Ethereal

VI

We made it a hundred feet before we were hopelessly lost.

The tunnel looked nothing like the one Percy and I had stumbled into before. Now it was round like a sewer, constructed of red brick with iron barred portholes ever ten feet. I conjured a ball of light and shone through one of the portholes out of curiosity, but I couldn't see anything. It opened into infinite darkness.

I thought I heard voices on the other side, but it may have been just the cold wind.

Annabeth tried her best to guide us. She had this idea that we should stick to the left wall.

"If we keep one hand on the left wall and follow it," she said, "we should be able to find our way out again by reversing course."

Unfortunately, as soon as she said that, the left wall disappeared. We found ourselves in the middle of a circular chamber with eight tunnels leading out, and no idea how we'd gotten there.

"Um, which way did we come in?" Grover said nervously.

"Just turn around," Annabeth said.

We each turned toward a different tunnel. It was ridiculous. None of us could decide which way led back to camp.

"Left walls are mean," Tyson said. "Which way now?"

Annabeth swept her flashlight beam over the archways of the eight tunnels. As far as I could tell, they were identical. "That way," she said.

"How do you know?" I asked.

"Deductive reasoning."

"So...you're guessing." Percy deducted.

"Just come on," she said.

The tunnel she'd chosen narrowed quickly. The walls turned to grey cement, and the ceiling got so low that pretty soon we were hunching over.

Tyson was forced to crawl.

Grover's hyperventilating was the loudest noise in the maze. "I can't stand it anymore," he whispered. "Are we there yet?"

"We've been down here maybe five minutes," Annabeth told him.

"It's been longer than that," Grover insisted. "And why would Pan be down here? This is the opposite of the wild!"

We kept shuffling forward. Just when I was sure the tunnel would get so narrow it would squish us, it opened into a huge room. I shined my light around the walls and said, "Whoa."

The whole room was covered in mosaic tiles. The pictures were grimy and faded, but I could still make out the colours—red, blue, green, and gold. The frieze showed the Olympian gods at a feast. There was Percy's dad, Poseidon, with his trident, holding out grapes for Dionysus to turn into wine. Zeus was partying with satyrs, and Hermes was flying through the air on his winged sandals. The pictures were beautiful, but they weren't very accurate. I'd seen the gods. Dionysus was not that handsome, and Hermes's nose wasn't that big.

The only accurate thing was my Dad, he was standing behind Artemis, poking her in the ribs. Some things never change...

In the middle of the room was a three-tiered fountain. It looked like it hadn't held water in a long time.

"What is this place?" I muttered. "It looks—"

"Roman," Annabeth said. "Those mosaics area bout two thousand years old."

"But how can they be Roman?" I was obsessed with ancient history, especially when I was younger,  and I am pretty sure the Roman Empire never made it as far as Long Island.

"The Labyrinth is a patchwork," Annabeth said. "I told you, it's always expanding, adding pieces. It's the only work of architecture that grows by itself."