The morning of their fourth day of travelling, Leo woke everybody up by speaking over the intercom.
"All right, m'hearties! Land ho!", he said all of this in his cheesy pirate voice. And he must of heard the crew's collective groaning because his next words were in his normal voice. "Wake up! We'll be over land in about four hours".
Annabeth got ready slower than usual this morning. Glancing longingly out the window in her room at the sea far far below. Since being attacked by vicious sea monsters almost their entire trip from Rome to New York, they had decided that they would stick to the air for most of the trip back.
No matter how logical this was, Annabeth couldn't help but miss being on the water. The smell of sea foam reminded her of Percy and made her feel better about their separation.
Her energy picked up when she fully absorbed what Leo had said.
Reaching land in four hours. Rescuing Percy in four hours! Just four more hours…
She reached the common area for breakfast at about the same time as everybody else. And after grabbing some food, she went to sit down at the head of the table.
Since Percy was gone, she had kind of become the defunct leader, and even though sitting at Percy's place felt wrong, the other's insisted.
Once everybody was seated, (including Leo who had relinquished the controls to Coach Hedge for a short time) Annabeth began to explain the plan.
She started off by looking at Hazel and Nico.
"What do you guys know about this place?"
Nico started, "The doors of death are currently located at the Necromanteion or the House of Hades. It is an underground temple to my father and his wife, Persephone".
Hazel continued from there, "The doors are located at the very bottom level of the temple, which is guarded by a maze and is very unstable. Our only way to reach them would be to navigate the maze, which is where I come in".
"Okay… So how many monsters are we talking about here?", Jason asked Nico.
"The doors are bound to be very heavily guarded. If we navigate the maze correctly and reach them, there could be thousands and thousands of monsters guarding the doors".
Everybody's faces darkened. They were on their own, it would take a hell of a lot of manoeuvring to gain access to the doors.
Annabeth was also feeling the gravity of their odds sink in, but she tried to motivate everybody else nonetheless.
"Come on guys! Percy is still alive! He's been in Tartarus for two weeks! Nobody has ever done that before. We owe it to him to rescue him, and close the doors".
Everybody nodded their heads in agreement, but a happy mood did not return.
Festus' weird machine language clacked over the intercom, and Leo stood up.
"Festus says that we're approaching land".
Everybody filed out and onto the deck of the Argo II. Below them, stretched Epirus, Greece. It was beautiful, but the skyline was marred by one thing.
"Hazel, do you see that?", Nico asked Hazel.
Her face had become sickly pale, and the two of them seemed to be staring at the same point on the horizon.
"What? What do you see?". Annabeth's eyes scoped over everything but she didn't see anything.
Black lightening shot out over the horizon, the remainder of dark energy shooting into the sky.
The younger boy's eyes darkened even further (if possible) and his voice was solemn as he said, "The Doors of Death are opened".
"But we're still at least two hours away! By the time we get there there will be too many monsters to fight", Piper said.
Annabeth knew that she was right. But she didn't want to believe it.
They hadn't gone through so much just to be two hours away and have to give up.
"Leo! Can this thing go any faster?".
He got a mischievous glint to his eye and ran down to the engine room already removing tools from his belt.
About ten minutes later, the ship jerked and began to move faster, sailing over the Greek coast so fast the sea was a blur underneath them.
Just hold on, Percy. We're coming.
Two hours of tense waiting later, they finally arrived above Epirus.
There had been a strange few number of monster attacks, which only served to put Annabeth further on edge about the whole situation.
According to Nico and Hazel, that strange black lightening shot through the sky about every five minutes or so. Meaning, that every five minutes the already large monster army grew.
Despite the heat of the day and all the events of the past few days, life for mortals continued on as normal, and there were even a few tourists crawling in and around the ruins.
They didn't seem to notice the large Greek warship that settled right next to the cliff, nor anything unusual about the seven demigods that marched towards the entrance decked out in full battle armour and weapons.
The mist must really be working over time.
Hazel guided them effortlessly through the tunnels, making random sharp twists and turns. But as they got deeper and deeper, her face seemed to get paler and paler.
To top it all off, she kept glancing back at Nico as if nervous about something.
"Hey, Hazel", Frank walked faster to match pace with Hazel who was at the front of the pack, "Are you okay? You seem a little bit on edge"
If possible, she paled even further.
She turned back to face the group and put her hand on the wall, closing her eyes in concentration.
"Hazel? Hazel are you okay?".
"No! No, there's too many of them, we need another plan".
Annabeth and the others were confused.
"We knew that there were going to be a lot of monsters when we walked in here, just calm down, okay?".
Nico drew her into a hug that was probably supposed to be comforting, but even Nico looked a little bit paler than usual.
"Guys seriously, what's going on? You're starting to freak me out a little", Leo said. He was trying to joke around, but even his voice shook.
Just then, Hazel's golden eyes opened and seemed to lock onto something behind them.
"Guys! Run!", she and Nico took off, leaving the rest to follow with no idea what they were running from.
A series of complicated twists and turns later, Hazel and Nico finally stopped running.
"Do you think we lost them?", he asked her.
"For now…". She still looked scared out of her wits.
"What is going on?!".
Annabeth was getting frustrated. How could she plan to defeat something she couldn't see?
Nico checked that his half-sister was okay one more time before turning to the rest and explaining.
"This place is full of the souls of the restless. They don't like Hades or Pluto's children and they've been following us for a while now. They had almost overtaken us back there, that's why we had to run".
"Couldn't you guys have just done some of your ghosty voodoo powers or something to make them go away?", Leo asked. He was still breathing heavy from the random sprint.
"No, they're spirits of the restless dead, those who haven't gotten the chance to cross into the Underworld or have resisted it. They haven't entered our father's domain yet so we have no power over them".
Annabeth's head was spinning with this new information.
"They're gone now, though right?".
"Yeah, for now", Hazel seemed to have regained some of her wits and was now standing up straight and on her own. "It doesn't matter, though, we're already here. Listen".
Everybody pressed an ear the the stone of the wall of the tunnel next to them and listened. Hazel was right, noise that could only come from a large army was emanating through the walls. Annabeth could only imagine how many could be in there if the noise was this loud through all the stone.
"How many?".
"Thousands. There's no way we can beat all of them head on".
Annabeth's mind was way ahead of that, though. And the beginnings of a plan were already starting to form in her brain.
"Okay. This is what we're going to do".
Their plan was simple, someone had to be on the mortal side of the elevator to let out whatever came, otherwise whatever it was would be dispersed into Chaos.
Their plan was for Nico to shadow travel to right behind the elevator to press the button every time it dinged. It didn't really matter what he let out, as long as they didn't leave Percy in that elevator for too long.
The rest of them were to be stationed around the room in various points so that they could attack if Nico was captured.
It seemed easy enough, so naturally it fell apart the second they stepped into the room.
Calling the number of monsters in the massive room an army would be an understatement. It was more like a few armies.
There were thousands and thousands of monsters, and as soon as they stepped into the overcrowded cavern they were spotted.
Nico shadow travelled away, and Annabeth could only hope that he planned on continuing with the plan. But the rest of the crew was captured and thrown into a cage.
As they walked by, every single monster was jeering and yelling insults at them. There was no hope of escape. Annabeth had calculated everything, and no matter which way you sliced the problem both their lives and Percy's life squarely relied on whether or not Nico continued with the plan.
As the rest of her crew was thrown into the cage, Annabeth prepared herself to be thrown in as well when somebody called out, "Wait!".
She turned, expecting to see some sort of god in disguise come to her rescue, but instead she came face-to-face with a large ugly cyclops.
Its skin was caked with mud and grime, but all the monsters nearby seemed to sit up straighter around him, so she could only assume that he was some sort of general.
"We'll take this one over here with us", it said, sneering. It's teeth were black and riddled with holes, and its breath made her want to puke as it fanned her face. But she held it together and glared at him.
"Get away from me!". She struggled as the larger cyclops dragged her over to where they had set up camp on the other side of the courtyard.
A well aimed kick brought one of the cyclops to its knees with a howl, and she had just wiggled out of the others' grasp when a huge blow knocked her to the ground, almost knocking her out.
The one she assumed to be the general stood above her snarling.
"It is pointless to struggle, half-blood", he snarled, picking her up by her hair.
She writhed around in pain as he carried her over to his "throne" and placed her on the floor next to him.
The entire situation reminded Piper a little bit of Star Wars as she and the crew looked on helpless from their cage.
The remaining crew were starting to lose hope, and sat down defeated in their cage.
Suddenly, they were drawn out of their thoughts by Nico who emerged from the shadows behind their cage.
He called their attention with a small wave. He didn't say anything for fear of being caught and instead motioned to them in confusion.
Finally, they managed to convey that they needed him to continue with the mission.
With that, he disappeared once again into the shadows. Leaving the rest of the crew to hold on to the small hope that Percy was still alive.
So far, the only things that had emerged from the elevators that were the doors of death were monsters.
But then, the flow abruptly stopped.
The monsters began to get suspicious when the elevator took at least fifteen minutes to come back to the surface.
The crew stuck in the cage, however, knew exactly what that meant.
Percy.