I dreamed of Annabeth and the surface world more often once I moved into my underwater room. If I would have known that was a possibility, I may have moved into my original pool sooner, sitting duck or not. The first dream after the… Medusa incident happened about a week (ish) later, and went about as well as I could have hoped.

"She. Did. What!?"

I sighed. We were at my Mom and Paul's apartment, sitting on the fire escape. Annabeth looked about ready to tear someone apart as she paced back and forth on the small landing. I didn't think that someone was me, at least. Didn't stop it from being terrifying. And people called me the scary one?

"Yeah," I muttered in reply. "Then I swallowed a whole handful of Phlegethon water just to get the sensation off. She…" I paused and looked away, ashamed. "She said I inherited more from my father than just looks and powers."

Annabeth stopped, going suddenly very still. That… worried me. She may be the smartest person I knew, but she also had ADHD, and did not do still unless she was thinking particularly hard about something. And considering what I'd just told her…

"Annabeth, you cannot come down here to tear her apart."

My girlfriend gave me the driest look I'd seen from her since I was a teen. "Of course not," she said. "I was wondering how I could summon her here to destroy her. There's got to be a way. Maybe Lou Ellen would know… or Sadie Kane."

"Annabeth," I said, standing up and going to her, wishing I could feel the stone of the Roman streets under my feet as our surroundings shifted to Camp Jupiter. "Please, let it go, Wise Girl. You have other things you have to work on." Like her future and her job and her dreams.

For a moment, I thought she wouldn't listen, but eventually she let out a huff and nodded. "You're right."

I let out a breath of my own, relief probably showing on my face. "Good. I… I really don't want to see you down here again," I whispered, touching my head to hers. "I don't want to see anyone down here, but especially not you."

She frowned and put a hand I couldn't feel on my cheek. I still put my hand over it and tried to imagine her calloused palms brushing against my skin.

"I know it's been so long," she said softly, leaning back so I could look into those gorgeous, storm-gray eyes. "But I am still coming for you. I will get you out. I just… have to play the long game and I hate it, but… Percy, I have to do this right, so that no one else can throw you down there again. So that no one else can get thrown down there again."

I chuckled tiredly. She would want to do it right. She was nothing if not thorough. "Athena always has a plan," I said.

She just looked at me, those eyes cloudy and ferocious. "You're right. My mother always has a plan. But I will make sure I have a better one."

I smiled softly. "If anyone could do that, it would be you, Wise Girl."

For a moment, nothing happened. Then tears began to well in her eyes.

"I'm putting everything on the line for this so you can't let that go to waste," she eventually managed to get out after some hiccuping sobs. "Please, don't give up, Percy."

I hated the look in her eyes—the sorrow and longing; the anger and betrayal (not for me, I knew, but still).

"You…" my voice choked off but I had to get it out, for her. "You don't have to, Annabeth. You have so much ahead of you—so much you can do. You can move on," I finally managed to get out. It hurt… It hurt so much to say, but I hated dragging her down. I hated being the source of her sadness.

She shook her head vigorously. "I'd do it again and again. I'll do it every time if it means saving you!" In the Camp Half-blood shirt I had on, her hands fisted and she pulled me so her forehead rested on my chest. "You can't tell me you wouldn't do the same."

Well, she had a point… still…

"I want you to be happy."

Another sob escaped her. "I will be, once you are."

I clutched her tighter. "Thank you. Me too," I replied.

We stood like that, heedless of the changing environments around us, until her head popped up. She shot me one last longing gaze before she disappeared. Her alarm clock or something I supposed

And then she vanished, leaving me feeling emptier than ever.

I opened my eyes and shivered a little at the cool water around me. I hadn't dared bring my sleeping bag under water, so I only really had pelts to cover me, and they floated off half the time. One of the things I had not been able to make yet was a needle, especially not one that could really deal with leather. I was working on it. I still didn't know how they made things like blankets work in Atlantis.

Yawning, I sat up and stretched. Then I looked around me and smiled. The best part about being under water was the fact that I didn't have to worry about toxic air, and thus I didn't have to worry about the Phlegethon water after waking up. Building the bunker/fortress was, in all honesty, the best decision I'd made since my exile, even if the upkeep of keeping it frozen and in the proper shape was a chore in and of itself. But just being somewhere relatively safe and underwater felt healing.

Part of me wished I could stay down there all the time, but as safe as I felt, I knew it wasn't completely. The right monsters could find it and destroy it easily. Plus, I couldn't afford to lose any strength or muscle mass, not when I had to leave the pool to eat, which meant toxic air as I had no idea how to try and filter it. Which meant I had to venture out to the Phlegethon at some point. And even if I could stay in my new pool-room, well, ADHD, am I right? I had to get out sometime, which meant I had to fight monsters. Even if I could keep my restless energy under control, Apollo's scroll didn't work underwater. I'd tried. And I could only stay bored and cooped up in my pool-room for so long.

Note: a bored demigod in exile is not a good thing. A bored child of one of the big three in exile to a place that boosts power, encourages one's darkness, causes you to fight and adapt on a regular basis, and actively wants you to get stronger for its own personal gain…

Yeah, very much not a good thing.

So I went out and I fought hoards of monsters almost on the daily. The groups seemed to get bigger so I just had to get faster at destroying them. Using water I saved just for those kinds of occasions in the moat I'd dug around my bunker, I often spread it over the field and used water chains or whips to hold monsters in place until I could get to them when I wanted to use my sword. Sometimes I just froze their feet to the ground. Sometimes I just froze them. Sometimes I used the water saw… though that one got a little gruesome. But it worked to take out large swaths of monsters at once.

Smaller-scale monster attacks began to drop off and eventually stopped almost completely, except when led in small army-sizes by a more intelligent monster. I still hadn't met a Titan since Koios, or a giant, but Echidna wasn't much better. And she was infinitely stronger in Tartarus than she'd been when I'd encountered her in St. Louis.

Her telling me that I'd never be as good of a monster as her children didn't help. At all. That… had been a difficult fight.

My water saw cut through the army around me, I had three going, but somehow the chimera had come back along with the flying sow-pig and more than one sphinx (who seemed too angry to follow the riddle rule and just attacked). It was all I could do to just keep them back and I could tell there were empousai in the crowd as I could swear I was seeing Annabeth everywhere, just glimpses out of the corner of my eye, giggling. Apparently what happened with Medusa had spread. That made me more than a little livid. Thankfully, the real Annabeth and I had set up a series of phrases that 'she' hadn't correctly responded to, so I continued to plow through whatever I could as more and more gold dust gathered around me.

The flocks of metal birds were more difficult to catch and I had to throw almost my entire moat up to crush them.

Then Echidna came in herself, looking kind of like Ursula from the Little Mermaid, if she'd been created by Tim Burton. She wore no makeup and the bottom half of her body looked like a snake split into two legs like many dracanae I'd seen, but tentacle-like and enormous. As in, Giant sized. Her skin was a sickly green and she had snake-hair like Medusa that constantly hissed at me. She used her claws and her snake-like legs as her main physical weapons, slashing and swiping at me with either or both. I had to do some fancy footwork and sea-magic combos to avoid most of those. She also used a fair amount of magic and seemed to favor fire. Not good for me. Her fire kept evaporating and eroding my water, making my attacks weaker and weaker until I summoned more.

I had been getting down to the end of the battle with the small fry, freezing the Sphinx and the Chimera before drawing water from the Phlegethon and literally raining super-heated water down on everyone there, excluding myself of course. I was thankful I still had that much control.

While the rest of the army screeched and died, I rushed between the Sphinxes, stabbing straight through their hearts before unfreezing the Chimera just in time to lop off its head.

Then I looked over to see how the still shrieking Mother of Monsters had fared from that attack. The sight that met my eyes had me shrinking back in horror. Healthy and whole, she looked like something out of the Corpse Bride. Now she looked like that but only if Steven King had gotten involved, too. A good portion of her body had been burnt from my attack, and she now sported several large patches of uneven, blistered skin. Unfortunately, she was apparently too strong to let that dissolve her, and without her children around, she seemed to let the pain motivate her, releasing all the stops. Before, she'd been fast. Now her arms and snake-legs moved at a blur. She moved deceptively fast as a whole, baring down on me like a freight train way too many times. It was all I could do to jump out of the way and keep moving.

My stamina was running low when I realized I had to end it asap. I called the remaining water I could from the air and puddles around me, making it coalesce behind her in a large spike. I really hoped she didn't see it and destroy it. I wasn't entirely sure I could do a whole lot more after that move. So I pulled off an old, Percy special: I whistled like I was summoning a taxi.

"Hey! I wanted to thank you for the fight! It was fun. Have any more kids I can kill?" Looking back, I'm not proud of that comment, it hit a little too below the belt, but I blamed my time in Tartarus mixing with my natural ability to tick people off and my frustration at the whole situation. Thankfully, it worked. She let out an earth-shattering shriek and once again lunged towards me, stopping only when I jumped out of the way (barely). As she leaped, I pulled the enormous ice spike I'd formed behind her towards us. When she stopped, it pierced her chest, coming all the way through her to bury itself deep into the ground there (and if I hurt Tartarus at all, well, so much the better). The spike ended up pinning her to the ground, but she didn't dissolve. She would soon, judging from her gasps of pain.

Then her eyes found mine.

"I won't… forget," she said with a wet growl that made me wince.

I shook my head. "Yes, you will." I still had a fair amount of Lethe water and before she actually died, I pulled it out of the bottles I always wore at my waist these days, then shoved it in her face. She must have realized what was going on before the water hit her as she tried to struggle again, but I pushed harder. The Lethe did it's work and her eyes started to fog over before she burst into sulfur dust.

At least now I wouldn't need to worry about her coming after me too soon. Iapetus got his memories back while in Tartarus after the Lethe treatment, but I doubted she'd get her memories back as soon as she reformed. Which gave me time. Which was all I needed at the moment.

(Or so I hoped.

Please hurry, Wise Girl.)

As difficult as that fight had been, it was only a matter of time before they started sending much worse monsters after me. Monsters I really, really didn't want to have to fight. Like Typhon. With his sheer size, I wasn't sure how much damage I could do. The gods had to band together to fight him when I'd accidentally awoken him at Mt. St. Helen's… and they'd barely defeated him. And the giants had to have a god and a demigod join forces to defeat them…

I shuddered and tried not to think of it, only grateful I hadn't had to try to win a fight like that yet.

When I couldn't handle being cooped up in my 'pool room' (as I'd taken to calling it) anymore, I swam to the surface and got out onto the pelts I'd placed there to try and stop me from having to walk on ice all the time. Too bad I did not have the ability to hold up the bunker with just water alone. I could probably do it for a little while, but consistently? Not so much. But… it might be worth looking into just so I could avoid how cold it got. No, literally, Tartarus was like a dirty, smelly, depressing sauna of evil. Going from living in that to living in an ice cave was nice. Going from living in that to living in an ice bunker (held up by my own magic and the rock I could freeze into the walls) was… jarring. Not always unpleasant, but not exactly pleasant all the time either. And once out of the water, I couldn't regulate my temperature as much…

I slowed as that thought crossed my mind. My own temperature… could I regulate it? I knew I had some resistance to extreme temperatures due to my father, and had tried with some success to keep my butt warm while riding my ice-bike, but… why hadn't it crossed my mind earlier that I may be able to just cool myself down or warm myself up? Like my whole body. Of course, I'd probably have to be careful when experimenting with that, but why not? I needed something to work on anyway.

So once I was done with my routine sword forms, I began to work on warming myself up and cooling myself down via my own blood. It worked. Surprisingly well. So well, in fact, that I had to be extremely careful not to go too far too fast. I was used to just jumping to an extreme, so having to moderate it was more difficult of an exercise than I thought it would be. But the idea of me not having to worry about being too hot or too cold anymore was a relief to say the least.

Once I finished experimenting with that, I began to pack to head out to the shrine. I needed more food and I wanted to talk to Annabeth… or any of my friends. Maybe I'd have letters from my family. I smiled at the mere thought.

I hadn't talked to Tyson in a while and I had a letter written specifically for him. If he couldn't read it, I was sure someone would read it to him, although I bet he'd gotten the hang of it by now. I also had a letter for Rachel, Chiron, Grover, Nico, Reyna, the rest of the sev… six each, as well as one for the rest of camp in general. I even had a letter to Sadie and Carter Kane in there. Because I could. They'd been nice. Ish. I knew Annabeth had consulted them at some point, but they couldn't even access my pantheon's afterlife, and few of their techniques crossed over into the Greeks. Annabeth said they'd been horrified to hear about what happened to me. I was positive she'd been passing news on to Magnus too. Which I was more than fine with. Any cross-pantheon headaches they could give the gods I was happy to support.

Yes, that was the extent of my current plans of revenge.

The last letter I packed was for my father. It… wasn't long. I didn't really know what to say to him, but I wanted to try and keep writing to him, if only to help me remember gods I felt decent about. I did put in a little PS for Hestia because she was my favorite Goddess, but yeah. I'd thanked Hades in a letter already, but I didn't think he'd want to hear much from me, and… well, while the rest of the gods were theoretically family, they'd never felt like family. Not like my father was. And I still had issues with him, but… he tried.

I had to keep remembering that to keep my own temper regarding Olympus to a manageable level. I knew myself. I'd been pushed beyond reason and caring before. I didn't want to go there again. If I had a second fatal flaw it would probably be my temper.

I kept my ice bikes (yes, plural!) in a garage. It wasn't huge, but it had stalls for each bike I made. The fact that I had over a dozen by that point probably said more about my sheer boredom than my skill at actually making things, but it was kinda fun. I'd even made ice-skates. Not like typical ice-skates, but shoes made of ice, and had been practicing keeping my balance on them as I skated across land. That had been fun.

But today, I wanted to try the ice-pegasus I'd made because I missed Blackjack. I wanted to see if I could make the ice move like a normal pegasus would. Obviously it was nothing more than a statue, I couldn't bestow life (and wasn't sure how I'd cope with that if it changed, so I hoped it didn't), but the kind of fine control I'd need to accomplish that…

Heh. Thinking back, I doubted I would have had the patience to really try just for the sake of honing my powers as a teenager. Impulsive, impatient… I really had been a brat. Not that I wasn't still a brat, but I'd gained some maturity. I hoped.

I froze everything I was bringing inside the horse's body before hopping on. It looked strange, but it worked. Then I focused on how the hooves and wings should move. The ice-sculpture jerked backwards, almost throwing me off. It felt more like a teenager driving for the first time than anything else. It got better after I had the horse trot around the small garage a couple of times before I felt like I could remotely control it as I needed to. I was glad I didn't need the wings to work. The horse would fly whether it looked like it could or not, but it was the illusion of the thing. I wondered what some of the monsters who saw the different ways I traveled up or down the river thought. 'Oh, demigod can walk on water. Stupid Poseidon kid. He can use the water of the river… unusual but… Oh, he can skate on top of the water. Well, then… Is that a cart he's riding in? In the air? Wait, now it's a motorcycle? Made of ice?! Now it's a pegasus?! Just what are his powers?!'

Hey, I had to find my entertainment somewhere.

Once I felt mostly confident of the movements I'd need, I braced myself and concentrated on the area I'd left mostly clear for my garage door, took a deep breath, and dropped all three walls at once. Then I had the horse shoot forward, Riptide already drawn. I let out a battle cry as I shot outside, expecting a similar hoard of monsters I'd found every time I'd left before, led by someone much more intelligent and wanting to take a stab at fighting (or destroying) me.

Which made me feel extremely silly when I saw I was yelling at nothing. For the first time since my necklace broke (I still had it in an actual chest, made of wood and bone, inside) I saw an empty expanse when I exited my bunker. Confused, my cry died on my lips and I had to turn around carefully to make sure I hadn't missed anything.

Fearing a trick, I smoothed over the hole I'd made in the walls and then looked back around, suspicious. When still nothing popped out I steered the ice-pegasus towards the river, senses still on alert. Just as I was about to take off over the glowing water, the sound of thunder crashing right over me made me flinch and draw Riptide.

"Hello, Grandson."

Was it bad that my first thought was, 'Oh, it's you?' And then the terror, horror, and darkness of his aura hit me and I remembered why this was a very bad thing and how much I hated it when he decided to visit.

"Not your grandson," I managed to respond.

He cackled. I think I hated his laugh more than anything. Raining boulders. That was the only image that came to mind. Except maybe in reverse, with all the noise but being sucked back into him at the same time it spread out?

Primordials. Made. No. Sense.

(Of course not, they weren't supposed to, but it was still beyond frustrating.)

"Well, you have certainly continued to be interesting since our last conversation."

That burning rage I kept having to tamp down began to build in my gut. I refused to acknowledge it, though. Later, when I could let loose without either offending a Primordial or somehow allowing myself to become a full-on monster, I'd deal with it then.

"I'm not here for your viewing pleasure," I hissed, then took a deep breath to calm myself down. Ugh. The air. It never got better, did it?

The ancient being smiled.

I really hated that smile. It had literally haunted my nightmares for years now, and I doubted that would stop any time soon, even when I eventually got out.

If I got out.

"I must admit, it is far more interesting now that I don't have to actively send monsters your way."

Wait…

What?!

Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out.

"You… sent monsters after me?"

"Of course. When they couldn't sense you otherwise, how else were you supposed to become stronger? Naturally, I had to hold a few back. I still believed you to be fragile."

Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out. Again.

Of course he'd done that. I shouldn't have expected any differently. Of course that was why I never got more than a day or so of a break. Of course that was why I had to constantly fight just to stay alive.

"You've done quite some damage to the monster population here. I am impressed."

I was done. Officially done. And that… was not a good place to be in. If I was pushed too far and let go, I didn't know what I'd do, but I doubted it would be something I could explain while looking my girlfriend in the face. So I did something I really probably shouldn't have.

I turned around and walked away. Or nudged my ice-pegasus away in any case. Thankfully, he didn't seem offended.

"I've released all but the highest restrictions on you, Grandson." The Protogenoi's words caused me to freeze in my tracks. "Thought you may want to know and… prepare yourself."

The burning anger sank into horror and I couldn't help but look over my shoulder at him (and then look away because it was still too much). "What?"

"Along with any group of what you seem to have termed 'mid-range monsters', any single being in my realm, not one of the original Protogenoi, can attack you now. They may or may not bring an army of lower monsters with them, but they cannot attack in unison with another being of equal status. That still includes my nieces, nephews, children, and anyone on their level."

I felt my mouth go dry. Titans and giants… that was what he meant. Gods and goddesses even… Oh. I… I was so dead.

I know my face paled and I heard a ringing in my ears, but I couldn't show weakness here. I had to say something back, so I forced my mind to work. "So… you do know what 'family terms' mean."

More booming laughter. "Oh, so very entertaining. But for better or worse, your entertainment value is coming to an end. You see, they can attack with the intent to kill, much like the lower monsters do. Gods and goddesses cannot show you their true form, yet, nor can they actively speed up your… hmm, transformation as it would actively undermine our little experiment. But everything else is what you humans call fair game.

"Now, Grandson, I must say I would be most… disappointed if you died now, despite being close enough to becoming one of us to likely reform here."

Part of me wanted to snap something back. That had always been my specialty, right? Tick off the gods and then somehow avoid the consequences of their wrath. Tartarus wasn't any different… right?

But he was. And as much as I may have wanted to, I couldn't force my mouth to open again. I was too busy watching my life pass before my eyes. I couldn't fight gods. Not like he was implying.

After a few moments of silence, he spoke again, even if I had difficulty understanding the words through the ringing in my ears. "You are far brighter than some of my children have given you credit for. You catch on far faster than they said you would."

It was a compliment.

It didn't help in the slightest. Quite the contrary because of who it came from.

My mind just felt so… numb. My body seemed to have gone beyond sick into a sort of static-like state. I wasn't sure if I wanted to get out of it.

"Hmm. Interesting reaction. I hope I didn't push too far in this. Have I underestimated your fragility this time? Hmm. Perhaps I should have said nothing and just let them attack you?"

I still couldn't respond. He seemed disappointed, and I kind of hated him for it. Or would have if I could have felt that.

"In any case, I interrupted something, did I not? Go. Be on your way. And what is it you mortals wish each other? Good luck?" He'd wished me luck before. "Yes, I believe that is it. Good luck, Percy Jackson. Survive, Grandson. If you do, I will see you shortly." Was that supposed to be incentive? It really wasn't.

And then he left, vanishing into the darkness of his own realm, leaving me behind, nearly unresponsive. He… was good at that, leaving me broken in his wake without using any of his actual power on me. Only words. A mix of facts and lies. And I didn't know which was which. He only used his words.

Applied logic is a terrifying thing. I knew that already because of Annabeth, but this was on a whole other level.

For the first time I began to understand just how far beyond my mortal comprehension Primordials were. I hadn't realized… but then, we weren't supposed to be able to realize, were we. Even that realization was petrifying. Literally as I couldn't seem to make myself move just then.

I began to realize just how terrifying the world of gods, Titans, giants, and Protogenoi was. I began to realize what I'd been playing with, the kind of power these beings had at their disposal, and what I had to stand up against to survive. I began to realize… and it almost drove me mad.

I wished I'd never found that out.

xXx

AN: NGL, I feel like this chapter's a little all over the place, but with help from my beta readers Berix, Asterius Daemon, Starlight3 and Quathis, it's better than it was.

So, yes. That's what I mean by the monsters leveling up. Not the monsters themselves, but titan level monsters can now come after Percy. May he rest in peace. *ahem*

Thank you for reading!

Discord: discord. gg/xDDz3gqWfy (no spaces)