A story where Percy Jackson couldn't help but fall in love with the girl he first hated, or a story where Amaya Beylin finds out there was a thin line between love and hate, and Percy and her crossed that line a long time ago. (I don't own Percy Jac...
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Percy looked at Grover. "Can you walk?"
He swallowed. "Yeah, sure. I never liked those shoes, anyway." He tried to sound brave about it, but he was trembling as badly as the rest of the group were. Whatever was in that pit was nobody's pet. It was unspeakably old and powerful.
Even Echidna hadn't given Amaya that feeling. She was almost relieved to turn her back on that tunnel and head toward the palace of Hades.
Almost.
The Furies circled the parapets, high in the gloom. The outer walls of the fortress glittered black, and the two-story-tall bronze gates stood wide open.
Up close, Amaya saw that the engravings on the gates were scenes of death. Some were from modern times—an atomic bomb exploding over a city, a trench filled with gas mask– wearing soldiers, a line of African famine victims waiting with empty bowls—but all of them looked as if they'd been etched into the bronze thousands of years ago. Amaya wondered if she was looking at prophecies that had come true.
Inside the courtyard was the strangest garden she'd ever seen. Multicolored mushrooms, poisonous shrubs, and weird luminous plants grew without sunlight. Precious jewels made up for the lack of flowers, piles of rubies as big as my fist, clumps of raw diamonds. Standing here and there like frozen party guests were Medusa's Garden statues—petrified children, satyrs, and centaurs—all smiling grotesquely.
In the center of the garden was an orchard of pomegranate trees, their orange blooms neon bright in the dark. "The garden of Persephone," Annabeth said. "Keep walking."
Percy understood why she wanted to move on. The tart smell of those pomegranates was almost overwhelming. He had a sudden desire to eat them, but then he remembered the story of Persephone. One bite of Underworld food, and we would never be able to leave. He pulled Grover away to keep him from picking a big juicy one.
They walked up the steps of the palace, between black columns, through a black marble portico, and into the house of Hades. The entry hall had a polished bronze floor, which seemed to boil in the reflected torchlight. There was no ceiling, just the cavern roof, far above. Percy guessed they never had to worry about rain down here.
Every side doorway was guarded by a skeleton in military gear. Some wore Greek armor, some British redcoat uniforms, some camouflage with tattered American flags on the shoulders. They carried spears or muskets or M-16s. None of them bothered us, but their hollow eye sockets followed us as we walked down the hall, toward the big set of doors at the opposite end.
Two U.S. Marine skeletons guarded the doors. They grinned down at them, rocket-propelled grenade launchers held across their chests.
"You know," Grover mumbled, "I bet Hades doesn't have trouble with door-to-door salesmen."
"Hades is the richest god, so I guess not." Hope shrugged.
"He can't be the richest god, Chiron complains about being broke remember." Amaya said logistically
