I pressed the cold figurine into Percy's hand, "If anything happens, give that to Nico. Tell him… tell him I'm sorry."
He tried to protest, but I ran toward the metal giant. The defective prototype. I climbed atop a junk pile and tried to position myself on the uneven scraps.
Zoë screamed: "What are you doing?"
"Just get it to raise it's foot!" I replied.
She notched an arrow and let it fly into it's face. The monster straightened and shook its head.
I positioned myself. It raised its foot and I stood under it fighting every instinct in me that screamed "run" as the giant foot fell. But I found myself inside the thing. A ladder climbed up the inside of the leg. I grabbed at the brass rungs and began to climb just as the giant took another step. Its foot hit the ground again and the whole body shuddered, jarring my hand from its hold. I clenched my muscles and continued to climb. It kept moving, shaking me from the ladder but I continued to climb. Its joints were creaking filling the body with the echoes.
The leg widened into a body where the back must have been there was a panel with switches and levers.
I braced one hand on the wall and planted my feet in the swaying body. I pulled myself upward and grabbed one of the levers. It was old, the stick wrapped in cracked and worn leather. I began to realize how dark it was, now that there was something to see.
The giant jolted violently sideways and I strained to keep from falling back down the leg. Or gods forbid, the other one in which there was no ladder. I searched the switches with my eyes but no "emergency shut off" or "sleep". I grabbed another lever and there was a ping and an echo. They were throwing things at it. I flinched at the thought of a sword driving through the metal walls and hitting me. I forced the thought from my mind and hit a switch. Its arms shook and flailed violently I braced myself again as it rocked to and fro in a pattern like a dance.
It careened to the side and I crouched to the floor. Realising that I might die.
Nico.
If I'm 70 years old, my time has come and gone. I've lived all that I needed to. I flipped another switch.
Talos tripped on something and I crashed against the front. Sparks, like lightning, danced along the walls. I screamed and cringed as the temperature rose. The sparks traveled along my skin and I scream again under the intense pain. Can anyone hear me?
It began to fall apart, through my obscured daze I saw the arms fall off at the joints. Then it crashed into the ground and my head banged against the metal with a crack and I cried out again.
Darkness. Utterly black.
Don't ask me how I knew his name was Charon. I just did.
He started to say something but stopped short and said. "Bianca di Angelo, daughter of Hades."
"I'm sorry?"
"It wouldn't be right to leave you on the wrong side of the river."
I'm dead.
I looked down at my shimmering hands. We stood in a boat full of shades, all clad in the same shapeless grey robes.
Nico. Nico is alone.
Nico sat on the side of the sword arena watching the Stoll brothers duel,
which quickly turned into a fight over who got to lead the line to dinner.
He pulled out a Mythomagic figurine from his pocket and fiddled with it,
replaying attack and defence scenarios in his head.
Suddenly, his ears were filled with a buzz like a very angry bee. His fingers
went numb and the figurine slipped from them and dropped to the cold floor.
Connor, he thought that was the one, looked over at him,
"You ok, kid?"
"Don't you hear that buzzing?"
Travis raised his eyebrows, "What buzzing?"
"That's weird, it stopped, now."
"Ok," Connor turned back and attacked his brother again.
The water beneath us was as black as could be and littered with objects that were dropped by souls leaving behind their last hope of mortal life. All passengers of Charon's boat, just like me.
There were screams from the distant darkness, there was a sparkling sea and shore with islands in the centre. I stood in a line of shades, still in shock that I was dead. My life lasted for a year in military—
"Move along." The security ghoul chattered at me; I shuddered and moved forward with the line to the judgment pavilion.
Gloomy. Dreary. Suddenly I am reminded of something that Charon called me: a daughter of Hades. My father is the lord of the dead. I look up at the black palace, grand and horrible. The home of my father.
I found myself before the judges. Golden masks staring down on me taking thoughts and memories from my mind.
"Half-blood, daughter of Lord Hades." One mused.
I felt like I was suffocating under the scrutinizing gaze of these long dead lords.
"Stayed in the Lotus for nearly a century."
"Hunter of Artemis, died on a quest."
"Saved her friends from the defective giant in the Junkyard."
"But she stole which woke him up."
"Elysium." The middle one decided, and the other two agreed.
I was sent down the path to the bright beaches, the place for heroes that glittered far away.
I was a hero.
I walked past Asphodel fields that went on forever, shades meandering about and chattering in a nonsensical dialect that none could interpret. The shades parted revealing a girl sitting alone under a tree. She looked up and dark hair fell away from her face revealing golden eyes that could've been the brightest thing in the colourless field. Her eyes met mine. The shades then closed back as quickly as they had parted and I continud down the road into eternity.
a/n: please please please review!
