The Half-Blood Project

33/Part 2/-Boiling

Annabeth Chase 

"You okay Tyson?" I turned my attention to Tyson as we walked silently in the tunnels, the only sound that had been between the four of us was our breaths and our shoes scraping against the wet, slippery pavement beneath us. 

"No." Tyson said gruffly and kept his dark eyes ahead of where the light shone through the cracks of a sewer grate. 

I felt bad for Tyson. Braries had seemed so weak, so helpless, so hopeless, and he was Tyson's hero. Seeing your hero be so....destroyed, it must have been horrifying. 

We turned left, the only possible direction to go in and I could feel myself shiver slightly as we passed into an underground fountain room, paintings on the floor fading, faces of myths dying in the dim light that filtered through another sewer grate, the fountain were dry, cracks running through the ceramic base, cobwebs strung all across the room. 

In short, it was depressing. As if all the life had been sucked out of it and left to rot and die in the dank, damp darkness. 

"This is depressing." I shuddered and moved on towards the exit and back into more endless crooks of tunnels and crawlspaces. 

"Tell me about it. Remind me why we're here?" Grover groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose like he was going to be sick, I don't blame him, this entire complex makes me want to barf, being underground, feeling trapped and kind of helpless. 

"To find Luke. To find the the the answers we need." 

"Right. And to possibly die."

"That too." 

Percy too was silent, hadn't talked much since we entered the labyrinth. Maybe he was still drinking in that he was related to a cyclops, a monster, but Tyson, he was a good monster, he had this funny kind of light in him I never expected from any one-eyed creature and I was intrigued. Was he sent to us or we were sent to him for a reason? Posideon claiming him wasn't a mistake or coincidence. Tyson was with us for some reason and I didn't quite know that reason yet. 

We stopped in another fountain room, much like the last one but the fountain was split down the middle like a giant sword had sliced the cracked ceramic-like butter. 

"We should stop here, get some rest," Percy said in a slow, quiet voice. How long had we been down here? Days? Hours? Weeks? But every cell in my body was telling me that I needed to sit, the balls of my feet were sore and weak. I collapsed against a wall. 

"I and Percy will take the first shift, you two sleep." I huffed and drew out a bottle of water and sipped it generously, not wanting to waste the precious contents. 

Grover didn't even complain, he lay his head down on his backpack and was snoring within seconds. The poor goat hated being in the complex of tunnels. Probably hated being so far away from the glorious sunshine of nature, the breathiness of the singing trees, and the shivers of a breeze. 

Tyson settled on the wall and leaned his head to the side, his one eye dropping and then he was snoring too, softly, like a tiny baby. It made me smile. 

Percy sat in the corner, a couple of feet away from Grover, and fiddled with Riptide in his hands, staring at the cracked, splitting ground. 

"You ever wonder what life would be like if this all finished?" Percy suddenly asked, out of the blue. I shrugged, not sure what I would even answer to that question yet. 

"I'd like to open a coffee shop, in the city. Maybe have a dog, visit my friends on the weekends." Percy said quietly, wistfully. 

"Really? What kind of dog?"