Chapter Ten: The Cursed Offspring

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Tartarus

Unknown Date

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Time went on in Tartarus.

With each passing day, the three demigods grew closer, getting to know each other better than they'd known anyone in their whole lives. Like Emmy had said many nights ago, if someone was going to be protecting her back, she wanted to know them.

The reputation of the three demigods was known, now, all throughout the pit. In the beginning, the demigods would fight a few easy monsters (at least in comparison), but now, stronger monsters would come to challenge them.

It was the curse of demigods, Ananke had realized. The harder you worked to stay alive, the stronger you got. The stronger you got, the more monsters you'd slay. The more monsters you'd slay, the more challenges by stronger and stronger monsters hoping to prove themselves. Sooner or later, you'd be challenged by a monster you couldn't beat. There was a reason all Greek heroes' lives end in tragedy.

Emmy and Trevor had improved from before. They seemed to accept their situation now, and they were okay with it. They had turned to each other for help, and were on the edge of a relationship (Ananke could tell), but neither wanted to go further. It was impossible to have a relationship in their current situation. Love would make them vulnerable.

Ananke's condition had worsened, at least in her own opinion. Emmy and Trevor had no clue, since she did her best to keep her mask on. But inside, she felt like she was breaking apart.

They'd fought Echidna and her Chimera son the other day, and Ananke had fought Echidna while Trevor and Emmy took on the Chimera. While Emmy and Trevor couldn't hear, Echidna had taunted Ananke, about her fatal flaw, about her family, about the hopelessness of her situation.

"You put on a good show," Echidna had said. "But you are so broken, aren't you, Ananke? You try to hold yourself together, but you cannot accept that you are falling apart… piece… by… piece."

Echidna had used her claws to etch a word into Ananke's bicep: POWER. Echidna had said that power- ambition- was Ananke's fatal flaw. Ananke didn't understand at first, until she thought about the reaction in her that Echidna's words had caused. Ananke had been forced to accept what she was trying to deny: the fact that she wasn't coping well. That she was weak, and vulnerable. Ananke had never wanted to fell weak and vulnerable again, so she worked harder than ever. She wanted to be powerful.

Hearing Echidna calling her broken had been a slap in the face. Echidna's accusations buried deep into Ananke's subconscious, always in the back of her mind, whispering to her. Echidna was gone, but it seemed like whenever Ananke felt her weakest, she'd hear the voice of the reptilian lady, whispering about how she was weak, and broken, and falling apart. When someone constantly tells you something, even if it isn't true, you start to believe it.

Ananke knew that she wasn't coping well, but her fatal flaw prevented her from trying to get any help from Emmy and Trevor. She couldn't look weak. So instead, she paraded around with an aura of detached, sarcastic superiority.

So, maybe it did kind of make her a little bit of a bitch. Well, at least she didn't look weak. Better a bitch than broken.

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The River Phlegethon

Tartarus

Unknown Date

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"It's eerily empty down here lately," Emmy observed as the trio walked along the River Phlegethon. They were on a scouting mission, but after a couple hours, the possibility of finding a monster was dim. The same thing had happened the past three missions, too. "Where have all the monsters gone? We can't have killed them all."

Ananke snorted. "We can hope."

"Something big must be happening in the mortal world," Trevor deduced. "The monsters have all gone up to… I don't know. The Olympians mentioned a war?"

"Weren't you listening to the gods?" Ananke demanded. "They told us that we were down here to prevent monsters from going up into the mortal world and aiding Kronos and the Titans, who are trying to overthrow the Olympians."

"Didn't the Titans and the gods fight before?" Trevor asked thoughtfully. There was a crease between his eyebrows as he tried to think of where he'd heard about a Titan War before. "Yeah… Yeah, they did, didn't they?"

"In the beginning, the children of Kronos- Zeus, Hades, Poseidon, Hera, Demeter, and Hestia- all rose up to try and overthrow their father, Kronos," Ananke recited dully.

Trevor frowned. "Why?"

Ananke rolled her eyes. "'Cause he was evil. He'd swallowed his kids, apart from Zeus, so that they wouldn't overthrow him. He overthrew his own father by cutting him to pieces with his scythe."

Trevor wrinkled his nose. "That's messed up."

Ananke shrugged but didn't comment. She began walking off a little bit faster to get some space in between her and Trevor and Emmy. She could hear them whispering to each other, maybe about her, but she didn't care.

She was a bitch, but the part of her that was still unchanged hated what she'd become.

Anger built up in Ananke's chest. She needed some monster to kill. Anything to get her anger out. It seemed like all she was lately, apart from depressed, was angry. It'd been building up inside her, and if she didn't get it out she was going to explode.

Her wish was granted as three monsters emerged from the mist of Tartarus.

Two of them were eight feet tall, with the snouts, claws, and paws of wolves. They wore blue jeans on their bottom and had shaggy brown fur on their top. They kind of looked like a lab experiment gone wrong, where a human and a wolf were genetically combined. They snarled, similarly to a wolf, and sniffed the air. No doubt they smelled demigod.

The third monster was enormously tall, and was at least double the wolf-men. He was humanoid on bottom, apart from his hooves, and wore some sort of tattered loincloth. His upper body was thick and sinewy, with coarse fur coming out of his skin. Instead of a normal, human head, the head of a bull sprouted from his shoulders. His red eyes gleamed angrily as they locked on to the demigods. Ananke noticed that one of his large horns was missing. It looked like it had been snapped off. Even without too much knowledge into Greek mythology apart from the basics, Ananke knew who this was: the Minotaur.

Ananke decided to use her sword this time. Over the time in Tartarus, she'd become proficient in a wide variety of weapons (bow and arrows, swords of every type, spear, knives, mace, axe, sickles, javelins, whips, even clubs). She had a couple favorites that she tended to use most often though: a basic Greek-style sword, spear, twin knives, and bow and arrows. Today, she chose the sword.

One of the wolf-men stepped forwards. "So it's true," he mused. His voice was a combination of man and wolf. "Demigods in Tartarus, fighting against the monsters for the gods."

Ananke stayed silent. Emmy and Trevor came up to flank her.

"Luke couldn't believe it," the wolf continued. "Nor could anyone else, really, but…" He paused to lick his canines.

Great, Ananake thought. Another enemy that wants to eat us. Those tended to be the worst, since they were okay with taking a bite in the middle of a skirmish. Ananke was missing a chunk of flesh in her arm from a particularly vicious cyclops.

"Maybe you three will taste good enough to make up for missing the fun up above," the wolf-man finished.

Ananke's eyes narrowed. "Fun?" she demanded. For insurance, she added, using her charmspeak, "Tell me."

"There's a battle going on soon. Lord Kronos has risen, and he and his army are going to attack Camp Half-Blood through the Labyrinth," the wolf-man explained. "The demigods are a threat, and they must be destroyed."

"I understood about zero percent of that," Trevor muttered.

The wolf-man locked his eyes onto the demigods. "Of course, our force would be stronger if many of our brethren were not returned to the void and kept from the fight."

The other wolf-man and the Minotaur tensed. Ananke copied them, knowing that a fight was imminent.

"Well… we'll prevent that from happening again. Lord Kronos will reward us!" the wolf-man roared. His gloating was short lived, as Emmy shot an arrow into his maw not even a second later. He exploded into dust.

"Agrius?" the other wolf-man wondered. His surprise turned to rage. "You killed my brother!"

The Minotaur and wolf-man charged. Emmy, Ananke, and Trevor didn't need to talk at all; they knew the plan. They had fought with each other enough to know their fighting styles.

Emmy went for higher ground, all while shooting arrow after arrow at both monsters. Now that they were expecting, them, though, they were easier to avoid. When the arrows did hit the Minotaur (which was too big of a target to miss), they didn't seem to hurt him, just annoy him. Apparently, he was big enough to need more than an arrow in the back.

Trevor charged the wolf-man with his sword out. They grappled for a little bit, sword-on-claws, but, in the end, the wolf-man was overwhelmed by the son of Demeter.

Ananke charged the Minotaur. She analyzed her enemy, something she'd learned to do. Big, lots of weight. Momentum. Probably not very agile, she concluded. To gain the advantage against the Minotaur's fighting style, she used her speed and agility to weave in and out of flailing fists that were unable to land a blow on the daughter of Aphrodite. She would dart in, under the Minotaur's guard, and slash with her sword, before dancing out of the way. Finally, after a few taunting cuts, Ananke charged at the Minotaur, then slid baseball-style under the reach of his fists. She popped up, and sunk her sword into the Minotaur's stomach (which was as close to its heart as she could reach). Ananke had learned to turn away when monsters turned to dust, so this time, when the Minotaur exploded into the yellow powder, her face was spared.

A silence fell over the battlefield for a second. All three knew that the others were thinking about: the battle up above.

Ananke hoped that the demigods would be able to dispel the enemy force. From the little she'd heard from the gods before she'd entered Tartarus, the demigods of Camp Half-Blood were going to play a vital role in the upcoming war. To quote Athena, she said that they'd be "One of three fronts." One was the demigods in Tartarus, one was the demigods from camp, but Ananke couldn't figure out the last one. She didn't preoccupy herself, though. She didn't have time to worry about things like that. Besides, she couldn't muster up the effort to care. She'd be dead soon, and the little problems of her life would be miles away. At least, that's what she hoped.

"Maybe we could have done more," Emmy said finally.

Ananke shook her head. "We did our best!" she retorted. "No one can blame us! We've defeated all sorts of monsters, and we've survived for this long! There is nothing we could have done!"

Ananke still wondered, though. She hated failure. She wondered what the gods were thinking about them. Were they pleased with what they'd done? Did they think that it was enough?

Ananke didn't know anymore. She didn't know anything anymore.

I am strong, she reminded herself on the way back to the Shrine of Hermes. I am not weak. I am not vulnerable. I am strong.

In her head, she could hear the reptilian laugh of Echidna.

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thank you so much to anyone who reviewed! i got some great feedback and am trying to adjust my story accordingly…

i don't know if i'm entirely happy with this chapter because it's a lot of angst that i don't think was written very well. also, for some reason i'm just using a bunch of advanced words and i don't know why, so it feels like my writing style changed from the last couple chapters which is not good… tell me what you think

but i really wanted to show the psychological stress on ananke at least the comes from being in tartarus. i probably (*ahem* definitely) overdid it, though, so when i edit (which i will sooner or later!) i'll tone it down a bit (*ahem* a lot).

please review, though, i love to hear how i'm doing. every review encourages me to write. i don't want to be one of those cliché authors that are like, 'more reviews more updates' but that's kind of how it works. i won't purposely withhold a chapter due to lack of interest, trust me, but i won't be as motivated to write, so chapters will get done slower.

uh, alrighty then, that's my little rant…

kay x