Sea Green Eyes

Chapter 67

Di Immortales, as if Cressida needed another thing to be scared of.

She wasn't scared of the dark before then but normally the dark wasn't forty feet tall. It didn't have black wings, a whip made out of stars, and a shadowy chariot pulled by vampire horses.

Nyx was almost too much to take in. Looming over the chasm, she was a churning figure of ash and smoke, as big as the Athena Parthenos statue, but very much alive. Her dress was void black, mixed with the colours of a space nebula as if galaxies were being born in her bodice. Her face was hard to see except for the pinpoints of her eyes, which shone like quasars. The goddess's chariot was made of the same material as Nico di Angelo's sword—Stygian iron—and pulled by two massive horses, all black except for their pointed silver fangs. The beasts' legs floated in the abyss, turning from solid to smoke as they moved.

"No, Shade," the goddess said. "Down, Shadow. These little prizes are not for you."

"Ok," Percy whispered nervously. "When we get out of here, I'm never missing Greek History Class again, and I'm actually going to pay attention now."

"A little late to say that now," Cressida hissed back and she didn't like the look on his face that was obviously a result of whatever those horses were saying to him in his head.

"Uh, so you won't let them eat us?" he asked the goddess nervously. "They really want to eat us."

Nyx's quasar eyes burned. "Of course not. I would not let my horses eat you, any more than I would let Akhlys kill you. Such fine prizes, I will kill myself!"

Percy had been right about Cressida's performance under pressure, it was flawless. Her instincts were flawless. She was flawless, her acting was flawless....to put it simply, she had no flaws. At least in his eyes.

"Oh, darling, don't kill yourself!" Cressida cried. "We're not that scary. I mean, sure we scared Akhlys, but, she's hardly the picture of bravery."

The goddess lowered her whip. "What? No, I didn't mean—"

"Well, I'd hope not!" Cressida laughed. "We wouldn't want to scare her, would we?"

"Ha, ha," Percy said weakly, but his performance was not to his girlfriend's standards as she gave him a dead look - pun not intended. "No, we wouldn't."

The vampire horses looked confused. They reared and snorted and knocked their dark heads together. Nyx pulled back on the reins. "Do you know who I am?" she demanded.

"Well, you're Night, I suppose," Cressida answered, remembering what she'd said to Percy about this place not being a tourist destination - she was about to change that. "I mean, I can tell because you're dark and everything, though the brochure didn't say much about you. I suppose they didn't think you were that impressive."

Nyx's eyes winked out for a moment. "What brochure?"

"Gods above, Percy, where did you put it now?" she asked, and he didn't exactly have to fake his outrage.

"I don't know! You had it last, didn't you?" he said as he began patting down his pockets, his sword still in hand.

"Oh, honey, I should've known better than to leave it with you. We should've taken that second brochure."

"Perhaps we should save the lovers' quarrel for later when we're not in the company of a goddess, baby," Percy suggested with a sarcastically sour look on his face. Neither of them enjoyed those clichéd pet names for each other - they were more about the insulting ones.

"Agreed," she said with a sweet smile before turning back to Nyx. "Anyway, I suppose you weren't interesting enough for the brochure to mention. I mean our Tartarus Tour has been jam-packed. We got to see the River Phlegethon, the Cocytus, the arai, the poison glade of Akhlys, and even some random Titans and giants, but Nyx...hmm, no, you weren't really featured."