NEVER BE THE SAME . . . percy jackson

one hundred and one: the trek.

BROOKLYN WASN'T DEAD yet, but she was already tired of being a corpse.

As they trudged toward the heart of Tartarus, she kept glancing down at her body, wondering how it had become so ugly so quickly. Her arms looked like bleached leather pulled over sticks. Her skeletal legs seemed to dissolve into smoke with every step. She'd learned to move normally within the Death Mist quickly, but the magical shroud still made her feel like she was wrapped in a coat of helium.

She worried that the Death Mist might cling to her forever, even if they somehow managed to survive Tartarus. She didn't want to spend the rest of her life looking like an extra from The Walking Dead. She was too pretty for that to happen.

Brooklyn tried to focus on something else, but there was no safe direction to look.

Under her feet, the ground glistened a nauseating purple, pulsing with webs of veins. In the dim red light of the blood clouds, Death Mist Percy and Annabeth looked like freshly risen zombies.

Ahead of them was the most depressing view of all.

Spread to the horizon was an army of monsters — flocks of winged arai, tribes of lumbering Cyclopes, clusters of floating evil spirits. Thousands of baddies, maybe tens of thousands, all milling restlessly, pressing against one another, growling and fighting for space — like the locker area of Goode High between classes, if all the students were 'roid-raging mutants who smelled really bad.

Bob led them toward the edge of the army. He made no effort to hide, not that it would have done any good. Being ten feet tall and glowing silver, Bob didn't do stealth very well.

About thirty yards from the nearest monsters, Bob turned to face Brooklyn.

"Stay quiet and stay behind me," he advised. "They will not notice you."

"We hope," she muttered.

On the Titan's shoulder, Small Bob woke up from a nap. He purred seismically and arched his back, turning skeletal then back to calico. At least he didn't seem nervous.

Annabeth examined her own zombie hands. "Bob, if we're invisible . . . how can you see us? I mean, you're technically, you know . . ."

"Yes," Bob said. "But we are friends."

"Nyx and her children could see us," Annabeth said.

Bob shrugged. "That was in Nyx's realm. That is different."

"Uh . . . right." Annabeth didn't sound reassured, but they were here now. They didn't have any choice but to try.

Percy stared at the swarm of vicious monsters. "Well, at least we won't have to worry about bumping into any other friends in this crowd."

Bob grinned. "Yes, that is good news! Now, let's go. Death is close."

"The Doors of Death are close," Annabeth corrected. "Let's watch the phrasing."

They plunged into the crowd. Brooklyn hated it here. She would've preferred being in Nyx's realm than in here, but of course the world hated her. She didn't do well with large, sweaty, smelly monsters.

A few feet away, a group of empousai tore into the carcass of a gryphon while other gryphons flew around them, squawking in outrage. A six-armed Earthborn and a Laistrygonian giant pummeled each other with rocks, though Brooklyn wasn't sure if they were fighting or just messing around. A dark wisp of smoke — she guessed it must be an eidolon — seeped into a Cyclops, made the monster hit himself in the face, then drifted off to possess another victim.

Annabeth whispered, "Percy, look."

A stone's throw away, a guy in a cowboy outfit was cracking a whip at some fire-breathing horses. The wrangler wore a Stetson hat on his greasy hair, an extra-large set of jeans, and a pair of black leather boots. From the side, he might have passed for human — until he turned, and Brooklyn saw that his upper body was split into three different chests, each one dressed in a different-color Western shirt.