Daughter of the Sea || HoO

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Tori was tired of water. If she said that aloud, she would probably get kicked out of Poseidon's Junior Sea Scouts, but she didn't care. After barely surviving the nymphaeum, she wanted to go back to the surface. She wanted to be dry and sit in the warm sunshine for a long time— preferably with Jason.

Speaking of, the taller blonde kept his hand intertwined with hers but neither looked at eachother. They hadn't acknowledge the kiss, and neither Percy nor Piper mentioned it, Tori wondered if their heads were underwater before they saw.

Tori knew that the way they were going was nowhere near the surface. Unfortunately, she didn't know where Annabeth was. Frank, Hazel, and Leo were missing in action. She still had to save Nico di Angelo, assuming her friend wasn't already dead. And there was that little matter of the giants destroying Rome, waking Gaea, and taking over the world.

Seriously, these monsters and gods were thousands of years old. Couldn't they take a few decades off and let Tori live her life? Apparently not. 

Percy took the lead as they crawled down the drainage pipe. After thirty feet, it opened into a wider tunnel. To their left, somewhere in the distance, Tori heard rumbling and creaking, like a huge machine needed oiling. She had absolutely no desire to find out what was making that sound, so she figured that must be the way to go. 

Several hundred feet later, they reached a turn in the tunnel. Percy held up his hand, signaling Tori, Jason, and Piper to wait. Of course Tori didn't listen, and she joined her brother's side. She peeked around the corner.

The corridor opened into a vast room with twenty-foot ceilings and rows of support columns. It looked like the same parking garage-type area Tori had seen in her dreams, but now much more crowded with stuff.

The creaking and rumbling came from huge gears and pulley systems that raised and lowered sections of the floor for no apparent reason. Water flowed through open trenches (oh, great, more water), powering water wheels that turned some of the machines. Other machines were connected to huge hamster wheels with hellhounds inside. Tori couldn't help thinking of Mrs. O'Leary, and how much she would hate being trapped inside one of those.

Suspended from the ceiling were cages of live animals—a lion, several zebras, a whole pack of hyenas, and even an eight-headed hydra. Ancient-looking bronze and leather conveyor belts trundled along with stacks of weapons and armor. Leo would love it, Tori thought. The whole room was like one massive, scary, unreliable machine.

"What is it?" Piper whispered.

Tori wasn't even sure how to answer. Neither her or Percy saw the giants, so they gestured for their friends to come forward and take a look.

About twenty feet inside the doorway, a life-size wooden cutout of a gladiator popped up from the floor. It clicked and whirred along a conveyor belt, got hooked on a rope, and ascended through a slot in the roof. Jason murmured, "What the heck?" 

They stepped inside. Tori scanned the room. There were several thousand things to look at, most of them in motion, but one good aspect of being an ADHD demigod was that Tori  was comfortable with chaos. About a hundred yards away, she spotted a raised dais with two empty oversized praetor chairs. Standing between them was a bronze jar big enough to hold a person.

"Look." Tori pointed it out to her friends.

Piper frowned."That's too easy."

"Of course," Percy said. 

"But we have no choice," Tori said. "We've got to save Nico." 

"Yeah." Percy started across the room, picking his way around conveyor belts and moving platforms.