Percy woke up in a cold sweat.
He sat up instantly, as alert as possible.
He looked around, everywhere he could see of his cabin he looked at, his eyes scanned over the room carefully, raking every single item in the room.
As he walked over to the bathroom and stood in front of the sink looking at himself.
His dreams bothered him. Him and Nico traversing Tartarus and stumbling upon Tartarus himself. It was really dark in his dream but he remembered Tartarus' form from when he and Annabeth were escaping the doors of death. He couldn't forget.
Ever since getting out of Tartarus all he could think about was his last few moments. Bob, Damasen and Small Bob about to face off against the most powerful thing down in the Pit. He himself had been so terrified he spent the entire ride up the elevator moving around uncertainly, afraid for everything to suddenly go black but it never did, they managed to hold down the button for him but their fate after that? He shuddered.
He hoped it was just PTSD from Tartarus, but in the back of his mind he had a small feeling that was a demigod dream.
-()-
At 8am Nico was knocking on the door insisting that he needed breakfast before preparing to go. Percy rubbed his eyes but was already sitting up in his bed ready to go before Nico knocked.
They talked as they walked.
"Are you sure you're ready for this Nico?" Percy inquired. "I can go alone, honestly I can survive in there." He brought up his fingers that caught fire lightly. "Especially with these new blessings."
Nico looked at Percy weirdly, who put his hands in his pockets and just looked at the ground seriously.
"You're insane if you think you're going alone, Piper would kill me." He kept his eye on Percy's expression which lightened a bit when he mentioned Piper.
"I hope they're not in pain or anything." He said looking at Nico hopefully. Who only winced.
They sat down across each other at the Poseidon table. Percy got his breakfast and stood up abruptly.
"Where are you going?" Nico asked befuddled. Percy gave his a sideways look.
"Gonna sacrifice some of my meal." He walked over to the campfire.
He dumped a good amount of his food into the fire. "To Hestia, Please please help me out a little with these new powers?" He thought as he looked into the fire which started to smell like his mother's cooking.
He went back to the table and ate his breakfast with his cousin.
"How far can we shadow travel?" Percy asked looking up. Nico looked back at his cousin.
With a thoughtful look on his face Nico said, "We can shadow travel to the Underworld, go to the entrance and jump in."
"Could you get me a parachute?" Percy questioned.
Nico looked at him confused. "What the fuck?"
-()-
Maybe the parachute wasn't a bad idea, Nico thought as they fell through the air.
As they were slowly nearing the ground Nico reached out and grabbed Percy's shoulder.
Percy noticed the floor underneath him slowly get darker and darker as the shadows below them almost become solid. They landed each with a small umph.
The treacherous air of Tartarus stung in his lungs and he breathed it in, Nico noticed Percy's ragged breathing and he walked over to him and put his hand over the older boy's chest.
The entire atmosphere was gray, the clouds above them were ruby-red. The ground was littered with broken glass all around. Percy looked up from where they fell and saw nothing but the crimson clouds above him. He was glad the ground he was standing on was black gravel instead of the strange sort of skin it was nearer to the heart of Tartarus, that made him shiver involuntary.
Percy's chest instantly felt better, he sighed in relief, "Thanks." He breathed out. "We need to follow the Phlegethon. When we left through the doors they were squaring off against Tartarus himself..." He took a shaky breath. "We have to head towards the heart ."
"I can only shield us from Tartarus so much, it's his domain and his body, we need to be careful."
-()-
As they travelled, deliberately avoiding the huge blisters on the ground that both the son of Poseidon and son of Hades knew clusters of mosters were inside reforming. They kept as close to the fiery river as they could.
Percy could see black rock mountains far away from them. He had lost count the amount of monsters he'd seen come out of them. Countless empousa, cyclopes of all sorts of sizes from freakish large to one rather small one as well, and too many telekhines for him to feel even more paranoid.
The landscape was slowly going down and down, which was expected but the demigod and god gulped as they knew that keeping away from monsters and being stealthy would only do so much for them as they continued.
To Percy's horror the ground started to slowly lose the gravel texture, now it was a membraine type material that squished under his foot just slightly, enough for his stomach to churn. The tissue the ground was made of was covered with a fine layer of earth and dust, it was smooth and sweltering. He would constantly glance upwards at the obsidian cliffs to see if there was any sort of winged creatures or anything else above them.
As they continued the air started to become colder, Nico and Percy stopped. Percy took a deep breath and watched the fleeting misty white cloud appeared as he breathed out and it dispersed. He looked further down and saw tall ink-black trees through the dark mist ahead, the trees were gigantic round tree but none had a single branch on them. He always thought of the trees in the same way Annabeth always described them to him... 'Hair follicles' and more specifically like insect hair.
"Ugh gods, I really hope we're not in Tartarus' happy trail." Percy said grimly as he looked at Nico, the god simply chuckled lightly shaking his head.
"Only you would think of something like that right now Percy." He said with a slight smirk.
They continued into the forest more and more. They came upon a group of empousai and dispatched them with a bit of stealth and godly energy from Nico.
After quite a long time traversing the forest Nico stopped suddenly and motioned for Percy to do the same.
"There's someone up ahead..." Nico whispered to him. Both men crouched low.
Percy could feel it if he really extended his sense. He started sneaking towards the aura.
"Perce-" Nico followed him slowly. "I don't think confronting it would be the best play."
Percy continued onwards, he was determined, his gut told him to go it.
As he approached closer and closer feeling the intensity, the air around them became more visible.
He saw a glowing light on the ground ahead. His eyes couldn't adjust to see what it was, after all the time they've been travelling the dark atmosphere.
Percy walked to it. As he got closer he felt Nico grab his shoulder and pull him back, as he turned to Nico both of them were suddenly enveloped into light, Percy had to close his eyes.
"Perseus, dear. Pleasure to finally meet you." Percy turned to the voice of a woman, when he saw her he almost gasped and heard Nico gasp behind him. Her skin glowing similar to Artemis' moon glow but different as well, a lot brighter. She had curly blond hair similar to Annabeth, much to Percy's chagrin his heart ached a little. The woman's eyes were glowing brightly, no iris to be seen.
Percy glanced at Nico before turning back to her, she glanced at Nico with distain and flicked her hand. Nico suddenly vanished.
"What did you do?" He asked taking his pen out of his pocket. She glanced at it and regarded him carefully, her eyes narrowing. Her perfect blonde eyebrows furrowing slightly.
"He is back where you both were seconds ago. We need to speak and I must be sure of no prying eyes. I am Hemera." She announced. She glowed more if that was even possible when saying her name. Percy bowed his head.
"Nyx's blessing is extremely powerful, along with that blessing of Hades' you have they will work together rather well." Her lips quirked upwards.
"Erebus sees you as a challenge, he has many plans for you depending on the path the fates take us on. You must be wise, Erebus cares little for mortals, he would gladly see the world as his new playground. A place of infinite darkness it would become. Thought I do say, the Olympians care little for the world they are meant to rule." She paced infront of him slowly. Percy was flabberghasted.
"You're the 3rd primordial to pull me into a pocket dimension. Are you just gonna play the pronoun game as well or will I get any useful information." He said heatedly, these primordials really were related to the fates, never saying anyth ing to you straight up, as it is.
"Don't forget your place boy, you may be powerful but you'd better be careful. I'm a Primordial, not one of the pesky Olympians you constantly mouth off to." She said coldly.
"I do have a clue for you, and a gift of sorts, from my Father." She narrowed her eyes staring intensely at him. "No big deal, his first gift to any being in at least 3,000 years."
Percy stupified. "I apologize Lady Hemera." He bowed deeply, all he could see was her sandled feet, he shifted uncomfortable.
"Your sword," She extended her hand towards him. "Give it to me."
He handed her Riptide in pen form, watching her cautiously. Not having a weapon wouldn't do. His pen glowed and became a sword. Slightly different then what he was used to.
"This is Chaotic Silver. Made from Chaos' essense, not many weapons are blessed like this. Not many are more powerful. Barely any come close to its power." She gazed at the sword with a strange look. She flipped the sword in her hand and daintily held the flat of the blade with the handle within his reach.
He grabbed it carefully. He felt the power of the sword. He closed his eyes. "Dousing that blade with ichor combined with your own blood... Would see you with a better chance of facing my brother. He knows where you are in here. I, of course only come down here at night unlike Nyx. You've seen Tartarus' physical form, although I believe you and your little friend have figured out that things are not so simple." She walked close to him, standing infront of him. "I am truly sorry you had to deal with that the first time around."
"Thank you milady. I appreciate this more than you know, but please could you still tell me that clue?" He pushed, looking into her eyes. She smiled at him.
"Good, I think you'll be ready when the time comes." She put her hands on his shoulders.
"It is cold and it is warm, it is white and it is dark, it is stone and it is soft and it is covered in red.
It's true nature is of flesh and it's color... gold." The world swirled, Percy closed his eyes as his stomach did a few flips.
-()-
"Percy, are you alright. What happened, was that Hemera? What did she want with you?" Nico said worriedly helping Percy to his feet.
"She gave Riptide an upgrade." He said uncapping the pen still in his hand.
Whereas usually his sword would glow bronze. It had helped with light a lot specially when he was in Tartarus or the Labyrinth, now it glowed a beautiful pearly silver color.
He felt his veins in his arm be filled with the same feeling he had when he first touched it, his veins tingled and felt hot as if he drank too much nectar and ate about 20 pounds of ambrosia. His skin sizzled, he saw the young god staring at him worriedly.
"Don't worry Nico. We need to keep moving." He lugged himself up, wobbling as he stood with his chin up. He stared down the atmosphere, all 5 rivers of the Underworld flowing closer and closer to each other and the air became impossible cloudy, he caught sight of crimson rain coming out of some clouds. He trudged onward towards it. He felt cold sweat on his forehead.
Read if you'd like A/N:
It's been months since I've touched this story but I have been thinking about it a lot. I sincerely apologize for the wait, my life has been quite hectic over the last year or so and I wasn't able to consistently write anything for this story. The skeleton and the plot have been worked on and it's in my head quite often. Thank you for anyone still reading this, this chapter feels like its very small but the 2k+ word count makes me happy enough to post it. I've tried fixing some errors in previous chapters here and there.
To one reviewer who said Percy should apologize to Aphrodite, while she was telling him info he needed to know she was being a nasty bitch to him and his friends(Piper).
I do wanna say however, this story WONT be abandoned. Thank you for patience and as usual please any reviews, thoughts, criticisms and whatever else.
Sincere apologies on the long HIATUS, I know how frustrating those are or WORSE unfinished stories.