The Gates of Tartarus | I ✓

9. I Am Cursed By A Bat-Lady

Edit: In which I promised to not stop writing TBOO for this story and it turns out I haven't been writing either story. Oops?

Apollo showed no signs of stopping, and I had no energy to try and tell him to.

Are we chasing something? my heart seemed to ask.

No.

Are we running from something?

Maybe not anymore.

Then why are you running?

Before I could tell it to shut up, my lungs and kidneys piped up, We also have questions.

Finally, Apollo slowed to a jog, and even despite his weakened state, he still looked like he had just taken a nice jog through the park. I wished I had even half the grace as him.

Instead, as I slowed to a stop, I ended up half-crumpling to the ground, everything in pain; my lungs had turned to ash, my legs filled with lead, my heart furiously trying to pump honey. Maybe, I thought deliriously to myself, if I just laid here for a few hours, the earth would reclaim me like it did the cyclops...

"Sorry," Apollo said, almost guiltily. "I forgot you have more limitations than me."

I tried to wave him off, but I ended up sounding like a dying fish, so I stopped. Apollo frowned, passing a hand over my forehead, murmuring what sounded almost like a song, and instantly, I felt better. He looked immensely pleased with himself, though also a little more tired.

"I can't believe that worked," he admitted. "I mean, exhaustion isn't what most people would call a health issue, but yay! It did."

Even though Apollo might've been a god, was at least several thousand years old with thousands of years of endurance training, and was an actual god, it was still embarrassing that he looked... well, normal while I looked like I had just run across the entire world thrice. It was so humiliating that it was almost funny... which, at this point, described my life pretty well, actually.

After I decided that I wasn't going to die if I took another step, I managed to get back onto my feet and the two of us trudged into the gloom.

"Okay, so we fought off a cyclops," I said. "He wasn't very dangerous, but what down here is?"

Apollo didn't answer for a few seconds before hesitantly saying, "The Titans."

I froze. "The Titans?"

Apollo nodded. "They were banished here after their defeat, but they're not a threat."

I frowned. "But aren't Titans... uh, wouldn't this be their home court?"

He shook his head. "Titans aren't monsters. Tartarus is a realm of chaos, but Titans were created from the same divine light we gods were—so yeah, Tartarus' magic suppresses a Titan's. That's why my father chose this as their prison. It's impossible to escape. The longer they stay here, the weaker they become, and they've been here a long time."

"Are the giants also from divine magic?"

He shook his head again. "The Titans were born from Ouranos and Gaia, but the Giants from Tartarus and Gaia—they're of chaos. So we buried them under cities and mountains, forever sleeping. My father wasn't too keen on locking them up on Olympus either, so the next best solution was Earth. In fact, a lot of the magic on Earth is sustained by them—their magic is what keeps your mortal realm alive still. But they're so far depleted of their magic now that they would need to spend millennia in Tartarus to recover their strength."

"Ah."

"Even if they did escape—which they won't—my father's ban would dissolve. The Giants were one of our most dangerous foes. There's no way he wouldn't allow us to return to Earth to defeat them. And we would win."