˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚
BOOK ONE
CHAPTER NINETEEN.
❝ are you real? ❞
ARIA FOUND herself in the bustling lobby of the empire state building, her gaze fixed on the guarded elevator doors. Determination fuelled her steps as she approached the stern-looking guard stationed at the entrance. Before she could utter a word, he interrupted her.
"Unless you've got an appointment, no entry," he declared firmly, crossing his arms.
Aria, realising there was no other choice, lifted her palms up to the sky, all the sunlight in the room drawing into her outstretched hand. With a quick mutter of inaudible words, the light reflected off her, temporarily blinding the guard. Aria lunged forward and grabbed the key that was nestled in the man's front pocket. He cried out in protest.
"What the hell is going on?"
He turned around aimlessly in a circle, his hands over his burning eyes.
"Sorry!" Aria apologised.
She raced into the lift and entered the key, aggressively hitting the 600th floor button. The elevator shifted upwards, leaving the sounds of the screaming security guard down below. He would be okay. Hopefully.
Music began to play as Aria waited for her stop.
"I got a pocket, got a pocketful of sunshine..."
Aria nodded her head along to the song.
"That's a bit ironic," she muttered to herself.
The elevator dinged at the 600th floor, and the doors opened.
She was standing on a narrow stone walkway in the middle of the air. Below her was Manhattan, from the height of an aeroplane. In front of her, white marble steps wound up the spine of a cloud, into the sky. From the top of the clouds rose the decapitated peak of the mountain, its summit covered in snow. Clinging to the mountainside were dozens of multileveled palaces - a city of mansions - all with white columned porticos , gilded terraces, and bronze braziers glowing with a thousand fires.
Roads wound crazily up to the peak, where the largest palace gleamed against the snow. Precariously perched gardens bloomed with olive trees and rosebushes. Aria could make out an open-air market filled with colourful tents, a stone amphitheater built on one side of the mountain, a hippodrome and a coliseum on the other hand. It was an Ancient Greek city, except it wasn't in ruins. It was new, and clean, and colourful, the way Athens must have looked like twenty five hundred years ago.
The trip through Olympus felt like a daze and Aria passed some giggling wood nymphs who threw olives at her from their garden. The nine muses were tuning their instruments for a concert in the park while a small crowd gathered - nobody seemed worried about an impending civil war. In fact, everybody seemed in a festive mood. Several of them turned to watch as Aria passed, and whispered to themselves.
She climbed the main road, toward the big palace at the peak. It was a reverse copy of the palace in the Underworld.
There, everything had been black and bronze. But this place, everything glittered white and silver.
YOU ARE READING
daylight | percy jackson
Fanfiction"you had a dream about me?" "it was a prophecy, dont get too cocky" "did i look really handsome and talented?" "no" created by gracieloveslana
