First Person: Zytaveon

Everyone was still in shock.

I had awoken on the floor of my room on the Argo II. By then, we were already on our way, leaving the path to Tartarus behind. The others had secured grappling lines to the Athena Parthenos just as the floor gave way and the final columns of webbing snapped. Jason, Frank, and Audrey had dove down to save the others, but they'd only found Nico and Hazel hanging from the rope ladder, struggling to hold onto Kaze, who'd been knocked out, the reanimations nowhere to be seen. All of them were gone. The pit to Tartarus had been buried under several tons of debris, and Leo had pulled the Argo II out of the cavern seconds before the entire place imploded, green lighting surging through the rocks to bring it all down, taking the rest of the parking lot with it.

The Argo II was now parked on a hill overlooking the city. Audrey had found me passed out in my room, and I was frantic. She, Jason, Hazel, and Frank had all joined me in returning to the scene of the catastrophe, hoping to dig through the rubble and find a way to save them, but we only came back demoralized. The cavern was simply gone. I had a feeling that Zy - Lucy - had made it that way before she jumped, made sure no one could come after her. The scene was swarming with police and rescue workers. No mortals had been hurt, but the Italians would be scratching their heads for months, wondering how a massive sinkhole had opened right in the middle of a parking lot and swallowed a dozen perfectly good cars.

Dazed with grief, we carefully loaded the Athena Parthenos into the hold, using the ship's hydraulic winches with an assist from Frank Zhang, part-time elephant, Kaze Grigora, resident super-strong blur of doom, and Audrey Mavepo and her trusty trident. My lance had been dropped into Tartarus when Kaze had saved me from his mom's reanimation, and I could only hope that Lucy would have it to help her, that it would allow her to use its power, and that it even worked while in Tartarus. The statue just fit, though what we were going to do with it, I had no idea, nor did I care too much at the moment.

Coach Hedge was too miserable to help, pacing the deck with tears in his eyes, pulling at his goatee, and slapping the side of his head, muttering, "I should have saved them! I should have blown up more stuff!"

Finally, Leo told him to go below deck and secure everything for departure. He wasn't doing any good beating himself up. Emily was trying to stay hopeful, believing that they'd be fine, having courage in them, and it was pretty much all she could do to keep us all from falling into a suicidal depression from all of the gloom and regret. I had a feeling she could've done much more with her powers and how much they'd grown, but I also remembered the incident from Medea's shop where she realized too much meddling in people's emotions and forbidding them to grieve, feel these painful emotions, would be more detrimental than we all realize, and it was just wrong. We shouldn't be uncaring about such an event, we shouldn't be able to brush it off easily and continue like we aren't all scarred.

I just stood on the quarterdeck, gazing at the distant column of dust still rising from the site of the implosion. I'd tried listening to music. I ended up throwing my iPod and earbuds off the side of the ship. They had been gifts from Zy - demigod-proof. It just made things worse. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't stop the crushing feeling in my chest. I couldn't help feeling like what I'd said was what made her take my place. She had reasons that I needed to fall, but decided those reasons weren't worth dropping me. And she'd taken my place instead. If what she'd said before was true, about me being the worthy host for Chaos - the Primordial Chaos - then I could only imagine what pain she was taking in my place to host him instead. Was it even possible for both Primordial Order and Primordial Chaos to be within the same body without destroying it, or at the very least, the human soul within it?

Something was still bugging me, though. I had had all these dreams about hosting something, and it was evil, yes, but I had always believed it was Tartarus before she'd brought up Chaos. I didn't even know that Zyanya was just an alias for Primordial Order. Sure, I wasn't one to go judging gods, let alone Primordials that I have no experience with before, but I was sure that was Tartarus. Getting to the problem of him wanting a human form to come to the surface later, I realized that meant that both Chaos and Tartarus wanted a host to escape the pit. And both of them were now going to be trying to use her to do it. Did she need to give permission? I doubted it. But would she be caught in the crossfire between them? Almost certainly yes.

The other demigods had gathered on the quarterdeck behind me, but I ignored them. I saw Leo out of the corner of my eye, resting his hand on the Archimedes sphere that he'd recovered from that place they'd faced the Eidolons, which was ready to be installed. I knew that Leo would normally be geeking out on us, excited about the biggest discovery of his life - even bigger than Bunker 9. If he could decipher Archimedes's scrolls, he could do amazing things, and maybe even build a new control disk for a certain dragon friend. Still, the price had been too high. He had used Nemesis's fortune cookie to activate the sphere, and in turn, perhaps this was the punishment for it. He'd saved Frank and Hazel, but the sacrifice had been Percy and Annabeth. Leo seemed sure of it.

"It's my fault," Leo said miserably.

The others stared at him.

"Leo, don't," Emily said.

"No," Hazel insisted. "No, this is Gaea's fault. It had nothing to do with you."

Leo didn't seem convinced. We'd started this voyage with Leo firing on New Rome, and ended in old Rome with Leo breaking a cookie and paying a price much worse than an eye. The guilt was no doubt crushing.

"Leo, listen to me." Hazel gripped his hand. "I won't allow you to take the blame. I couldn't bear that after…after Sammy…"

She choked up, but I knew what she meant. Leo's bisabuelo had blamed himself for Hazel's disappearance. Sammy had lived a good life, but he'd gone to his grave believing that he'd spent a cursed diamond and doomed the girl he loved. Leo obviously didn't want to make Hazel miserable all over again, but there was no denying the facts. Hazel's gems had always been cursed, especially back when she didn't know much about her powers, and Leo's fortune cookie had come with the warning 'True success requires sacrifice.' Sammy had sold his diamond, Leo had broken his fortune cookie. They both tempted fate, and bad things happened because of it. One could argue all they wanted how the events weren't connected, but it seemed the Valdez family had a curse upon them.

Nico shuffled over, leaning on his black sword. "Leo, they're not dead. If they were, I could feel it."

"How can you be sure?" Leo asked. "If that pit really led to…you know…how could you sense them so far away?"

Nico, Hazel and I shared glances, comparing notes on our Hades/Pluto death radar. Nico and I were in agreement that neither of us felt anything, and Hazel wasn't very good at the whole death sensing as she was her gem powers, but she looked to the two of us for confirmation that she was right in assuming we hadn't felt them die yet.

"We can't be one hundred percent sure," Hazel admitted. "But I think Nico is right. They're still alive…at least, so far."

"Lu went down there," I said. "She promised she'd protect them one way or another, I'd say she has a shot at keeping them safe. And if she succeeds in getting Chaos's power, surely they'll be okay. Even if it…should've been me who had to take that risk. She also said she'd keep her promise to Kaze."

At the mention of his name, Kaze looked up. He was sitting with his head down, away from the group. "What?"

"Rei said she promised you something, said that she'd keep her promise, before she…left."

His head dropped again. "I made her promise to come back. To…to fight whatever fights she had to and then…come back to me. Then we'd…we'd leave all of this. We could run away. Maybe we'd never stop fighting, but at the very least would be who we wanted for once. We wouldn't let the gods rule our lives. I want that life. I want things to be the way they were before. And she said she'd try. For me."

"He says she promised to come back. To win this war, to fight all these fights and whatnot, and then come back. Go out and leave this life to the best of their abilities. Live their lives how they want to. By their own terms. Lu promised she'd come back, she'd survive. That's what she was saying. And that she'd bring Percy and Annabeth home safely as well."

Jason sighed before pounding his fist against the rail. "I should've been paying attention. I could have flown down and saved them."

"Me, too," Frank moaned.

The big dude looked on the verge of tears.

Piper put her hand on Jason's back. "It's not your fault, either of you. You were trying to save the statue."

"She's right," Nico said. "Even if the pit hadn't been buried, you couldn't have flown into it without being pulled down. I'm the only one who has actually been to Tartarus, Veon a close second if we're being technical. It's impossible to describe how powerful that place is. Once you get close, it sucks you in. I never stood a chance."

Frank sniffled. "Then Percy and Annabeth don't stand a chance either?"

Nico twisted his silver skull ring. "Percy is the most powerful demigod I've met. No offense to you guys, but it's true. If anybody can survive hell, he will, especially if he's got Annabeth at his side. They're going to find a way through Tartarus."

Jason turned. "To the Doors of Death, you mean. But you told us it's guarded by Gaea's most powerful forces. How could two demigods possibly-?"

"I don't know. But like Veon said. Zy - or Lu, or whatever - she's helping them. Percy told me to lead you guys to Epirus, to the mortal side of the doorway. He's planning on meeting us there. If we can survive the House of Hades, fight our way through Gaea's forces, then maybe we can work together with Percy, Annabeth, and Lu and seal the Doors of Death from both sides."

"And get Zy, Percy, and Annabeth back safely?" Leo asked.

"Maybe."

The way Nico said that evidently gave away to the close viewer that he wasn't sharing all his doubts, but did they really need to be shared? Everyone knew the risks, the dangers, and the simple fact that if you wanted to close a door from both sides, someone would have to stay on the other side, trapped in the Underworld. And I knew Lu. She'd push Percy and Annabeth through the doors so they could be reunited with the other five demigods of the prophecy, and she'd sacrifice herself, staying down there and saying she could survive because of Chaos's powers or something, maybe even Tartarus's, if she had enough will-power to gain control for long enough - and if I knew her, she'd pull it off.

"I tried to save them and Lu had to save me," I muttered. "Now she's…"

"She chose to go and try to recover Chaos's power," Audrey pointed out. "I mean, think about it. If she can pull this off, we might actually be able to make it through all this. She'll be able to save Percy and Annabeth, close the doors, and heck, even stop Gaea and the giants all in one fell swoop."

"But it should've been me! Why didn't she just tell me?!"

"Maybe your ignorance was part of the equation," Emily pointed out. "To test you without your knowledge getting in the way. Seeing what you'd do when you were clueless."

"So what does that means for her if she already knows?"

Emily looked down, but I knew that she understood the chance that her going in my place meant she wasn't compatible to gain Chaos's power. And if she couldn't get that power, she, Percy, and Annabeth might all be doomed.

Nico took a deep breath. "I don't know how they'll do it, but one way or another, whatever happens, they'll find a way. They'll journey through Tartarus and find the Doors of Death. When they do, we have to be ready."

"It won't be easy," Hazel said. "Gaea will throw everything she's got at us to keep us from reaching Epirus."

"What else is new?" Jason sighed.

"We have to do our part," Emily said. "Lu, Percy, and Annabeth have a much harder task, but they are going to be fighting harder than ever to make sure they don't let us down. But it works in reverse too. They are going to be risking everything while they're down there, meaning we can't let them down either."

Piper nodded. "We've got no choice. We have to seal the Doors of Death before we can stop the giants from raising Gaea. Otherwise her armies will never die. And we've got to hurry. The Romans are in New York. Soon, they'll be marching on Camp Half-Blood. And with Zy out of commission…"

"Her Curses might not have made it to help," I summarized.

"Or maybe they did," Emily pointed out. "They're Curses given to her from a power that has the ability to change prophecies and visions of the future. Who knows how far their power can go? In any case, it's up to us to move quickly and seal those doors."

"We've got one month at best," Jason added. "Ephialtes said Gaea would awaken in exactly one month."

"What would a quest be without deadlines?" Audrey muttered.

Leo straightened. "We can do it."

Everyone stared at him.

"The Archimedes sphere can upgrade the ship. I'm going to study those ancient scrolls we got. There's gotta be all kinds of new weapons I can make. We're going to hit Gaea's armies with a whole new arsenal of hurt."

"That's the spirit," Emily nodded.

At the prow of the ship, Festus creaked his jaw and blew fire defiantly.

Jason managed a smile, clapping Leon on the shoulder. "Sounds like a plan, Admiral. You want to set the course?"

We kidded with him, calling him Admiral, but for once, it seemed Leo was happy to accept the title. This was his ship. He hadn't come this far to be stopped. We'd find the House of Hades, we take the Doors of Death, and by the gods, we would do anything to get back our friends. If Leo had to design a grabber arm long enough to snatch them out of Tartarus, then that's what he'd do. Nemesis said to wreak vengeance on Gaea? I think we were all going to be happy to oblige.

"Yeah," Leo said, taking one last look at the cityscape of Rome, turning blood-red in the sunset. "Festus, raise the sails. We've got some friends to save."