Son Of Darkness

Chapter-2

There was silence in the room, even saying the name caused an ominous chill to sweep through the room.

Tartarus

Then all at once, everybody reacted, all saying the same thing.

"What?!"

"How did this happen?"

She took a slow shuddering breath as she remembered how Percy had sacrificed himself to save her.

No. That's not right. Not a sacrifice. They would save him.

Everybody was still staring at her, expecting an explanation.

"Before she fell, Arachne managed to wrap a strand of web around my ankle. We didn't notice... there were webs everywhere and I would have been pulled in but P-"

She took another breath before she could say his name.

"Percy leaped over and just managed to cut it before that could happen. His momentum, it carried him over the edge. I just managed to grab his hand, but I couldn't hold on. I'm so sorry"

She buried her head in her hands, letting fall the tears that she had been holding back since he had fallen.

Piper and Hazel immediately came over and comforted her as well as they could while the boys were just silent.

Frank stared at seemingly nothing, but you could see the tears gathering in his eyes. Even Jason, still stoic as ever, had a small amount of fear and sadness in his eyes as he looked at the empty chair at the head of the table.

Leo just got up and left, mumbling something about how he would be on the intercom if they needed him.

Wiping the tears from her face, Annabeth tried to clean up.

"We have to go meet him. We have to rescue him"

"How?". Hazel looked at her with wide eyes.

"Before he fell, he made me promise to meet him at the doors. He made me promise". Her voice grew quieter at the end as they all absorbed the meaning of those words.

An oath to keep with a final breath.

Finally, Piper broke the silence.

"It's probably nothing, Annabeth"

"Yeah. You know how difficult it is to try and interpret a prophecy".

But even they didn't believe their own words.

A heavy silence once again took over the room as everybody looked at the empty chair at the head of the table where Percy should have been sitting.

After a while of sitting in silence, Leo's voice crackled over the intercom.

"So where are we off to lovelies?"

It was nice that he was still trying to joke around. And nobody mentioned the unsteady wobble his voice had.

"To rescue Percy of course"