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Nine days.
That's how long the old Greek poet Hesiod had speculated it would take to fall from earth to Tartarus.
Well, clearly Hesiod had never actually fallen into Tartarus himself.
Rory had lost track of how long she and Percy had been falling — hours? A day? It felt like an eternity. They had been holding hands ever since they dropped into the chasm. Now Percy pulled her close, hugging her tight as they tumbled through absolute darkness.
Wind whistled in Rory's ears. The air grew hotter and damper, as if they were plummeting into the throat of a massive dragon. She wrapped her arms around Percy and tried not to sob. She had never expected her life to be easy. Most demigods died young at the hands of terrible monsters. That was the way it had been since ancient times. The Greeks invented tragedy. They knew the greatest heroes didn't get happy endings.
Still, this wasn't fair. After all they had been through. Rory had been separated from Percy for six long months, and just days ago were finally reunited. She had almost lost Annabeth on her journey to retrieve the Athena Parthenos, and the moment Rory found out she was alive, she and Percy began the fall to their deaths.
Even the gods couldn't devise a fate so twisted.
But Gaea wasn't like other gods. The Earth Mother was older, more vicious, more bloodthirsty. Rory could imagine her laughing as they fell into the depths.
Rory pressed her lips to Percy's ear. "I love you."
She wasn't sure he could hear her — but if they were going to die she wanted those to be her last words.
She tried desperately to think of a plan to save them. She was a daughter of Hecate. She was a sorceress. She should be able to save their lives. But she couldn't. Her mind was muddled. On any other occasion, she could harness the winds. She could shadow travel them away. For Hades sake, she could probably grow wings if she tried hard enough. But she couldn't. She felt powerless. She felt as weak as she did in the nymphaeum, like when she wore that stupid anti-magic collar. Being around Tartarus always messed with her powers... being in Tartarus was something new entirely.
There had to be something she could do. If they reached the bottom at terminal velocity... Well, Rory knew enough science to know it would be terminal.
She was seriously wondering whether they could fashion a parachute out of their shirts — that was how desperate she was — when something about their surroundings changed. The darkness took on a grey-red tinge. She realized she could see Percy's hair as she hugged him. The whistling in her ears turned into more of a roar. The air became intolerably hot, permeated with a smell like rotten eggs.
Suddenly, the chute they had been falling through opened into a vast cavern. Maybe half a mile below them, Rory could see the bottom. For a moment she was too stunned to think properly. The entire island of Manhattan could have fit inside this cavern — and she couldn't even see its full extent. Red clouds hung in the air like vaporized blood. The landscape — at least what she could see of it — was rocky black plains, punctuated by jagged mountains and fiery chasms. To Rory's left, the ground dropped off in a series of cliffs, like colossal steps leading deeper into the abyss.
