madness and ecstasy // leo valdez

-lava boy and the house of emo-

Leo began to feel like he was leaving the world of the living, which was totally on his bucket list. 

His skin tingled, and he wondered if it was a side effect of the poison, or if he was just really allergic to dust. In the eerie glow of their magic weapons, his friends looked like flickering ghosts. He could hear real ghosts, whispering in the side corridors, beckoning him to veer off course, to come closer and listen to them speak.

Leo chose to ignore them, but he couldn't ignore the look on Piper's face as she was lit up by a red sheen and the silvery reflection of her jagged sword. He looked around, "what?"

She just pointed vaguely to him. To put it simply, he looked like a volcano.

Leo held his hands out and had to physically check that his brown skin hadn't cracked open with lava, but as the light under his skin ebbed and them came back in oranges and yellows, he realised it was the fire. 

In his veins, probably. 

How dramatic.

"Huh," he muttered, and then wondered if his face matched. Frank's wide eyes gave him the answer to that question.

Hazel continued and Leo realised he was lighting most of tunnel, bright and then faded and then bright again, like the walls were made of a beating heart. A place made of membranes and veins would be so cool. Creepy, but cool.

Piper caught up with Leo and began poking his cheek experimentally, and he didn't seem to be too hot because she started tugging on his ear as well. She grinned, "your eyes, are like..."

"What?"

"On fire, it's fucking sick dude," Piper said. When Leo pressed his fingers to his eyelids, they seemed normal, and Piper laughed. "Not literally, they just look like the sun or something."

Leo opened his eyes as to not trip over a stray corpse or monster. Finally, they reached an archway carved in the shape of human skulls—or maybe they were human skulls embedded in the rock. In the purple light of Diocletian's sceptre and Leo's, well... everything, the hollow eye sockets seemed to blink.

"This is the entrance to the second level." Hazel traced her fingers across the carved skulls. "No traps on the doorway, but...something is strange here. My underground sense is—is fuzzy, like someone is working against me, hiding what's ahead of us."

"The sorceress that Hecate warned you about?" Jason guessed. "The one Leo saw in his dream? What was her name?"

Hazel chewed her lip. She pulled her hand back away from the skulls with a wince. "It would be safer not to say her name. But stay alert. One thing I'm sure of: From this point on, the dead are stronger than the living."

The voices in the darkness seemed to whisper louder. He caught glimpses of movement in the shadows and shiny white eyes that made Leo step behind Jason. Piper grabbed his elbow. Judging by the way his friends' eyes darted around, he guessed they were seeing things too.

"Where are the monsters?" Frank wondered aloud, his voice shaking as much as the tunnel they were in. "I thought Gaea had an army guarding the Doors."

"Don't know," Jason said. His pale skin looked as green as the poison from the chalice, and as red as Leo felt. He was like Christmas. "At this point I'd almost prefer a straight-up fight."

"Careful what you wish for, man." Leo said. "Personally, I'm hoping nobody's home. We walk in, find them, destroy the Doors of Death, and walk out. Maybe stop at the gift shop. Teqi wants that shirt."