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IF LAURIE HAD thought the Underworld was a nightmare, then Hades' palace was a never-ending purgatory without an exit.
The gates were engraved with screaming faces of torment. Persephone's garden was a temptation that even some immortals couldn't resist.
Passed that had been pitch black columns and marbled floors that lead to the house of Hades. There was no roof, just a cavernous gape in the ceiling, though it wasn't like any light was being let in.
Laurie had never hated her curse more than now. Darkness was all that there was here, nowhere to run to escape the suffocating shadows. How could her mother live down here?
The front doors were guarded by two skeletons in U.S. Marine uniforms. They seemed to grin down at the four mortals with sinister skull smiles.
"You know," Grover mumbled quietly. "I bet Hades doesn't have trouble with door-to-door salesmen."
"Well, guys," Percy began as he stared up at the doors, nervously hiking his bag up on his shoulder. The stupid thing felt like it weighed a ton now, as if a stray skeleton had climbed its way in there. "I suppose we should . . . knock?"
Laurie lifted her arm to knock on the door much like she had done at Medusa's at the beginning of their quest, ( though that felt like a lifetime ago ) but it was no use. A hot gust of wind blew down the corridor and the doors swept open, the guards stepping aside.
"I guess that means enter." Annabeth shrugged.
And they did. The room inside looked just how Percy has described it in his dreams, though Laurie had been secretly hoping that when he had explained it to them that he had just happened to skip over the fact that there was a brilliant ray of light streaming in. There wasn't.
As terrifying as the darkness was to her, that was far from the center of her attention. What had her so occupied was the god that sat before them, a ten feet tall figure cloaked in black silken robes, his head topped with a golden crown. The power radiated off of him, filling the room with intimidating authority.
His throne of fused bones made Laurie's skin crawl, as if her own skeleton craved to be added at the base of it.
"You are brave to come here, Son of Poseidon." The Lord of Darkness spoke in an ingratiating voice. "After what you have done to me, very brave indeed. Or perhaps you are simply very foolish."
Laurie felt like an ant in the god's presence, and she wasn't even being spoken to. She couldn't imagine how Percy must've felt, but she couldn't help but be relieved that Hades has chosen to not acknowledge her presence.
