Percy spent a few hours talking to Hecate about everything thing that she had tried to mediate on her own for the past few years. She told him how use of Chronomancy had led to the creation of several different timelines, in order to stop the monster called "The Beast." And he also learned that he was an outlier in an equation where all the variables had already been discovered and tested and substituted time and time again. As always, Percy Jackson was inserting himself into an impossible situation.

Then Hecate had explained who Reynard was, the trickster fox god who was surprisingly, a son of Persephone, and quite like one Luke Castellan, he was another child who resented their parent. But it didn't make sense, Persephone spent most of her time either on Olympus or in the Underworld.

Apparently, the god was some super douche and went around targeting, and killing, followers of Persephone up in the real world. There was already a seed of hatred planted in Percy's heart and he was sure that it would only grow until he was able to confront the disgraceful god in his own time. And as much as Percy wanted to feel empathetic for the immortal, he couldn't. Harming mortals because of your own mommy issues was so far out of line that the demigod was surprised that someone hadn't Faded the god a long time ago. But alas, he was a trickster god, and they weren't normally as easy to catch as some of the others.

"I'll work on it. On everything." He had said to Hecate when he had finally left her palace, and the titaness thanked him in earnest.

"I do suppose this is why you're my favorite Perseus."

"You're family Hec, someway, somehow." Percy said softly as he walked away. "And who would I be if I didn't help family?"

With that, Percy started making his way out of the Underworld. The walk seemed a lot shorter, like every step he took stretched the boundaries of what he could physically walk as a mortal. He briefly wondered if Hecate had anything to do with it.

When he reached the entrance of the cave again, it was already nighttime. The sounds of New York City echoed off Central Park's trees, Percy couldn't help but wonder what stories these trees had to tell. He wondered what the oldest ones had seen and how much history had been etched into the bark of even the youngest. He blinked. The thought hadn't occurred to him before, even though he had worked with various wood nymphs over the last few years. He and Grover had worked hard to convince the nymphs to take up some form of self-defense, because they both knew that there would be times when their woodland magic could only take them so far.

And so, as he stepped deeper into Central Park, he imbued his footsteps with magic, and felt the blessing of Pan flow through him as it did all those year ago in the Labyrinth, there was a point when he had almost forgotten about it, being so caught up in quest after quest that he had never had time to consider the piece of essence the god of the wild had placed inside him. It had been nurtured and reawaken in his time working with Grover and he was somewhat glad that it was.

The trees here were old, and the Nymphs that lived here were few and far in between. A few of them had even taken cuttings of their original homes and placed them in the forests of Camp Half Blood. It had been something that the two friends had thought of one of their late-night outings, when the sky had been particularly clear, and you could see The Huntress blazing high up into the sky. But now the trees were… vacant. Memories of what they used to be, but Percy could still use that.

He pumped life into the trees, liquid magic extended from beneath his feet and soaked into the roots of the trees that formed a clearing around him. Their leaves glowed golden. Filling the night up with a light so bright, Percy wondered if this was as close to divinity as they could get. His mind briefly flashed to Hera's Golden apple tree on top of Mount Orthrys. Was this how the Earth Mother had created it? By channeling her divinity directly into the roots of a sapling.

He shook his head as he began to fill his spell with meaning.

A demigod performing magic was quite different from a human performing magic. While mortals tapped into other sources of magic, like the wellspring, as Hecate had explained to him. Demigods imposed their own will onto the universe using their divine soul and because their parents were the ones who governed the universe, it had no choice but to submit to them in any way that they wanted. Usually magic in a broader sense was left to the children of Hecate, who had a much easier time accessing because of what their mother was the goddess/titan of, but other demigods tended to stick with the magic associated with their parent's domain. But Percy had learned that it was somewhat limiting to do that.

Having spent time with Helios had shown him how much you needed to expand your skill set. The dangers of the world were so much more than he had originally known, and magic was one of the few ways to get a good defense against everything.

"I need to see what's happened here. Foreign magic has invaded this world and threatened it's people. Help me protect them."

The trees responded eagerly. Their branches swirled and flew through the air, moving more like string through fabric instead of rigid and gnarly tree bark. They weaved themselves together, creating network so intricate that even Percy lost track of where one branch ended and where another one started. The trees pulsed with golden magic, sending flows of golden magic into the network they had created. Soon enough the pulses became so frequent that it was almost impossible to separate them. The network became a glowing screen.

Percy had to say.

He loved a good scrying screen spell.

The image appeared unexpectedly. The scene showed the same area looking very much like it did tonight. It followed the footfall of someone wearing dress shows as they walked through the grass and dirt and mud but leaving no evidence that they were there. The screen panned out, showing a cloud of moths and fixing the cuff links of their suit.

Percy snarled but kept watching, anger bubbling up in his chest. It left a bitter taste in his mouth, just the idea of this monster rampaging through New York without his knowledge.

The scene launched forward and focused instead on a pair of legs running through the forest at top speeds. They were running toward something, probably the first figure the screen had shown before. The scene quickly switched and showed the face of the person running, and Percy's eyes widened as he recognized who it was. The terrified face of Lou Ellen Blackstone almost made Percy drop his concentration on the scrying screen spell. The girl was a child of Hecate, and if Percy was being honest, one of the most powerful magic users at Camp Half Blood. The son of Poseidon didn't know if the Beast would know that, but the type of raw power she wielded would make waves if not properly hidden.

But Percy knew how well the mist worked, he knew how careful Lou Ellen was when she did magic especially when in the mortal world, it didn't make sense.

But Percy knew one thing for certain. He would get to the bottom of it, because as he watched Lou Ellen become frozen in place, and a single tear fall down her face, he couldn't help but feel as though she was looking directly at him. Begging and pleading for his help.