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For the record; this wasn’t his fault.
Percy would like to make that very clear, it wasn’t his idea and he hadn’t wanted to do it in the first place. Alas, when a god calls, Percy has to answer. Sure, he had some leeway as the two-time savior of Olympus, but if he didn’t have a really good reason to decline, he still had to go on the occasional quest.
And here he was, once again stuck underground in water he couldn’t control— not really.
Hephaestus had come to him to retrieve some sort of artifact from some long-lost cave-thingy— he hadn’t really been listening, too busy worrying about his biology essay that was only half-done in the room behind Hephaestus shoulder. He would have to hand that in late, again. In any case, he’d accepted the quest, swung up on the back of Blackjack and off he went.
As far as quests went, it had actually been fairly typical, some monsters to fight, some near-deadly traps, yada yada yada. (He was way too used to it all) He’d gone into the hidden cave system, had thankfully found the artifact (—which he still had no clue what it was even supposed to be? It just looked like a hunk of junk to him, but he didn’t dare voice that on fear of being smited) and reached out to grab it. Yeah, big mistake. You’d think he’d be smarter by now. As soon as he grabbed the curiously metallic something a trapdoor had opened and he’d fallen in.
The fall hadn’t been particularly long— nothing like Tartarus-shiver-but it had been pretty dark.
He’d landed in a pool of water, maybe five-feet deep. He had no trouble breathing though and at first he’d thought he’d lucked out since water really wasn’t a problem for him of all people. That had been 30 minutes ago and oh wonder, the water slowly began to rise. It reacted almost like usual water, key word almost. It moved around him and he wasn’t wet, not really. But, as he wiped the sweat from his forehead, there seemed to be something different at play here. Namely, the temperature. When he’d fallen the water hadn’t been cold exactly, but it hadn’t been hot either. But, almost without his notice, the temperature began to climb and climb.
It reminded Percy of the frog and the boiling water. It was an utterly inhumane experiment and he was sure most of his friends would be rightfully angry if they knew about it, but he’d always found it rather fascinating.
See, if you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will jump out. But if you put that same frog in normal water and slowly heat it over time, it won’t jump, even if it’s boiling alive. One of his English teachers had used it as a metaphor for staying in abusive relationships if it only became worse a little bit every time, which Percy was painfully aware of.
But now, this wasn’t just a metaphor or something, it was his reality. The water was getting hotter by the second and he had no clue how long he had, until he would boil too.
He snorted, this was certainly an end to the mighty hero of Olymp, boiling in some stupid cave, alone. The water was rising higher and the temperature was starting to become unbearable. He let out another round of prayers as black spots began dancing across his vision. They had gone unanswered until now, and he wasn’t exactly sure why, especially because he’d already full-filled the stupid quest. All he knew was that he wouldn’t be able to pray again, as the black enveloped him whole.
—
He hadn’t expected to wake up again, so this was a welcome surprise. He cracked one eye open and found himself in a clinically white room in a hospital-bed. He groaned. Not again.
As if sensing his renewed consciousness, the door flung open to reveal one Phoebus Apollo, smiling broadly in a white-doctors coat. *
“How’s my favorite patient doing? You gave us quite a fright.“
How was he doing? Feeling for his limbs, his skin spanned lightly and he hissed. “Felling like my whole body is one big blister“
Apollo hummed in sympathy, golden locks bouncing on his head not unlike a halo.
“That would be an accurate statement. It took us quite a while to find you, the whole cave was covered in ancient runes. I didn’t want to give you too much nectar before you woke up, but you seem sufficiently coherent!“
Well, that explained it at least. The nectar melted on his tongue, the taste of his mom’s blue cookies ever present. He already felt better.
“Who found me“ he asked, more out of curiosity than anything else.
“I did“ huh, unexpected. He would’ve put quite a bit of money on his dad, since most of his prayers had been directed towards him and he’d even been in water.
Apollo’s look and the fact that he hadn’t just brought him to one of his children but kept him for himself certainly send a message as well, but for now, Percy was far too tired to decipher it. Future-Percy could worry about it.