𝐒𝐈𝐋𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐖𝐄𝐀𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒! percy jackson

ii. Hit The Bottom

silent weapons
chapter two

✿✼:*ﾟ:༅｡.｡༅:*･ﾟﾟ･⭑

     DARKNESS soon became the only thing she could see. Fiona didn't know how long they had been falling. It could have been minutes or an entire day, but it felt like an eternity of feeling the chills of her spine knowing there should be wind brushing past her as she hurtled to the end, but instead was nothing. Her knee throbbed, her head ached, she was tired and still felt the aftereffects of the electricity in the shock from the Eidolons. 

     The only thing that was tangible in the darkness around her was the feel of Percy holding her tight against his frame. He hugged her with strong arms despite his trembling breath. Fiona clutched his shirt on his back, keeping her head nuzzled into his neck. She wanted to smell the familiarity of him near her. It was what kept her as calm as she could be. 

     The air was growing hotter and damper, as if they were plummeting into the throat of a massive dragon. Fiona closed her eyes, trying to hide her whimpers, but Percy heard them. He hugged her even tighter. She wondered, was this it? Percy had made Nico promised to meet them on the other side, but what happened once they hit rock bottom? They would be flattened on impact, lost before they even began.

     She wanted them to win, but when was it time to give up? Time to realise that this was it, there was no way they could continue. She knew it was her fatal flaw; she didn't know when to accept defeat. A girl who wanted to be a praetor, wouldn't know when to retreat her army. She would send them to their deaths.

    Had she just sent her and Percy to their deaths?

    He had fallen with her. She had begged him to let her go, but he refused. That was his fatal flaw, too. Loyalty; he could never let someone fall alone, and now, he refused to let Fiona lose alone. Still, she felt like whatever would happen next, was on her. 

     Fiona didn't deserve him, she knew that. He helped her so much. In such a short time, he had become such an important monument in her life. Fiona found herself wanting to win for him, wanting to help him win even if it meant her losing━her entire ambition switched to not just thinking of herself. Percy made her selfless. He wanted her to make her selfless. He saw a side to her that she didn't even see, and now, it was the only side she wanted to see.

     And now, their story was coming to an end, barely before it could even begin.

     Fiona tried not to sob, and instead, turned her head and pressed her lips to Percy's ear. Emotions flowed out of her like a river; a waterfall of her heart that Percy had started the moment he arrived in her life, and never stopped since. 

     "I love you," she whispered.

     She didn't know whether he could hear her, or if she wanted him to. All she knew, in this moment, was that if they were going to die, she wanted those to be her last words. 

     When, around them, the surroundings started to change. The darkness took on a grey-red tinge, and Fiona realised she could see Percy's hair. The whistling in her ears turned into more of a roar. The air became intolerably hot, permeated with a smell like rotten eggs.

     The chute they were tumbling through opened into a vast cavern. Maybe half a mile below them, Fiona could see the bottom. Her eyes widened━at least four New Rome's could fit inside the cavern, that she could see, because she couldn't see its full extent. Red clouds hung in the air like vaporised blood. The landscape was rocky black plains, jagged mountains and fire chasms. To her left, the ground dropped away in a series of cliffs, like colossal steps leading deeper into the abyss.