I have absolutely no excuse. None at all. Just senior year of high school and freshman year of college and jobs and my life is so hectic that at times I forget that FanFiction exists and I'm an extremely scatterbrained person and my profile is jumbled and I'm so sorry.

Before any complaints—any glares about "changing the story"—I didn't. I rewrote it with a few of the many secrets that I had planned on from the beginning revealed at the start so it wouldn't be as confusing and OOC-ish later on.

And when you get to the part that might shock you, please keep that statement in your heads. Thank you.

Also: I won't be deleting my AtlantaJackson95 account, but I will no longer be posting from it. It's far too much of a jumbled mess for me to work with. So from now on, if you want to find me, look up Andiconversehoodies to find me. I'll also be posting the new username on my old AtlantaJackson95 profile.

Disclaimer: I do not own Percy Jackson and the Olympians or Heroes of Olympus.

Descendants of Heroes: The First Legacy

Prologue

The dying rays of a warm sunset peeked out over a grassy hill, illuminating several cabins in the distance. Tiny figures in orange t-shirts scuttled around the buildings, fixing and repairing gaping holes and charred rooftops. A quarter-mile to the east, organized masses of armor-clad purple figures marched around purple, red, and gold tents, each bearing the likeness of some animal. Tension buzzed through the air between the two camps, but none carried weapons—a smart maneuver suggested by the blonde-haired figure in orange picking her way towards the beach to the south.

Sitting at her destination, hugging his knees to his chest, was a boy—also in orange—with messy raven-colored hair and green eyes that closely matched the flow of the tides before him. He stared blankly out across the sound, lost in thought.

"Hey," the blonde girl sat down next to the boy, her grey eyes swirling with worry. "You okay?"

The boy shrugged. It wasn't much of an answer, but at least it was an answer.

She paused, staring out across the sea like he was, trying to think of something to say.

"Leo was able to sit up today. You should've seen the look on Calypso's face when she walked in on him fiddling with a bunch of springs. It was like she couldn't decide whether to be relieved or pissed, so she went with both."

The boy blinked—the only notification that he had heard her.

She sighed. He had been like this quite often the year before as well, after the second Titan war. But not nearly this bad. Of course he hadn't strolled through the mythological monster-waste-disposal-system in the Titan war.

The sound of a conch blew in the distance, interrupting the girl's worry. A massive sound of hammers and bricks dropping moved like an echo to the conch as the campers headed for the mess hall for dinner.

The girl stood up and dusted her jeans off, before offering her hand to the boy—sticking it directly in his face so he'd lean back, startled.

The boy blinked in surprise and confusion at the hand, then transferred his expression to the girl.

She smiled, "Come on, Seaweed Brain. You're no use to anyone starving to death."

The boy opened his mouth—most likely about to rasp that he wasn't hungry, as it seemed to be all he ever said now—but his stomach beat him to it with a fierce growl.

Annabeth-the-blonde-girl laughed. "You're such an idiot sometimes. Come on. Take my hand."

The briefest flicker of memory passed across Percy's sea-green eyes, and then he gave Annabeth a small smile, and took her hand.

The moment he did, a flash of light touched their joined hands, growing outward and around them until nothing was visible.

When the light vanished, the two teenagers were gone.

It was dark. And empty. And Annabeth was swimming.

She reached forward, struggling for a handhold to pull herself up out of the sticky darkness, but every try only pulled her farther back.

A mumbling voice reached her ears, and she strained to hear.

"—okay?"

Another voice answered, and suddenly she became aware of presences around her, invisible fingertips gently tugging her up out of the black. She struggled harder.

Then a single word echoed in the bleakness, in a voice that she hadn't heard clearly in days, shoving the black sticky fingers away until she could breathe again.

"Annabeth?"

Her name, in Percy's voice echoed around the emptiness, until she was so overcome with the sound that she slammed against the walls, harder than ever, and burst out of the inky black.

She opened her eyes.

"Percy?" she asked, her voice hoarse. She couldn't be sure that it was him who spoke, but something told her it was.

Sea green eyes surfaced in her line of vision, and she relaxed. His eyebrows were scrunched up, like they were when he was worried, and he lightly brushed her face with his fingertips, obviously relieved.

"What happened?" she croaked.

"I'm not sure," Percy's voice was slightly hoarse from disuse, "but I think it has something to do with Rachel."

Confused, Annabeth sat up, only to realize that she was sitting on a couch in a strange room, and surrounding her were several familiar faces.

The room looked a lot like the living room back in her home in San Francisco—a coffee table in the center, with two couches and an armchair surrounding it on three sides. Sitting up on the adjacent couch was a bewildered-looking Leo, his usually unruly curly hair dotted with oil and grease. Kneeling on the floor next to him, overworrying over the Latino Santa's elf, was Calypso, blowing a stray lock of caramel hair out of her eyes in her frustration. Standing halfway between the two couches, as if unsure as to whom to worry about, were Piper and Jason, with Reyna, Rachel, Thalia, and Grover to the side, whispering urgently over a ripped up and slightly burned slip of paper. Hazel and Frank stood on either side of Percy, hands relaxed and ready to grab their weapons at a moment's notice. And—as always—Nico stood in the dark corner, a frown set to his mouth that Annabeth found mildly creepy, as he purposely avoided looking the way of her couch.

"Percy," Annabeth muttered, turning back to the boy hovering next to her, "what do you mean 'something to do with Rachel'?"

"It's this," Rachel spoke up, holding out the piece of paper. "It claims to be a note from the Oracle of Delphi and the Fates. Only I'm the Oracle, and I don't remember writing it."

Annabeth took the paper and scanned it critically, struggling through the fancy script.

Time is fracturing. I don't have much left.

This is a warning to you, that I received special permission from the Fates to send back into my own time-stream. It took a lot of work and a fair amount of disintegration and reiteration—Kronos's left arm says hi—but if you're reading this, then I did it.

This war in my time has been coming for thousands of years, since Nyx herself was born. And you can't stop it, or change it.

But you can understand that it isn't over. You're not done yet. And you need to survive, for the future.

Oracle of Delphi, seer of the Phoebus Apollo

P.S. Don't worry about your daily lives. The house you're in is suspended in time. Think of it like the Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. You could live and die here and as soon as you do die, you come back to the real world at the exact moment and in the exact state and age that you left—only a little more knowledgeable.

When Annabeth finished, she looked up at Rachel. "You're the Oracle. Do we listen or not?"

Rachel frowned, fiddling with the green sharpie she had been using to draw a Greek Delta on her jeans. "Well, normally I would say that curiosity killed the cat. But that same weird feeling I get when the Oracle is about to possess me is tingling. I think we should listen."

Leo raised an eyebrow. "Your spider sense is tingling?"

Rachel rolled her eyes. "Yes, Stan Lee. My spider sense is tingling. We need to listen. I don't know how I have no memory of writing this, but it's legitimate."

"Well, it says something about time, doesn't it?" Percy asked. "There's no telling when the Oracle possessed its host to write this."

"Touché," Rachel frowned thoughtfully. "In any case, we found that note on top of a box on the coffee table. We were trying to decide whether to open it or not or wait for you, Annabeth."

Annabeth glanced over at the table, eyeing the small brown cardboard box sitting next to a Hephaestus TV coaster. What did they have to lose? They were stuck in a weird house that she had a feeling had no way out.

"Let's open the box," Annabeth decided aloud. "Leo? Got a knife?"

"On it!" Leo reached into his magic toolbelt and pulled out a Swiss Army knife. Unable to stand up because he was still too weak, he handed the knife to Calypso, who passed it to Percy, who sliced the tape on the box and then passed it back.

Inside the box was an old fashioned stereo and a set of cassette tapes.

It's like Th1rteen R3asons Why, Annabeth thought, remembering the book she'd finished the month before Percy first disappeared to Camp Jupiter, the military camp for Romans like Hazel, Frank, Reyna, and Jason.

Each cassette tape had two small numbers in the corner on each side, in green paint instead of blue nail polish like the book Annabeth had read. But each tape that had a second number one on it also had words across the front. Tape 1-1 read The First Legacy. Tape 2-1 said The Mare Nostrum. Tape 3-1 read The Fire of Maris. Tape 4-1 said The Descent to Oblivion. And tape 5-1 read The Last Light.

Percy frowned for a moment, set the stereo on the table, and slowly slid in tape 1-1.

[PLAY]

Time.

It was a girl's voice, about their age. Light and cheerful, yet weighed down and dramatic at the same time, much like Percy at times.

This thing all things devours. Birds. Beasts. Trees. Flowers. It gnaws iron. It bites steel. And it grinds hard stones to meal. It slays kings. It ruins towns. And it beats a high mountain down.

"Well, at least she's read the Hobbit," Annabeth mumbled. "She's either mortal or a stubborn daughter of Athena."

Curiously enough, the tape paused for Annabeth to speak, almost as if the girl who recorded this would know what Annabeth was going to say and when.

Time passes for all creatures in this world. And if those creatures were to stop spinning, the world would go right on spinning without them.

A man sat in a bay window, watching the raindrops dance in the rough thunder, occasionally illuminated by the brief lighting of the dark cloudy night. His black hair glistened silver, and his green eyes swirled with thought as he watched the sky weep, feeling like weeping himself.

A shriek broke his contemplation, and he glanced behind him to see a flash of blue fabric, and then suddenly a dark shape bowled him over and knocked him into the windowpane, jostling the dancing raindrops in their reverie.

The man looked down at his lap to see a tiny curtain of long brown hair, shivering. He couldn't suppress a small smile.

"What's the matter, sweetheart?" he asked the little girl clinging to his waist.

When the man spoke in the story, a deep, familiar male voice came from the stereo instead of the girl's. Something was extremely familiar about that voice, but Annabeth couldn't put her finger on it. Why would she know well a man in his thirties or so?

"Sp-" the girl fumbled in a stammering whisper. "Sp-sp-spi-"

The man rolled his eyes amusedly, knowing all at once what the problem was. "There's a spider in your room, isn't there?"

Annabeth felt like scoffing at the character's eye-rolling at a "simple spider," especially after Arachne dragged her down to Tartarus, but she didn't want to call attention to herself for talking to a book.

The little girl looked up and sniffed, nodding at him with large, teary green eyes whose color were much like his own.

"Maybe she's his daughter?" Grover asked. "Maybe she's a demigod and he's her mortal parent. With the spider thing I'd guess probably Athena, but I've never known of a child of Athena to not have grey eyes."

He picked up the girl and set her down next to him, turning to sit cross-legged facing her.

"Alexis Lucia Jackson," he said to the shivering little girl, looking her straight in the eye, "do you remember why your name is what it is?"

Silence fell around the room, and several mouths dropped open, including Annabeth's herself.

"Did…" Percy stumbled, his face as white as a sheet and his shock breaking his silence, "did he just say Jackson?!"

"Alexis Lucia Jackson," Grover mumbled. "I don't know of any demigod with that name. Have you got a cousin or something, Perce?"

Percy shook his head. Everyone knew his mom's brothers had died too early in their lives to marry and have kids.

The little girl gave a shy nod, and her small voice sounded like a whisper over the crack of thunder. "My first name means "defender of people" in Greek. And my middle name is after a demigod called Luke Castellan."

"What?" yelled Annabeth.

"Who's Luke Castellan?" Leo asked.

"The leader of Kronos's demigod forces in the second Titan War last year," Thalia mumbled, her face as white as Percy's now. "But he died a hero."

"Exactly," the man smiled. "And that demigod was perhaps the bravest man I have ever known. You were named what you were so that you could always carry on that bravery. And someday, I hope that it will save your life."

"So her father named her after a traitor so she'd carry on the traitor's legacy?" Jason asked. "Maybe that's what the tape means by The First Legacy."

Annabeth glared bloody murder at Jason over the traitor comment, but she said nothing.

"Maybe not," Rachel mused. "If this man knew who Luke was, then he's most likely a demigod who survived the Titan War, and the legacies that the Romans do with training could work, so she could technically be the first Greek legacy. But the only green-eyed survivor of the Second Titan War I can think of is…"

Slowly, all eyes crept over towards Percy, who looked about ready to faint.

"Jackson…" Hazel whispered, shocked.

Alexis's tears stopped, and her trembling mouth formed into a small smile.

"Now," the man said with a smile and a mischievous twinkle in his eye, "do you really think a little spider is going to stop you from being the bravest little girl ever?"

Alexis giggled. "No, daddy."

"No? Are you sure?" Mr. Jackson reached forward and tickled his daughter for emphasis, until her giggles and shrieks outlived the rain, becoming something much more cheerful than what they were before.

"Daddy!" Alexis squealed. "St-st-stop i-it!"

Annabeth couldn't help thinking that—if their suspicions were correct—Percy seemed to make a good father.

Mr. Jackson stopped, waiting patiently for Alexis's giggles to subside. When they did, he stood up out of the bay window and held out his hand, walking her back to her bedroom.

After she was safely tucked into her blankets and clutching her Mickey Mouse doll, Mr. Jackson kissed his little girl's forehead and backed up towards the door.

"I love you, daddy," Alexis yawned.

Mr. Jackson smiled. "I love you too, Alix. Goodnight, sweetheart."

With the door shut, Mr. Jackson peeked in through the door across the hall, glad to see a second bundle of blankets and a four-year old curled up and fast asleep. He kicked a boy's teeball jersey out of the doorway and shut that door as well.

"So there are two kids?" Frank asked. "Dang, that's quite a handful."

Just as he was settled back into the bay window, he heard a door in the hallway open and close, and the sound of wheels dragging against carpet, and his heart sank. He turned to see yet another figure leave the hallway, this time much taller and more post-pubescent.

"What was that shrieking noise I heard earlier?" the newcomer asked in a voice that Mr. Jackson attributed to silky honey.

Annabeth more attributed the voice to a well-worn woman who'd seen much in her life.

"Alix found a spider in her room," he explained. "We talked for a little while and then I sent her back to bed."

"Shouldn't you be in bed as well?" the newcomer inquired.

Mr. Jackson shrugged. "I couldn't sleep." He opened his arms towards the figure, feeling much more miserable than when his daughter was talking instead.

The figure left the box-shaped item at her feet and stepped forward into the light of the storm.

It was a woman. Her long blonde hair was scattered into a tangled curtain down to her elbows, and her grey eyes reflected the storm minutely. She stepped forward into Mr. Jackson's embrace and curled into his lap, much the same as the smaller girl had done before her.

No one said a word, but Annabeth could feel all eyes on her.

Mr. Jackson stroked the blonde curls, pressing a small kiss against the woman's hair. They sat in silence for several minutes, until the woman spoke up.

"Percy…" she whispered, "you know I have to go."

"So it is Percy," Calypso mumbled. "Which means that that blonde woman must be you, Annabeth."

Annabeth said nothing, but stared down at the stereo, watching the tape roll from one side to the other.

"That doesn't mean I want you to go," Mr. Jackson replied.

The woman sat up and looked him straight in the eye. "If I don't, she will come. I've pushed this off for long enough. Too much more, and she will get angry. She'll come, and not even my mother will be able to stop her from killing you, Alix, and Damon."

"Who's 'she'?" Leo asked. "Gaia?"

"No," Rachel muttered. "Something tells me it's someone else."

"Whoever it is, it's threatening Annabeth and Percy," Grover growled.

"But Annabeth—"

"No," the woman interrupted. "I'm sorry, Percy, but I have to do this. For your sake as well as the kids'."

Percy sighed, resting his forehead on Annabeth's shoulder. He didn't answer right away, instead taking her hand and bringing it to his lips, kissing her knuckles. He stared thoughtfully into the gold bands on her finger, unconsciously fiddling with the single one on his own finger.

Annabeth flexed her hand, rubbing the spot where a wedding ring would be with her thumb.

"Alright," he sighed finally. "Fine. But just promise me one thing."

"What?"

He looked up and pressed his hand to her cheek, staring forlornly into the two miniature storms that stared back. His forehead touched hers, and he whispered, "Promise you'll come back."

"Percy—"

"Just promise me," he insisted, knowing full well how tall of an order that was, especially for them.

Out of the corner of her eye, Annabeth noticed Percy pull his eyebrows together in worry. She reached for his hand and he held tight to it like it was a lifeline.

She smiled, and sealed the agreement with a kiss.

"I promise."

And with that, Percy watched as the most important woman in his life picked up her suitcase and walked out the door.

Percy's grip on Annabeth's hand tightened, and she bit her lip.

Meanwhile, in another room, Alix jumped up at a particularly loud crack of thunder. She scowled at her window, her mouth twisting into something that made her look like she'd just bitten into a lemon, and smacked her hand against the glass.

Leo laughed. "Percy and Annabeth's kid or not, she's got spunk. I like her."

With the next bout of lightning, she jumped, noticing a tiny scuttling black shape against her wall, and curled into a ball. She opened her mouth to scream, but then paused.

Alexis Lucia Jackson. Brave defender of people.

She frowned at the tiny shape, and said, "Stupid spider! My daddy said I'm brave! I'm not afraid of you!"

And with that, she brought her hand onto the black intruder with a sickening slap. And the spider was reduced to a black smudge on her blue-green walls.

Annabeth wrinkled her nose in disgust.

Alix smirked, wiped her hand on her jacket by her bed, and went back to sleep.

After that, a more metallic, automatic, older woman's voice like you hear on automated phone calls said, "Please play side two."

[STOP]

So yeah. There's the real basic background. Hopefully with you guys knowing a bit more in the beginning, it won't be as difficult for me to juggle so many secrets.

And in the next chapter, you'll partially find out why I never mentioned Damon before.

REMINDER: MY ACCOUNT IS CLUTTERED AND I'M SWITCHING TO A DIFFERENT ACCOUNT WITH THE USERNAME ANDICONVERSEHOODIES. IF YOU WANT TO FIND ME OR MORE CHAPTERS, SEARCH THAT.