AN: I own nothing and after a million years, this story started playing on my mind all over again and I just had to finish it! So sorry for the forever-long hiatus but here we go. Buckle up and get ready.

Tempting the Fates

Chapter Thirty Two

Over the Edge

Nico

The moment they'd wrapped the death mist around them like shrouds of their forefathers, he'd felt the thrumming of his heart speed up. It was cool in the way that summer nights could be, the temperature plummeting with light giving way to the dark. There was something about it, though foreboding, was also familiar. And not familiar because it was a cloak he had worn before, or because of the Ghost King's affinity for manipulating the mist as part of his birthright. Familiar in the way that it welcomed him, like an old friend. Perhaps because he was so often touched by death. Perhaps because it was likely he should have succumbed to it (and old age) by now… if not, of course, for the intervention of his father.

The two demigods followed after Akhlys, dark eyes watchful of the corpse-like goddess as she lead them down a path even Bob could not follow. She might be their only hope for the time being, but her help wouldn't come for free and the only question that remained: what was the price? The fact that it turned out to be their deaths was hardly surprising.

Sabotage and betrayal? In Tartarus?

No way!

How unexpected!

Nico was less surprised that although he was more phantom than body than his companion, that Percy had a harder time holding himself together as he attempted to fight back Misery. It wasn't his best look… disintegrated flesh, flakes of sinewy muscle and skeletal frame that somehow still spoke of his swimmer's frame… and yet Percy probably didn't look nearly as revolting as the boy made of shadows. He moved like liquid, like ink, with his Stygian blade flashing as he fought back Misery. But as long as he kept her busy, that meant that Percy had a few moments longer to— to what? Escape. Figure out how to control his body succumbing to mist. Die.

Nico really didn't want to think about that last one as each second brought them closer to the inevitable moment they could no longer pull themselves back together. And even with his affinity to the mist? His end would come three times faster than Percy's, he could feel it already. Just like he could feel the drag of the pit behind him with each step he took backwards.

Closer.

And closer.

Akhlys hardly flinched when Percy's backpack— unaffected by the mist— was thrown at her. It bounced off her and rolled away (fortunately not over the edge of the chasm otherwise that'd be it— no provisions for Percy) harmlessly. She had been mid swipe with her long, gory talons and they missed him by a hair, deflected by his own blade. In the sweep around she kicked the backpack away and it bounced back towards its owner, no longer a tripping hazard. But it gave him just a fraction of a second, his senses in hyperdrive as they are for any demigod in battle, and he had an opening. A single fraction of a second opening where he swiped with his Stygian blade and connected with the goddess of Misery. Nothing fatal, but enough, he had hoped, to knock her a little off balance.

"You rotten half-breed!" She shrieked. "You dare to strike Misery?!" And with that she launched herself forward and Nico could feel it, the second that there was little more beneath his heel than air… and then he was falling. It took every ounce of his concentration, every once of willpower, but he held himself together enough that his fingertips grappled with the edge of the cliff, holding himself from the chasm below. Another, darker, deeper pit. The breath stuttered in his lungs; he wasn't sure that his stomach had stopped falling like the rest of him.

"You will die, my delectable demigod. You are in Tartarus and you cannot escape. Not from me, not from the true and final death. Not from the mist that will fall over your eyes before your time comes. And he knows you are here, he has known since the beginning. Now I will drink you dry, and feed your remains to the Eternal Night. Perhaps if there is something left, I will give it to Tartarus as a gift." Her taunts drift over the edge of the cliff that Nico is so desperately clinging to as he attempts to hoist his form up and over. For all the control over the mist he might have, he hasn't exactly practiced attempting to rock climb with ghastly limbs whilst Chaos attempts to suck him down into his belly. Saying that the son of Hades isn't exactly successful in pulling himself up and over is an understatement, and for each time he scrabbles, a little more of the edge seems to crumble away leaving him slipping backwards again.

So he can't see it when it happens because he's firmly faced with the craggy cliff face, but he can feel it. Feel the way the atmosphere changes as things shift and move and twist themselves to an unknown master and begin to answer a call that never should have been made. Nico isn't sure how he can differentiate the feeling from all the wrongness of the toxic landscape but he can and it feels like the first time. The first time he stood with Bob looking on, nervously chewing on his mop end, and the prince of the underworld attempted to control more than the earth but the dust and the ash which makes up everything. It's like a pressure and a presence all at once and although he can't see what's happening, he can hear Akhlys' shriek and part of him knows that just like he had, another son of the Big Three has found a deeper part of himself and his gifts than other demigods could understand.

Water.

Liquids.

When he'd discovered his own ability he'd suspected… and yet asking would have meant owning up to the potential that he possessed. It would have meant talking about it… that he could do more than just call forth the dead or manipulate the shadows and the earth. It would have meant actually speaking with Percy and Nico didn't need another reason for anyone to look at him with distrust or fear… like he was a plague. Like his presence would taint those around him. And maybe it would. No one, not even demigods, were meant to have powers like that. To be able to dothings like that. It wasn't natural. And so he had suspected and wondered, but he'd never asked.

Then there had been the whole not-meddling-with-the-gods and the memory wiped children pulling the good ol' camp switcheroo.

"Percy! PERCY! Shit… shit shit shit… I'm kind of… barely hanging on here. Whatever you're doing, cut the shit— AND COME HELP ME!" And the cliff was giving way once more, his hand coming loose and dangling at his side leaving him holding on with only a few fingers. He threw all the power he had in attempting to latch his hand back onto the cliff but his fingers curled around another bit of crumbling soil and rock disappearing to the depths beneath him. Once more he shouted for the other demigod, for his help before he plunged downwards and he heard the other's cry back but he'd called out to the sea and heard back from a cyclone.

"Percy?!" And that's when Nico feels it, the attention that the other demigod has turned towards him, like an awareness of every drop of moisture in his body as it's called to Poseidon's son. Not out of him, not exactly, but his eyes bulge in what's left of their ghost like sockets and he's moving, that much he knows, but somewhere after that he loses himself, not before he's aware that his heart stops beating. Maybe it was the stress of it all: a second trip to Tartarus, having eaten the Pomegranate seeds, sending those hell hounds to dust, the way Tartarus has sunk its claws inside of him and is speeding up an internal body clock that's been behind for so many years, nearly losing Percy, the death mist…

From the darkness came light, even the red tinged dimness that was Tartarus as his body wracked forward and up as if wanting to beach itself against the son of the sea. Pupils shot back and forth trying to sense the danger, find the reason that his lungs felt like he had been buried alive and his chest ached. Percy, a part of himself whispered.

He was dead, for however brief a few moments, and the son of Hades didn't need to hear it to know that it had been true. So he acknowledged it, only briefly, knowing they couldn't afford for him to clutch at his chest and contemplate what that might have meant— or how he might have failed the other boy if he had stayed that way.

"It was an accident," he answered quickly because if there was one thing he didn't want the other demigod to think, it was that he was somehow wrong after what he'd done.

"I killed you."

Already he can see it, the panic setting in eyes the colour of churning waves. Hands, still wisps of mist, took either side of the other's face and brought their foreheads to rest together fixing his gaze. "Every day in Tartarus is killing me. It's not the same as it is for you… I'm closer to death. I always will be." As a son of Hades. As a boy without a true place on the topside to call home. As someone who had spent too long in Tartarus once before falling back once more. "I'm only going to say this once and I want you to hear me, really hear me, Perseus Jackson. You are powerful. What you can do is incredible but this side of your nature won't come to you easily. The water and the earth give life… but they also take it away. There is a natural order to things, a balance. The gods are not the only ones with a dual nature… but it's different for us. Children of the Big Three. Do you understand?"

Percy's eyes drop, not willing to meet his gaze at first so Nico uses his grasp to tilt the other's head up just a fraction, demanding his attention. When their eyes lock he can feel the hesitance, a gaze that's search for any shred of falseness to the son of Hades' words but they find nothing in his eyes to suggest anything beyond the impassioned words he's spoken. He meant them.

"Do you understand?" only this time it's met with a nod. "Now come on, we have to get going."