Crimson Rivers [1] - Percy jackson

Chapter 14: The Truth- Sorta

“We have to get out of here,” Annabeth said. Together, we dragged Grover to his hooves and started back up the tunnel. My legs wouldn’t move fast enough. My backpack weighed me down. The voice got louder and angrier behind us, and we broke into a run. Not a moment too soon. A cold blast of wind pulled at our backs, as if the entire pit were inhaling.

For a terrifying moment, I lost ground, my feet slipping in the gravel. If we’d
been any closer to the edge, we would’ve been sucked in. We kept struggling forward, and finally reached the top of the tunnel, where the cavern widened out into the Fields of Asphodel. The wind died. A wail of outrage echoed from deep in the tunnel. Something was not happy
we’d gotten away. “What was that?” Grover panted, when we’d collapsed in the relative safety of a black poplar grove. “One of Hades’s pets?”

Annabeth and I looked at each other. I could tell she was nursing an idea,
probably the same one she’d gotten during the taxi ride to L.A., but she was
too scared to share it. That was enough to terrify me. Percy capped his sword, put the pen back his my pocket. “Let’s keep going.” he looked at Grover. “Can you walk?”

He swallowed. “Yeah, sure. I never liked those shoes, anyway.” He tried to sound brave about it, but he was trembling as badly as Annabeth, Percy, and I were. Whatever was in that pit was nobody’s pet. It wasbunspeakably old and powerful. Even Echidna hadn’t given me that feeling. I was almost relieved to turn my back on that tunnel and head toward the palace of Hades. Almost. "Here Syrus" Percy said handing me his backpack "I'm too tired to carry this"

The Furies circled the parapets, high in the gloom. The outer walls of the
fortress glittered black, and the two-story-tall bronze gates stood wide open. Up close, I saw that the engravings on the gates were scenes of death.
Some were from modern times—an atomic bomb exploding over a city, a
trench filled with gas mask– wearing soldiers, a line of African famine
victims waiting with empty bowls—but all of them looked as if they’d been rocket-propelled grenade launchers held across their chests.

“You know,” Grover mumbled, “I bet Hades doesn’t have trouble with door-to-door salesmen.”

His backpack weighed a ton now. I couldn’t figure out why. I wanted to
open it, check to see if he had somehow picked up a stray bowling ball, but this
wasn’t the time. “Well, guys,” I said. “I suppose we should…knock?”

A hot wind blew down the corridor, and the doors swung open. The guards stepped aside. “I guess that means entrez-vous,” Annabeth said.

The room inside looked just like in my dream, except this time the throne
of Hades was occupied. He was the third god I’d met, but the first who really struck me as godlike. He was at least ten feet tall, for one thing, and dressed in black silk robes and a crown of braided gold. His skin was albino white, his hair shoulder- length and jet black. He wasn’t bulked up like Ares, but he radiated power. He lounged on his throne of fused human bones, looking lithe, graceful, and dangerous as a panther.

I immediately felt like he should be giving the orders. He knew more than
I did. He should be my master. Then I told myself to snap out of it.bHades’s aura was affecting me, just as Ares’s had. The Lord of the Dead resembled pictures I’d seen of Adolph Hitler, or Napoleon, or the terroristbleaders who direct suicide bombers. Hades had the same intense eyes, the same kind of mesmerizing, evil charisma.

“You are brave to come here, Son of Poseidon,” he said in an oily voice  staring at Percy “After what you have done to me, very brave indeed. Or perhaps you arebsimply very foolish.”

Numbness crept into my joints, tempting me to lie down and just take avlittle nap at Hades’s feet. Curl up here and sleep forever. Percy stepped forward. "Lord
and Uncle, I come with two requests.”

Hades raised an eyebrow. When he sat forward in his throne, shadowybfaces appeared in the folds of his black robes, faces of torment, as if the garment were stitched of trapped souls from the Fields of Punishment, trying to get out. The ADHD part of me wondered, off-task, whether the rest of his clothes were made the same way. What horrible things would you have to do in your life to get woven into Hades’s underwear?

“Only two requests?” Hades said. “Arrogant child. As if you have not already taken enough. Speak, then. It amuses me not to strike you dead yet.”
I swallowed. This was going about as well as I’d feared.