Disclaimer: I don't own Trials of Apollo.

APOLLO VII

The long descent down
A primordial body
Time to find my son

Apollo was seething. Distantly, he was aware of Hades walking away from him, continuing in the same direction he'd been leading from the beginning, no doubt towards the Prison, but he could not bring himself to try and persuade his uncle that splitting up in Tartarus was a bad idea.

Right then, Hades was the last person Apollo wanted to go with him. His uncle had not answered his demand whether he'd been involved in Asclepius' apparent new and increased punishment, but that was as good as a confirmation, to Apollo's mind. His uncle had always been angry with Asclepius for the initial creation of the Physician's Cure, despite his father being the one to actually punish him for doing so; it was not hard to believe that his fury would flare up once again at the revival of the Cure, no matter how justified it had been.

And it had been justified. Apollo had known the risks when he picked the flower and handed it to Leo in exchange for the Valdezinator, bidding him to visit his son and pass on the message that Apollo was approving its creation. He had thought that the punishment for that would be mitigated by its necessity, or barring that, that he would be the one to take the brunt of it. It had not occurred to him that it would be his son, once again, who would be punished.

He'd been a fool, he realised. His father often hurt those closest to him in punishment; why shouldn't he take it out on Asclepius a second time? Six months of mortality, of trials and tribulations and the all-too close possibility of death clearly were not enough. His father had to go one step further, had to hurt his son on top of all of that, remind Apollo that no act of defiance, no matter how minor, could ever go unpunished.

No matter what Hades thought, it was Apollo's fault his son was down here, in this inhospitable pit that Asclepius was no better suited for than Will, save the singular distinction of his elder son's immortality, and he would not, could not, leave him to his fate.

His son's presence was faint, faint enough that it had taken him the length of their trek from their landing point to the banks of the Phlegethon to identify what had been niggling at the edge of his senses and come to the horrified conclusion that it wasn't merely a product of his imagination. Asclepius' presence was not as familiar to him as he would have liked, thanks to their forced separation, but there was still the distinctive edge of care, of healing and light and love, that sang out to Apollo's own essence.

Down here, it was less of a song and more of a cry for help. Apollo had to answer it, no matter what his uncle thought.

He'd failed Asclepius too many times. He couldn't fail him again.

Tartarus tore at his feet as he walked, uncaring that he was a god – or perhaps reminding him that Tartarus was a primordial, far, far greater than Apollo could ever hope to be, and that by willingly falling into the Pit, he had placed himself at the absent mercy of the primordial. His form constantly resealed, faster than ichor could spill, and compared to the agonies of mortality, it was nothing, so Apollo didn't let it bother him.

Nor would he let his waning power bother him. He could feel it, had been able to feel it since they fell, his hands clutching his uncle tightly to stay together – how quickly things changed. Away from the light, away from the sun and songs and music and life, his power was less. There was no drama surrounding it – it was not sudden, and compared to his time as Lester it was negligible, but Apollo was still aware of it.

There was a time limit. The longer he stayed in Tartarus, so far removed from the domains he was best known for, the ones that gave him his greatest power, the weaker he would become, and the greater the danger the Pit posed to him would become in turn.

Apollo was not so weak that it would be a problem soon, but time in Tartarus passed oddly, perhaps because of his grandfather's scattered remains, or perhaps simply because Tartarus did not care for things such as time and so it had no reliable hold. What was time to a being as old as the Pit? Compared to Tartarus, Apollo might as well be the same young child he was when he'd battled Python the first time around.

It was not a comforting thought.

He latched onto Asclepius' faint presence – was it faint because of distance, or because his son was Fading? The pessimistic part of Apollo whispered it was both, and he increased his pace, ignoring the monsters on his periphery as they eyed him, no doubt wondering why one of the Olympians was traipsing through their birthplace, place of re-birth.

Apollo was not so naïve as to expect them to be staying back out of any degree of fear. Even in the Overworld, it was hate, not fear, that monsters held for the gods. Down here, in their own respawning zone, it was contempt that Apollo could feel. What did it matter that he could slay them with a single arrow? They would be reborn again, and Apollo suspected that the rebirths would not take long.

At least, not for monsters that opposed Apollo. His time as a mortal had taught him that things typically did not go his way. Part of him longed to see Crest again, to hear some blissful music in this place of glass and moans and hate, but Crest did not deserve to get tangled up in another of Apollo's quests, pitted against his own kind and punished for it. Indeed, if he did that here, in the Pit, defying Tartarus himself… it was all too likely there would be no rebirth for him ever again.

No, it was for the best that Crest did not respawn while Apollo was down here, or if he had, that their paths did not cross.

He kept walking, kept following Asclepius' too-faint presence while watched by monsters whose contempt and curiosity would not hold them back from attacking forever, and tried not to think about whether Hades was continuing their original quest or would decide it wasn't his problem after all and return to the Underworld. Earlier, Apollo would not have thought he would, but after the unpleasant realisation about Asclepius' new punishment, he was less deposed towards positive thoughts regarding his uncle. In fact, he wasn't sure he wanted to cross paths with Hades again for some time.

Certainly not before Asclepius was safe and out of the Pit. Where he would go to avoid his father's wrath, Apollo did not know, but he would find somewhere. Delos, perhaps; when it came to Asclepius, Artemis had little room to complain. It had been for her benefit that the Physician's Cure had been created, and while Apollo knew she regretted the resulting fallout and had forgiven her unfortunate part in Asclepius' death – she was his twin, his other half, how could he not forgive her – he was still not above using it to ensure his son's safety if it came to it.

First of all, though, he had to find Asclepius, and that was not a task that Tartarus was making simple. The Phlegethon ran, its scorching flames searing cold, some way off to his left as he traipsed across the vicious glass-sand of its banks, while on his right, the sheer cliffs that marked the edge of the Pit towered high above, disappearing into clouds of ominous crimson, the colour of fresh mortal blood. The surface of the cliff itself was jagged and threatening, a reminder that while there was a high-security prison within Tartarus, the Pit itself was a prison, and generally discouraged departure, especially for things it did not want to leave. Between the two, where Apollo was walking, the ground was pitted with crevasses and riddled with structures not unlike volcanoes; nothing overly dangerous to a god, but still obstacles that needed to be navigated, taking time that Apollo could not confidently track and did not have to spare as he scrambled ungainly across a lattice of jagged boulders blocking his path and then took a running leap over a gash the width of the throne room of Olympus.

He almost didn't make it, hands scrabbling at the lip and staining the dark, glassy stones with gold as the edges crumbled away beneath his grip. For one terrifying moment, he thought he would fall, down into unimaginable depths that didn't feel like Chaos itself but would likely be not much easier to escape.

A surge of fear, triggered by the thought of Chaos, of remembering Python and unravelling into non-existence, gave him the strength to grab a little bit further, onto a piece of jagged Tartarus ground, and haul himself out of the chasm. He scrambled out, on his hands and knees in a fashion far more like the mortal Lester than the god Apollo, and gave himself a moment to recompose.

His hands were covered in gold, the wounds sealing instantly but the evidence remaining until he wiped it on the fabric beneath his armour, before remembering that he could just will it away.

It was a warning, a small taste of what Tartarus could do even to a god. Apollo was well aware that things would get far, far worse before the prophecy was fulfilled and the quest over. He knew that Nico had, in a manner of speaking, survived Tartarus before, as had the combined forces of Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase, but in the Pit himself, facing the trial of Tartarus at full godly strength, he honestly could not see how they had managed it.

He was more certain than ever that Will would not have done. Not because he doubted his son – Will was powerful, resourceful, and smart – but because Tartarus truly was the antithesis of everything Will was.

It was also the antithesis of everything Asclepius was, and Apollo clung to the traces of his son's presence tightly as he pulled himself to his feet again, glaring at the monsters that had inched closer, sensing brief weakness in the god in their midst. He had a son to rescue.

He resumed his trek, following the wall of the Pit and increasingly aware that the glow of the Phlegethon was getting ever closer as he walked. While he knew of the rivers, what they did and the dangers they posed, Apollo didn't know the paths they took within the PIt. He did know that, at some point, he would need to cross the river of fire in order to reach the Prison itself, because Hades would not have taken that route if there was an alternative one, but beyond that, he was in the uncomfortable position of not knowing, which was not a position the god of knowledge ever liked to find himself.

As he advanced, he kept to the wall, feeling the slight incline beneath his feet that said he was getting deeper into Tartarus, and continued to track his son's presence, concerned that no matter how far he seemed to walk, there was no noticeable strengthening.

Assuming he had been punished shortly after Apollo's memory gap began, Asclepius had been in Tartarus for a year; that wasn't a long time in the lifespan of a god, but Apollo could personally attest to how some short spans of time could be the most impactful – and dangerous.

Apollo kept walking, not needing to pause for a rest like he would have done as Lester, as a mortal rather than a god, but even he could not tell how long he had kept going for with the fluidity and distortion of time within the Pit. It could have been mere minutes, or hours, or days. Weeks, months, years – Apollo hoped not, but even he with his usual innate sense of time (a necessity in his role as the god of the sun) could not say with any conviction that it had not been.

Eventually – after minutes or eons or both - it became apparent that the strip of glassy ground between the wall and the river was shrinking with the eventual fate of disappearing entirely as the fire rushed to meet the solid wall, cutting off Apollo's current route and forcing him to make a crossing. Unlike where he had parted ways with Hades however long ago, the river here was wide as well as furious, easily triple its earlier width as it crashed into the wall before zig-zagging along it with tongues of fire leaping up and illuminating more of the dark, jagged material that made up that particular edge of the prison.

The river was one of healing, but it was not Apollo's brand of healing. It did not heal out of love, but cruelty, forcing bodies to go past their limits, to endure, and denying souls the release of ending their existence. At least, that was its role in the Underworld, as it ran past the Fields of Punishment and sustained the souls of the wicked condemned to an eternity of torture.

Apollo had no doubt that it was even crueller down in Tartarus, rushing eagerly towards the heart of the primordial.

Unfortunately, it was between him and Asclepius, and Apollo dared not take the extra time to backtrack all the way to where he had left Hades to find a narrower stretch. Asclepius' presence was too faint for that, and part of him feared losing track of his son if he headed away from him again.

He didn't stop walking until he was right on the banks, feeling the frigid heat of the flames licking up at him, almost eagerly waiting for him to take the first step into its clutches.

Apollo didn't have another choice. He took the step.

Phlegethon couldn't kill him; the river god was old, but Apollo was an Olympian. Perhaps once, pain would have been enough to make him falter – pain was not a familiar sensation for gods, after all, and while they could physically endure it, mentally was another matter entirely – but Apollo had spent six months as a mortal, injured more often than not and more than once knocking on Thanatos' door.

Compared to being flayed alive, being unravelled alongside Python on the edge of Chaos, the searing cold of the Phlegethon was nothing.

Apollo pushed forwards, feeling the outer layer of his form peeling away under the onslaught as the god lashed out at him. One step after another, he descended into the river, catching glimpses of a face in the flickering flames, fragmented throughout the fire, his stature growing and growing to keep his head above water as the riverbed sank deeper and deeper.

It took effort, with both the river and the Pit fighting him, but Apollo knew that swimming the river would be a fools' errand. It might be a river, but it was fire, not water, and fire was categorically not for swimming in. He didn't know how the demigods had managed to cross, unless the river god had taken mercy on them.

Phlegethon certainly was not taking mercy on Apollo.

It was a battle of wills; the river god clearly did not wish to let Apollo pass, but Apollo's son was on the other side, and he would not be kept from Asclepius by a river, even if said river was one of the Underworld rivers.

Ichor dripped into the flames, gold swallowed by blazing orange, and then onto the glassy shards of the Pit's ground as Apollo emerged the other side of the river, his physical form shredded but regenerating rapidly. No doubt he looked a terrible sight as he returned to a human size on the bank, feeling his body seal back up again now that the fire river could no longer sear it apart. It certainly wasn't a pleasant sensation.

Some of the ever-watching monsters clearly thought he looked weakened. As he pulled himself upright, giving himself a moment to re-centre after the ordeal of fire water – and resignedly realising that he would likely need to cross it again to leave Tartarus – a troop of empousai swooped upon him, batting eyelashes even as they lunged for the kill.

Each one fell to a single arrow long before they could reach him, and Apollo was aware of the slight retreat of the other observing monsters. Very few fled entirely, though, and he knew that they were biding their time, waiting for Tartarus to wear him down further.

They had time, numbers, and regeneration on their side, after all.

Apollo refused to hold arrows at the ready; his draw time was fast enough that, against monsters like these, he didn't need to broadcast any wariness. He kept his head high and his grip on his bow relaxed as ichor dissolved away, leaving him as unblemished as he had been before his trip through the Phlegethon, and continued striding across the surface of the Pit, towards where he could sense his son.

Beneath his feet, the ground was softer this side of the river. Not by much – glassy shards still tore at the soles of his form – but enough to let him know that he was definitely heading towards the most aware, alive parts of the Pit, and not away. The Phlegethon rushing past him, following the shallow yet seemingly endless incline deeper into Tartarus, cemented the knowledge that he was heading in that direction.

It was not a comforting thought; Asclepius was highly intelligent and would have known better than to stray too deep. By himself, Apollo was certain he would have found somewhere to stay as far up as possible, which meant that Asclepius' current location was not of his son's choosing.

His fingers tapped out another jerky rhythm on his bow as he kept walking, tracking his son's presence and trying not to think about how faint it still was.

The Phlegethon remained his constant companion as he walked, keeping its bright flames a little way to his right but more or less followings its course deeper into Tartarus, until the river took a sharp and unwelcome turn, peeling away from the wall of the Pit and slashing across Apollo's path and off somewhere over on his left.

Asclepius' presence was straight ahead, the other side of the fire river again, and Apollo realised that he would have to once more forge his way through the Phlegethon.

Thankfully, with its sharp turn, it had apparently narrowed once again, although it flowed even faster to compensate.

Apollo didn't let himself hesitate.

The river was no more willing to let him cross unscathed than the first time. If anything, it was more vicious, the flames energised by their rapid flow and seemingly aware that they had a smaller window of opportunity to punish him for his hubris of daring to wade through it.

Ichor dripped onto the bank as Apollo hauled himself out the other side, his physical form once again shredded by the frigid flames, and he sincerely hoped he wasn't going to have to cross it many more times.

He feared how Asclepius would cope, once he found his son and they were headed back, towards the exit to the Overworld. He was worried how many times Asclepius had already fallen foul of the river, let alone the other horrors of Tartarus.

The answer was certainly far more than Apollo would like – especially as Apollo's preference had his son never touching Tartarus in the first place.

This side of the Phlegethon, the glass underfoot had completely faded away, replaced by something far more akin to a membrane, lurking just beneath the surface of a deceptive crust of soil. Life – not life, but consciousness, awareness, the feeling of something alive – thrummed beneath Apollo's feet, and he instantly decided he vastly preferred the constant laceration of his feet to this.

The Pit was Tartarus, and Tartarus was the Pit. Further back, near the wall and the cliffs where they'd arrived, Apollo had been able to ignore that fact, been able to treat the surface beneath his feet as exactly how it had felt – shards of glass. Painful, but negligible.

Crossing the Phlegethon for the second time, at the point when the wall of the Pit dived off into the distance and at some point switched to a yawning drop into something that had his essence jittering nervously rather than the impossibly high cavern, Apollo could no longer ignore the reality. Tartarus surrounded him, mind and body and soul, and should the primordial choose to acknowledge his presence, he would be entirely at his mercy.

Here, where the deception fell away into a despairing reality, Apollo was free only so long as the Pit decreed it.

It was as far from a comforting thought at it was possible to get.

It also cemented Apollo's desire – need – to find Asclepius and retreat back to the false safety offered by the other side of the Phlegethon as fast as possible.

If there was one positive to crossing the Phlegethon, it was that Asclepius' presence was finally, finally, sharper. For the first time since he'd started following it, it had noticeably strengthened, and Apollo dared to hope that meant it wouldn't be much further before he found his son. The presence still wasn't at the level a god of Asclepius' calibre should be, but considering how long he'd been in Tartarus, that was tragically unsurprising.

Despite knowing that, when he caught sight of an ichor-covered elderly male balled up at the base of one of the hair-like, branchless trees that protruded periodically between the blisters of respawning monsters that littered the membrane-plain he had entered shortly after leaving the Phlegethon far behind him, Apollo's essence churned nauseatingly.

The last time he had laid eyes on Asclepius, his son had been a freshly-ascended god, still in the form of the fifteen year old child he had been when the Master Bolt took his life. It had been a brief glimpse – allowed by his father only as proof that he truly had bestowed godhood upon his son – before Asclepius was snatched away and imprisoned for eternity, and Apollo was forbidden to see him again.

That had been four millennia ago, and visually it seemed impossible that the decrepit old man in of him could possibly be that same teenager-slash-newly ascended god, but despite their forced separation, Apollo knew his son's presence.

He didn't hesitate.

Much to Hermes' distaste, Apollo had once won the title of fastest of the gods, and it was that speed he tapped into at the sight of his son, crossing the last stretch of membrane faster than the distorted time could keep up and kneeling beside the wounded god.

Wounded was barely adequate a word to describe Asclepius. The golden ichor covering most of his skin and staining his simple chiton was clearly all his own. As a god of healing – superior even to Apollo himself – the fact that he still had open wounds, ichor freely flowing down his withered form and pooling across Tartarus' skin spoke of just how much Tartarus had drained him.

"Asclepius." Apollo could barely say his name, his voice coming out in a pained whisper.

Exhausted blue eyes blinked up at him, before widening sharply as his son tried to pull himself into a more upright position. Without thinking, Apollo reached out and steadied him.

"Father?" Asclepius' voice was hoarse. "You- How..?" The rasp trailed off, whether because of weakness or because he didn't know what else to say, Apollo couldn't tell.

"My son," Apollo near-sobbed, wrapping his arms around him as though he were the fifteen year old demigod he still remembered with clarity four thousand years later and holding him close. "You are not staying here." Asclepius was in an even worse condition than Apollo had feared; not just the stilted healing, but the physical form. No god would ever willingly take on a form so withered and frail, but it was possible to force them into something similar should their powers or domains drain too far.

"But Grandfather-" Asclepius choked. Apollo hushed him immediately.

"You are not staying here," he repeated firmly, mentally pushing the problem of his father's wrath to one side to be dealt with once Asclepius was no longer in the Pit. It would need to be addressed, he was reluctantly and fearfully aware, but with his son in his arms, he couldn't do anything but save him.

First, Asclepius needed strength, and a form that could stand and walk. Apollo hummed, drawing on his own essence to forcibly bolster the healing hymn against the oppressive malaise of Tartarus. Healing a god was nothing like healing a mortal – mortal bodies followed the same general pattern and rules, a sack of meat and bones and blood that had certain guidelines they needed to follow in order to function.

Gods were different, and not just because they tended to be too proud to let Apollo near their wounds even when they were injured severely enough that they didn't regenerate rapidly. No two gods were the same, their essence swirling in patterns that were unique to each one of them. It was impossible to treat them the same way as a mortal.

Apollo pushed his own healing aura into Asclepius, seeking less to heal the wounds himself and more to share the strength to regenerate with his son. In a location as hostile as Tartarus, it was hardly a safe thing to do, but it was the fastest and most reliable method.

In his embrace, his son visibly flourished, sagging and wrinkled skin retreating and freshening into something less gaunt, and the countless wounds that had been leaking ichor like free-flowing pipes sealed back up.

"Father." His son's voice was stronger, as were the arms that wrapped around Apollo's back, gripping him tightly for a blessed moment before slowly pulling back. "You can stop now."

Asclepius wasn't fully restored. Apollo could feel it as certainly as he could feel that he still had vast reserves of his own power to give. His form had rewound to a mature man, with hair that was still white-grey rather than the dark mop of waves it had once been, but it was still an old form, forced rather than chosen.

Intellectually, he knew that his son was right; in Tartarus, Apollo needed all the power he could amass, especially as he could still feel the slow drain as the isolation from his own major domains continued to wear at his essence. Still, he refused to stop, pushing revitalising energy into the younger god until Asclepius wriggled out of his grip like the teenager Apollo remembered him once being and pulled out of immediate reach.

"Father," he scolded. "This is enough for now. We must move."

He seemed jittery, all of a sudden, eyes darting around, and Apollo was faced with the obvious fact that in order for Asclepius to have been so injured, something must have been hurting him. Something powerful enough to wear down a god – which, in Tartarus, could be any number of things.

Or beings.

Reluctantly, he rose to his feet again, glancing around warily for whatever threat Asclepius was fearing. Nothing stood out, which was not reassuring. Apollo hated hidden threats.

"Okay," he agreed, picking up his bow from where he had dropped it to treat his son. "Let's-"

The sound was so familiar it simultaneously caught his attention immediately yet failed to register for several moments. A powerful thwack, with a note like a lyre humming behind it, and a recognition that took a hair of a second to settle.

Asclepius' wounds, leaking like punctured pipes.

A stalking threat, near-impossible to detect.

"Father!"

Apollo's reaction was glacial in comparison to his son's. Asclepius body-checked him, an unusually aggressive move for a gentle healer, and it was that plus Apollo's own instincts that had him shifting just far enough to one side.

His son was not so lucky, and a grunt of pain escaped the younger god as a hand flew to his upper arm, instinctively clutching at the new wound. Ichor dripped down the skin, but Apollo's focus was taken by the cause.

A thick, black shaft with rings of red and yellow protruded from between Asclepius's clenching fingers, fletched with raven feathers.

Thanks for reading!
Tsari