The Path Of Glory (Annabeth Chase x Male Reader)

17. A Horrible Slip

They were going to bolt through the EZ DEATH line when Cerberus moaned pitifully from all three mouths. Annabeth stopped.

She turned to face the dog, which had done a one-eighty to look at them.

Cerberus panted expectantly, the tiny red ball in a puddle of drool at its feet.

"Good boy," Annabeth said, but her voice sounded melancholy and uncertain.

The monster's heads turned sideways, as if worried about her.

"I'll bring you another ball soon," Annabeth promised faintly. "Would you like that?"

The monster whimpered.

"Good dog. I'll come visit you soon. I—I promise." Annabeth turned to the others. "Let's go."

They all pushed through the metal detector, which immediately screamed and set off flashing red lights. "Unauthorized possessions! Magic detected!"

Cerberus started to bark.

They burst through the EZ DEATH gate, which started even more alarms blaring, and raced into the Underworld.

A few minutes later, they were hiding, out of breath, in the rotten trunk of an immense black tree as security ghouls scuttled past, yelling for backup from the Furies.

Grover murmured, "Well, Percy, what have we learned today?"

"That three-headed dogs prefer red rubber balls over sticks?"

"No," Grover told him. "We've learned that your plans really, really bite!"

Y/N pretended not to see Annabeth wipe a tear from her cheek as she listened to the mournful keening of Cerberus in the distance, longing for his new friend. Finally, they got out of their hiding.

To imagine the Fields of Asphodel, you should have imagined the largest crowd you've ever seen, a football field packed with million fans. Then you should have imagined a field a million times that big, packed with people, and imagined the electricity gone out, and no noise, no light, no beach ball bouncing around over the crowd. As if something tragic had happened backstage. Whispering masses of people just milling around in the shadows, waiting for a concert that will never start.

That was a pretty good idea of what the Fields of Asphodel looked like. The black grass had been trampled by eons of dead feet. A warm, moist wind blew like the breath of a swamp. Black trees—Ethan said they were poplars—grew in clumps here and there.

The cavern ceiling was so high above them it might have been a bank of storm clouds, except for the stalactites, which glowed faint gray and looked wickedly pointed. Y/N tried not to imagine they would fall on them any moment, but dotted around the fields were several that had fallen and impaled themselves in the black grass.

Y/N, Annabeth, Ethan, Percy and Grover tried to blend into the crowd, keeping an eye out for security ghouls. Y/N couldn't help looking for familiar faces among the spirits of Asphodel, but the dead were hard to look at. Their faces shimmered. They all looked slightly angry or confused. They'd come up to you and speak, but their voices sounded like chatter, like bats twittering. Once they realized you couldn't understand them, they frowned and moved away.

The dead weren't scary. Just sad.

They crept along, following the line of new arrivals that snaked from the main gates toward a black-tented pavilion with a banner that read:

JUDGMENT FOR ELYSIUM AND ETERNAL DAMNATION
Welcome, Newly Deceased!

Out the back of the tent came two much smaller lines.