Okay, first of all, Guest reviewer DepressedTiger: Dude. Jesus Christ. That sounds amazing. I wish I could read that! I think I'll try to incorporate the general tone you want, but I've got a few plans as to what will happen. It's quite similar to what you want though. I hope you like it and keep reviewing, I actually loved reading that.
Second of all, here's the new chappie. It's longer.
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Chapter 28
Leo II
The group was tense and silent as they turned another corner, Hazel confirming that there was nothing potentially lethal coming up. Leo found himself at the back of them.
"Why am I at the back?" Leo muttered to Piper. "Everyone knows the guy at the back of the group gets killed first."
He winced at his tactlessness, briefly forgetting that Annabeth was dead. It seemed an awful and massive thing to forget, but Leo guessed it just hadn't really hit him yet. He still half expected a bossy order from the front of the group every few seconds, a blonde head turning around to make sure everyone was keeping up, and that they were okay.
Leo realised how much he missed her. Like, he really missed her. She'd been terrifying when he'd first met her, but Leo now knew that was just her desperation to find Percy. And to have died in such a horrible and painful way... She didn't deserve it. He missed the way that she, above anyone else, would send a small smile his way at his jokes, no matter how bad they were. Percy would do it often, along with Piper, but Annabeth would always do it. She made him feel appreciated. Leo had always felt like a seventh wheel, an odd one out, but he'd rather have all of his friends with him, happy and safe, than have a girlfriend. That was clear to him now.
No one acknowledged his slip, Leo observed thankfully. They carried on walking in the dark, his fire lighting the way, flickering along the ceiling.
Eventually they turned a corner into a round circular room. The stone floors and ceilings had made the room very cold, uncomfortable for someone like Leo. There were torches lining the walls, and mirrors on every surface, cracked and dusty. Leo could see a couple hundred versions of himself dotted about. It was like being in a hall of mirrors.
He dropped his fire and looked around.
"Can you feel the way out?" He heard Jason ask Hazel behind him.
Leo wandered over to a wall and placed his hand over it.
As he looked in the mirror, his eyebrows knitted together. He looked different. His hair had grown out longer and shaggier, and his face was leaner, so he looked less like an imp and more like one of those willowy elves in the fairy tales. There were thick smears of grease on his neck that he had missed while washing his face, almost as dark as the shadows underneath his eyes, purple like he'd been punched in the face a couple times.
He turned back to see Hazel looking troubled.
"The only way out is through there," she said as she pointed in one direction, at a relatively nondescript wall, "but there's a lot of support there, I think if we take it out, the whole room could collapse." She bit her lip worriedly and looked to the rest.
Frank was staring hard at the wall, as if he was trying to scold it for being so fragile. Jason and Piper were looking at each other, having some silent conversation. Nico watched his sister think.
"If we all just go near it, we smash it, then we duck in, we'll be fine." Leo said, shrugging. "Is the tunnel behind it strong?"
Hazel glanced at it.
"I think so." she said. "It's a little hard to tell, we're close to all those monsters, it's blurring into each other slightly. And it's thick behind. We won't be able to just hit it and smash it, that feels like it will take a lot of force to go through."
Jason straightened up.
"I'll smash it, you all go stand near-"
"No." Nico cut him off, putting his hand out to halt Jason. "I'll smash it. If this roof falls in, I can just shadow travel away. But it'll just land on you."
Jason blinked.
"Yeah. Yeah, you're right." Leo saw a smile twitch onto his best friend's face for the first time since Annabeth had died. "We'll all stand over there. Whenever you're ready, Nico." He clapped the younger boy softly on the shoulder, who quirked up the corner of his mouth.
Leo followed the rest over by the wall, a few feet away to avoid any glass shards that would fly out.
Nico stood in the middle of the room, a little awkward but seemingly ignoring it. Leo noted how deeply he was breathing, his chest heaving slowly.
"Ready?" Asked the son of Hades.
Piper nodded, the rest of them pressing flat against the other walls.
Nico stepped closer, his hands flickering with some kind of black mist that darted about in sharp curves. It got blacker and more violent as Nico raised his hands, holding the dark blaze level with his shoulders.
A look of deep concentration in his face, Nico pushed his arms forward.
A bolt of flickering black energy shot out, and struck the mirrors, shattering it and the wall behind, chunks of rock flying out.
Leo covered his eyes to avoid the dust, before being thrown slightly off balance by the sudden shaking of the room.
Mirrors fell off walls, exploding across the floor, as spider-web cracked expanded across the ceiling rapidly.
"Leo!"
Leo had just been pulled into the tunnel by his suspenders as a large layer of the ceiling fell heavily to the floor.
It landed with an almighty crash, blocking in their tunnel, plunging them into darkness, and cut off their view of Nico, who had been sprinting towards them.
"No!" shouted Leo and Hazel, Leo's arms erupting in flames.
Hazel launched herself at the rock, her hands outstretched as she moved the rock a few inches, dust falling onto their horrified faces.
"Nico!" Frank bellowed angrily.
Leo heard Jason swear violently behind him and agreed with every word.
"Nonononono-" Hazel began screaming as she lifted the heavy rock with sheer force, a thin beam of light coming in from the bottom. It was quickly extinguished as another crash came, the rest of the ceiling caving in.
"Nico!" She screamed, her eyes burning gold in the dim light of Leo's burning arms.
"No more!" Piper kicked the wall of the tunnel furiously, "No more, no more, not another, not again- AGHHH!" She screamed, punching it so hard Leo saw blood, again and again.
Leo couldn't breathe- they couldn't take another death, they just couldn't, it wasn't fair, please-
"Uh-guys?" Came a voice behind them.
They all span around.
Nico stood there, looking curiously at them, a little dusty, a little shaken, but otherwise absolutely fine.
"Nico!"
He was instantly gripped in such a bear hug from Frank, that Leo doubted he could breathe. But he joined them anyway, gripping the small, quiet child of Hades that they had all grown to feel protective over tightly. He felt Jason's arms partially close over him, Piper's hand on his shoulder.
Hazel had flown towards her brother and speeds Leo didn't think possible, tears dripping down her nose as she sobbed into Nico's chest.
"I thought- we- again- that you- the ceiling- dead- we didn't-" Hazel's speaking was interrupted by gasps and hitches.
Sometimes, Leo forgot that Hazel was only thirteen.
"I shadow travelled." Nico's voice was muffled and surprised. "I told you I would."
"I didn't think you got there in time." Hazel sniffed wetly.
Leo had completely blanked about Nico's shadow travel, along with everyone else, despite being told minutes ago. They had lost so many members of their crew, they had all just assumed.
Leo didn't want to move from their inadvertent group hug. They were all warm and together, he could feel the love radiating off of each of them. But one by one, they drew away, until it was just Hazel, who was holding Nico's hand in a death grip.
"Don't you- don't you ever do that again." She told him firmly, wiping at her eyes. "Let's just keep going. Go left at the end."
No one questioned her, and they carried on in a strange atmosphere. Leo felt ecstatic that Nico was fine, but he honestly thought that he could cry very easily. Everyone's emotions were at an all time high.
"What was that stuff you used to blow up the wall?" Piper asked Nico quietly.
"Hellfire." Nico replied. "It takes a lot to use but it's powerful. I discovered it in Tartarus."
"Oh. Cool." Piper said.
The air temperature somehow dropped even further at the name, and Leo winced at how awkward Piper sounded. He got the impression that Nico hadn't meant to say that.
Nico began to tell them about the doors of death.
"When someone gets in the elevator, it will chime. When the chime sounds again, someone on our side needs to push the UP button, or the Doors won't open and Percy- well he'll be gone. We won't know when he's in, so we'll have to just hope that we let him out and not some other thing."
They turned left.
Leo could finally let his flames simmer down on his arms, dimly noting how his sleeves had charred at the edges. Every shirt. There were torches lighting the way now, and at the end, Leo could see the outline of a door.
"Is that-" He began.
"Yeah." Nico nodded, "The doors of death are through there, along with a couple hundred monsters."
"We're going in there." Jason said. "I don't even care anymore, Percy is through those doors, and I want him here, right now. Kill as many as you can, and protect those you can see. Got it?"
Everyone nodded.
Leo was ready to torch some monster ass, to just make them feel as angry and hurt as he was.
"Let's go." He said.
Nico counted down from three on his hands, before throwing open the door, that lead into a massive cavern, crawling with monsters.
From where they were stood on a slightly elevated ledge, Leo could get a good view of the entire room. The obsidian walls were carved with scenes of death: plague victims, corpses on the battlefield, torture chambers with skeletons hanging in iron cages – all of it embellished with precious gems that somehow made the scenes even more ghastly.
As in the Pantheon, the domed roof was a waffle pattern of recessed square panels, but here each panel was a stela – a grave marker with Ancient Greek inscriptions. Leo wondered if actual bodies were buried behind them.
He couldn't see any other exits. At the apex of the ceiling, where the Pantheon's skylight would've been, a circle of pure black stone gleamed, as if to reinforce the sense that there was no way out of this place – no sky above, only darkness.
Leo's eyes drifted to the centre of the room.
'Yep,' Leo muttered. 'Those are doors, all right.'
Fifty feet away was a set of freestanding elevator doors, their panels etched in silver and iron. A large black figure stood in front. Rows of chains ran down either side, bolting the frame to large hooks in the floor.
The area around the doors was littered with black rubble. Leo narrowed his eyes as he realized that an ancient altar to Hades had once stood there. It had been destroyed to make room for the Doors of Death.
Monsters were crowded about, pressed against walls and shoved into corners, cyclopes and empousai and hellhounds, the room filled with growls and roars and bellows.
"HEY!" Leo shouted.
Every monster head turned to see the six of them standing at the door, weapons aloft: Jason's sword crackling with electricity, Piper's eyes glinting as she bared her dagger, Frank's hands slowly growing claws, Hazel's spatha pointed upwards, tears now dried on her furious face, and Nico's stygian iron sword swinging dangerously from his hand.
Leo let his sword and hand burst into roaring flames.
"You're all already dead." Leo promised calmly into the silence.
He jumped in.
He immediately beheaded a monster, the others flying in behind, screams and clangs of metal thrown up around him.
Leo had stepped back to take a breath when he heard it.
In the centre of the room, the Doors of Death made a pleasant chiming sound. The green UP button on the right side of the frame began to glow. The chains shook. Something was in the elevator- Leo felt a small spark of hope- Percy?
That fueled him as he sliced into a dracaenae. All he saw for a few minutes was gold. Nothing but gold. His sword swung out of its own accord, his flames shooting out to vanquish monsters he hadn't even seen yet. He was pretty sure his whole body was on fire.
At some point he pulled back, checking on his friends, who were decimating and holding their own pretty well. He ducked a swing and retaliated, gold entering his vision again.
Suddenly a stomp that rivalled thunder itself bellowed across the chamber, shockwaves knocking a few off balance.
The monsters and demigods froze. Leo lifted his head; the figure that Leo had seen in front of the doors let its leg move back to where it was, the twenty-foot-tall shadowy figure looming next to the shaking Doors.
The giant Clytius, the bane of Hecate, was shrouded in black smoke, but Leo could see dragon-like legs with ash-coloured scales; a massive humanoid upper body encased in Stygian armour; long, braided hair that seemed to be made from smoke. His complexion was as dark as Death's. His eyes glinted cold as diamonds. He carried no weapon, but that didn't make him any less terrifying.
He stepped down, hundreds of monsters scuttling away from him.
Leo let himself be scared for a few seconds. Then, he lifted his chin. So he was tall. So was a giraffe. And Leo wasn't scared of any giraffes. Around him, he could see his friends straightening up, not one of them showing fear.
As Leo side-eyed them, he scanned for Nico; he had just seen him before Clytius had intervened, but now he had vanished.
There.
Out the corner of his other eye, he saw Nico hidden behind the doors. He blinked meaningfully at him, hoping he got the message. As soon as the doors chimed, Nico would let whatever or whoever out. They couldn't take any chances.
The monsters around them had backed off. They would have to fight Clytius until a God showed up, and fight him for a long as it took for the doors to chime. Leo looked up at him.
"Yeah? You're smoky and mute. Oh, we're so scared." Leo said, screwing up his nose.
Despite the fact that they were literally surrounded by hundreds of monsters and a giant that could only be killed if a God was present, which there wasn't, Leo heard Jason snort.
Clytius didn't move, but Leo saw his eyes get colder, if that was even possible.
"It's a nice place you got here," Piper joined, pretending to scan the cavern. "Bit of a fixer upper, but not too bad. You've got a bit of an infestation problem though." She gestured to the monsters.
Stall, was all that was going through Leo's brain, stall, stall!
Clytius lifted his sword a fraction.
"I think what we really mean," Leo started quickly, "is that Gaia could've put you anywhere but she puts you in some underground pit on door duty. That's not the best, is it?"
"I heard her say that Polybotes was her favourite son." Frank said conversationally to Hazel, who nodded convincingly.
"I heard that too."
"I thought it was Alcyoneus?" Jason interjected.
Leo had butterflies in his stomach, he was thoroughly intimidated by the sheer amount of monsters, but he also wanted to laugh at the absurdity of their conversation, this couldn't last.
As Jason and Frank debated over which giant was Gaia's favourite, Leo glanced sideways.
Four things happened in quick succession:
One, the doors chimed for the second time.
Two, Nico slapped the button a millisecond after hearing it.
Three, Clytius snapped, lunging forwards to kill them.
Four, the doors slid open, and something huge came out.
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Oh God finally, yknow?
My English class has tests every Wednesday; I've come 2nd, 2nd, 2nd, and then finally this week I came 1st. I was second to three different people, but one of them was my best friend so I'm cool with that. Kinda.
