The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan Page A

me. All we could do was defend, and we wouldn’t be able to keep that up for very long.
    I took another step sideways, and suddenly there was nothing behind me. It was a crack between two of the largest boulders, something I’d passed by a million times, but…
    “In here,” I said.
    Annabeth sliced at a scorpion then looked at me like I was crazy. “ In there? It’s too narrow.”
    “I’ll cover you. Go!”
    She ducked behind me and started squeezing between the two boulders. Then she yelped and grabbed my armor straps, and suddenly I was tumbling into a pit that hadn’t been there a moment before. I could see the scorpions above us, the purple evening sky and the trees, and then the hole shut like the lens of a camera, and we were in complete darkness.
    Our breathing echoed against stone. It was wet and cold. I was sitting on a bumpy floor that seemed to be made of bricks.
    I lifted Riptide. The faint glow of the blade was just enough to illuminate Annabeth’s frightened face and the mossy stone walls on either side of us.
    “Wh-where are we?” Annabeth said.
    “Safe from the scorpions, anyway,” I tried to sound calm, but I was freaking out. The crack between the boulders couldn’t have led into a cave. I would’ve known if there was a cave here; I was sure of it. It was like the ground had opened up and swallowed us. All I could think of was the fissure in the dining room pavilion, where those skeletons had been consumed last summer. I wondered if the same thing had happened to us.
    I lifted my sword again for light.
    “It’s a long room,” I muttered.
    Annabeth gripped my arm. “It’s not a room. It’s a corridor.”
    She was right the darkness felt…emptier in front of us. There was a warm breeze, like in subway tunnels, only it felt older, more dangerous somehow. I started forward, but Annabeth stopped me. “Don’t take another step,”
    she warned. “We need to find the exit.”
    She sounded really scared now.
    “It’s okay,” I promised. “It’s right—”
    I looked up and realized I couldn’t see where we’d fallen in. The ceiling was solid stone. The corridor seemed to stretch endlessly in both directions. Annabeth’s hand slipped into mine. Under different circumstances I would’ve been embarrassed, but here in the dark I was glad to know where she was. It was about the only thing I was sure of.
    “Two steps back,” she advised.
    We stepped backward together like we were in a minefield.
    “Okay,” she said. “Help me examine the walls.”
    “What for?”
    “The mark of Daedalus,” she said, as if that was supposed to make sense.
    “Uh, okay. What kind of—”
    “Got it!” she said with relief. She set her hand on the wall and pressed against a tiny fissure, which began to glow blue. A Greek symbol appeared:
    ∆, the Ancient Greek Delta.
    The roof slid open and we saw night sky, stars blazing. It was a lot darker than it should’ve been. Metal ladder rungs appeared in the side of the wall, leading up, and I could hear people yelling our names.
    “Percy! Annabeth!” Tyson’s voice bellowed the loudest, but others were calling out too.
    I looked nervously at Annabeth. Then we began to climb.

    * * *

    We made our way around the rocks and ran into Clarisse and a bunch of other campers carrying torches.
    “Where have you two been?” Clarisse demanded.
    “We’ve been looking forever.”
    “But we were gone only a few minutes,” I said.
    Chiron trotted up, followed by Tyson and Grover.
    “Percy!” Tyson said. “You are okay?”
    “We’re fine,” I said. “We fell in a hole.”
    The others looked at me skeptically, then at Annabeth.
    “Honest!” I said. “There were three scorpions after us, so we ran and hid in the rocks. But we were only gone a minute.”
    “You’ve been missing for almost an hour,” Chiron said. “The game is over.”
    “Yeah,” Grover muttered. “We would’ve won, but a Cyclops sat on me.”
    “Was an accident!” Tyson