❝𝘴-𝘴𝘢𝘺 𝘪𝘵 𝘢𝘨𝘢𝘪𝘯❞
❝𝙞 𝙡𝙤𝙫𝙚 𝙮𝙤𝙪.❞
𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗖𝗬 𝗝𝗔𝗖𝗞𝗦𝗢𝗡 had met a lot of people and he had seen a lot of things that had caught his eyes. But she was a different story. The girl with the long hair was just someone he coul...
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XXXII. THE DAY WE WERE BLINDSIDED BY MY DAD'S COWS
━━━━━━
"Summer ends,
and autumn starts all fadin' into one"
THE ONLY MORNING THEY WERE going to get from the maze was Dodie's glow that immediately illuminated the whole scene, indicating that daylight was greeting the world at this instance. Whether they like it or not, they need to wake up and welcome another day of torture within the endless maze. Their breakfast? Well, it consisted of the fabulous and fantastic apple granola bars and juice boxes that were simply illuminating, before they headed back into the maze.
From the ancient stone tunnels that they had been tracking yesterday to dirt cedar beams that were nothing but peculiar as they tracked through the labyrinth. It was like they had ventured toward a gold mine or something, but it wasn't a thing that Annabeth was all that satisfied with. Actually, Annabeth was nothing but agitated.
"This isn't right," she huffed. "It should still be stone."
Dodie glanced around. They had come to a stop in a cave surrounded by stalactites that hung low from the ceilings. In the centre of the dirt floor was what looked to be a rectangular pit — kind of similar to a grave.
Neat.
Grover shivered. "It smells like the Underworld in here."
She scrunched her nose. Dodie wasn't exactly sure what the Underworld was supposed to smell like — she had the privilege of never being there before, and quite frankly she would rather refrain from playing tourist... or resident any time soon. Looking around the cave, she shone her own torch around when in the corner of her eyes, she had caught a glimpse of what seemed to be a soft glint at the edge of the pit — a foil wrapper.
She knitted her brows as she made it to reach the closest person to her: Percy. She tugged his sleeves, and he looked at her weirdly before he followed where she was gazing at, shining his own flashlight into the hole. There, they found a half-chewed cheeseburger floating in a pool of murky, carbonated muck.
"Now, who would be in their right mind to decide that this is the best place to have a burger picnic," she scoffed as she kicked the foil wrapper.
"Nico," Percy suddenly exclaimed, his face filled with realisation.
She snapped her eyes at him.
"What?"
"I told you yesterday, right? How I think he's here?" And that brought dread to be welcomed into her stomach, intermingling with the disgusting granola bar Kayla had packed for her. She didn't want to believe the kid was actually here, but seeing how serious Percy seemed, adamant about his own deduction, she felt sick to her stomach. Percy held her hand in his, and she felt a squeeze. "He was summoning the dead again."
