Warriors || Leo Valdez [2]

30

Several hundred feet later, they reached a turn in the tunnel. Percy held up his hand, signaling them to wait. He peeked around the corner.

"What is it?" Piper whispered.

Percy gestured for his friends to come forward and take a look.

The corridor opened into a vast room with twenty-foot ceilings and rows of support columns. It looked like the same parking-garage-type area Alex had seen in her dreams, but now much more crowded with stuff.

The creaking and rumbling came from huge gears and pulley systems that raised and lowered sections of the floor for no apparent reason. Water flowed through open trenches, powering waterwheels that turned some of the machines. Other machines were connected to huge hamster wheels with hellhounds inside. Alex thought of Mrs. O'Leary inside itt and almost flinched at the thought. 

Suspended from the ceiling were cages of live animals-a lion, several zebras, a whole pack of hyenas, and even an eight-headed hydra. Ancient-looking bronze and leather conveyor belts trundled along with stacks of weapons and armor.

Leo would love it, Alex thought and then immediateley she began to worry about him. The whole room was like one massive, scary, unreliable machine.

About twenty feet inside the doorway, a life-size wooden cutout of a gladiator popped up from the floor. It clicked and whirred along a conveyor belt, got hooked on a rope, and ascended through a slot in the roof.

Jason murmured, "What the heck?"

They stepped inside. Alex scanned the room. There were several thousand things to look at, most of them in motion, but one good aspect of being an ADHD demigod was that Alex was comfortable with chaos. About a hundred yards away, he spotted a raised dais with two empty oversized praetor chairs. Standing between them was a bronze jar big enough to hold a person.

"Look." Percy pointed it out to his friends.

Piper frowned. "That's too easy."

"Of course" Percy 

"But we have no choice," Jason said. 

"Yep, we've got to save Nico." Alex took a step forward

"Yeah." Percy started across the room, picking his way around conveyor belts and moving platforms.

The hellhounds in the hamster wheels paid them no attention. They were too busy running and panting, their red eyes glowing like headlights. The animals in the other cages gave them bored looks, as if to say, I'd kill you, but it would take too much energy.

Alex tried to watch out for traps, but everything here looked like a trap. She really missed Leo now and his trap sensing abilities.

They jumped over a water trench and ducked under a row of caged wolves. They had made it about halfway to the bronze jar when the ceiling opened over them. A platform lowered. Standing on it like an actor, with one hand raised and his head high, was the purple-haired giant Ephialtes.

Just like Alex had seen in her dreams, the Big F was small by giant standards-about twelve feet tall-but he had tried to make up for it with his loud outfit. He'd changed out of the gladiator armor and was now wearing a Hawaiian shirt that even Dionysus would've found vulgar. It had a garish print made up of dying heroes, horrible tortures, and lions eating slaves in the Colosseum. The giant's hair was braided with gold and silver coins. He had a ten-foot spear strapped to his back, which wasn't a good fashion statement with the shirt. He wore bright white jeans and leather sandals on his... well, not feet, but curved snake heads. The snakes flicked their tongues and writhed as if they didn't appreciate holding up the weight of a giant.