𝒊𝒗. 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐘𝐎𝐔

𝒗𝒊.

They made it a hundred feet before they were hopelessly lost. 

The tunnel looked nothing like the one Annabeth and Noelle had stumbled into before. Now it was round like a sewer, constructed of red brick with iron-barred portholes every ten feet. Percy shined a light through one of the portholes out of curiosity, but he couldn't see anything. It opened into infinite darkness. He thought he heard voices on the other side, but it may have been just the cold wind.

Annabeth tried her best to guide them. She had this idea that they should stick to the left wall. 

"If we keep one hand on the left wall and follow it," she said, "we should be able to find our way out again by reversing course." 

Unfortunately, as soon as she said that, the left wall disappeared. They found themselves in the middle of a circular chamber with eight tunnels leading out, and no idea how they'd gotten there. 

"Um, which way did we come in?" Grover said nervously. 

"Just turn around," Annabeth said. 

They each turned toward a different tunnel. It was ridiculous. None of them could decide which way led back to camp. 

"Left walls are mean," Tyson said. "Which way now?" 

Noelle swept her flashlight beam over the archways of the eight tunnels. As far as she could tell, they were identical. 

"That way," Annabeth said, pointing to a tunnel. 

"How do you know?" Percy asked. 

"Deductive reasoning." 

"So . . . you're guessing," Noelle said.

"Just come on," she said. 

The tunnel she'd chosen narrowed quickly. The walls turned to gray cement, and the ceiling got so low that pretty soon they were hunching over. Tyson was forced to crawl. 

Grover's hyperventilating was the loudest noise in the maze. "I can't stand it anymore," he whispered. "Are we there yet?"

"We've been down here maybe five minutes," Annabeth told him. 

"It's been longer than that," Grover insisted. "And why would Pan be down here? This is the opposite of the wild!" 

They kept shuffling forward. Just when Percy was sure the tunnel would get so narrow it would squish them, it opened into a huge room. He shined his light around the walls and said, "Whoa." 

The whole room was covered in mosaic tiles. The pictures were grimy and faded, but they could still make out the colors—red, blue, green, gold. The frieze showed the Olympian gods at a feast. There was Poseidon with his trident, holding out grapes for Dionysus to turn into wine. Zeus was partying with satyrs, and Hermes was flying through the air on his winged sandals. The pictures were beautiful, but they weren't very accurate. They'd seen the gods. Dionysus was not that handsome, and Hermes's nose wasn't that big.

In the middle of the room was a three-tiered fountain. It looked like it hadn't held water in a long time. 

Noelle couldn't deny, it was beautiful despite its dust and cobwebs. She wondered if everything in the ancient times was this beautiful. There were probably thousands of constellations then that no one even knew of now. The thought made her sad and she chose to instead go back to being afraid of what could possibly be lurking in the labyrinth.

"What is this place?" she muttered. "It looks—"

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