Ethereal

XI

I thought we'd lost the spider until Tyson heard a faint pinging sound. We made a few turns, backtracked just a few times, and eventually found the spider banging its tiny head on a metal door. 

Same dude same.

The door looked like one of those old-fashioned submarine hatches—oval, with metal rivets around the edges and a wheel for a doorknob. Where the portal should've been was a big brass plaque, green with age, with a Greek Ȇta inscribed in the middle.

We all looked at each other.

"Ready to meet Hephaestus?" Grover said nervously.

Nope, not really.

I glanced over at Annabeth, to see her mirroring the same hesitant expression I knew I was also portraying.

"No," Percy admitted.

"Yes!" Tyson said gleefully, and he turned the wheel.

As soon as the door opened, the spider scuttled inside with Tyson right behind it. The rest of us followed, not quite as anxious.

Percy stepped to the side to allow me to enter before him. "After you, Ells."

I narrowed my eyes at him. Why was he being so suspicious?

"What's with the name?" I asked while glancing around.

The room was enormous. It looked like a mechanic's garage, with several hydraulic lifts. Some had cars on them, but others had stranger things: a bronze hippalektryon with its horse head off and a bunch of wires hanging out its rooster tail, a metal lion that seemed to be hooked up to a battery charger, and a Greek war chariot made entirely of flames.

"Just..." He scratched his neck, "trying out some things."

I hummed in response.

Smaller projects cluttered a dozen worktables. Tools hung along the walls.

Each had its own outline on a Peg-Board, but nothing seemed to be in the right place. The hammer was over the screwdriver place. The staple gun was where the hacksaw was supposed to go.

Under the nearest hydraulic lift, which was holding a '98 Toyota Corolla, a pair of legs stuck out—the lower half of a huge man in grubby grey pants and shoes even bigger than Tyson's. one leg was in a metal brace.

The spider scuttled straight under the car, and the sounds of banging stopped.

"Well, well," a deep voice boomed from under the Corolla. "What have we here?"

The mechanic pushed out on a back trolley and sat up. I'd seen Hephaestus twice before, briefly on Olympus, so I thought I was prepared, but his appearance made me gulp.

I guess he'd cleaned up when I saw him on Olympus or had used magic to make his form seem a little less hideous. Here in his own workshop, he apparently didn't care how he looked. He wore a jumpsuit smeared with oil and grime. 'Hephaestus' was embroidered over the chest pocket. 

His leg creaked and clicked in its metal brace as he stood, and his left shoulder was lower than his right, so he seemed to be leaning even when he was standing up straight. His head was misshapen and bulging.

 He wore a permanent scowl. His black beard smoked and hissed. Every once in a while a small wildfire would erupt in his whiskers and then die out. 

His hands were the size of a catcher's mitts, but he handled the spider with amazing skill. He disassembled it in two seconds, then put it back together.