Cressida was angry. She'd never been more angry in her life.
If Bob was going to do this for them, then it wasn't going to be for nothing.
She was angry.
"Percy!" she yelled, and he snatched up Riptide and she dove for the chains holding the Doors of Death in place. Her drakon-bone blade cut through the left-side moorings in a single swipe. Meanwhile, Percy drove back the first wave of monsters. He stabbed an arai and yelped, "Gah! Stupid curses!" Then he scythed down a half dozen telkhines.
The Solace Solution they took was definitely a good idea as he kept fighting and Cressida lunged behind him and sliced through the chains on the other side.
The Doors shuddered, then opened with a pleasant Ding!
Bob and his sabre-toothed sidekick continued to weave around Tartarus's legs, attacking, and dodging to stay out of his clutches. They didn't seem to be doing much damage, but Tartarus lurched around, obviously not used to fighting in a humanoid body. He swiped and missed, swiped and missed.
Castor was nose deep in monsters as he hacked through them, the remnants of his shirt having been ripped from his body by a griffin that had tried to swoop at him before he cut its wing off and then its head.
More monsters surged toward the Doors. A spear flew past Cressida. She turned and stabbed an empousai through the gut, then dove for the Doors as they started to close.
Cressida wedged a foot between them as she fought, her back protected by the elevator car as she fought. She also sent a path of fire cleaving through the armies, not affecting them but scaring them, specifically the ones that died by her fire.
"Percy, get over here!" she yelled.
He joined her in the doorway, his face dripping with sweat, and blood from several cuts.
"You okay?" she asked.
He nodded. "Got some kind of pain curse from that arai." He hacked a gryphon out of the air. "Hurts, but it won't kill me," he said before he realised he was left with no choice as he placed his hands on her arms and tried to ease her back into the elevator.
"What are you doing?" she asked, panic building inside her and he just gave her a smile.
"You've gotta go, Grape Girl. Let the Doors close, so I can hold down the button."
And he ducked as she swung her sword over his head, not aiming at him but at the cyclops behind him that deteriorated into dust with her blow. Though, that could've been a happy coincidence when she was truly trying to aim for him.
"You promised me, Fish Face. You promised me you'd always be my friend and never leave me behind."
"I also promised you a million other things! Like I'd take care of you. And that I love you, and that means getting you in that elevator, by yourself, so let go," he urged.
"NEVER!"
And her eyes widened as Percy spun swiping his sword in the air as he cut through a dracaena. And he was forced to look at her as her fingers cut little crescent shapes into the leather of his drakon tunic as she gripped it tightly.
"The only way you'll get me in this elevator is if you're in there next to me. And I will run you through if you try and force me to go without you."
"Dammit, Cress, you're impossible."
"So are you!"
"And you still love me!"
"And you love me! Which only proves why we should stay together!"
"Are we seriously having this conversation right now?"
Whatever Cressida had been about to say next was cut off by the gaggle of empousai that was charging towards them, followed by an entire phalanx of cyclopes, both of them knocking and eating other monsters other of their way.
Percy gave a battle cry. At the feet of the cyclopes and empousai, a red vein in the ground burst open, spraying the monsters with liquid fire from the Phlegethon. The firewater might have healed mortals, but it didn't do the Cyclopes any favours. They combusted in a tidal wave of heat. The burst vein sealed itself, but nothing remained of the monsters except a row of scorch marks.
Castor let out a similar cry from where he'd mounted a griffin and was now flying through the hordes as his sword glinted in the darkness.
"Cress, you have to go!" Percy urged. "We can't both stay."
"What about no don't you understand?!" she shot back. "Do I have to make the same oath to you that you did to me?!"
"Cressida, don't you dare -"
"I swear on the River Styx, if any god, monster, giant, demigod, human or anything in between tries to take me from you then they have to take both of us because I refuse to be separated from you. And I swear on Papa, Perseus Jackson, that if you try to force me to leave you behind, I will kill you, because if I leave you, it will be my choice and I can tell you right now that I'm never going to make that choice."
And playing into his history of having good timing, Percy kissed the hell out of his girlfriend.
At least until Cressida pulled away and shouted, "Duck!"
Percy crouched as Cressida vaulted over him, bringing her sword down on the head of a heavily tattooed ogre.
She and Percy stood shoulder to shoulder in the doorway, waiting for the next wave. The exploding vein had given the monsters pause, but it wouldn't be long before they remembered: Hey, wait, there's seventy-five gazillion of us and only two of them.
"Well, then," Percy said, his face still flushed from her kiss and not from the fighting, "you have a better idea?"
She saw how Bob's attacks were getting slower. Tartarus was learning to control his new body. She looked over to where Castor had crashed to the ground after a spear impaled his Griffin and he began fighting with his sword again as he tried to make his way to the Doors.
"We just have to hold out until Cas can get to the button," she said, but her voice was mostly filled with disbelief.
"How much positive thinking is that going to take?"
"Probably more than we have."
They were screwed because they were worrying about a million things right now and with their ADHD, their minds rarely stayed on the same thoughts for long.
Sabre-toothed Small Bob lunged at the god, but Tartarus smacked the cat sideways. Bob charged, bellowing with rage, but Tartarus grabbed his spear and yanked it out of his hands. He kicked Bob downhill, knocking over a row of telkhines like sea mammal bowling pins.
YIELD! Tartarus thundered.
"I will not," Bob said. "You are not my master."
Die in defiance, then, said the god of the pit. You Titans are nothing to me. My children the giants were always better, stronger, and more vicious. They will make the upper world as dark as my realm!
Tartarus snapped the spear in half.
Bob wailed in agony. Sabertoothed Small Bob leapt to his aid, snarling at Tartarus and baring his fangs. The Titan struggled to rise, but Cressida knew it was over.
Even the monsters turned to watch, as if sensing that their master Tartarus was about to take the spotlight. The death of a Titan was worth seeing. Percy gripped Cressida's hand.
"Stay here. I've got to help him."
"Percy, you can't," she croaked. "If you think getting me into that elevator without you is impossible, then you really don't know anything. Tartarus can't be fought. Not by us."
He knew she was right. Tartarus was in a class by himself. He was more powerful than the gods or Titans. Demigods were nothing to him. If Percy charged to help Bob, he would get squashed like an ant. Not even Castor, who was a ghost being overwhelmed by monsters could do anything right now.
But Cressida also knew that as much as she begged Percy and as much as it killed her inside, he couldn't leave Bob to die. That just wasn't him—and that was one of the many reasons she loved him, even if he was an Olympian-sized pain in the podex.
She squeezed his hand, already knowing her decision too. Because she wasn't going to leave anyone behind either.
"Together?" she asked, her indigo eyes shining like crystals as Percy stared at them, wanting those, wanting her to be the last thing he saw before they marched into their final battle. If they stepped away from the Doors, they would never leave Tartarus. At least they would die fighting side by side. They'd die together.
"Together," Percy said as they faced the fray and took a deep breath.
But before they could take a single step away from the Doors, a ripple of alarm passed through the army. Shrieks, screams, and a persistent boom, boom, boom that was too fast to be the heartbeat in the ground—more like something large and heavy, running at full speed. An Earthborn spun into the air as if he'd been tossed. A plume of bright-green gas billowed across the top of the monstrous horde like the spray from a poison riot hose. Everything in its path dissolved.
And Cressida began to cry happily as she saw the cause of the commotion.
The Maeonian drakon spread its frilled collar and hissed, its poison breath filling the battlefield with the smell of pine and ginger. It shifted its hundred-foot-long body, flicking its dappled green tail and wiping out a battalion of ogres. Riding on its back was a red-skinned giant with flowers in his rust-coloured braids, a jerkin of green leather, and a drakon-rib lance in his hand.
"Damasen!" Cressida called, her vision slightly blurry with tears as she cried openly, Percy's own face wet as the giant inclined his head at her, right on time, just as she had predicted.
"Cressida Lynn," his voice bellowed. "I took your advice. I choose to change my fate."