Chapter Text
That fateful day started like any other.
As far as anyone was concerned, it was just supposed to be another day in camp. Another day of archery practice, sword drills, perhaps scaling the lava wall and strategising for the next round of Capture the Flag.
Percy Jackson, as counsellor of the Poseidon cabin and de facto camp coordinator, was supposed to be overseeing the sword fighting lesson that day.
There was no prophecy, no great warning about the absolute annihilation to come. There was no time to prepare. No time to come up with contingency plans, or any plan for survival.
In hindsight, however grim and ultimately futile it would be, the fact that a primordial might one day reform even after being scattered in the void of Khaos was something everyone should've considered. After all, their physical form might have been destroyed, but their consciousness remained, and if the particles were not scattered thinly enough, it should be theoretically possible for said primordial being to reform.
Thing is, after all that has happened within the span of several years, with the second Titanomachy, the shitshow with Gaea, and Apollo's stint as Lester and Triumvirate, the little fact of yet another primordial being returning with a promise of vengeance was among the absolute last things on anyone's mind. Least of all Percy, who was by this point absolutely, and understandably, done with any bullshit coming from Olympus. His focus had been on his latest semester in NRU, and on that day, keeping an eye on the summer campers before he was supposed to teach them how to block against an attacker's hits.
It should have been an unremarkable day.
And it was the day that would herald his awakening, and the subsequent end of everything.
The first inkling that Percy has that something is going very wrong is the otherworldly feeling of something dying inside of him. Of everyone currently in Camp Half-Blood, only he has ever gone through such an unimaginable horror, with the other person studying across the country in UC Berkeley. In that startling moment, it feels as if he is not only being crushed to death, but every atom of his being is ripped, pulverised, and then disintegrated into nothing.
He had been idly fiddling with Riptide when it struck. The sword drops from his hands, as his eyes widen with dawning horror.
There is only one fate that can begin to describe what he just felt. Those few agonising minutes holding up the sky atop Mount Tamalpais during the fight against Atlas, where he felt the weight of everything pressing down on him for what felt like an eternity and beyond.
He doesn't realise it then, but Percy had felt the moment when the sky began to fall upon the world. Atlas had been the first casualty, no longer able to withstand his eternal burden as the sky pushed down on him. Percy doesn't hear it, but Atlas died screaming and crying in vain, as every atom of his being is crushed and ripped apart violently and painfully. Mount Tamalpais is the next to go, the summit crushed into dust as the sky continues to descend. Landslides of rock and dust billow down the slopes, but no one pays attention to the destruction of the immediate vicinity around the mountain.
Not when every mortal, animal, immortal being and monster roaming the earth and ocean becomes the victim of Ouranos' wrath.
All around Percy, demigods seize up, regardless of what they were doing beforehand. He watches with growing confused horror as demigods crumple to the ground like puppets cut from their strings, screaming, contorting their limbs, and frothing from their mouths.
Not all demigods, though. The children of Apollo, including Will in the infirmary, start bleeding from every orifice possible. They too collapse onto the ground, choking and gasping for air as their mouths, noses and lungs fill with their own blood, right as the sun above in the sky flickers in and out, streams of gold spreading across the infinite blue like rivers of ichor.
Then, without warning, what seems like an earthquake rolls through Long Island. The ground at Percy's feet cracks and splinters. Startling out of his stunned horror, Percy moves to grab Riptide, which was lying just an arm's length away from him, when suddenly, the cracks burst apart, and then -
He falls.
He isn't the only one. Other demigods also fall through the cracks, as do the structures in the immediate vicinity. However, he quickly loses sight of everyone and everything, falling and falling endlessly for what seems, and is apparently so, like days on end.
He just falls, falls, falls.
As the sky above falls upon everything and everyone.
He doesn't know how much time has passed since he landed in Tartarus.
And frankly, it doesn't matter.
Never mind that time doesn't flow in a linear pattern within the depths of Tartarus. Percy has long stopped caring.
Why should he care, when everything and everyone he loves is now gone?
During his free-fall into Tartarus, Percy felt the innate connection between him, the ocean, marine life, his father, shatter into dust. That was all he needed to know that the sky has not only destroyed and crushed everything above ground, it had also crushed everything beneath the surface of the oceans into nothingness.
Thousands of marine species, both mundane and mythical, gone. Atlantis, gone. His dad, Poseidon, gone, along with Amphitrite, his royal half-siblings, and even Triton, who he was still at odds with. All of them are gone, reduced to nothing.
Not to mention, billions of ordinary humans, demigods, mundane creatures and monsters, had been wiped out in however long it took for the sky to finally reunite with the earth. Manhattan, its many skyscrapers, the trees of Central Park…his mum, Paul, and baby sister Estelle -
A sob chokes out from his throat, the latest of many whenever he thought of his loved ones. He grasped at the hope that the Mist held on to the very end, that the demise of his hometown and his mortal family had been painless. He held out for what must have been a day, before the perpetual despair and hopelessness of Tartarus made him accept the harsh truth. Whenever Olympus was destroyed, so too was the Mist. There was nothing stopping mortals from realising that the sky was falling, and likely also being consumed by the same madness that he saw demigods succumbing to. There was nothing anyone could do, mortal or immortal. Gods and humans alike would've been crushed into nothing when the sky finally touched the earth, and Percy knows, beyond any possible doubt, that their final moments had been in utter, maddening, agony.
And he also knows for a fact that, sooner or later, Tartarus itself will not be spared.
Percy can feel it, and see the effects of the deepest part of the underworld becoming the next victim of Ouranos' vengeance. The landscape itself is crumbling apart. Percy lost count of how many sudden floods and landslides he had to escape from. Monsters of all kinds that would've otherwise jumped at the chance to take a bite out of him instead seemed to act like he wasn't there at all. They too had been consumed by madness, running around in all directions, frothing and writhing on the ground, throwing themselves off cliffs or into the Phlegethon river, and even attacking and cannibalising one another.
Admittedly, on a few occasions, particularly when he stopped to rest, Percy wondered why he hadn't been consumed by the madness when the sky began to fall. He is still a demigod, after all, and even though he'd fallen into Tartarus not long after the campers started going insane, he had been on the surface long enough to see them crumple to the ground. But such thoughts are often eclipsed from the sheer hopelessness and utter numbness that had consumed Percy after what must be several days of endless trekking with no end in sight.
In fact, Percy doesn't know why he is even trekking aimlessly around Tartarus. He had passed by a good many cliffs with sheer drops beyond their edges, hell he could just seek out the Cocytus river and just drown in it after losing the will to live once submerged. And yet, the thought of just ending it all never once crossed his numbed mind. It wasn't as if his body moved on auto-pilot either. Despite the despair and hopelessness plaguing him, Percy still moves with some elusive purpose, as if, like the last time he was down here, he has a destination he is supposed to reach, against all the odds.
Maybe it is his bloody loyalty keeping him going. Even after he has lost everything - his family, friends, his entire life purpose, maybe some fucked up part of his mind was under the delusion that, if he gave up now, he'd be betraying everyone and everything he loved. That somehow, paradoxically, their agonising final moments would be in vain, if he does not carry on.
Either way, Percy just keeps going, even as Tartarus continues to crumble around him, monsters continue to run amok, insane and impervious to his presence, all in pursuit of this unknown, elusive final destination that remains out of sight.
Until it suddenly appears to him.
Percy blinks once, and then twice.
It takes several moments for Percy to acknowledge that what he is seeing is not a hallucination conjured from his numbed, despairing mind. Although, frankly, he could be forgiven if he thought that what he is seeing is just the first sign that his mind, just like the landscape around him, is breaking down.
An ordinary looking fruit stand, just like any one might find in an open-air market.
Memories of seeing said fruit stand all those years ago, and the three old women behind it, sitting on rocking chairs, flood Percy's mind with such ferocity, he trips over his own two feet and stumbles forward, barely managing to catch himself.
"You have arrived."
To Be Continued.