𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐬'𝐬 𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 • 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘤𝘺 𝘫𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘴𝘰𝘯

Bickering

A/n: Sorry it's so short, my brother deleted my whole chapter trying to write 'I love you'.

Y/n's Pov:

The metal door was half hidden behind a laundry bin full of dirty hotel towels. I didn't see anything strange about it, but Rachel showed me where to look, and I recognized the faint blue symbol etched in the metal.

"It hasn't been used in a long time," Annabeth said.

"I tried to open it once," Rachel said, "just out of curiosity. It's rusted shut."

"No." I stepped forward. "It just needs the touch of a half-blood."

Sure enough, as soon as I put my hand on the mark, it glowed blue. The metal door unsealed and creaked open, revealing a dark staircase leading down.

"Wow." Rachel looked calm, but I couldn't tell if she was pretending or not.

She'd changed into a ratty Museum of Modern Art T-shirt and her regular marker-coloured jeans, her blue plastic hairbrush sticking out of her pocket. Her red hair was tied back, but she still had flecks of gold in it, and traces of the gold glitter on her face.

"So...after you?" she asked me.

"Well, you're the guide now," I told her. "So, after you."

"Lead on," Annabeth said with mock politeness. 

The stairs led down to a large brick tunnel. It was so dark I couldn't see two feet in front of us, but Annabeth and Percy had restocked on flashlights. As soon as they switched them on, Rachel yelped.

A skeleton was grinning at us. It wasn't human. It was huge, for one thing—at least ten feet tall. Not only that, but it had been strung up, chained by its wrists and ankles, so it made a kind of giant X over the tunnel. But what really sent shivers down my spine was the single black eye socket in the centre of its skull.

"A Cyclops," Grayson said. "It's ancient. It's not...anybody we know."

It wasn't Tyson, he meant. But that didn't make me feel much better. I still felt like it had been put here as a warning. Whatever could kill a grown Cyclops, I didn't want to meet.

I looked at Grayson quizzically. "Since when do you know what the word 'ancient' means?"

Grayson frowned. "Shut up."

Rachel swallowed. "You have a friend who's a Cyclops?"

"Tyson," Percy said. "My half brother."

"Your half brother."

"Hopefully we'll find him down here," Percy said. "And Grover. He's a satyr."

"Oh." Her voice was small. "Well then, we'd better keep moving."

She stepped under the skeleton's left arm and kept walking. Annabeth and I exchanged looks. Annabeth shrugged. We followed Rachel deeper into the maze.

After fifty feet, we came to a crossroads. Ahead, the brick tunnel continued. To the right, the walls were made of ancient marble slabs. To the left, the tunnel was dirt and tree roots.

Grayson pointed left. "That looks like the tunnel Tyson and Grover took."

Annabeth frowned. "Yeah, but the architecture to the right—those old stones—that's more likely to lead to an ancient part of the maze, toward Daedalus's workshop."

"We need to go straight," Rachel said.

Annabeth and I both looked at her.

"That's the least likely choice," I said.