Tidal Wave (Luke Castellan)

The Underworld

Percy had come back to the surface very disheartened. Poseidon hadn't been the one to meet him, a Nereid was. I hated to say I wasn't surprised about it. Between a war brewing between him and Zeus, the chances of him meeting Poseidon were very low at the moment. And of course gods were gods and it was rare to ever meet one in general. Well, besides Mr D. considering he was the camp director. Seeing any other god was something many demigods would never experience. For us to meet two already during our quest really showed the severity of our situation.

Percy told us about the warnings the Neried told him and the pearls she gave him. There were four, one for each of us. Something I noticed but did not want to point out was that there wasn't one for Percy's mom. If she was being held by Hades like Ares suspected, then one of us wasn't coming out of the Underworld by the pearls. Who that would be was a decision I didn't want to think about just yet.

We piled back into Hermes's car. With much more grace, we were in L.A. within seconds. I'd been imagining the Underworld when I started driving but I guessed the car couldn't get all the way there. Maybe it took us as close to the entrance as we could get.

"Where do we go from here?" Grover asked as we got out of the car.

Annabeth looked up and down the streets, "Which of these buildings looks out of place?"

It wasn't too hard to spot, "A waterbed store?"

"Exactly." She started walking forward. The rest of us followed on high alert.

Some guy walked up to us. He seemed to be waiting for us which creeped me out quite a bit. He reminded me of a reptile that walked on two legs. He even had a smile that gave me lizard vibes. The suit he was wearing was definitely not of this time period and when he smiled, his teeth were quite yellow. If this man wasn't a monster guarding the entrance, I was going to be majorly surprised.

"You guys want to try out the waterbeds?" was the first thing he said to us. Yeah, that wasn't suspicious at all.

"No, I think we're good," Percy said while taking a look around the room.

'Say, do you know where in this place the entrance to the Underworld is?' I wanted to ask but that would be a bit too on the nose. So I bit my tongue and adjusted my hat as I looked around the store too.

"Do me a favor and try out this one," the guy told Annabeth. I looked over right as he pushed her onto it. Ropes sprung out and tied her down. He did the same to Grover.

The guy tried to push me down too but I tripped over my own feet and fell to the cold, hard ground. I looked up just in time to see ropes grasp onto Annabeth and Grover and start pulling them apart. We had to do something about this guy soon or else two friends were going to turn into four.

"Your real name's not Crusty, is it?" Percy asked, slowly backing up.

"Legally, it's Procrustes," the guy admitted.

"The Stretcher," Percy remembered.

So did I. And that was one of many stories that I didn't really like. While Percy kept Procrustes talking, I quickly glanced around from my spot on the floor. There had to be some way to beat Procrustes while also having a way to get information out of him. And there was the issue of Annabeth and Grover being stretched to death. Thinking of complicated plans like this was more of Annabeth's department but I would have to do for right now. I caught my distorted reflection in one of the waterbeds. Yeah... I would have to do for right now.

I stood up just as Procrustes pushed Percy down onto one of the waterbeds. The ropes wrapped tightly around my brother so he couldn't get back up. The extra ropes didn't wrap around him to stretch him, thank the gods.