violent delights, percy jackson

chapter fourteen

"What is this place?" Azalea asked the room, with her eyes captivated the more she stared at it all. "It looks-,"

"Roman," Annabeth said absolutely. "Those mosaics are about two thousand years old."

Azalea wanted to ask how she knew that because it just looked like some grubby but still beautiful old artwork to her. Percy beat her to the punch though, as he asked the blonde girl, "But how can they be Roman?"

"The Labyrinth is a patchwork," Annabeth explained simply as she turned to the fake haired boy. "I told you, it's always expanding, adding pieces. It's the only work of architecture that grows by it's self."

"You make it sound like it's alive," Azalea mumbled more so to herself than the others. "Like it has a living and thinking conscious."

A loud groaning noise echoed from the tunnel in front of them all. Azalea on instinct took a step back from the tunnel as Grover whimpered from behind her.

"Let's not talk about it being alive," The goat pleaded nervously. "Please?"

"All right," Annabeth amended to the satyr who nodded thankfully. She added on secondly to them all, "Forward."

"You're kidding?" Azalea asked in disbelief, while Tyson echoed her with a nervous glance that didn't make anyone seem to thrilled about the prospect. "Down the hall with the bad sounds?"

"Yeah," Annabeth said simply. "The architecture is getting older which is a good sign. Daedalus's workshop would be in the oldest part."

It made sense but Azalea couldn't help but think that the maze could be toying with them. Who was to say the maze wouldn't put the workshop in the newest part of the maze just to throw them off course? She wouldn't put it past the Labyrinth to lead them on a wild goose chase.

Nonetheless they marched on. Fifty feet in and the tunnel however turned back to cement with large brass pipes running down the sides. Azalea was pretty sure the architecture wasn't Roman anymore, with the spray-painted graffiti at times and the large neon sign that read MOZ RULZ.

Annabeth however ignored Percy's helpful ( not ) point a few seconds later that he didn't think to was Roman anymore either. Azalea wouldn't have put it past her to slap the guy and she not forged ahead. Every few feet the tunnels twisted and turned or branched off into a different direction. Even the floors beneath them changed from the familiar cement and then to mud and then to bricks before repeating the process. Annabeth was right. The maze really was all patchwork ( kind-of like a grandmother's home stitched quilt ) and it made absolutely no sense at all.

At one point they even stumbled into a old wine cellar with a bunch of dusty bottles on wooden racks. Azalea half thought they had intruded into some rich old mans basement with a few discarded boxes of trinkets to be found as well. Despite this, there was no exit above them. Only more tunnels leading onwards. From the wine cellar came the wooden planked roof, like old times floorboards that were creaking above them from the weight. Azalea could hear the voices above them, as if they were under an old fashioned bar. It was reassuring to hear people, but then again, they couldn't exactly reach them. Though things truly took a turn for the worst when they came across their first skeleton.

He was dressed in white clothes, like some kind of uniform and a wooden crate of glass bottles sat next to
him. Azalea wrinkled her nose at the smell that filled the passage from it. The dead man stunk or whatever was in the remains of his bottles sure did.