Children of the Big Three Book 4: Battle of the Labyrinth

Chapter Thirteen: Death Wish

"Robot spider, ironic huh?"

"I know, right?! So after that, Hephaestus just goes 'They're in my forge, go stop them.' And just sends me off like that."

"So like, does this get us any closer to stopping Luke and his Pop-Tart sniffing posse, or is this literally a side quest?"

"I have no idea, wasn't really at liberty to ask questions. But I like to look at like he's gonna owe us a favor."

"Oh yeah sure, he's gonna owe three Demigods a favor cause we got the rats out of his apartment."

"Okay Ms. Negative Charge-"

"Okay that's just not even-"

"I know I'm very clever, thank you my oh so supportive girlfriend. Anyway, I think I've figured out how these God folk work by now. We're gonna go there and do what he says, he'll give us horribly vague advice, then we continue on our merry way." Percy sighed, combing a hand through his surprisingly greasy hair.

"Yuppers, thus is the life of a Demi-God."

"Yeah; whether we like it or not."

"Percy-"

"Sorry. I'm fine Annabeth. Let's just get back to this, so we can actually, ya know, save the camp." Thalia perked up at that.

"Oh yeah, the camp! Somehow I completely forgot about that."

"Ah, don't worry about it. The author does too."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Meta humor, three whole comments about the fourth wall-Let's go!" Percy took the lead, ushering the group deeper into the narrowing, and pretty dang hot tunnel.

"Was that a jab at the audience?"

"What audience?"

"I.. Don't know."

The trio moved in silence for a while, broken every once and a while by the sound of Thalia crunching on an Oreo that she shoved in her pocket a while back. Look, just because it was a double edged sword of a gift from Aphrodite didn't mean that Oreos weren't delicious, okay? You spend who knows how long with both Janus heads talking your ear off past lunch, and see how picky you're feeling.

The tunnel was pitch black, save for a single light source. A door with an orangish glow behind it, shining light on floor through the little gap at the bottom. Percy moved his hand along the door, looking for a handle or something to push, but he had no such luck. "Uh, are we sure we're in the right place?"

"Move it or lose it, sea foam!" Thalia gave The Son of Poseidon a little hip bump, moving him out of the way. She slid her hands wildly around the base of the door, eventually finding a chiseled in symbol; a forge hammer. "Yeah, this is the place. This is one of the many, many, many, workshops of Hephaestus." Suddenly, there was a rumble from the door, as it slid upwards; like you see in tomb raider and think 'there is no way that an ancient civilization could figure out how to do that, I don't even know how to do that!' Percy and Thalia were plenty impressed, giving an 'ooo' and 'aaa' respectively. Annabeth however,