Percy Jackson AU: Hell Born

Chapter 7:

He leans down picking it up, it is soft but bony under the skin, how that works he isn't sure. He releases the vibrations causing a medium quake that shakes rocks and creates small fissures in the ground.

Scratching under its chin, able to better feel the kittens purrs further he smiles, "You need a name little one,"

He looks at the kitten, "what about Nemo?"

The cat slowly blinks its glowing yellow eyes at him still purring.

"Nemo it is then" he says chipper.

Having a friend here brings him a semblance of happiness.

"You and I will get out of here." Percy swears.

Nemo curls up on Percy's head, using his hair as a nest. Percy continues walking. It continues to get darker, and colder. Whilst extreme weather doesn't bother him, he could still sense the shift. Suddenly he feels like he needs to go left, following it he enters some kind of forest.

Towering black trees soar into the gloom, perfectly round and bare of branches, like monstrous hair follicles. The ground is smooth and pale.

Like Tartarus' armpit.

The more he makes these comparisons the more he is able to see Tartarus for what it is. He has tried to ignore it, but slowly he finds himself unable to deny that this is the body of Tartarus he is walking on.

Something in the air shifts and he is on high alert. Nemo hisses before leaping down, growing into a full sized sabre-toothed tiger. A warning growl reverberates from it.

A tree shudders. Then more. His eyes snap above him, there are dozens of winged demons. When the first lands in front of Percy he thinks it is one of the Furies. The creature looks almost exactly like one: a wrinkled hag with batlike wings, brass talons, and glowing red eyes.

She wears a tattered dress of black silk, and her face is twisted and ravenous, like a demonic grandmother in the mood to kill. But dozens join the first. So it can't be them.

"What are you?" He demands, Riptide drawn held steady in front of him.

"The arai," hisses a voice. "The curses!"

Percy tries to locate the speaker, but none of the demons had moved their mouths. Their eyes look dead; their expressions are frozen, like a puppet's. The voice simply floats overhead like a movie narrator's, as if a single mind controls all the creatures.

"What do you want?" He asks, trying to maintain a tone of confidence.

The voice cackles maliciously. "To curse you, of course! To destroy you a thousand times in the name of Mother Night!"

"Only a thousand times?" Percy murmurs, "Oh, good. ..I thought I was in trouble."

The circle of demon ladies close in. And Percy is relieved. Fighting is what he knows, what he is good at.

"Back off." Percy jabs Riptide at the nearest shriveled hag, but she only sneers.

"We are the arai," says that weird voice-over, like the entire forest was speaking. "You cannot destroy us."

"Yeah? Watch me!" He swipes Riptide in a wide arc driving them back.

"We serve the bitter and the defeated," says the arai. "We serve the slain who prayed for vengeance with their final breath. We have many curses to share with you."

The firewater in Percy's stomach starts crawling up his throat. He wishes he had taken a sip of water rather than it before arriving in the forest.

"I appreciate the offer," he says. "But my mom told me not to accept curses from strangers." The nearest demon lunges.

Her claws extended like bony switchblades. Percy cuts her in two, but as soon as she vaporizes, the sides of his chest flare with pain. He stumbles back, clamping his hand to his rib cage. His fingers come away wet and red.

The left and right hems of his tattered shirt are sticky with blood, as if a javelin has run him through.

Or an arrow...

Queasiness almost knocks him over.

Vengeance. A curse from the slain.

He flashes back to an encounter in Texas two years ago—a fight with a monstrous rancher who could only be killed if each of his three bodies was cut through simultaneously.

"Geryon," Percy say. "This is how I killed him...."

The spirits bare their fangs. More arai leap from the black trees, flapping their leathery wings.

"Yes," they agree. "Feel the pain you inflicted upon Geryon. So many curses have been leveled at you, Percy Jackson. Which will you die from? Choose, or we will rip you apart!"

Somehow he stays on his feet. The blood stopped spreading, but he still feels like he has a hot metal curtain rod sticking through his ribs. His sword arm is heavy and weak.

"I don't understand," he mutters.

"Each one of us you heave down with place another curse upon you! So choose!" the arai cry. "Will you be crushed like Kampé? Or disintegrated like the young telkhines you slaughtered under Mount St. Helens? You have spread so much death and suffering, Percy Jackson. Let us repay you!"

The winged hags press in, their breath sour, their eyes burning with hatred. They look like Furies, but Percy decide these things are even worse. At least the three Furies are under the control of Hades. These things are wild, and they just keep multiplying. Nemo shrinks and crawls up onto Percy's shoulder claws digging in to steady itself.

If they really embody the dying curses of every enemy Percy has ever destroyed...then Percy is in serious trouble. He has faced a lot of enemies.

They chase after him, and Percy starts slicing through the arai to clear a path. He probably brings down a dozen curses on himself, but he doesn't feel them right away, so he keeps running.

The pain in his chest flares with every step.

Leathery wings beat the air above him. Angry hissing and the scuttling of clawed feet told him the demons are at his back.

As he runs past one of the black trees, he slashes his sword across the trunk. He hears it topple, followed by the satisfying crunch of several dozen arai as they are smashed flat.

If a tree falls in the forest and crushes a demon, does the tree get cursed?

Percy slashes down another trunk, then another. It buys him a few seconds, but not enough.

Suddenly the darkness in front of him becomes thicker. Percy realizes what it means just in time. He screeches to a halt, Nemo digging its claws in further as to not go flying into the void. Percy can't see how far the cliff drops. It could be ten feet or a thousand. There is no telling what was at the bottom. He could jump and hope for the best, but he doubts "the best" ever happened in Tartarus.

So, two options: right or left, following the edge.

He is about to choose randomly when a winged demon descends in front of him, hovering over the void on her bat wings, just out of sword reach.

"Did you have a nice walk?" asks the collective voice, echoing all around him.

Percy turns. The arai pour out of the woods, making a crescent around him.

One tries to grab his arm and Percy reflexively grabs the arai by it's throat and slammed it to the ground. It dissolves into dust.

Behind him there is a noise, he turns and is face to face with Annabeth, but he is invisible to her.

"Percy?" she calls, panic in her voice.

"I'm right here." He tries to put his hand on her shoulder, but she isn't standing where he thought. He tries again, only to find she is several feet farther away. It is like Tantalus trying to grab food or drink water, and he had seen that first hand.

"Percy!" Annabeth's voice cracks. "Why did you leave me?"

"I didn't!" He calls to her but she doesn't hear him. He turns on the arai, his arms shaking with anger. "What is this? What did you do to her?"

"We did nothing," the demons say. "You have unleashed a special curse—a bitter thought from someone you abandoned. You punished an innocent soul by leaving her in her solitude. Now her most hateful wish has come to pass: Annabeth feels her despair. She, too, will perish alone and abandoned."

"Percy?" Annabeth spreads her arms, trying to find him. The arai back up, letting her stumble blindly through their ranks.

"Who did I abandon?" Percy demands. "I never—" Suddenly his stomach feels like it has dropped off the cliff.

The words ring in his head: An innocent soul. Alone and abandoned.

He remembers an island, a cave lit with soft glowing crystals, a dinner table on the beach tended by invisible air spirits.

"She wouldn't," he mumbles. "She'd never curse me."

The eyes of the demons blur together like their voices. Percy's sides throb. The pain in his chest is worse, as if someone was slowly twisting a dagger. Annabeth disappears from his sight. It is an illusion.

Annabeth isn't here, she is on the surface, where he had left her. Perhaps the curse had already been in effect when he fell.

More arai spawn with his sorrow.

Percy clenches his jaw, suddenly uncaring of gaining any curses. He lets out a battle cry and attack the arai.

********

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