Disclaimer: I don't of PJO or anything else I might mention in this story.

Hello! Sorry for not updating for a while, I've been busy. But I bring with me, along with this apology, another chapter! Yay!

Enjoy, R&R!

- Shadows, my Friends -

I step through the shadowy gateway and am enveloped by darkness. Not the sort of darkness you find in Tartarus which is a lack of light. Here there is a lack of everything. The first time I ended up here I was trapped for 4 sleep cycles, escaping on the fifth. While I was there I couldn't sense anything, not the floor, or even the air. As far as I knew there wasn't an atmosphere in this place, or anything else for that matter. I couldn't even sense myself while I was there, it was just a void.

That had me pretty scared. I had stared down the fiercest monsters to ever roam the earth and I got creeped out by the dark? I live in the dark, but not this kind of dark. This dark simply had nothing in it.

That was my first visit and to this date, the only unintentional one. My second visit went a little better; though that's not saying much. I had been trying for a month to re-enter the shadowrealm in hopes of exploring it as a possible escape from Tartarus. I had already been in the pit for too long and was quite alright with leaving whenever the opportunity arose.

I had finally succeeded in entering the shadowrealm for a second time but once again, the emptiness of the place caught me off guard. Nonetheless I choose to explore further into this void walking for what seemed like forever. My sleep cycles had shifted as my body had slowly adapted to the dark environment it was forced to cope in.

I walked for a month worths of sleep cycles meaning it was probably closer to two months that I was in there. I slept until I woke and stayed up until I dropped, much longer than any mortal would.

In my two months of exploration I found out quite a bit... of nothing. It seemed to be all that was in this place, nothing. In the two months I walked in a sort of straightish line I not once hit any walls, encountered any life or even tripped and fell. Well, that's not entirely true, I tripped on my own foot once but I didn't fall because as soon as my decent ended, I just kept walking, presumably downwards; if there is an up or down in this place.

I tried to call out once, I hadn't at first because of Tartarus. In there, if you yell or even so much as whisper, something will hear you and in Tartarus, that's never a good thing. Here however, I had gone this entire time without encountering anything and it was starting to creep me out so I decided to go for it.

"Hello, is there anything here?" I yelled loudly. As soon as the words had left my mouth I had already drawn Riptide and was holding it out in front of me. At least, I thought I was, though I couldn't be sure as I couldn't see anything. Not even Riptide's glow could penetrate the shadows.

After not hearing anything for what I counted to be three minutes I call out again, the same message and this time I took notice of my own voice. It had changed in the time I had spent in Tartarus, it was now a foreign raspy sound. It was deeper and more commanding but if you looked deeper into it and saw past the illusion of control you would find it is weak and flimsy like a tower of cards, ready to falling to pieces at a mere touch.

I kept listening and heard nothing. No echo, no answer it was like it just disappeared. I decided then to call it quits and camp here. Camping back then involved lying down and getting comfortable enough to stay asleep for any decent period of time.

My second visit ended when walked back into Tartarus. It would normally be incredibly hard to tell if you're in one place or the other because you can't see anything in either but as soon as I stepped back into Tartarus I started feeling my surroundings again. I was exactly where I left from, even though I knew that I had travelled at least a thousand miles.

I've only been in here four times before. This is my fifth time coming here and this time I know where I'm going. It was on the third time entering the shadowrealm that I figure out one of its biggest secrets.

I was in the middle of fighting the Minotaur, a Fury, the titan Krios and the Hydra all at once. The thing about fighting monsters in Tartarus is that you can't 'Send them to Tartarus' because they're already here. It took awhile to get used to them not disintegrating into dust once I've hit them once and actually take the time to cut each and every one of them repeatedly. Does it kill them? No, it doesn't but dead or no, it's hard to attack people without your arms and legs so I use the good ol' tiny pieces strategy.

Anyhow, I was fighting some unkillable monsters at the bottom of the world and I was doing a pretty good job at it. I had already decapitated the Minotaur, cut off the Fury's wings and was fighting Krios while dodging Hydra heads when the Minotaur in all his headless glory slipped a sword in my back.

It didn't kill me. Like the monsters I fought, I couldn't die while I was in Tartarus but getting stabbed in the back still hurt. A lot.

I kept fighting though, pain wasn't something I was unfamiliar with. I ducked under one of the Hydra's heads and jumped onto it causing one of it's other heads to bit off the one I was on. I jumped from head to head until I got to the Minotaur whose sword arm I cut off followed by both its legs while using it's body as a shield against the Hydra. The fight was going quite well until I sensed two more titans approaching. I probably could have taken them but I had been injured and I wasn't certain so I thought I'd try to escape to the shadowrealm.

That was my third visit to the shadowrealm. It was that time that I discovered that when you exit the shadowrealm, you can exit somewhere other than where you entered. This was huge. If it could get better at this I could use it to escape Tartarus. Of course, it didn't work. When ended up in the shadowrealm a fourth time to try and escape I found that as I pictured the surface and moved forwards, I remained in the shadowrealm. I tried this for a long time, trying at different places all over the world but none of my attempts were successful and I eventually gave up and returned to the pit.

I did escape eventually, after a long trek through Tartarus I came the god himself. Unlucky for him, I was having a pretty bad day when we met otherwise I would have just left him alone but after having to deal with 4 titans simultaneously and then take down Typhoon I was pretty mad and decided to pick a fight with him for the sake of it.

The fight was not the hardest I had fought but it was certainly the longest. Tartarus and I fought sword on sword, neither of us putting a single scratch on the other for the longest time until I decided to throw Riptide at him and tackle him to the ground. That move was probably the stupidest move I'd ever made. Tartarus was a lot stronger than me but I was faster and so we stayed grappling until I felt Riptide return to my pocket. I was counting on the fact the Tartarus didn't know about that feature of Riptide as I freed one hand and grabbing Riptide I cut his head from his body.

I quickly went to work slicing the rest of him into pieces so he couldn't regenerate and then noticed something that I hadn't while I was fighting him. The throne of Tartarus sat in front of me. It was similar to the thrones on Olympus and I deduced that it must be his throne of power. I decided to sit on it, just because no one was here to smite me and to see what it would feel like. When I managed to climb onto it I felt it's aura mixing with my own. The throne shrunk so it was the right size for me and I didn't think much of it at first and left it where it was.

It took awhile for me to realize the power I had and even longer still until I used that power to leave Tartarus. On the surface it was too tiresome to venture down and back up from Tartarus anytime I want to go to someplace different and so that is why I'm here in the shadowrealm. I've really grown quite fond of this place and the little comfort the darkness around me bestows now.

"Shadows, my friends." I think out loud as I picture Camp Half-Blood and step through a portal.

- Close -

Thank you for reading! Hopefully I will not be as long updating as last time but no promises, I now have two stories I'm writing. This one and another Percy Jackson story Man, Moon and Owl. Review please! It doesn't take much, just type in a few word in the comment box below but I really appreciate it. It doesn't matter if it's good or bad but your comments are what encourage me to write more, quicker.