Bianca di Angelo & The Olympians

Airports Are Scary

Percy POV

"What is this, The Airport?" I wondered out loud. I wasn't expecting the entrance to The Land of The Dead to have metal detectors leading to different parts of The Underworld, with guards wearing black cloaks. Of the three detectors, two were labelled ATTENDANT ON DUTY, while one was labelled EZ DEATH. The latter was moving quite fast, but the other two were at a crawl.

"That's The Fields of Asdophel." Nico said, pointing towards the quick moving line. It led to what looked like prairies, yet what would have been miles of green and yellow, it was all dead and withered.

"Why would anyone go there?" I asked. All the souls were milling around, looking almost... lost.

"No judgement. Then they don't risk being punished by the judges, right?" Annabeth looked to Bianca for confirmation, and she nodded. He noticed that they were standing closer together than normal...

"Why are you holding hands?" he asked blatantly. The daughter of Athena moved so fast away from Bianca, she may have teleported. The sister looked, embarrassed, to her feet. "You know what, I don't care, let's just go." I said, not wanting to bring up whatever I had apparently missed in the last, oh, ten minutes.

"Umm, Percy..." Grover whimpered from behind me.

I turned, "What wro-" I froze, because there was a three headed dog standing over us. It was huge, maybe 3 stories high. It stared its red beady eyes at us.

"Heel!" a shout came from behind, Nico's. "Cerberus, sit." Nico had his hand out, and the giant dog sat. "Lay down." It followed. "Good boy." he took a Lotus Hotel ball out of his bag. "Fetch!" he threw it into the fields. The monster bounded off, leaving us safe to pass.

"Poor thing probably doesn't get much attention." Annabeth of all people said.

"Who car-" Grover looked at the di Angelos, "-an say no to a good game of fetch!" He put on a strained smile. Bianca cocked an eyebrow at him, but ignored it after rolling her eyes.

We made our way with the crowd of ghosts, through the EZ DEATH detector. "Nico did a good job." Annabeth said to me. I looked at her questioningly. "My... father had a doberman. I taught him to do all those things in obedience school." her eyes were shining, and I realized she was crying.

I put my hand on her shoulder. "Yeah, that did a good job, really." I said, although I could have been referring to Nico or her. Our moment was interrupted by Grover tripping over his own feet.

"Woah!" He cried as the flying shoes that I had given to him (They were from Luke, but I couldn't really fly with them seeing as Zeus would blast me.) dragged him away from us. "Maia! Nine one one! Help!"

We sprinted after him, as he went into a channel between the rock walls. He tried to slow himself but couldn't get a grip on anything. The channel opened up to a cavern with a large pit. "This is-" I panted as we ran ,"-The place from my dream"

He tried to untie the laces, but couldn't reach his feet. I thought, this is it, this is how I killed my best friend by giving him a pair of shoes. But one thing saved him.

His hooves.

The shoes were always a loose fit on him, and they slipped off just before they shot into the pit, leaving Grover behind.

"What is this place?" Nico asked, panting.

Annabeth said worriedly "Tartarus." I uncapped Anaklumos, waving it around illuminating the area around us.

"We need to get out of here," Bianca said darkly, "I'd rather not go to hell today." A force felt as if it was weighing us down as we made our way out, and not a moment too soon. The pit seemed to suck in, and if we had been any closer, we would have fallen.

"What was that?" Grover asked as we emerged from the chasm.

"Ta- The Pit is like..." Nico tried to formulate an explanation, "If The Underworld was Heaven, then The Pit would be Hell."

Annabeth looked at him, "And how is it you know that?" she asked accusatory.

"We just know Underworld stuff, probably because of our father." Bianca answered for him.

"Oh really? If you're so smart, tell us why you seem to know everything about Greek Mythology?"

"It's my brother's game. That Mythomagic one." she responded, exasperated, "He got it as a 'gift' about 2 weeks ago. Some guy in a suit lent it to him and never came back for it."

"Maybe that was your father." I said, interrupting whatever Annabeth was going to say, "Or one of his servants."

"Why would he do that?"

I shrugged, "Maybe he was trying to teach you about his world before-"

"It went belly up? Figures." She kept moving through the crowd of dead. "I mean-" she pushed forward, and i had to jog to keep up, "-Hades was the only figure he didn't have. It's not like he wanted us to know about him."

"He's The Lord of The Dead! Maybe he didn't want you making false assumptions."

She let out a bitter laugh, "Assumptions? Like the fact that we had a father this whole time yet he's nowhere to be found?" We were rearing up on a castle looking structure.

"I know how you feel Bianca, my father was never there-"

"At least he didn't find you to be such a hassle that he stuck you in a Hotel for 70 years!" She turned and yelled at me, and I flinched. The guards around the castle shifted nervously as she raised her voice, "I've been watching Nico forever, because our mother's dead and my father was too until 12 hours ago! At least he could've had the decency to tell us! Not let me raise myself and  Nico!"

I realised (Kinda late for this) that she must've had this pent up for weeks, and that it wasn't really my fault. She was just taking it out on me. But I couldn't help but blame myself for bursting her bubble.

She's a daughter of Hades, I reminded myself, she was naturally scary.

Bianca looked as if she was spent, "Where have you been?" I jumped, remembering that there were others around too. They had just caught up to us.

Bianca looked at her brother, and I felt the temperature around me become warm again (Read: still really cold, but slightly warmer.) "We were just talking." I said.

"Well here goes nothing." Grover looked at me for reassurance, and I sent him a light smile. I knew he was terrified.

"More like here goes everything." I mumbled under my breath. After all, if we died here, this was all for nothing. 

Annabeth looked at Bianca and Nico. "You better contain his rage pretty damn well." she said in almost a mocking tone.

I just saw that someone voted the chapters, thank you so much!