The Battle of the Labyrinth - Harder Time

I 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 moved,” Annabeth guessed. “There’s no telling where.”

“So what do we do now?” I asked. “How do we get back in the maze?”

Annabeth gazed at the summit of Pikes Peak 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.”

I thought about Grover and Tyson, still down there somewhere. And Daedalus . . . even though he’d done some terrible things and put everybody I cared about at risk, it still seemed like a pretty horrible way to die.

“No,” Nico said. “He isn’t dead.”

“How can you be sure?” I asked.

“I know when people die. It’s this feeling I get, like a buzzing in my ears.”

“What about Tyson and Grover, then?”

Nico shook his head. “That’s harder. They’re not humans or half-bloods. They don’t have mortal souls.”

“We have to get into town,” Annabeth decided. “Our chances will be better of finding an entrance to the Labyrinth. We have to make it back to camp before Luke and his army.”


- The Battle of the Labyrinth, Chapter 16