He forced his fists to unclench. ‘Look, lady, we’re not going to go all Hunger Games on each other. Isn’t going to happen.’
‘But you will win a fabulous honour!’ Nike reached into a basket at her side and produced a wreath of thick green laurels. ‘This crown of leaves could be yours! You can wear it on your head! Think of the glory!’
‘Leo’s right,’ Frank said, though his eyes were fixed on the wreath. His expression was a little too greedy for Leo’s taste. ‘We don’t fight each other. We fight the giants. You should help us.’
‘Very well!’ The goddess raised the laurel wreath in one hand and her spear in the other.
Percy and Leo exchanged looks.
‘Uh … does that mean you’ll join us?’ Percy asked. ‘You’ll help us fight the giants?’
‘That will be part of the prize,’ Nike said. ‘Whoever wins, I will consider you an ally. We will fight the giants together, and I will bestow victory upon you. But there can only be one winner. The others must be defeated, killed, destroyed utterly. So what will it be, demigods? Will you succeed in your quest, or will you cling to your namby-pamby ideas of friendship and everybody wins participation awards?’
Percy uncapped his pen. Riptide grew into a Celestial bronze sword. Leo was worried he might turn it on them. Nike’s aura was that hard to resist.
Instead, Percy pointed his blade at Nike. ‘What if we fight you instead?’
‘Ha!’ Nike’s eyes gleamed. ‘If you refuse to fight each other, you shall be persuaded!’
Nike spread her golden wings. Four metal feathers fluttered down, two on either side of the chariot. The feathers twirled like gymnasts, growing larger, sprouting arms and legs, until they touched the ground as four metallic, human-sized replicas of the goddess, each armed with a golden spear and a Celestial bronze laurel wreath that looked suspiciously like a barbed-wire Frisbee.
‘To the stadium!’ the goddess cried. ‘You have five minutes to prepare. Then blood shall be spilled!’
Leo was about to say, What if we refuse to go to the stadium?
He got his answer before asking the question.
‘Run!’ Nike bellowed. ‘To the stadium with you, or my Nikai will kill you where you stand!’
The metal ladies unhinged their jaws and blasted out a sound like a Super Bowl crowd mixed with feedback. They shook their spears and charged the demigods.
It wasn’t Leo’s finest moment. Panic seized him, and he took off. His only comfort was that his friends did, too – and they weren’t the cowardly type.
The four metal women swept behind them in a loose semicircle, herding them to the northeast. All the tourists had vanished. Perhaps they’d fled to the air-conditioned comfort of the museum, or maybe Nike had somehow forced them to leave.
The demigods ran, tripping over stones, leaping over crumbled walls, dodging around columns and informational placards. Behind them, Nike’s chariot wheels rumbled and her horses whinnied.
Every time Leo thought about slowing down, the metal ladies screamed again – what had Nike called them? Nikai? Nikettes? – filling Leo with terror.
He hated being filled with terror. It was embarrassing.
‘There!’ Frank sprinted towards a kind of trench between two earthen walls with a stone archway above. It reminded Leo of those tunnels that football teams run through when they enter the field. ‘That’s the entrance to the old Olympic stadium. It’s called the crypt!’
‘Not a good name!’ Leo yelled.
‘Why are we going there?’ Percy gasped. ‘If that’s where she wants us –’
The Nikettes screamed again and all rational thought abandoned Leo. He ran for the tunnel.
When they reached the arch, Hazel yelled, ‘Hold it!’
They stumbled to a stop. Percy doubled over, wheezing. Leo had noticed that Percy seemed to get winded more easily these days – probably because of that nasty acid air he’d been forced to breathe in Tartarus.
Frank peered back the way they’d come. ‘I don’t see them any more. They disappeared.’
‘Did they give up?’ Percy asked hopefully.
Leo scanned the ruins. ‘Nah. They just herded us where they wanted us. What were those things, anyway? The Nikettes, I mean.’
‘Nikettes?’ Frank scratched his head. ‘I think it was Nikai, plural, like victories.’
‘Yes.’ Hazel looked deep in thought, running her hands along the stone archway. ‘In some legends, Nike had an army of little victories she could send all over the world to do her bidding.’
‘Like Santa’s elves,’ Percy said. ‘Except evil. And metal. And really loud.’
Hazel pressed her fingers against the arch, as if taking its pulse. Beyond the narrow tunnel, the earthen walls opened into a long field with gently rising slopes on either side, like seating for spectators.
Leo guessed it would have been an open-air stadium back in the day – big enough for discus-throwing, javelin-catching, naked shot-put, or whatever else those crazy Greeks used to do to win a bunch of leaves.
‘Ghosts linger in this place,’ Hazel murmured. ‘A lot of pain is embedded in these stones.’
‘Please tell me you have a plan,’ Leo said. ‘Preferably one that doesn’t involve embedding my pain in the stones.’
Hazel’s eyes were stormy and distant, the way they’d been in the House of Hades – like she was peering into a different layer of reality. ‘This was the players’ entrance. Nike said we have five minutes to prepare. Then she’ll expect us to pass under this archway and begin the games. We won’t be allowed to leave that field until three of us are dead.’
Percy leaned on his sword. ‘I’m pretty sure death matches weren’t an Olympic sport.’
‘Well, they are today,’ Hazel warned. ‘But I might be able to give us an edge. When we pass through, I could raise some obstacles on the field – hiding places to buy us some time.’
Frank frowned. ‘You mean like on the Field of Mars – trenches, tunnels, that kind of thing? You can do that with the Mist?’
‘I think so,’ Hazel said. ‘Nike would probably like to see an obstacle course. I can play her expectations against her. But it would be more than that. I can use any subterranean gateway – e
ven this arch – to access the Labyrinth. I can raise part of the Labyrinth to the surface.’
‘Whoa, whoa, whoa.’ Percy made a time-out sign. ‘The Labyrinth is bad. We discussed this.’
‘Hazel, he’s right.’ Leo remembered all too well how she’d led him through the illusionary maze in the House of Hades. They’d almost died about every six feet. ‘I mean, I know you’re good with magic. But we’ve already got four screaming Nikettes to worry about –’
‘You’ll have to trust me,’ she said. ‘We’ve only got a couple of minutes now. When we pass through the arch, I can at least manipulate the playing field to our advantage.’
Percy exhaled through his nose. ‘Twice now, I’ve been forced to fight in stadiums – once in Rome, and before that in the Labyrinth. I hate playing games for people’s amusement.’
‘We all do,’ Hazel said. ‘But we have to put Nike off guard. We’ll pretend to fight until we can neutralize those Nikettes – ugh, that’s an awful name. Then we subdue Nike, like Juno said.’
‘Makes sense,’ Frank agreed. ‘You felt how powerful Nike was, trying to put us at each other’s throats. If she’s sending out those vibes to all the Greeks and Romans, there’s no way we’ll be able to prevent a war. We’ve got to get her under control.’
‘And how do we do that?’ Percy asked. ‘Bonk her on the head and stuff her in a sack?’
Leo’s mental gears started to turn.
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘you’re not far off. Uncle Leo brought some toys for all you good little demigods.’
XII
Leo
TWO MINUTES WASN’T NEARLY ENOUGH TIME.
Leo hoped he’d given everybody the right gadgets and adequately explained what all the buttons did. Otherwise things would get ugly.
While he was lecturing Frank and Percy on Archimedean mechanics, Hazel stared at the stone archway and muttered under her breath.
Nothing seemed to change in the big grassy field beyond, but Leo was sure Hazel had some Mistalicious tricks up her sleeve.
He was just explaining to Frank how to avoid getting decapitated by his own Archimedes sphere when the sound of trumpets echoed through the stadium. Nike’s chariot appeared on the field, the Nikettes arrayed in front of her with their spears and laurels raised.
‘Begin!’ the goddess bellowed.
Percy and Leo sprinted through the archway. Immediately, the field shimmered and became a maze of brick walls and trenches. They ducked behind the nearest wall and ran to the left. Back at the archway, Frank yelled, ‘Uh, die, Graecus scum!’ A poorly aimed arrow sailed over Leo’s head.
‘More vicious!’ Nike yelled. ‘Kill like you mean it!’
Leo glanced at Percy. ‘Ready?’
Percy hefted a bronze grenade. ‘I hope you labelled these right.’ He yelled, ‘Die, Romans!’ and lobbed the grenade over the wall.
BOOM! Leo couldn’t see the explosion, but the smell of buttery popcorn filled the air.
‘Oh, no!’ Hazel wailed. ‘Popcorn! Our fatal weakness!’
Frank shot another arrow over their heads. Leo and Percy scrambled to the left, ducking through a maze of walls that seemed to shift and turn on their own. Leo could still see open sky above him, but claustrophobia started to set in, making it hard for him to breathe.
Somewhere behind them, Nike yelled, ‘Try harder! That popcorn was not fatal!’