Our Darkest Nights

Chapter 2: My Name is Percy Jackson, and the Fates Hate Me

     Nine days.

     As Percy fell, he remembered what Annabeth had told him once. "There was an old Greek poet, his name was Hesiod. He thought that it would take nine days to fall from earth to Tartarus."

     "When am I ever gonna need to know how long it takes to get to Tartarus?" Percy had questioned.

      "Knowledge is power, Percy. Don't forget that." Annabeth had been right. Knowledge was power at this time, or at least right now. Percy had lost track of how long he had been falling for hours, maybe days ago. It felt too long. He had managed to get some sleep as he had been falling (he didn't know how though.) and he was utterly bored.

     Wind whistled in Percy's ears. The air around him grew uncomfortably warm.

     He thought about the huge spider-lady Annabeth had dealt with. Was the oversized phobia down there? Percy had personally never met the spider, and he didn't want to, as the monster would probably kill him. But, even if he didn't meet the creepy spider queen, then he would die from the impact considering there was a bottom.

     And, hearing all the things that were in Tartarus, Percy knew that a huge spider would be the least of his problems.

     The fates really must have had some beef with Poseidon when Percy was born, because Percy's life had been anything but even a usual demigods life. He had known that demigods never lived ordinary lives, but even by these standards, Percy's life was unusual, odd, and crazy.

     Seriously, what did Percy do to make the Fates mad?

    Percy had been through a lot of Hell, but now he was on his way to literal Hell. This wasn't fair. He had just killed 2 giants, without the help of Bacchus, the god of laziness, and next thing he knew, he couldn't keep track of days and was on his way to Tartarus.

The gods couldn't devise a fate so twisted, even for him.

But then it hit him.

Gaea wasn't like the other gods. Ms. I-am-the-earth-mother-I-will-destroy-you was a lot older than the olympians, she was more vicious, and even more bloodthirsty than Ares. Percy scowled as he imagined her laughing as he fell through the pit of Tartarus.

Percy couldn't get out of this mess. He couldn't fly, like Jason, or turn into animals, like frank.

Percy was snapped out of his thought process as his surroundings changed. The darkness took on a gray-red tinge. The air whistling in his ears turned to the sound of air roaring in his eardrums, and the air became intolerably hot, and it smelled like Someone had combined all the rotten eggs in the world and made a giant omelet with it.

Suddenly, the chute Percy had been falling through turned into a huge cavern. Percy could now see the bottom of the not-so-bottomless-bottomless-pit! Percy could see that the entire island of Manhattan could fit in this one cavern, easy peasy. The area around him was like a bizarre outside world, completed with red clouds, rocky black plains, jagged mountains, and fiery chasms, completed with to the left of Percy, colossal (he'd heard Annabeth use that word before.) steps leading deeper into the already deep enough pit.

An intoxicating smell filled Percy's nostrils which made it hard to focus, but percy spotted something out of the corner of his eye, a glittering black body of water, a river.

Percy then remembered at this moment, that he was a son of Poseidon and could control water.

Of course, Percy had heard stories about the rivers in the underworld that could take away your memories, (checked that off the list a long while back), or burn your body and soul to ashes, which Percy wasn't exactly up for. But honestly, he didn't care. This was liquid. Which was his element. This was his chance.