Wildfires, Heroes of Olympus ₂

073, clock that tea and brew it

CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
SILVIANA                   DUVALL

For a moment, Sylvie was weightless in the dark, the sides of the hot stone pit burning her arms.

I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die.

Then the space opened up around her. Instinctively, she tucked and rolled, absorbing most of the impact as she hit the stone floor.

Flames shot up in front of her, but Sylvie snatched up her dagger and swung before she'd even stopped rolling. A bronze dragonhead, neatly decapitated, wobbled across the floor.

"Uh, sorry," she mumbled.

Sylvie stood, trying to get her bearings. She couldn't believe she'd just done this. A few years ago, Sylvie would've had to be dragged down here by her hair.

Three bronze dragon statues stood in a row, aligned with the holes in the roof. Sylvie had decapitated the middle one. The two intact dragons were each three feet tall, their snouts pointed upward and their steaming mouths open. They were clearly the source of the flames, but they didn't seem to be automatons. They didn't move or try to attack her. Sylvie sliced off the heads of the other two.

She waited. No more flames shot upward.

"Sylv?" Finley's voice echoed from far above like she was yelling down a chimney.

"Yeah!" Sylvie shouted.

"Oh, thank fuck! You okay?"

"Yeah. Hold on a sec."

Her eyesight adjusted to the dark. She scanned the chamber. The only light came from her glowing blade and the openings above. The ceiling was about thirty feet high. By all rights, Sylvie should've broken both legs in the fall, but she wasn't going to complain.

The chamber itself was round, about the size of a helicopter pad. The walls were made of rough-hewn stone blocks chiseled with Greek inscriptions—thousands and thousands of them, like graffiti.

At the far end of the room, on a stone dais, stood the human-sized bronze statue of a warrior—the god Ares, Sylvie guessed—with heavy bronze chains wrapped around his body, anchoring him to the floor.

On either side of the statue loomed two dark doorways, each ten feet high, with a gruesome stone face carved over the archway. The faces reminded Sylvie of gorgons, except they had lions' manes instead of snakes for hair.

Sylvie suddenly felt very much alone.

"Finley!" she called. "It's a long drop, but it's safe to come down. Maybe... uh, fasten a rope so we can get back up?"

"On it!"

A few minutes later a rope dropped from the center pit. Finley shinnied down.

"Silviana Duvall," she grumbled, "your boyfriend has corrupted you. That was without a doubt the dumbest risk I've ever seen anyone take, and I'm a dumb risk-taker!"

"It's sorta fun, isn't it?" Sylvie grinned innocently. "Being reckless?"

"Not when Percy's going to kill me if you get hurt!"