AN: The "sitting on a park bench" joke was a shout-out to the song "Aqualung" by Jethro Tull, one of the greatest bands of the classic rock era.

The italicized text is not supposed to be either Magnus or Amy speaking; I know neither of them talks like that. It's a third person narrator. When the font is in brackets and not italicized, that's Amy's commentary. Also, I understand that a lot of this stuff will be obvious to Percy Jackson readers, but nowhere in that series is the whole story set down. Most Greek mythology books tell the story this way.

I apologize for the lack of stuff blowing up so far and promise that there will be action in upcoming chapters. Hang in there.

XXI. Tartarus Rising.

I knelt in the tree's shadow. Magnus sat Indian-style near me. On my other side, Sarah crouched, her pointy elbows making her look like a grasshopper. She glared at Magnus with hooded eyes. He ignored her hostility.

This is the story he told.

...

In the beginning, there was darkness. In the darkness was Chaos—a whirling mass of cosmic material and unshaped energy.

As the movement of Chaos slowed down, it formed into three giant beings. The solid became Gaia, the Earth. The air filled with stars and became Uranus, the Sky. And between them lay Eros, spirit of Love, the most powerful force in this world, perhaps in any.

Gaia could see the sparkling majesty of Uranus through Eros. Uranus likewise could see the fertile solidity of Gaia. In due time she brought forth his offspring.

These first children of Gaia and Uranus were intelligent, and magnificent to look upon. Their form they shared with humans (who did not yet exist) but they were vastly larger and they controlled different aspects of the cosmos being created around them. At first there were only twelve—six boys and six girls—but as they matured their species increased. They were called the Titans, and both their parents were proud of them.

Gaia became pregnant again. She now birthed three male giants who each had one eye in the middle of their foreheads. They were ugly and rather brutish, but they were skilled in the crafting of metal. They became known as the Cyclopes.

Her third litter were triplets again—three more male giants, these with a hundred arms each. They were called the Hecatonchires or the Hundred-Handed Ones; like the Cyclopes, they were ugly creatures who forged beautiful things.

Mysteriously, other life forms were appearing during this era and for a long time after: nymphs, humans, animals and plants. They were small beings, at the mercy of the Titans.

Gaia loved all her children equally, but Uranus did not. He saw his own beauty in the Titans, but not in the others. He wondered in disgust how he could have ever sired such hideous beings.

In the unfathomable vacant space below Gaia lay the great pit of Tartarus, a Pit so great not even Uranus' starry eyes could pierce to the bottom of it. He took his six malformed sons to the brink of Tartarus one day, and dropped them over the edge of it.

Much as Gaia loved her husband, she loved her children more; they were part of her. They always came first.

She took aside Kronos, the youngest and cleverest of the Titans, and gave him a great sharp scythe that she had fashioned deep within herself.

"Kronos, I give you permission to kill your father. Throw him into Tartarus. See how he likes it. This can never happen again. All my children must be free."

Kronos, who had always longed for his father's power, obeyed her without a second thought. He chopped Uranus into thousands of pieces and cast him into the Pit. [Yet, for reasons that no one has ever bothered to explain, we still have a sky].

Kronos then assumed kingship of the universe. He took his sister, Rhea, as his wife and queen [ew]. The other Titans became his courtiers. He also kept the company of nymphs, and even humans were sometimes brought in for entertainment.

But Kronos broke his promise to his mother. He didn't care for the Cyclopes and the Hundred-Handed Ones any more than his father had. Kronos was beautiful, and ugliness hurt his selfish eyes. He did not set his monstrous brothers free.

He was also consumed by fear that one of his children would overthrow him in the same way he had overthrown his father. [You'd think that he could avoid this whole problem by celibacy, but nobody ever does anything that makes sense in Greek mythology]. Whenever his wife, Rhea, birthed a child, Kronos would have the infant brought to him. He would cradle the baby in his great arms, eyes misted with fatherly joy…and then he would swallow it whole.

(On a side note, Kronos had children by other women, like Philyra the nymph, who bore him the centaur Chiron. To the best of our knowledge, Kronos never tried to kill those kids. He apparently only worried about the children of Rhea).

Rhea lost five children this way. She was trapped by her tyrannical husband and had to obey his orders. No other Titans were brave enough to oppose him.

But Gaia was ever watchful, and she saw that Kronos had become even more corrupt than Uranus. Time for another revolution.

When Rhea delivered her sixth child, she wrapped a Titan-baby-sized stone in swaddling cloth and sent it to Kronos, who was by now so used to this routine that he did not even wonder at what a silent, cold, heavy baby he was swallowing. The real infant was meanwhile spirited away to a secret cave on the island of Crete. Gaia had prepared it for her little grandson's upbringing, and with her powers hid it even from the all-piercing eyes of Kronos.

The little Titan boy was named Zeus. The rebellious nymphs recruited by Gaia raised him. Zeus always knew as he grew up that his destiny was to kill his father and take the cosmic throne.

His best friend was a young Titan girl named Metis. She was prudent and clever. Zeus was neither, but he was handsome and powerful. They made a perfect team. When they came of age, they married. Then they left the island to wage war on his father.

Meanwhile Zeus' five siblings were not dead. All this time they had grown inside Kronos' stomach. It was the only world they'd ever known, but it was getting awfully crammed. As for Kronos, he was becoming rather concerned about his constant stomachaches and apparently uncontrollable weight gain. What could be causing it?

Zeus descended to Tartarus. He fought his way through the starry fragments of his grandfather's corpse to find his uncles, the Cyclopes and the Hundred-Handed Ones. "I'm going to overthrow Kronos," he told them. "Join my revolution, and I will set you free." Their ugliness repulsed him just as much as it had Uranus and Kronos, but Zeus knew from his grandmother that beauty was not the only power.

The disenfranchised sons of Gaia allied themselves with their audacious nephew at once. Upon returning to the upper world they began forging weapons for the war.

Metis, meanwhile, had gone to Kronos and given him a magic herb, which made him vomit up his five other children. There were three girls—Hestia, Demeter, and Hera—and two boys, Hades and Poseidon. Once Metis had whisked them to a safe place, she told them the whole tale. Without any hesitation they threw in their lot with Zeus.

War broke out, and all the Earth was ravaged by it. Mountains were torn from their roots. Gods and Titans drew ichor on air, land and sea. Smaller animals, including humans, were wiped out during the conflict and had to be reinvented post bellum.

Zeus ended the war at last by chopping his father into a million pieces and casting them into Tartarus.

Those Titans who had sided with the young gods were given power and rewards. The Cyclopes and Hundred-Handed Ones were also honored, though in future years they would once again be despised for their ugliness.

Those Titans who had sided with Kronos were punished severely. Some were cast into Tartarus alongside their lord. Others paid more creative penalties—Atlas was forced to hold the sky on his shoulders, while his daughter Calypso was confined to the island Ogygia for eternity…

…..

"Pity about Calypso," Magnus finished. His green-gold eyes were soft and dreamy, staring at something no one else could see. "Such a nice girl. I washed up on Ogygia on an adventure once and stayed with her awhile. She wanted to me to stay forever, but—"

"Back to Kronos," Sarah cut in. She'd shown no emotion for most of the story (she told me she'd read it before several times). But once he mentioned Calypso, Sarah was now even tenser than she had been before.

I shot her a look like What'd you do that for? I'm curious!

Then it hit me that I hadn't even questioned any part of Magnus' tale. That made me nervous enough that I decided to lie low awhile and let the conversation unfold.

The High Warlock of Brooklyn rolled his eyes at her. "If you must know, matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed. Even your silly little mundane scientists have figured that out. Kronos is not dead."

"That much I surmised," Sarah returned.

"But I thought Zeus chopped him up and dropped them into the Abyss," I cut in. "How'd he survive?"

Magnus looked a lot friendlier when he turned his face to me. "There's a sad irony to the universe, Amy. When a 'good' sentient life form—god, demigod, Nephilim, human, what-have-you—dies, they're permanently dead, and their spirit will float into the stars or perhaps reincarnate. 'Bad' sentient life forms on the other hand go body and soul back to whatever inferno they came from, nurse their wounds, and return in the same shape to the worlds of the living. Depending on the powers of the demon and the manner of their death, this restoration process might take anywhere from six months to six centuries. Kronos was such a force that it took him about three thousand years."

"OK, thanks." I wasn't sure I understood, but it was nice of him to explain.

"But what does Kronos want?" Sarah asked.

"What do you think he wants?" Magnus said this like this answer was as obvious as whether water is wet. "Have you never read any fantasy novels?"

"I don't care for the genre; there's nothing to learn from it. Why do you ask?"

"Pick up pretty much any fantasy book and it will include a villain who wants to take over the universe, obliterate the forces of good, and bend whatever's left of humanity to his (or occasionally her) nefarious will. In that respect they are quite realistic."

"I keep forgetting that I'm talking to a warlock," she grumbled. "Does Kronos want to kill and/or subjugate anything in his path, or is his wrath limited to the Olympian gods?"

"His plan is to destroy this whole world," he replied matter-of-factly. "He leads his army now hosted by a demigod. Soon he will burn away the boy's body and rule in his own dread form. His first targets are the gods and their children, but his victory will render this planet unable to support human life. Most animals will die too. The Nephilim and all us Down-worlders (except maybe the vampires) will either starve or become enslaved. Then all living things on this planet will wither; Hyperion will scorch the face of the Earth and dry up the seas; and Mother Gaia herself will perish in agony. Thus ends what the Norse called Ragnarök, Twilight of the Gods."

"Why did Morpheus put the other humans to sleep when he could've just killed them?"

"Humans make useful slaves."

Magnus said this with no emotion. I wondered if he too, thought humans were merely "useful slaves" and edged closer to Sarah. Sensing my fear, she put her arm around me.

"My brother went missing early this morning," she stated. "He left a note saying he had life-or-death business to attend to. His name is Ron. He's twelve years old, on the short side, with long unkempt reddish hair. Might've been carrying a guitar and a laptop. Have you seen someone matching that description?"

The warlock fiddled with one of his bracelets. "Yes. I met him. I was sitting here waiting this morning, before the sun was up. I was joined by a young bird girl called Nudge, who told me she'd left her Flock and needed to visit…" his voice dropped to a whisper "…the Itex Institute for Higher Learning."

I could not resist shooting a what did I tell you look at Sarah. She ignored me.

"And the Itex Institute for Higher Learning is…?"

"A prison of the worst description. Run by Itex, a soulless mundie corporation bent on eliminating every supernatural force—including Kronos—and controlling all life." Magnus shivered, though the afternoon sun poured heat down on us even in the tree's shadow. "They've kidnapped friends of mine—faeries, werewolves, vampires. They've killed them and shocked them back to life and cut them apart and sewed them back together all wrong, as if they were merely more lab rats.

"Anyway, Nudge had been there before. She'd come to the city looking for her friend Fang, whom she believed had been captured and brought back there. She claimed that 'someone she knew she could trust' had told her to wait in this park till a good travelling companion came along.

"Your brother came in following this big locust-y thing I'd never seen before that was playing a flute and singing in a language I've never heard. And I can speak most of the tongues of all creatures."

Sarah's eyes had gotten a lot bigger and she was smiling. I'd have to ask her about the locust thing later.

Magnus continued, "The locust disappeared just as the sun finally rose. Your brother sat on one of these benches for a while, playing Simon & Garfunkel. He seemed kind of lost, so I brought Nudge over and suggested he join her. I gave them some supplies and they were on their way."

"You just sent them over to this evil place where they torture people?" I asked. "But Ron's only twelve, and Nudge isn't much older."

"I was doing far more dangerous things at their age," he replied.

"How old are you?" I blurted out.

"Nineteen."

"Is that young to be the most powerful warlock in Brooklyn?"

"I've been nineteen for the past seven-hundred-eighty-one years."

"Ah." See? I catch on to stuff pretty fast.

Sarah stood. I jumped to my feet too.

"Bane, can you give us directions to this Institute?" she asked.

Magnus shook his head. "I do not know the way. Few who enter those doors come out again, and those that do…aren't very good at retracing their steps."

He stood. Once again I was shocked by his height. I'm used to people towering over me, but I know Sarah's not.

"However," he continued, "I know that if you go into the subway tunnels tonight, you might find someone who will help you—someone who's been there before, and escaped."

"Who?"

"I can't tell you or it would ruin the surprise."

"I see," she said flatly. She walked away to retrieve her backpack.

"Sir?" I asked once she was out of earshot.

He smirked at me. "You can call me Magnus."

"Can anything be done to stop Kronos?"

"It's a bit late for that, I'm afraid. There's a demigod army headquartered somewhere on the island, but they don't stand a chance. My advice is to find all your loved ones and get to another world while you still have time. It's a bit hard for mundies to do that, but since you're not effected by Morpheus' spell, maybe you could pull it off."

"How much time do you think we have?"

"A week at best."

"What are you going to do?"

"My business is my own, Miss Porter."

"Are you going to help the demigods?"

"Perhaps, if they ask nicely." His eyes drifted to the hilt of James Blackwood's sword, which was sticking out of my backpack (we hadn't been able to fit it all the way). "Can I have a look at that?"

If he'd wanted to kill us, he could've a long time ago. I took the sword out and handed it to him.

He unsheathed it and looked the blade over. "A little rusty, don't you think?"

I nodded. "But it's the best we've got."

I heard a metallic zinging noise and saw a brief flash of light. Light appeared to pour from Magnus' jewelry as he brought his armored fingers swiftly down the length of the blade.

I gasped—I knew he was a warlock, but that was the first time I'd ever seen real magic done. All the rust had vanished. The sword shone like it had just been forged. The freshly sharpened blade looked almost thirsty for the black blood of demons.

Magnus smiled at his handiwork and gave it back to me. "It'll slay many more monsters now."

"Thanks."

He reached into the pockets of his tight pants and pulled out what appeared to be energy bars. "Take these. You'll get hungry."

"We've already got a lot of food packed," I said, not knowing why looking at the energy bars gave me a creepy feeling. Was warlock food safe?

"It's a gift," he stated, then reached over my head and stuffed them into my backpack.

Sarah sprinted back. "Thank you for your help, Sir," she grunted. "We will now head to this evil Institute to save my little brother just in time for the Apocalypse. You ready, Amy?"

"Yep."

"Have fun!" Magnus trilled. "Best of luck!"

Sarah and I exchanged a look of stupefied horror.

He turned to me. "By the way, is that your natural hair color?"

Whoa, where had that come from? I looked down at my long blood red locks. "No. I'm naturally blonde."

Roughly he grabbed my hand and wrote something on the palm in pen.

And then he vanished from our sight.

AN: While you're here, check out the excellent PJO/MI crossover Lies, by Pyg'm ( s/7774858/1/Lies). Thanks!