Where You Go ― Jason Grace

xix. an ancient sorceress causes problems

OPHELIA TOOK A DEEP, shaky breath, wiping her wet cheeks with her sleeve. "Okay, Hazel," she said after taking a second to compose herself enough for her voice not to quiver. "Which way?" 

Hazel sighed. She pointed at the tunnel she'd pointed out before. "That one," she said. "It feels the most dangerous." 

"I'm sold," Leo said. 

"Lead the way," Ophelia told her. 

With Melinoe and her ghosts taken care of, the three demigods finally began their descent. 

As soon as they reached the first archway, the polecat Gale found them. 

She scurried up Hazel's side and curled around her neck, chittering crossly as if to say: Where have you been? You're late. 

"Not the farting weasel again," Leo complained. "If that thing lets loose in close quarters like this, with my fire and all, we're gonna explode." 

Gale barked a polecat insult at Leo. 

Hazel hushed them both. She looked ahead. 

"Be ready," she whispered. "We're getting close." 

"Close to what?" Ophelia asked. 

A woman's voice echoed down the corridor: "Close to me."

The entire world shifted. None of them seemed to move, but suddenly Ophelia and her friends were three hundred feet down the corridor, at the entrance of the chamber. 

"Welcome," said the woman's voice. "I've looked forward to this." 

Ophelia's eyes swept the cavern. She couldn't find who was speaking. 

The cavern gave Ophelia the creeps, which wasn't easy. The obsidian walls were carved with scenes of death: plague victims, corpses on the battlefield, torture chambers with skeletons hanging in iron cages—all of it embellished with precious gems that somehow made the scenes even more ghastly. 

The domed roof was a waffle pattern of recessed square panels. Each panel was a stela—a grave marker with Ancient Greek inscriptions. Ophelia wondered if actual bodies were buried behind them. 

She saw no other exits. At the apex of the ceiling, a circle of pure black stone gleamed. 

Ophelia's eyes drifted to the center of the room. 

"Whoa," she whispered. 

"Yep," Leo muttered. "Those are doors, all right."

Fifty feet away was a set of freestanding elevator doors, their panels etched in silver and iron. Rows of chains ran down either side, bolting the frame to large hooks in the floor. 

The Doors of Death. 

"Where are you?" Hazel shouted, her voice full of anger. 

"Don't you see us?" taunted the woman's voice. "I thought Hecate chose you for your skill." 

Another bout of queasiness hit Ophelia. On Hazel's shoulder, Gale barked and passed gas, which wasn't the least bit helpful.

Dark spots floated in Ophelia's eyes. She tried to blink them away, but they only turned darker. The spots consolidated into a twenty-foot-tall shadowy figure looming next to the Doors. 

The giant Clytius was shrouded in black smoke, just like he had been in Hecate's crossroads vision, but now Ophelia could dimly make out his form—dragon-like legs with ash-colored scales; a massive humanoid upper body encased in Stygian armor; long, braided hair that seemed to be made of smoke. His complexion was dark, and his eyes glinted cold as diamonds. He carried no weapon, but that didn't make him any less terrifying.