So, since I'm a couple of chapters into writing, and I'm sure after the slow pace of the first chapter that you guys would want to see the story move forward a little faster, I decided to, why not, release the second chapter.

I would also like to thank everyone who followed and favorited this story, and to thank The Nova 6 and merendinoemiliano for their reviews. I'm glad you guys have taken such a quick interest in this story, and I would love to encourage everyone who's reading this story to review, as those help to find any problems readers might have with my story and address them in one form or another.

On to the story. Enjoy!

Summary: After Alabaster, the son of Hecate, goes missing, the goddess asks Percy and Annabeth to go find him. But what they find may change their world forever. Sequel to Son of Magic by Haley Riordan.

Disclaimer: I don't own Percy Jackson or its characters, Rick Riordan does. I just own the storyline and any OC's that may pop up.

The Search

…

The next morning, Annabeth and I were wandering through Central Park, headed to Orpheus's Door.

"Are you sure we shouldn't call Chiron or Grover and get their opinions?" I was asking her. She shook her head.

"Percy, if this Alabaster is banished by Olympus, they wouldn't want us helping him at all." She said. "Besides, Chiron knows as much about the primordials as we do, and Grover is still in California dealing with the wildfires."

"And what do we know about the primordials?" I asked.

"Besides that they exist?" Annabeth said. "Nothing much. And besides Gaea and Tartarus, we haven't really encountered any of them."

I shivered, remembering the dark figure Annabeth and I encountered at the Doors of Death. Him and Gaea were definitely old and terrifying.

"How many of them are there?" I asked. "Were they all immortal?"

"For the most part." Annabeth tried to answer. "As for how many of them there were, I'm not sure. We know about Tartarus and Gaea, and Gaea's first husband, Ouranos, the first God of the Sky. And after our little run-in with Carter and Sadie, I researched a little Egyptian lore and found out about Apophis, the chaos serpent. I think he could be one. But there probably wasn't a whole lot of them, otherwise they would still be around."

"Why do you say that?" I asked her.

"Because just one of them is so powerful that the world nearly ends with just their presence. I imagine if there was an army of them, all of humanity would've been wiped out to begin with."

…

We approached Orpheus's Door, a rock where a cave existed that I had once used to escape the Underworld after my friend Nico had me bathe in the River Styx to become strong enough to fight Kronos. Mortals took leisurely walks and jogs near it everyday and never knew what it was.

"Do you think Alabaster and Dr. Claymore went in there?" Annabeth asked me.

"I don't know." I answered. "They could have. But I don't know that it would take them to the altar thing. I only used it to get out of the Underworld."

"Are you looking for someone?" A voice said from behind us. Annabeth and I jumped and turned to find a girl behind us. She was wearing a plain brown dress and no shoes, and her eyes and hair were green.

"You're a dryad." Annabeth said. The dryad sniffed and looked at me.

"You're Grover's friend, aren't you?" The dryad said.

I looked at Annabeth, and said, "Yeah, we um- we both are. My name is Percy, and this is Annabeth."

The dryad looked us up and down, and said, "My name is Alura. I live in the sycamore over there." She pointed at a tree near Orpheus's Cave.

I looked at the tree, and Annabeth, and thought for a second.

"So, Alura?" I asked.

"Mh-hmm?" She said.

"We're- um, we're looking for some people." I said. "Have you seen two people like us, you know, not mortals, come anywhere near this cave recently?"

Alura tilted her head, and pointed at Annabeth and me.

Annabeth sighed. "People besides the two of us?" She asked, exasperated.

Alura huffed. "Well, someone has an attitude. And I think I saw two people going inside the Cave a few hours ago. Or maybe- or maybe a few days ago. I'm not sure."

See, time is weird for dryads. They sleep so much, so days can seem like hours, or months like days, or years like months. I'm sure you get it.

"Are you sure they went in the Cave?" Annabeth asked.

"I know what I saw!" Alura said defensively. "One of them was younger, and he said, 'Take Me To The Altar of Coatlicue.' Or something like that. Then they went in, and they haven't come out yet."

As Annabeth opened her mouth to snipe at Alura, I put my hand on her arm. We were here to find a lost son of Hecate, not start an insult war with nature spirits. Besides, Grover would never forgive us if I let Annabeth attack Alura.

"Thank you, Alura." I said quickly. "We appreciate your help."

"Oh, I'm sure she does." Alura sniffed, before walking away and literally fading away into her sycamore tree home.

"I don't like dryads." Annabeth muttered.

"You like Juniper." I said, confused.

"Yeah, because she's nice and doesn't really act like a dryad at all." Annabeth explained. "Most dryads are just so disconnected from the world and its irritating."

"Who's Coatal- whatever?" I asked, trying to change the subject.

"Coatlicue." Annabeth answered carefully. "If I'm not mistaken, she was an Aztec earth goddess."

"Could she be one of those primordial things?" I asked, not at all surprised that my braniac (yet awesome) girlfriend knew about some random Aztec gods.

"It's possible, but you know what that would mean?" Annabeth answered a question with another question.

"I don't know but I have a feeling you're about to tell me." I responded.

"That the Aztec gods are real, too." Annabeth explained.

My head started hurting. I had had enough trouble remembering all of the Greek gods and their Roman names, but now I knew that Egyptian and Norse gods were running around the modern world, too. Now I had to worry about Aztec gods.

"Awesome." I said, rubbing my temples. "What do we do now?"

Annabeth shrugged. "I guess we go in after them." She said, leading me towards Orpheus' Cave.

"Well, this should be good." I groaned, following Annabeth.

…

As we approached Orpheus's Door, a thought occurred to me in a moment of rare brilliance. I know. Thinking and great ideas are usually more Annabeth's thing. I don't even know how I even thought of this.

"What if Orpheus's Door is like the Room of Requirement?" I asked aloud. "You know, from Harry Potter?"

Annabeth tilted her head. "What do you mean?"

"Like, what if it usually is an entrance to the Underworld, but if you say the right words it becomes a door to somewhere else, like the altar thing?" I asked, hoping I was onto something.

Annabeth's eyes widened. "Percy, that's brilliant! Alura said that either Alabaster or Dr. Claymore said, 'Take Me To The Altar of Coatlicue'. That's it! That's how we go in after him."

I smiled. I didn't often come up with an idea so smart that it amazed my girlfriend, so I was basking in it.

"You wanna do the honors?" Annabeth asked, gesturing to Orpheus's Door.

"Oh no, I might've come up with the idea, but I can't pronounce the goddess's name." I argued.

Annabeth sighed. Oh well. So much for impressing her. Annabeth looked at the door and said loudly: "Take me to the altar of Coatlicue."

For a moment, nothing happened. I was about to break the news to my girlfriend that she couldn't pronounce the name of the Goddess either when the rock trembled liked it was caught in an earthquake and a rough passage appeared on the rock's side.

"Let's get this over with." Annabeth said reluctantly as we walked inside.

…

The tunnel smelled of dust. Cobwebs hung from the walls. I looked at Annabeth in concern. Being a daughter of Athena, spiders weren't really her thing.

"I'm fine." She said, gritting her teeth as we continued. On the walls, we saw crude drawings of stick men and giant faces in the sky, the sea, and on the ground. One picture we saw depicted a giant, terrifying snake devouring the sun.

Another displayed a warrior standing on a ledge on the ocean, facing a terrifying creature rising from the depths of the sea.

We passed a drawing depicting a blacked-out figure wiping out an ancient village. I shivered as I looked at the crude, familiar face that was drawn.

"Is that-"I started.

"Yep, that's Tartarus." Annabeth answered, looking scared with a faraway look in her eyes, as if remembering our time down there. "Let's just…keep going and find this guy."

I grabbed Annabeth's hand and we kept going. As we passed more and more drawings, I asked. "How old do you think these are?"

Annabeth shrugged. "Probably very old. Like maybe older than Ancient Greece or Egypt."

"But if it was before human civilization, who put these here?" I asked, confused. I was pretty sure I'd heard about three times how humanity was created out of clay by one god or another.

"No one knows." Annabeth answered. "Maybe there were people before humanity, before the gods."

"That's insane to think about." I said, my head hurting. "If there were people here before us, why don't we know about them?"

"History is written by the victors." Annabeth quoted. "If gods and humans wiped out some early civilization, maybe they destroyed all evidence of that civilization as one last insult, leaving them to be forgotten forever."

"That's terrifying." I said. Imagine an entire way of life, an entire world, and no one knowing a thing about it.

Wait, I could imagine it. That's my world.

"Yeah." Annabeth said, distracting. Greenish-blue light was coming from the end of the tunnel.

"You think that's our guy?" Annabeth asked.

"Probably." I agreed. We both quickened our pace for the end of the tunnel.

…

We walked into a circular chamber covered in more elaborate drawing. Torches lit with green fires hung from the walls, and a giant ceiling decorated with sleeping faces hung ominously above us.

In the center of the room, a boy in grey clothes with a bulletproof vest decorated in green symbols stood, chanting with his hands raised, a ball of energy in between them. It was definitely the source of the light. A man dressed in slacks and a nice shirt lay on the ground, unmoving.

I looked at Annabeth, and she seemed concerned.

I turned to the boy, and yelled, "Alabaster!" The boy dropped his hands, and turned to face us, his features twisted in a puzzled expression.

"Who are you two?" He asked, confused.

"Your mom sent us to find you." Annabeth explained, taking the lead. "My name is Annabeth Chase, daughter of Athena. This is my boyfriend, Percy, son of Poseidon." She said gesturing to me.

Alabaster's eyes flickered in recognition. His jaw tightened.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, feeling an impending sense of danger. I put my other hand in my pocket, gripping Riptide. "What happened to the doctor?" I asked, gesturing to Dr. Claymore.

"Well, Dr. Claymore agreed to share the power he got from my mother with me." Alabaster said, turning away from us and looking down at Claymore. "He gave up his life so that I could work my magic."

"What magic?" Annabeth asked, squeezing my hand. I uncapped Riptide as Alabaster swung around and screamed "Incantare: Modus Impederant!"

I froze, my sword in the air. I was stuck. I couldn't move. I tried to call out to Annabeth, who seemed to be facing a similar problem. I recognized Alabaster's Latin words. Impede motion. It was a spell.

"You guys must be wondering what's going on here." Alabaster guessed. "Or maybe you don't really care and you just wanna kill me. I don't really know. Or care. But don't worry yourselves into a frenzy. The spell will wear off soon. Just an insurance policy. I need to finish my other spell."

Alabaster walked over to us and looked me up and down, disdain in his eyes.

"I hated you for so long." Alabaster confessed, looking me in the eye. "For a while there, I wanted to kill you. But now I know the truth, and since Dr. Claymore is gone, I've been a little lonely. I'm glad you guys came."

Alabaster walked back to the ball of glowing energy, reaching his hand out to it.

"You see, after the Titan War and Gaea's Awakening, Dr. Claymore and I became curious. We wanted to know how many other pantheons of gods existed in the world. And we discovered that besides the Greeks and Romans, the Norse, Mesopotamian, Ancient Egyptian, and Aztec gods were real as well as countless others. We realized that every single myth and ancient story of the past held a grain of truth. But then we discovered some ancient writings that stated that the Olympians, the Titans and monsters, all of those old gods and creatures were all part of the same species. The race of Precursors. But who was before them?"

Alabaster turned to us and smiled. I felt my hands beginning to move. I gripped Riptide, hard. I hoped Alabaster wouldn't notice.

"So, without my mothers' knowledge, we looked and found ancient records of a group of primordial beings that existed before the gods. 12 of them, to be exact. Including Gaea, Ouranos, and Tartarus. Another primordial has surfaced recently as well. Apophis, the ancient chaos serpent of Egyptian myth. Most of the others are unaccounted for. Until Dr. Claymore and I found records of the First." Alabaster grinned mischievously.

I felt my legs beginning to move. Out of my peripheral vision, I saw Annabeth wiggling her index finger.

"Coatlicue, of Aztec myth." Alabaster explained, reaching both hands for the glowing orb of energy. "The Mother of the Gods, as she was once called. She was the first primordial, the first to be referred to as a god. And she rests in this chamber, in its very walls. I think its high time that she woke up."

As Alabaster started chanting more Latin, I broke free of his immobilization spell and launched myself at him, Riptide aimed at his back.

…

…

…To Be Continued?

Ha! I love cliffhangers. Anyways, if anyone with an account and an open PM reviews, I will send them a sneak peak into the next chapter if they want it.

Also, a note on the dryad Alura. I know she isn't in the books but I thought a dryad would be an interesting character to play with. She will probably return in a later chapter, so I hope you guys like her.

Thanks for reading, and see y'all next time!