THE BATTLE OF THE LABYRINTH Percy Jackson ... - No one's invited.
THE BATTLE OF THE LABYRINTH Percy Jackson ... - No one's invited.
THE BATTLE OF THE LABYRINTH Percy Jackson ... - No one's invited.
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Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html<br />
Ithought we’d lost the spider until Tyson heard a faint pinging sound. We made a few turns, backtracked<br />
a few times, and eventually found the spider banging its tiny head on a metal door.<br />
The door looked like one of those old-fashioned submarine hatches—oval, with metal rivets around the<br />
edges and a wheel for a doorknob. Where the portal should’ve been was a big brass plaque, green with<br />
age, with a Greek?ta inscribed in the middle.<br />
We all looked at each other.<br />
“Ready to meet Hephaestus?”Grover said nervously.<br />
“<strong>No</strong>,” I admitted.<br />
“Yes!” Tyson said gleefully, and he turned the wheel.<br />
As soon as the door opened, the spider scuttled inside with Tyson right behind it. The rest of us<br />
followed, not quite as anxious.<br />
The room was enormous. It looked like a mechanic’s garage, with several hydraulic lifts. Some had cars<br />
on them, but others had stranger things: a bronzehippalektryon with its horse head off and a bunch of<br />
wires hanging out its rooster tail, a metal lion that seemed to be hooked up to a battery charger, and a<br />
Greek war chariot made entirely of flames.<br />
Smaller projects cluttered a dozen worktables. Tools hung along the walls. Each had its own outline on a<br />
Peg-Board, but nothing seemed to be in the right place. The hammer was over the screwdriver place.<br />
The staple gun was where the hacksaw was supposed to go.<br />
Under the nearest hydraulic lift, which was holding a ’98 Toyota Corolla, a pair of legs stuck out—the<br />
lower half of a huge man in grubby gray pants and shoes even bigger than Tyson’s.one leg was in a metal<br />
brace.<br />
The spider scuttled straight under the car, and the sounds of banging stopped.<br />
“Well, well,” a deep voice boomed from under the Corolla. “What have we here?”<br />
The mechanic pushed out on a back trolley and sat up. I’d seen Hephaestus once before, briefly on<br />
Olympus, so I thought I was prepared, but his appearance made me gulp.<br />
I guess he’d cleaned up when I saw him on Olympus, or used magic to make his form seem a little less<br />
hideous. Here in his own workshop, he apparently didn’t care how he looked. He work a jumpsuit<br />
smeared with oil and grime.Hephaestus, was embroidered over the chest pocket. His leg creaked and<br />
clicked in its metal brace as he stood, and his left shoulder was lower than his right, so he seemed to be<br />
leaning even when he was standing up straight. His head was misshapen and bulging. He wore a<br />
permanent scowl. His black beard smoked and hissed. Every once in a while a small wildfire would erupt<br />
in his whiskers then die out. His hands were the size of catcher’s mitts, but he handled the spider with<br />
amazing skill. He disassembled it in two seconds,then put it back together.<br />
“There,” he muttered to himself.“Much better.”