House of Hades (book 4 of Heroes of Olympus)

Chapter 4 - Percy

PERCY

As Percy maneuvered his way down the ridiculously thin string, he could hear Annabeth protesting now and then about the usefulness of her foot – which, as he’d gathered from her cursing – wasn’t very useful at all.

At one point, he’d sworn she had let go of the string and plunged to her death at the bottom (if they actually weren’t already dead), but she had instantly shouted “I’m okay!” and his heart restarted from relief.

What seemed like hours later, Percy heard a clunk as Annabeth’s broken foot touched down on a surface.

A moment later, he too felt his foot touch ground and then a muffled “Ouch!” He glanced down to see he’d managed to tread on Annabeth.

“Sorry!” he replied, swinging his foot around her and jumping down.

“And how did I deserve that?!” she scowled, one hand on her hip whilst the other wiped away the dirt on her face from his shoe.

“Well…” he joked, “Remember when we were climbing the cliff to the giants cave on the rescue for the Golden Fleece? And you stepped on my face to lift yourself up?”

She scoffed, looking away into the fog that surrounded them. It seemed to slink around them and wrap them up in a chilling embrace.

“Nice.” She said, wafting her hand in front of her face, “But you know who we need right now?”

Percy looked at Annabeth, “Grover”.

Since Hera had moved him away from Camp Half-Blood, he had missed all of his friends. But Grover most of all.

“He has a brilliant sense of smell for monsters”.

“Tell me about it,” Percy laughed.

“I just did. Hand me the torch”.

Percy walked around the back of Annabeth’s rucksack and unzipped the bag, groping around for the torch.

“Found it!” he said, triumphantly holding it into the air and switching it on, reminding him of a wizard pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

Annabeth grinned and snatched it from his grasp, “Do you want to be a light house of attention for monsters? We do that already being powerful demigods, but waving a flashlight about? Now that’s stupid.”

He pulled a face at her, “Okay grouchy”.

Ignoring him, she aimed it into the fog straight ahead of them, penetrating the cloud and seeing straight through it.

“Great Poseidon, that’s a strong torch.”

“Demigod torch,” she said pointing at the logo on the side, “from the Camp Half-Blood store. Chiron recommended it – said nothing could be dark enough to beat this baby”.

“He said that?”

“Not to those exact words”.

Percy’s disappointment clearly showed on his face, “I bet the Party-Ponies would have said something like that”.

“Which is exactly why Chiron runs camp and the party-ponies don’t” Annabeth laughed, shaking her head and turning back to face the gloom.

The cliff face rose far above them, lost into the mist and hiding where they had been not too long before. Percy already missed that cold, dark, bumpy little cave. Compared to this, that was luxury, “I think we should go back”.

“Hmm,” Annabeth mused, a smile playing around her lips. She lifted her foot up deliberately, “How ‘bout no? You try climbing with a foot like this”.