Curse of the Triblood

Chapter 49

Percy POV

When we finally got to camp, we were welcomed with a heartfelt welcome of a hundred spears nearly cutting off our heads. Ah, good times, good times. Maybe next time, they would welcome us with a bullet to the brain.

When everyone figured out who we were and noticed how banged up I was, I was rushed to the infirmary. Chiron heard about us finally making it back and rushed to meet us there. Clarisse and some of the other cabin heads met us there; my siblings ran to follow, disregarding the fact they weren't allowed. I was surprised to see that Grover, Silena, Tyson, and my lions came to join us as I lay on the bed.

When everyone was there, Annabeth explained what happened on the quest. Silena and Grover then explained what happened on their end of the situation. Grover and Tyson had to lead them through the corridors and ended up somewhere in New Mexico, in a cave system teeming with nature, magic, and vegetation. Life magic, vegetation, and plants were apparently more potent than the area surrounding my little secret bar that I brought everyone to on the quest to rescue Aphrodite, Artemis, and Annabeth.

Animals that should have been dead for eons lived in the cave, and Pan was lying down on a stone bed, while moss, and vegetation were growing around him. He was dying, or rather he was already dead. Silena explained that Pan had faded long ago, and this was just a memory of him; his former consciousness was too stubborn to die before someone could take over his work that he was too weak to continue.

"He gave me this," Grover said. He then handed it to me. It was a necklace, kind of like the one I had for the heart of the sea that was now combined in Olethros. It looked like a wooden heart, like an actual heart, not a symbol that looked like an upside-down spade. The heart was made of wood and looked like branches and leaves coming off of it and some moss growing on the bark. "He told me to give it to you."

"What are you talking about? Why would he give it to me?" I asked.

Silena bit her lip; she knew something that she was hesitant to say. "Pan said that you will bring the next primordial god of nature into the world and her counterpart. Many are going to fade; many have already. The next primordial of creation, fertility, vegetation, and life, will come from you. He said that he needs the deity to have the locket to be the next lord of the wild."

"That's impossible; Gaea is the primordial of the earth; a primordial can't have domains so similar to another. Besides..." I said, leaving the questioning hanging out there. Your mother is primordial, and her domains are vegetation; she's Venus, I continued in my head.

"I don't know," Silena said, biting her lip still. "Pan is the son of Hermes and Driope. He explained that she had a son before him with Apollo, and some of the prophecy and foresight stuff rubbed off on him because of it. The void will have many divine essences to make another two primordials soon, powerful primordials, and that you will bring them into the world."

"How can a mortal be a father to primordial?" Annabeth asked.

Silena stayed quiet; she knew something and wasn't telling me. First, Aphrodite decides to give me the silent treatment for a portion of the quest, and now our daughter is doing the same. They know something and are keeping it from me. Aphrodite told Silena something and they are keeping the secret away from me.

"Scylera said something to me," I said. "When she was trying to kill me, she told me, either way, my daughters are next. She said daughters, not daughter. But that didn't feel like a threat she would make so bluntly; that's more of a Kronos thing."

"Kronos may have told her to say the threat?" Annabeth offered.

"Wait, you have a kid; you're a dad? I'm an uncle already?" one of my siblings asked.