AS HE FELL, PERCY THOUGHT ABOUT HOW LONG IT WOULD TAKE HIM TO REACH THE BOTTOM OF TARTARUS. Annabeth had said something about a Greek Poet, Hessihid or something, and that he had thought it would take nine days to reach the floor of the pit. He hoped Hessihid was wrong, because he certainly didn't want to fall for days.
Percy wasn't sure how long he had been falling anymore. It felt like forever. He thought about Annabeth, how he's promised her that they wouldn't leave each other again. Well, sometimes promises have to be broken. He couldn't lose his Wise Girl.
Wind whistled in Percy's ears. The air grew hotter and wetter, as if he was falling down the throat of some enormous monster. Arachne. Despite being defeated, she had almost gotten her revenge, she had almost gotten Annabeth. He'd saved her... but now he was the one who had taken her place.
Percy didn't want to imagine that Arachne was still alive, somewhere below him in the darkness. He didn't want to meet the monster that had hurt Annabeth when he finally reached the bottom. Then again, he would probably be flattened into a demigod pancake the moment he hit the ground, so giant spiders weren't his biggest worry.
He'd never expected his life to be easy. Most demigods died young at the hands of terrible monsters. His own mother had named him after Perseus in a vain attempt to give him the happy ending that he so wished for. He'd gone through so much. When things had finally gotten better, when he'd been reunited with Annabeth, he had plunged to his death and lost her again.
Even the gods couldn't devise a fate so twisted. But Gaea wasn't like other gods. She was twisted, evil, bloodthirsty- the opposite of the mother earth he had grown up hearing tales about. Percy could imagine her laughing as he fell into the depths. "I love you." Percy whispered, knowing Annabeth couldn't hear him— but if he was going to die, he wanted those to be his last words.
He tried desperately to think of a way to save them, but he wasn't a child of Athena. He couldn't come up with plans on the spot like Annabeth could. He couldn't think of any way to stop or slow his fall into hell.
He definitely couldn't fly—not like Jason, who could control the wind, or Frank, who could turn into a winged animal. If he reached the bottom at this speed...well, he knew enough science to know it would be enough to kill him. He was seriously wondering whether he could use the moisture in the air to make some sort of parachute—that's how desperate he was—when something about his surroundings changed.
The darkness took on a gray-red tinge. The whistling in his ears turned into more of a roar. The air became very, very, hot, and had a smell like rotten eggs. Suddenly, the chute he'd been falling through opened into a huge cavern. Maybe half a mile below them, Percy could see the bottom.
For a moment he was too stunned to think properly. The entire island of Manhattan could have fit inside this cavern—and he couldn't even see the whole thing. Red clouds hung in the air like clusters of blood. The landscape—at least what he could see of it—was rocky black plains, with the occasional jagged mountain and fiery chasm.
To Percy's left, the ground dropped off in a series of cliffs, like ginormous steps leading deeper into the abyss. The stench of sulfur made it hard to concentrate, but he focused on the ground directly below them and saw a ribbon of glittering black liquid—a river. Water!
Percy could control water— if that that was water below him. He might be able to use it to stop his fall, or make it softer somehow. Of course Percy knew the rivers of the underworld were terrible- he'd had an encounter with the Lethe and Styx personally. But he decided not to think about that. This was his only chance.
The river hurtled toward him. He tried to control the water, make it do anything, but it refused to listen. At the very last second, he let out a yell, and the water rose up, erupting in a massive geyser and swallowing him whole.
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