When we reached the ledge, I wanted to back out of my crazy idea right away. The cliff dropped more than eighty feet. At the bottom was a river of fire cutting a path through a jagged obsidian crevasse, the glowing red current casting horrible shadows across the cliff faces.
Even from the top of the canyon, the heat was intense. The chill of the River Cocytus hadn't left my bones, but now my face felt raw and sunburned. Every breath took more effort. The cuts on my hands were bleeding more and my ankle was throbbing painfully.
"Uh..." Percy examined the cliff. He pointed to a tiny fissure running diagonally from the edge to the bottom. "We can try that ledge there. Might be able to climb down."
He didn't say that my plan was crazily insane. Percy managed to sound hopeful. I was grateful that, but also worried I may be leading us to our doom. It was a difficult choice to make. If we stayed where we were now, we would die anyway. If we went down to the river of fire, we had a chance of survival.
Percy went first. The ledge was barely wide enough to allow a toehold. Our hands clawed for any crack in the glassy rock. Every time I put pressure on my bad foot, I wanted to yelp. I had to swallow back the pain. I'd ripped my sleeves off my shirt to wrap my bloody palms. However, my fingers were still slippery and weak.
"So...what is this fire river called?" Percy grunted as he reached for another handhold.
"The Phlegethon." I said. "You should concentrate on going down."
"The Phlegethon?" He shinnied along the ledge. We'd made it roughly a third of the way down the cliff. "Sounds like a marathon for hawking spitballs."
"Please don't make me laugh." I bit my lip as I almost lost my grip on a handhold. "I'd laugh all the way down to my death."
"Just trying to keep things light."
"I know, thank you." I gasped, nearly missing the ledge with my bad foot. I spewed out a few cursed. Percy stopped and glanced back at me. "But let's save the laughing for safe-not-falling-to-our-death-heights, okay?"
We kept going, one step at a time. Sweat dripped into my eyes, causing them to sting. I couldn't wipe it away, the fear of my losing my hold and falling scaring me. My arms trembled. Thankfully the both of us finally made it to the bottom of the cliff.
When I reached the ground, I stumbled. Percy caught me. His skin was feverishly hot. I glanced at him with my blurry vision to see red boils in his face resembling smallpox.
"Just to the river." I said, my throat raw and blistered. I tried to keep the alarm out of my voice. We needed to hurry. "We can do this."
We staggered over slick glass ledges, around massive boulders, avoiding stalagmites that would've impaled us with any slip of the foot. Our tattered clothes steamed from the heat of the river. We kept going until we crumpled to our knees at the banks of the Phlegethon.
"We have to drink." I breathed out.
Percy swayed, his eyes half closed. It took him a three count to respond.
"Uh...drink fire?"
"Annabeth and I did some research a few months back about Tartarus. The Phlegethon flows from Hade's realm down into Tartarus." I could barely talk. My throat was closing up from the heat and the acidic air. "The river is used to punish the wicked. But some legends call it the River of Healing."
"Some legends?"
I placed my hands on the ground to stop swaying. Swallowing, I took a shaky breath. I was starting to feel lightheaded.
"The river keeps the wicked in one piece so they can endure the torments of the Fields of Punishment. Annabeth had mentioned..." My eyes started to feel heavy. I had to force myself to blink. "It might be the Underworld equivalent of ambrosia and nectar."
"But it's fire." Percy winced as cinders sprayed from the river, curling around his face. "How can we-"
Desperation over took me. I didn't have the energy to explain it. I thrusted my hands into the river. On first contact, the fire wasn't painful. It felt cold, which, if I remembered correctly, meant that it was so hot it was overloading my nerves. Before I could change my mind, I cupped the fiery liquid in my palms and raised it to my mouth.
I didn't know what to expect for the taste of the fiery liquid. It was defiantly not a spicy heat burning down my throat. It was like I combined all the spicy peppers in the world, blended it into a smoothie and chugged it all. My sinuses filled with the liquid flame. My eyes shed boiling tears, and every pore in my face popped. I collapsed, gagging and retching as my whole body shook violently.
"Ivy!" Percy grabbed my arms and just managed to stop me from rolling into the river.
The convulsions passed. I took a ragged breath and managed to sit up. I still felt horribly weak and nauseous l, but my next breath came more easily. The blisters on my arms were starting to fade.
"It worked." I croaked out, looking at Percy. "You've got to drink."
"I..." Percy's eyes rolled up in his head, and he slumped against me.
I quickly cupped more fire in my palm. Ignoring the pain, I dropped the liquid into Percy's mouth. He didn't respond. Fear crawled up my throat. I tried again, pouring a whole handful down his throat.
This time he spluttered and coughed. I held him as he trembled, the magical fire coursing through his system. Percy's fever disappeared. His boils faded. He managed to sit up and smack his lips.
"Ugh." Percy said. "Spicy, yet disgusting."
I laughed weakly. For some reason, Simba eating a bug came to mind from the Lion King. He said something along those lines.
"Yeah. That pretty much sums it up."
"You saved us." Percy told me.
"Somehow, yeah. But for now." I said. "The problem is, we're still in Tartarus."
Percy blinked. He looked around as if just coming to terms with where we were.
"Holy Hera. I never thought...well, I'm not sure what I thought." Percy furrowed his brows. "Maybe that Tartarus was empty space, a pit with no bottom. But this is a real place."
"There's no way we've seen all of it." I warned. "This could be just the first tiny part of the abyss, like the front steps."
"The welcome mat." Percy muttered.
"Welcome to Tartarus, enjoy your stay." I muttered.
We both gazed up at the blood colored clouds swirling in the gray gaze. There's no way we would have the strength to climb back up that cliff, even if we wanted to. Now we only had two options: downriver or upriver, skirting the banks of the Phlegethon.
"We'll find a way out. The Doors of Death." Percy said. I shuddered at the thought of wandering through Tartarus to find the Doors of Death. We barely stumbled a hundred yards in this poisonous place without dying. "We have to. Not just for us. For everybody we love. The Doors have to be closed on both sides, or the monsters will just keep coming through. Gaea's forces will overrun the world."
I slowly nodded along in agreement. We had no idea where the exact location of the Doors were. We didn't know how much time it would take, or how time flowed in Tartarus. How could we synchronize a meeting with our friends? Plus, Nico mentioned a legion of Gaea's strongest monsters guarding the Doors on this side. Percy and I couldn't exactly launch a frontal assault. But I couldn't tell Percy any of this, not right now.
"Well." I took a deep breath, my lungs no longer hurting. "If we stay close to the river, we have a way to heal ourselves with spicy awful tasting fire. If we go downstream-"
Percy's eyes locked on something behind me. I turned to see a massive dark shape rushing toward us. A snarling monstrous blob with spindling barbed legs and glinting yes. Arachne.
I quickly plucked a grape from my necklace and a spear grew on my hand. Riptide transformed into a pen. I threw my spear like a javelin while Percy swept his blade over my head in a glowing bronze arc. A horrible wail echoed through the canyon. Yellow dust rained around us.
"You okay?" Percy scanned the cliffs and boulders, skewer for more monsters, but nothing appeared. "She didn't get you, did she?"
"No, I'm okay." I reassured him, retrieving my spear. "You good?"
"I'm fine." Percy nodded, kicking the dust on the rocks. "You were saying something about downstream?"
"If the river comes from the upper levels of the Underworld," I continued to explain my thoughts, "it should flow deeper into Tartarus-"
"So it leads into more dangerous territory." Percy finished. "Which is probably where the Doors are. Lucky us."
🍇
We'd traveled a few hundred yards so far. My head had started to droop with exhaustion. I was tired, hungry, and thirsty. The Phlegethon didn't do anything for my hunger and thirst. Percy and I will have to find the basic necessities to survive down here.
I heard faint female voices. They sounded like they were having some sort of argument. My body was instantly alert.
"Percy, get down!" I whispered.
I pulled him behind the nearest boulder, wedging herself so close against the riverbank that my shoes almost touched the river's fire. On the other side, in the narrow path between the river and the cliffs, voices snarled, getting louder as they approached from upstream.
The voices sounded human, but the odds of another mortal in Tartarus was out of our luck. It had to be monsters. Monsters could smell demigods-expected powerful ones like Percy, who was the son of Poseidon. I doubted the both of us hiding behind a boulder would do any good once the monsters caught our scent.As the monsters got closer, their voices didn't change in tone.their uneven footsteps-scrap, clump, scrap, clump-didn't get any faster.
"Soon?" One of them asked in a raspy voice.
"Oh my gods!" Another voice exasperated. It sounded oddly familiar, as if the monster was a teenage girl. "You guys are totally annoying! I told you, it's like three days from here."
Percy gripped my wrist. He looked at me with alarm, recognizing the voice as well. I tried to remember who it was. My mind went reeling to the labyrinth and me stabbing the enpousa in the back. My eyes widened when I realized it was Kelli the cheerleader.
There was a chorus of growling and grumbling. The creatures-maybe half a dozen-had paused just in the other side of the boulder. My heart pounded in my chest. They gave no indication that they'd caught our scent.
"I wonder," a third voice gravelly spoke, "if perhaps you do not know the way, young one."
"Oh, shut your fang hole, Serephone." Kelli remarked. "When's the last time you escaped to the mortal world? I was there a couple of years ago. I know the way! Besides, I understand what we're facing up there. You don't have a clue!"
"The Earth Mother did not make you boss!" Shrieked a fourth voice.
More hissing, scuffling, and feral moans-like alley cats fighting.
"Enough!" Serephone yelled. The scuffling died down. "We will follow for now. But if you do not lead us well, if we find you have lied about the summon of Gaea-"
"I don't lie!" Kelli snapped. "Believe me, I've got good reason to get into this battle. I have some enemies to devour, and you'll feast on the blood of heroes. Just leave one special morsel for me-the one named Percy Jackson."
I fought down a snarl of my own. I wanted to jumped over the boulder and stab Kelli in the back once again. Then kill the others of course. Percy held me down, giving me a look to calm down.
"Believe me." Kelli continued. "Gaea has called us, and we're going to have so much fun. Before this war is over, mortals and demigods will tremble at the sound of my name-Kelli!"
The creatures shuffled off, their voices getting fainter. I crept to the edge of the boulder and risked a glimpse. Sure enough, five woman staggered along on mismatched legs-mechanical bronze on the left, shaggy and cloven-hooved on the right. Their hair was made of fire, their skin as white as bone. Most of them wore tattered Ancient Greek dressed, except for Kelli who wore a burned and torn cheerleader's uniform. I gritted my teeth at the sight of her. Kelli had almost killed Percy until I killed her.
"They're heading for the Doors of Death." Percy murmured, rising to his feet. "You know what that means?"
"Yeah." I grumbled, not happy that the empousai were our unsuspecting guides. "We need to follow them."
Just some sunshine to brighten up the atmosphere ☀️☀️☀️☀️