𝐒𝐈𝐋𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐖𝐄𝐀𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒! percy jackson

vii. Kelli's Revenge

━━ chapter seven
kelli's revenge

✿✼:*ﾟ:༅｡.｡༅:*･ﾟﾟ･⭑

     PERCY'S body was on autopilot. His fingers were cramped, he felt blisters on his ankles and he was shaky from hunger, but he still moved with little thought. 

     Part of him wondered whether they would die of starvation, or if the fire-water will keep them going. He briefly remembered Tantalus, who had been permanently stuck in a pool of water under a fruit tree but couldn't reach either. 

     (Gods, Percy hasn't thought about that ass in ages, but now he was starting to sympathise).

     Keep climbing, he told himself.

     Cheeseburgers, his stomach argued.

      Shut up, he scolded.

     With fries, his belly complained. 

     A billion years later and with a few blisters on his feet, Percy reached the bottom. He helped Fiona down despite her mutterings of, I'm fine. But despite it, she collapsed to the surface beneath and Percy couldn't help but join her, dizzy and aching. But he forced his head to stay up, blinking through the smoke to see a wasteland stretching for miles in front of them, bubbling with monstrous larvae and big insect-hair trees. To their right, the River Fire split into branches that etched the plain, widening into a delta of smoke and fire. To the North━or right in front of him, Percy had barely any bearings here, unlike on sea where he could sense everything━, 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.

    Welcome to your death! 

     Even his jokes were becoming dry. 

     Under his hand, the soil felt warm and smooth━alarming, for sure. 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.

     He pulled away his hand and tried not to think about it, for his stomach wanted to heave fire-water. (That couldn't be good).

     Percy didn't mention it to Fiona, but he had a feeling like something was watching them━something vast and malevolent. He couldn't zero in on it, because the presence was all around them. Watching was the wrong word, too. That implied eyes, and this thing was simply aware of them. The ridges above them now looked less like steps and more like rows of massive teeth. The spires of the rocks looked like broken ribs, and if the ground was skin ...

     No, stop it. He forced those thoughts aside. This place was freaking him out━that was all. 

     Fiona grasped his shoulder and stood up, wiping the soot from her face. She glared out at the wasteland. "We're going to be completely exposed," she cursed. 

     About a hundred yards ahead, a blister burnt on the ground. Out of it crawled a monster━a telkhine with slick fur, a seal-like body and stuned human limbs. It manaed to drag itself a few yards before something else shot out of the nearest cave. It was so fast, Percy could only register a dark green reptilian head. The monster snatched the squealking telkhine in its jaws and dragged it into the darkness.

    Reborn in Tartarus for two seconds, only to be eaten. The telkhine didn't even get to the Monster Talk. 

     He swallowed the sour taste of the fire from river harshly. "You don't think━think you can control these guys like you could before?"