sky blue ● jason grace

warning

Finding the place was easy enough; Percy led them right to it-an abandoned stretch of hillside. Getting inside was easy as well, Jason cut through the padlock and the metal gate creaked open. For a few moments, the four of them stood there, unmoving.

"I'll go first," Daria volunteered. She didn't want to, but out of the four of them she figured the daughter of the earth goddess had the best chances underground.

"No," Percy and Piper said at the same time. Daria felt a slight twinge of annoyance, but it was masked by the alarm she felt at Piper's abrupt vehemence.

"Piper," Daria said uncertainly. "Have you seen those images before?"

She nodded grimly. "I didn't know how to tell you. I saw the room down there filling with water. I saw the four of us drowning."

Daria glanced at Percy sharply, Alaska, the muskeg. "I can't drown," Percy said firmly, though it ended up sounding more like a question. Daria put a reassuring hand on his arm, but it had the opposite effect and caused him to tense up, so she backtracked.

"Maybe the future has changed," Jason speculated, there was a familiar laziness with which he spoke, like he couldn't be particularly pressed about the outcome. "In the image you showed us just now, there wasn't any water." Daria hoped he was right, but she suspected they wouldn't be so lucky.

"Look," Daria said. "I'll check it out first. It's fine. Be right back." Before any of them could object, she tread carefully down the stairwell.

The first thing she noticed was the overwhelming darkness. The sides were covered with some sort of moss which added a tinge of color, but there were no windows, no doors for light to peek out of. The space was small, maybe ten feet in diameter; she didn't know how well they'd be able to fight if it came down to it.

The second thing she saw were the inscriptions on the wall. Mostly Italian, some fading Latin. Whatever the language, it meant someone had been here after the fall of the Roman empire. For their sake, Daria hoped they were just mortals that the hiding monsters had ignored, and not demigods who met their untimely end.

She strode around slowly, tapping her rings together for a sense of security. When she reached the middle, the flashing green and blue lights startled her so much that she almost decapitated herself.

Other than her blade, there was no other source for the light to bounce off of. Vaguely, she could hear the gurgling of a fountain, but when she did a 360, there was no water in sight.

She walked back up, sheathing her swords and gripping the rock structure to her side so she didn't slip. Truthfully, she wasn't sure what to make of it, but maybe Jason would.

They all looked too shocked when they saw her, like they were sure she had just walked straight into her own death. Jason looked less surprised than the other two though, a testament to everything they had gotten through in the past.

"Good news: no water," she said. "Bad news: I don't see any exits down there. And, uh, weird news, well, you should see this...."

Daria was nervous when she returned, lightly wondering if maybe the monsters had decided to pop out when she was gone and she was leading her friends into a trap. The air was cold and musty and she turned to face them as Jason hopped down the last step shivering; he didn't like tight spaces.

"All right." Daria raised her eyebrows. "Here's the weird part. Watch." She stepped to the middle of the room.

Instantly, the green and blue light rippled across the walls. Daria watched her friends glance around in surprise. Percy inhaled deeply, "Do you smell the ocean?"