Thunderstorms And Ocean Waves *Book 2*

Hello Rocks

Ari

We made it a 100 feet before we are hopelessly lost. The tunnel looked  nothing like though one Percy and I had stumbled into before. Now it was round like a sewer constructed of red brick with iron-barred portholes every ten feet. I shine a light through one of the portholes out of curiosity, but couldn't find anything, it open into an infinite darkness. I thought I heard voices on the other side, but it may just have been the cold wind. Annabeth tried her best to guide us. She had this idea that we should stick to the left wall.
"If we keep one hand on the left wall and follow it," she said, "we should be able to find our way out again by reversing course."
Unfortunately as soon as she said that, the left wall disappeared. We found ourselves in the middle of a circular chamber and 8 doors leading out, and no idea how we'd gotten there.
"Which way did we come in?" Grover said nervously.
"Just turn around," Annabeth said. We turned toward a different tunnel. It was ridiculous. None of us could decide which way lead back to camp.
"Left walls are mean," Tyson said.
"Which way now?" Annabeth swept her flashlight beam over the archways of the 8 tunnels. As far as I could tell they were identical. "That way," she said.
"How do you know?" I asked
"Deductive reasoning."
"So… you're guessing."
"Just come on," she said.
The tunnel and she chosen narrowed quickly. The walls turned to gray cement, and the ceiling got so low that pretty soon we were hunching over, and Tyson was forced to crawl.
Grover's hyperventilating was the loudest noise in the maze.
"I can't stand it anymore," he whispered "are we there yet?"
"We've been down here for maybe 5 minutes," Annabeth told him.
"It's been longer than that!" Grover insisted. "And why would Pan and be down here? This is the opposit of the wild!" He
We kept so shuffling forward. Just then I was sure the tunnel would get so narrow it would squish us, and opened into a huge Room. Percy shined his light around the walls and said, "Woah."
The whole room was covered in mosaic tiles. The pictures were grimy and faded, but I could still make out the colors- red, blue, green, and gold. The frieze showed the Olympian gods at a feast. There is Poseidon with his Trident holding out great for Dionysus to turn into one my dad was partying with the satyrs, and Hermes was flying through the air on his wings and sandals pictures the pictures were beautiful, but they weren't very accurate. Had seen the gods. Dionysus was not that handsome, and Hermes's nose was not that big. In the middle of the room was a three-tiered fountain.
"What is this place? I muttered. It looks-"
"Roman," Annabeth said. "Those mosaics are about to 1000 years old."
"But how can the be Roman?" I wasn't that great on ancient history, but I was pretty sure the Roman Empire never made it as far as Long Island.
"The Labyrinth is a patchwork," Annabeth said. "I told you it, it's always expanding, adding pieces. It's the only work of architecture that grows by itself."
"You make it sound like it's alive." Percy grimaced as groaning noise echoed from the tunnel in front of us.
"Let's not talk about it being alive," Grover whimper. "Please?"
"All right," Annabeth said. "Forward."
"Down the Hall with the bad sounds?" Tyson said. Even he looked nervous.
"Yeah," Annabeth said. "The architecture is getting older. That's a good sign. To Daedalus's workshop should be in the oldest part."
That made sense. But soon the maze was toying with us- we went 50' in this tunnel and turned back to cement, with brass pipes running down the sides. The walls were spray painted with graffiti. And a neon tagger sign read 'Moz Rulz'.
"I'm thinking this is not Roman," Percy said helpfully.
Annabeth took in a deep breath, then forged ahead.
Every few feet the tunnels twisted and turned and branched off. The floor beneath us change from cement, to mud  to bricks, and then back again. There is no sense to any of it. We stumbled into a wine cellar-a bunch of dusty bottles in wooden racks- like we are walking through somebody's basement, only there is no exit above us, just more tunnels leaning on.
Later the ceiling turned to wooden planks, and I could hear voices above us and the creaking of footsteps, as if we are walking under some kind of bar. It was reassuring to hear the people, but then again we couldn't get to them. We were stuck down there with no way out. Then we found our 1st Skelton.
He was dressed in white clothes, like some kind of uniform. A wooden crate of glass bottles that next to him.
"A milk man," Annabeth said.
"What?" I asked.
"They used to deliver milk."
"Yeah I know what they are, but… that was one my mom was little, like a million years ago. What's he doing down here?"
"Some people wander and by mistake," Annabeth said. "Some come exploring on purpose and never make it back. A long time ago, the Cretans were even sent people in here as human sacrifices."
Grover gulped. "He's been down here a long time." He pointed to the skeletons bottles, which were coated in white dust. The skeleton's fingers were calling at the brick wall, like he had died trying to get out.
"Only bones," Tyson said. "Don't worry goatboy. The milk man is dead."
"The milk man doesn't bother me," Grover said. "It's a smell. Monsters. Can't you smell it?"
Tyson nodded. "Lots of monsters. But underground smells like that. Monsters and dead milk people."
"Oh, good," Grover whimpered. "I thought maybe I was wrong."
"We have to get deeper into the maze,"
Annabeth said. "There has to be a way to the center."
She let us to the right, then to the left, through a corridor of stainless steel like some kind of air shaft, and we arrived back in Roman tile room with a fountain.
This time, we weren't alone.