Rick Riordan
Percy Jackson and the Olympians
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67
could strike, Tyson ripped the monster’s grading machine out of the floor and threw it at the Sphinx’s
head, ruining her hair bun. It landed in pieces all around her.
“My grading machine!” she cried. “I can’t be exemplary without my test scores!”
The bars lifted from the exits. We all dashed for the far tunnel. I could only hope Annabeth
was doing the same.
The Sphinx started to follow, but Grover raised his reed pipes and began to play. Suddenly
the pencils remembered they used to be parts of trees. They collected around the Sphinx’s paws,
grew roots and branches, and began wrapping around the monster’s legs. The Sphinx ripped
through them, but it brought us just enough time.
Tyson pulled Grover into the tunnel, and the bars slammed shut behind us.
“Annabeth!” I yelled.
“Here!” she said, right next to me. “Keep moving!”
We ran through the dark tunnels, listening to the roar of the Sphinx behind us as she
complained about all the tests she would have to grade by hand.
Chapter Eleven
I Set Myself On Fire
I thought we’d lost the spider until Tyson heard a faint pinging sound. We made a few turns,
backtracked a few times, and eventually found the spider banging its tiny head on a metal door.
The door looked like one of those old-fashioned submarine hatches—oval, with metal rivets
around the edges and a wheel for a doorknob. Where the portal should’ve been was a big brass
plaque, green with age, with a Greek Ȇta inscribed in the middle.
We all looked at each other.
“Ready to meet Hephaestus?” Grover said nervously.
“No,” I admitted.
“Yes!” Tyson said gleefully, and he turned the wheel.
As soon as the door opened, the spider scuttled inside with Tyson right behind it. The rest of
us followed, not quite as anxious.
The room was enormous. It looked like a mechanic’s garage, with several hydraulic lifts.
Some had cars on them, but others had stranger things: a bronze hippalektryon with its horse head
off and a bunch of wires hanging out its rooster tail, a metal lion that seemed to be hooked up to a
battery charger, and a Greek war chariot made entirely of flames.
Smaller projects cluttered a dozen worktables. Tools hung along the walls. Each had its own
outline on a Peg-Board, but nothing seemed to be in the right place. The hammer was over the
screwdriver place. The staple gun was where the hacksaw was supposed to go.
Under the nearest hydraulic lift, which was holding a ’98 Toyota Corolla, a pair of legs stuck
out—the lower half of a huge man in grubby gray pants and shoes even bigger than Tyson’s. one
leg was in a metal brace.
The spider scuttled straight under the car, and the sounds of banging stopped.
“Well, well,” a deep voice boomed from under the Corolla. “What have we here?”
The mechanic pushed out on a back trolley and sat up. I’d seen Hephaestus once before,
briefly on Olympus, so I thought I was prepared, but his appearance made me gulp.
I guess he’d cleaned up when I saw him on Olympus, or used magic to make his form seem
a little less hideous. Here in his own workshop, he apparently didn’t care how he looked. He work a
jumpsuit smeared with oil and grime. Hephaestus, was embroidered over the chest pocket. His leg
creaked and clicked in its metal brace as he stood, and his left shoulder was lower than his right, so
he seemed to be leaning even when he was standing up straight. His head was misshapen and
bulging. He wore a permanent scowl. His black beard smoked and hissed. Every once in a while a
small wildfire would erupt in his whiskers then die out. His hands were the size of catcher’s mitts,
but he handled the spider with amazing skill. He disassembled it in two seconds, then put it back
together.