Sea Green Eyes

Chapter 66

It wasn't long before the same fear they felt when it was just the two of them stumbling around Tartarus came roaring back. They missed their friends. Now their only guide was an emaciated corpse lady with serious self-esteem issues. As they struggled across the dusty plain, the fog became so thick that Percy had to resist the urge to swat it away with his hands. The only reason he was able to follow Akhlys's path was because poisonous plants sprang up wherever she walked.

"Here we are." Akhlys turned and leered at them. Blood from her cheeks dripped on her dress. Her sickly eyes looked moist and swollen but somehow excited. Can Misery look excited?

"Uh...great," Percy asked. "Where is here?"

"The verge of final death," Akhlys said. "Where Night meets the void below Tartarus."

Cressida kept her grip on Percy as she inched forward and peered off the cliff. Yeah, she understood where Thalia's fear of heights came from. "I thought there was nothing below Tartarus," she said as she moved away from the edge.

"Oh, certainly there is...." Akhlys coughed. "Even Tartarus had to rise from somewhere. This is the edge of the earliest darkness, which was my mother. Below lies the realm of Chaos, my father. Here, you are closer to nothingness than any mortal has ever been. Can you not feel it?"

The void seemed to be pulling at him, leeching the breath from his lungs and the oxygen from his blood and Percy seemed worried when he turned to Cressida and saw the blue tinge to her lips, and he ran his thumb along her bottom lip. "We can't stay here," he said. 

"No, indeed!" Akhlys said. "Don't you feel the Death Mist? Even now, you pass between. Look!"

White smoke gathered around their feet and began to coil around their legs, but it took a moment to realise that the smoke wasn't surrounding them, it was coming from them.

They're bodies were dissolving, Percy's hands fuzzy that he couldn't tell how many fingers he had. And when he turned to Cressida, he stifled a yelp.

"You're—uh—" He couldn't say it. She looked dead. Her skin was sallow, her eye sockets dark and sunken. Her beautiful hair had dried into a skein of cobwebs. Her mesmerising eyes were dull and grey that Percy was scared she'd gone blind again. She looked like she'd been stuck in a cool, dark mausoleum for decades, slowly withering into a desiccated husk. When she turned to look at him, her features momentarily blurred into mist. Percy's blood moved like sap in his veins which was probably a good thing because he felt like he was about to throw up the drakon stew he'd eaten.

For years, he'd worried about Cressida dying, their quest to save Annabeth was what made him realise how deep his fear of losing her ran when the prophecy had said that she would burn in purple fire if she got tired. He'd hardly let her out of his sight the entire quest because he was terrified that she'd try to do something heroic or dramatic and tire herself out to the point where the prophecy came true. But now, actually seeing it, it was too painful. He'd rather stand in the River Phlegethon, get attacked by arai, or be trampled by giants or jump back into the River Styx than see it.

"Oh my gods," Cressida cried as she lifted a hand to her mouth. "Percy...you...you look..."

He didn't have to see the true colour of her eyes to know that he probably looked as bad and it pained her just as much, if not more - it was probably more. Cressida had to live through two periods of time where she thought he was dead, but his body was never there. And now she was actually seeing him dead...ish.

"I've looked better," he decided. "I can't move very well. But I'm all right."

Akhlys clucked. "Oh, you're definitely not all right."