❝ Does being a Child of Hermes automatically make you good at flirting? Or was that just a skill you picked up? ❞
Andromeda Jackson knew she was not cut out for the demigod life, and that was before she heard about her death from the creepy oracle i...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
𝖂e did almost lose the metal spider thing, but luckily for us, Tyson heard a faint pinging sound and with some backtracking, we located the spider banging it's head on a metal door.
I wish I could do the same.
The door looked like one of those old-fashioned submarine hatches—oval, with metal rivets around the edges and a wheel for a doorknob. Where the portal should've been was a big brass plaque, green with age, with a Greek letter inscribed in the middle.
We all looked at each other.
"Ready to meet Hephaestus?" Grover said nervously.
"No,"
"Yes!" Tyson said gleefully, and he turned the wheel.
As soon as the door opened, the spider scuttled inside with Tyson right behind it. The rest of us followed, not quite as anxious.
The room was enormous. It looked like a mechanic's garage, with several hydraulic lifts. Some had cars on them, but others had stranger things: a bronze hippalektryon with its horse head off and a bunch of wires hanging out its rooster tail, a metal lion that seemed to be hooked up to a battery charger, and a Greek war chariot made entirely of flames.
Smaller projects cluttered a dozen worktables. Tools hung along the walls. Each had its own outline on a Peg-Board, but nothing seemed to be in the right place. It was a sort of organised chaos, but not in a good way.
Under the nearest hydraulic lift, which was holding a '98 Toyota Corolla, a pair of legs stuck out—the lower half of a huge man in grubby grey pants and shoes even bigger than Tyson's - one of the legs was in a metal brace.
The spider scuttled straight under the car, and the sounds of banging stopped.
"Well, well," a deep voice boomed from under the Corolla. "What have we here?"
The mechanic pushed out on a back trolley and sat up. I'd seen Hephaestus once before, briefly on Olympus, but they'd been deciding on whether or not to kill me for being born so I hadn't paid too much attention to what people looked like.
He wore a jumpsuit smeared with oil and grime. Hephaestus, was embroidered over the chest pocket. His leg creaked and clicked in its metal brace as he stood, and his left shoulder was lower than his right, so he seemed to be leaning even when he was standing up straight. There were stories that he always scowled, but surrounded by his machinery, he actually seemed to be smiling and at peace.
