PERCY DECIDED THE MONSTERS wouldn't kill him. Neither would the poisonous air, nor the dangerous landscape with its pits, cliffs, and jagged rocks.
Nope. Most likely he would die from an overload of weirdness that would make his brain explode.
First, he had had to drink fire to stay alive. Then, he was attacked by a gaggle of vampires, led by a cheerleader that Annabeth had killed two years ago. Finally, he was rescued by a Titan janitor named Bob who had Einstein hair, silver eyes, and wicked broom skills. To top it all, it just happened to be the same titan that he had wiped the memory of.
Sure. Why not?
He followed Bob through the wasteland, going alongside the Pleghmy River as he approached the storm front of darkness.
Every so often he stopped to drink firewater, which kept him alive, but Percy wasn't happy about it. His throat felt like he was constantly gargling with battery acid.
His only comfort was Annabeth. The fact that she was waiting for him, above, and that he needed to reach her.
"Bob knows what he's doing," He reminded himself.
Wow, he had some really... interesting friends. I guess that's what being a demigod does to you.
"So, Bob..." He tried to sound casual and friendly, which wasn't easy with a throat burnt by fiery water. "How did you get to Tartarus?"
"I jumped," he said, like it totally was obvious.
"You jumped into Tartarus," he said, "because I said your name?"
"You needed me." Those silver eyes gleamed in the darkness.
"It is okay. I was tired of sweeping the palace. Come along! We are almost at a rest stop."
A rest stop. Percy couldn't imagine what those words meant in Tartarus. He remembered all the times he and Annabeth had relied on old sheds as rest stops while on quests, trying to survive. Wherever Bob was taking him, he hoped it had clean restrooms and a snack machine.
He repressed the giggles. Yes, he was definitely losing it.
Percy hobbled along, trying to ignore the rumble in his stomach. He stared at Bob's back as he led him toward the wall of darkness, now only a few hundred yards away.
His blue janitor's coveralls were ripped between the shoulder blades, as if someone had tried to stab him. Cleaning rags stuck out of his pocket. A squirt bottle swung from his belt, the blue liquid inside sloshing hypnotically.
He remembered meeting the Titan. Thalia, Nico, and him had worked together to defeat Bob on the banks of the Lethe. After wiping his memory, they didn't have the heart to kill him.
He became so gentle and sweet and cooperative that they left him at the palace of Hades, where Persephone promised he would be looked after. Apparently, the Underworld king and queen thought "looking after" someone meant giving him a broom and having him sweep up their messes.
Percy wondered how even Hades could be so callous. He'd never felt sorry for a Titan before, but it didn't seem right taking a brainwashed immortal and turning him into an unpaid janitor.
He's not your friend, he reminded herself. He was terrified that Bob would suddenly remember himself. Tartarus was where monsters came to come back. What if it healed his memory?
If he became Iapetus again...well, Percy had seen the way he had dealt with those empousai. He had no weapon except a jagged bone torn from the carcass of a monster. He were in no condition to fight a Titan.
He glanced nervously at Bob's broom handle, wondering how long it would be before that hidden spearhead jutted out and got pointed at him.
Following Bob through Tartarus was a crazy risk. However, it was his only choice.
He picked his way across the ashen dump as red lightning flashed overhead in the poisonous clouds. Just another lovely day in the dungeon of creation.
Percy couldn't see far in the hazy air, but the longer he walked,the more certain he became that the entire landscape was a downward curve.
He'd heard lots of horrifying descriptions of Tartarus. It was a bottomless pit. It was a fortress surrounded by brass walls. It was nothing but an endless void. One story described it as the inverse of the sky—a huge, hollow, upside down dome of rock. That seemed the most accurate, though if Tartarus was a dome, Percy guessed it was like the sky—with no real bottom but made of multiple layers, each one darker and more horrible than the last.
And even that wasn't the full, horrible truth....They passed a blister in the ground—a writhing, translucent bubble the sizeof a minivan. Curled inside was the half-formed body of a drakon.
Bob speared the blister without a second thought. It burst in a geyser of steaming yellow slime, and the drakon dissolved into nothing. Bob kept walking.
Monsters are zits on the skin of Tartarus, Percy thought. He shuddered.Sometimes he wished he didn't have such a good imagination, because now he was certain he was walking across a living thing.
This whole twisted landscape—the dome, pit, or whatever you called it—was the body of Tartarus—the evilest of evils.
Just as Gaea was the surface of the earth, Tartarus literally was the pit. If that god noticed them walking across his skin... ugh, no more thinking. He was being like Annabeth, all smarty pants and stuff, and this wasn't something he wanted to ponder.
"Here," Bob said.
They stopped at the top of a ridge. Below them, in a sheltered depression like a moon crater, stood a ring of broken black marble columns surrounding a dark stone altar.
"Hermes's shrine," Bob explained.
Percy frowned. "A Hermes shrine in Tartarus?"
Bob laughed in delight. "Yes. It fell from somewhere long ago. Maybe mortal world. Maybe Olympus. Anyway, monsters steer clear. Mostly."
"How did you know it was here?" He asked.
Bob's smile faded. He got a vacant look in his eyes. "Can't remember."
"That's okay," Percy said quickly.
He felt like kicking himself. Before Bob became Bob, he had been Iapetus the Titan. Like all his brethren, he'd been imprisoned in Tartarus for eons. Of course he knew his way around.
If he remembered this shrine, he might start remembering other details of his old prison and his old life. That would not be good at all, as titans had a bad habit of trying to kill Percy.
He climbed into the crater and entered the circle of columns. Percy collapsed on a broken slab of marble, too exhausted to take another step.
He forced himself to look up and scan his surroundings. The inky storm front was less than a hundred feet away now, obscuring everything ahead of them.The crater's rim blocked their view of the wasteland behind. He'd be well hidden here, but if monsters did stumble across him, he would have no warning.
"You said someone was chasing us," Percy said. "Who?"
Bob swept his broom around the base of the altar, occasionally crouching to study the ground as if looking for something.
"They are following, yes. They know you are here. Giants and Titans. The defeated ones. They know."
The defeated ones...Percy tried to control his fear. How many Titans and giants had he fought over the years? Each one had seemed like an impossible challenge. If all of them were down here in Tartarus, and if they were going after Percy...
"Why are we stopping, then?" he asked. "We should keep moving."
"Soon," Bob said. "But mortals need rest. Good place here. Best place for...oh, long, long way. I will guard you."
Uh, no. Hanging out with a Titan was bad enough. Going to sleep while the Titan guarded you...he didn't need to be Annabeth to know that it was not a great idea.
"Ok. I'll sleep. But promise to wake me up if anything comes?" He stated.
"Yes, good. When you wake, food should behere!"
Percy's stomach did a flip at the mention of food. He didn't see how Bob could summon food in the middle of Tartarus. Maybe he was a caterer as well as a janitor.
Percy felt like he was back in the Hypnos cabin at Camp Half-Blood, overcome with drowsiness. He curled up on the hard ground and closed his eyes, wishing he was back at home with his Wise Girl.
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