Chapter 3: The expedition to find the Gateway

"Come on guys! We're almost there!" Cecil cried as he leaped from rock to rock, followed by the rest of the group. "We're trying! I'm a child of Aphrodite, not Hermes!" Silena cried as she desperately tried to catch up to Cecil as he nimbly lept along the cave/pit wall. The group had just come up from the huge cave where the portal and the rumble were located. Percy had told them of what he had seen, but right as he finished another rumble rocked the caves they were in, and the group fled to Trox.

The entire group was sweating hard, except for Lou Ellen, who was teleporting from cliff to cliff, and laughing at the misery of her team, as they grumbled on and on about how Lou had it lucky in being a child of Hecate. This continued until another rumble was heard, and the group immediately started rushing to Trox, Lou completely ditching her friends as she teleported away with a pale face.

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"WHAT THE HELL? YOU FOUND A PORTAL?!" Screeched a voice across Olympus, coming from a certain daughter of Athena. "Yeah Annabeth. My group actually ventured down to the Deep Pits, (A.N LOL I'm sorry about the location name hehehehe) which you were against going too, and we found a possible source of the surge." Percy told Annabeth smugly, before Annabeth slapped his arm blushing, as they walked to the council room. As soon as Percy's group had arrived in Trox, they had immediately split up, telling all the major leaders of the expedition about the gateway Percy had seen in the cave. Currently, Percy and Annabeth were walking towards the Olympian's throne room to tell the council about what had been seen.

"Percy, this is excellent news! If this… Gateway, you say, is the source of the power, we could potentially find out how and why it cause the surge." Annabeth said as she started to speed walk towards the throne room. Percy sighed, already knowing what this would mean. Telling the Olympians meant a large scale raid on the caverns, and a large scale raid meant lots of time and energy spent guiding a small army through Tartarus. Time that could have been spent playing Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed.

Eventually the pair finally arrived at the throne room, and just before they were about to enter the throne room, Annabeth leaned over and whispered in Percy's ear "Maybe, um, when the raid starts, we could be in the same little group?" Percy turned around, his mouth opening, but just before he could reply, a booming voice from inside the throne room yelled out "Come in."

Percy and Annabeth turned, and walked into the throne room. It was majestic and grand, with statues of the gods made of quartz, and the stars and constellations twinkling above. But the most stunning part of the room was the gods themselves. They each had their own throne, with Hephaestus' throne being made from mechanical scrap, and Zeus' throne being made from clouds, quartz and pure lightning.

Immediately, all the gods, who were chatting amongst themselves, looked over at the 2 heroes, and then at Zeus, who boomed "Why are you here Perseus, and Annabeth?" Percy gritted his teeth, and almost let a retort, but Annabeth stealthily stomped on his foot, and said "Zeus, gods of the council, the group of my friend Percy has found something that could impact the entire course of the expedition, or the godly world." The gods looked among each other, wondering what it might be.

"Well, what is it than, my daughter?" Athena asked curiously as she stared at her daughter and Percy. "It is a gateway, one that released a pulse of blue, green and gold, before shaking the bottom caves of Tartarus roughly." Hermes, Demeter and Aphrodite gasped, while Poseidon, Athena, Hera, and Zeus glanced at each other before Zeus nodded. "Very well. We will contact the strongest teams, and organize a search for this gateway. Let us hope it does not end like the last one…" Zeus replied as he shook his head while thinking of what had happened to the poor souls who went into the lost caves, searching for the source of the surge.

"I indeed hope so. Thank you for your time lord Zeus, and all of the other gods of the council." Annabeth said as she bowed to the gods, while they inclined their heads towards her and Percy, aside from Ares, who was jumping up and down is his throne, giddy with happiness at another large raid. Annabeth and Percy left right after that, not wanting to get tied up in whatever discussion would happen next.

"Oh yeah, about the group thing, I would be glad if we could be on the same team." Percy said to Annabeth as she smiled at Percy, a slight blush on her face as she said bye and ran off to get ready for the upcoming raid.

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"So, are we ready to head into the tunnels?" Percy asked his small group, consisting of Will, Annabeth, Nico and a few more warriors. There were 5 groups, each containing 7 to 10 warriors. They would each split up, but would rendezvous at specific coordinates.

"Pretty sure I am." Nico told Percy as the rest of the group stood up, ready to move on into the tunnels. Percy inclined his head towards the group, before pulling out a map. It showed the route they needed to take, and where they would stop and rest with some of the other groups. "We're going to take this tunnel until the Giant Caverns, which we will hopefully reach in a few hours. There we will rendezvous with Lou's group, before heading with them down to the deep pits, which was the location where we found the portal. Do you understand?" The other group members nodded. "Yep. We get it." Will replied, before slinging his quiver of arrows over his shoulder, and walking into the caverns. Percy and the group followed soon after.

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"Yaaah!" Percy screamed as he sliced a laistrygonian giant in half, before moving on and saving a son of Hermes from a group of spear-wielding dracaena. Percy looked around the cavern. There were only a few monsters left, but everyone was absolutely covered in dust. They had been ambushed by about 50 monsters, but thankfully no one had suffered any serious wounds.

"Hey there!" A female voice ran through the cavern. Percy and the group turned, to find Lou Ellen's group, similarly caked in dust, but without any major wounds, and only a few cuts here and there. "Hi Lou." Percy said as he walked over to the girl, whose light armor and clothes were dirty and dust-covered. "How you doing?" "Good. Just got into a nice little fight. Silly monsters, thinking they could kick my ass!" Lou laughed as she walked over to Percy, clapping him on the shoulder, before looking over his shoulder and seeing Will, hunting for any arrows that were scavengeable.

"Will!" Lou yelled as she walked over to Will, who looked over and saw Lou. A smile grew on his face, and he jogged towards Lou, who held her arms out for a hug. Will carefully walked forward, but just before they embraced, Lou tripped him, and shook all the monster dust on her off onto him. "LOL!" She yelled before running away, as he got up with a slightly frustrated, but happy look on his face.

Percy chuckled as he saw the scene, before turning towards the group of warriors who were amassing before him. He sighed, knowing that this briefing would be quite long.

"Alright everyone, now that we have gathered in the Giant Caverns, it is time to breif you guys on where we're going next." Percy said, and as he expected, about 10 hands shot up. "Ok everyone, put your hands down." Percy said as he gestured for them to lower their arms. "After this briefing, we are going to spend 15 minutes getting suited up and ready for the next journey. This time we will be heading for the deep pits, in which lies the area where I found the Gateway. However, stay cautious. Many of the Tartarians lie in wait for us. Just a few days ago I was almost killed by a gigantic hydra, so stay alert. We will rendezvous with the other groups in a small cave just before the cavern that contains the Portal. Do you understand?" Percy said, showing them the areas on the map as he talked. When he was finished, everyone nodded. They were ready to go in.

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It was a relatively boring journey to the next rendezvous point, as no monsters had actually jumped out yet, and mostly all the tunnels were small and narrows, so there was not much room to move around.

"Come on guys, let's keep moving! The lack of monsters means that it will take far less time to get to the rendezvous point!" Percy yelled as he tried to encourage the group, who were bored out of their minds, to hurry up and actually show enthusiasm. Unfortunately, this was met by a bunch of groans and moans, especially from Timmy, who was so bored that he was falling over. "Note to self," Percy muttered under his breath. "Don't bring Timmy along again."

Finally, the group heard shouts from up ahead, and immediately everyone perked up, eager to finally fight some monsters. "Come on guys!" Annabeth yelled as she sprinted forward towards the possible fight. "Last one there has to hold Timmy up!" Immediately, everyone ran forward, including Percy, who sprinted as fast as he could, and Lou, who just teleported forward ahead of the group.

When they arrived at the battle scene about 30 seconds later (Timmy was last. He just stumbled around before tiredly pulling out a bottle of lethe water and smashing it in a giant's face.) everyone ran forward and engaged an enemy or two. There were about 100 monsters here, including hellhound, dracaena, giants and more evil baddies, who surged forward, trying to destroy a group of about 12 demigods, who were having a little trouble slicing through the horde.

Percy spotted Silena and Beckendorf fighting together, working as a pair to trick giants (and then brutally chop off their heads). He also saw another group come out of an adjacent tunnel, looking just as eager as his warriors were to fight.

"DIE DEMIGOD SCUM!" A snakelike voice screamed behind Percy, and he ducked, before stabbing the dracaena in the chest. "AGH!" It screamed before dissolving into nothing but golden dust and dirt… all over Percy, and who doesn't like a nice little (HUGE) dust bath?

As Percy spat out the monster dust in his mouth, he cleared his eyes of dirt, which enabled him to see the last of the demigods finish off a couple laistrygonian giants. He looked around, not seeing any injuries or casualties, which was a pleasant surprise.

"Percy, you alright?" Annabeth said as she walked up to him, before noticing the large amount of monster dust caked on his front. Annabeth chuckled before shaking her hand through his hair, taking out the large amount of dust that had settled there. "Thanks Annabeth." Percy said as he continued to wipe his armor clean of dust. "Your welcome Percy, now come on, Will's leading us to the cavern that contained the Gateway. We're about to leave, so I would advise you to get ready to go." Annabeth said before turning and trudging off to follow Will. Percy sighed, before running after.

Percy ran up to near the front of the group, where Lou Ellen moved to walk beside him. She immediately wriggled her nose at the smell of the monster dust, and backed away slightly. "I've finally found Lou repellent, huh?" Percy said to Lou with a smile, before she smacked him. "More like human repellent." Lou retorted before running over to a child of Dionysius, who was passing out juice boxes to the warriors in the group. Percy looked around, noticing that no one was standing within 3 feet of him.

"Looks like Lou was right." He said to himself, before gazing ahead. It was the tunnel that lead to the cave with the Gateway. Percy was so caught up thinking about the Gateway that he didn't notice the tunnel rumble and groan.

Everyone stopped as the Tunnel rumbled again, but just then, someone stumbled in from around a corner. It was Cecil, who was sprinting back as fast as possible. He stumbled over to the front of the group. "The Gateway- It- it's shini- ing, really bright *pants* and something came out of it-" Just then, the cave rumbled again, with a huge bright light shined in front of the group

"Fall back!" Percy screamed as the rest of the group ran back to the city of Trox, followed by a flashing wave of Gold, Blue and Green light.

A.N: My gods! Will the expedition members ever see the Gateway again? What's causing those rumbles and shakes? And most importantly, will I get enough reviews to post again? Remember, reviewing boosts the speed of the next chapter by one day, so REVIEW! Thanks, you guys are awesome! PFUR

Vocabulary:

Deep Pits: An area deep in Tartarus. Almost untravelled, and contains very strong monsters.

Giant Caverns: An area around the middle of Tartarus. It's name is self-explanatory, and Trox is in one of them.

Tartarians: Monsters who betrayed the Titans, choosing to retreat to Tartarus instead of make a peace pact with the Olympians.

Surge: Another name for the great wave of power that happened a year ago in Tartarus.