The Vanishing Hero

chapter 26

Chapter 26: Dancing with the Pit

3RD PERSON POV

Percy sprinted through the streets of Olympus, his knives in hand, as he decimated the monsters that were left to ravage the nature spirits and minor gods. He didn't stop to assess the damage as he blazed a trail of destruction on his way to the Throne Room and bursted through the door, making his eyes widened in shock.

Ares was lying in a crumpled heap of ichor at the foot of his throne. Zeus in a similar state next to the hearth and Athena not looking much better in a crater in one of the walls. Hades was in the Underworld recovering his strength from the fight with his Bane and various minor gods/goddess littered the rest of the once magnificent room. Hestia was watching with tears in her eyes from the hearth, clutching to the pithos Percy had given her nearly six years before.

The room itself was cracked and had various small fires burning throughout it with the mix of the gods' weapons. In the middle of the room in front of Zeus' throne was the embodiment of the Pit himself, clutching Poseidon by his throat. "Perseus Jackson," Tartarus boomed and his voice echoed throughout the Throne Room. "Come back to me again at last," he mocked the Guardian who growled in response.

PERCY POV

"Let my father go," I spat to the most evil being I had had the misfortune of encountering in the Greek world. Tartarus tossed my father to the floor at his throne and he could only weakly pick up his head and look at me.

"I told you, boy. This is your fate. The hunters are dying by my children's hands, and your precious gods lay at my feet where they belong," the Pit said to me smugly. "I will send you back to your wife," I growled to him, receiving a maniacal chuckle in response. "Come little demigod. Time to end your suffering," he cooed to me and I steeled myself.

'I'm severely outclassed in power. Speed,' I thought as I gave my hunting knives a single twirl and my armor sprouted from my necklace. I charged.

3RD PERSON POV

Percy surged forward at blinding speed and threw a feint to Tartarus' chest to open the fight. Tartarus bit and Percy ducked under the strike to slash even lower at his thighs, but Tartarus was quicker; far quicker that Percy anticipated. He summoned a longsword of a nightmarish blood red metal and blocked Percy's strike. The force from Percy's strike was nothing to sneeze at, even with the limited power of the knives, but Tartarus caught it with his own blade and didn't budge an inch.

Before Percy could retreat, Tartarus kicked the demigod in the chest and sent him back flying into the wall near Athena. With the air being rapidly expunged from his lungs, Percy gasped and sucked down all the oxygen he could just in time to avoid a diagonal slash from the Primordial. Percy managed to score twin slashes on the immortal's legs as he dodged forward and the platinum ichor dripped from the cuts.

If the Pit even felt them, he showed no visible signs of it. The two whirled around to engage once again in the dance of death. Percy spent most of the exchange dodging and parrying for all he was worth as the adrenaline flowed through his being. He didn't dare try to block the blows from the sheer power of each alone was enough to make Perses' strikes look like a kitten.

So he sped up and danced his way through the Primordial's strikes, scoring minor cuts on the few openings that were left for him to expose. 'Faster. I need to go faster!' he chanted in his head as the half-conscious Poseidon could hardly follow the two's movements. He scored another set of cuts to the Pit's limbs, but slipped on the ichor that pooled on the floor in his attempt to retreat.

Percy's eyes bugged out as he raised his knives in an "X" position just in time to catch the immortal's fist that sent him careening through the Throne Room again, and launching his blades to Hades knows where. That time, Percy didn't fall; instead he skidded back across the Throne Room in a crouched position and pulled Diagrapsei off of his back, allowing the Herculean ax to take it's full form.