Falling for You

Percy: II

Percy: II

He was no child of Hephaestus, but Percy thought his makeshift sword was pretty cool.

He had used the liquid fire from the river to help melt down Kelli's leg into a passable sword shape. It could now be held easily in one hand and the many stones around him had given an effective way to file the sides and top so they were relatively sharp and sword-like, a rudimentary point. Percy was just grateful to have a weapon in his hand again, infinitely more reassured that he wouldn't die instantly if he was jumped by something.

He swung it around in his good hand, testing out the balance. Or lack of it. It was crude and weighted around the middle, but it would do the job, he guessed. The Celestial bronze blade glowed brighter than normal in the gloom of Tartarus. As it passed through the thick hot air, it made a defiant hiss like a riled snake.

He knew he couldn't stay by the fire river forever. He'd been walking alongside it for ages, but the light made him too easy to spot in the darkness. The empousai had found him, the Stymphalian bird too. He knew he reeked of demigod. Of a Big Three demigod as well, and that usually attracted monsters like crazy. He needed to get himself moving, away from the river. Bracing himself, he choked down a little more of the liquid fire to repair his arm and refilled his bottle to the brim. Percy sighed, sitting on his heels; he hated this place already. Everything was so dark and on edge… he just wanted to go home. After being taken away by Hera for so long, all he'd wanted was to be with his friends and family, but no, of course, he had to be in the prophecy. Another Great Prophecy, to boot. Didn't he deserve a break?

His stomach rumbled; he'd been down there for a while now, and he felt like it had shrunk to the size of a gumdrop. If he came across any more monster carcasses, he was afraid he might pull an empousa and try to devour it. Maybe by some miracle it would taste just like fried chicken. He doubted he could find any ketchup though. He wondered if he would die of starvation, or if the firewater would keep him going. He remembered the punishment of Tantalus, who'd been permanently stuck in a pool of water under a fruit tree but couldn't reach either food or drink.

Jeez, Percy hadn't thought about Tantalus in years. That stupid guy had been paroled briefly to serve as director at Camp Half-Blood. Probably he was back in the Fields of Punishment. Percy had never felt sorry for the jerk before, but now he was starting to sympathise. He could imagine what it would be like, getting hungrier and hungrier for eternity but never being able to eat.

Percy's heart crept into his throat as he glanced off the edge of a small nearby cliff, leading to a deeper section of Tartarus. The fire river flowed in torrents down the side, a strange waterfall of fire. If the doors were going to be anywhere, he'd bet that they were down there. But even if he reached the bottom of that descent alive, he knew he didn't have much to look forward to. The landscape below him was a bleak, ash-grey plain bristling with black trees, like insect hair. The ground was pocked with blisters. Every once in a while, a bubble would swell and burst, disgorging a monster like a larva from an egg, a little black mark in the distance.

Suddenly Percy wasn't hungry anymore.

He saw all the newly formed monsters crawling and hobbling in the same direction—toward a bank of black fog that swallowed the horizon like a storm front. The fiery Phlegm river flowed in the same direction until about halfway across the plain, where it met another river of black water—maybe the Cocytus? The two floods combined in a steaming, boiling cataract and flowed on as one toward the black fog. Above him, dark winged shapes spiralled in and out of the blood red clouds.