A long fall. Impenetrable darkness. Annabeth's hand in mine. Air rushing past. Screams and roars. Bashing against side. Impact. Jarring pain. Nothing…
I woke with a groan. Some how Annabeth had landed on me. Of course. Annabeth had a way of looking out for herself. It was just the way she was. I couldn't blame her. Well, lucky her. She had a relatively soft cushion. Annabeth groaned, stirring. "I wish you were fatter," she moaned.
"You had a soft landing," I rasped. Annabeth perked (for lack of a better word) up.
"Are you alright?" she asked worry in her voice.
At the moment, I didn't feel like being nice. "Yes I'm fine. We just fell a long way and you used me as a landing pad. Nothing could be better."
Annabeth looked hurt. Wait, I could actually see. "How can I see if its supposedly pitch black down here?" I wondered out loud.
Annabeth shrugged. "I can't see a thing." She answered.
I grunted as she propped herself up. Her elbows dug into my ribs. After a lot of maneuvering and grunting, she finally sat up.
"Here," she said pulling me up. I groaned. If I hadn't broken my back, I probably had a massive bruise. I felt like I had been run over by a steam roller. I remembered when Annabeth and I had taken turns holding up the sky. Now I truly understood how Atlas felt.
I managed to stand after falling down a few times and almost face-planting the first time.
I bent down to pull Annabeth up. She screamed with pain as she put weight on her injured leg. She plopped back down sobbing with pain. "Is it really that bad?" I asked softly.
I saw her nod her head through the gloom. "Here I'll carry you."
I carefully scooped her up, careful not to touch her leg. Then a thought struck me. "Hey don't you have any ambrosia?" I asked.
"Yeah it's in my pack." Amazingly, she had grabbed onto her backpack while we were falling. I hadn't even noticed she had it. She had balanced it on her stomach. I laid Annabeth down and rummaged through her pack.
The ambrosia was in one of the smaller pockets. I broke off a generous helping and fed it to her. I hoped it wasn't too much.
Eating the ambrosia seemed to help. Annabeth was breathing much easier. "Sleep," I told her scooping her up and cradling her.
For a while I stumbled along, hoping that I wasn't hurting her. There were a lot of ditches down here and I nearly tripped many times. Tarturas was actually not as bad as I had imagined. Hopefully it would say this way.
With nothing else to do, my mind wandered to my friends. I didn't blame them for this. The statue was more important.
I stumbled yet again, this time falling to the ground. Annabeth woke up with a cry of pain. "Sorry," I gasped." I'm so sorry."
Annabeth swallowed a sob of pain. "I'm okay she squeaked. Hey I can see." Then she frowned. "You look horrible," she said.
"Gee thanks. I love hearing that from you." I grumbled.
"No," she said quickly." You look as handsome as ever, but you look sick and tired. Maybe you should rest."
"Good idea." I said. Like I was surprised. She was always full of them. I pulled her up. I was too tired to pick her up and I was afraid I would drop her.
We stumbled on, me supporting Annabeth, looking for any well hidden place to rest.
Annabeth looked around, studying the place. "This doesn't look as scary as Nico described." I nodded, too tired to speak.
Suddenly, cliffs loomed up ahead. After walking a few feet, I ran into the wall. I bounced back with a groan.
Annabeth grunted. "Huh. I was wrong. This is just plain weird."
"Thanks for asking. I'm fine." I grumbled. "C'mon. Lets look for caves. Cliffs like these always have caves."
"Not always." Annabeth commented. I could feel a lecture coming on. Sure enough, there it was. I tuned her out and scanned the cliff, looking for a deep shadow that should be a cave.
I limped along the foot of the cliff until we stopped in front of a cave.
Annabeth stopped in mid-lecture. She looked very surprised. "We seem to have a lot of luck."
"Yes, but with us, it definitely won't hold. Might as well take advantage of it."
I sat Annabeth down and ventured in to make sure to was safe. I know Annabeth didn't like me treating her like she was helpless, but she was in no condition to defend herself.
The cave wasn't that deep. There were no signs to danger, but I was so tired, I wouldn't be able to tell if there was a monster right in front of me.
"Oh well." I muttered. "Just screw it." I helped Annabeth inside and passed out, hoping not to have any dreams, or that there weren't any monsters nearby.
