Neptune's Rage

How Percy actually died

Percy's P.O.V. (10 minutes until the attack)

​​​I'd been running for weeks. How long ago exactly, I wasn't sure, but it'd been at least a month, maybe more. Every time I hesitated, they were on me in a second. "No rest for the wicked" ​​​played endlessly in my head, spurring me onwards further and further through the pain and the exhaustion. "For the wicked," ​​​​repeated the voice, scathingly becoming the voices of friends-turned-enemies.

"Wicked!" "Traitor!" "Liar!"

I tried to tell them the truth, but they didn't listen, they didn't want to listen. Their eyes held a hate I'd seen a long time ago, the kind that glared into me before I'd started my journey; the journey that started with friendship and had now become this broken mess of backstabbing and heartbreak. Their faces haunted me, I could see some of them smiling cruelly, they wanted a reason to throw me to the monsters for ages.

If they couldn't find one, they invented one.

"I just want to go home," I begged to the universe. Not that anyone was listening, of course. Home didn't exist now. Mom was gone, slaughtered like an animal. Dad didn't care about me; if he did, he wouldn't have let her die.

He'd let it be me instead.

I looked for the tree marking the border of the only place I'd be safe. Ironically it was the same place that I prayed I would never return to: Camp Half-Blood.

20 feet of grassy hills was all that was left between me and relief from the evil creatures hunting me down. I dragged myself up the slope, each step slower than the last, when I heard it.

Subtle at first, almost imperceptible, easily dismissed as an engine in the distance. Then it grew louder, closer, a rumble so deep it shook the earth. Only one monster could produce a growl like that, and as if to confirm my dreading suspicion, the footsteps tremored like an army ever nearer. I felt its hot breath on the back of my neck, silently drew Riptide out of my pocket, knocked off its cap, then turned to face the hellhound.

It snarled, revealing teeth sharper than any sword, daring me to make the first strike. I swung at it, but it dodged my attack, reared up onto its enormous black paws and brought its entire weight down on my arm, snapping it in half effortlessly.

Shouting in pain, I stumbled back, looking desperately for any sign of help. Why would they help me? I thought, Those bastards are the reason I'm out here!

"If I'm going down," I vowed, "then I'm taking you to hell with me." 

The beast and I lunged at the same time. I slashed at its side; its claws tore into my chest, ripping my shirt and carving into my flesh. Adrenaline coursed through me, and I kept fighting. With every blow that landed I pictured a different face. I yelled their names as I lashed out with everything in me. "Leo!" Riptide scarred the hound's snout- "Piper!'" It roared at me, while I threw a wild punch at its eye. "Grover!" The monster launched its great hellish body at me, landing on the tip of my blade.

It fell to the ground before disintegrating into dust, leaving its signature smell of sulfur.

At last the rush was over, and feeling flooded back to my broken body. I knew I wasn't coming back from this final battle. Who would even know I was gone? Everyone that ever loved me was either gone or wished I was. I fell to my knees, crying out with one last breath, "Annabeth."

As darkness filled my eyes I saw fourteen flashes of light. That is when I knew the gods where there, but what I did not expect was for them to be in their Roman form. Neptune had tears in his eyes as did Jupiter and Pluto. Finally the world went black and my heart stopped. And the weird thing was is that I had been smiling the entire time as if to say This is entirely your fault that I won't be rising from the ground to fight anymore.

I arrived at the DOA where Charon greeted me like an old friend. He said that since I gave him all those drachmas when I was twelve I did not have to pay to enter the underworld.

He took me across the river Styx and asked," So how did you actually die?"

I told him everything that has happened to me over the past several weeks. To say he was mad was an understatement of the century. I smiled knowing that I still had someone who was angry for me.