Author's Notes: So, obviously, this is the next book in the "Heroes of Olympus" series, and it also obviously has Mark of Athena spoilers, so if you haven't read the Mark of Athena already, then read that before you read this! It was really good!
I'm aiming to finish this story before the actual book comes out. I may be cutting it a bit fine, especially as we get closer to the reveal date (October 2013), but it'll happen.
Disclaimer: I do not own Percy Jackson and the Olympians or the Heroes of Olympus series. All characters, settings, and other attributes belong to Rick Riordan.
Percy
Falling into Tartarus was one of the most surreal experiences he'd ever had. It was as if time had slowed down, almost to a stop, except he knew that wasn't possible because (and he could discern this from the wind rushing around him) they were actually speeding up. The only possible explanation was that the fall was so long that they had reached terminal velocity.
Well, that wasn't good.
He'd once read an article in the newspaper (for the first and god-willing final time in his life- the words were all written too small and bled out all over the page) about a man who tried suicide once by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. He didn't die. In the article, he said, "Once I was halfway down, I thought it was a bad idea."
It was played for laughs in the article, and Percy took it as dark satire once he read it, but it was a different situation when the reader experienced it for themselves.
When he and Annabeth were dangling from the floor a few short seconds ago, all he was thinking was that it was his duty and that what he was about to do was necessary. Now, all he could think about was how big of a mistake he'd made.
But, no! It wasn't a mistake! It was necessary! There has to be someone shutting the Doors and fighting the battles from this side, too, he reasoned. We went over this with Nico. It took a few moments (probably only a second or two in real time) for him to calm himself, but once he did, all his worries cleared away.
The same, unfortunately, could not be said for Annabeth.
He looked over at her, and, startled, noticed that her eyes were shut. Not squeezed shut like she was afraid, but just...shut. Like how someone's eyes look when they're unconscious.
She must have passed out, he reasoned. From fear or from pain, he didn't know. But what he did know was that there would be a lot more pain for her if he didn't do something about cushioning the fall for both of them.
Thinking quickly, he slinked an arm around her waist and pulled her so that she was resting on top of him, sheltered from whatever would come. He didn't feel any fear at the moment (like any normal person would while anticipating the impact of a hundred-story fall), he just knew that he had to protect Annabeth.
It took a little shifting to make sure that she was snug on top of him, and when he was certain that she was more or less protected, he grabbed the backpack out of the air (it was falling next to them) and shrugged into it to protect himself.
Everything that just happened took place in a total of about eight seconds, yet it felt like a lot more to Percy. Later, he would be glad that it was only eight seconds, because any longer, and he might not even have survived the fall.
And then there was impact.
He must have blacked out from the pain for a while, because when his senses returned, he realized that he was laying flat on his back against a cool stone floor, a bit bumpy and textured against the burning muscles of his back, and when he tried to suck in a breath, he choked on a square of ambrosia and noticed that Annabeth was shaking him, trying to get him to wake up. "Percy! Oh, please don't be dead, wake up!"
He swallowed the ambrosia, and the first wave of pain that came with slamming into a stone floor at terminal velocity seemed to get a little more bearable, which wasn't saying all that much. "I'm-" he winced at the pain it took even to talk, suspecting that something may be wrong with his ribs, "-I'm fine, Annabeth."
She stared at him for a second, as if she couldn't believe her eyes, and then sat back on her heels, exhausted. "Oh. Oh...oh, god." She brushed some hair out of her eyes. "What- what happened?"
Percy laughed and tried to hoist himself up from the position he was in, but was barely able to suppress the cry of pain that came with it. He collapsed back on the stone floor, a cold sweat starting to break out on his face. Something was definitely wrong with his ribs, and more than likely there was something wrong with his back, too.
Thank the gods for Annabeth- he'd really have to send her a thank-you card with a box of chocolates sometime- for stuffing more ambrosia into his mouth, a little piece at a time, until he could sit up again, and he gently scooted himself over until he was propped up against one of the walls of something vaguely cavern-like, in the underground world that was Tartarus.
It was only then that the thought occurred to him, and he turned to Annabeth to ask. "Where did you get the ambrosia?"
"Well," she said, coming over to sit next to him, "when I was fighting Arachnae and the floor started to collapse, my backpack, which had Daedalus's laptop in it, and my dagger fell with us." She held up all the items, including Daedalus's laptop, which, surprisingly, didn't even have a scratch on it. Percy suspected it might have been another one of Daedalus's technological advancements at work. "Turns out that everything that fell from Arachnae's room fell in the same spot."
It was then that a cold wave of fear washed over Percy's body. "Does that include Arachnae?"
Annabeth shrugged and hugged her knees up to her chest, fear seeming to settle over her, too, though she tried to hide it. "I don't know. Maybe there's a separate section of Tartarus for reforming monsters? And you still haven't told me what happened during the fall. How we survived."
Percy snuck another piece of ambrosia from a side pocket in Annabeth's backpack (she wouldn't let him have any more on the precaution that it was probably lethal, but he needed it) and relayed the eventful eight seconds after he let go of the floor.
"We were falling. I was scared, but tried to remain calm so we didn't die. I saw you black out, so I got under you and put the backpack on my back, so we were both cushioned. The fall wasn't that long- less than ten seconds- but I'm guessing it was pretty bad."
Annabeth looked horrified. "Percy, human terminal velocity is one hundred-twenty miles an hour! In eight seconds, we fell a quarter mile! How are you still alive?" She looked down at herself. "How the heck am I still alive?"
"Wow. A quarter mile?" The fall didn't seem too long to Percy when it was happening. A quarter mile made it seem a lot more menacing. "How do you know that?"
"1 mile per hour is about one and a half feet per second- well, actually, it's more like 1.46666666 feet per second- but if you multiply that by human terminal velocity, you get how far we'd fallen in one second, which is about 176 feet, and that multiplied by eight seconds, the length of the fall, is-"
"A quarter mile," Percy finished. "Jesus. How am I still alive?"
Annabeth shrugged. "Maybe physics gets thrown out of the window in Tartarus. Maybe human terminal velocity changes in certain areas. Maybe we're too light to even achieve terminal velocity. The possibilities are endless."
Percy agreed with that idea (mainly because he had nothing intellectual to add to the conversation) and the two sat in silence for a while. Percy didn't know what Annabeth was thinking, but he was wondering about what the task ahead of them would bring.
To the extent of his knowledge before that very moment, Tartarus was just a deep, bottomless pit. He hadn't really thought about it any more than that, but, looking around him, he saw that a deep, bottomless pit certainly wasn't the case.
Tartarus just seemed like an extremely large cavern, probably even a series of caverns. He was sitting against a stone wall, the floor seemed to be made of stone, and there were stalactites hanging from the ceiling. He didn't see any stalagmites on the floor, which was probably the only good thing that had happened to them since Arachnae's temple- the absence of stalagmites would mean one less hazard to worry about.
Ghostly, inhuman wails and screeches echoed around various parts of the cavern, and he shuddered at the thought of what they could possibly be, and having to go through all of that for Hades knows how long. He knew it would be a tough journey, definitely tougher than anything else he'd ever done, and he thought he'd rather hold up the sky again than travel through Tartarus, which was saying a lot.
But they had to do it. Percy wasn't too sure of his fighting ability, but he knew that, with Annabeth at his side, they at least stood a slim chance. And he'd take a slim chance over no chance at all every day, but to increase their chances to the maximum, they'd have to know more about the place they were in...
He turned to Annabeth. "Annabeth? What's Tartarus like?"
She nodded like she was expecting the question, still staring straight ahead as if trying in vain to see the far wall of the cavern that they were in. "That's what I've been thinking about."
She turned to him and began talking. "In the old myths, only monsters, Kronos, and the absolute worst mortals on earth got sent here. The monsters would slowly reform, the mortals would be tortured for all eternity, and Kronos...well, you know about Kronos."
Percy nodded. They'd defeated the Lord of Time almost half a year ago, but that didn't mean that he didn't wake up in the middle of the night from a nightmare about the war they defeated him in. About the large death toll that he still couldn't help but take the blame for, at least partly.
There was something new to him in what Annabeth said, though. "Mortals...they also get sent down here?"
She nodded gravely. "Only the absolute worst. There haven't been that many, but the ones that do...well, they're pretty bad. There were more in ancient times, because the gods had extremely short fuses, what with them being young and all, but nowadays, there are less. Adolf Hitler, for example. And Bin Laden."
Percy nodded understandingly. Normally, he wouldn't have liked or even appreciated a Mythology lesson from Annabeth (or from anyone, for that matter), but in a life-or-death situation like the one they were in right now, he was beginning to learn their importance, why Annabeth insisted on them. And he was thinking things, too, about his past. If he had listened to Annabeth's lectures before quests and battles, could the outcomes have been different? Like, at Mount St. Helens, or...maybe if he'd talked to Annabeth instead of Rachel before the Princess Andromeda? Could he have saved Beckendorf?
He shook his head to dismiss the thought, emotions pooling at the back of his eyes, and Annabeth looked at him like he had three chests. "What?"
"Nothing," he said, though he knew she'd probably force it out of him later. "Go on."
"Well," she continued, "making up Tartarus is an infinite number of large caverns, like the one we're in. They go on forever, so probably the most important thing for us to do is to get our bearings and find the most direct way to the Doors of Death. I think Tartarus is supposed to be surrounded by bronze walls or something, which would mean the only exits would be the pit in the Underworld and the Doors themselves."
Percy nodded again. "So...the plan. First, we rest up. No going anywhere else today."
"That's reasonable," Annabeth agreed. Percy assumed her ankle was still hurting like Hades from the battle and the fall, and his upper body wasn't doing too much better. He'd had the wind knocked out of him, big time, and it was only just starting to recede.
"Second," he continued, "we somehow find a way to the Doors. But how..." he was almost afraid to ask as doubt started to seep into him, joining the fear that was already there, "...how would we do that?"
Annabeth thought for a second and then said slowly, "I've got a pretty good idea about that one...I have a feeling that the Doors would be where the monsters reform- where Gaea's army would be the strongest. We'll just have to find our way there."
Percy wasn't so sure if they could handle that many of the beings from hell- monsters were bad enough to deal with when they had dozens of healthy campers, let alone two injured ones (not to mention they'd have to fight the monsters in the area where the monsters were strongest and mortals were weakest), but he knew that failure was not an option. Somehow, they would do it. They would have to.
"Third," he said, "is to fight. And if we win, chances are, we're home free."
Annabeth nodded. "We also need some primary objectives." Before he could ask, she continued. "Things we need to do, like, right now."
Percy looked around uneasily. The wails and howls seemed to have increased in the time they'd spent talking. "Find someplace to sleep, some temporary shelter. Do the monsters...come out at night?"
She shrugged. "I've never been here, I wouldn't know. But it's probably better to be safe than sorry. Can you walk?"
Even before he tested himself out, he knew the answer.
He shook his head. "No...but-"
She stood up, dusting off her shorts. "I'll do it, then. It shouldn't be too hard."
"Wait," said Percy, "what are you doing?"
"This is a cavern, right?" she said, walking along the walls, "there should be small crevices or something in the- aha! That was easy!" She stepped back from the wall and grinned, and Percy could make out a crevice of some sort in the wall. Their temporary shelter.
With help from a couple more ambrosia squares, Percy was able to limp over to the crevice and crawl inside, though his back still hurt like Hades, as did his left leg, and he still couldn't take more than a shallow breath without a knife of pain slicing through his ribs.
The crevice, surprisingly, was more like a small cave of the size of the average classroom and a few heads higher than Percy was tall, they could move around comfortably inside it. It would definitely do for a resting place, probably for the next few days.
The finding of the shelter did nothing but raise their spirits, and in a hellish place such as the one they were in, they could certainly use a whole bunch of spirit-raising. And Percy guessed that, even in a place as dark and inhospitable as the one they were in, small things that keep people going, like will, luck, and hope, still existed.
They didn't have anything to use in the way of pillows or blankets, so they lay on the flattest section of floor they could find, hands intertwined, sharing Annabeth's backpack as a pillow, and it was at that moment that Percy realized how tired he was. That's what falling to Tartarus and taking the full force of the impact does to a guy, he guessed.
He turned over to look at Annabeth, not really knowing what to say. "So...assessing the situation," he said, remembering the survival course he and Annabeth had taken from Grover.
She nodded with approval. "We're in the deepest, darkest part of the Underworld."
Percy continued. "We're both injured, probably won't be back to full strength for a few more days."
"We've got to beat pretty much all the monsters in the world, by traveling through the depths of hell to a place who's location we aren't sure of yet."
"We don't know how much time has passed, or, for that matter, how much time we have."
"And if we fail, then the world as we know it will come to an end."
Hope looked bleak for a while as the two contemplated the predicament they were in. But then, Percy gave Annabeth a watery smile and held up their intertwined hands, gripping hers a little tighter in his and kissing it again, something he would never have had the guts to do three months ago. It was amazing, how a life or death situation in the most hellish place on earth could change a guy.
"But," he reminded her, "we've got each other. We're together."
Ignoring the cheesiness, Annabeth smiled back. "Together," she agreed, like she did when they were hanging over the pit in Arachnae's temple, and she didn't say what they were both thinking. How that, even though they were in a place just about as bad as it gets in the world, with bodies so injured even walking became a difficulty, with a task ahead of them they weren't sure could be completed even if they were at full strength- the fact that they were together kind of made up for it.
Almost a little bit unsure of himself, Percy leaned his head forwards slowly, and he could feel Annabeth still smiling against his lips when they met.
It was only a short kiss, and to the untrained observer, it may have remained just that. But to Percy and Annabeth, it was a whole lot more. It stood for security, will, inseparability, drive, determination...
And hope.
Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase were going to beat the odds or die succeeding.
Author's Notes: I hope you liked that! I did my homework on how Tartarus works, so I assure you that everything you read from now will be accurate.
Reviews would be greatly appreciated.
Edit: As of July 16th, 2013.
-epicsilverbullet
