Thank you everyone for the reviews! Just four words to say:

You guys.

Are.

Amazing.

Oh, and happy Kalends of July! Today is Jason's birthday! Let's say hi!

Me: Hi Jason!

Jason: Hi!

Me: How's your saving-the-world thing going on?

Jason: Uh…

Me: Yeah, I don't own HoO, blah blah blah.

(You may have noticed that I'm abnormally bright and bubbly today. Well, duh, I'm on HOLIDAYS!)

Chapter XXXVII Hazel

Hazel did not like what she was seeing. The two guardian-statue-automatons were huge. They filled up the rest of the tiny room. They also had very, very large, sharp and dangerous-looking swords. And her senses told her the guardians had been crafted out of diamond, which was practically indestructible. If it came to a fight in this tiny underground chamber, they would lose. Badly.

"We are the guardians," said the first one. "We will decide."

"I already figured that out, thanks," muttered Leo. "Get on with it."

Hazel winced. She had a very bad feeling that the statues did not like disrespectful people.

"State your names and purpose," declared the second guardian.

Nico stepped forward. "Uh, my name's Nico di Angelo, son of Hades. That's Jason, son of Jupiter. The satyr is Coach Hedge. Hazel's a daughter of Pluto, and the guy next to her is Frank, son of Mars. Jason's girlfriend is Piper, daughter of Aphrodite. The guy with the magic toolbelt is Leo, son of Hephaestus. And we're here to close the Doors of Death."

The statues studied them coldly. One of them looked at her.

Suddenly Hazel was spinning through her memories, but this didn't feel like a blackout. It was as if somebody was inside her head, shuffling through her memories to see if there was anything useful. Hazel saw New Orleans, Sammy, her mother, her father, Nico, Frank, Percy, Arion, Annabeth, Gaia, Alcyoneus, Polybotes, Jason, Leo, Piper, everyone she knew was being pulled out of her memories for the guardians to scan.

Abruptly the guardians pulled out. Hazel collapsed onto the ground, feeling sick.

Piper looked as if she was on the verge of throwing up. Leo's crazy expression had turned dark. Jason's eyes weren't their normal blue, but stormy and dark. Her boyfriend was sitting beside her with a nauseous expression on his face. And Nico… gods, Nico looked the worst out of them. His pale complexion had turned even paler, and he looked stunned. Apparently Nico hadn't known the statues could do the memory trick, or he hadn't expected it to be so traumatising.

Only Coach Hedge seemed to be unaffected. The satyr was fingering his club and his expression yelled "Cool! Show me more! I wanna revisit battle scenes!"

The first guardian looked down at them before saying, "Your heart is pure."

"Your motive is true," agreed the second guardian.

"Then can we pass?" coughed Frank.

"No."

"Wait, what?" demanded Jason.

The statues' eyes turned from black to clear gold. "Eidolon," gasped Piper.

"But I melted you!" yelled Leo. "Back in Rome!"

The first eidolon laughed. "Pathetic. You think those three weaklings were the only ones?"

"They were weak. We are not. We will destroy you," the second one said.

"But… they said the Earth Mother sent only three, the strongest!" stammered Hazel.

"Ha! They were liars, fools. The Earth Mother, not have backup? Ha!" laughed the first eidolon. There was a cold, cruel light in its eyes.

"Guys," Hazel whispered. "Those automatons are diamond. We won't be able to just cut them down."

"Great," sighed Nico. "Wonderful. Just what we need."

"Hazel, can you control the diamond?" asked Frank, ignoring Nico's comment.

Hazel frowned. "I can try… I think so."

The first statue jerked one arm to the side, then the other, before the eidolon brought the arms back to normal. "A good try, Hazel Levesque. But you cannot control us."

"Drat," muttered Leo. "It would have been great to just force them out of the way. Now what? Sit down with them for a cup of tea and a nice chat?"

Hazel's mind whirled, snatching on to the last word Leo said. Chat.

Talk, she realised. Speaking.

At the Doors speaks charm the dove. The guardians deceived and gateway closed.

Dove. Charmspeak. Guardians deceived.

Jason had apparently come to the same conclusion as Hazel, because he whispered, "Piper! You need to charmspeak them!"

"What?"

'"At the Doors speaks charm the dove'!" hissed Jason.

"Beauty Queen, he's right," snapped Leo. "Just do it!"

"Finished your obituary?" sneered the second eidolon.

Piper stood up. "Stay away. Drop the weapons."

Hazel suddenly found herself with the strong urge to drop her spatha and leave.

Apparently the eidolons felt the same way. The first one drew his sword and dropped it. The second one backed away. Hazel quickly took the opportunity to levitate the black diamond sword and throw it behind her. The doors behind her were still open, and she flung it backwards as hard as she could.

She heard it go ker-sploosh in the River Styx. Apparently they hadn't closed those doors either.

As soon as the diamond sword dropped into the Styx, the eidolons' eyes unglazed. They stared at Piper with hate.

"Daughter of the dove," growled the eidolon who'd lost his sword. "You will be the first to die."

They both charged. Hazel cursed and sent out her senses, desperately hoping to at least slow them down so Piper could get another chance at charmspeak.

The second eidolon skidded to a stop. The first one kept going. Hazel felt a little drained from stopping the huge mass of stone.

At least she'd stopped the more important one. The first eidolon had no sword.

"Stop!" commanded Piper.

Both eidolons froze and turned to look at her. "You will leave," she commanded. "You will let us through. We are friends of yours. You will let us through."

"You are friends of ours," repeated the first eidolon.

"We will let you through," said the second.

"Drop the weapons," Piper said.

The eidolons hesitated.

"Drop them!"

They obeyed.

"Now, let us through."

The eidolons parted, giving access to the small pair of doors on the far side. Hazel could feel it now. The aura of death around it was shockingly intense. Being Thanatos', she had believed they would emit a strong aura, but Hazel was wrong. The Doors didn't emit a strong aura. They sent out pulses, blasts of incredibly intense waves of deathly radiation. Nico clearly felt it too, because there was a look of awe as they approached the second-last pair of doors in her father's shrine. Hazel knew what would be behind those doors. Gration. And an exit out of Tartarus, where they might see Percy and Annabeth again. Hazel silently prayed they'd made it.

The eidolons stayed still as they marched through the middle. Leo paused with his hands on the door.

"Do we lock ourselves in that room? It won't be a fair fight if the eidolons can help."

"Lock it," decided Jason. "We're smaller than the giant. We'll have a better mobility advantage. How big is the last room, anyway?"

"Really big," answered Nico. "Like, not-as-big-as-the-throne-room, but bigger than the twin giant's storeroom. Hippodrome, whatever."

"Hypogeum," corrected Piper. "But yeah… do you mean with the stuff inside or without?"

"Without."

"That's a big room."

"Okay," said Jason. "So, the plan is that we lock ourselves in a hypogeum-sized room, attack the giant, try get Percy and Annabeth, and pray for another miracle?"

"Looks like it, Grace."

"There are a lot of things that could go wrong with that plan," noted Hazel.

"I wish we had a child of Athena here," muttered Nico. "Annabeth, why did you have to go drop into Tartarus?"

Under different circumstances, Hazel would have laughed. But now, a few seconds off from facing a giant, with no divine help in sight, with Percy and Annabeth possibly finally coming back after weeks of their absence, and with the possibility that someone had to stay behind to close the Doors, Hazel felt like there was no chance of happiness anywhere anymore. The expectation was going to drive her mad.

Fortunately, before that could happen, Leo kicked the doors open. The first thing that caught Hazel's eyes were the pair of doors sitting innocently on the far side of the room, emitting waves of death – and wide open.

The second thing was the very large giant's shadow looming over the floor.

Hazel almost thought it was funny that she missed the giant and focused on the Doors.

Then they stepped in.

TA DA! I know, I'm evil for putting up such a giant (hehe, no pun intended) cliffhanger. Sue me. I like cliffhangers… when I know what will happen next. (Actually, I don't have a clue yet, which is why I'll be dreaming.) Yeah… Well, this chapter is the last possible one for votes on Gration's defeater. Hazel is winning by a mile and a half so far, so chances are it'll be Hazel + god VS Gration. (I know I revealed the god earlier, but I'm too lazy to write up the name. Go search for it… somewhere in the last few Reyna chapters, I think.)

Waiting for reviews to hit 115 (that's another 6 reviews. PLEASE? *puppy eyes look*)

Cheers.

~Olympusseriesisawesome

P.S. I'll remove the A/N on the 3rd of July.

P.P.S. HOLIDAYS! WOOHOO!