Percy wasn't exactly having the time of his life down here.
It was hard to trail Kelli and the other empousai, especially with the way his vision seemed to darken as the distance stretched on. At times when he slowed, their fiery hair was the only thing guiding him through the darkness.
Well, that and the Phlegethon. It was a lucky coincidence that the monsters were following along its path as well. The heat was almost suffocating, but when the noxious air got too much for him, drinking the river's flames kept him alive.
The jagged scrapes on his skin seemed to be healing well enough thanks to the Phlegethon. Percy had been worried that he'd be left a scarred, leathery mess if he'd ever made it out of this nightmare, but there were no lasting scars to be seen.
If only he could say the same for his clothes. He probably looked worse than Nereus did when he, Grover, Thalia, and Zoe captured him in San Francisco.
Gods, he missed those times. Not that he was particularly a fan of being chased across the country in a vain attempt to save the world (again), but he could at least have claimed to maintain some semblance of innocence to the evils of the world before that quest.
That was when he'd seen his first deaths. Where he'd seen two of his friends die.
At least he didn't have to watch Bianca die, as horrible as that thought was. He'd been spared the trauma of death for at least a few days.
He still had nightmares about Zoe sometimes. Watching her lie there, pale and barely breathing with a hole through her gut thanks to her father, gently grasping Percy's hand as the Fates cut her string and Artemis placed her in the stars. For years after that he wondered how many other people would die due to the grudges of immortal beings far beyond them. He often thought about when he himself would be in that position, choking out his final words to a small group of his friends. Who would be there to burn his shroud, like those he had done for others?
With the way things looked now, that answer was nobody.
Percy's throat burned and constricted, but not due to the liquid fire. He trembled as he walked, hungry and thirsty and tired and scared beyond belief. Was he going to have to pick at a corpse for survival, the same way the empousai ahead of him had when they reached a particularly enticing carcass? It was fine for them, he supposed, they were monsters. There were only monsters down here, they didn't really have a choice.
If the only thing down here were monsters, what did that make him?
Time was impossible to judge, especially with his only company being his own intrusive thoughts.
When Percy reached the corpse of whatever poor bastard the empousai had looted, there was nothing left except a few shards of bone.
He couldn't stop himself from thinking about how that would be him soon enough.
As he walked, Percy couldn't help but think about the first time he'd fought Kelli at his freshman orientation at Goode, when he and Rachel had been trapped in the band hall. At the time, it seemed like a hopeless situation. Now, he'd give anything to have a problem that simple. At least he'd been in the mortal world then. Here, there was nowhere to run.
Wow. Looking back at the Second Titan War as the good old days - his life really sucked. He had thought he'd avoided the typical hero's fate after surviving that ordeal.
Clearly not. He wondered if the Fates were spinning his thread with barbed wire instead, just to see how much one demigod could tolerate before they snapped.
He imagined his thread was becoming rather taut.
After a few more miles of walking (or so he thought - distance and time were weird down here), the empousai disappeared over a ridge. When Percy caught up, he was treated to the edge of another massive cliff. The Phlegethon spilled over the side in jagged tiers of fiery waterfalls. It was fascinating watching the empousai descend down the cliffs swiftly, leaping from ledge to ledge like mountain goats. It looked like the mystery of whatever creature their right leg was made out of had been solved.
His heart crept into his throat. Even if he reached the bottom of the cliff alive, which wasn't exactly a given, he didn't have much to look forward to. The landscape below was a bleak, ash-gray plain bristling with black trees that reminded him of insect hair. The ground was pocked with blisters. Every once in a while, a bubble would swell and burst, disgorging a monster like larva from an egg.
Suddenly Percy wasn't very hungry anymore.
All the newly formed monsters were marching, crawling, or slithering in the same direction, towards a bank of black fog that swallowed the horizon like a storm front. The Phlegethon flowed in the same direction until about halfway across the plain, where it met another river of black water, presumably the Cocytus, and the two combined into a steaming, vile cataract and flowed as one into the fog.
The longer Percy looked into that storm of darkness, the less he wanted to go there. It could be hiding anything - an ocean, a bottomless pit, an army of monsters (that one seemed more likely with each passing second), an angry Titan or two that he'd slain previously and wanted revenge - the possibilities were limitless. But if the Doors of Death were in that direction, he'd have no choice but to venture on.
He looked down at the massive cliff face, and instantly regretted it. Heights were never his strong suit. It wouldn't be an impossible climb, per se, but to do so on an empty stomach with aching limbs while trying to avoid causing small rockslides that would alert the empousai to his presence and being splashed by stray fire from the falls?
Yeah, good luck with that.
Percy waited a little longer to allow the empousai to get further ahead and not risk them detecting him as he descended down the cliff face, but in reality he was trying not to freak out. All of this was just becoming too much.
Why did he have to do this? Why was he alone on an impossible quest to save the world again? Why must he venture alone into a land that even the gods themselves feared and avoided? Hadn't he done enough? Couldn't this have been anyone else's job?
Percy staggered to the ground, falling to his hands and knees. His stomach growled. He was so hungry.
He briefly entertained the idea of simply throwing himself off the cliff, and deciding to figure out his next move should he survive the fall - the simplest solution was usually the correct one, wasn't it? - but he eventually discarded the idea. If he lived, there would be a half-dozen monsters waiting at the bottom, and he had no illusions about Kelli granting him a quick death.
Oh yeah, and he'd also probably be stuck down here for the rest of eternity in eternal torment if his soul didn't simply cease to exist. That kind of retirement wasn't exactly the same as shuffleboarding on a cruiseliner when he was eighty.
He eyed the Phlegethon miserably, watching the waters tumble over the side of the cliff as a plan began to form in his mind.
A neat little party trick he'd learned forever ago flashed to the forefront of his mind - the ability to stand and walk on water. It was a simple exercise of his powers, the only difficulty originating from the need for focus and concentration to perform it.
But the Phlegethon wasn't exactly normal water. And there was a difference between standing on still water and standing on a platform of water as it cascaded down a waterfall.
Oh well. His stupid plans were usually the ones that worked out, at any rate. Thinking things through too hard never really panned out the way he wanted.
He took a tentative step towards the Phlegethon, and then another. A few more, and he was at the edge of the bank. Little cinders flew up from the main stream and burnt tiny marks into his shoelaces.
Percy steeled his will. If he wasn't completely focused, he would fail. And failing was death now.
And he couldn't die yet.
He raised his left foot slowly, as though he were preparing to squash a nasty bug. If only things were that simple. His leg burned from the heat, and every inch he extended it out towards the river felt like another few hundred degrees had been added to Tartarus's thermostat.
The seconds crawled on, one foolish boy squeezing his eyes shut as he prepared to fight the will of a river of the pit.
Again.
The tug in his gut tightened until it felt like he was being strung up into a tightrope. His stomach joined his heart in his throat, and he slammed his foot down into the Phlegethon.
His foot stomped against the solidified surface of the river, and his focus nearly slipped as he recoiled in surprise. The water trembled, and Percy quickly renewed his efforts to prevent himself from falling in. He fully stepped onto his tiny platform of solid fire, standing above the point where his knees would have been fully submerged. The platform he was standing on seemed to be no wider than a few feet across in any direction, and no more than a few inches thick. The fire that normally rushed and burnt along the river seemed frozen inside his little platform, trapped in a way that looked mesmerizingly beautiful. It was as though someone had taken the fire of Prometheus and captured it within a piece of glass.
And then it started to move.
Percy tensed, but was unwilling to do more beyond that as he focused all his attention on making sure he didn't slip and fall into the Phlegethon. The water was quickly speeding up, and unfortunately Percy forgot one crucial detail:
He was about to go over a waterfall.
The water churned beneath him, and he was pretty sure his shoes were starting to melt. He squared himself on the disc of water, and as he tipped over the falls he put everything he had into not tumbling over.
It was a lot harder than it sounded.
Percy's insides felt like they were being twisted around into a new Gordian Knot. His eyes were clenched shut in concentration as he forced the water he was standing on to grab hold to the falls, and suddenly he was in freefall, with nothing but the flimsy sheet of water keeping him from falling to his death.
His arm shot out, and the water followed his command. About half of the platform he was standing on thrust out towards the rest of the Phlegethon, reconnecting it to its source and slowing his descent, although it wasn't by much. Percy's control shrunk to around a foot or so of water that he was able to stand on.
Stop! He cried in his mind. Slow down! Hold up! Quit!
He was running out of synonyms for stop, and the water wasn't quite as keen on listening as it had been earlier. Maybe it would accept a 'Don't kill me please!' if he asked nicely.
His lungs were on fire. Had he even breathed since stepping onto the Phlegethon? Probably not.
Percy could feel the rest of the river coming in hot. If he landed like this, he'd probably break his legs. Maybe drinking of the Phlegethon would heal that, but it certainly wouldn't heal him in time to deal with the empousai, who he seemed to have just passed, if their surprised shrieks were anything to go by.
He grit his teeth and let out a muffled scream as he put even more into not crashing into the river below. It felt like he was twelve again, trying not to pass out from fear as he flew across the country to deliver the stolen master bolt back to an angry Zeus. His stomach was in his ears the entire time, and even his fall into the pit paled in comparison to how he felt right now.
Percy roared as something inside him came undone - it almost felt like a crystal ball had shattered in his stomach, or a lock in his gut had been removed. His makeshift 'raft' came to a complete stop…
And so did the entire waterfall.
Percy's frame shook as he briefly halted the flow of the Phlegethon, before slowly dropping his platform of frozen fire to rejoin the rest of the river. It deposited him on the riverbank with hardly a thought, and he immediately collapsed into the small layer of glass shards that separated the Phlegethon from the new, gray terrain that made up the rest of this new area of the pit.
Miles of wasteland stretched ahead of him, bubbling with monstrous larvae and big insect-hair trees. To his right, the river of fire split off into a dozen smaller tributaries that etched the plain, widening into a delta of smoke and flame. To the north, along the main route of the river, the ground was riddled with cave entrances. Here and there, spires of rock jutted up like exclamation points.
Under his hand, the soil felt alarmingly warm and smooth. He tried to grab a handful, then realized that under a thin layer of dirt and debris, the ground was a single vast membrane.
Like skin.
Percy almost threw up, but forced himself not to. There was nothing in his stomach but fire.
He felt like he was being watched. Not in the way of something having eyes on him, but as though something was acutely aware of his presence in the pit. It felt vast and malevolent.
Percy tried not to think too much about it. He felt like he'd go insane if he did.
About a hundred yards ahead of him, a blister burst on the ground. A monster clawed its way out - a glistening telekhine with slick fur, a seal-like body, and stunted human limbs. It managed to crawl a few yards before something shot out of the nearest cave, so fast that Percy could only register a dark green reptilian head. The monster snatched the squealing telekhine in its jaws and dragged it into the darkness.
Oh yeah. This would be fun. Looks like he'd have to stay away from the caves.
As he sluggishly pulled himself to his feet, he was suddenly hit with the strange feeling that he had forgotten something important -
"Percy Jackson!"
Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
He forgot about the empousai.
"How awesome!" Kelli cooed, "I don't even have to return to the mortal world to destroy you!"
Riptide was out immediately, Kelli and the four other empousai hissing as they saw the cursed blade's gleaming edge. Percy might have been imagining it, but for a moment it looked like the tip of the sword was tinted silver.
He recalled how he had faced her in Daedalus's workshop, all those years ago. Despite those mismatched legs, she could move fast. She'd dodged his blows and would have eaten his face off if it wasn't for Annabeth.
Percy scowled at the reminder. The empousai giggled in response - he must not have passed a particularly intimidating figure with his homeless attire and sunken eyes.
"Where's that daughter of Athena?" Kelli sneered, "I was hoping I'd get the pleasure of gutting her, but I suppose I'll settle for you!"
The empousai formed a semicircle around him, cutting off any chance of escape with his back to the river, but it didn't matter too much. It wasn't exactly like he could outrun them on a good day, let alone in his current condition. He liked his odds against just about any monster that wasn't Typhon in a one-on-one grudge match, but he wasn't even sure he could kill Mrs. Dodds in this condition.
Welp. Fighting was out. Unless…
Percy shook his head. He wasn't going to try and mess with the Phlegethon again unless he completely ran out of options. That left him the other options: Trickery, talking, and delaying.
In other words, make up random bullshit until something stuck.
"So…" he started, "I guess you're wondering what I'm doing down here."
Kelli snickered. "Not really. I just want to kill you."
Damn. That was that, then.
Percy raised Riptide. "Aren't you all servants of Hecate?" He tried, "She's on our side this time, y'know. I can't imagine she'd be too happy if you all tried to attack one of her favorite demigods."
He had no idea if Hecate actually liked him or not, but he was willing to make shit up at the risk of pissing off a goddess that couldn't get her hands on him unless he made it out of here. Besides, he had gotten her a full pardon from Olympus as well as a cabin at camp - if she had any semblance of respect she'd appreciate the gesture.
That got a reaction from the other empousai, each of them (minus Kelli) briefly freezing up and looking at him with more hesitation than before.
"Is this true, Kelli?" One particularly brave empousai asked, "Has our mistress made peace with Olympus?"
"Shut up, Serephone!" Kelli screeched, "Gods, you're annoying!"
"I will not cross the Dark Lady."
"You'd better not!" Percy added in quickly, throwing more fuel onto the fire, "I'd hate to have to fight the underlings of one of my friends! Listen to Serephone!"
"Yes!" Serephone shrieked, "Listen to me! Follow me!"
Kelli struck so fast, Percy didn't have the chance to intercept. Fortunately, she didn't attack him. Kelli lashed out at Serephone. For half a second, the two demons were a blur of slashing claws and fangs - until Kelli screeched, standing victoriously over a pile of dust.
"Any more issues?" She snapped at her sisters, "Hecate is the goddess of the Mist! Her ways are mysterious. Who knows which side she truly favors? She is also the goddess of the crossroads, and she expects us to make our own choices. I choose the path that will bring us the most demigod blood! I choose Gaea!"
Her friends hissed in approval.
Wonderful. At least there were only four of them now, instead of five.
It didn't do much to reassure him.
"For two years I churned in the void," Kelli spat hatefully, "Do you know how annoying it is to be completely vaporized? Slowly reforming, fully conscious, in searing pain for months and years as your body regrows, then finally breaking the crust of this hellish place and clawing your way back to daylight? All because some little girl stabbed you in the back?"
Percy sneered back, thinking of the time he had destroyed Mount St. Helens once more. "I might have an inkling as to what that's like."
She locked eyes with him, snarling at his little comment. "I wonder what happens if a demigod is killed in Tartarus. I doubt it's ever happened before. Let's find out."
Just before they charged, Percy did something that even he didn't expect.
He laughed.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" He asked, smiling at the empousai. "I mean, you really have no idea who you're dealing with, do you?"
The other three empousai shook their heads dumbly, even as Kelli screeched at them to attack.
"Well," he continued, "Let me introduce myself. I'm the one who defeated Hyperion and turned him into a tree. I'm the one who defeated Ares before I was a teenager. I'm the one who defeated Kronos. A few weeks ago I kicked the shit out of Polybotes - if I didn't need a god to help kill him, I would have finished him off myself. They made me a praetor for that, you know."
He didn't usually like to brag about his achievements in battle, but desperate times called for desperate measures. With each name he listed off, he took another step forward, as if he was daring the empousai to attack him. His eyes flashed dangerously as he looked at each of them, and all of them except for Kelli seemed to be rethinking provoking him.
"Romani." One hissed uncomfortably, looking to Kelli for guidance.
Percy caught the glance. "Oh, you think you can trust her?" He chuckled, "She couldn't even kill me with help! I was fourteen and outnumbered, and she still lost! What a failure! What do you think, have a few extra years of nonstop training from yours truly improved your chances?"
Kelli hissed. "Ignore him, sisters! He is in our domain - there are four of us and only one of him. He has no way to escape! Think of how delicious his flesh will be!"
Her words fell on deaf ears. The other empousai looked even less interested in trying to kill him now.
Riptide shone brightly in the dark haze of the pit, and Percy swung it experimentally in the direction of one of the empousai. She screamed, running back towards the cliff as quickly as possible. She almost looked like she would make it - at least, until the Phlegethon reached out and grabbed her, dragging her kicking and screaming into the river of fire.
Percy howled with laughter as the other empousai watched on in horror. Even Kelli looked ill. His facade nearly cracked when one of the two unnamed ones began to weep. "He's a demon!" She wailed.
His impassive face betrayed the whirlwind of emotions brewing up inside him. Kelli rushed at him, claws bared, and he was barely able to deflect her talons with Riptide. The Phlegethon surged forward at his command, but Kelli was quick.
Unfortunately, she wasn't quick enough to completely save herself. A watery tendril lashed out like a snake, separate from the rest of the fiery liquid, and severed her left arm from her body.
Kelli screamed, crumpling to the ground like a sack of potatoes. The other empousai were frozen in terror as Percy approached them, quickly cutting them down into matching piles of dust.
He finally turned his attention back to Kelli, her form flickering between her empousai form and the cheerleader she had masqueraded as during his freshman orientation. It was weird, seeing another 'human' down here, but he knew it was just a trick.
"Please!" She begged, crying hysterically, "Spare me! Don't kill me! Have mercy!"
Kelli was really pulling out all the stops with this performance. Too bad he didn't care.
"Would you have given me any mercy?" He asked rhetorically.
Kelli didn't seem to get the memo. "Yes! Yes! Of course!" She brayed, "I would never betray Hecate! I see the error of my ways!"
Percy was unimpressed. He lazily raised an eyebrow, before sighing as he prepared Riptide.
And then he realized his mistake.
Kelli, from her downed position in front of him, was still as quick as ever. Had he been focused, he would have been able to finish her off with no issue, but he'd let his guard down while she begged for her life.
She lunged at him, lone arm extended as a final act of desperation. He jumped back as far as he could, but Percy couldn't do anything but cry out in pain as Kelli's claws raked across the side of his face - barely missing his left eye.
"Gah!" He cried, blindly swinging Riptide in a wide arc. By some miracle, his aim was true, and Kelli's head was finally severed from her body.
Percy fell against the dirt, his hand instinctively going up to reach for the wound across his cheek. He winced as he felt liquid, and pulled his hand back to see blood.
A lot of blood.
He looked at his cloudy reflection in the Phlegethon, and he wasn't a fan of what he saw. The entire side of his face was shredded by Kelli's last act, making him look like some B-rated horror movie villain.
It didn't take long for his skin to begin to stitch itself back together with the assistance of the Phlegethon, wincing at the wretched taste of its waters once again. He coped with it, though - this river was far and away the only thing down here not out for his head.
Percy bit back a groan as his stomach began to make its displeasure known once again. He was really starting to worry about the possibility of starving to death at this point.
After everything he'd been through, that sounded like the worst way to go he could think of. His mind flickered back to Tantalus, and the brief experience he'd had with that specimen of antiquity. He'd absolutely loathed the man during his brief stint at Camp Half-Blood's director in Chiron's absence, and not just because he looked up to the centaur like a father at times. No, he was a complete and utter asshole as well.
But now as he stood here, possibly facing the same fate as the man, Percy couldn't help but sympathize. He still didn't miss the man. He wondered if he was back in the Fields of Punishment now.
Whatever he was going through, Percy probably had it worse.
Oh well. Complaining wasn't going to get him anywhere. He sighed through his nose, and continued his trek through Tartarus.
Better to die having freed the Doors of Death than at the bank of the Phlegethon.
–
Unfortunately for Percy, it didn't seem like he'd get much say in the matter.
He'd been walking for hours at this point, tracing the Phlegethon, and his strength was beginning to fade.
Quickly.
He'd tried to move fast to avoid falling prey to whatever those things hiding in the caves were, as well as any other potential monsters or immortals that were out for his blood, but that didn't stop the occasional telekhine or cyclops from attempting to ambush him. He killed them quickly and efficiently now; he couldn't afford anything less.
He also began to pop the little blisters of reforming monsters. He'd been surprised by a freshly-made hellhound leaping out of one, nearly tearing his throat out, and now he wasn't going to take any chances.
But that was hours ago. Now, he could barely keep his eyes open. He stumbled along weakly, the only thing keeping him going being the thought of a cheeseburger and a nice warm bed waiting for him on the other side of the Doors of Death. He was only a few hundred yards away from the wall of darkness by this point. With every step he took the fog looked more imposing, more unwelcoming.
More willing to kill him.
Wonderful.
Percy passed by the pod of a reforming drakon, the yellow sphere nearly as big as a minivan. With a single slash, Riptide cleaved the thing open, and the drakon dissolved into nothingness.
It would have killed Hazel, he told himself. It could have ripped Nico in half.
Little thoughts like that helped keep him going too. If he was forced to be down here any amount of time, he'd do his friends a favor and make sure they were facing as few enemies as possible on the surface.
He'd do anything for them at this point - the idea of seeing his friends again nearly brought him to tears.
Percy forced himself to keep walking, having stopped at the thought of reuniting with everyone. Hadn't it only been a few hours? It felt like days. He couldn't tell time very well down here. The… everything was messing with his mind. He didn't know if he felt like himself anymore.
Someone to talk to would have been nice. At least, someone that wasn't actively trying to kill him.
The monster pods were like pimples on the skin of Tartarus. He shuddered at the thought that he was walking on something, someone, even though he knew he was. He'd seen the pit's… skin, underneath the surface. This whole twisted world - the dome, the pit, whatever it was - was the body of the Primordial God Tartarus. The most ancient incarnation of evil. Just as Gaea inhabited the Earth, Tartarus inhabited the pit.
And there was a pretty good chance the pit had taken notice of its little 'intruder'.
Did he ever mention how much he loved his ADHD? It loved to provide him with useful thoughts like these.
It was these same distracting thoughts that distracted him once more, causing him to trip over his own two feet - and stumble over a small ridge.
Percy bit back a curse as he tumbled down into a rather large crater, rubbing the back of his head as he felt a welt already beginning to form.
He glanced up, taking in his surroundings, and froze.
Percy was in a sheltered crater, like the kind that the moon had. A ring of black, shattered marble columns stood proudly, but that wasn't what caught his attention.
The columns encircled a dark stone statue. He'd recognize that god anywhere.
A massive shrine of Hermes stood before him, staring down at him with a cocky smirk, as though he were an ant to be crushed beneath its boot.
He crumpled beneath its eternal gaze, too exhausted to do anything but crawl towards its base. A hundred feet ahead of the crater, the black fog obscured everything ahead. The rim blocked the view of the wasteland behind.
He was safe here, for now.
For how long, he didn't know.
But something about this place… it felt lighter than the rest of Tartarus. It was like the air was less deadly, like there was less evil beneath Hermes' eternal post.
How had this statue ended up in the pit? Had it fallen in, the same way he had? Did it come from Olympus? How long had it stood here, alone in its eternal bastion as a symbol of the gods where their power did not reach.
All questions he would never find the answer to.
Percy looked up at the statue's eyes. They seemed to follow him from the rim of the crater to his current position at his feet.
Maybe Hermes would come and take his body away if he died here. That wouldn't be the worst fate he could suffer down here.
But he couldn't afford to die, could he?
He was out of options though, wasn't he?
Well, he thought as he stared up at the statue, Maybe there was one option left.
Exhausted, delirious, and starving to death, Percy did something he never deigned to do anymore.
He prayed.
"Hermes - I mean, Lord Hermes, or Lord Mercury, or whatever you are right now," he pleaded, eyes shut tight and fingers knit tightly together as he knelt, "Help me. Please. I don't know where to go, or what I'm doing, or how I'm supposed to survive down here, or if Olympus is even still standing, but - but I'm not dead yet."
His body began to quiver as his strength abandoned him, and he was pretty sure tears were beginning to run down his face, but he pressed on nonetheless. "I need food. Or just some sleep with a promise that I won't die while I'm defenseless. I don't know how much more I can take of this place. It wants me dead. If I die, it's over for everyone. For you, for Zeus, for dad, for all your kids. I don't even know if you can hear me right now, or if you're still secretly mad at me for Luke's death but I-I'm begging you. Please - just give me the strength to free the Doors of Death. I'll do the rest."
And with his final plea, he collapsed against the shrine of Hermes, completely drained and at the mercy of whatever presence found him first - and completely helpless against the incoming onslaught of nightmares.
If only Percy knew his prayers would go unanswered. It would have saved him the trouble of holding out hope for godly intervention on his behalf.
After all, there were plenty of immortals down here with more than a bone to pick with Percy.
It was only a matter of which one found him first.