𝐆𝐎𝐋𝐃 𝐑𝐔𝐒𝐇 [Jason Grace]

40

𝐃𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐞 𝐚𝐮𝐝𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐲 𝐠𝐚𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐝 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐉𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧 told him to look over the rails as they descended. He wasn't a big fan of listening to what Jason said, but the guy had a point.

The sky was brilliant blue, as if the stormy weather had never happened. The sun rose over the distant hills, so everything below them shone and sparkled like the entire city of Rome had just come out of the car wash.

Dante had seen big cities before. He had spent a lot of time in San Francisco after all. But the sheer vastness of Rome grabbed him by the throat and made it hard to breathe. The city seemed to have no regard for the limits of geography. It spread through hills and valleys, jumped over the Tiber with dozens of bridges, and just kept sprawling to the horizon. Streets and alleys zigzagged with no rhyme or reason through quilts of neighborhoods. Glass office buildings stood next to excavation sites. A cathedral stood next to a line of Roman columns, which stood next to a modern soccer stadium. In some neighborhoods, old stucco villas with red-tiled roofs crowded the cobblestone streets, so that if Dante concentrated just on those areas, he could imagine he was back in ancient times. Everywhere he looked, there were wide piazzas and traffic-clogged streets. Parks cut across the city with a crazy collection of palm trees, pines, junipers, and olive trees, as if Rome couldn't decide what part of the world it belonged to—or maybe it just believed all the world still belonged to Rome.

This is what they had been taught about at Camp Jupiter, a great empire now long gone, but with an unforgettable legacy (sure some parts greater than others like all the murder and what not).

Dante saw Percy and the rest of their crew come up on deck. They crowded around him, looking down as well. All of them oohing and aahing as they stared.

"We're setting down in that park," Leo announced, pointing to a wide green space dotted with palm trees. "Let's hope the Mist makes us look like a large pigeon or something."

Dante wanted to say that's not how the mist worked, but it would at least keep the mortals away. The Argo II set down in the grassy field and the oars retracted.

The noise of traffic was all around them, but the park itself was peaceful and deserted. To their left, a green lawn sloped toward a line of woods. An old villa nestled in the shade of some weird-looking pine trees with thin curvy trunks that shot up thirty or forty feet, then sprouted into puffy canopies. They reminded Dante of trees in those Dr. Seuss books his step-dad Jerkface used to read him when he was little, when he wasn't so much of a Jerkface.

To their right, snaking along the top of a hill, was a long brick wall with notches at the top for archers—maybe a medieval defensive line, maybe Ancient Roman. Dante wasn't sure.

To the north, about a mile away through the folds of the city, the top of the Colosseum rose above the rooftops, looking just like it did in travel photos. That's when Dante's legs started shaking. He was actually here. He wouldn't be who he was without this place. This was his homeland in a way, this is where people had worshiped his father more than a thousand years ago, this was where the republic had risen and fallen like the emperors that followed.

Jason pointed to the base of the archers' wall, where steps led down into some kind of tunnel.

"I think I know where we are," he said. "That's the Tomb of the Scipios."

Percy frowned. "Scipio... Reyna's pegasus?"

"No," Dante put in. "They were a noble Roman family."

"This place is amazing," Annabeth looked like a kid at Christmas, her grey eyes wide as she tried to take everything in.