NINE DAYS

"i'm no ordinary girl"

     NINE DAYS.

For whatever reason, Hesiod, the old Greek poet, had speculated that it would take nine days to fall from earth to Tartarus.

Wind whistled in Ariadne's ears. The air grew hotter and damper, as if they were plummeting into the throat of a massive dragon. She couldn't tell what was happening, or if Annabeth was still holding her arm.

Annabeth eventually wrapped her arms around Ariadne and tried not to sob. She's never expected their lives to be easy. Most demigods died young at the hands of terrible monsters. That was the way it had been since ancient times. The Greeks invented tragedy. They knew the greatest heroes didn't get happy endings.

Gaia was like other gods. The Earth Mother was older, more vicious, more bloodthirsty. Ariadne could imagine her laughing as they fell into the depths.

Ariadne presser her lips to Annabeth's ear. "I've got you."

She wasn't sure she could hear her—but if they were going to die she wanted those to ensure comfort in her sister companion.

Neither of them had the power to fly—not like Jason, who could control the wind, or Frank, who could turn into a winged animal. Ariadne wasn't sure where they would land, and no amount of concentration could will a vine. If they reached the bottom at terminal velocity...we'll, she knew enough science to know it would be terminal.

Something about their surroundings changed. The darkness took on a grey-red tinge. She realized she could see Annabeth's hair as she hugged her. The whistling in her ears turned into more of a roar. The air became intolerable hot, permeated with a smell like rotten eggs.

Suddenly, the chute they'd been falling through opened into a vast cavern. Maybe half a mile below them, Ariadne could see the bottom. The entire island of Manhattan could have fitted inside this cavern—and she couldn't even see its full extent.

Red clouds hung in the air like vaporized blood. The landscape—at least what she could see of it—was rocky black plains, punctuated by jagged mountains and fiery chasms. To Annabeth's left, the ground dropped away in a series of cliffs, like colossal steps leading deeper into the abyss.

The stench of sulphur made it hard to concentrate, but she focused on the ground directly below them and saw a ribbon of glittering black liquid—a river.

"Ari!" Annabeth yelled in her ear. "Water!"

Ariadne gulped down the nerves climbing her throat. She nodded in understanding.

The river hurtled towards them. At the last second, Ariadne snarled defiantly. Long, dark limbs surrounded them and the river swallowed them whole.

The impact didn't kill her, but the cold nearly did.

Freezing water shocked the air right out of her lungs. Her limbs turned rigid, and she lost her grip on Annabeth as the limbs disappeared. She began to sink. Strange wailing sounds filled her ears—millions of heartbroken voices, as if the river were made of distilled sadness. The voices were worse than the cold. They weighed her down and made her numb.

Despite not being the best swimmer, and the voices telling her to give up, she jolted back to reality. She couldn't see Annabeth in the murky water, but suddenly it became clear she didn't want to die.

Annabeth gasped, grateful for the air. The water rippled around them.

"Land," she croaked. "Go sideways."

Ariadne looked near dead with exhaustion. Whatever those viene were, having them on her back must have taken every bit of her strength. The weight holding them up began to dissipate. Annabeth hooked one arm around her waist and struggled across the current. The river worked against her: thousands of weeping voices whispering in her ears, getting inside her brain.

"Worthless," Ariadne murmured. Her teeth chattered from the cold. She stopped swimming and began to sink.

"Ari!" Annabeth shrieked. "The river is messing with your mind. It's the Cocytus—the River of Lamentation. It's made of pure misery!"

"Misery," she agreed.

"Fight it!"

Annabeth kicked and struggled, trying to keep both of them afloat.

She hugged her sister tighter. "You told me Percy mentioned something about New Rome," she demanded. "What were his plans?"

"New Rome...For the two of us..."

"Yeah, Ari. You said you wanted a future there! With him!"

"Peaceful," Ariadne murmured. The fog started to clear from her eyes. "Parks he thought I'd like. Places to sit and listen."

"College," Annabeth gasped. "He wants you to go together?"

"Y-yeah," she agreed. "Said we would live together."

"What would you study?"

"Never thought."

"Teaching?"

Ariadne laughed, purely at the idea of her being a teacher—there was no patience in her for that—and the sound sent a shock wave through the water. The wailing faded to background noise.

They used the last of their strength to reach the riverbank. Ariadne's feet dug into the sandy bottom. She and Annabeth hauled themselves ashore, shivering and gasping, and collapsed on the dark sand.

At their feet, the River Cocytus roared past, a flood of liquid wretchedness. The sulfurous air stung Annabeth's lungs and prickled her skin. When she looked at her arms, she saw they were already covered with an angry rash. She tried to sit up and gasped in pain.

The beach wasn't sand. They were sitting on a field of jagged black-glass chips, some of which were now embedded in Ariadne's pals.

So the air was acid. The water was misery. The ground was broken glass. Everything here was designed to hurt and kill.

Next to Ariadne, Annabeth forced herself to take stock. Her foot was still wrapped in it's makeshift cast of bird and bubble wrap, still tangled in cobwebs. But when she moved it, it didn't hurt. The ambrosia she's eaten in the tunnels under Rome must have finally mended her bones.

Annabeth glanced at Ariadne. She looked pretty bad. Her curly hair was tangled and stuck to the sheen of sweat plastered across her forehead, her t-shirt ripped at the top. Her fingers were scraped raw from holding on to that ledge before they fell. Most worrisome of all, she was shivering and her lips were blue.

"We should keep moving or we'll get hypothermia," Annabeth said. "Can you stand?"

She nodded. They both struggled to their feet.

Ariadne gripped her shoulder, though she wasn't sure who was supporting whom. She scanned their surroundings. Above, she saw no sign of the tunnel they'd fallen down. She couldn't even see the cavern room—just blood colored clouds flowing in the hazy grey air. It was like staring through a thin mix of tomato soup and cement.

The black glass beach stretched inland about fifty yards, then dropped off the edge of a cliff. From where she stood, Ariadne couldn't see what was below, but the edge flickered with red light as if illuminated by huge fires.

A distant memory tugged at her—something about Tartarus and fire.

"Look." Ariadne pointed downstream.

A hundred feet away, a familiar looking baby blue Italian car had crashed headfirst into the sand.

She gripped Annabeth's hand, and they stumbled towards the wreckage. One of the car's tires had come off and was floating in a back water eddy of the Cocytus. The Fiat's windows had shattered, sending brighter glass like frosting across the dark beach. Under the crushed hood lay the tattered, glistening remains of a giant silk cocoon—the trap that Annabeth had tricked Arachne into weaving. It was unmistakably empty. Slash marks in the sand made a trail down river...as if something heavy, with multiple legs, had scuttled into the darkness.

"She's alive." Annabeth was horrified, her face went paper than it already was.

"It's Tartarus," Ariadne said. Her voice sounded raspier than normal. "Monster home court. I'm not sure if they can be killed down here."

She gave a pained look. "Or, she crawled away to die."

"Let's go with that," Annabeth agreed.

Ariadne was still shivering, despite the hot, sticky air. The glass cuts on her hands were still bleeding, which was unusual. The purple tint looked odd in the dark crimson lighting of their surroundings.

"This place is killing us," Annabeth said. "I mean, it's literally killing us, unless..."

Ariadne gazed inland towards the cliff, illuminated by flames from below. It was an absolutely crazy idea they shared.

"You thinking what I'm thinking?" Ariadne prompted.

"It's a plan," Annabeth murmured. "I don't know if it's brilliant. We need to find the River of Fire."

***

     ARIADNE WAS SURE THEY'D SIGNED THEIR DEATH WARRANTS.

The cliff dropped more than eighty feet. At the bottom stretched a nightmarish version of the Grand Canyon: 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 insane. The chill of the River Cocytus hadn't left Ariadne's bones, but now her face felt raw and sunburnt: every breath took more effort, as if her chest was collapsing: the cuts on her hands bled more rather than less. Annabeth's ankle, which had almost healed, now seemed broken again. Each step made her wince.

She examined the cliff. She 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."

If they stayed there they would die anyway. Blisters had started to form on their arms from exposure to the Tartarus aire. The whole environment was about as healthy as a nuclear blast zone.

Ariadne went first. The ledge was barely wide enough to allow a toehold. Their hands clawed for any crack in the glassy rock.

A few steps below Annabeth, Ariadne reached for another handhold. She shinnied along the ledge. They'd made it roughly a third of the way down the cliff—still high enough up to die if they fell.

Annabeth grunted, nearly missing the ledge with her bad foot.

When she reached the ground, she stumbled. Ariadne caught her. She was alarmed by how feverish her skin felt. Red boils erupted on her beautiful face, so she looked like a small pox victim.

Ariadne's own vision was blurry. Her throat felt blistered, and her stomach was clenched tighter than a fist.

"Just to the river," Annabeth told her, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. "We can do this."

They staggered over slick glass ledges, around massive boulders, avoiding stalagmites that would've impaled them with any slip of the foot. Their tattered clothes steamed from the heat of the river, but they kept going until they crumbled to their kneels at the banks of the Phlegethon.

"We have to drink," Annabeth said.

Ariadne swayed, her eyes half-closed. "I'm still not so sure of those...legends."

Annabeth swallowed, trying to stay conscious. "I think...it might be the Underworld equivalent of ambrosia and nectar."

Ariadne winched as cinders sprayed from the river, curling around her face.

"Okay," Annabeth said. "Now, on the count of three—"

"Three." Ariadne thrust her hands into the river.

Stupid? Yes, but she was convinced counting would cost them seconds. If they waited any longer, they would pass out and die. Better go try something foolish and hope it worked.

On first contact, the fire wasn't painful. It felt cold, which probably meant it was so hot it was overloading Ariadne's nerves. Before she could change her mind, she cupped the fiery liquid in her palms and raised it to her mouth.

Annabeth followed her lead.

Their sinuses filled with liquid flame. Ariadne's mouth felt like it was being deep fried. Her eyes shed boiling tears, and every pore on her face popped. She collapsed, gagging and retching, her whole body shaking violently while Annabeth did the same.

They managed to stop one another from rolling into the river.

The convulsions passed. She took a ragged breath and  managed to sit up. She felt horribly weak and nauseous, but her next breath came more easily. The blisters on her arms were starting to face.

"Ugh," Ariadne said. "Spicy, yet disgusting."

Annabeth laughed weakly. "Yeah. That pretty much sums it up."

"Nice plan."

"For now," she said. "The problem is we're still in Tartarus."

They both gazed up at the blood-colored clouds swirling in the grey haze. No way would they have the strength to climb back up that cliff, even if they wanted to. Now there were only two choices: downriver or upriver, skirting the banks of the Phlegethon.

"We'll find a way out," Ariadne said. "The Doors of Death."

Annabeth shuddered. She remembered what Ariadne had said just before they fell into Tartarus. She's made Nico do Angelo promise to watch over Percy and and the Argo II to Epirus, to the mortal side of the Doors of Death.

"We have to," Ariadne said. "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. Gaia's forces will overrun the world."

They both knew the odds were bad.

"Well." Annabeth took a deep breath, grateful at least that her lungs didn't hurt. "If we stay close to the river, we'll have a way to heal ourselves. If we go downstream—"

It happened so fast that Annabeth would have been dead if she'd been on her own.

Ariadne's eyes locked on something behind her. Annabeth spun as a massive dark shape hurtled down at her—a snarling, monstrous blob with spindly barbed legs and glinting eyes.

Annabeth blinked and stood there, stunned, as yellow dust—the remains of Arachne—rained around her like tree pollen.

"You okay?" Ariadne scanned the cliffs and boulders, alert for more monsters, but nothing else appeared. The golden dust of the spider settled on the obsidian rocks.

The golden-bronze sword glowed even brighter in the gloom of Tartarus. As it passed through the thick hot air, it made a defiant hiss like a riled snake.

"She...she would've killed me," Annabeth stammered.

Ariadne spit on the dust, it sizzled. "She died too easily, considering how much torture she put you through. I would've given her worse."

Annabeth couldn't argue with that, but the hard edge in Ariadne's voice made her unsettled. She'd never seen someone get so angry or vengeful on her behalf. It almost made her glad Arachne had died quickly. The look in those amethyst eyes were more haunting then where they were. "How did you move so fast "

Ariadne huffed. "Gotta watch each other's backs, right? Now, you were saying...downstream?"

Annabeth nodded, still in a daze. At least they know that monsters could be killed in Tartarus.

"Yeah, downstream," she managed. "If the river comes from the upper levels of the Underworld, it should flow deeper into Tartarus—"

"So it leads into more dangerous territory," Ariadne finished. "Which is probably where the Doors are. Lucky us."

For the first time since Ariadne became a demigod, she was unpredictably scared.

authors note:

IM SO SORRY THIS IS LATE IM SO SORRY IM SORRY

i have been so busy I'm a terrible person dndndnnd

First: was asked to homecoming then ghosted after the dance (I still really like him and it hurts)

Second: I'm schedule my license test for sometime in the next few weeks!!!

Third: I hate myself still!!!

I'm so sorry you guys I know you hate me! I just wanna say thank you to all of you guys so much for waiting and I'm sorry if I lost your interest!

Let me know what you're excited for and all that and I PROMISE FOR MORE CONSISTENCY!!!

Love you guys!