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"the doors opened and she saw what it was all for"
ARIADNE WASN'T DEAD YET, BUT SHE WAS ALREADY TIRED OF BEING A CORPSE.
As they trudged towards the heart of Tartarus, she kept glancing down at her body, wondering how it could belong to her. Her arms looked like bleached leather pulled over sticks. Her skeletal legs seemed to dissolve into smoke with every step. She'd learned to move normally within the Death Mist, more or less, but the magical shroud made her feel like she was wrapped in a coat of helium.
She worried that the Death Mist might cling to her forever, even if they managed to survive Tartarus. She didn't want to spend the rest of her life looking like an extra from The Walking Dead. Imagining her wedding with Percy as a ghostly bride was straight from a horror movie.
Ariadne tried to focus on something else, but there was no safe direction to look.
Under her feet, the ground glistened a nauseating purple—the sickly version of her eyes—pulsing with webs of veins. I'm the dim red light of the blood clouds, Death Mist Annabeth looked like a freshly risen zombie.
Ahead of them was the most depressing view of all.
Spread to the horizon was an army of monsters—flocked of winged arai, tribes of lumbering Cyclopses, clusters of floating evil spirits. Thousands of baddies, maybe tens of thousands, all milling relentlessly, pressing against one another, growling and fighting for space—like the locker area of an overcrowded school between classes, if all the students were 'roid-raging mutants who smelled really bad.
Bob led them towards the edge of the army. He made no effort to hide, but that it would have done any good. Being ten feet tall and glowing silver, Bob didn't do stealth very well.
About thirty yards from the nearest monsters, Bob faced Ariadne.
"Stay quiet and stay behind me," he advised. "They will not notice you."
"We hope," Ariadne muttered.
On the Titan's shoulder, Small Bob woke up from a nap. He purred seismically and arched his back, turning skeletal then back to calico. At least he didn't seem nervous."
Annabeth examined her own zombie hands. "Bob if we're invisible...how can you see us? I mean, you're technically, you know..."
"Yes," Bob said. "But we are friends."
"Nyx and her children could see us," Annabeth said.
Bob shrugged. "That was in Nyx's realm. That is different."
"Uh...right." Annabeth didn't sound reassured, but they were here now. They didn't have any choice but to try.
Ariadne stared at the warm of vicious monsters. "We'll, at least we won't have to worry about bumping into any other friends in this crowd."
