tartarus and back ⇩

29. Night in shining armor

pparently I had been hiding really wel down in Tartarus, because I had never run into a single god, let alone two.

Nyx forty feet tall. Looming over the chasm, she was a churning figure of ash and smoke. 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. When her wings beat, waves of darkness rolled over the cliffs, making me feel heavy and sleepy. The goddess's chariot was made of the some kind of black metal that I didn't recognize, 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.

The horses snarled and bared their fangs at us. The goddess lashed her whip – a thin streak of stars like diamond barbs – and the horses reared back.

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

Percy eyed the horses as they nickered. It had been so long since I'd seen him, I forgot he could talk to horses.

"Uh, so you won't let them eat us?" he asked the goddess. "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!"

"Oh, don't kill yourself!" she cried. "We're not that scary."

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

"Well, I'd hope not"' Annabeth looked at Percy and I and forced a laugh. "We wouldn't want to scare
her, would we?"

"Ha, ha," Percy said weakly. "No, we wouldn't."

"I don't need that kind of guilt in my conscious." I said

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,' said Annabeth. "I mean, I can tell because you're dark and everything, though the brochure didn't say much about you."

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

Annabeth patted her pockets. "We had one, didn't we?"

Percy licked his lips. "Uh-huh."

"You guys got a brochure?" I asked.

"Anyway," she said, "I guess the brochure didn't say much because you weren't spotlighted on the tour. We got to see the River Phlegethon, the Cocytus, the arai, the poison glade of Akhlys, even some random Titans and giants, but Nyx ... hmm, no, you weren't really featured."

"Featured? Spotlighted?"

"Yeah," Percy said, warming up to the idea. "We came down here for the Tartarus tour – like, exotic destinations, you know? The Underworld is overdone. Mount Olympus is a tourist trap –"

"Gods, totally!" Annabeth agreed. "So we booked the Tartarus excursion, but no one even mentioned we'd run into Nyx. Huh. Oh, well. Guess they didn't think you were important."

"Not important!" Nyx cracked her whip. Her horses bucked and snapped their silvery fangs. Waves
of darkness rolled out of the chasm.

"Not important..." I echoed.

Annabeth pushed down Percy's sword arm, forcing him to lower his weapon.

"Well, how many other demigods have come to see you on the tour?" Annabeth asked innocently.