Hi! No copyright infringement intended, etc.

Characters are all Rick's and I just looked up a few Greek Myths in Wikipedia and made up a couple things about them so don't expect them to be exact or anything. Hope you like it!

P.S.: English isn't my first language so I'm sorry if there are any grammar mistakes or whatever

I. ANNABETH

Annabeth was in trouble. Aside from the fact that she was in freaking Tartarus, she had landed with a brand-new collection of bruises and scratches and, what was worse, on top of her boyfriend Percy Jackson, who was now lying flat on the floor, knocked out; she didn't have supplies or her dagger; and to make matters worse, she could hear a heard of monsters stirring maybe a hundred feet away from where she sat beside Percy, awakened by the scent of fresh demigod blood.

She only heard them because there was literally nothing to see: the pit was pitch-black, and no matter how many times Annabeth blinked, her eyes refused to adjust. The only potential light source was Percy's sword, Riptide, disguised as a pen in his back pocket, but Annabeth didn't dare uncap it and attract more attention to herself, defenseless as she was.

As she had done several times since her, uh, forced landing, Annabeth checked Percy's pulse and heartbeat. All fine, but that didn't reassure her: his eyes remained closed. Annabeth tried calling him softly, shaking his shoulders and even slapping his face. Nothing worked. She felt more and more hopeless by the second.

Wake up, Seaweed Brain, she thought as she heard light but numerous footsteps coming in their direction. Annabeth shook Percy again, a little violently this time, as a chill went up her spine and panic started settling in.

When the footsteps were less than ten feet away, Annabeth's mind went into monster-butt-kicking mode. She reached for Percy's unconscious body, grabbed a small pen and uncapped it. Riptide appeared in her hand and, accustomed to the light weight of her dagger, Annabeth almost dropped it. The Celestial Bronze blade shun and revealed the floor to be a clumsy collection of chipped stones, as if every bad piece of rock had fallen here and piled up. And been painted black, of course, because that was all there was: black, black, black, every way Annabeth looked. Five feet to Annabeth's left, a small crowd of seemingly twisted dwarves was approaching. Seven to ten short creatures with hunched backs, greenish dark skin, big bare feet, thin noses, bald heads and beetle-sized black eyes advanced towards her, their long, dirty toenails scraping the floor as they went.

Annabeth scraped her brain for any Greek myth that might fit these horrible gnomes in desperate need of a bath, but couldn't come up with anything. So she just sat between Percy and the unknown little creatures, holding Riptide in her right hand and waiting for the little demons to approach. Two feet away, they stopped. The shortest of them, which would barely have reached Annabeth's knee if she had been standing, licked his lips. He wore a Santa's hat which was dark with what Annabeth thought was dried blood. From his previous victims, perhaps, she thought.

"Been a while since Gaea sent us a fresh batch of sweet-smelling demigods, hasn't it, boys?" he said loudly to his companions. The crowd laughed, loud screeching noises that reminded Annabeth of her half-brother scraping his fork against the frying pan, trying to get the last bit of scrambled eggs that was stuck there. She decided she'd better keep them talking until she could figure out a better plan than her current one: to slash around with Riptide and hope all the ugly gnomes disintegrated.

"So, uh- Who are you guys?", she blurted out.

"Shut her up already! I hate it when my food starts blabbering!", shouted a voice from within the crowd.

The Santa Gnome, who was apparently the leader, gave a short, mean laugh and retorted, "Calm down, Gyther. Have you forgotten who we are? We, the kobaloi, enjoy playing with our food. We enjoy playing with pretty much everything, actually." The crowd laughed at some sick inside joke.

Kobaloi… That rings a bell, thought Annabeth. "I though Heracles had given you guys to some queen or something".

Gyther's voice sneered, "Like we were his to give away". A second voice replied, "Yeah, Omphale was a total pain in the neck". Then a third, "I liked the palace better than here, though".

At that last comment, hell broke loose within the crowd: angry kobaloi jumped the little dwarf who had said the "monstrosity", as the monsters who were watching the fight murmured to each other. A minute or two later, the fighting stopped; the attackers retreated and Annabeth could see only a splash of blood on the floor where the kobalos had stood.

Their leader sighed and asked in a bored tone, "Can we get back to these succulent demigods now?" An agreeing murmur ran through the crowd.

Annabeth blinked and looked away from the bloody spot. She tried pressing on: "Weren't you, like, Dionysus's partners in crime or something?"

"And good times those were! We tricked every mortal we could get our hands on. We inspired a great deal of children's bedtime songs! But then, of course, Zeus got mad at Dionysus for letting us run free frightening mortals. Frightening! Can you believe that? We don't frighten mortals, we trick them. If they're afraid of us, well, that's their problem. So Dionysus had to appease Thunder Dude, of course, so he dispensed us. We had to get even, didn't we? So we robbed Zeus's pretty little son Heracles. But he captured us and gave us away as a gift to some stupid queen! Since then, we have only killed and eaten demigods. For that, Omphale banned us to the single worst part of the Underworld!" Santa Gnome raised his hands and screamed to the sky- or in the direction of it, since they were so deep there was no sky to be seen, "Thanks a lot, o generous queen Omphale!"

Annabeth was quick. As Santa Gnome was looking away from her, she drove Riptide into his flesh right above his bellybutton. The Celestial Bronze cut through like it was butter. In the chaos that followed, Annabeth managed to turn most of the kobaloi to dust. When she looked around, though, there was still one left, Gyther. He was sinking his teeth into Percy's calf. Annabeth spun, eyes wide, and took off the dwarf's head with one stroke. As he crumbled to monster dust, she kneeled next to Percy and examined the wound.

The bite-mark was weird, as if the kobalos had only three really sharp teeth. Weirdest of all was that there was no blood flowing from it. But all of that didn't matter once Annabeth noticed Percy's skin around the bite-mark was slowly becoming a sickening shade of green and her stomach seemed to contract to the size of a raisin.

Panicking, Annabeth picked up Riptide and started to scan her surroundings for anything that might be useful. There was nothing as far as she could see. If I only had my backpack, she thought.

Then it occurred to her: she and her backpack had fallen to Tartarus from the same place, so it couldn't be so far, could it? With that in mind, she started walking around, making a sort of perimeter around Percy, going farther and farther. Annabeth kept glancing back to look at her boyfriend's body and, when she was far enough that she couldn't make it out in the limited light of the sword, she had to convince herself to keep walking by repeating to herself, "If you go back, you'll end up watching him die. Better do something about it while you can".

Annabeth had been walking for five minutes when she tripped on a pointed rock and fell face-first on the floor, sending a jolt of pain and a feeling of wet warmth (blood, she suspected) through her nose and Riptide spiraling across the air and to the floor twenty feet ahead of her. For the next thirty seconds or so, it was all Annabeth could do to cup her nose in her hands, trying to staunch the bleeding and keeping herself from screaming and throwing up.

Then, remembering Percy's state, she pulled herself together as best as she could and started to make her way to the glowing sword. To Annabeth's absolute terror, just when she was near enough to reach out her arm and grab the sword hilt, Riptide suddenly disappeared, returning to Percy's pocket in the form of an apparently harmless pen.

You can't freak out now, Annabeth thought to herself. She looked around, seeing absolutely nothing, and stumbled towards the direction where she thought she had come from.


After walking ten minutes, Annabeth was sure she was going the wrong way. Of course, she couldn't see a thing, so it was kind of hard to tell if she'd passed Percy's body and walked on, but she had a sort of experienced-demigod gut feeling that told her she wasn't anywhere near her boyfriend. Annabeth had to walk carefully, patting the floor with her toes before actually stepping on it, just in case there was some sort of irregularity. She didn't want any more bruises.

Her nose throbbed painfully, but whenever she was close to giving up, her mind reminded her of Percy, sprawled on the floor, unconscious and defenseless, with a potentially fatal wound on his mid-calf. The thought was enough to keep Annabeth moving, though somewhat slowly, walking through Tartarus with nothing to guide her except her instincts.

When Annabeth was close to fainting because of all the bloodloss and worry and sense of dread, she saw something that made her heart leap with hope. A short way ahead, Annabeth could make out a faint glow which looked suspiciously like Celestial Bronze. Throwing caution to the air, Annabeth ran like she had never run before, hoping against hope Percy had woken up and that was Riptide in his hand.

As she got closer, Annabeth's breath faltered and a cold chill went up her spine as she realized the glowing thing - whatever it was - was lying on the floor, not being held by her favorite green-eyed, black-haired demigod. She tripped and fell again, this time shielding her face with her arms and earning a long cut that went from her elbow to her wrist. Luckily enough, it wasn't deep, so Annabeth got up again and kept running, the adrenaline rush erasing all thoughts of pain from her mind.

Annabeth stopped to a halt next to what she realized was her bronze dagger which had fallen with her from Arachne's chamber into the pit. All worries momentarily forgotten, she smiled, picking it up and waving it around until she found what she was looking for. Annabeth slung her backpack across her shoulder and started making her way towards Percy - or where she thought he'd be - a little more confidently this time, dagger pointed at the ground so she could see where she was stepping.

Fifteen minutes of treading through the nearly complete darkness, Annabeth distinguished a lump on the floor ahead of her she gladly realized was, in fact, Percy. Sighing with relief, Annabeth kneeled beside him and dug around her backpack until she found her ziploc bag half-full with ambrosia. She wanted to shove it all into Percy's mouth, but the rational part of her mind kept her from doing, reminding her he could burst into flames or whatever, and they would probably need the godly food during the next - month, was it? Anyway, Annabeth gave Percy as much ambrosia she thought was safe, then swallowed a bit herself for her nose. The throbbing pain diminished almost at once. Annabeth glanced expectantly at Percy, scrutinizing his face for any sign of movement other than his breathing. After what seemed ages, but were probably just a few seconds, she Percy's eyelids flutter and open slowly, revealing those sea-green eyes Annabeth loved.

"Annabeth? I- what happened? Are we in-?" he asked, his voice croaked.

Annabeth hushed him. "Yeah, Tartarus. Pretty cozy, huh? You were bitten by a kobalos, but I found my backpack and gave you some ambrosia, so you should be fine" She brushed his hair from his forehead affectionately.

"A khaki?"

Annabeth laughed. "Kobalos. Sort of like a green evil dwarf".

"Oh. Your nose-"

"It's fine. I had some ambrosia too."

Annabeth checked Percy's calf. The greenish hue had disappeared and the bite-marks were little red scars by now. When she looked back at his face, he was frowning.

"What's that noise?", he asked.

Annabeth heard it too. It was a distant howling, combined with shouts and grunts she couldn't understand. She sighed.

"Monster noise", she said. "We'd better get used to it"