*AN- There are mentions of abuse in this chapter, so please don't read Dylan's POV if you are triggered by that. Also, I am not at all Uncle Rick so I do not own any of the Percy Jackson characters.

One more thing, Blood in the Water by grandson is the inspiration for this story so I would recommend listening to that song before reading!*

Chapter 1:

Dylan's POV:

"Rise," Taurus spoke. I stood up tall and proud before one of the many entrances to his domain.

"Where is she, father?" Liam asked from beside me.

"Have a look for yourself," My vision went dark, and the sound of wind sang in my ear. I looked in front of me and saw the person I despise the most. Mya Gethern fell into my master's domain. Her eyes were shut tightly causing her face to scrunch up. Endless darkness surrounded her.

'She wouldn't be here if she would've just agreed to help you,' one part of me thought. 'But she wouldn't be here if you wouldn't have kicked her like any other reasonable friend!' Another part of me screamed. 'Shut up!' I thought allowing the voices in my head to be silenced.

"Dylan?" my master asked.

"Yes," I responded.

"Are you ready?"

"Yes."

"Do you understand what power you will have when the ritual is finished?" I nodded. "You will inherit Kronos, Lord of Time, and my own domains!" Tartarus shouted. His powerful voice echoed against the walls that surrounded us. "While my son, Liam, has not yet proved himself worthy to be my champion so he will receive the domains of Atlas, Titan of strength and endurance, Iapetus, Titan of pain and mortality, and Hyperion, Titan of power, light, and fire."

"Yes father," Liam kneeled at the edge of the pit.

"Thank you, master," I quickly followed Liam's lead.

…

Later that night Liam and I found a small hotel near the entrance of our master's domain. We both decided it would be the best temporary option. We also decided that we should have our own separate rooms to allow each other their needed privacy.

"Good night Dylan," Liam told me.

"Yeah, we have training to prepare for tomorrow," I responded. I received a small nod from Liam before he shut his door to his room.

I entered my bed and quickly found my way to my bed not bothering to explore the rest of the room. As soon as my head hit the pillow my dreams began.

…

I stood at the edge of a cliff. Below me, I could hear the ocean but I could not see it through the thick fog that sat right below the edge of the cliff. I looked to my right and saw a shallow hole with a shovel stuck into the ground.

"Look who's digging their own grave," I turned and saw Mya. She was incredibly pale. Her face was bruised and stained with blood.

"That is what they all say," I snarled back. My left hand became heavy and I looked down at it. In my hand, I held a bottle filled with an unknown substance. I raised it to my nose and sniffed at it. The scent of alcohol burned my nostrils.

"You'll drink yourself to death," Mya countered. "Living beyond your years, acting out all their fears. You feel it in your chest!"

"Stop!" I shouted at her. I turned away and looked out into the hazy fog. For the first time in a while, I thought of my mother. Holding whatever alcohol I had in my hand had opened a floodgate of memories. She always came home drunk and angry. I don't remember a night where she was sober. She always said I reminded her of my father and that was her lazy excuse to beat me. I got good at hiding my bruises or cuts, and I never fought back. I knew if I did the next time she decided to beat me it might cause me to lose consciousness or worse.

'I can't do this,' I thought. 'Think about what your master would say!'

"Look at yourself!" Mya told me. "Your hands protect the flames from the wild winds around you!" I closed my eyes trying to wake from this nightmare. Finally, Mya said something that made my blood boil. "Standing on the cliff face. Highest foe you'll ever grace. It scares me half to death." she paused before she went on. "Look out to the future, but it tells you nothing! So take another breath."

"Why are you here? To taunt me?" I screamed at her. "Everything you say! Everything you do! You push it in and you cut me down!:" I turned to face her again. "We arm ourselves with the wrongs we've done! Name them off one by one! Let's go to war!" With that, she disappeared with a small smile. Everything began to fade and I was hit with one last spray of salt before my dream shifted again.

This time I stood in the middle of my mother's small apartment. My mother laid on the floor. A small puddle of blood laid around her unconscious body.

"Your worst fear?" voices hissed from all around me. I turned but saw nobody. When I turned back around I saw my father standing above my mother. His eyes were glossed over and his smile was something out of a horror movie. "How sad, but maybe there is more to you, Dylan Matthiou."

I said nothing. Instead, I stood there staring at my father until my vision changed.

I saw Mya again. She was covered in thin white silk. Her face was scratched and a little bloody.

"Do not show me her," I growled. "She means nothing to me."

"Is that how you truly feel?" the voices mocked me. I stared as Mya looked above her. I tried to look up when her eyes grew wide. I found that I could not, and this vision faded as quickly as it appeared.

This time I stood next to Mya. She was younger than ten. We were walking through Central Park in a comfortable silence. Mya seemed to fidget and then she turned to me.

"Do you feel safe?" I knew she was asking about my mother.

"She doesn't mean to hurt me," I realized that I couldn't control what I said or what choices I could make. I could only sit and watch.

"Do you remember this?" the voices asked in a whisper.

"No," I lied. I remembered this day quite clearly. It was one of the first days that I realized that I did not see Mya as only a friend. Of course, I was too young to realize the true feelings that I had for Mya, but that didn't mean I didn't have them.

"You're lying," the voices hissed. I didn't reply but I continued to watch Mya. We had drifted from such serious topics such as my mother, and instead into topics like school or sports. "She's your weakness."

"She means nothing to me. I have told you this!" I shouted back at them.

"Are you really helping your master because you want to see the gods fall or are you doing it because you want to protect the girl?" the voices asked with one final hiss.

I woke up in my hotel room. No light shined through the window, but I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep anymore.

Mya's POV:

'Where am I?' I thought. The wind that I heard in my ears was almost too loud for me to think. That's when I remembered. The stranger's voice when he was walking towards me. What he said before he almost killed me. How Luke stepped in to stop him. Then the… the kick. I grabbed on to the ledge. I pleaded with the stranger to pull me up, but he-he turned his back to me. 'Enough!' I screamed at myself.

I looked around me and saw nothing but darkness. I looked above me hoping and praying that I could see light, but instead it was again I was greeted by just darkness.

When I looked below me I had lost hope and expected to see the same darkness that I saw all around me and above me, but instead, I saw a soft red glow. I began to gain some hope about my situation until I remembered where I was falling.

"Annabeth and Percy's worst nightmare," my voice was lost in the sound of the wind. The first time I had met Luke in a dream he had warned me that only one person had escaped on their own.

'Is it even worth it?' a voice asked in my ear.

'Yes,' I screamed back. 'I need to get back! I need to save my friends! My family! I need to win this war! I will find a quick escape and then get back and win!' I tried to tell myself but I knew better. There was probably no way I would escape this terrible place.

I looked down again and saw the glow of red getting brighter. I closed my eyes and imagined Luke next to me. Not the form of him that I had seen in my dreams, but instead the form that I saw fighting the stranger. I saw a soft blue glow and knew it was the blue outline that had surrounded him when I had seen him.

"Breath," he whispered softly in my ear. "You can get out of here! I believe in you!" I knew he wasn't really there but a part of me wished he was. Percy and Annabeth had each other while I had nobody.

"I-I don't know if I can do this," I admitted. I imagined Luke quieting me and pulling me into a tight hug like he had done when I thought Percy and Annabeth had been kidnapped.

"You're going to get out of there and then you're going to go fight that stupid war and win," he sounded so sure that I could do it. "For me." I opened my eyes and he was gone. I looked down and saw the red light sitting below me. As I fell closer to it I noticed there seemed to be some sort of cloth or silk laying above the light. I didn't know what it was until I landed on it.

The silky substance caught me and cushioned my fall. It was like a makeshift net. Except it was sticky and I could barely move. The little movement I could do caused me to get more and more tangled in it. I looked down and saw that I hovered a good ten feet off the ground still.

I flicked my wrist and my sword appeared in my hand. I cut away the silk carefully making sure I didn't fall. Finally, I had a few big strains and I wrapped them around each other making a makeshift rope for myself. I made sure not to lean my whole body onto it so I didn't stick to it. Slowly but surely I lowered myself to the ground below.

When I reached the ground I looked down at my body. I was covered in the silky, sticky substance. While trying to free myself from this sticky prison I heard a soft rustling above me. I quickly turned my head upwards trying to locate the source of the sound.

Everything above me was incredibly dark. So at first, I couldn't see anything. I allowed my eyes a few moments to adjust, and with the view that I received, I wished I hadn't.

Above me, in the darkness, a giant spider climbed through it's web. I looked back down at the sticky silk that was tangled around me and then back up at the monster.

'Of course,' I thought. I quietly crouched praying that the monster hadn't seen me. I lowered myself further to the ground to the point where I was laying on my stomach. The monster didn't seem to notice, but that didn't stop me from keeping my breaths shallow and quiet and my heart from racing.

Ahead of me, I spotted a little patch of rocks.

'Just make it there, and then you can hide for a little bit,' I thought to myself. So slowly and quietly I made my way to the rocks. Every time I heard the spider rustle above me I froze expecting the monster to have spotted me and was preparing to kill me.

I was almost to the group of rocks when I felt resistance on my right arm. I looked at it and saw there was a strain of web wrapped around it. I ignored it and army crawled my way closer to the rocks. I looked up and saw I was less than five feet away from the rocks. Then I felt the resistance again. Again I ignored it and tried to continue on, but this time the strain of web was pulled so tight I had to tug at the web multiple times. I was able to snap free from the prison and made my way around the rocks.

A small sigh escaped my mouth.

"Well well well what do we have here?" a voice whispered from above me. I scrambled to my feet right before something heavy fell on top of the rocks. I looked at top of the pile of rocks and saw the enormous spider.

"Λειτουργεί," I shouted. My armor sprung to life and wrapped itself around me. The sea-green trident on the front of the chest piece glowed lighting up the darkness around me. I flicked my wrist and my trident appeared in my hand. Around it glowed a matching sea-green. For a second I was reminded of the blue outline that had surrounded Luke but I pushed that thought away and looked the monster in it's eyes. It's eyes glowed a bright red, but they also had a softness to them.

"Where is the girl?" the monster asked.

"What girl?" I responded confused.

"The daughter of Athena," the spider hissed. "I have unfinished business with her." I looked the monster up and down. Then the myth came to the front of my mind.

"Arachne," I whispered.

"Where is she?" Arachne growled.

"She isn't here," I responded calmly.

"I heard her," she pointed one of my legs upwards to the hole where I fell from. "I sensed her with the boy. They're powerful demigods and easy to keep track of… even from down here." She paused and looked up. Then she returned her gaze to me, "But you… you are not as easy to track. And why would that be?"

"I-I don't-" I studdered.

"Don't," she said cooly. Then she studied me for a few moments. "I see. You are protected by someone."

"By who?" I blurted out.

"I don't know," she admitted. "But it doesn't matter to me. I've starved myself waiting for the girl I could use a snack." She charged at me. I was unprepared for the attack and got knocked off my feet by Arachne.

I managed to get up right before her next attack. She again charged and I slid underneath her. I held my trident above me so it would scrape her stomach and if she tried to crush me the trident would impale her. I made a large gash under her but she didn't disintegrate. I saw golden dust spilling out from her wound but she didn't seem to notice. She charged again but I sidestepped because I was confused.

"The rivers!" I remember Reyna screaming at me before I fell. "Mya, use the rivers!" I felt a tug at my gut. "The River of Styx," I remember her talking to the man that took us across the river.

"Hopefully you won't have to see the other four," he had responded.

'All five of the rivers flow into Tartarus,' I silently thought to myself. I felt a rough tug at my gut but nothing happened. Arachne jumped at me this time and I slashed at her. Again I hit her but dust just poured from her wound. I looked down at my feet and saw swelling. 'They're his blood?'

Arachne growled and charged again, but this time I stabbed my trident into the ground below me. A geyser of water shot out of the punctured ground. I felt the power of each individual river surround me. I felt the River Phlegethon singeing the hairs off my arms, screams from the River Cocytus filled my ears, woe, and misery from the River Acheron fogged my mind. I pushed both the River Styx and the River Lethe away from me in fear. I knew the River Lethe had the power to make me forget everything I had known, but the River Styx had it's own power that pushed the misery and woe from my mind. The river instead, helped me focus on Arachne.

I surrounded the monster in a blanket of all the rivers. Every second I pushed the waters closer to the monster laughing at her screams of terror and pain.

"Stop! Please!" Arachne screamed.

"Why?" I laughed.

"I-I can help you," she stuttered. I pulled the water from the rivers back a little and allowed her to talk. "I can assist you. I can get you back to the Overworld."

"How?" I knew I needed a way back to the Overworld so I pulled the water back further. To the point where if she tried to run I could trap her before she escaped.

"Well…" she went silent for a few moments.

"You don't know do you?" I growled.

"Well," she looked at me and then looked back down. "No. I don't know."

"Then you're useless to me," I replied coldly. Before she could scream I encased her fully in a bubble of the rivers and crushed her quickly. After a few minutes, I allowed the water to flow into the gash in the ground. I saw no remains from the monster that I had just destroyed.

On the ground, I drew an Apotropaic eye with the points of my trident. I knew it was a symbol to ward off evil but I don't know where I learned it from. Then, I turned away from the eye and headed into the unknowns of Tartarus.

Hey everyone! I'm sorry for the kind of long wait, but I wanted to make sure that the first chapter of this story was the best that I could make it. Also if you are a new reader this is the second story so I would recommend reading the story A New Start to help understand everything that is happening. Of course, you don't have to if you don't want to. Also, I used lyrics from the songs Icarus by Bastille and Go to War by Nothing More. Anyway, please review it would mean a ton!

~Emily