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PERCY

The skeleton warriors bowed like Percy had seen in those creepy occult movies late at night on HBO. Except this time there wasn't a button to fast forward the live action through the creepy parts.

The bones of the skeletons rattled as they bowed low at the waist, chanting something Percy could not understand.

He felt hot air blowing up his exposed chest like it was a Sauna who's heat had been turned up to high. The wound in his side throbbed and burned with each blast of sulfuric heat.

The skeleton nearest him chanted the loudest like an overzealous priest. The others seemed picked up on this and began to raise their voices which sounded like a million broken woodwind instruments trying to play a song.

All of the skeletons had linked bony fingers together, but the one who had started to chant louder broke a hand free.

Percy watched as it raised a bronze blade in its hand. It hovered the blade over Annabeth's body and slashed rapidly at her bare arms and legs opening long vertical cuts down her skin.

Annabeth screamed into the cloth gagging her.

Percy thrashed against his bonds, screaming into the gag in his mouth.

Blood began to pool down Annabeth's skin, dripping like heavy rain onto the stone below. One the skeletons retrieved wooden bowls and began to set them below Percy's eyesight.

The sound of a wet patter made his stomach roll.

Annabeth's bare stomach was heaving on breaths. The skeleton with the knife smiled at her with ugly teeth and ghosted the knife on the skin of her navel and traced upwards, drawing a line of blood. She struggled harder, her gray eyes terrified.

Percy bit hard on the cloth and moved it with his teeth and this made it so that he was finally able to spit the nasty thing out of his mouth. "Don't. Touch. Her. Again!"

The skeleton turned dead eyes to him. "Your loyalty to this one is commendable Perseus." It moved away from Annabeth.

Percy felt his head being yanked back by a pair of bony fingers. Those black empty eye sockets peered at him. Another skeleton tucked a wooden bowl under his side that sloshed a viscous red with Annabeth's blood.

"It is acceptable," Finger bones carved into spiked points tore apart the leaves from his wound and began to rip through the flesh. "And to be rewarded, little hero."

The pain was red hot. Percy screamed as he felt his blood began to leak like a wave into the bowl. He screamed again when another skeleton took up the first one's knife and slashed across his abdomen, thrusting another bowl against his skin to collect the blood.

He lost count of how long those creatures dug into his flesh, and how long he screamed. When that unknown time frame passed Percy's head was swimming like a balloon and a torrent of dizziness, pain and nausea gripped him like a vice.

The skeletons moved away from him and Annabeth as a collective, each of them carried a wooden bowl.

Annabeth lay beside him, her legs and arms a mess of blood that glowed in the half light of the lava river that flowed below them.

The skeletons stood over the lava, raising the bowls of blood high into the air.

Percy tried to manipulate the blood like water the way he had done in Tartarus. But his body was weak and he could barely sit up to see what was happening.

The off key chanting began again and Percy watched his and Annabeth's blood being poured into the lava.

He turned back to Annabeth. She wasn't watching the skeletons like he had been. Her eyes were focused on him; tears were leaking down her face.

"Annabeth-" Percy fought hard to free the hand closest to her. He twisted and pulled at his wrist, trying to reach her hand. Trying to touch her. But his hand stopped millimeters apart from hers.

"I love you," Percy called over the gaps of their fingers. The wound in his side throbbed in the immense heat, and from his heavy breaths. "I love you Annabeth-forever."

This time Annabeth didn't tell him to shut up. She nodded, unable to speak through her gag, and he watched tears fall like a rainstorm down her face. Her fingers splayed out, trying to reach his.

The chanting grew louder, the lava began to bubble and rise like spires, breaking apart like mini eruptions.

"Sacrifices…" the voice came deep within the lava, deep under the earth, the scantest of whispers. "Beautiful ones," the voice grew into a stronger whisper, louder, hissing. Another spire of lava rose from the ground, larger than before. It expanded until it was 7 feet high like a David Blaine magic trick and the face from Percy's dreams rose from it.

"I can see you now."

The shape stepped out of the lava and solidified. It was tall, and shrouded in a hooded cloak the color of brown earth. The voice came from deep within the recesses of the blackness of the hood.

The hooded shape began to move and Percy could see that the cloak wasn't the color of earth, it was earth – clumps of dirt fell from it as the figure moved.

"For two long I have rotted asleep," the figure moved towards the alter where Percy and Annabeth were shackled.

The skeletons dropped into a bow as the shape passed them, some of them prostrated their skulls to the volcanic stone floor. A hand made of twisted rotting cypress wood reached out and touched the skeletons one by one and they fell into fits of swooning like it was a backwoods revival.

"But the time for sleeping has past," the hooded shape stopped at the base of the logs, where Percy's bare feet were splayed out like a chicken ready to be cooked.

Those branch fingers pulled back the hood.

Gaea's face was horrible. The color of dried mud webbed over with cracks. Her hair was made of falling silt and dry roots that crawled with earthworms and earwigs. She had no nose, only a flat protrusion that flared up and down, reminding Percy of Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter movies.

Except this wasn't a movie.

"I owe you a debt little heroes," Gaea's eyes were the color of slate, with punched black holes in the center instead of pupils and she smiled through lips of the same color. "You have helped bring about the dawn of a new Golden Era. A feat that must be rewarded-" Gaea turned her head and a cluster of earthworms plopped on Percy's bare wounded feet.

Gaea snapped her twig like fingers and the rag in Annabeth's mouth dissolved to sand.

Annabeth choked and gagged, spitting out the foul mess.

"It shall be ladies first," Gaea opened her mouth wide and a spilling of black spiders tumbled out onto Annabeth's bare skin. "A present from Archane for your help in her weaving, Child of Athena."

The spiders latched themselves onto Annabeth and began biting her skin with needle like pinchers. She screamed.

"Annabeth!" Percy thrashed in his bonds. "Leave her alone you Dirt Face Piece of Silt!"

"Patience boy, you will have you reward soon enough." Gaea waved her hand over Annabeth and the spiders began climbing up her body towards her opened mouth. Annabeth screamed louder and it reverberated all around the crater.

"Stop it!" Percy cried. Annabeth's screams would haunt his nightmares.

Gaea snapped her fingers again and the spiders disappeared from Annabeth, but her body was now dotted in massive red welts as well as streaks of blood, and she was pale and sweaty and trembling, eyes glassy.

"Annabeth!" Percy pulled at the shackle on his hand, hearing pops in his wrist, trying to reach her. Her breathing was rapid and shallow, and she looked like she was in shock. Percy turned and looked Gaea right in her granite colored eyes.

"I'm going to kill you, you mud caked freak!" He was breathing so hard he felt it shake the logs.

"So loyal dear one," Gaea's bent down over Percy. " I knew the moment I learned of you, you would be the one to help me rise. You are everything I needed in a sacrifice, loyal, handsome," branch like fingers reached out and stroked his face. "powerful. Such power I can use when I reclaim this world-"

"That's never going to happen!" Percy spat back trying to yank his face away from those spindly fingers.

Gaea laughed the low rumbled earthquake sound, and with her face so near Percy felt his skull shaking.

"It is already happening foolish child!" Gaea let go of Percy's head so fast that it smacked the back of the wood.

Pain exploded behind his eyes.

Gaea leant back up, standing at a height of almost 8 feet. "If you will not join me Son of Poseidon. Then you have outlived your usefulness." The Titan swept her gaze down to the skeletons that were still prostrating themselves at her feet.

"The Sacrifice is complete; throw these remains into the lava pit!"

The sound of 12 skeletons climbing to their feet all at once screeched through the air.

Percy yanked again at his bonds and a blinding pain shot through his left hand. His wrist throbbed and was slick with blood. His thumb and the two fingers next to it were bent inwards like a claw. He realized that he had broken his fingers, and possibly his wrist. But the shift in the bones gave him wiggle room in the cuffs. He pulled. The pain was white hot, but he kept pulling.

His hand slid free of the manacle. The pain now shot up his whole arm, and his side screamed in agony, but he ignored both. He reached across and shook Annabeth's shoulder.

"Annabeth!" she didn't move, her eyes still unfocused. She was whispering something, that sounded like 'spiders' over and over again.

"Annabeth please!" Percy shook her again. "We're together! Please!"

The shadows of the skeletons stretched out over them as they circled their way around the alter. Percy had only one hand free, one broken hand and no weapons. Annabeth still had yet to move.

One of the skeletons reached up towards them, and Percy threw himself over Annabeth's still form.