a toothpick. “All that you see is the body of Tartarus, or at least one manifestation of it. He knows you are here. He tries to thwart your progress at every step. My brethren hunt you. It is remarkable you have lived this long, even with the help of Iapetus. ”
Bob sco
wled when he heard his name. “The defeated ones hunt us, yes. They will be close behind now. ”
Damasen spat out his toothpick. “I can obscure your path for a while, long enough for you to rest. I have power in this swamp. But eventually, they will catch you. ”
“My friends must reach the Doors of Death,” Bob said. “That is the way out. ”
“Impossible,” Damasen muttered. “The Doors are too well guarded. ”
Annabeth sat forward. “But you know where they are?”
“Of course. All of Tartarus flows down to one place: his heart. The Doors of Death are there. But you cannot make it there alive with only Iapetus. ”
“Then come with us,” Annabeth said. “Help us. ”
“HA!”
Annabeth jumped. In the bed, Percy muttered deliriously in his sleep, “Ha, ha, ha. ”
“Child of Athena,” the giant said, “I am not your friend. I helped mortals once, and you see where it got me. ”
“You helped mortals?” Annabeth knew a lot about Greek legends, but she drew a total blank on the name Damasen. “I—I don’t understand. ”
“Bad story,” Bob explained. “Good giants have bad stories. Damasen was created to oppose Ares. ”
“Yes,” the giant agreed. “Like all my brethren, I was born to answer a certain god. My foe was Ares. But Ares was the god of war. And so, when I was born—”
“You were his opposite,” Annabeth guessed. “You were peaceful. ”
“Peaceful for a giant, at least. ” Damasen sighed. “I wandered the fields of Maeonia, in the land you now call Turkey. I tended my sheep and collected my herbs. It was a good life. But I would not fight the gods. My mother and father cursed me for that. The final insult: One day the Maeonian drakon killed a human shepherd, a friend of mine, so I hunted the creature down and slew it, thrusting a tree straight through its mouth. I used the power of the earth to regrow the tree’s roots, planting the drakon firmly in the ground. I made sure it would terrorize mortals no more. That was a deed Gaea could not forgive. ”
“Because you helped someone?”
“Yes. ” Damasen looked ashamed. “Gaea opened the earth, and I was consumed, exiled here in the belly of my father Tartarus, where all the useless flotsam collects—all the bits of creation he does not care for. ” The giant plucked a flower out of his hair and regarded it absently. “They let me live, tending my sheep, collecting my herbs, so I might know the uselessness of the life I chose. Every day—or what passes for day in this lightless place—the Maeonian drakon re-forms and attacks me. Killing it is my endless task. ”
Annabeth gazed around the hut, trying to imagine how many eons Damasen had been exiled here—slaying the drakon, collecting its bones and hide and meat, knowing it would attack again the next day. She could barely imagine surviving a week in Tartarus. Exiling your own son here for centuries—that was beyond cruel.
“Break the curse,” she blurted out. “Come with us. ”
Damasen chuckled sourly. “As simple as that. Don’t you think I have tried to leave this place? It is impossible. No matter which direction I travel, I end up here again. The swamp is the only thing I know—the only destination I can imagine. No, little demigod. My curse has overtaken me. I have no hope left. ”