CHAPTER SIX
—dumb brothers

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—UP was down and left was right.

  Judith didn't know exactly how or when she'd come to that conclusion. Maybe it was when her insides became her outsides and she'd chucked up her bagel from that morning. Maybe it was when she tripped for the thousandth time on a stray rock and lost her grip on the flashlight. However or whenever it happened, it didn't matter, she was pissed.  It had only been about five minutes of shuffling before it started to feel like she'd completed five hours of repetitive laps.

  She'd activated two booby traps so far, and luckily, her head wasn't cut off yet. The worst of the two had nicked her side pretty good, but she'd just popped some ambrosia in her mouth and powered on. Judith had also encountered multiple forks in the maze, forcing her to choose between two or three directions. Each time, she tried to imagine which one Nico would take ( the answer was the darkest and scariest ), but then she had to remember that some ghost was guiding him through, he wasn't finding his own way like her.

  She just had to hope that she was getting closer to where he might be. All she had was hope and it made her want to scream.

  Judith reached out to her right to feel around the wall in order to ensure she was still in a corridor. She'd snatched a flashlight from the camp store, but it only illuminated so far into the tunnels — enough to see the hordes of bugs that scurried out from under her boots.

  The sight of spider made her think about Annabeth. She was probably freaking out each time they passed through a series of cobwebs. Judith hoped that was the least of their problems, but knew that Percy had probably managed to get them into something worse. He had an affinity for that kind of thing.

  Maybe she should have just snuck away with them. They'd probably find Nico first considering the boy was actively seeking the son of Poseidon out to kill him. She was truly stupid to think that going out on her own would yield better results than sticking with the main group, she could already feel the effects of insanity trying to pick away at her brain.

  She'd almost started talking to herself, and Judith never talked to herself.

  Her right hand's fingertips were rubbed raw from scraping against the bricks. If she kept contact with one singular wall, she would be able to find her way back, that is, if the Labyrinth didn't change on her — which was unlikely. It still gave her an ounce of comfort to think about, though. Her hands lost contact with the wall a moment later, grappling at air.

  She'd made it to an expansive room, the edges blanketed in total darkness and a spotlight trained on the center ring. Judith looked up to try and find the source of light, but the ceiling was a black void ( not freaky at all ). It especially wasn't freaky when she found her favored dummy from camp situated in the center of the circular room.

  The girl wandered closer, looking around for pressure plated or tripwires before each step. Once she was close enough, Judith took out her ax and gripped it tightly before nudging the dummy to see if it would trigger anything. Nothing.

  She was just about to carry on her way, thinking some deity was just trying to mess with her head, when a deep voice lingered out into the open. "Go on, hit it." Judith sent her flashlight's beam in the voice's direction, but all she could see was a singular pair of red glowing eyes. "We know you want to."

  Judith hefted her weapon higher to show whoever sat in the shadows she was armed and lethal.

  "Show us that anger," a different voice said, this one a higher octave, but it was just as capable of sending shivers down Judith's spine.

  "I'm not angry — well, not yet," she said to the shadows with the bite of a threat. "Show yourselves."

  Surprisingly, they complied with her command. Two figures emerged from the inky black, both donned in leather jackets and ripped jeans. They looked older than her but not by much, but then again, she had to assume they were immortal and probably thousands of years older. The one with the glowing eyes had a bandana on his head. The other had a sneer covering his scar clad face. It was interesting that a god who could change form would choose to keep scars.

  Then she remembered that Ares kids refused ambrosía sometimes in order to keep their battle scars.

  "Of course you're angry, you're always angry. We feel it," the one with the marred face said, the one with the snake-like voice.

  "Feel it? Who are you?" She asked, though they struck her as oddly familiar.

  "We remind you of someone?" Bandana guy asked. Suddenly, there was a burst of yellow smoke and he was standing closer to Judith, wisps of the vapor trailing off of him like steam. "Your father, perhaps?"

  Judith racked her brain for the names of the twins she'd only heard of. "Phobos and Deimos."

  "Aha! And everyone says Ares kids have no brains," the one with the bandana said. Based on the feeling in the pit of her stomach — the hollowed out chasm of impending doom — Judith guessed he was Deimos.

  "Rare to see a sibling of ours come out smart," Phobos remarked. "And I bet you know exactly what we control."

  "Terror and panic," Judith answered.

  "Exactly." Deimos grinned. "But that's not exactly what we're here to demonstrate, though it would be a great motivator."

  Judith's eyes narrowed. "Motivator for what? What do you want?"

  "We're here to incite another feeling," Deimos said, a little too excited.

  "Agitation."

  "Frustration."

  "Anger."

  "Rage."

  "Fury!"

  Their voices swam around her head tauntingly like molten lava, burning each and every inch of her skin. The dark world around her had turned a deeper shade of red with every word they traded off; she was consumed in a bloody scarlet, their bodies glowing like beacons. How could they, with just words, being her head to a screaming ache?

  Her muscles began to cramp up with the urge to punch something, like she'd fall apart if she refused. The energy was spreading from her chest to each fist, each leg, her head. It was blinding her from sensibility.

  The twins laughed menacingly as they circled her, red fog covering them. "Control it. Harness it."

  Judith swung her ax out blindly with a shout. Her head felt like it was splitting open in an explosion of scorching heat. "Stop!"

  "Stop it yourself!" Phobos's voice screamed back from a short distance away.

  "I can't!" Judith felt her ax hit something solid, most likely the wooden dummy. She continued to swing. "It hurts!" Each hit made it better before dropping back to ten times worse as she pulled her weapon back for another hit.

  "JUDITH! You have to resist it!" The brothers screamed at her like they were in her head, she could see their daunting faces becoming warped in her mind.

  "Agh!" Judith screamed and tried to swing her blade at the nearest brother, not caring about the consequences. But she heard both their laughs and heaved herself to the ground. Her fists connected with the concrete multiple times, needing to release the energy before it blew her apart and killed her.

  "Make it stop!" She shrieked, an uncontrollable fury rolling off her in waves as she thrashed at the ground. She was sure her body was burning with the heat of the sun and her hands had gone numb a while ago, her body unfeeling as she unleashed the rage they were forcing into her.

  "No can do. Fight it, Judith," Deimos said, calmer this time, but every bit as demanding. It reminded her of a viper.

  "It won't stop," she shouted, her knuckles completely split and torn, her wrists aching with every pound.

  "It will stop," Phobos amended. "Fear it, or control it."

  "How fitting," Judith growled. The brothers grinned at the first sign of her resistance shining through.

  "Come on, Judy Moody," Deimos snarled.

  Judith's fists clenched even more at the nickname, only ever used by one person consistently. She refrained from sending her fist up at her brother. "Don't call me that."

  "What? Judy Moody?" He taunted. He stood a few feet away, challenging her, egging her to strike.

  Judith stood to her feet unsteadily, still feeling the rage sparking at every inch of her, even in her numbing fingers. Her breathing was heavy and loud. "I will kill you."

  Phobos crossed his arms. "Big words for someone who can't control their own emotions."

  Judith took a deep breath and steeled herself. "Stop it."

  The two boys had full blown smirks, seeing her steady stance and dark eyes now. The only sign of her earlier fit being her bleeding hands and clenched teeth. "Well done, Sloane."

  The two gods approached her stilled form. "Odikinesis is tough to crack, but you're well on your way," Phobos said.

  Judith looked down, realizing what they had just managed to do to her. She felt a jolt of anger spike up in her chest at their manipulation, but she tackled it down, just like she had with all the other emotions earlier. "Why did you do that?"

  "Gotta help out family, right?" Phobos chuckled darkly, like he knew something she didn't. "The Labyrinth isn't nice. It'll make or break you. And if you continued with your typical temper, you'd find yourself broken faster than a wine glass in an opera house."

  Deimos rolled his eyes at the analogy and Judith blinked.

  "This doesn't just mean you're cured," Deimos explained. "It just means you'll know how to stop it from affecting you. You'll still need to learn how to keep it from spreading to others. That's something we can't help with."

  "How do I do it myself?" Judith asked.

  "It's different for everyone," Phobos answered. "First, you'll need to detect it faster, then find something that'll make you forget hatred and anger. Like a — I don't know, something to make sure you don't go off the rails."

  "And we suggest you find it fast," Deimos said. "Things are escalating and we can't have you making a mess of things."

  "And by 'we,' you mean Ares," Judith guessed, though it was more a statement.

  "Of course. Believe me, we'd kill for some chaos caused by you, but we're under strict orders to make sure you chill out before things get out of hand," Phobos ranted. "So, that anchor of yours, hop to it."

  "I'm sure we'll be seeing you again." Deimos winked, his his glowing red eyes contorting like a blazing fire.

  "Take your time," Judith muttered.

  They both guffawed as Deimos placed a hand on his brother's shoulder and Phobos waved before popping away in a burst of yellow smoke. The room fell to an eerie sort of quiet, the kind you hear after a pouring thunderstorm, when the birds have yet to come out and the bugs still burrowed themselves in the earth. Complete uninterrupted stillness.

  It didn't last very long.

  Judith couldn't stop her hissed of pain as the adrenalin sunk. Her hands shook and fumbled for her backpack, cursing as the blood got on every piece of clothing she wore. She resorted to using her teeth to open her cinch bag and using as little movement in her hands to retrieve the pack of ambrosia. She wouldn't be able to put on bandages herself until the shaking died down a little.

  After eating a whole cube of the food of the gods and downing three ibuprofen, Judith left through the only exit apart from where she'd entered. Her hand brushed up against the right wall, although it seemed pointless at this point. She would never find her way back to the camp's entrance.

NOTES ;

HOW DO YOU LIKE PHOBOS AND DEIMOS??

I THINK THEY'D BE THOSE CRAZY BROTHERS THAT WOULD BEAT YOU UP TO A PULP BUT THEN TURN RIGHT AROUND BUY YOU ICE CREAM OR SOMETHING

edited : 09 / 03 / 2020