A/N: So just pretend that Percy and Annabeth are in Tartarus because I'm still working on the beginning part. Sorry :/ Also, I apologize for any rambling and I know you guys don't speak Latin, but there shouldn't be much of that in here.
I got this idea randomly one day and stayed up 'til 5 am writing this. Needless to say, I felt like crap the next day. But I had fun writing it xD
Updating may be sporadic because well I'm in high school, I'm in honors, and apparently I go to therapy right after school everyday for 5 weeks starting soon, so I'll update with this as soon as possible.
Wow, I'm telling complete strangers about my life. Well, reviews would be appreciated, and while constructive criticism is nice, if you're going to just hate on it and not offer suggestions to make it better, then I'd prefer you not review (:
Suddenly, Percy and Annabeth detected a faint noise—so slight in fact that, under normal circumstances, it may have gone unnoticed; these, however, were not normal circumstances (already a week in Tartarus and the pair had faced more monsters than even Annabeth could keep up with)—startlingly close to them. The unexpected sound caused Percy to jump slightly, which elicited a weak laugh from Annabeth. After his initial shock, he and Annabeth promptly scrambled together, their backs pressed up against each other, as they had rehearsed many before; it had almost become routine. Together, they began to circle clockwise, taking one tentative step at a time, scoping out for danger; this feat was, however, infinitely harder to do when their only source of light was their celestial bronze weapons, which both held high, ready to strike at a moment's notice.
"There," Annabeth whispered softly, voicing only loud enough so that Percy alone could hear her. Turning around, he noticed she was pointing; fixing his gaze upon what she was indicating with her forefinger, he noticed not a few yards ahead of them a shadow stir.
Curious, he began, "What was—" but Annabeth cut him off before he could finish the thought.
"Does it really matter? Whatever it is, I doubt it is friendly." Percy shrugged at that; she had a point. Like always, he mused. He smirked at the thought.
"Quit smiling, Seaweed Brain. We have monsters to kill" she scolded. With that, they slowly approached where the shadow had been, cautious of any oncoming attacks; to their dismay, when they finally reached it, they found nothing. "It must have moved."
Percy didn't have to think much about where the mysterious thing moved, though, because that's when he heard it again, an almost inaudible noise, like a creek of a floorboard accidentally betraying someone's whereabouts when someone's trying to sneak up on a person; it wasn't necessarily a loud noise, but it was detectable nonetheless. If he didn't know any better, he would have wagered a hundred golden drachmae that it almost sounded as if a human were bumbling around. He smacked the preposterous thought away; the chances of their finding something even as much as resembling human life forms were a stretch, and an even further one was that whatever they did happen to stumble across being friendly.
Snapping their heads in unison to the source of the noise, they were thoroughly surprised by what they found: of everything Tartarus had to offer—from every myriad of beast, monster, or what-have-you stuck in the Pit—they found themselves staring agape at a humanoid figure emerging from the shadows of the cave wall. Clad in nothing but a simple white silk toga, flowing from his right shoulder down to his ankles, stood a barefoot man no taller than Percy, and not much older, too. Even so, he seemed to radiate a timeless aura, one found usually only with gods. His eyes shone in the darkness, reminiscent so much of the sky that Percy had to remind himself just how far away from the sky he actually was. His hair was about shoulder-length, and as black as night. It was actually hard to make out where his shoulder started and hair ended in the darkness. The mysterious teenager also seemed unusually pale, although Percy had no idea if it were because of the lack of light, or because he was naturally almost sickly pale. Maybe both, Percy thought.
Percy studied the strange man intently, recognizing the toga at once. Maybe somebody from Camp Jupiter stumbled and fell into Tartarus during a council meeting. Even so, Percy had never seen him at camp before. Annabeth, however, was quick to react. Not stopping to ask any questions—or even make Percy aware of her intentions—she charged the man before her. Before her knife could make contact, though, her target sidestepped the attack easily and held his hands up in surrender. "Expecta! Expecta, jovenis semidea! Nolo vos necere."
The weird jumble of consonants and vowels caused Annabeth to come to an abrupt stop. Tilting her head slightly to the right, she regarded the man inquisitively, listening to what he had to say fixedly. He had her attention now. "Semideus sum quoque, filius Saturni."
While Percy seemed lost, it appeared to him that Annabeth didn't share his confusion, per usual. After spending months on the Roman side of things, it didn't take him long to recognize Latin when he heard it, but he still hadn't a clue what he was hearing; he had enough problems learning Greek as it was. Annabeth spoke back to the guy in the same weird tongue. "Non vos credo. Qui es, mihi monstra." He nodded his understanding and pointed to her knife. Without a second thought, she gave it to him.
"Annabeth, are you crazy?" Percy was exasperated. Not only did he not understand what was going on, but he just witnessed Annabeth willing give this stranger her weapon. What did I just miss, he thought.
"He said he was a demigod, like us. I asked him to prove it."
"And you just give him your knife?"
"Celestial bronze is deadly to monsters," Annabeth stated bluntly.
Percy all but glared at her. Even he knew he wasn't that obtuse—he knew at least that. Unfazed, she continued. "If he were a mortal—a fact I highly doubt—the blade will pass right through him. If he were a monster, he would have never offered to cut himself with the blade—it's too risky. If they touch it in either trying to disarm us or kill us, they'd do more harm than good to themselves." Percy nodded at what he heard; her logic seemed sound enough.
At this, Annabeth turned expectantly to the Romanesque teenager. Right on cue, the man took Annabeth's knife and held it up against his arm, and pressed the blade down upon it until a trickle of dark, sanguine liquid began to run down his arm, slightly pooling and staining his toga. Showing his blood to Annabeth, he then returned her knife.
"Well that solves that mystery," she proclaimed aloud to herself. To the mystery man, she asked eloquently and fluently, not skipping a beat, "Qui es? Quod nomen tibi est?"
"Silam. Ego Silam sum," is what he said in response.
Percy, still trying to make sense of what he was hearing, turned to Annabeth. "What did he just say?"
"He said his name was Silas. And, as he has just proven, he is a demigod."
"Oh, cool. Who's his godly parent?"
"Not godly," she proclaimed matter-of-factly. "He says his father is Saturn."
"And Saturn is…?" Percy mentally went through the list of god and goddesses he knew of, but he couldn't recall a Saturn.
"Honestly, Seaweed Brain, do you even pay attention at all?" Percy blushed at her taunting. "You spent, what, like a few months with the Romans and you don't even recognize who Saturn is? He's the Roman version of Kronos."
"Kronos!" If Percy looked confused before, he now looked like he was trying to navigate the Labyrinth. Which, he reminded himself, I actually did once. "I didn't know he had children."
"Nor did I, up until a few minutes ago."
"So, let me get this straight. He—this Silas guy—is a demigod. Or whatever the term would be–"
"I think the term demigod would suffice," she supplied.
"—Ok, demigod," he amended to his previous thought, emphasizing the last word. "He's also a son of Saturn, who is the Roman version of the guy I just got done beating a year ago. And apparently he only speaks Latin, which you seem to be fluent it."
Annabeth smiled at his jibe. "I've always loved architecture, you very well know that. I even got a chance to help rebuild Olympus." Her eyes glazed over at the thought. "Anyways," she said, snapping out of her reverie, "Roman architecture is some of the best in the world—both ancient and modern. I've always admired Rome. Actually, I was a little jealous that you got to see New Rome and I didn't—you know, besides for the whole Hera-messing-with-your-already-complicated-life thing. Anyways, I decided, heck, why not learn Latin while I'm at it. It was fun, a challenge of sorts. And it happened to come in handy, so you should be thanking mean instead of insulting me."
"Sorry. But still, why does he speak Latin. Shouldn't he, like, speak English or something. I thought Latin was dead."
Annabeth pondered over that for a moment before responding with, "It is. Why don't we ask him."
"But I don't speak Latin." A look of confusion crossed over Percy's face again.
"You don't have to." She said with a knowing smirk, as if she knew something he didn't. What else is new, Percy's subconscious added. Calmly, she approached Silas.
"What do you—"Percy started, and then stopped mid-sentence as he stared in amazement at what Annabeth was doing. When she finally reached Silas, she placed a simple finger on his lips, as if she were shushing him, and spoke a single word: "Loqui." Simple words Percy's brain could translate: Speak.
Stepping away from him slightly, she asked Silas a simple question, "Who is your father?"
"What is this, Star Wars?" Percy laughed at his own joke, but Annabeth, un-amused by Percy's feeble attempt at a joke, turned her head towards him and glared.
Silas—who either seemed not to notice the comment or didn't care enough to acknowledge it—cocked his head slightly at the question, answering hers with his own. "Saturn—I've already told you. Why?" Annabeth smiled at the response, which only seemed to confuse Silas further.
The look on Percy's face was priceless. He was utterly flabbergasted. "What—wait how—who—when—where?" He struggled to form a coherent sentence for a few seconds before he choked out, "When did you learn to do that?" The awe in his voice was almost tangible. He just stared at her in disbelief, earnestly awaiting an explanation.
Annabeth chuckled again. She forgot to mention this to her boyfriend. Granted, it never really came up, she mused to herself. "When you went missing, I did everything in my power to try to locate you. I even asked the Hecate cabin if they could scry for you, but when they did, they said that they couldn't find you, that it was almost as if you never existed in the first place." Percy seemed like he was following along well enough, so she continued. "I looked through every book I could think of, trying to find a way to find you. I searched thought the Camp's private library even, and found nothing. Then, one random day, as the Fates would have it, I found a thick, leather-bound—least, I hope it was leather—" both Percy and Annabeth shook with the implication—"anyways, it was a thick and old book. It might have even been older than the Camp here in America itself. When I opened it, I found it the words in Ancient Greek. After weeks of trying to decipher it, I found out it was a spell book." This solicited an awe-filled "whoa" from Percy. "I learned that you don't need to be a child of Hecate to do magic. All you need to do is will what you want into existence, sort of like Piper's charmspeak." When she saw Percy nod his understanding, she continued. "It's not like on TV, though. I can't just do whatever I want, like fly or kill people with spells. It has its limits. Plus, I'm not a child of Hecate." She slightly giggled the last part out.
"So, can you, like, summon food or something?" A few days with little to eat had certainly made Percy hungry, and just thinking about food made his stomach hurt. His stomach growled in anticipation.
"Theoretically, I could, but, just like in physics, nothing can be created nor destroyed. In order to call forth food, I'd first have to offer something to make the food. And, if you haven't noticed, there's not much in Tartatus for me to use; in my short time being here, I have seen all of about three rocks sufficient to become food, and hunting monsters is too dangerous. So, sorry, but as hungry as you—"Annabeth's stomach growled at that point—"we are, I'm sorry but I can't just make food magically appear."
Percy put on a slightly mournful expression, and muttered under his breath a curse. "Dang. I'm hungry. Now what am I going to eat?"
At this, Silas, whom Annabeth and Percy had all but forgotten, spoke up finally.