The first thing Percy noticed when he woke up was that he wasn't dead, which was either really good or really bad.
He pulled himself to his feet with surprising ease - he felt oddly refreshed considering his current location. His exhaustion was gone, and even his stomach wasn't complaining.
Percy took a cursory glance at his surroundings and froze. The statue of Hermes was gone - in fact, he wasn't even in the crater anymore. The red haze of Tartarus was nowhere to be seen. The constant pressure of the pit wasn't pushing down on him anymore.
Hope swelled in Percy's chest. Had he truly been saved from that gods-forsaken place? Had his prayer to Hermes been answered?
A deep rumbling from below put an end to those thoughts as quickly as they had arrived.
"You really thought you had bested me, grandson?" A chilling voice asked, causing his blood to run cold. "I thought you were smarter than that."
"Kronos," Percy bit out, snarling, "You lost. You're never coming back."
"I am immortal, boy!" Kronos laughed, and the earth below him shook. "It may be centuries, it may be millenia, but the endless cycle of Time ensures my return. Can you say the same about yourself? One day, there won't be a hero to stop me, and I will raze Olympus to the ground. Everyone you love will die."
Percy grit his teeth. "You'll never win."
In the back of his mind, he dimly realized that he was standing at the edge of the pit - the same spot Grover had nearly been dragged into Tartarus from on their very first quest.
"Maybe not," Kronos admitted, "But I can ensure that you lose."
He could feel the shift in temperature immediately - and the pull of the pit.
"No," Percy gasped, already turning to run.
There is no hope, boy! You will die here!
That last voice definitely wasn't Kronos. It felt older, more powerful.
More evil.
No matter how hard he fought, the pull of the pit was too strong. With one final scream, he was pulled right back into the abyss.
Nothing can save you.
Percy squeezed his eyes shut. Maybe if he closed his eyes and played pretend, the nightmare would end. Maybe he'd wake up in his bed in his mother's apartment in New York, and she'd comfort him over his nightmares and she'd make him blue cookies and things would be okay.
Instead of that, when he opened his eyes again he was privy to a sight that was almost worse than the last.
He was on Mount Tamalpais again. The fighting raged on around him, with Thalia facing off against Luke and Zoe fighting for her life against Atlas. Artemis was holding up the sky, unable to do anything but watch as the questers fought desperately for their continued existence.
Percy moved to act, but it was like his feet were superglued to the ground. It wasn't like he was moving through molasses, but rather he couldn't move at all.
"Artemis!" He tried to scream, but no noise came out. It was like he was forced to spectate a world where he hadn't joined the quest, where his friends were slowly picked off and left to die by the gods' inaction.
Your weapon will fail you when you need it most.
Ares' curse lingered heavily in his mind. He wondered if the war god knew just what his stupidity and arrogance had cost him.
The prick probably didn't care. The gods rarely did.
"Percy! Percy!"
He tensed as a voice called out to him, hazy and distant, as though it were calling out to him from the other end of a tunnel. He looked everywhere he could from his rooted spot, but there was nothing but the battle that raged on before him.
"Kid! Can you hear me?"
The voice sounded weaker now. Whatever it was, its connection to him was fading. It sounded familiar, and certainly wasn't malicious the way Kronos was, but it felt weaker and weaker the longer he focused on it.
"Zoe!" Artemis screamed, catching Percy's attention as he turned back just in time to watch Atlas kick his daughter down to the dirt. He raised his javelin, the tip glinting in the light of the setting sun as he prepared to kill his daughter once again.
"No!" Percy cried, fighting even harder to be freed from his prison. His hand reached Riptide, and it was like a flip was switched. The pressure on his body was lifted, and he rushed forward faster than he would have thought possible.
Riptide was glowing silver as he raised it up to intercept the Titan of Endurance. The moment the two weapons met, Percy's world faded to white.
–
Percy shot forward like a bat out of hell, nearly slamming his head into the shin of Hermes' shrine. He almost laughed at the thought of dying in such a way, busting his skull open on the shrine of one of the few gods he liked, before remembering where he was.
The pit. Tartarus. He was still here.
If that was what the nightmares were like down here, Percy vowed to never sleep again. He didn't know how long he had been out, but it must not have been long considering he hadn't been torn apart by monsters. He had no illusions about the number of immortals that were out for his head.
Was Polybotes down here, or did he not reform yet? It would have been nice if that was the case - he'd seen enough of his father's bane for one eternity.
Percy grimaced at the feel of his stomach as it grumbled again. He looked around, wondering if he could digest marble, before pausing as he got to the space in front of his feet.
A feast awaited him.
Well, not exactly. But when you introduced a starving demigod to a bag of peanut M&M's, some grapes, a slice of pizza, half a hotdog, and a plate of roast beef, there wasn't much else it could be categorized as.
Was this the doing of Hermes, then? Had the god sent him aid in the form of food?
Percy eyed the food with distrust. If that was the case, wouldn't he have sent him ambrosia and nectar? Or at least a message that said so? Maybe a bag of those magic vitamins? He'd at least have given Percy a full hotdog.
He had never been overly paranoid, but something about this place just set off every warning alarm his brain had to offer. Had the monsters done this? Some kind of elaborate trap, just to have him lower his sense of security?
Again, something just didn't add up with that. They would have just murdered him in his sleep.
It was only when, in a puff of smoke, half a cup of mac and cheese appeared at Percy's feet did he realize what this was.
Offerings.
Connor Stoll always sacrificed a pack of Peanut M&M's to his dad at dinner, something that he had never quite understood. But it made the pieces finally click into place. At least some portion of the offerings Hermes received were deposited here.
He had to wonder just how many packs of Peanut M&M's Tartarus had laying around before his stomach reminded him of what priorities were.
If Percy had bad table manners on a good day, he was sure that he didn't have any as he consumed the food in front of him. He didn't so much as chew as he did inhale the food, starting with the roast beef and pizza. He downed everything in under a minute, and finally felt his hunger disappear as he stared at the bag of M&M's. It would have been smart to eat them now, but they were the only thing he could possibly save for later in his pocket.
Maybe he could give them back to Connor if he ever made it out of here.
That got a laugh out of him, and he pocketed the candy. It and Riptide were the only things he had on him, and the idea of a bag of M&M's holding as much value to him as his sword was almost laughable.
He'd have to sacrifice something to Hermes if he ever got the chance. The guy was already near the top of his list of immortals, and he seemed poised to rise even higher, along with whatever god or goddess or whoever controlled the Phlegethon. After all, if it weren't for those two, he'd definitely be dead by now.
And wouldn't that be a shame? The fates would lose their favorite plaything.
Percy crawled out of the crater carefully, before running over to his favorite river and drinking some more liquid fire. It didn't taste any better, but beggars couldn't be choosers.
He eyed the dark fog that signaled his next destination with apprehension. Now that he could properly focus on it, it seemed to write and wriggle as though it were alive. It looked impossibly dark - what if he couldn't see anything inside it? He'd be doomed, certainly.
But what other choice did he have?
He eyed the Phlegethon. It had merged with what was likely the Cocytus, creating an absolutely vile mixture that led into the fog, but there was another offshoot of the river that sprung up just before the two rivers met. It shot off hard to the right, and seemed wider than most of the other tributaries of the fire river.
It couldn't hurt to take a detour, could it? If nothing else, it might delay his inevitable death. Why not do some sightseeing before he died.
Besides, it felt like something was pulling him in that direction. Percy didn't know what it was - maybe it was just that weird intuition feeling he'd always had that helped him determine when someone was being deceitful or when something bad would happen, maybe it was the fact that he was too afraid to abandon the Phlegethon in its base form.
Maybe it was the fact that he could feel Riptide, even in pen form, squirming.
That freaked him out. He'd been willing to ignore whatever the hell his sword had been doing since he fell down here - the glowing, the… whatever it had done in the Cocytus, etc. - because there were bigger issues, but now he didn't know what to think.
Had Riptide been possessed? Was that even possible? And why was it glowing silver of all things? That wasn't exactly the color of the sea.
Maybe his sword had secretly been conscious this whole time and had been waiting for a moment to reveal itself, live Hermes' caduceus. Maybe he was just going insane.
That second option seemed a lot more likely.
"SON OF NEPTUNE! I KNOW YOU ARE DOWN HERE!"
He froze as he heard Polybotes' cry. It seemed like he was pissed.
The Giant sounded far away, but Percy wasn't keen on sticking around to find out just how far away he was. Even rejuvenated, he didn't want to take his chances with a Giant on their father's home turf.
Especially when he didn't have a god to aid him. He could fight circles around Polybotes, but he'd never win unless he had a deity ready and willing to finish him off with him.
Percy took off running. He'd spent too much time thinking already.
He was a man of action.
–
Percy had slowed down after a few… hours? Minutes? Days? Again, time was weird down here. He could feel it passing for sure, but something about it just felt weird.
Regardless, Percy had begun to slow once Polybotes' cries had faded into the distance, unwilling to burn up all of his energy incase of a fight. He'd been surprisingly lucky so far - no monsters had attacked him since he had woken up, and that was a small miracle in itself. Percy felt pretty happy about that.
Until he stumbled upon Mount Othrys.
He'd nearly tripped into the river when he realized what he'd discovered. The black marble bricks were just as he remembered from when he'd journeyed to Mount Tamalpais all those years ago. It felt like an eternity since he'd laid his eyes upon the former fortress of the Titans, but what was it doing down here?
They couldn't be trying to rise again, so soon after they had been defeated. Hades, Percy had slain half of them himself - there was no way they had the strength to rebuild so quickly, even with Thanatos briefly chained, right?
Maybe this was just their home away from home, kind of like how Hades had created his palace as a mirror of Olympus. Their exiled kingdom for when they couldn't rule over the mortal world.
It would make sense. Even Titans probably didn't want to roam the pit undefended, without a home base to protect themselves.
He eyed the fortress with distaste. Why was he being, for lack of a better term, guided here? He couldn't think of many fallen Titans that would want to help him. Bob didn't count - he was likely still in the Underworld, under the watchful eye of Persephone and Hades (and maybe Nico).
Maybe Prometheus? Likely not; he'd irritated that guy quite a bit with his refusal to open Pandora's 'Pithos'. He couldn't imagine Hyperion or any of his brothers welcoming him in with open arms.
Still, Percy's instincts rarely led him astray. As much as he didn't want to, he approached the fortress. Surprisingly enough, the front gate was open - and undefended. Percy didn't have much cover aside from a few small boulders, but even from a distance he could tell that there wasn't a soul guarding the entrance.
It kind of made sense. What kind of being was stupid enough to attempt to infiltrate the home base of the Titans?
Him, apparently.
Percy thought about going for a more discrete approach - going through the front seemed like a really boneheaded idea, but there didn't seem to be another option. There were no windows and no other doors that went into the building, so he was kind of starved for options.
Oh well. Fortuna favors the bold, right? If that was the case, he'd have to be her favorite demigod of all time.
As he entered through the obsidian gates, he was struck by the feeling that he really shouldn't be here. It was like his brain was at war with itself, trying to pull his body in two different directions. His rational side told him to get the hell out of here ASAP, and to just find the Doors of Death and do what he had to do, but something was telling him that he was needed here.
Riptide was freaking out at this point too. It almost felt like the pen was trying to leap out of his pocket and fly down the hall.
Percy was in a massive atrium, with three heavy wooden doors on either side of him and two more at the end of the hall. He could hear muffled voices behind one of the doors on his left, and didn't that just ruin his day?
What was a Titan or two discovering him breaking into their home compared to the rest of the pit's wrath? He almost laughed at the thought, before realizing it wasn't very funny.
Maybe he really was going insane.
Percy felt a tickle in the back of his throat, and dumbly realized that he was kind of running on borrowed time here. He only had so much time before he had to return to the Phlegethon, and he wasn't big on making a return trip to this place.
He let Riptide guide him towards the first door on the right. When he put his ear to the wood, he could make out the sound of what seemed to be growling on the other side, as well as various other cries from monsters.
The door was heavy as he pulled it out (in the back of his mind he realized that meant that it would be locked from the outside if need be), but it was thankfully silent as he closed it behind him. He was never really one for stealth missions, but he couldn't exactly go in and announce his presence to the world here.
Percy had to use his brain a lot more than usual down here. He stifled a grimace as he was reminded of how stupid everybody liked to think he was - Annabeth, Thalia, and Clarisse all liked to remind him of how much of an idiot he could be. He hadn't always hated their nicknames for him, back when he thought they came from a place of affection. But getting called Seaweed Brain and Kelp Head always reminded him of how Gabe used to mock Percy, even more so when they called him that name out of irritation or anger. But what could he say? He had an image to maintain. The Greeks always looked up to him as their flawless leader - he had to stand strong for them.
Maybe that was why he liked Frank, and more importantly Hazel so much. The two of them had looked up to him like everybody else at first, but neither of them carried a negative opinion about him. His friends at Camp Half-Blood had all formed their opinions of him before he'd even woken up after his fight with the Minotaur, and had practically isolated him after Poseidon claimed him. The other Romans were less obvious, but they had still given him less respect based on his godly parent, except for those two. They never treated him as less than based on his father, or worshiped or feared him based on his feats. He was always just Percy to them. Not Percy the outcast, not Percy the warrior, not Percy the scared little kid who could barely hold himself together and had to prepare for his inevitable death.
Just Percy.
Hazel was pretty observant for a thirteen year old girl. There were times he'd thought she could see through the facade he'd constantly kept up, especially on the Argo II, but she'd never pressed him on the issue the way Annabeth or Jason or Thalia would. She would simply be a comforting presence, someone who made him feel like he was doing enough, and then they'd start talking about horses and pegasi or something dumb and he could forget about his worries for a little bit.
For those few moments, he was able to pretend like he was a normal sixteen year old kid. Like his greatest worries were if he'd pass English class, or if he could save up to buy a new car, and not if he would live to see another day or if he would ever see the sun and moon and stars again or which one of his friends would die in his arms next or -
Percy idly realized that he was digging his nails into his palms, almost hard enough to draw blood. His teeth were clenched as he continued to stand behind the door, frozen as he became too introspective once again.
This place was really messing with his head.
Behind the door, a small flight of stairs led down into a long, wide corridor. On both sides of him, prison cells sat, cramped and rusty and disgusting. Most of them were empty, but as he walked he realized that a good portion of the cells were still getting some use.
A massive hellhound cramped into a positively tiny cell in comparison, a telekhine chained to the wall that hissed and spat acid at him as he passed. An arai that lunged at him, before being shocked by the electric bars that held it captive. It swore at him in some ancient language, but did not try again.
Percy ignored all of them. They would gut him like a fish if he showed them any remorse, the same way Kelli had tried to. These were monsters, and he would treat them as such.
Finally, he reached the end of the hallway. Riptide had gone still, and as Percy peered into the final cell on his right, he could see why.
Chained up against the far wall by her wrists and ankles, laying limply against the cold, damp ground, sat the crumpled form of Zoe Nightshade.