𝐒𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄 | 𝐏𝐉 𝟐

𝟎𝟐𝟏.𝟑

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. Percy had seen big cities before. He was from New York, 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 neighbourhoods. 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 Percy 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.

Built over my land, over the death of my people. Percy's throat clogged with anger. His people had died for the foundation of Rome to be laid.

"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."

Percy wished Jason's sister Thalia were here. She'd always had a way of bending the Mist to make people see what she wanted. Percy had never been very good at that. He just kept thinking: Don't look at me, and hoped the Romans below would fail to notice the giant bronze trireme descending on their city in the middle of morning rush hour.

It seemed to work. Percy didn't notice any cars veering off the road or Romans pointing to the sky and screaming, "Aliens!"

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 lawns loped 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 Percy of trees in those Dr.Seuss books his mom used to read him when he was little.

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. Percy wasn't sure but it made him angry.

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 Percy's legs started shaking. He was actually here. He'd thought his trip to Alaska had been pretty exotic, but now he was in the heart of the old Roman Empire, enemy territory for a Greek demigod, the place where he had supposedly committed all his previous life mistakes.

In a way, this place had shaped his life as much as New York. 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," Annabeth put in. "They were a noble Roman family, and...wow, this place is amazing."

Jason nodded. "I've studied maps of Rome before. I've always wanted to come here, but..."

Nobody bothered finishing that sentence.

"I'm," Juliet began her eyes dazed as everyone looked at her, "Going to be sick,"