Otrega was imprisoned inside of himself. Day after day, he sat alone on some ground, gradually willing himself awake. It had to be a slow process; he learned that the hard way. Immediately after he entered this place inside of his mind, he tried to aggressively force himself awake, but it caused him agonizing pain, worse than that of death. He knew that the darkness was trying to pull him back in and that trying to jump into the consciousness of his own body so quickly was leaving him vulnerable to just that. Therefore, he learned to do it little by little. In the meantime he had nothing else to do, but to lose himself in memories of Annabeth and his life before Destruction had come into it.

***
"Percy! The other campers want pizza too, you can't have all of it!"

"C'mon Annabeth, you should know me better than that," he playfully chided her, "I'm only gonna eat most of it." Rolling her eyes, she grabbed a couple of the plates that Percy took and started handing it out to the younger campers. He hardly noticed, seeing as there were many more plates of food all around him. After serving everyone else, Annabeth looked back at her boyfriend and sighed. His appetite seemed to mirror the intensity of his training which was constantly increasing. Thinking about it made her smile. The only reason he worked so hard to become strong was to protect the ones he loved.

Years had passed since the two camps came together and in this time, Percy single-handedly eliminated any threats before they could develop into anything serious. In this task, he had been very successful. Although he allowed the demigods to train and even trained them himself at times, Percy absolutely refused to let any of them go out on quests and endanger themselves. He did everything that needed to be done so that everyone else could finally live in peace, including the leading demigods of both camps. There were always people who tried to stop him from fighting solo, but he was too stubborn. Something had manifested inside of him that urged him to keep fighting and getting stronger, while also creating a need to do it all alone. He promised that no one would have to fight. Ever.

"Percy, you can't eat all of that, you're leaving in a few minutes. Don't you need to get ready?"

Pausing only to reach for the pen in his pocket, he responded, "I am ready."

"Of course you are. Because taking any ambrosia would be a crazy idea."

"Oh yeah...WILLLL!" Will looked over at Percy from his table, already knowing what was coming.

"I already put a packed bag by the border, you're good."

"Thanks Will." He nodded in response to Percy and continued listening to one of the nurses tell him about the patient that he was about to do a minor surgery on.

Five minutes later, the two lovers were saying goodbye at the border.

"You know the drill, Jackson. If you don't come back then I'll find you and kill you. So don't die."

"Yeah, I know." Giving her a smirk followed with a kiss, he left camp and went on one of his many quests to take out potential threats.

***
Otrega opened his eyes to find himself back in his prison of a mind and sighed. He sat with his knees up to his chest and his head resting on top of them. He could feel that he was almost awake, but he had no clue how much time had passed. Every minute he spent disconnected from his body, Otrega felt colder and weaker. Knowing it was the feeling of him slowly dying, he tried not to focus on his possibly impending death, and gave more attention to the possibility of him waking up soon. 

However, Otrega couldn't help but feel a strong sense of longing towards the memories of those good days. This sadness allowed the darkness to creep in for just a second. Alas, a second was more than enough. Otrega suddenly screamed in pain as the darkness latched on to the negative emotions that he let himself feel for a moment and tried to pull him back into the torturous dimension that would surely leave him dead. 

"After all of this time, it can't end like this. I'm so close, I just need to fight a little longer. For her." He decided to try something that he had been considering as a trump card for a while now. Chaos once told him that the Sharingan had many unique abilities, and every time Otrega thought about escaping the place he was trapped in, his instinct always led him to the same conclusion. While enduring the pain of darkness, Otrega concentrated on the memory of the power he felt before with the Sharingan. Seconds later, it was unleashed and the darkness succumbed to the intimidation of the power behind Otrega's eyes. For the first time in what felt like forever, he was able to stand. 

It was overwhelming at first, that is, the change in his visual prowess. His eyes were opened to so many different things around him so fast. However, Otrega sensed the power of his friends and looked towards this feeling. It seemed like a door through dimensions was in front of him that wasn't visible before. Using his Sharingan, Otrega willed the door to open, and when it did so, he could see that a fatigued Jason was single-handedly fending off two strong foes. Aware that it was only a matter of time before Jason was struck down, Otrega tried to cross dimensions. However, as soon as he took a step towards the door, darkness consumed his vision and he fell back down to the ground. 

"Damn it. I wasn't strong enough to sustain that power." Otrega was not able to resist the exhaustion that consumed him. The darkness once again had a hold of him as he returned to the hell that he was in before. 

Line Break (a few minutes before)

Jason didn't know how this could have happened. The room was so well protected, but the one time that Chaos wasn't watching over it due to an emergency in the arena, the two enemies in front of him were able to break through the barrier and catch the four of them completely off guard. Piper was taken out of the equation immediately. As soon as the two, clad in knight-style armor, materialized right on the other side of the door where the demigods were getting ready to rush to the arena, they took their swords and cut gashes across her back followed by a flat of a blade hitting her in the back of her head. As the three stared at their now unconscious friend, the knights wasted no time and moved to their next target. 

"Nico, watch out!" Jason willed a strong gust of wind to pull Nico towards him before two swords could cut him down as was done to Piper. Thalia, also snapping out of her initial shock (pun intended), electrocuted their armor, only serving to immobilize them for a few seconds. In this time, however, Jason and Nico closed in and attacked. Their armor was identical up to their helmets, so there was no way of telling them apart, but they each were targeted by one of the two demigods that came at them. A single moment before either of their swords made contact with the hearts of the knights, they were freed from their previous immobilization and smoothly sidestepped the blades that were coming from behind them. Expecting nothing more than a direct, fatal hit, Jason and Nico weren't prepared for their attack to be dodged, causing them to be a bit disoriented. The two foes were unusually fast for the type of armor they were equipped with.

A dark light began to coat the knights, and when they slashed their swords, arcs of power blew their opponents away. Jason was the first to get up, eager to retaliate.

"I will not fail them again. Not again." With the motivation of protecting his friends, Jason parried the next waves of dark power that came at them with his own lightning. Smoke engulfed the white, circular room. Before the smoke could clear,  Nico filled the room with pitch black darkness to blind the knights. His friends had trained to grow accustomed to when Nico would perform this in battle so they had the advantage. Nico could now move as a shadow throughout the entire room making him almost impossible to catch. Since their opponents weren't gods, the son of Hades had an increased amount of control over the bones in their body. Immobilizing them, Nico glided towards the two with his sword in hand. What the demigod wasn't expecting was for them to use powers. When he got close, their swords gave off explosions of energy that merged and became one big blast directed at Nico as it's light filled the room. 

"The light given off by their blasts is stronger than my darkness!?" Nico was trapped in the air with wide eyes as he was about to take a direct hit from a seemingly deadly energy blast. Thalia instinctively intercepted the attack with a lightning strike that slightly moved the blast to the left of her boyfriend, allowing Nico to barely move out of the way, though his arm still made contact with the enemies's attack. He fell to the ground clutching his arm that was now smoking as Jason used wind to pull him back. The leader of the group had stayed back to see if he could find anything out about their attackers while they fought off Nico. So far, he'd observed that they didn't really rely on their armor seeing as they always dodged or used their swords to counter attacks. Meaning, if they could get a decent hit, it might be fatal. Jason figured that their armor wasn't strong enough to protect them and that it was just for show. 

"If I'm fast enough, I can beat them. I'd have to fight them up close, though." Jason had a plan. There was a new extension of his power he'd been working on that he hadn't quite gotten down yet. However, he was going to have to use it in order to defeat the enemies before them. Before Jason could spring into action, Thalia made a mini tornado around her that's immense power could be felt from afar. Lightning began to spark around it, and Thalia flew towards the knights, throwing the electrified tornado along with herself at the unprepared foes. Jason hadn't expected his sister to pull off something like that, but when she did, he immediately knew to follow her lead. They were both blasted back into the wall where Jason was waiting to trap them inside of a sphere of lightning. When he did so, they were paralyzed as hundreds of bolts of lightning from every direction continuously zapped them. Now they had a few seconds to attend to Piper.

"You two get Piper some Ambrosia and go down to the Arena with Chaos. I can handle these guys." 

"We're on it." Nico knew there was no point in arguing with Jason once he saw the look in his eyes. He knew that his best friend would be fine, so he grabbed a hold of Thalia with his one good arm, shadow-traveled to Piper, and fled with the girls. 

Jason was now alone with the knights who were beginning to break out of the electricity as pieces of their armor fell off. He willed his power to dissipate. "You two will die for touching my wife," As he said this, his eyes began to spark, "but if you tell me who sent you here for Otrega, Chaos might not make your afterlife completely torturous." 

"Rot in hell." 

"Sending your friends away was a grave mistake, son of Jupiter. We are stronger than you think." The two spoke as they shed the rest of their armor, revealing a tall man with blonde hair, black eyes, and a sinister smile and an equally tall woman who had most of the same features as the man, both of them wearing black jumpsuits. Though they looked human, Jason knew that they were far from it. Once their armor was entirely off, they started giving off powerful auras. 

Giving away no reaction, Jason also revealed his true power. Sparks of electricity started to come off the ground, creating a small circle around it's owner. The circle became wider and wider until Jason held his hand out, filling it with the electricity that surrounded him. After putting away his sword, he did the same with the other hand as his opponents arrogantly stood by, waiting to be attacked. Seconds later, Jason's lower arms and legs were completely coated in lightning. 

"You guys aren't the only ones who've hidden their strength." Jason's new power was not yet complete, but still effective. The lightning made him faster while also providing more powerful punches and kicks. However, it caused him immense pain to sustain this power, so it wouldn't be long before he wore himself out. Hence the reason his next attack was delivered without a single moment wasted. Jason seemed to materialize in front of the two to whom he gave each a punch in the gut that staggered them, allowing him to warp behind them and hit the both of them with a single roundhouse kick to the back of the head. 

The two were smashed into the ground as their entire body violently sparked. Jason was right over them before they could stand and smashed his two enemies farther into the ground with bolts of the electricity coursing off his arms. Jumping out of the deep crater, Jason knew it was time to end this fight before it was too late. The two knights were at the bottom of what the son of Zeus observed to be a long narrow hole. 

"These are perfect conditions for that attack, but it's gonna take everything I have." Jason was about to produce his strongest attack, Electrical Storm. He began creating as much concentrated energy as he could, and as he was doing this, his enemies, who were struggling to stand, shouted their final words. 

"Defeating us wins you nothing! Our master will  have him, and no one will be strong enough to do anything about it! Not even Perseus himself." Those words caught Jason off guard and almost made him stop his attack. However, he knew that this was his only chance to assure Otrega's safety for the time being, so without another moment of hesitation, Jason made several bolts of lightning surround and bounce all around the pit. Trapped inside of this deadly storm, the knights were undoubtedly dead after only a few moments of such torture.

 So many questions ran through Jason's head, but as he collapsed to the ground, there was one that stood out above all others. 

"What did they know about Percy?" 

Final Line Break

Yes, I have posted. 

Yes, it's been six months. 

No, I don't have a good excuse as to why I was gone from wattpad for so long.

No, I don't expect you guys to be happy with me at the moment. 

But I do hope you enjoyed the chapter. :) 

P.S.