Because I obviously need more stories.
Yes, I realized I am swamped with active fics and majorly behind on, uh...everything. I'm also aware I'm just about to reach the climax of several of them, including my current project, KEAFH--which I'm not going to be stopping for this story, for the record. It's going interesting places and will soon get to the really fun parts with no boring stuff to wear me down in sight.
Nonetheless, I've been updating it at a pretty ridiculous pace, which has lead to, amongst other things, some pretty embarrassing spelling errors. More importantly, I need to make sure what is getting sticks to the plot I have designed, which could probably use some hammering out, besides--you know something is wrong when you're writing a series and have three of the books completely plotted out...and none of them are the first one, which is lingering at about 75% done and 25% '???'. So I need a day or two to reel that in and actually talk to my betas and stuff to hammer out the last few kinks out of that before problems occur, which means a few days of plot work and such.
In that time, I'll reply to some questions and such I've been neglecting and also working a bit on this, because it's easy to write and keeps me from going crazy over constant KEAFH.
Without further ado...
To The Doors Of Death
The fall into Tartarus is longùlong enough to make one wonder if thereÆs a bottom, but you know there has to be, so you instead start to wonder what itÆll be like when you finally hit the bottom. You fall fast enough that the very air against your face begins to hurt and the deeper you go, the worse it gets. The vile stench of blood and worse fills your nostrils, screams echo loud enough to hurt your ears, and it gets colder and colder, and youÆd think eventually you would go numb, but you donÆtùyou just start to ache more and more in the cold. And every time you breath, as the chill of the cold seems to claw at your nose and mouth, as the screams seem right next to your ear, and as the horrible smell makes you gag, you think æThis is it. The smell and the voices are so closeùIÆm about to hit the bottom and break into pieces.Æ
But itÆs an illusions. Hesiod was right about Tartarus in that wayùit is a very long fall, whether for a golden anvil or a pair of demigods. Nine days down, getting worse all the way. The screams grow in volume until your ear-drums seem ready to burst, but they never do; the screams just get louder and your pain increases. Your sense of smell swiftly becomes less of an aid and more of an elaborate for of self-punishment. Your entire body hurts, as if layers of your skin were being frozen and the force of the wind were flaying them off.
But eventually, after nine days and nine nights that may as well be the same to you, down there in the darkùyou do reach the bottom.
The entire way down, weÆd held each otherÆs hands, refusing the let go and leave the other alone. The darkness of the pit had long ago stolen our ability to see one another, and trying to hear each otherÆs voices was an effort in futility. That contact was all we had to be sure the other still existed.
So perhaps it was fitting that the first thing Tartarus stole from us was that certainty.
We hit the ground with a thunderous roar and after those nine, frigid days and that enormous fall, I thought that was the end. I thought the fall would kill us both, by that point, maybe even imagined that between the impact and the cold, weÆd shatter into a thousand pieces.
Maybe we did. Maybe we died down there at the bottom of the pit, bodies broken beyond repair, and Tartarus simply refused to let out souls escape.
I donÆt know. All I know is that for a long time, I can do nothing but lie there like a puppet with its strings cut. I think I may have blacked out, maybe even several times. I felt like everything was broken, but that couldnÆt have been, because somehow, after I had no idea how long, I managed to stand through the pain.
It hurt, if that needs to be said. So did walking and breathing and talkingùbut all of that was nothing compared to the fact that I might have lost her down here.
I canÆt see her, but then, I canÆt see anything. Tartarus is dark; unbelievably so. I lift my hands to cover my eyes and then move them perhaps a millimeter away, but when I open my eyes I cannot see them in the slightest. In that darkness, in the midst of those screams and concealed by that stench, a dragon could have been right in front of me and I wouldnÆt have been able to tell, much less find Annabeth.
It scared me. I donÆt normally think that IÆm afraid of the dark, but that darkness? That cold and that noise and that stench? They scared me.
That didnÆt change anything, either. Whether I was scared or not, I was going to find her.
ôAnnabeth!ö I screamed. At least, I think I did. In the midst of the endless screams of the punished, I couldnÆt even hear my own voice and I hear no reply.
ôAnnabeth!ö I shout again, putting everything I have into it, until it feels like my throat is tearing, but I still receive nothing back, so I donÆt dare stop. I shout for her again and again, maybe thirty times, and get no reply. But after a moment, thereÆsàsomething. I think I heard a momentary raise and fall in the bone-shaking screams around me, and it could easily have been nothing but my imagination. And if it wasnÆt, thereÆs nothing to say it was Annabeth.
But Gods if I wasnÆt desperate.
I ran toward what I thought was the source. I may have heard the sound again, but even as I got closer, I wasnÆt sure if it was anything but my mind playing cruel tricks on meùuntil I ran straight into someone. We went down into a pile of frigid limbs, but hope filled my chest.
ôAnnabeth?ö I said hopefully, forgetting to yell, and the result was too low for even me to hear. I shouted it again after catching myself, lifting my hands to her face to trace it with my fingersùbut they were so cold and ached so badly, I wasnÆt sure it did any good. I traced her cheekbones as her own hands lifted to my face, doing the same, and I tried to remember how her face felt beneath my fingers. I ran them through her hair a moment later and I thought it could have been the right length. But I hadnÆt expected to be getting a quiz on it and weÆd been together for mere days after being separated for months. Cold and in pain as I wasà
I didnÆt know. I didnÆt know if the person I was holding was Annabeth. Butàbutà
Her fingers left my face, apparently more sure then mine, and a moment later I felt something cold and soft against my mouth.
Her lips. She was kissing me and in desperate fear I kissed her back and I thought she kissed like Annabeth.
But then again, perhaps that was just another of TartarusÆ cruel tricks.
XxXXxX
Yes, I realized I am swamped with active fics and majorly behind on, uh...everything. I'm also aware I'm just about to reach the climax of several of them, including my current project, KEAFH--which I'm not going to be stopping for this story, for the record. It's going interesting places and will soon get to the really fun parts with no boring stuff to wear me down in sight.
Nonetheless, I've been updating it at a pretty ridiculous pace, which has lead to, amongst other things, some pretty embarrassing spelling errors. More importantly, I need to make sure what is getting sticks to the plot I have designed, which could probably use some hammering out, besides--you know something is wrong when you're writing a series and have three of the books completely plotted out...and none of them are the first one, which is lingering at about 75% done and 25% '???'. So I need a day or two to reel that in and actually talk to my betas and stuff to hammer out the last few kinks out of that before problems occur, which means a few days of plot work and such.
In that time, I'll reply to some questions and such I've been neglecting and also working a bit on this, because it's easy to write and keeps me from going crazy over constant KEAFH.
Without further ado...
To The Doors Of Death
The fall into Tartarus is longùlong enough to make one wonder if thereÆs a bottom, but you know there has to be, so you instead start to wonder what itÆll be like when you finally hit the bottom. You fall fast enough that the very air against your face begins to hurt and the deeper you go, the worse it gets. The vile stench of blood and worse fills your nostrils, screams echo loud enough to hurt your ears, and it gets colder and colder, and youÆd think eventually you would go numb, but you donÆtùyou just start to ache more and more in the cold. And every time you breath, as the chill of the cold seems to claw at your nose and mouth, as the screams seem right next to your ear, and as the horrible smell makes you gag, you think æThis is it. The smell and the voices are so closeùIÆm about to hit the bottom and break into pieces.Æ
But itÆs an illusions. Hesiod was right about Tartarus in that wayùit is a very long fall, whether for a golden anvil or a pair of demigods. Nine days down, getting worse all the way. The screams grow in volume until your ear-drums seem ready to burst, but they never do; the screams just get louder and your pain increases. Your sense of smell swiftly becomes less of an aid and more of an elaborate for of self-punishment. Your entire body hurts, as if layers of your skin were being frozen and the force of the wind were flaying them off.
But eventually, after nine days and nine nights that may as well be the same to you, down there in the darkùyou do reach the bottom.
The entire way down, weÆd held each otherÆs hands, refusing the let go and leave the other alone. The darkness of the pit had long ago stolen our ability to see one another, and trying to hear each otherÆs voices was an effort in futility. That contact was all we had to be sure the other still existed.
So perhaps it was fitting that the first thing Tartarus stole from us was that certainty.
We hit the ground with a thunderous roar and after those nine, frigid days and that enormous fall, I thought that was the end. I thought the fall would kill us both, by that point, maybe even imagined that between the impact and the cold, weÆd shatter into a thousand pieces.
Maybe we did. Maybe we died down there at the bottom of the pit, bodies broken beyond repair, and Tartarus simply refused to let out souls escape.
I donÆt know. All I know is that for a long time, I can do nothing but lie there like a puppet with its strings cut. I think I may have blacked out, maybe even several times. I felt like everything was broken, but that couldnÆt have been, because somehow, after I had no idea how long, I managed to stand through the pain.
It hurt, if that needs to be said. So did walking and breathing and talkingùbut all of that was nothing compared to the fact that I might have lost her down here.
I canÆt see her, but then, I canÆt see anything. Tartarus is dark; unbelievably so. I lift my hands to cover my eyes and then move them perhaps a millimeter away, but when I open my eyes I cannot see them in the slightest. In that darkness, in the midst of those screams and concealed by that stench, a dragon could have been right in front of me and I wouldnÆt have been able to tell, much less find Annabeth.
It scared me. I donÆt normally think that IÆm afraid of the dark, but that darkness? That cold and that noise and that stench? They scared me.
That didnÆt change anything, either. Whether I was scared or not, I was going to find her.
ôAnnabeth!ö I screamed. At least, I think I did. In the midst of the endless screams of the punished, I couldnÆt even hear my own voice and I hear no reply.
ôAnnabeth!ö I shout again, putting everything I have into it, until it feels like my throat is tearing, but I still receive nothing back, so I donÆt dare stop. I shout for her again and again, maybe thirty times, and get no reply. But after a moment, thereÆsàsomething. I think I heard a momentary raise and fall in the bone-shaking screams around me, and it could easily have been nothing but my imagination. And if it wasnÆt, thereÆs nothing to say it was Annabeth.
But Gods if I wasnÆt desperate.
I ran toward what I thought was the source. I may have heard the sound again, but even as I got closer, I wasnÆt sure if it was anything but my mind playing cruel tricks on meùuntil I ran straight into someone. We went down into a pile of frigid limbs, but hope filled my chest.
ôAnnabeth?ö I said hopefully, forgetting to yell, and the result was too low for even me to hear. I shouted it again after catching myself, lifting my hands to her face to trace it with my fingersùbut they were so cold and ached so badly, I wasnÆt sure it did any good. I traced her cheekbones as her own hands lifted to my face, doing the same, and I tried to remember how her face felt beneath my fingers. I ran them through her hair a moment later and I thought it could have been the right length. But I hadnÆt expected to be getting a quiz on it and weÆd been together for mere days after being separated for months. Cold and in pain as I wasà
I didnÆt know. I didnÆt know if the person I was holding was Annabeth. Butàbutà
Her fingers left my face, apparently more sure then mine, and a moment later I felt something cold and soft against my mouth.
Her lips. She was kissing me and in desperate fear I kissed her back and I thought she kissed like Annabeth.
But then again, perhaps that was just another of TartarusÆ cruel tricks.
XxXXxX