Into The Darkness

Chapter 2

Rune for delusion, distress, confusion.

Kill him.

Through the throes of pain Percy marveled at how one simple command could cause such breathtaking agony. He wasn't so sure if his thoughts were still coherent, or had he already been driven over the brink of insanity. Suffice it to say, it hurt.

He'd known of the elderwood poisons, of course. Though he may not use them, it does not serve to be blinded by prejudice and lose an advantage. Still, he'd reacted too slow and the sickly colored bolt had caught him unawares. In a way, he deserved this punishment for letting his guard down.

But no theoretical training can prepare one for the excruciating pain that was sure to follow. His nerves had been lit on fire, bones cracking under the brute sledgehammer force of the poison. It hurt to breathe, to think ... it would be better just to die ... he opened his mouth to scream, but just as suddenly snapped his mouth shut, the jarring force bringing some clarity back into his mind.

No, he would not give the insane bitch the pleasure to see him break.

His head flung back as he felt his mind slipping beyond his control. The crystal hanging around his neck was no help to him now, his shields beginning to crack-shatter-obliterate under the intense fire roaring behind his eyelids. Cold fingers scraped at his fevered skin and he fought the urge to vomit at her touch. "Come now," the purring voice of his tormentor laced itself with the pain. Claws dug into his chin and forced him to look up into lust filled eyes.

"Scream for me ..."

Death.

Judgement. Fate. Heaven. Hell. Punishment. Torment. Agony. Peace. Elysium. Dream. Nightmare.

Because in death, there are no lies.

For I shall tell you the hidden truths, the revelations your kind have so long tried to hide behind. The ones you fought to deny to your last breath. I will tear it apart and lay it before you, so that none of your kind can ignore any longer what you have done, to the world and to me.

I am the living evidence that everything you do will have a price. I am the one you so successfully tried to forget, the crime you thought no one would remember. I was the one you committed to death, and now I stand before you as your executioner.

My name is Percy.

Welcome to hell.

-X-

The Second Titan War had made its lasting destruction on the camp and on its sixteen year old savior. But while one had slowly but surely rebuilt, the other had not.

On that day, something in his eyes shattered into oblivion. Darkness seemed to enter those crystal-like eyes, and tiredness hung about him like a thick curtain. But no one ever noticed the little pieces he was breaking into, slowly cracking at the seams. He still smiled and laughed with his friends, but he had lost his luster, his life.

If anyone had taken a second to look, to pay attention for once, they would have noticed the way his smile faltered when he thought no one was looking. The way he never looked truly happy anymore, the listless and haunted look in his gaze that seemed tired and sorrowful at the same time. The war had taken its toll on him, and he was trying to keep himself together. The irony made him laugh aloud.

So this was what drowning feels like.

It was about five days after his dip in the Styx that the hallucinations started.

They were dying around him, all of them, and he could do nothing, nothing to save them. He couldn't tell the difference between anything anymore. He couldn't break free. The voices ... oh, ones of haunting quality, beseeching and begging and he couldn't take it much longer ...