Chaos Rising |BOOK 2| Harry Potter x PJO |Alexandra Marine|

PHOEBUS APOLLO

"Hey!" a girl screamed at me.

I was back at the beach, surrounded by cottages, standing at the edge of the cliff. Of the other people standing on the other side, it seemed like two of them had found a boat each, and were rowing towards me. I waved my hands at them furiously, and they waved back at me.

I still couldn't make out their faces. "Hey!" I screamed at them. "I'm here!"

Their voice were strangely familiar. "Hey!" a boy screamed. I could make out his black hair.

"Don't lose hope, Apollo," a voice whispered. "Your time for vengeance comes near."

***

"This is the place?" Percy asked me, frowning.

Nero Tower was more ruins than tower on the inside.

"Yeah," I whispered. "It was actually pretty okay on the inside once."

The elevator opened with a DING!

The Tower was still beautiful, but it had been left uncleaned after the battle. Rotting corpses of pandoi and dried red blood was still all over the floor and walls. Even as I entered the elevator, I recognized some of Lester's blood on the sliding doors.

"Why does the electricity even work here?" Percy asked.

"I don't know," I shrugged. "I guess the money automatically flows from Nero's enterprise."

"What the hell even happened here?"

"It's a good thing you weren't here," I smiled. "You should've seen Will after the battle. He was crying over a spilled bottle of iodine."

Percy chuckled. "I've seen him do that enough times already. Last week he cried over a bottle of pickled jalapenos, for some reason."

"I guess he misses that boy - Nico, was it?" I said, gritting my teeth. Hades had found a good reason to send my son to Underworld. In fact, he had threatened me the day the two boys got together.

Percy grinned. "Seems like you don't like Nico."

"Oh no," I smiled. "Nico's fine. I like him, actually. He helped me- it's his father that I have a feud with."

Percy's smile grew even wider. "News from the Underworld is that Hades is trying to end feuds and make new connections."

"Oh yeah? Time for me to set up an appointment."

***

The cave was still dark as hell, and I could almost see the trails of Python's body etched into the black, glittering sand. In between, there were huge footsteps, not human.

"What are those?" I asked Percy.

He kneeled down, examining the footprints with great interest. "Not really fresh," he said, touching the sand. "Probably a creature that came here years ago. It's probably not alive."

We moved further into the darkness.

"Why are we here?" Percy asked me.

"I had a vision," I replied, not going into details. Percy was Alex's brother. I wanted him to have the surprise... if it really was true.

"What kind?" Percy asked.

"There are types of vision?" I asked, frowning.

"Yeah, we had a class on them back at camp," Percy said. "The real kind, the kind that seems real but is fake, the kind that looks fake but is real, the kind-" he stopped abruptly, staring ahead of us.