After several minutes, Joe Bob's head fell limp as the monster suffered from the effects of high blood loss. Percy kept his mouth clamped on the Laistrygonian's neck as he tried to draw every last vestige of blood from its body. Who knows when he would get another meal?

Also, Percy realised as he swallowed more blood, his body felt like it was buzzing with the amount of energy he had. Percy no longer felt tired and on the verge of starvation. In fact, he felt like he could take on an army; a feeling not dissimilar to when he first received the Curse of Achilles and managed to take on an Army of the dead plus Hades.

Now that Percy mind was clear from pressing thoughts of thirst, he registered a sharp pain present in the majority of his chest, where Joe Bob had, quite forcefully, struck him with his oversized fist. The pain was not as bad as a sword wound, but was more than a mere annoyance. Unfortunately, the lack of ambrosia and water in his immediate vicinity meant there was little Percy could do to alleviate the pain.

Now that the Laistrygonian had been well and truly exsanguinated, he finally took note of the appearance of the blood and that once ran through the veins of the - now catatonic - Laistrygonian, but now was spattered on the ground and dripping through his hands. At first glance, one might mistake it for ichor, or, more specifically, the ichor of the gods. This was clearly ichor of some kind, but it lacked the golden glow that the ichor of the gods possessed. The monster's ichor was a sort of rusted gold, like old brass instruments that hadn't been polished since Beethoven.

Even though Percy had been killing monsters since he was 12, he'd never actually taken notice of the colour of their blood, usually because either they turned to golden dust once fatally wounded, or that he had been in the middle of a fight for his life and didn't have time to ponder the interesting colour of his enemies' blood (usually a mixture of both).

Speaking of turning to golden dust, Joe Bob seemed to have finally succumbed to his severe case of anaemia. Like Percy had seen countless times before, the Laistrygonian's body began to disintegrate into... grey dust?

Not golden, grey. The monster was breaking down into what looked like ash.

If Percy hadn't been to Tartarus beforehand, he would've assumed that this was because this was in Tartarus, and nothing makes bloody sense in Tartarus. But Percy had been here before, and had seen monsters break down into golden dust when killed, so it wasn't the Tartarus causing this strange phenomenon.

The two differences between then-Tartarus and now-Tartarus were that Joe Bob had been drained of blood, and Percy had stabbed him with Stygian Glass. The latter was an unlikely cause, as the killing blow was not struck with the glass shard. Percy had also seen Nico and Bianca use Stygian Iron swords to kill monsters and they still turned to golden, not grey, dust.

By process of elimination, that meant, unless there was another reason that he hadn't thought of (not entirely unlikely), a monster turned into grey dust upon death if they had been drained of blood. Which made sense; monster blood is gold, dull and brassy it may be, and the dust they turn to postmortem is gold. If you remove blood from the equation, there is nothing to carry the golden factor in the dust, ergo making it grey.

Thoughts on the colour of monsters' blood and death-dust aside, Percy tried to remember how long ribs to heal. His wound would be quite bothersome in the defending against or attack any of Tartarus' tenants, as the distraction of the pain which... which was noticeably less painful than 30 seconds ago...

As the wound was internal, he couldn't physically see how much the wound had healed, but he could definitely feel that it had been healed by a significant amount. It was now a dull throb, rather than the piercing pain it had been, and provided less of a strain on his breathing. Perhaps this was a perk of now being an immortal? Though he was no god, he still had ichor running through his veins - the shiny stuff, not the dull stuff. It made sense that it provided accelerated healing. What immortal wants to spend 6 months nursing a broken arm in an era of war when the Titans reigned?

At least one good thing came out of being cursed to be immortal; Percy definitely wasn't going to complain about potentially life-threatening injuries healing quicker than usual.

Near the discarded meat of some unfortunate creature that the Laistrygonians had been fighting over, Percy found the Stygian Glass shard he'd used against the monsters. It had been quite an efficient weapon, and had cut deep into the considerably sturdy hide of the Laistrygonains with ease. Percy just attributed this to being one of its useful traits - it was Stygian glass after all.

The dagger-esque shard was stained with dull monster ichor at its pinnacle, and his own liquid gold around the base. Percy still felt some inclination of wanting to lick the blood off the very sharp glass, but it was minor enough that he could ignore it as he was quite satiated from the amount of blood he'd drank from the monster.

The weight of what he'd done suddenly hit him with no small amount of revulsion. He had drunk the blood of a monster. What was worse was that Percy couldn't bring himself to regret what he did at all, as he no longer felt the undeniable hunger and horrible thirst that had plagued him. And it had tasted so good~

A surge of hate swept through him. Is this what the gods had turned him into? A monster no better than the ones that had fought for years of his life? They had done it before, with Medusa and Arachne, and no doubt countless others as well. They had been twisted by the gods' unbalanced sense of misplaced vindictiveness to become monsters that cared naught for who they killed or what they did.

That was what they intended for him to become. Zeus had cursed him to drink the blood of monsters and mortals. They intended for him to become a monster and prey on the innocent. What Percy was confused about though, was how Zeus expected his m to drink the blood of mortals when he'd been condemned to Tartarus... Was Zeus expecting him to escape Tartarus? No way in Hades would he even think of killing innocent mortals if he did get out of this literal hell-hole. And why would Zeus want him to escape Tartarus, where he and the other gods had imprisoned him in the first place?

It could be that the gods simply wanted him to become like Medusa and terrorise the mortals and eventually be killed by a demigod like Percy used to. But why not send him directly into the mortal world? Why send him to Tartarus first? He knew he was missing something - something that could explain why. Cruel and spiteful they may be, but the gods weren't stupid. One did not overthrow the Titans and reign for thousands of year by being stupid.

Alas, there was nothing Percy could do at the moment to figure out exactly why they had sent to Tartarus specifically. What he did know though was that he hated the gods for what they'd done to him, bar Hestia and Hecate, who genuinely seemed against cursing and condemning me. He was withholding judgement on Hades as he wasn't at the council meeting, but Hades rarely seemed to care about much anyway. Hecate had even helped him and gave him the he use of charmspeak, which Percy only now realised that he had used against Joe Bob to make him stumble. It wasn't a huge feat, but he still felt some sense of accomplishment for using then gift for the first time. Who knows how that fight could have turned out if he didn't have charmspeak?

A thunderous roar echoed across the hills of Tartarus, interrupting his train of thought, and reminding him that he was in Tartarus. Never a good idea to stay in the open in Tartarus, and Percy no longer had any need or want to find any monsters in the short future until he was hungry again. He had to get moving and find shelter for when he needed to rest - he didn't think that the energy boost he got from the blood would last forever, and he hadn't slept since he'd gotten to Tartarus, which was an unknown period of time beforehand. He'd better get moving, as even thought he still had his powers and glass dagger, he didn't want to run into whatever made that roar.

O.O.O.O.O.O.O.O.O WAIT, PLEASE READ THIS! ^_^

Here's an update people! Not a very long one, only about 1500 words, but I wanted to get some stuff down on paper. Electronic paper that is.

Also, thanks to everyone who has favourited, followed and reviewed. 150 followers and 107 favourites. :D

I would really appreciate it if you guys left a review before you go, and comment on how the chapter was: good/bad? It would be great to know how my writing is. Thanks to Inevera010 and I'm not ofreakingkay who reviewed last chapter.

Om another note, for the overall antagonist in this story, I was thinking of making a new one that's kinda OC, but has origins. I think I've come up with a good one that I can explain the existence of and background and stuff. I didn't really feel like doing the primordial bad guy (e.g. Erebus/Nyx) or Chaos/Order villain thing. I wanted to come up with something new. Just saying, Chaos and Order are kinda OC's as Chaos was just a primordial void thingy, and Order is completely OC. Not saying that the primordials won't be in this fic, but I'm not thinking of making them the antagonists. I've never seen the one I'm thinking of in the PJO fandom before, and it's not a god per se from another mythology, it's kinda just an idea.

So please leave a review (they help to write) and hopefully an update won't be too long

VenatrixCazador