Through the Ashes
Following the eruption caused by Percy at Mount Saint Helens, except instead of landing on Calypso's Island and crashing his own funeral, Percy is thrown far back into the Labyrinth. Read to see what happens next.
Prologue:
When Percy first became conscious, all he was aware of was pain.
His body felt as if it was enveloped in fire, already melting his skin away and now on its way to cook his insides until all that would be left of him was a pile of charred bones. Pain, excruciating burning pain was all his brain could focus on. His mind was dead to the world, unaware of any eligible thoughts other than I need this to stop and ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
He didn't care if the end of the pain meant death. All he wanted was for it to stop. He would've screamed if his throat wasn't stuck, if it wasn't as dry as a desert with the same burning sensation as the rest of his body. He certainly moaned, wanting his vocals to make someone else aware that he wanted the pain to end. Please kill me, he thought.
Percy was somewhere stuck in between a state of conscious and unconsciousness. The pain throbbed through his body far too strongly for his mind to allow him to sleep. It was the protective part of his body, unable to let the mind relax; fearing if it did, Percy would never wake up again.
Still, he was sure he saw a face swim somewhere in his vision. The face was the most beautiful he had ever seen, with the honey gold eyes and teakwood toned face. What made Percy sure he was hallucinating was how he saw wings of blue, black, and purple adorning the cupid-like figure.
The figure looked down at him, beautiful head cocked to the side. "You're an interesting case, aren't you?" his voice spoke, deep and melodious.
He was still in a stupor, trying to grasp a feeling of reality hopelessly in vain while the colored feathers blurred in his vision as they fluttered.
"Hmmm," the image hummed, honey gold eyes looking thoughtful, "I've waited days on end for you to die, Percy Jackson, but yet you stubbornly refuse to allow your heart to stop beating. I suppose Hades was right when he said you were an annoying one."
Percy hoped his pleasant looking hallucination wasn't expecting him to respond, since another rage of fire flared again throughout his body, causing his mind to go blank and his mouth to let out a barely audible groan of pain as it scratched through his throat.
In response, the beautiful man raised a single eyebrow at him, "A fussy one. Clearly, you've been too busy whining about your pain to consider much about just dying; that's the thing about you demigods, isn't it? Too busy complaining about how quick your life is to enjoy it."
This cupid-guy was disappointed in Percy for some reason that he couldn't comprehendingly fathom. It wasn't his fault he wouldn't die. He attempted to say something in argument, but the attempt failed again with another long, drawn-out groan.
"Yes, yes," the breathtaking figure gave a long sigh in response. His wings shook again with the movement of his chest making Percy's bleary vision contort irrationally with the movements of blue, black, and purple again. "I suppose I'll leave you to suffer the rest of your short life in the mortal world in peace," he said in his calming voice, "I'm sure I'll see you again, Percy Jackson."
Just like that, the figure shimmered blindingly into his eyes, and in the next moment, Percy's hallucination was gone. Now he was alone again with only pain to bother him.
He blinked in and out of consciousness after that. Every time darkness overcame him was relief, but every time it would end with sharp pain across his body. His head would pound with the worst headache he's ever experienced. His body felt like he had fallen out of a tree, repeatedly slamming against branches on his way down, before being stampeded on by a herd of elephants. His throat was raw and ragged, quenched with an insatiable thirst that overtook his body every time he drew a breath through the hollow, dry as a bone tube. His lungs were weak, too, and with every painful breath of air he took, they never seemed to stop begging him for more. The worst, though, was still the burning sensation that went all the way from his tender skin to his pathetically weak pounding heart struggling to stay on beat. Percy wasn't sure what he had done to get himself in this painful situation, but he would not be doing it again.
Much later, he swore he could hear voices. The pain had likely just brought him to madness, but faintly through the pounding of his eardrums, the sound could almost be of people talking. Talking about helping him, he hoped.
Then, he was positive his body was moving too. Before all of it, he felt still as his body throbbed motionlessly. Now it was worse, as he felt the ground move beneath him as if he were laying on a treadmill of sorts. It made Percy dizzy, multiplying the pain of his head and adding to every ache and burn he felt. He wanted to die all over again.
Finally, when his mind swam above the pain to a more alert state, he found that he could feel the sweet taste of a liquid trickling down his parched throat. Whatever it was, it tasted great, immediately seeming to regenerate him and dull his pain down a few notches to a more tolerable level. The liquid sent a wave of nostalgia over his muddled brain, making him think of someone he held dear.
"Mom…" he croaked out as he remembered all the batches of blue chocolate chip cookies his mother would bake for him.
"Now, Jackson," a familiar voice sounded beside Percy as they stopped giving him the sips of nectar his body relished. It seemed to echo through his ears, making him wonder if they were talking to him from across a cave and not right beside him. It continued, "don't you go and get sentimental on me."
Percy put every ounce of newly earned energy into opening his eyes to see who was talking to him. When he did finally manage to inch them open, he regretted ever doing so, because staring back at him were the haunting blue eyes of the blond-haired son of Hermes.
"Luke," he rasped, watching as the other demigod began to grin at him, his scar rippling across his face.
The Fates must have been dying of laughter right then when the son of Poseidon silently asked himself how his situation could possibly get worse. Turns out, it could.
Author's Note: Things aren't looking so hot for Percy, are they? Hope you enjoyed the prologue; the first chapter is already underway. Updates will be sporadic.