Keeper Of Their Hearts (EG/PJO) - Book One

XXVI. Poseidon Defuses The Bomb That Is Zeus

Location: 600th Floor (Olympus), Empire State Building

The first thing I happened to notice as soon as me and Demeter had entered the Empire State Building was none other than Percy Jackson standing in front of the front desk.

He was alone, which was strange since he had left Camp Half Blood a week ago with Annabeth and Grover in tow. His clothes were in tatters, his face on the sides looked like it was scraped up, and he had on a backpack on his back. He was having trouble with the guard, until Demeter and I walked up.

The guard looked up, saw Lady Demeter, and sighed. "Apologies, Ms. Florence.." he said, using Demeter's human identity last name. "This kid is being a bit problematic."

"No problem.. I believe both of them are with me.. so.. access to 600th Floor please?" Demeter asked calmly. The guard looked at Percy, blinked, looked at me, then at Demeter, and then scrambled out of his seat, fumbled around the desk for a key card and then handed it to Demeter.

Percy didn't even say a word, he was too flabbergasted to even speak. "Again.. apologies Ms. Florence. I didn't know the kid was with you and the other one. You know what to do.." the guard said before going back to whatever he had been doing prior.

Demeter just gestured to both of us - for I had been staring dumbfounded at the whole event - and both me and Percy shook off the shock and followed her. "Who's Ms. Florence?" he asked as we followed behind her, obviously confused as to why the guard gave the key card to her.

"Demeter.." I told him, and his eyes just grew wide. "I mean.. she brought me, Clarisse, Charles, Michael, Alabaster, Dawson, Sherman.. plus two new demigods named Adagio and Sunset.." I left out the part that they were fated to me. "..all the way from Central Virginia back to New York, so coming with her back to Olympus was the least I could do."

There was a strange look in Percy's eyes when I mentioned Clarisse's name, but I thought nothing of it at the time. Though it.. was the first hint to me as to the true identity of the Lightning Thief. I wasn't really thinking much at the moment of the implications of Percy being back - meaning that his quest had most likely obviously succeeded - at the moment.

But either way, as we followed Demeter into the elevator, the two of us stayed silent as the elevator rose towards the red button that Demeter had pressed that had appeared when she had slipped the key into the slot, a red button that said "600 ".

- — - — - — -

I'm pretty sure that as soon as the doors slid open again, Percy nearly had a heart attack. If he was having such an event, then I was being absolutely blown away by what I saw.

For this being the first time ever seeing Olympus, I had to admit that this was absolutely unbelievable with what I was seeing.

The elevator had opened up to a narrow stone walkway in the middle of the air, far up above Manhattan, which lay below as if we were looking at it from the level of an airplane. Good thing I was not afraid of heights. In front of us, the walkway continued onwards, with white marble steps winding up the spines of multiple clouds into the sky. At the end of the stairway, there it was.

Olympus.

To say that it looked anything like the original Mount Olympus did in Greece — from the illustrations I had seen in school — could not have been further from the truth to be honest. It was as if we were in another dimension entirely. From the top of the clouds where the staircase ended rose a mountain, with its peak having been broken off at the top, its summit covered with snow. Clinging to the side of this mountain was an absolute sea of white buildings — dozens of multi leveled palaces, 'a city of mansions' to quote Percy here — all of them with white-columned porches or whatever that was, glided terraces and what seemed like mini-fireplaces glowing with what seemed like over a thousand fires. In a word, it was essentially the Ancient Greek version of Hollywood, if Hollywood was a community built on the side of a mountain.