Chapter Text
Being terrified got boring after a while. Percy blamed his ADHD. There was only so much to entertain his hyperactive brain while falling endlessly. His brain played the Greatest Hits of How Percy Screwed Up, though, and it was a long list. It technically also counted as his life flashing before his eyes.
They were all holding each other, closer than any of them had been before, and Percy's mind was too scared to even think of being embarrassed. One of Grover's arms was wrapped around Percy's waist, and Annabeth was holding his hand. They were all so close, tumbling down into the abyss for so long that he could barely remember what it felt like to not be falling.
They couldn't talk, there was this roaring noise that couldn't really be called wind but there was no other word for it. It carried the same horrific whispers as before, making Percy know and feel things he shouldn't know, like blood coating his hands, and a scythe scraping on stone, and the foul breath of a murderer.
His eyes were closed most of the time, though it wasn't like that helped with the feeling of falling. This was like falling from the Arch but worse. Well, the Chimera's venom sucked pretty bad, and he had no clue where they were ending up now, but he was fairly sure there wasn't going to be a river to break their fall.
Annabeth squeezed his hand tight, so Percy opened his eyes. It was lighter than the pure dark they had been in before. There was a reddish glow that was only growing brighter the longer they fell. The scent of sulfur filled Percy's nostrils.
And then the world opened up.
They fell through a bank of red clouds and Percy could see a dark landscape in vague shapes. Jutting cliffs and mountains, thin ribbons of light, deep red, black, and yellow fogs in different areas obscuring things. There was no structures he could see, it was so vast and he was falling so fast he couldn't keep up.
"PERCY! RIVER!" Annabeth shouted in his ear, the strange whispering roar gone.
Percy looked down and he could see the river. It was dark gray like the sea during a storm, and he could sense it, the same way he had sensed the sea when he was in Santa Monica, what felt like a million years ago.
The river had a mind of its own, willful and stubborn. But so was Percy. He reached out and felt a tug in his navel, not the little pulls from before but more like someone was grabbing his insides and trying to drag them out through his belly button. He kept reaching, not caring if it was meaningless or not, not even knowing what kind of river it was. All he knew was that it was their only hope if they didn't want to be demigod and satyr pancakes.
Water rose from the river, writhing and bucking under his hold, and Percy grabbed the back of Grover's shirt with numb fingers, his grip on Annabeth's hand tightening. The ground was coming closer and closer, and he could see sharp looking trees or poles in the landscape, barely able to notice them before they plunged into the river.
Immediately Percy's ears were full of screams, cold water thrashing at him. He saw glimpses of the monsters he had fought— the Minotaur, the Furies, Medusa, Procrustes… he could hear Medusa's voice, her accented cooing saying he was her murderer just like his namesake. Procrustes calling him brother. The bellowing of the Minotaur, the screeching of the Furies…
Voices he didn't know overlapped, thousands of them yelling and accusing him for his crimes. Telling him that he deserved to be dragged down with them, to drown here. It hurt worse than a hellhound ripping him apart or the Chimera's venom, worse than anything he'd ever felt in his short, miserable life.
"Per-r-r-cy!" Grover's gasping bleats jolted Percy from the nightmarish visions, and he felt his grasp on the river water slipping.
He grabbed it back, forcing the river to spit them out. They landed hard on the bank, the shouting voices of the river still audible, but no longer screaming in Percy's ears.
Annabeth coughed up gray water, Grover patting her on the back. He was shaking, goat eyes wide, his head whipping around trying to get a hold on their surroundings. Percy groaned, feeling like someone had punched him in the gut now that he had let go of the river.
Percy put his good hand down, trying to brace himself to sit up, only to feel like broken glass was jabbing into his palm. He hissed, lifting his hand up and shaking it, shards of what looked like obsidian dislodging from his skin, small beads of blood rising. His hands were already covered in scrapes, some of his nails cracked and one missing from his pinkie finger, bleeding sluggishly and stinging from the river water.
"Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods." Annabeth was muttering, glancing around now that she wasn't hacking up water. "Ohhh…" She groaned, trying not to hyperventilate, a hand on her chest.
Grover was shaking like a chihuahua, and Percy wasn't feeling too hot either. The ache in his shoulder returned tenfold.
"Where are we? What's that river?" Percy asked, not wanting to know the answer. Was this some hidden corner of the Fields of Punishment? Some junkyard of the Underworld? Had they fallen down Hades' garbage chute?
Annabeth whimpered like they were back in Waterland, surrounded by spiders. Her eyes darted around. "We fell in the River Acheron… the River of Pain… we're below the Underworld…" She said hoarsely.
Grover bleated, gnawing at the collar of his camp shirt to soothe himself.
Percy huffed. "Well, the river sure did hurt— wait, but isn't the Underworld, like… under? What would be under the Underworld?"
"The Pit." Grover said through a mouthful of fabric.
That was one of those moments Percy had gotten used to, where he could practically hear the capital letters even if he didn't know why it was so important yet. It jogged his memory from the Ancient Greek lessons he and Annabeth had before his claiming, how she explained some basic myths to him like they were obvious truths of the world.
Tartarus, wasn't it? The place where the titans were sent as punishment and monsters regenerated?
"You mean Tar—"
"Don't say it!" Annabeth shrieked, struggling as she stood up unsteadily. "Not while we're here!"
While Percy hadn't really cared about the whole 'don't say names' thing, he could take a hint on how important this one was, so he didn't push it.
Grover stood, hooves steadier on the sharp gravel. He reached out and helped Percy up. "We need to fix your shoulder. And we need to…" He was muttering to himself.
"We need to get back to Hades' palace." Percy reminded them. "We need to talk to him about the bolt."
"I don't think we can, Percy." Annabeth said, gray eyes wide and distraught. "We might be…"
"Screwed. Epically screwed. Monumentally screwed." Grover said, his voice getting louder as he got more hysterical.
"But like, it's all connected, right?" Percy asked. "Like, there's gotta be a way back up?"
"Technically, yeah, but also… mortals don't survive down here, Percy. Even the gods don't go down here. It's just monsters down here…"
"Monsters and us." Grover whimpered. "Oh gods…" He trailed off.
"Well, it's not like we can stand around just talking about it. We can find wherever monsters go to escape and bust ourselves out." Percy said it like it was that simple, but he knew nothing was ever that easy.
Annabeth took some deep breaths and calmed herself down. "Okay, okay. Yeah, we can do this. There has to be a way out. There has to be." She was mostly talking to herself, but it helped Percy get his head on straight.
He still didn't know much about Ancient Greek mythology, but he knew this was really bad, if Annabeth and Grover were freaking out like this. But Percy had survived a bunch of stuff he probably shouldn't have already, so what was one more thing?
"C'mon, let's get going while you tell me about the Pit." Percy grabbed Grover's hand, who grabbed Annabeth's, and maybe it was childish but it made Percy feel better. "We gotta talk to my Uncle before the solstice."
Annabeth and Grover looked at Percy like they didn't want to break the bad news to him, but he already knew that they weren't gonna make Zeus' deadline. They still didn't know if Hades even had the bolt, after all, and then they'd have to get back to New York by tonight.
They couldn't do anything about a probably World War Three right now. All they could do was walk away from the pain river and hope they could follow some monsters out of Tartarus.