To survive, you must lead, the voice said. He looked down and realized he’d been about to step out of line. “Frank, don’t move.” Hazel sounded alarmed. He had no doubt…the voice that spoke to him was one of his ancestors.
You had to take them seriously.įrank always thought his grandmother’s superstitions were silly. His grandmother had always been big on honoring the ancestors. It resonated right down to his bones, as if it knew everything about him-his curse, his history, his future. He’d even faced the god of Death.īut this voice terrified him in a different way. I await you in Pylos.įrank felt like the poison was bubbling back up his throat. It seemed to come from right next to him, like someone whispering in his ear. The voices of the war gods were arguing again in his ears. Frank walked right behind her-not because he felt particularly brave, but because he wanted to be close if Hazel needed his help. “The tunnel from here is unstable,” Hazel warned. “Let’s not make an offering,” Jason suggested. “If you wanted your ancestors to appear, you had to make an offering.” The tunnel floor was littered with ceramic shards and silver coins. He couldn’t read Ancient Greek, but he guessed they were prayers or supplications to the dead, written by pilgrims thousands of years ago. Frank saw Ancient Greek graffiti scratched into the stone. Even though Frank knew that, there wasn’t much he could do about it. If no monsters were visible, that just meant they were hiding, waiting to spring a trap. They would have no good options for retreat.Īll of Frank’s instincts told him to get out of these tunnels. Their group could be flanked or surrounded easily. There were blind corners everywhere, perfect for ambushes. The tunnels were big enough to accommodate large monsters, even giants. The extra space should have made Frank feel better, but all he could think about was the tactical situation. The ceilings rose to six meters high, decorated with elaborate paintings of owls in the branches of white poplars. I can sense it.”Īs they traveled deeper, the corridors widened. “Every twelve,” Nico corrected, though he didn’t explain how he knew. “It’s happening like every fifteen minutes,” Piper noted. “The Doors of Death just opened again,” Nico said. “These passageways won’t take much more.” We walk in, find Percy and Annabeth, destroy the Doors of Death, and walk out. “Careful what you wish for, man.” Leo summoned a ball of fire to his hand, and for once Frank was glad to see the flames. “At this point I’d almost prefer a straight-up fight.”
#The house of hades skin#
His pale skin looked as green as the poison from the chalice. “I thought Gaea had an army guarding the Doors.” “Where are the monsters?” he wondered aloud. From the way his friends’ eyes darted around, he guessed they were seeing things too. He caught glimpses of movement in the shadows. The voices in the darkness seemed to whisper louder. One thing I’m sure of: From this point on, the dead are stronger than the living.”įrank wasn’t sure how she knew that, but he believed her. “The one Leo saw in his dream? What was her name?” “The sorceress that Hecate warned you about?” Jason guessed. My underground sense is-is fuzzy, like someone is working against me, hiding what’s ahead of us.” “No traps on the doorway, but…something is strange here. Hazel traced her fingers across the carved skulls. “I’d better take a look.”įrank hadn’t even realized that he’d moved in front of the doorway. “This is the entrance to the second level,” she said. In the purple light of Diocletian’s scepter, the hollow eye sockets seemed to blink.įrank almost hit the ceiling when Hazel put a hand on his arm. In his mind, Ares and Mars had gone silent, but Frank thought he heard other voices whispering in the side corridors, beckoning him to veer off course, to come closer and listen to them speak.įinally they reached an archway carved in the shape of human skulls-or maybe they were human skulls embedded in the rock.
In the eerie glow of their magic weapons, his friends looked like flickering ghosts.Ĭold air brushed against his face. The pouch with his firewood seemed heavier on his belt. His skin tingled, and he wondered if it was a side effect of the poison. “It’s the only one that won’t collapse on us.”įrank began to feel like he was leaving the world of the living. “This way.” Hazel pointed to a doorway that looked the same as all the others. “The screech owl is one of Hades’s sacred animals,” Nico said. “I thought the owl was Minerva’s symbol,” Jason murmured.
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