Disclaimer: I don't own Percy Jackson. All my fanfic writings are non-profit. 'Tis all for fun.

Piece of Darkness III - Middlegame

Chapter Four

"Being a detective isn't all about torture and murder and monsters. Sometimes it gets truly unpleasant."

–Derek Landy, 'Skulduggery Pleasant'

I woke up in the Camp Half-Blood infirmary.

Um, wait.

More precisely, I woke up, sat bolt-upright in bed, looked around wildly like an alarmed rabbit, saw enough to realise I was in the infirmary, and then collapsed back onto the bed.

For a few vague moments of confusion, I couldn't figure out why I was even in the infirmary or how I'd got there, but as I woke up a little more, everything fell back into my mind with an emphatic thump. The spectres, the battle, the effort it had taken to stop them.

The message from Tartarus.

The one-room hospital was too dark to see more than vague outlines, but I could hear the sounds of breathing. The others, I guessed, as I lay there with my eyes closed. I didn't look around again, but just rested and thought for a while. For a number of minutes, I enjoyed the fact that nothing was trying to kill me.

I really wasn't a fan of armed combat.

After a while, I started to work things out.

It didn't feel like I'd been asleep all that long, so it was probably only a few hours since the battle with the spectres. Pretty much every joint in my body felt stiff, and my head was throbbing dully. Presumably, help from camp had arrived at some point after I'd managed to poof the last spectre. It was real nice of the cavalry to turn up once everything was over.

As I thought of the end of the fight, the memory of that voice - the voice of the pit - started to creep into the forefront of my mind, but I pushed it away. I was too tired to think about that now. Anyway, it didn't really seem like a good idea to chew that particular ominous moment over at night, in the dark. There are some things that should only be considered in the light of day.

I didn't think anything else for a few minutes, and I probably would have fallen back to sleep in another minute or two. Sounds of movement on my right roused me, though, and I turned over slowly.

I waited a moment or two before opening my eyes, just in case something was about to kill me. I wasn't really in the mood to catch someone in the act of murdering me.

When nothing happened, I cracked my eyes open warily, and saw the dim shape of Jane Welles lying on a bed next to me.

I blinked,

Despite the fact that there was barely enough light in the room to make out the ceiling or to see the end of the bed distinctly, Jane appeared to be reading a book.

Feeling unequal to the task of puzzling over this anomaly, I ignored it. I took another pause (I'm awfully slow when I wake up), before whispering, "Hey, Jane."

Jane looked up immediately, her dark eyes flicking from the pages of her book to my bed.

"Hey," she whispered back. "You're not dead. That's cool."

"Really?" I murmured slowly. "I'm sorry. You must be so disappointed."

Jane closed her book and placed it on her bedside table. "It's okay," she said, sitting up a little straighter in the bed. "You're not too dull or anything, so you can stick around."

"Are you trying to tell me," I said flatly, following her lead and sitting up in my bed. "that my life hangs in the balance of whether or not you find me too boring?"

"Well, yeah," Jane nodded, glancing with alarm at the other beds in the room as I rearranged my pillows a little too noisily. "All the monsters consult me when they're picking who they're going to kill next."

"Wow," I muttered, finally settling down. "You should make some business cards. Jane Welles: Destroyer of Boredom."

We sat in silence for a few moments. I noticed for the first time that we were close to the door of the infirmary, which was ajar. Slightly yellowish light from an overhead bulb spilled in through the gap, providing the room with its only illumination. Looking around at the other beds, I could make out only two other occupants, who were both asleep - or, at least, they were swathed in sheets and lying still.

"That's Kevin and Olivia," Jane confirmed my unspoken thoughts. "I woke up a little while after we arrived back. A couple of Apollo kids were handing around the ambrosia like it was Betty Crocker brownies. They nearly stuffed some down your throat, too, but I managed to stop them."

A chill of alarm rippled through me, followed by a wave of relief. "Thanks."

While I was an unusual mortal by most people's standards, I still didn't share most of the things that made a half-blood a demigod. Even a little nectar or ambrosia would kill me real dead.

"It's fine," Jane said, shrugging. "So then we were all bundled into bed, Kevin woke up briefly, but he went straight back to sleep when they gave him some nectar. I think that stuff works like a sedative on some people. They left us in here, told us not to talk—"

"Why would they tell us not to talk if three of us were unconscious?" I interjected, frowning.

"I don't know," Jane said, rolling her eyes. "Some of those Apollo kids are like 19th-century hospital matrons. Anyway, I fell asleep, and woke up about a half an hour ago."

"Ah," I nodded. "What time is it, then?"

Jane looked at a clock (which I hadn't noticed before) on the bedside table, and said, "Oh, it's nearly 5 a.m."

I peered intently at the clock, which was a good old-fashioned mechanical one, with none of those new-fangled digital displays or glowing green numbers. I couldn't make out the hands on it, never mind the numbers.

"Um," I said wisely, looking over at Jane with confusion. "How can you… read that clock?"

"Hey, don't ask me that," she said, looking back at me with her eyebrows raised in surprise. "I'm a daughter of Nyx, do you really think I can't see in the dark?"

"Oh yeah," I said slowly, rubbing my eyes.

Silence fell once more, though I didn't mind. It was nice, restful silence.

As I woke up more thoroughly, my thoughts started to move, inexorably, back to the battle. I realised that it had been the first real battle I'd ever been in. Admittedly, it hadn't exactly been a full-fledged clash between two armies or anything, but it had still been plenty intense for my liking. It was certainly one of the most stressful experiences I'd had, though it somehow hadn't been particularly traumatic. Maybe my journey to the depths of the Underworld had made me more or less immune to the shock of such pedestrian things as an attack of killer mutant ghosts.

"So, what happened after I was out?" Jane asked, as though she was reading my mind.

"Well…" I said slowly. For the first time, I thought about how I'd managed to use Olivia's magic rock. I had no clue how it had happened. I'd acted on pure instinct, and somehow I'd released the power in the stone. But I was just a mortal. That would have been impossible.

It's funny how often impossible things just sort of happen if no-one watches too hard.

I explained to Jane how Kevin had been taken down, and how I'd been the only one left. Her eyebrows scrunched together with both confusion and interest - she knew better than anyone that, when it came to confronting any number of enemies (even one) on my own, I wasn't exactly what you'd call Herculean. She was clearly struggling to imagine how I'd taken down all the killer spectres. I was having difficulty with the idea, too, to be honest.

I wasn't sure whether or not to be annoyed by how supremely unconcerned Jane looked as I recounted being strangled by a spectre.

"You could at least try to look worried," I told her, trying to sound stern.

"What, why?" she said smilingly. "You're sitting right next to me, obviously you had it under control."

"Oh, yeah, totally under control," I said darkly. I detailed my sudden, instinctive usage of the magic stone, making abundantly clear how it had been a total fluke.

Jane sat in silence until I'd finished, and stayed quiet for a moment afterwards. I watched her, waiting for some wise observation. Finally, she looked at me, and said sanguinely, "You know, this means it was actually a good thing that Olivia got hurled through those doors."

I just stared at her.

"Hey, if that hadn't happened, her stone wouldn't have been so handily close to you!" she said, raising her hands. "Then where would we be?"

I shook my head. I'd heard of combat pragmatism, but this was ridiculous.

"But what do you think of this?" I asked her, shifting about a little in my bed. "How could I have called up that magic? It doesn't make any sense. I've never shown any ability like that before."

Jane took a moment to consider that. "I don't know," she stared intently into empty space. "Maybe you have some latent godly blood in the family tree, or something. Maybe a god reached out to help you, though that seems very unlikely."

Another thought struck me, and I looked at Jane carefully. She, too, had displayed new abilities and powers during that battle. She'd seemed more powerful than ever before. Before that battle, any manipulation of the shadows had worn out her pretty much instantly, but Jane had lasted quite a long time during the conflict. It didn't take a great leap of imagination to guess that this power boost was linked to her new sword, her mysterious trip to the Underworld, and her overall change of demeanour.

I was sorely tempted to ask the daughter of Nyx then and there what was going on. I knew, though, that it would only put her on the defensive, and I'd done enough fighting for the moment.

"So that was it?" Jane said, emerging from her reverie and jolting me from mine. "You killed all the spectres?"

"Yeah," I nodded. I explained how I'd vaporised the rest of the ghosts, going into a lot more detail than was necessary - not because I particularly enjoyed this part of the story, but because I really didn't want to consider what had come next.

Finally, though, I had no choice.

"So there was only one spectre left," I told Jane, who was listening eagerly. "He nearly got me, but I managed to blast his legs off. And then…"

I paused, thinking of the moment when Tartarus had spoken through the spirit. I'd been so exhausted at the time that I'd barely connected with the terrible, cold darkness that had started to creep into me when he'd emerged. I'd last felt that ominous power when we'd been down at the Edge of the West, but somehow it seemed far worse up here, in the land of the living. Down in the Underworld, the shadowy presence of Tartarus did not seem overly out of place, but there in the lobby of the Empire State Building, it had felt like a tearing of nature.

"And then?" Jane prompted me.

I took a deep breath.

"And then, Tartar— the son of Chaos spoke to me."

("Son of Chaos" was the Tartarus' euphemistic name. Chiron kept telling us to use it instead of his true name. Something about not invoking the awareness of immensely powerful beings.)

"Okay," Jane said slowly, her eyes wide.

"He took over the last spectre," I plunged on, trying to avoid thinking of how chilling that moment had been. "He told me that the invasion of ghosts was only a warning. He said that if we didn't meet his demands, far worse things would happen to the whole city."

The sudden sound of quiet movement made Jane and I both jump, but it was only Kevin turning over in bed. The daughter of Nyx eyed him for a moment, then turned back to me.

"And what are his demands?" she asked, folding her arms tightly.

I thought about it for a brief moment, making sure I recollected it correctly. "He wants something called 'the Ritual of the Pit' handed over to him by the winter solstice.".

Jane looked rather blank and unimpressed. She looked away from me, tilting her head as she frowned in confusion.

"What's that?" she said uncertainly.

"I don't know," I yawned, starting to feel tired again. Telling the story had used up what little energy I'd gotten from sleep. "Something to do with the Son of Chaos, obviously." I paused, glanced towards the clock, remembered I couldn't see in the dark, and said, "What time is it now?"

"Oh, it's almost six o'clock," Jane said, her expression still rather puzzled.

I nodded vaguely, and started to say something else, but my tongue felt heavy with weariness. I blinked once, twice, trying to rouse myself. The third time I blinked, I fell asleep.

Kevin was woefully unamused by the fact that he'd been beaten by a mere super-powered demonic spectre. For someone who didn't like conflict very much, he took success in battle very seriously.

"To be fair, almost all of us got taken down," I said from my bed, trying to reason with him.

"You didn't!" he exclaimed from his bed, managing to look fearsomely annoyed even whilst wearing teddy bear pyjamas. He folded his arms crossly.

"Well, they weren't as interested in attacking me, since I'm just the mortal guy, right?" I said, in placatory tone. Kevin's only reply was a dour head-shake.

Olivia was equally irritated, although I felt she had better justification for it - who wants to be thrown through the doors of the Empire State Building by a gang of intransigent monster ghosts? She'd started grumbling about two minutes after waking up.

"It was humiliating," she muttered, as she sat up in bed and plumped her pillows aggressively. "A daughter of Hecate, the only child of Hecate with enough strength to perform quanta transmission without collapsing, and I end up being thrown through a pair of stupid doors."

"Look at it this way," said Jane, who was already dressed and preparing to leave the infirmary. "You were brought down while heroically defending the entranceway to Olympus."

This did not mollify Olivia, who seemed to take it as a personal insult that she had been unable to personally annihilate every one of the spectres who'd been so impudent as to manhandle her.

(I didn't dare mention how I'd used her stone. I didn't want to be turned into a frog or something.)

I rather hoped that I'd get to stay in the infirmary for a day or two. That way I'd stay out of all the morbid, apocalyptic discussions, maybe even get to miss the apocalypse altogether. It wasn't like they needed me around for it to happen. I could watch the billowing, hellfire-red mushroom clouds of destructions through the window.

Unfortunately, the only thing wrong with me was a lack of enthusiasm, and I was discharged by eleven o'clock. The others were also quickly dispatched back into camp, though they were a lot happier about it than me. Kevin and Jane were practically discharging themselves, and Olivia was so restless in bed that it was clearly counterproductive to keep her there any longer.

(Another reason why I'm glad I'm not a half-blood: it means I don't suffer from almost irrational bouts of ADHD. I mean, no disrespect to people who do, but seriously…)

We did at least get the morning off, though the good mood induced by this was greatly reduced by the announcement that a camp council was going to be held after lunch.

I hated these meetings. They weren't formal or anything, what with being held around the rec room's ping-pong table, but they always managed to make me feel like a total outsider. The half-bloods had their community, and it was usually indistinguishable from a regular teenager sort of community. When they were all together talking about serious mythological matters, though, I felt like a pacifist at an arms manufacturers' convention.

It wasn't that they tried to make me feel like an outsider (well, mostly), but something about this type of strategic conference forcefully reminded me that I didn't really belong in the demigod world. I understood the things they talked about, I participated in the discussion, but I always had a sense that I was simply not in my world.

Of course, that wasn't my only issue.

Since it had emerged that Tartarus, the ancient, evil primordial deity, was rising from the depths of his prison, we'd had a number of these councils. Supposedly, their purpose was to decide how to combat Tartarus, but all that ever happened was delays, delays, and more delays.

Chiron said that it wasn't possible for us alone to do anything to fight Tartarus, that we had to wait for him to make the first move. He said we couldn't just fight shadows.

That wasn't the full truth, though, and we all knew it. The reason we hadn't made any move against the son of Chaos was that the orders from on high were to sit on our hands and wait. And when I say "on high", I'm being literal. You don't get much higher than Mount Olympus, after all.

A lot of people were okay with this - most people, in fact. The Greek world had had a lot of turmoil over the last decade, and very few people were keen for another war. The threat from Rhea had eased somewhat in the autumn, since Chiron had reached an agreement with Xavier Graecus, the Rhean high priest. The danger to mortals and to half-bloods had not quantifiably increased, so most people took the view that there was no point in chasing after shadows, because it would only plunge us into unnecessary darkness.

I understood that view. It was a reasonable one, a position completely founded on logic. I, of all people, could totally see that it made sense.

But I, of all people, knew that it was wrong.

Nico di Angelo, Alice Evans and I had been the three people who'd discovered Tartarus' awakening. We'd been there, at the very edge of western civilisation. We'd felt the dark power, the strength so great it made a powerful demigod such as Nico seem like little more than a twig in a hurricane. Perhaps if I'd seen the power of Tartarus from afar, I'd be able to pretend that it was no great threat, that it would just go away.

But I'd seen it close up. I'd felt that power hold my life in its hand, with only a tiny thought making the difference between life or death. I'd experienced the cold grasp of the pit - not only that. I'd seen the cold hand of Tartarus drag away Nico di Angelo.

So that was why I was always the advocate for action. A couple others agreed with me, among them Alice Evans, who backed me up whenever she was at camp - which wasn't very often. The world of the gods had taken too much from her.

But maybe now something would happen. The son of Chaos had certainly made a move, unless the gods were going to try to convince us that an invading army of demonic ghosts was actually a gesture of conciliation and friendship.

So for the first time, as I headed to the Big House for the meeting, I felt a little hopeful.

I was late to the council, as I'd gotten stuck telling the story of the battle to Josh and Sophie, the two magic-obsessed twins in the Hermes cabin. I hurried up to the farmhouse, and as I bounded up onto the porch, a cheery voice to my left said, "Hi!"

I looked around.

"Hi, Rachel," I said.

Everyone in camp knew who Rachel Dare was. Apparently she was the Oracle, though I could never quite believe it. Something about her paint-spattered jeans and her constant demeanour of anarchic friendliness didn't really fit with the idea of a serious, doom-bringing Oracle.

She was sitting in a wicker chair on the porch, in her usual T-shirt and jeans. I didn't really talk to her much, but I knew she was good friends with Percy and Annabeth. Everyone always seemed surprised that I wasn't best friends with her, since we were the only two mortals who spent time at camp, but the fact was that I hardly ever ran into her.

"What up, man," Rachel said drily, standing up and looking at me with those sharp green eyes. Her aura was the only thing that made her Oraclehood seem likely - it was a very bright green, and it looked oddly misty, totally unlike any demigod aura.

"I'm just going into the council," I said, tilting my head towards the doors. I guess my flat tone gave away my feelings, because Rachel grinned knowingly.

"Me, too, unfortunately," she said, stepping towards me and sticking her hands in her pockets. "I hate these things. It's so tedious, and everyone just argues."

I frowned at her, as I pushed open the door. "But I've never seen you at them."

"And now you know why," Rachel said cheerfully, walking in behind me and tugging the door shut.

We moved, slowly, towards the rec room, from which we could hear the murmur of voices and movement, as the demigods assembled.

"So I hear that you've got pure sight," the Oracle said, with unusual levels of interest.

"Uh, yeah," I replied, giving her a wary sidelong glance. A lot of people had been asking about that lately. It was starting to get a little tedious. The conversation usually ended in them being woefully unimpressed by my inability to blow things up.

"Cool," Rachel nodded. Then she stopped, a few feet away from the door into the rec room. I paused, too, turning to eye her curiously.

"Let me tell you something," Rachel said, glancing at the room ahead and lowering her voice conspiratorially. "Between us mortals."

"Yeah?" I said, crossing my arms. She was a few inches taller than me, but the Oracle was not remotely imposing.

"Those guys," she said, jerking her thumb towards the door, through which we could see the half-bloods milling around the ping-pong table. "They're a gang of idiots."

"Um," I said wisely, staring at her. I'd rather expected the Oracle to be a pretty big advocate for the role of the half-blood.

"For God's sake, look at them," she said impatiently, flapping her hands in the air. "They're discussing the fate of the world while standing around a ping-pong table."

"Yeah," I nodded, starting to smile. "But so are we."

Rachel rolled her eyes.

"Sure," she muttered, turning to step inside. "But at least we don't act like it's normal. These half-bloods are like, yeah so we're gonna save the world today, gonna kill some monsters. You and me are like, for Christ's sake, what's with the we?"