We Find Out the Truth, Sort Of

**We Find Out the Truth, Sort Of** is the sixty-eighth chapter of The Gift of a Best Friend. It was first published on August 5th, 2018.

## Chapter

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**Annabeth's POV**
The Fields of Asphodel was huge and dark.
The black grass had been trampled by eons of dead feet. A warm, moist wind blew like the breath of a swamp. Black trees, poplars, grew in clumps here and there.
The cavern ceiling was so high above us it might’ve been a bank of storm clouds, except for the stalactites, which glowed faint gray and looked wickedly pointy. There were several that had fallen and impaled themselves in the black grass.
We tried to blend into the crowd, keeping an eye out for security ghouls. The dead were hard to look at. Their faces shimmered. They all look slightly anger or confused. They will come up to you and speak, but their voices sounded like chatter, like bats twittering. Once they realize you can’t understand them, they frown and move away.
The dead aren’t scary. They’re just sad.
We crept along, following the line of new arrivals that snaked from the main gates toward a black-tented pavilion with a banner that read:

JUGDMENTS FOR ELYSIUM AND ETERNAL DAMNATION
Welcome, Newly Deceased!
Out the back of the tent came two much smaller lines.
To the left, spirits flanked by security ghouls were marched down a rocky path toward the Fields of Punishment, which glowed and smoked in the distance, a vast, cracked wasteland with rivers and lava and minefields and miles of barbed wire separating the different torture areas. Even from far away, I could see people being chased by hellhounds, burned at the stake, forced to run naked through cactus patches or listen to opera music. I could just make out a tiny hill, with the ant-size figure of Sisyphus struggling to move his boulder to the top. And I saw worse tortures, too—things I don’t want to describe.
The line coming from the right side of the judgment pavilion was much better. This one led down to a small valley surrounded by walls—a gated community, which seemed to be the only happy part of the Underworld. Beyond the security gate were neighborhoods of beautiful houses from every time period in history. Roman villas and medieval castles and Victorian mansions. Silver and gold flowers bloomed on the lawns. The grass rippled in rainbow colors. I could hear laughter and smell barbecue cooking.
Elysium.
In the middle of that valley was a glittering blue lake, with three small islands. The Isles of the Blest, for people who have chosen to be reborn three times, and three times achieved Elysium. I know that’s where I wanted to go when I died. Of course, who wouldn’t?
“That’s what it’s all about,” I said. “That’s the place for heroes.”
There were few people in Elysium, how tiny it was compared to the Fields of Asphodel or even the Fields of Punishment. So few people did good in their lives. It was depressing.
We left the judgment pavilion and moved deeper into the Asphodel Fields. It got darker. The colors faded from our clothes. The crowds of chattering spirits began to thin.
After a few miles of walking, we began to hear a familiar screech in the distance. Looming on the horizon was a palace of glittering black obsidian. Above the parapets swirled three dark batlike creatures: the Furies. I got the feeling they were waiting for us.
“I suppose it’s too late to turn back,” Grover said wistfully.
“We’ll be okay,” Percy said, trying to sound confident.
“Maybe we should search some of the other places first,” Grover suggested. “Like, Elysium, for instance . . .”
Jasmine sighed in annoyance. She had decided to turn Toothless back to normal size.
“Come on, goat boy.” I grabbed Grover’s arm.
He yelped. His sneakers sprouted wings and his legs shot forward, pulling him away from me. He landed flat on his back in the grass.
“Grover,” I chided. “Stop messing around.”
“But I didn’t—”
He yelped again. His shoes were flapping like crazy now. They levitated off the ground and started dragging him away from us.
“*Maia!*” he yelled, but the magic word seemed to have no effect. “*Maia!*, already. Nine-one-one! Help!”
Percy made a grab for Grover’s hand, but too late. He was picking up speed, skidding downhill.
We ran after him.
“Untie the shoes!” I shouted.
Grover tried to sit up, but he couldn’t get close to the shoe laces. I guess it’s not so easy when your shoes are pulling you along feetfirst at full speed.
We kept after him, trying to keep him in sight as he zipped between the legs of spirits who chattered at him in annoyance.
Toothless was able to catch up to him by flying since he is a fast flyer and tried to grab Grover with his teeth, but the shoes were pulling him too fast.
I was sure Grover was going to barrel straight through the gates of Hades’s palace, but his shoes veered sharply to the right and dragged him in the opposite direction.
The slope got steeper. Grover picked up speed. Jasmine, Percy, and I had to sprint to keep up. The cavern walls narrowed on either side, and I realized we’d entered some kind of side tunnel. No black grass or trees now, just rock underfoot, and the dim light of the stalactites above.
“Grover!” Percy yelled, his voice echoing. “Hold on to something!”
“What?” he yelled back.
He was grabbing at gravel, but there was nothing big enough to slow him down.
The tunnel got darker and colder. The hairs on my arms bristled. It smelled evil down here. Then I saw what was ahead of us. Percy did, too, and stopped dead in his tracks.
The tunnel widened into a huge dark cavern, and in the middle was a cavern the size of a city block.
Grover was sliding straight toward the edge.
“Come on, Percy!” I yelled, tugging at his wrist.
“But that’s—”
“I know!” I shouted. “The place you described in your dream! But Grover’s going to fall if we don’t catch him.”
Percy got moving again.
Grover was yelling, clawing at the ground, but the winged shoes kept dragging him toward the pit, and it didn’t look like we could possibly get to him.
What saved him were his hooves.
The flying sneakers had always been a loose fit on him, and finally Grover hit a big rock and the left shoe came flying off. It sped into the darkness, down into the chasm. The right shoe kept tugging him along, but not as fast. Grover was able to slow himself down by grabbing on to the big rock and using it like an anchor.
Toothless grabbed onto him and kept hold.
He was ten feet from the edge of the pit when we caught him and hauled him back up the slope. The other winged shoe tugged itself off, circled around us angrily and kicked our heads in protest (which Jasmine laughed at until it kicked her head) before flying off into the chasm to join its twin.
We all collapsed, exhausted, on the obsidian gravel. My limbs felt like lead.
Grover was scratched up pretty bad. His hands were bleeding. His eyes had gone slit-pupiled, goat style, the way they did whenever he was terrified.
“I don’t know how . . .” he panted. “I didn’t . . .”
“Wait,” Percy said. “Listen.”
I heard something—a deep whisper in the darkness.
“Percy,” I said, after another few seconds. “This place—”
“Shh.” He stood.
The sound was getting louder, a muttering, evil voice from far, far below us. Coming from the pit.
Grover sat up. “Wh—what’s that noise?”
“Tartarus,” I said. “The entrance to Tartarus.”
My eyes were wide. I was terrified now, mostly because I remember having a vision of being in Tartarus with Percy and no one else. But I think we were older than we are now.
Percy uncapped his sword.
The bronze sword expanded, gleaming in the darkness, and the evil voice seemed to falter, just for a moment, before resuming its chant.
I could almost make out words now, ancient, ancient words, older even than Greek. As if . . .
“Magic,” Percy said.
“We have to get out of here,” I said.
“Uh, yeah,” Jasmine agreed.
Together, we dragged Grover to his hooves and started back up the tunnel. My legs wouldn’t move fast enough. The voice got louder and angrier behind us, and we broke into a run.
Not a moment too soon.
A cold blast of wind pulled at our backs, as if the entire pit were inhaling. For a terrifying moment, I lost ground, my feet slipping in the gravel. If we’d been any closer to the edge, we would’ve been sucked in.
Toothless walked behind us with his wings extended, which helped, but not enough.
We kept struggling forward, and finally reached the top of the tunnel, where the cavern widened out into the Fields of Asphodel. The wind died. A wail of outrage echoed from deep in the tunnel. Something was not happy we’d gotten away.
“What *was* that?” Grover panted, when we’d collapsed in the relative safety of a black poplar grove. “One of Hades’s pets?”
Jasmine and I made eye-contact, and I could tell that we were thinking the same thing. I looked at Percy, and I knew that he knew that we had an idea, but not one we wanted to share because of how terrifying it was.
Percy capped his sword, put the pen back in his pocket. “Let’s keep going.” He looked at Grover. “Can you walk?”
Grover swallowed. “Yeah, sure. I never liked those shoes, anyway.”
He tried to sound brave about it, but he was trembling as badly as we were.
We turned our backs on that tunnel and headed toward the palace of Hades.
The Furies circled the parapets, high in the gloom. The outer walls of the fortress glittered black, and the two-story-tall bronze gates stood wide open.
Up close, I saw that the engravings on the gates were scenes of death. Some were from modern times—an atomic bomb exploding over a city, a trench filled with gas mask—wearing soldiers, a line of African famine victims waiting with empty bowls—but all of them looked as if they’d been etched into the bronze thousands of years ago.
Inside the courtyard was the strangest garden I’d ever seen. Multicolored mushrooms, poisonous shrubs, and weird luminous plants grew without sunlight. Precious jewels made up for the lack of flowers, piles of rubies as big as my fist, clumps of raw diamonds. Standing here and there like frozen party guests were Medusa’s garden statues—petrified children, satyrs, and centaurs—all smiling grotesquely.
In the center of the garden was an orchard of pomegranate trees, their orange blooms neon bright in the dark.
I knew what would happen if any of us ate one.
“The garden of Persephone,” I said. “Keep walking.”
Even Percy seemed to understand.
The tart smell of those pomegranates was almost overwhelming. If we had one bite of Underworld food, we would never be able to leave. Percy pulled Grover and Jasmine pulled Toothless away from eating any of them.
We walked up the steps of the palace, between black columns, through a black marble portico, and into the house of Hades. The entry hall had a polished bronze floor, which seemed to boil in the reflected torchlight. There was no ceiling, just the cavern roof, far above.
Every side doorway was guarded by a skeleton in military gear. Some wore Greek armor, some british redcoat uniforms, some camouflage with tattered American flags on the shoulders. They carried spears or muskets or M-16s. None of them bothered us, but their hollow eye sockets followed us as we walked down the hall, toward the big set of doors at the opposite end.
Two U.S. Marine skeletons guarded the doors. They grinned down at us, rocket-propelled grenade launchers held across their chests.
“You know,” Grover mumbled, “I bet Hades doesn’t have trouble with door-to-door salesmen.”
“Lucky him,” Jasmine said.
“Well, guys,” Percy said. “I suppose we should . . . knock?”
A hot wind blew down the corridor, and the doors swung open. The guards stepped aside.
“I guess that means *entrez-vous*,” I said.
Inside the room, the throne of Hades was occupied.
Hades was at least ten feet tall, and dressed in black silk robes and a crown of braided gold. His skin was albino white, his hair shoulder-length and jet black. He wasn’t bulked up like Ares, but he radiated power. He lounged on his throne of fused human bones, looking lithe, graceful, and dangerous.
“You are brave to come here, Son of Poseidon,” he said in an oily voice. “After what you have done to me, very brave indeed. Or perhaps you are simply very foolish.”
I looked at Percy.
He was nervous, but he fought it and stepped forward.
“Lord and Uncle,” he said. “I come with two requests.”
Hades raised an eyebrow. When he sat forward in his throne, shadowy faces appeared in the folds of his black robes, faces of torment, as if the garment were stitched of trapped souls from the Fields of Punishment, trying to get out.
“Only two requests?” Hades said. “Arrogant child. As if you have not already taken enough. Speak, then. It amuses me not to strike you dead yet.”
Percy swallowed.
He glanced at the empty, smaller throne next to Hades’s. It was shaped like a black flower, gilded with gold. Queen Persephone’s throne. She wasn’t here right now because it was summer. She’s in the world of light with her mother, the goddess of agriculture, Demeter. Her visits, not the tilt of the earth, create the seasons.
Percy still hadn’t said anything.
I cleared my throat. I used my finger to prod him in the back.
“Lord Hades,” he said. “Look, sir, there can’t be war among the gods. It would be . . . bad.”
“Really bad,” Grover added helpfully.
“Return Zeus’s master bolt to me,” Percy said. “Please, sir. Let me carry it to Olympus.”
Hades’s eyes grew dangerously bright. “You dare keep up this pretense, after what you have done?”
Percy glanced back at us. He looked just as confused as we were.
“Um . . . Uncle,” he said. “You keep saying ‘after what you’ve done.’ What exactly have I done?”
The throne room shook with a tremor so strong, they probably felt it upstairs in Los Angeles. Debris fell from the cavern ceiling. Doors burst open all along the walls, and skeletal warriors marched in, hundreds of them, from every time period and nation in Western civilization. They lined the perimeter or the room, blocking the exits.
“Do you think I *want* war, godling?” Hades bellowed.
“You are the Lord of the Dead,” Percy said carefully. “A war would expand your kingdom, right?”
“A typical thing for my brothers to say! Do you think I need more subjects? Did you not see the sprawl of the Asphodel fields?”
“Well . . .”
“Have you any idea how much my kingdom has swollen in this past century alone, how many subdivisions I’ve had to open?”
Percy opened his mouth to respond, but Hades was on a roll now.
“My security ghouls,” he moaned. “Traffic problems at the judgment pavilion. Double overtime for the staff. I used to be a rich god, Percy Jackson. I control all the precious metals under the earth. But my expenses!”
“Charon wants a pay raise,” Percy blurted.
Why did he have to say that now?
“Don’t get me started on Charon!” Hades yelled. “He’s been impossible ever since he discovered Italian suits! Problems everywhere, and I’ve got to handle all of them personally. The commute time alone from the palace to the gates is enough to drive me insane! And the dead just keep arriving. *No*, godling. I need no help getting subjects! *I* did not ask for this war.”
“But you took Zeus’s master bolt.”
“Lies!” More rumbling. Hades rose from his throne, towering to the height of a football goalpost. “Your father may fool Zeus, boy, but I am not stupid. I see his plan.”
“His plan?”
“You were the thief on the winter solstice,” Hades said. “Your father thought to keep you his little secret. He directed you into the throne room on Olympus. You took the master bolt *and* my helm. Had I not sent my Fury to discover you at Yancy Academy, Poseidon might have succeeded in hiding his scheme to start a war. But now you have been forced into the open. You will be exposed as Poseidon’s thief, and I will have my helm back!”
His helm?
“But . . .” I spoke, my mind racing. “Lord Hades, your helm of darkness is missing, too?”
“Do not play innocent with me, girl. You and the satyr, your other friend and the dragon have been helping this hero—coming here to threaten me in Poseidon’s name, no doubt—to bring me an ultimatum. Does Poseidon think I can be blackmailed into supporting him?”
“No!” Percy said. “Poseidon didn’t—I didn’t—”
“I have said nothing of the helm’s disappearance,” Hades snarled, “because I had no illusions that anyone on Olympus would offer me the slightest justice, the slightest help. I can ill afford for word to get out that my most powerful weapon of fear is missing. So I searched for you myself, and when it was clear you were coming to me to deliver your threat, I did not try to stop you.”
“You didn’t try to stop us? But—”
“Return my helm now, or I will stop death,” Hades threatened. “That is my counterproposal. I will open the earth and have the dead pour back into the world. I will make your lands a nightmare. And you, Percy Jackson—*your* skeleton will lead my army out of Hades.”
The skeletal soldiers all took one step forward, making their weapons ready.
Percy looked angry.
“You’re as bad as Zeus,” he said. “You think I stole from you? That’s why you sent the Furies after me?”
“Of course,” Hades said.
“And the other monsters?”
Hades curled his lip. “I had nothing to do with them. I wanted no quick death for you—I wanted you brought before me alive so you might face every torture in the Fields of Punishment. Why do you think I let you enter my kingdom so easily?”
“*Easily?*”
“Return my property!”
“But I don’t have your helm. I came for the master bolt.”
“Which you already possess!” Hades shouted. “You came here with it, little fool, thinking you could threaten me!”
“But I didn’t!”
“Open your pack, then.”
His pack?
Percy slung it off his shoulder and unzipped it. Inside was a two-foot-long metal cylinder, spiked on both ends, humming with energy.
“Percy,” I said. “How—”
“I—I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t understand.”
“You heroes are always the same,” Hades said. “Your pride makes you foolish, thinking you could bring such a weapon before me. I did not ask for Zeus’s master bolt, but since it is here, you will yield it to me. I am sure it will make an excellent bargaining tool. And now . . . my helm. Where is it?”
Percy was speechless. So was I. He had no helm, and didn’t seem to have any idea how the master bolt had gotten into his backpack. I wanted to think Hades was pulling some kind of trick, but I didn’t think he was. The master bolt had been in his backpack, and he’d gotten the backpack from . . .
“Lord Hades, wait,” Percy said, coming to the same realization. “This is all a mistake.”
“A mistake?” Hades roared.
The skeletons aimed their weapons. From high above, there was a fluttering of leathery wings, and the three Furies swooped down to perch on the back of their master’s throne.
“There is no mistake,” Hades said. “I know why you have come—I know the *real* reason you brought the bolt. You came to bargain for *her*.”
Hades loosed a ball of gold fire from his palm. It exploded on the steps in front of us, and there was a woman, who I assumed was Percy’s mother, frozen in a shower of gold.
Percy was speechless, again.
He reached out to touch her, but I guess it burned him, because he yanked his hand back.
“Yes,” Hades said with satisfaction. “I took her. I knew, Percy Jackson, that you would come to bargain with me eventually. Return my helm, and perhaps I will let her go. She is not dead, you know. Not yet. But if you displease me, that will change.”
Percy seemed to be thinking of a plan.
“Ah, the pearls,” Hades said, and Percy froze. “Yes, my brother and his little tricks. Bring them forth, Percy Jackson.”
He moved his hand and brought out the pearls.
“Only five,” Hades said. “What a shame. You do realize each only protects a single person. Try to take your mother, then, little godling. And which of your friends will you leave behind to spend eternity with me? Go on. Choose. Or give me the backpack and accept my terms.”
Percy looked at us. We were grim.
“We were tricked,” Percy told us. “Set up.”
“Yes, but why?” I asked. “And the voice in the pit—”
“I don’t know yet. But I intend to ask.”
“Decide, boy!” Hades yelled.
“Percy.” Grover put his hand on Percy’s shoulder. “You can’t give him the bolt.”
“I know that,” he said.
“Leave me here. Use the fifth pearl on your mom.”
“No!”
“I’m a satyr. We don’t have souls like humans do. He can torture me until I die, but he won’t get me forever. I’ll just be reincarnated as a flower or something. It’s the best way.”
“No.” I drew my bronze knife. “You guys go on. Grover, you have to protect Percy. You have to get your searcher’s license and start your quest for Pan. Get his mom out of here. I’ll cover you. I plan to go down fighting.”
“Not without me, you’re not,” Jasmine said.
“Jasmine—”
“No, Annabeth. Best friends stay together and don’t leave each other behind.”
I couldn’t argue with that, and she wouldn’t let me if I tried anyway.
“No way,” Grover said. “I’m staying behind.”
“Think again, goat boy,” I said.
“Stop it, both of you!” Percy said. “I know what to do. Take these.”
He handed us each a pearl, even Toothless.
“But, Percy . . .” I said.
He turned and faced his mother.
“I’m sorry,” he told her. “I’ll be back. I’ll find a way.”
The smug look on Hades’s face faded.
“Godling . . . ?” he said.
“I’ll find your helm, Uncle,” Percy told him. “I’ll return it. Remember about Charon’s pay raise.”
“Do not defy me—”
“And it wouldn’t hurt to play with Cerberus once in a while. He likes red rubber balls.”
“Percy Jackson, you will not—”
“Now, guys!” Percy shouted.
We smashed the pearls at our feet. For a scary moment, nothing happened.
“Destroy them!” Hades yelled.
The army of skeletons rushed forward, swords out, guns clicking to full automatic. The Furies lunged, their whips bursting into flame.
Just as the skeletons opened fire, the pearl fragments at our feet exploded with a burst of green light and a gust of fresh sea water. We were encased in our own milky white spheres, which were starting to float off the ground.
Spears and bullets sparked harmlessly off the pearl bubbles as we floated up. Hades yelled with such rage, the entire fortress shook.
“Look up!” Grover yelled. “We’re going to crash!”
Sure enough, we were racing right toward the stalactites, which I figured would pop our bubbles and skewer us.
“How do you control these things?” I shouted.
“I don’t think you do!” Percy shouted back.
That’s reassuring.
We screamed as the bubbles slammed into the ceiling and . . . Darkness.
Were we dead?
No, I could still feel the racing sensation. We were going up, right through solid rock. That was the power of the pearls.
For a few moments, I couldn’t see anything outside the smooth walls of my sphere, then my pearl broke through on the ocean floor. The four other milky spheres; Percy, Jasmine, Grover, and Toothless, soared upward with me through the water.
We exploded on the surface, in the middle of the Santa Monica Bay, knocking a surfer off his board with an indignant, “Dude!”
Percy grabbed Grover and hauled him over to a life buoy. Jasmine caught Toothless and me and dragged us over too. A curious shark was circling us, a great white about eleven feet long.
“Beat it,” Percy said.
The shark turned and raced away, which Jasmine didn’t like.
The surfer screamed something about bad mushrooms and paddled away from us as fast as he could.
In the distance, Los Angeles was on fire, plumes of smoke rising from neighborhoods all over the city. There had been an earthquake, all right, and it was Hades’s fault. He was probably sending an army of the dead after us right now.
I’m not sure what day it was, but I’m was mostly positive that it was June 21, and we only had until sunset to get Zeus back his master bolt and stop World War III from happening.

So I was told that today is national friendship day, and I figured it would just be wrong to not update today given that that's the whole point of this story. Don't you agree?
**Please review** here**.**

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## Character Appearances

### Main Characters

* Annabeth Chase
* Jasmine Saturday
* Percy Jackson

### Minor Characters

* Grover Underwood
* Hades