Erre es korakas, Vlacas! I'm SO sorry to all the one who I've kept waiting! PLEASE FORGIVE ME!
F.Y.I: I'm not the best at writing fight scenes, especially physical vs. magic fight scenes, so please forgive the quality!
Also, this is IMPORTANT: I'll be moving to a new place in the next month or two, so it could be a while before my next update.
Robert scowled as he threw up a barrier around himself as a stream of flames the size of a steam engine rushed at him. Damn pyro abilities! He hadn't been merely sitting back while the monsters he summoned were defeated. He'd been analyzing.
This 'Naruto' was primarily a close-range melee fighter, but used his fire abilities for distance battles. Very problematic. Curse the son of Hestia!
Naruto rushed forward, keeping his flames going as he went, then as he got close, Robert vanished and reappeared a few feet away.
Growling, Naruto channeled both wind chakra and fire through his knife until the blade was enveloped in a concentrated stream of flame like that off a handheld blow torch and lengthened it so that made the knife's business end the length of a greek Xiphos sword from Camp Half-Blood. Scowling, he send a crescent wave of heat off his extended blade but the magical demigod threw up a bubble of energy to shield himself. But when Naruto's attack struck it, the two canceled one another out in a blast of heat and energy that popped Robert's shield and threw them both back.
Robert panted. How in the name of the Primordials that predated every mortal, god and titan did this guy have so much energy?! With all the fighting he did before getting here, the blond should be running on fumes! But he looked still as fresh and ready to go as ever! And Robert couldn't keep this up forever. Flames were easy to deflect with magic with magic, but deflecting actual heat required greater effort and energy.
Users of magic had an innate power that allowed them to use their energy, directed by thoughts (though most people believed it was directed by words), to manipulate the nature of the world. Casting a spell with magic cost as much energy as would be lost to do the task by mundane means. Problem was, to learn Magic required training of intellect and spirit, and as a result of mastering the Magic, most users of the art of spellcasting don't train their body. Seemed unnecessary when one could alter the nature of the world around them to suit your wants with a thought, word or gesture.
He had to end this fast, or Naruto would outlast him!
Naruto's eyes widened as the air on either side of him shimmered and two slabs of rock formed on either side of him and zoomed at him. But Naruto flooded chakra into his legs and leap up as the rock slabs crashed into one another, sending up a shower of debris, the stone chips turning into swords and launched themselves at Naruto.
Just as Naruto was going to prepare a substitution, A series of golden arrows knocked the blades out of the air and as he landed, Naruto flashed Desma a grateful smile before whipping to where Robert was, sending a wave of flames from his mouth, adding wind chakra to it to make the already massive fireball cover a wider range.
Robert raised his arms again and the whole temple started to glow and pulse with power as if it were a giant heart. As it did, a wall of water rose in front of the son of the magic goddess, and the underground chamber filled with steam as Naruto's flames struck it.
Robert snarled, waving a hand and a section of the vapor became an iron staff that glowed with a faint, dark purple light.
Seeing the faint bronze glow from Naruto's knife and the golden one from Desma's bow and arrows, he smirked. Whereas weapons made from Celestial Bronze and Imperial Gold only caused monsters to disintegrate into dust and could not harm mortals, Stygian Iron absorbed monsters' essence, causing them to either not being able to reform ever again or take a longer time to reform and it can also harm mortals.
Still, he hated close range fights and relying on anything that had to be swung over your head and used to crack skulls like some crude barbarian. He shoved that aside and prepared to strike—and as he got close, an explosion of dry air blasted through the chamber, dispelling the steam...and the center of the blast had been Naruto!
'Ho come on! Hestia's kid had Pyrokinesis AND Aerokinesis?! What was up with that?! His mom doesn't even have the elemental ability to create control and manipulate the air and wind! Only fire! How did he have that power?!' Robert though, shocked, yet he still attacked.
Naruto leap back and away as the staff smashed into the ground where he had been standing a moment ago.
"Damn you! Stop dodging!" Robert roared.
I'll take your attacks when you take mine!" Naruto retorted. He hated distance fighters, they were his polar opposite. Not to mention Naruto had no idea how to deal with magic. He was glad for his experiences with shinobi from Kirigakure...and the glowing purple light coming off the staff had been a dead give-away. Made keeping taps on his opponent MUCH easier, even if the guy was a stealthy as a heard of elephants wearing steel drums tied to their feet.
Robert glared at that comment. Who said that in a fight?! Still...he supposed that given the way he kept teleporting when Naruto got close enough to actually hit him, he deserved having that thrown at him.
Naruto growled as Robert levitated and bolts of green energy shot from the end of the son of the magic goddess's staff and struck him in the chest, sending him skidding backwards. He hated lightning! He had enough of that dealing with Sasuke! He felt that one even though the Nemean Lion outfit!
"You can't beat me! No matter how powerful a demigod you are, Zeus, Poseidon and Hades gave my mother power in all three major realms, the sky, sea, and the Underworld! I'm never out of my element!" Robert shouted raising his staff and slamming the end on the ground and an army of skeletons erupted from the ground and surrounded Naruto and Desma.
Desma was having no luck at all with the skeleton warriors, her arrows just whistled straight through their empty skulls and the spaces between their bones. Naruto's attack had more luck as he formed a Rasengan and slammed it into the Spartus soldiers, sending them flying and shattering to pieces...at least that's what he thought before they started to reform, the bones pulling themselves together as if they were magnetized.
Crap!
"What?! Th-th-that shouldn't be possible! Only Sybarius' dragon teeth can produce self-rebuilding skeleton warriors!"
"That's because it's MY power that's restoring them!" Robert said triumphantly.
At that, Naruto glared. This didn't add up. No way this guy had THIS much power to spare...and that greek temple... it was giving off so much power that he could feel it. Every time Robert made to cast a spell, it reacted...
Wait a second! No way! It couldn't be that, could it? Those three Ryūdōin brothers and their Mokujin Sōjutsu?
Naruto had his knife change back into a ring then raised his hand, focusing on the fox's chakra within him and concentrated it in one arm, and flung his hand forward in a punch, extending the energy toward Robert. A glowing fist slammed into him, and the sorcerer flew backward with such force, he cracked a column, which tumbled down on top of him.
For a heartbeat, the only sound was the trickle of dust and debris. Then out of the rubble came a deep howl of laughter. Robert rose from the ruins, tossing aside a huge chunk of stone.
"Nice!" he roared. "Completely ineffective, but nice!"
Then he noticed what had happened to the temple and seemed panicked, turning his back on Naruto and Desma, leaving them to the Spartus as he set about using his magic to repair the column.
'Bingo!' Naruto thought, then grabbed Desma under one arm.
"What are you...?!" she shouted before she yelped as Naruto leap up onto the wall, sticking to it with chakra, then kicked off it and landing a flying dropkick to Robert just as he finished his repair job and the three went tumbling into the temple, Naruto and Desma recovering first.
"You coward! Attacking from behind like that!" Robert sputtered furiously.
Naruto glared at that "Aw HELL no! You were the one who turned your back on us in the middle of a fight and expect us NOT to take an opportunity like that! Besides, if the pillar falling on you didn't hurt you, why are you complaining about a kick?!"
"So you picked up on that I've got the Curse of Achilles...named after Achilles, the Ancient Greek hero, who was famous for his invulnerability. When one bathes in the River Styx, they will be granted the power to remain uninjured by any means...and in the middle of a battle too. Are you sure you're not one of Aries or Athena's kids?" Robert said with surprise and begrudging respect in his tone. He glared at Naruto.
"I got it because my body was too weak otherwise...would've died as an infant...Anyone who bears the Curse of Achilles is nearly invulnerable, except in one weak point. They also get highly increased strength, speed, agility, reflexes, endurance, and fighting skills, also linking to their abilities, making it less tiresome to use immense powers. However...in addition to gaining invulnerability, someone with the Curse of Achilles also gains extreme physical powers - heightened strength and reflexes - and a body that almost automatically fights. However, this places an enormous amount of stress on the body, requiring a warrior under the curse to be careful not to over-exert himself, which happens more quickly than before. This means someone under the curse will tire fighting quicker than someone who isn't; meaning that if a person with the Curse of Achilles is attacked by a large enough army they can be overwhelmed or become too exhausted to fight. Also, a person under the curse will have certain emotions or behaviors enhanced, normally having to do with their fatal flaw. One major weakness is that while you are immune to injury you can still be killed by other means, as your body is still mortal."
"Well...damn." Naruto scowled, but Desma noticed that his eyes were glinting, not unlike the way the kids back at Cabin Eleven...the cabin that housed the children of Hermes at Camp Half-Blood...did when they were going to prank someone. "Hope this guy doesn't know any vampirization spells that'd leech the energy out of whatever it hits, then! That'd be bad in this situation!"
Robert smirked, "That so?" and a cannonball-sized orb of energy formed on the top end of his Stygian Iron staff and it launched towards Naruto, whom Robert saw as the much more immediate threat. Naruto met the magic-user's eyes and dodged, pulling Desma out of the way with him, and too late, Robert realized what had happened: Naruto had tricked him into disrupting the magic energy of his temple!
The ball of energy exploded within the center of Roberts temple and it started going haywire, like an out-of-control electrical generator as the whole place shook.
"You fools! That just interrupted the network that maintained all the arcane energy in the entire City of Russellville! That's twenty-eight-point-three square miles of magic!" the sorcerer screamed in panic as bolts of magical energy lashed around. "That much energy going out of control could even blast us all to...AAAGH!" Robert screamed as one of the bolts struck him.
Cursing, Naruto grabbed Robert and hauled both him and Desma out of the ruined structure, the bolts of unstable magic had vaporized the skeletons. But as they got out of the temple, Naruto skid to a stop and set the others down as he recalled just how far the temple boosted the magical energy. Twenty-eight-point-three square miles of unstable magic!
Aw hell! He whipped around, letting the other demigods go as he did.
"What are you DOING?!" Desma shouted at him.
"If this goes, all of Russellville could blow with it!" Naruto shouted, thinking of all the people that could die if that happened.
"Well, what are we gonna do then?!" Desma shouted, "This was your idea!" she shouted furiously.
'Try this! Its a pretty powerful one! But you might not have the time to do it completely, ya know!' a feminine, yet urgent voice shouted in his mind as a sealing formula flashed behind Naruto's eyes.
A seal. A barrier containment seal! But how had he know that and how to construct it appeared in his mind like that?!
Wait...There wasn't time for that! But how to apply that seal in time to stop everything from being destroyed?!
Ho!
Naruto slammed his hands down onto the ground and at his mental urging, a stream of fire sprung up from where his hands touched the ground and zoomed towards the center of Robert's temple and once it got there and erupted into a bonfire before spreading out in a spiderweb of ruins that spread out from the center and quickly spread out to try covering the whole area of the temple, but it wasn't fast enough.
'Come one...! Come on...! COME ON!' Naruto thought desperately, mentally praying to those Olympian gods he'd learned of back at Camp Half-Blood for help. More time. Anything that would keep the haywire temple explosion from destroying everything and everyone in Russellville.
The flames responded to his urgings and formed the seal faster but as it wasn't quick enough, and Robert's temple exploded. Fortunately, the seal was completed enough so that the explosion itself was sealed, but the kinetic energy of the shockwave still sent the trio of demigods onto their backs and tumbling like sacks of abused produce, with enough force to knock them all unconscious.
The ground crumbled inwards and all three of them fell...
The first thing Naruto noted as his eyes opened was the wind whistling in his ears. When he and the other two demigods awoke, he was shocked. They were tumbling down an open-air shaft!
Desma wailed in terror. Neither of them had the power to fly. And Robert seemed to have something wrong with him, because he didn't teleport away.
They kept falling falling for so long that they wondered if they were ever going to stop, something about the surroundings changed. The air grew hotter and damper, as if they were plummeting into the throat of a massive dragon. The darkness took on a grey-red tinge. Naruto realized he could see Desma and Robert as they all fell. The whistling in his ears turned to more of a roar. The air became intolerably hot, permeated with the smell of rotten eggs. Suddenly, the chute they'd been falling through opened into a vast cavern. Maybe half a mile below them was the bottom. For a moment he was too stunned to think properly. The entire island of Manhattan could have fit inside this cavern- and she couldn't even see its full extent. Red clouds hung in the air like vaporized blood. The landscape- at least what she could see of it- was rocky black plains, punctuated by jagged mountains and fiery chasms. To Naruto's left, the ground dropped off in a series of cliffs, like colossal steps leading deeper into the abyss.
The stench of sulfur made it hard to concentrate, but he focused on the ground directly below them and saw a ribbon of glittering black liquid- a river. And they were heading right for it.
The impact didn't kill him, but the cold nearly did.
Freezing water shocked the air out of his lungs and he fought down a cry of sheer agony as he was submerged, it made him recall thinking back to his time at Camp Half-Blood's lake when he thought that since he was practically made of fire and his connection to fire was extremely deep, of course water would hurt him.
He HATED being right about that!
His limbs turned rigid, and he lost his grip on Desma and Robert. Naruto began to sink. Strange wailing sounds filled his ears- millions of heartbroken voices, as if the river was made of distilled sadness. The voices were worse than the cold. They weighed him down and made him feel numb.
What's the point of struggling? they told him. You're dead anyway You'll never leave this place.
He could sink to the bottom and drown, let the river carry his body away. That would be easier. He could just close her eyes...just give up...
Wait...Give up?
"Hold on, Naruto." It was Artemis's voice. "You're not getting away from me that easily, I'm a huntress, after all. But do you give up? What of those with you now? Will you abandon their hope? Can you not feel their desperation? HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN!? You live for those who care for you and saved you from your darkness and pain and it is for them that you stand and fight…regardless of the outcome, they gave you a reason to live…not for yourself but for them…and if you give up now…then those counting on you right here and right now will suffer and worse…stand and fight!"
He could see her now— and more than that, memories came flooding back to him—sharper and more colorful.
In his mind,Naruto started seeing events that had happened before, images from his previous missions.
A large lake in a country far away, covered in an unnatural mist. Sasuke and Naruto felt afraid when suddenly Kakashi-sensei spoke up.
"Don't worry. I don't let my comrades die."
'Kakashi-sensei...' Naruto thought.
Showing the area of the chuunin exam's preliminary rounds. As Naruto was standing up in the stands, Hinata was fighting her cousin Neji. Even though she was being beaten up, she stood and suddenly spoke the words that he remembered saying himself, so long ago.
"I won't give up. That's my way of the Ninja!"
'...Hinata...'
Again, showing the area of the preliminaries. Lee standing up, even though he had already passed out.
'Fuzzy brows.'
Naruto was sitting in a field full of flowers that was in the country of the Wave. He could see a person standing in front of him, talking with a small smile on his face. if Naruto had not known it was a boy, he would mistake him for a girl all over again. He was listening intensely as the girly-looking boy, spoke.
"Do you have something you want to protect? When a person has something they want to protect regardless whether it's a dream, a person or a place, that's when they become truly strong."
He could see Artemis now—in the form of a young girl in her early teens with long auburn hair that was kept up behind her in a high ponytail, and her eyes were as silvery-yellow as the moon, strapped to her back was a silver bow and a quiver filled to the brim with arrows. She also wore a pale green vest with a silvery parka over it, and camouflage patterned pants and hunting boots, just like he'd first seen her. She was looking down at him with a very slight smile.
Next to her was a woman that was sweet-looking and beautiful in an unpretentious way, with an honest smile, eyes of red fire, and black hair that framed her face in ringlets. She wore a plain, modest brown gown, and kept her hair tucked under a linen shawl.
The woman smiled at him like he was the most important thing that ever existed. And held out her arms as if to embrace him. Just the sight of this woman made Naruto want to weep with happiness. Somehow he knew who she was, and what she was to him.
"Mother...!" he whispered, and fought to reach both her and Artemis.
"Good to know the tides of misery aren't enough to extinguish you Will of Fire...I know you can overcome this!" his mother encouraged, holding out a hand for him to take.
Naruto eyes blazed as the vision faded. Give up? No way! Naruto snarled at the thought, gripping his fellows. He couldn't see them in the murky water, but when he gripped them, he kicked upward and broke the surface. Naruto gasped, grateful for air, no matter how sulfurous. Though he couldn't make out their surroundings, he knew this was a river. Rivers had shores. The river worked against him: thousands of weeping voices whispering in his ears, getting inside his brain.
Life is despair, they said. Everything is pointless, and then you die.
"Pointless," Desma murmured, her teeth chattered from the cold and she stopped swimming and began to sink.
"Misery," Robert moaned.
"Fight it!" Naruto shouted as he kicked and struggled, trying to keep all three of them afloat.
Mentally shoving the wailing and his own agony to the to back of his mind, he used the last of his strength to reach the riverbank. His feet dug into the sandy bottom. The ninja hauled them all ashore. Robert, Desma and him all shivering and gasping, and collapsed on the dark sand.
At their feet, the river roared past, a flood of liquid wretchedness. The sulfurous air stung Naruto's lungs and prickled his skin. When he looked at his arms, he saw they were already covered with an angry rash that the fox was being slow to heal. He tried to sit up, then gasped in pain.
The beach wasn't sand. They were sitting on a field of jagged black-glass chips. Some of which were now embedded in Naruto's palms. So...the air was acid. The water was misery. The ground was broken glass. Everything here was designed to hurt and kill...wherever "here" was. Naruto took a rattling breath and took off his Nemean Lion vest and laid it out before channeling his wind chakra through his index and ring fingers on one hand and used them as a pair of scissors to cut the sleeves off it and then cut the sleeves apart and made strips that he used as makeshift bandages and wrapped around the injuries his companions had obtained.
They struggled to their feet just after he had finished doing so.
"Th-tha-that's the Cocytus- the River of Lamentation It's made of pure misery!" Robert said through clenched teeth. "H-how? Wha-wha-what ARE you?! How come you weren't affected?!"
Naruto shrugged, summoning a bonfire between them so they could all dry off and in about a minute, the trio of demigods were warm and dry again. "Who says I wasn't? I just know that when times are hard, you can either roll over and die, or endure and push through. Besides..." he looked down at Artemis's silver ring fondly, "...I had help from my teachers and those dear to me."
Robert and Desma looked at him, puzzled, but the whiskered blond male ignored them and scanned the surroundings. Above, he saw no signs of the tunnel they'd fallen down. He couldn't even see the cavern roof- just blood covered clouds, floating in the hazy grey air. It was like staring through a thin mix of tomato soup and cement.
It made Naruto wish he had the Byakugan.
Robert, meanwhile, was alternating between waving his hands and looking at them, disbelief and horror covering his face.
"What's with you?" Desma asked.
"My magic...that reaction back in Russellville...when that bolt hit me, it sapped my magic dry, I can't do anything this way!" Robert said, stricken.
Naruto and Desma looked at one another and Naruto made up his mind before his bronze ring transformed into his hunting knife and he pressed it hilt first into the son of Hecate's hand.
"Wha...?" Robert asked, looking up at him.
"Until you get your hocus pocus mojo back, you need that blade more than me." the ninja said with a shrug since it was obvious, then looked around. "So...where are we?" Naruto asked, already eager to be moving and find the way out. The black-glass beach stretched inland about fifty yards. then dropped off the edge of a cliff. From where he stood, Naruto couldn't see what was below, but the edge flickered with red light as if illuminated by huge fires.
That lightened Naruto's mood somewhat, the three of them could warm themselves and he could restore his strength there. Like the note from his mother had told him, if he ever needed help, fire would come to his beck and call as well as empower, heal, and protect him.
Desma was still shivering, despite the hot, sticky glass cuts on her hands were still bleeding, which was unusual for her. As a child of Apollo, God of medicine, normally, she healed fast. Her breathing got more and more labored. What was worse was that she'd lost her bow, and most of her arrows in the fall into the Cocytus.
"This place is killing us," she said. "I mean, it's literally going to kill us, unless..." She gazed inland toward the cliff, illuminated by flames from below.
"Unless what?" Naruto prompted. "You've got a plan?"
"It's a plan," Desma murmured. "I don't know about how much it'll work, but...we need to find the River of Fire. If we drink from it, we should be able to survive here if this is where I think it is."
Naruto smirked, "Easy enough." he concentrated and a stream of liquid flames shot from where he could sense the fire below the cliffs, as he cupped his hands together, and in his palms ignited a flame that blazed for a few seconds, before it faded away to show a trio of water canteens that he unscrewed and the liquid flames of the entered them and handed one to each of his fellow demigods.
Desma and Robert nodded and took the offered canteens before the trio each drank and lowered them, Desma and Robert with faces of disgust and shuttered while Naruto shrugged the taste of the flames off, and found that they looked somewhat better and that it was no longer painful to breathe the air.
"So...now that we're NOT gonna die just from being in here...where is this place?" Naruto asked.
Desma and Robert shared a look, then grimly answered in unison, as though even naming this place was the LAST thing they wanted to ever do.
"Tartarus."