Ugh! I hate school! So much work! I can barely keep up with homework and have to give away all my precious FanFic writing hours to complete it all! And AP classes! I'm so stressed right now!
Luckily, writing makes me feel better. I have returned! I know I haven't been away that long in reality, but by my standards it's been ages.
Song: "The Other Side" by Ruelle
Kinda has a double meaning in the chapter, see if you can spot them both.
Seriously though, listen to this song before you read the chapter, or while you're reading the part where it comes in. It is amazing, and when I heard it, I knew it represented this moment perfectly.
First Person: Lucy
Now, I'd seen some crazy things in my time, so raining cars wasn't exactly high on my list of shocking surprises. As the roof of the cavern collapsed and the ground caved in, sunlight poured into the darkness below. Hedge had used the ballistae to blast a hole straight through the ground. Chunks of asphalt as big as garage doors tumbled down, along with six or seven Italian cars. One would've crushed the Athena Parthenos, but the statue's glowing aura acted like a force field, and the car bounced off. Unfortunately, it fell straight towards Annabeth, who was sitting in the cavern below, blinded by the sunlight and holding her arms over her head and eyes to protect herself from dust and rocks.
Luckily my Curse was fast to act, surging forward to wrap her misty body and aura around Annabeth protectively, causing the car to be deflected away from her, retaining its kinetic energy, and Annabeth opened her eyes just in time to see a bright red Fiat 500 slam into Arachne's silk trap, punching through the cavern floor and disappearing with the Chinese Spidercuffs. As Arachne fell, she screamed like a freight train on a collision course; but her wailing rapidly faded. All around Annabeth, more chunks of debris slammed through the floor, riddling it with holes.
The Athena Parthenos remained undamaged, though the marble under its pedestal was a starburst of fractures. Annabeth was covered in cobwebs, strands of left-over spider silk from her arms and legs like the strings of a marionette, but otherwise, she was unharmed. The army of spiders had disappeared, either fleeing back into the darkness or falling into the chasm. As daylight flooded the cavern, the tapestries along the walls crumbled to dust, but I caught a glimpse of one that depicted what looked to be Order and Chaos, as well as one that looked suspiciously like a bunch of children with Ward barcodes on the backs of their necks. They were gone before I could get a proper look, and I remembered that I had an important role here. Below was the cavern to Tartarus. It was time.
"Annabeth!" Percy called, leaning over the rail.
"Here!" She sobbed.
Kaze was the first off the Argo II, getting a running start as he hit the ground and rushed through the crumbling room with his speed. Veon drew his lance and hopped off next, Audrey summoning her trident and testing out her ability to float before then practicing her controls going forward and backwards. I pulled one of Percy's arm's over my shoulders and wrapped my arm around his waist before jumping over the railing with him, heading to Annabeth.
The room kept shaking, but Annabeth managed to stand, Curse's aura protecting her as best it could. I had rejuvenated the power to my Curse, upgrading her as a new test for the next versions that I'd send out onto the battlefield with the camps. Annabeth's backpack seemed to be missing, along with Daedalus's laptop, not to mention her knife that she said she'd had since she was seven, but at the very least she was alive. She edged closer to the gaping hole made by the Fiat 500 where Arachne had fallen through. Jagged rock walls plunged into the darkness as far as she could see, a few small strands jutting out here and there, but nothing on them - just strands of spider silk dripping over the sides like Christmas tinsel.
She wondered if Arachne had told the truth about the chasm. Had the spider really fallen all the way to Tartarus? She tried to feel satisfied with that idea, but it made her sad. Arachne had made some beautiful things. She'd already suffered for eons, and now her last tapestries had crumbled. After all that, falling into Tartarus seemed like too harsh an end. I considered that Arachne's intentions had never been pure, but she was a good weaver. If she had lost her pride and hubris, quite possibly she and Athena could've gotten along, Athena might have admired her, and maybe Arachne would've been known for more than just the spiders. As if my 10th grade English teacher needed any more reasons why hubris was one's downfall.
I dropped Percy beside Annabeth, and he surged forward, lacing his fingers in hers. He turned her gently away from the pit and wrapped his arms around her. She buried her face in his chest and broke down into tears.
"It's okay," He said. "We're together."
He didn't say 'you're okay' or 'we're alive,' I noticed. After all that we went through in our lives, the most important thing was that they were together. Behind us, the Argo II dropped down a rope ladder for the others, while Audrey and Veon were using what powers they had over the earth - as the daughter of the earthquake god and the son of the god down under - to try and calm the tremors shaking the room. Kaze tried his best to stabilize the cavern, putting a rock here and there to put pressure on certain areas and keep the ground from slipping anymore. My curse dispersed from Annabeth, blowing out into the air to assist in her own way before she disappeared.
Everyone gathered around Percy and Annabeth. Annabeth didn't seem too surprised to see Nico, considering he had been in a jar last she heard, and he looked like a vampire raised from the dead who wasn't all that excited about it. The guy was in better condition than he could've been, but really, he was still a bit out of it. The healer in me couldn't help but want to help fix that - an urge, like when you saw someone with food on their face and it would be so easy just to reach over and fix the issue. I figured that Annabeth was too worn out to be surprised about it, or she wasn't surprised we'd saved him because she knew we were awesome like that.
"Your leg," I pointed out, kneeling and examining the Bubble Wrap cast. "Allow me to help."
I put my hand to her ankle and began sending my energy through. I wasn't at my strongest, so it wouldn't be a permanent fix, but at the very least I could speed up the healing process and put it into more of a recovery phase, setting the bone properly and healing it enough that it wouldn't jostle to give it a sort of head start.
"Oh, Annabeth, what happened?" Piper asked.
Curse had explained the entire story to me when she disappeared, so I focused more on healing Annabeth than listening to her story. She seemed to have trouble with her words at first, but managed to get out the story, becoming more at ease the more she spoke. Percy held her hand tight, which must've helped as well. When she finished, her friends' faces were slack with amazement.
"Gods of Olympus," Jason muttered. "You did all that alone. With a broken ankle."
"Well…some of it with a broken ankle," She corrected. "And Curse was with me too."
Percy grinned. "You made Arachne weave her own trap? I knew you were good, but Holy Hera - Annabeth, you did it. Generations of Athena kids tried and failed. You found the Athena Parthenos!"
Everyone gazed at the statue.
"What do we do with her?" Frank asked. "She's huge."
"We'll have to take her with us to Greece," Annabeth said. "The statue is powerful. Something about it will help us stop the giants."
I wanted to protest that Athena's statue wasn't going to be of much use, but Hazel continued.
"'Giants' bane stands gold and pale, Won through pain from a woven jail.'" She looked at Annabeth with admiration. "It was Arachne's jail. You tricked her into weaving it."
With a lot of pain, I assumed.
"I thought about that," Annabeth admitted. "When the idea came to me, I figured it was worth a shot."
Leo raised his hands. He made a finger picture frame around the Athena Parthenos like he was taking measurements. "Well, it might take some rearranging, but I think we can fit her through the bay doors in the stable. If she sticks out the end, I might have to wrap a flag around her feet or something."
I imagined the Athena Parthenos jutting from the trireme with a sign across her pedestal that read: WIDE LOAD.
"What about you guys?" Annabeth asked. "What happened with the giants?"
Percy told her about rescuing Nico, the appearance of Bacchus, and the fight with the twins in the Colosseum. Nico didn't say much, not that it was very surprising. The poor guy looked like he'd been wandering through a wasteland for six weeks. Percy explained what Nico had found out about the Doors of Death, and how they had to be closed on both sides. Even with the sunlight streaming in from above, Percy's news made the cavern seem dark again.
"So the mortal side is in Epirus," Annabeth concluded. "At least that's somewhere we can reach."
Nico grimaced. "But the other side is the problem. Tartarus."
The word seemed to echo through the chamber. The pit behind us exhaled a cold blast of air. I smelled the scent of Tartarus, an ancient darkness. But it was also refreshing, and I felt Order stirring within me, like a child being offered chocolate pancakes in the morning to be convinced into getting up.
"Chaos is there. Bring him to me. Bring him back," She urged, although her voice inside me sounded only half awake, like someone begging in their sleep.
Percy seemed to feel the dark and uneasy energy, because he guided Annabeth a little farther from the edge. Her arms and legs trailed spider silk like a bridal train. The OCD in me wanted to cut them free, but Percy interrupted my thoughts.
"Bacchus mentioned something about my voyage being harder than I expected. Not sure why-"
The chamber suddenly groaned. The Athena Parthenos tilted to one side, and Audrey was quick to fly over to it, catching the head with her trident, but she was trying to support a 40-foot statue. Kaze was quick to run up the walls and use some of Arachne's remaining spider webbing to connect to the statue and pull it from the other side, keeping Audrey from losing any ground - or air, I guess - and falling back from the weight, but she couldn't move forward, either. The marble foundation under the pedestal was crumbling, and Veon rushed over to help Audrey, pushing the statue back just a bit, but the ground beneath was giving way beneath. If the statue fell into the chasm, all of Annabeth's work would be for nothing. The quest would fail.
"Secure it!" Annabeth cried.
Everyone understood immediately.
"Zhang!" Leo cried. "Get me to the helm, quick! The coach is up there alone."
Frank transformed into a giant eagle, and the two of them soared towards the ship.
Jason wrapped his arm around Piper, turning to Percy. "Back for you guys in a sec."
He summoned the wind and shot into the air.
"The floor won't last!" Hazel warned. "The rest of us should get to the ladder."
"Come on!" Emily shouted. "We've made it this far! We get out of here and we're golden! We can do this!"
Plumes of dust and cobwebs blasted from the holes in the floor, the spider's silk support cables trembled like massive guitar strings and began to snap, while the tremors began to pick up once more, Audrey and Veon's distraction not allowing them any control. Even Kaze's quick fixes were beginning to crumble. Hazel lunged for the bottom of the rope ladder and gestured for Nico to follow, but Nico was in no condition to sprint. Emily took one of his arms over her shoulders and helped him forward.
Percy gripped Annabeth's hand tighter. "It'll be fine," He muttered.
Looking up, I saw grappling lines shoot from the Argo II and wrap around the statue, one lassoing Athena's neck like a noose. Leo shouted orders from the helm as Jason and Frank flew frantically from like to line, trying to secure them, while Audrey, Kaze, and Veon held the statue steady while they did.
I turned back to the chasm that led down into Tartarus. I had to throw Veon down there, didn't I? He'd be down there alone, confused, terrified, with the weight of the world on his shoulders, and he won't understand what he's supposed to do. He won't know how to escape, he won't know what he's fighting. All he will know…is that I was the one who left him there. And that scared me. That hurt to think about. It hurt to think that he would hate me, that he wouldn't understand why I did what I did. And I didn't want to think about him alone down there - alone down there because of me.
It was time. I thought I'd be ready when this moment came. But it was only now, the moment the opportunity was right in front of me, that I allowed myself to feel my doubt. So I did what I always did when I was conflicted about things. I chose, and I acted before I could stop myself.
"Get going to the ladder," I ordered Percy and Annabeth. "I'm too worn out to fly you."
Percy nodded and began to walk forward, pulling Annabeth's hand in his. She looked fully ready to follow him, but she suddenly gasped and stopped.
"What is it?" Percy asked.
She tried to stagger towards the ladder. She didn't understand why she was moving backwards instead. Her legs swept out from under her and she fell on her face.
"Her ankle!" Hazel shouted from the ladder. "Cut it! Cut it!"
No one seemed to understand what she meant. Cut her ankle? Something yanked Annabeth backward and dragged her toward the pit. Percy lunged and grabbed her arm, but the momentum carried him along as well. The spider silk, loose lines that seemed innocent enough, but there was one strand wrapped around her foot - and the other end went straight into the pit. It was attached to something heavy down in the darkness, something that was pulling her in. I lunged with my bow to strike the spider silk, but was suddenly knocked back by a strong punch to the gut.
"Do not allow her to reach Tartarus. Do not allow him to escape Tartarus."
I internally flinched upon hearing that voice. It was robotic, deep and monotonous, but it was a voice I promised never to forget. My stomach ached, and I could barely move from the attack, but I could open my eyes and see my father's reanimation walking towards me. It wasn't him, I knew. I was so angry when I first saw what Gaea had done, stealing his form like that, defiling it into that thing. But I was out of anger. I could only feel sadness. Was his soul trapped somewhere along with the darkness she'd placed, or was he in the Underworld? Veon had once done some digging, said that my father was scheduled to go to Elysium, but that he had gone and searched but couldn't find him. Elysium was big, he explained, and finding one person in a sea of thousands of years worth of demigod heroes wasn't an easy task. But perhaps he was gone. He was here.
I worked on healing the pain in my stomach, while Kaze charged up, leaving the statue to the others, and charging like a missile into my father, sending him back and causing the floor to crumble as he kept his feet upon the cracking ground to stay on his feet. Nico was hobbling in their direction, Hazel trying to detangle her cavalry sword from the rope ladder. Everyone else was working to secure the statue, and Hazel was crying desperately for anyone to hear her shouts.
Veon noticed, shouting something to Audrey before suddenly releasing the weight of the statue onto her alone and using his lance to soar towards Percy and Annabeth. She hadn't fully processed what he'd said or where he was going before she suddenly turned her attention back to the statue, now lurching from the lack of support. Annabeth sobbed as she hit the edge of the pit, her legs slipping over the side. Percy couldn't reach Riptide without letting go of Annabeth's arm, and Annabeth's strength was gone. As she slipped over the edge, Percy fell with her.
Veon made it to the edge of the pit at full speed, but as he slowed to turn his direction vertical, his lance was suddenly ripped from his grip, twisted to shove the shaft into his chin and then into his gut. His hands were off the lance before he could realize what was happening, and without it, he began to plummet, caught off guard by the attack and with no reaction time to grab onto anything. Tsuchi's reanimation hovered higher above him, the lance in her hand and held slightly behind her in an elegant battle pose. She kicked his right arm as he fell, aiming to kick him further from the edge of the chasm, but Kaze suddenly jumped up to land on her shoulder, causing her balance in the air to be disrupted for milliseconds. She still kicked Veon's arm, most likely popping his elbow in the wrong direction based on his scream of pain, but she instead kicked him closer to the edge than away from it. Right after, my father's reanimation - Kandai - came soaring in their direction, and Kaze jumped off of Tsuchi at the last second, causing him to tackle her back, the lance dropping from her grip and into the pit below.
Bless my brother, really.
I lunged without thinking. I dived nearly past a proper leverage angle, but managed to grab his hand, gripping it tightly as his direction suddenly changed and he hit the wall of the pit with a grunt. I barely had my hips at the edge of the chasm, my other arm shaking as it tried to keep me from slipping any further at the angle I was trying to stabilize myself at. I should've let him drop, I knew. But I didn't want to let him fall. I was filled with dread at the idea of him falling.
A distance away, Percy had managed to grab a ledge about fifteen feet below the top of the chasm. He was holding on with one hand, gripping Annabeth's wrist with the other, but the pull on her leg was much too strong. He was barely holding on to a ledge the size of a bookshelf. Nico leaned over the edge of the chasm, thrusting out his hand, but he was much too far away to help. Hazel was yelling for the others, but even if they heard her over all the chaos, they'd never make it in time. Kaze was busy trying to avoid the two reanimations at once, and he was pushing himself to remain faster than them, since he was constantly having to change his direction, which in turn forced him to slow down from time to time, and the act of coming to a dead stop and starting up again was keeping him on edge, especially with two reanimations nearly as fast as him trying to crush him. They had no anger at his tricking them into running into each other, but they understood he was standing in the way of their goal - a mission from Gaea, no doubt: to send Veon to Tartarus and have him be the vessel for the pit instead of Chaos.
Veon was going to have two Primordial beings trying to possess his body at once; the strain would be terrible on him. The force of the Underworld tugged at us like dark gravity. The darkness wanted him, and it was grabbing onto Annabeth and Percy as well for just being in the vicinity. Arachne's webbing hadn't grabbed Annabeth until she tried to escape the pit. The webbing would've broken otherwise, but Tartarus must've realized an easy was to get Veon close enough to fall would be to lure him to the rescue of his friends - and to add insult to injury, he'd let them fall too. And now, they were too far down to be saved.
"Percy, let me go," Annabeth croaked. "You can't pull me up."
His face was white with effort. He knew it was hopeless. "Never," He said. He looked up at Nico, fifteen feet above. "The other side, Nico! We'll see you there. Understand?"
Nico's eyes widened. "But-"
"Lead them there!" Percy shouted. "Promise me!"
"No…" Veon muttered. "No, don't make me do this…"
It took me a moment to realize that he wasn't begging for himself. He was begging from Nico's perspective through their soul bond.
"I…I will," Nico said painfully.
Below, a voice seemed to laugh in the darkness. 'Sacrifices. Beautiful sacrifices to wake the goddess.'
Percy tightened his grip on Annabeth's wrist. His face was gaunt, scraped and bloody, his hair dusted with cobwebs, but Annabeth looked to him like he was the most handsome he'd ever been.
"We're staying together," He promised. "You're not getting away from me. Never again."
A one-way trip. A very hard fall. Annabeth realized what he was saying.
"As long as we're together," She said.
I don't want to know
Who we are
Without each other.
Nico and Hazel were still screaming for help. She saw the sunlight far, far above - maybe the last sunlight she would ever see.
It's just too hard.
I don't want to leave
Here without you.
Percy let go of his tiny ledge, and together, holding hands, he and Annabeth fell into the endless darkness.
I don't want to lose
Part of me
Will I recover
That broken piece?
"No!" Veon shouted.
He lurched in their direction, almost as though he thought he could reach them. The movement disturbed his injured arm, not to mention causing me to slip. I had seen this scene before. Sure, it had been a little different. Initially, it was Audrey and Emily who had grabbed him first and then I came in and took over to drop him. But I had changed fate already. Now, who could say what the future would be? I had already changed this critical moment. What would happen if I continued to change it?
I had to let him go.
Let it go and unleash
All the feelings.
"I'm sorry," I sobbed.
"No!" He shouted. "No, Lucy, please!"
He hadn't called me that for so long. The name was almost forgotten. He wasn't talking to the goddess. He wasn't talking to the girl possessed by and hosting one. He was talking to me. His best friend. His - quite terrible, if we're being honest - girlfriend. The person who had grabbed him before he fell. The person who couldn't bring themself to let go yet.
Did we ever see it coming?
Will we ever let it go?
"Please! Don't-!"
"I'm sorry!"
"Lucy! Lucy, please don't let her make you do this!"
"I have no choice."
"You have every choice! There is no such thing as not having a choice!"
"You don't understand! When you do, you'll see the choice that I'm making and why."
We are buried in broken dreams
We are knee deep without a plea.
His grip tightened, but he couldn't move his other arm to pull himself up or grab my wrist to prevent me from dropping him. His grip almost seemed to be from a flinch. He knew not to argue any further. He'd seen this happen too. And then, his grip relaxed, as though he was giving up.
And that's when I pulled. I got a proper grip on my knees, before using my other hand to pull his wrist and lug him up and out. He was heavy - not to mention the extra gravity of Tartarus trying to pull him down - but for me, desperate times were when I made miracles happen. And I pulled him out of the pit. I pulled him away from it, a good ten feet.
I don't want to know
What it's like
To live without you.
I popped his elbow back into place and he screamed, before he regained his composure, looking to me in shock, breathing hard.
"What did you…?"
"I…"
And just like that, he was kissing me. He didn't move his injured arm, I suspected because it was numb, but he used his other hand to cup my face. It didn't last long, mostly because he was breathing so hard and needed more oxygen than normal, and because I was sobbing.
Maybe it was because I was relieved. Or maybe it was because I was afraid of what came next.
Don't want to know
The other side
Of a world without you.
I pulled him to his feet. I slipped my hand to his neck, before pulling at a cord and revealing a necklace similar to mine, only this gem was pure black. I ripped it from his neck easily, tugging my own off as well. The gems of Order and Chaos.
Is it fair
Or is it fate?
No one knows
The stars choose their lovers
Save my soul.
"We do this our way," I declared.
And I blinked away more tears, but my vision was still blurry. Veon rested his hand on mine, the one gripping the gem for Order. I put my other hand, still fisted with the Chaos gem, atop his, before slowly flipping our hands, and releasing the gem into his palm.
It hurts
Just the same
And I can't tear myself away.
"I won't let them die. I'll protect them. We'll make it, okay? Tell Nico we'll be okay."
Did we ever see it coming?
Will we ever let it go?
"Tell Kaze I will keep my promise."
"Wha-?"
I shoved the gem in his palm so that he was holding it up against his chest, and it exploded with white light. Once the light vanished, he was gone.
We are buried in broken dreams
We are knee deep without a plea.
I put the black gem to my chest and felt it pulse, the energy bursting through me.
"I will do it! I will save you! Chaos! Answer me!"
I don't want to know
What it's like
To live without you
Don't want to know
The other side
Of a world without you.
The gem pulsed, and I knew I had my response. I threw out my hands, sending electricity throughout the rocks in key places, making sure that once the others got clear, this path to Tartarus would be buried and sealed closed.
We are buried in broken dreams
We are knee deep without a plea.
I sprinted to the pit once more, jumping and diving head first into the darkness to rescue Percy, Annabeth, and Primordial Chaos.
I don't want to know
What it's like
To live without you
Don't want to know
The other side
Of a world without you
Can't live without you.
