Will

I'm not sure exactly how long that we had been falling. Minutes seemed like hours and hours seemed like days. Every time that I looked at my watch, it was either not ticking at all or spinning really fast. Nico told us part way through the plunge that he thought that the time fluctuations had something to do with Kronos' essence in Tartarus. Even in hundreds of little pieces, he was still wreaking havoc over things. The pit was made in a way that made it almost impossible for the monsters to escape, but it was really easy to get in. I will say one thing; the free fall was definitely not what I had expected. It didn't feel like we were plummeting to our deaths, it was more like being in a controlled fall. The warm air coming up from the pit seemed to keep our fall at a steady pace. Once I could start to smell the horrible sulfur, I knew that we were getting close to the bottom. An eerie, reddish glow, started to appear below us.

"Get ready," Nico said, "the impact is going to be pretty abrupt. It shouldn't hurt much, but it's enough to knock the wind out of us."

As the glow started to get brighter, I knew that we were getting closer to the bottom. I tightened my grip on my husband's hand and pulled myself right beside him. We shared a quick kiss right before the cavern opened up beneath us. I thought that I had mentally prepared myself for the impact, however, I was gravely mistaken. Nico was right about one thing, it definitely knocked the wind out of me. All three of us laid on the ground for a few minutes before anyone moved.

"Ouch."

Reyna mumbled, "'ouch', is the understatement of the day, that fucking hurt."

Nico let go of Reyna's hand and moved it under his mid-section. "I think that I landed on my nuts."

Reyna and I both started to chuckle, but we both stopped shortly after we started. It hurt to much to laugh and I was assuming that Reyna felt the same way. Any other time I would offer to help make Nico's injuries feel better, but this was hardly the time or the place. After a few more minutes, we started to get up and assess the situation.

We were alive and now safely in Tartarus: Check.

Our gear was still securely attached to our backs: Check.

We were in the pit of eternal damnation with no guarantee of making it out alive: Check.

As we slowly got back up on our feet, we started to look around. There wasn't a monster to be found in sight. At first, I thought that this was a good thing, but then Nico had to go and ruin my mood. "Tartarus should be full of monsters right now, something isn't right here."

"Well, let's hope it stays empty until we find Bob."

We dusted ourselves off and carefully started our journey across Tartarus. I made sure that all three of us ate some ambrosia and had some nectar before we started off. Sadly, Tartarus was exactly as I had dreamed it to be. The sulfur in the air burned my eyes and dried out my throat. It was definitely hot down here, but not unbearable. Still, my shirt was soaked before we finished walking the first mile or so. Nico looked like he was pretty drenched as well, however, I knew that this time his shirt wouldn't be coming off. Everything just looked gray, regardless of what it was. A smokey haze seemed to be everywhere, making it hard to see too far into the distance. Every so often, we would hear voices or something moving off in the distance. The three of us would hide where ever we could until the threat had moved on.

We had tried to keep moving as much as possible, but after a while hunger was starting to overtake us. Reyna pointed out some boulders off in the distance, so we headed towards them. The three of us hid between the rocks and dug something to eat out of our packs. After there was enough food in us to keep us going, we continued wandering through Tartarus.

"Nico, we can't just keep wandering around down here looking for Bob. Can you think of anywhere that we could try looking for him?"

"Well," he said, "I've been thinking about that, but I don't think that you're going to like it. What one place do we keep having nightmares about?"

"You mean where you are running beside the River Acheron?"

"Exactly, I think that may be a good place to start. Luckily, we are rather close to that spot. At least, I think we are."

"Lead the way babe."

Nico led us in a slightly different direction than we were already heading. After walking again for a short time, we started to hear voices coming closer to where we were at. At the time, the three of of were completely out in the open. Reyna spotted a few decent sized rocks up ahead of us, so we ran towards them as fast as we could. We ducked behind the rocks and quietly waited. I had Nico pulled into me, holding him with his back against my chest. It felt really good having my angel so close to me, even if only for a few terrifying minutes. The voices seemed like they were gradually getting closer to us. They sounded human, but I couldn't quite make out what language they were talking in. I think that they stopped right on the other side of the rocks that we were hiding behind. Reyna looked at us with a puzzled expression on her face, then she slowly tried to peak out between the rocks. Her expression changed from puzzled to shocked really fast. She quickly hid where she was before and put a finger up to her lips. After a few more minutes I could hear them walking away from us and the voices started to get quieter. We stayed where we were at until we couldn't hear them anymore. Reyna peaked out through the rocks once again, then she half stood and looked around. She sat back down and looked at us.

"I think that was Saddam Hussein talking to Adolf Hitler."

Nico replied back, "well, not just the kind of monsters that we are use to fighting can end up down here. They were both monsters too, only human."

"I wish I would have brought my camera. That would have been an awesome photo-op."

Nico gave me a slight nudge in the ribs with his elbow. I couldn't tell for sure, but i was pretty sure that he was smiling. We all got up and continued walking towards the river. When we got close enough that we could actually see it, I started to hear the cries from the river.

"Nico, how close do we actually need to get to the river?"

"Really," Reyna said, "just what I can hear from here is torture. I couldn't imagine what it is like up close to the bank."

"Yea, I think that this is close enough. I don't want to have a reenactment of what happened the last time that I was here. I think that we should follow the river's path, keeping far enough away that we can just see it. The lack of monsters still has me really concerned, there's no way that we could get this lucky."

"I'm hoping that we stay this lucky until we find what we came for and get out of here."

As we continued further following the river's path, the terrain started to look a lot more familiar. This was definitely the area that I kept having those terrible nightmares about. I was starting to have flashbacks to those dreams. My poor Nico, overwhelmed by the cries of river, breaking down on the river's bank. I took everything that I had to not start crying myself. I shifted my bow from one hand to another and took Nico's hand in mine. When he looked at me, I knew that he could see the hurt in my eyes.

"You're thinking about the dream," he asked?

"Yea I am, I'm sorry but it's hard not too right now."

"It's alright babe," he said, "there's always been one thing that puzzles me about that dream. When I was down here before, I came by myself. Bob was still at my father's palace doing his new janitor's job. What happens in the dream was all real, just minus Bob."

"Wow that is weird, what happens right before the dream ends? You always end up at exactly the same spot right before the dream fades."

"Well, I get to the edge of the hill and as I'm just about to look down it, then I get hit on the head. That's right where I was before those twin assholes knocked me out. That's why there's nothing more after that. When I woke up, I was sealed in that big jar that the others rescued me from."

I could now see the edge of the hill that Nico had talked about through the haze directly in front of us, but still a little off in the distance. Now, not knowing what was on the other side, we approached the edge slowly. Almost to the edge, Nico thought that it would be best if we laid down and crawled the rest of thee way just in case. The ground was solid, but had kind of a rubbery texture to it almost like animal skin. I was really trying not too think too much more into it as we crawled the rest of the way.

Very slowly, the terrain down the little hill started too become visible. Im pretty sure that we saw a little downstream was scaring the shit out of all three of us. Bob was sitting on our side of the river, his hands and feet appeared to be chained together. The scary part of this scene is what was on the other side. Monsters stood packed together as far as we could see. They were waiting for us, waiting until someone came to get Bob. We slowly crawled backwards until we were well out of sight. Certain death was waiting for us below and death was definitely not an option.