the_blood_of_olympus_-_rick_riordan

‘Did we activate them somehow?’ Piper wondered. ‘Maybe that surge of fear you felt on the hill
… Uh, I mean we both felt.’
Annabeth didn’t seem to hear her. ‘There must be some kind of mechanism … a pressure plate, a
proximity alarm.’
Flames shot from the middle pit. Annabeth counted silently. The next time, a geyser erupted on the
left. She frowned. ‘That’s not right. It’s inconsistent. It has to follow some kind of logic.’
Piper’s ears started to ring. Something about these pits …
Each time one ignited, a horrible thrill went through her – fear, panic, but also a strong desire to get
closer to the flames.
‘It isn’t rational,’ she said. ‘It’s emotional.’
‘How can fire pits be emotional?’
Piper held her hand over the pit on the right. Instantly, flames leaped up. Piper barely had time to
withdraw her fingers. Her nails steamed.
‘Piper!’ Annabeth ran over. ‘What were you thinking?’
‘I wasn’t. I was feeling. What we want is down there. These pits are the way in. I’ll have to jump.’
‘Are you crazy? Even if you don’t get stuck in the tube, you have no idea how deep it is.’
‘You’re right.’
‘You’ll be burned alive!’
‘Possibly.’ Piper unbuckled her sword and tossed it into the pit on the right. ‘I’ll let you know if
it’s safe. Wait for my word.’
‘Don’t you dare,’ Annabeth warned.
Piper jumped.
For a moment she was weightless in the dark, the sides of the hot stone pit burning her arms. Then
the space opened up around her. Instinctively she tucked and rolled, absorbing most of the impact as
she hit the stone floor.
Flames shot up in front of her, singeing her eyebrows, but Piper snatched up her sword, unsheathed
it and swung before she’d even stopped rolling. A bronze dragonhead, neatly decapitated, wobbled
across the floor.
Piper stood, trying to get her bearings. She looked down at the fallen dragonhead and felt a moment
of guilt, as if she’d killed Festus. But this wasn’t Festus.
Three bronze dragon statues stood in a row, aligned with the holes in the roof. Piper had
decapitated the middle one. The two intact dragons were each three feet tall, their snouts pointed
upward and their steaming mouths open. They were clearly the source of the flames, but they didn’t
seem to be automatons. They didn’t move or try to attack her. Piper calmly sliced off the heads of the
other two.
She waited. No more flames shot upward.
‘Piper?’ Annabeth’s voice echoed from far above like she was yelling down a chimney.
‘Yeah!’ Piper shouted.
‘Thank the gods! You okay?’
‘Yeah. Hold on a sec.’