:3 Hi! Um… This was actually typed in the fanfiction "Create Document" box. My computer is completely out of memory, so I literally can't save a word document without deleting like a megabyte of data. (Anything less gets instantly filled up.) Anyone know how to fix that? D:

*CoughGETANEWONEMORONCough* I mean besides that...

Something so evil shouldn't look pretty. That was the first thing that popped into Tyx's head when he looked at it. He, Annabeth, and Grease were all standing in the small, unassuming room at the end of a long tunnel that was nicknamed the "Highway to Hell," but no one actually knew what the joke meant or why it was funny. Still, no matter how tiny the space or how confusing and disconnected the humor... it was impressive. The smooth blue-black sheen of the obsidian, the deep liquid swirl of the portal, the little purple snowflakes drifting through the stuffy underground air… it looked amazing. Of course, he'd seen one before… but there was something about that eerie noise it made that you just couldn't quite remember properly afterward.

Well, it wasn't exactly sunshine and roses, but Tyx preferred the dark and dank anyway.

Still, there was something that was bothering him, more than anything else. For some reason, he wasn't scared.

Granted, he was two meters away from the entrance to hell ‒ literally ‒ but at least he could get some space. The air might not smell like pig feces and methane... well, okay, maybe it would, but he could snag some mushrooms.

Mushroom stew tasted so much better than carrot and potato, and if he gathered enough he could probably bribe Rye, their chef, to fix him some.

Then, he thought about all the ghasts, and pigmen, and blazes…

Oh, now he was scared.

"Ready?" asked Annabeth.

"No," he replied, and stepped through the gate.

There was a moment, a heartbeat, where all he saw was the infinite spiral of purple, stretching on and on, filling his vision. He was floating, weightless, bodiless…

And then the air was so hot he had to fight down the impulse to rip off his armor, and smelled faintly of burning pork. He would know ‒ he'd set some piggies on fire in his day. It wasn't personal or anything; he just needed the cooked meat.

"Woah," Annabeth choked out, gasping for air. Tyx himself was taking slow, deliberate breaths, trying hard to ignore the humidity. He was actually surprised that, with this much water in the air, the lava hadn't all turned to obsidian. Really, being on fire in this weather just seemed wrong.

Then, he took a step out of the portal. If Grease hadn't grabbed him around the middle, he would've died; they were camped on a tiny obsidian platform, high above a massive sea of bubbling magma.

"Oh…" Annabeth said, rather faintly.

"It's fine," Tyx squeaked, wishing his voice was as deep as Grease's. "We'll just... build a bridge.

"Uh, what?"

Right, she was from another universe. Did the word bridge have some other meaning there? Grinning impishly, he lifted his inventory pouch from where it hung on a leather thong around his neck, zipping it open.

"What is that?"

Tyx almost dropped the stack of cobblestone he'd just pulled from his pouch.

"What do you mean, what is that?!" Grease stared at her with his mouth open, for once looking flabbergasted just like a normal person.

"I meant, what is that?" she replied, rolling her eyes. "Different universe, remember?"

"You don't have an inventory?!" he half-shrieked, half-whispered. It was a strange kind of noise, like he was trying to be quiet but his voice cracked and came out a couple octaves too high.

"No."

That was just ridiculous. Everyone had an inventory! Mobs did, or at least zombies and skeletons, and they weren't even people!

"How do you carry building blocks?" he asked, trying not to stare. It was just so strange. The idea of only carrying what he could hold in his hands was insane, and because of the actual size of a block, pretty much impossible.

"I, uh, don't. Building blocks?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

"These," Grease grunted, flicking a stack of what looked like dirt out of his own pouch (Hooked neatly onto his belt, which was cinched around his waist on the outside of his armor) and carefully leaned over the edge into the bottomless abyss. Well, it wasn't strictly bottomless. There was a bottom, a bottom that was bright orange and made bone-chilling bubbling noises.

"What are you doing?" Annabeth demanded, reaching out awkwardly as if to grab his armor in case he might fall, taking in his sheer size and density, and thinking better of it.

"Getting us out of here. A ghast might show up any‒"

"Ree‒EET!" Tyx froze, willing it to go away, go away, don't notice us please don't kill us!

Hushhh! A huge flaming black orb sailed out of the gloom, right at their tiny little platform that had absolutely no room whatsoever to dodge. Oh, right, and because one of them (probably him) had apparently offended Notch somehow, getting hit would mean getting knocked into open air and plunging to one's death.

"We're going to die," he pointed out, and slashed at the incoming attack with the spoon.

A spoon, and it deflected the fireball perfectly. Well, it hit some mountain somewhere instead of the evil squid-monster it belonged to, but it hadn't melted off their flesh, and that was something.

"Oh gods!" Annabeth yelped, staring at the ghast. The angry orange eyes, like the inside of a furnace, the vast expanse of snow-white skin, the weird little tentacles… it wasn't exactly pretty.

"See, this is why I hate this place!" he explained. "Grease, hurry up!"

"What is he doing?" she asked, staring at him. He had frozen, arm hanging off the small extension he'd already made.

"Uh…" he said.

"What?"

"I tried to get out my sword… and I dropped all my dirt." Seriously?!

"Wait, what? Never mind!" Annabeth made a magnificent arc with her sword, sending the next fireball sailing off into the distance.

"I'll build. Does anyone have a bow?" Tyx asked.

"Nope," replied the other two, in perfect unison.

"We went to the Nether and no one brought a bow?!" Cursing, he edged over the precipice, trying very hard not to notice the bright fiery glow coming from beneath him. Whipping out his cobblestone, he separated one block and stuck it to the side of their platform, grumbling about how it made no sense for the portal to end up over here, and why were they the first ones to test it anyway?

Of course, he didn't think once about running back into the overworld with his tail between his legs. Kitty had told him that she would nail him to the outside of the wall and let spiders eat his innards, and he never could quite tell if she was joking or not.

"How does that even‒" Annabeth paused to swipe at another projectile, "work?"

"It just does. Don't question physics, or you'll end up crawling through the forest babbling to yourself for the rest of your life."

"There is no way we can just build a bridge over to shore. That doesn't work! The whole thing will collapse under its own weight."

"You do realize that this entire thing is floating, right?!" Tyx squeaked. He hadn't meant to squeak, but the stress was starting to get to him. One lucky shot…

Boom! What?! That pasty little marshmallow hadn't even been aiming at them! It had… shot the portal. Oh, that was just wonderful.

"Since when do ghasts have brains?!" he demanded.

"You had to put yours somewhere," Grease replied, his voice completely level because of course he wasn't being insulting or anything.

"Hey!"

"You gave sharpness ten to a spoon," Grease pointed out.

Tyx had to resist the urge to hide the offending object behind his back.

They were about halfway to the other side when the ghast made a mistake. It flew too low, and Annabeth pulled something out of her sleeve and tossed it at the monster.

A sword? She threw a sword? When did she even get that? Why throw it? In the odd half-light of the Nether, it looked almost like some sort of cross between wood and gold. Twirling end over end, it cut through the air like an efficiency pick through netherrack, and…

Went straight through the ghast. He could swear the little, or huge, monster looked almost surprised, like its lunch usually didn't throw things at it.

"Styx," Annabeth muttered. "I liked that knife." Sticks? Huh?

"How did it just go through like that?!" he demanded, placing some more blocks.

"Don't question physics," she replied, smirking.

"And what's a knife?"

"What's a… What?!"

"Mra‒AHH!" moaned the ghast. Twice. At the… same time.

"There's two of them!" he wailed, in his best 'Why me?!' voice.

"Hurry up," Grease grunted. Grease never shouted, or mumbled, or squeaked. He had only two gears: grunt, and grunt quietly. Then, the two ghasts fired almost simultaneously, causing Tyx to make the least dignified sound of his life.

"Jump," said Grease, with his usual solid stoicism.

"What?! That's at least twenty feet down," Annabeth protested.

"Don't question PHYSI-I-I-I-I-I-ICS!" he shouted at the top of his lungs, taking a flying leap off the bridge and plummeting towards the ground.

For the third time in as many minutes, Percy jumped nearly a foot in the air, uncapping Riptide and pointing it at the pig's face.

Somehow, even though it had been nearly an hour and they'd made no move to attack him, they still scared him every time he saw one out of the corner of his eye. It was definitely pretty creepy, how they always shuffled around for no apparent reason, keeping him in sight, but never did anything.

His feet ached, party from walking and partly because the strange rock that made up most of what he was walking on was hot. It burned him even through the thick soles of his sneakers. Then, there was the mud. Well, he thought it was mud. It was a really nasty yellow-brown color, and the weird twisted faces that floated on the top weren't even the worst part. It sucked at his legs, making him sink at least an inch into the evil-smelling muck and wouldn't let go without a fight. Despite all that, he'd have loved the stuff if it were actually as icy cold as it looked. It wasn't. He did what he could to avoid it, but often it was either slog through or fall into a pit of lava. What a choice.

Suddenly, the ground disappeared right in front of him. Percy tipped forward, landing painfully on his left arm.

"Ah!" he gasped, more from surprise than anything else.

"Who's there?!" demanded a harsh whisper.

Percy froze, gripping Riptide so hard his knuckles went white.

"I can hear you."

What was he going to do? Well, whoever it was obviously knew he was there, so he decided to hope it didn't want to eat him.

"You can come out, I won't hurt you."

"Boo!" someone shouted, as a head burst right out of the ground, only a few feet away from him. Percy had to bite down on his lip to keep from yelling, especially when he got a good look at it.

He looked a bit like cartoon Satan, with dark red skin, a pointed tail, and little horns. Innocent, almost cow-ish brown eyes peered up at him from his hiding place under the mud, not going with the rest of him at all. To top it off, there was a small, shiny black goatee plastered across his chin.

Still, Percy barely glanced at all that. He was too busy staring at the extremely sharp imperial gold sword he was holding.

"You have a sword! What is that even made of?!" he demanded, in a weirdly high-pitched voice.

"Uh, yeah. It's made of…" he paused, not sure if he should give away the nature of his weapon. Then again, if the… whatever it was were a monster, he would know exactly what Riptide was. "…bronze. Celestial bronze."

"Bronze? What's that?"

"What? It's… a metal…" Percy trailed off. He actually didn't know much else about Celestial bronze, or bronze in general.

"Okay. Hey, are you an overlander?" The creature's eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"A… what?"

"Oh! Good! Follow me," he said, smiling in a very un-devilish way and trotting off. Percy couldn't help noticing that he had goat hooves, just like Grover.

"So," Percy said, pocketing Riptide as he jogged to catch up. "What's your name?"

"Oh, I'm Emma," she replied, beaming. Oops... In his defense, it was really hard to tell. And, she had a goatee.

"Okay… how old are you?"

"I'm six!" Emma declared proudly, holding up one hand, six black-clawed fingers spread out for all to see.

"Oh. That's nice."

They continued on, with Percy sometimes stopping to rest his now blistered feet. He soon found himself fantasizing about a cool, refreshing can of coke, or maybe some lemonade… actually, he wouldn't turn down a hot tin can full of tomato juice. The hot, humid air seemed to suck up water like a sponge, and he was sweating so much he probably looked like he'd been on the business end of a hose recently.

"Do you have any water?" he pleaded, glancing over at Emma.

"Water? Are you a new-spawn or something?"

"A what?" he asked, baffled.

"Obviously, yes. A new-spawn is someone who just, I don't know, started to exist here. Dee explains it better. I spawned six years ago!" She beamed, catching his eye to make sure he noticed how old and mature she was.

"Uh, yeah. That sounds about right," Percy lied. Well, it wasn't exactly a lie. He hadn't been here long, only a few hours. Technically, he hadn't existed here before the… whatever it was. Making a conscious effort not to glance at his palm, he shoved his hands in his pockets.

"Come on! Home is through here," she told him, ducking into a tiny opening in one wall, so small and with insides so exactly like everything else he almost couldn't see it.

"Okay…" Percy replied, squeezing into the narrow doorway. "So Emma… are you the only one here?"

Just as the hallway widened into an enormous cave, he felt strong, rough hands lift him clear off the floor, his shoes dangling uselessly.

"No."

"Don't question PHYSI-I-I-I-I-I-ICS!" shouted Tyx, and dove off the end of the bridge. For a horrified second, Annabeth was sure he was going to land in the lava, but his jump carried him several feet from the edge. He was still standing, which was probably impossible. Human legs couldn't take that high a fall without bending, and there he was, stiff-kneed and fine. This whole parallel universe thing was a bit unfair.

"Come on!" he yelled, backing away from the edge and under a small overhang a few yards away from where he landed.

Stopping to bat away another fireball, Grease backed up to the empty shell that was supposed to be their way home.

"Follow," he said, and launched himself into empty space.

Of the two of them, Annabeth had definitely expected Grease to be less graceful ‒ after all, he was made of stone. Somehow, he managed to execute a perfect swan-dive and rolled to safety, getting up and sprinting over to Tyx.

"Come on!" Tyx yelled, beckoning frantically. Wait, she had to…

Oh.

As far as she could tell, physics were very different here. There was no way she could land on locked knees and not break anything, and if she dropped that far there was a good chance she wouldn't be able to make it under the overhang. Their physics said she'd be fine. She wasn't quite sure she trusted their physics.

Another fireball exploded against the walkway, not six feet away from her, setting fire to the stone. Then again, if she landed right…

Annabeth backed up as far as she could, praying silently to every single god on Olympus and quite a few that weren't. Then, she began to pelt towards the end of the bridge as fast as she could. Bending her knees, just tipping her toes off the edge so that she could push forward as well as up… it would've been a great jump.

Just as her feet left the stone, a noise like… well, she'd heard enough fireballs detonate to know what it sounded like. Something hot slammed into her legs, and somehow the spot she was trying to land in became the ceiling, and something hard cracked as her back slammed into it.

It wasn't the first time she'd had the breath knocked out of her, but it was just as terrifying as the last time ‒ probably more so, because the stupid ghost thing was still there. She could see it from where she lay, spread-eagle on jagged maroon rock, its empty eyes locked on her. A deep, fire-rimmed mouth yawned wide, heating up, ready to finish her off…

"What are you doing?!" shouted Tyx. Annabeth couldn't see him from where she was, struggling to take a breath, her legs screaming in pain. "Get up!"

Easier said than done. She tried to move her arms, legs, anything, but they just laid there like limp spaghetti.

"Sorry," grunted a gruff voice. Then, she was up in the air, moving fast, being jostled around… but not right below a fire-breathing monster, which was an improvement.

Under the overhang, Grease swung her down from his broad shoulder and set her down much less gently than she would have liked on stone that smelled like sulfur and methane.

Her breath was finally coming back in short gasps, and the feeling was slowly returning to her hands and feet ‒ which began to hurt. A lot.

"Ungh…" she groaned.

"What happened?! Are you okay?" Tyx looked on the verge of panicking.

"Yeah," she managed, trying not to be sick.

"That wasn't so big a fall," Grease frowned, giving her an odd look.

"Maybe not for you, but in my world, you don't just fall two stories and get up."

"Oh," Tyx chirped. "Physics are different for you. Makes total sense."

"Don't question physics," she grinned, sitting up painfully.

"Can you walk okay?"

"Gimme a minute." Painfully, Annabeth managed to haul herself to her feet, wincing and reaching behind her to massage her bruised back. Her legs really stung, they must have been burned a little in the blast. Upon further inspection, they did look pretty red. Well, there wasn't any cold water around, and she had no idea how else she was supposed to treat a burn without any kind of medical equipment, so it'd have to heal on its own.

"So," she said, once she no longer felt like throwing up, "Where exactly are we going?"

"No idea!" Tyx exclaimed. "We want to follow the X axis, so… that way." He pointed in a seemingly random direction.

"The… what axis?" she asked, confused. As far as she knew, the world couldn't have an X and Y axis. Since the earth was a sphere, not a circle, two-dimensional geometry on its surface was non-Euclidian; you had to use latitude and longitude.

"The X axis. It goes, umm… East to West."

"You can't have a straight X axis unless the world is flat!" she protested, once again at a complete loss.

"The world is flat," Tyx said, in the tones of someone whose little sister had said… well, had said that the earth was flat.

"Your world is flat?!"

"Your world is a triangle?!"

"What?" Annabeth blurted. Why would anyone go from flat to triangle?! Triangles were flat!

"Oh. It's… a giant… OH! An O!"

"This isn't a guessing game Tyx. It's a sphere."

"What? Really? Well, anyway, we still have to go that way." Tyx replied, grinning as if the last minute of arguing over whether or not the world was flat had just come up, with both parties somehow being right. This universe had very different logic.

"Why?" she asked.

"Nether fortresses tend to form on the Z axis," Grease said, beginning to take his long, clunking strides in the direction Annabeth assumed was East.

"The Z axis?" Wasn't that up and down?

"Oh, and I suppose in your world Z is vertical or something," Tyx rolled his eyes, grinning at the obvious stupidity of such a system.

"It is, actually."

"Ah. Whatever, don't question physics." It wasn't technically a physics difference, but bickering over which letter meant what seemed pretty pointless anyway.

"Come on," Grease motioned towards the entrance to their tiny cave, apparently unfazed by the gigantic blimp monster that was probably still out there.

"What about the ghast?"

"Nothing to be done. We'll just have to make a break for it," Tyx said, not looking very happy with this prospect.

"We can't just go through here?" Annabeth asked, gesturing at the back of the cave ‒ which continued on a lot further than she'd thought. She could see where it opened up into another cavern.

"Oh," Tyx said, grinning like an idiot. Well, not that he'd exactly been Einstein before. "I guess we can."

"Let's go," Grease mumbled, his usual stoic self.

As soon as the tunnel began to widen, Annabeth suddenly found herself face to face with a very dead, very bipedal, very dangerous-looking pig.

"Ah!" she gasped reflexively, her hand flying to the hilt of her sword.

"No!" Tyx shouted, his voice echoing in the enclosed space as he forcibly placed himself between her and the creature. Remembering what he'd said before about peaceful nether-dwelling monsters that could "pretty much disembowel" them, she froze in place and slowly, deliberately raised her empty hands.

"You don't have to do that," Grease grumbled, brushing roughly past another pig without a second glance. Whatever they were, they didn't seem to care one way or another whether any of the humans existed or not, which was a bit disconcerting. Still, being ignored was a lot better than being eaten.

The three of them continued on, Annabeth still shuffling slightly, wincing at the burns on her legs. They weren't bad, more like the burn you get when you're six and you really want a marshmallow and accidentally touch the charred end of a stick that's been in the fire.

Not that she'd ever done that.

The ghoul ‒ ghast, whatever ‒ was still making those eerie chirping, whining noises, so it had to be out there somewhere. Hopefully it couldn't see them past the huge array of cliffs between them, or maybe it would just leave them alone if they left its territory.

Yeah, as if.

"Right," Tyx began, after a minute or two of walking. "Anyone have a flint and steel?" he looked grim for some reason.

"Why? The last thing we want is more fire, isn't it?" Annabeth said, non-plussed.

"For the portal," Grease explained. The portal, which had been blasted and was now a lot less operational.

"Would matches work?" she asked, pulling a book out of her pocket. She and Percy had been planning on going camping, and they hadn't wanted to bring Leo. The thought made her stomach twist a little... she missed him. If nothing else, she wished she wasn't the only one here operating on different physics.

"What?"

Great. "Matches. You drag them along here," she said, demonstrating with her finger. (She didn't want to waste any.) "And they catch fire."

"Sweet! That should work," Tyx exclaimed, ogling the matches like a five-year-old with a working toy helicopter. Grease gave her just the tiniest of smiles, which for him was like Tyx almost falling into some lava with excitement... which he did. Twice.

"These are so cool! How did you make them?"

Not wanting to get into it with Tyx about how matches worked, she kept silent. After a few more comments from Tyx that ran each other over and mixed up so much she couldn't actually tell what he was saying, they lapsed into a comfortable silence.

Then, it got less comfortable. By the time she realized what was happening, the awkward silence was so profound it swallowed up her words before she even thought them.

"So," Tyx chirped, clapping his hands and destroying the quiet like an elephant in a china shop. It was probably the most lamely nonchalant thing she had seen anyone do in this world so far, so she couldn't help laughing a little.

"Seriously though, what now?" he asked, trying hard to suppress an impish grin that sort of reminded her of the Stoll brothers.

"We walk," Grease stated flatly.

"Check," Tyx managed to dodge the massive backhand slap, which would've been friendly if the hand hadn't been made of stone and about the size of a large sledgehammer.

"Is there any way to find... whatever we're looking for faster?" she asked, hoping for some kind of magic compass.

"There is," Grease replied.

"What?" Tyx broke in, looking confused. "There is?"

"Walk faster."

Percy didn't like surprises, at least not the, "Haha, you've fallen into our trap" kind. In hindsight, it was pretty stupid to just wander into a cave with someone you met hiding out under the quicksand, especially when you've just been teleported to what looks and smells a lot like Tartarus. Still, tricking him was not cool.

"Emma? Who is this?" demanded the guy holding Percy by his shirt collar, which was very uncomfortable.

"Um."

"Emma," the voice repeated, sounding angry. If he could talk through the fist in his face, Percy might have said the same thing, plus a few Greek words he'd learned from Annabeth.

"He's new-spawn! One of us!"

"Remember Ryan?" asked another voice accusingly, this time female. Ryan? That didn't sound very scary.

"Yes..." Emma said in a quiet voice. "But this one didn't even know what a new-spawn was!"

"Neither did Ryan. It's easy to pretend, Emma," another voice chimed in, sounding like the owner was making a huge effort to be patient. Past the front of his shirt, which the fist that still hadn't moved ‒ even though Percy knew he was pretty heavy ‒ was still holding, he could just make out something very blue in the direction of the speaker.

"But he's nice!" Emma protested. Percy was starting to get the uncomfortable feeling that his life was hinging on the arguments of a kindergartner.

"Emma..." the gruff voice of shirt-holder warned.

"But he is!" A very stubborn kindergartner... but not exactly his ideal lawyer. Percy tried to speak, to say that he was, in fact, super nice, but all that came out of his crushed lungs was a raspy croak.

"Icee!" Wait, what? Icee?! "You're crushing him!"

"Fine."

The hand relaxed, letting Percy slump to the ground in an embarrassed heap of limbs. Getting to his feet was made somewhat difficult by a large boot placed menacingly on his stomach.

"But we can't mess this up now."

The all too familiar rasp of a sword being drawn echoed throughout the room...

Piper had never liked nightmares, and not usually just because they were scary. For one thing, there was always the chance they were demigod dreams that would eventually come true, which was enough to make anyone anxious.

But sometimes, they were just really uncomfortable. As she lay on something cold and damp, with an icy wind biting into her and going right through her clothes, her skin, and maybe even her bones, she really wished she could wake up and be back under her fluffy green comforter ‒ she had discreetly disposed of the baby pink one ‒ with easy access to a hot shower, maybe some tea... a pot of boiling water...

It was really cold.

Tentatively, she opened one eye, wondering what horrors she would have to blunder through this time, before her alarm clock would finally go off. Nightmares weren't exactly regular, but still, she knew her way around her dreams.

She cracked the eye open... and froze. Why was she floating? And why was everything so vivid? This was way more realistic than her dreams usually were. Was this a vision... or...

Oh. The spell... curse... whatever it was.

Somehow, she felt a bit cheated. How was it fair to teleport her in her sleep? Wait, how was she floating?!

In her panic, she almost slid over the edge. Beneath her, to her relief, was some kind of stone walkway (A slick, damp stone walkway) that her head was hanging off of. If that wasn't enough, the ground, far, far below, almost as long a fall as the Grand Canyon, looked... strange. It was all white, like snow, but somehow fluffy-looking.

Oh. Clouds? Clouds?!

"Oh‒"

Heehee... double cliffie! :D

Sorry. :/ It was getting really long, so I wanted to end it off. Might've bitten off a bit more than I can chew with so many perspectives, but so be it! :)

BAI!

GOD DANGIT NOW THE EDIT DOCUMENT OPTION IS BEING A DERP! #$# $# $ RAAAWR! And my computer thinks it's hilarious to have firefox completely fail in the middle of editing. Ha. Ha. -.-

Now, I SHALL SLEEP! :D