Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
chapter sixteen. ☄︎. *. ⋆
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
WE WERE ABOUT HALFWAY to Hades's dwelling when Grover's magical shoes tried to pull him to his death.
"No turning back now," I had said, stupidly, before Grover gave a small yelp from behind me and I did, in fact, turn back around. His shoes had sprouted their wings without being commanded to, his legs shooting forward. He landed flat on his back, letting out a huff of pain.
"Come on, Grover," Annabeth said, reaching out to help him up. "Stop messing around."
"But I didn't—" Grover yelped again. His shoes were flapping like crazy. They levitated him off the ground and started dragging him away from us.
"Grover!" I called, the three of us beginning to jog after him, but the shoes were gaining speed. Annabeth, Percy and I were sprinting to keep up. "Untie them!"
I thought it was a good idea, but I guess it could've been hard to execute when your shoes are pulling you along feet-first at full speed. He kept trying to sit up and untie them but couldn't even reach the laces.
The slope we were chasing Grover down seemed to be getting steeper and steeper by the step. I almost lost my footing and fell, but Annabeth stabilized me. The tunnel was getting darker and colder. I could sense evil in the air. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
I glanced past Grover, at where his shoes were taking him: they were headed straight for a steep drop-off—a cliff in the Underworld that was surrounded by evil energies and feeds off the fear of demigods? I realized a split second after Percy did that we were racing towards the opening of Tartarus.
He stopped dead in his tracks. I yelled for him to come on, that Grover was about to fall in, and that seemed to get his attention. Percy, Annabeth and I reached Grover at the last second; his left hoof knocked the shoe off after hitting a stray boulder, and it went flying into the pit of Tartarus. The right shoe was still trying to pull Grover down, but not as quickly and it didn't have nearly as much power. He was ten feet from the edge of the slope when we caught him and hauled him back up the slope. The other winged shoe tugged itself off and circled around us angrily. It kicked us all once in the heads before diving into the chasm to join its twin.
Percy, Annabeth, and Grover all collapsed in exhaustion. I stayed standing, my bow hanging limply at my side, while I gazed around and peered into the darkness. A shiver ran up my back. A visual came to me—an image of us sitting at the edge of Tartarus, catching our breath just as we were then, when the pit opened up and swallowed us into it.
"We need to go." I tugged Percy's shoulder, dragging him urgently to a standing position. Annabeth and Grover followed at the insistence of my voice. "C'mon, we have to go! Run!"
