A/N: So, you might be slightly confused in some chapters, as later chapters are going to be a combination of stuff happening in current time, and dreams. If you guys don't get something, ask. I'll explain.

One week later.

Percy found himself in the middle of a huge room, like the ones he'd seen in one of Annabeth's ideas for the redesigning of Olympus. Marble statues cornered the room, both ends of the space lacking walls, as if his was in the centre of a courtyard rather than a room.

Then he realized that the sunlight making shadows in the centre was coming from the sky, and when he looked up, the ceiling was lacking too.

And when he looked about, he realized that all the walls had disappeared, leaving him in the centre of a large platform, with a marble floor and pale Greek style statues in the corners, towering over a huge area and looking down at an entire city. Rhodes, a voice whispered in his mind, as he spied a huge colossus in the heart of the city, probably the city's patron god.

This meant that he was in Ancient Greece.

Okay, he thought. A demigod dream.

The next thing he noticed was that he was wearing a Greek chiton, lined with gold. He raised his eyebrows and looked around, wondering what in Hades he was doing in this dream.

"My lord."

He blinked and turned to the voice, a soft, lyrical tone that he felt he should be familiar with. A woman, in a chiton similar to his, was standing next to him, looking down at the city with a content, calm smile.

Her blond curls were pinned up in a Greek hairstyle, the way he had seen princesses wear their hair. She had an aura of power around her, and looked like one of those ageless mythological figures. Percy decided she must be a goddess.

Then she turned her face towards him, and he felt a profound shock in his system. Her eyes were an impossible blue, mixed with swirls of glass green. And her face…

She was the spitting image of Annabeth.

But then again, Percy mused, Annabeth wasn't likely to call him 'my lord', even in a godsdamned dream.

She smiled. "I know what you are thinking, my lord." She held up her arms and looked at them. "This is not what I truly looked like. But with the new dawn…I must say all of our anchors have influenced us with their image, haven't they?" she smiled at him again, this time an Annabeth like knowing smile. "Even you have green eyes."

He tried to speak, but it seemed that his mouth was glued shut, as if the person he was in the dream wished to have control over him as he slumbered.

The goddess shook her head, sighing as she looked at him. "He calls you," she said, skimming his forearm with her fingertips, sending currents of pleasure-shock up his spine. "You must be safe, my lord."

The world seemed to invert, the dream changing into a scene where fire rained from the sky and everything seemed to burn.

She gave him one last reassuring smile as the glowing embers enveloped her, but her eyes held concern and determination. "Trust your legacy."

And everything turned into flame and ash.

When he gained awareness, or so to say, his consciousness regained sense, he was chained to a wall. No, not a wall…the surface ground against his now bare back, sharp stones digging into his feverish flesh. He was standing in lava, his arms chained to a mountain, his feet to the ground.

Everything hurt; his arms felt cut open with blades and the shackles seemed to bite into his wrists and ankles and he noticed he was in nothing but torn and smoldering jeans. It stunned him even more when he realized the heat had no effect on him…it seemed like he was back in Hephaestus's forges in the Labyrinth, only this time, there were no monsters, and the flames didn't burn him.

"Having fun, sea child?"

Percy blinked against the heat and looked to his right, where the voice seemed to come from. A blurred figure, almost like a semi humanoid pillar of ash, leaned against the mountain next to him. He wondered for a second whether it was a monster, but the man (the voice was male) seemed like a strange presence, one he had never felt before.

The figure laughed—like paper crackling as it burnt, wood consumed in flames. Something told Percy that he did nothing but burn—burn as one column, burn everything in its path until it was nothing but a desert of ash. "Perhaps you are wondering why I look so. So I tell you," the man grinned. Percy couldn't see him doing so, but he could sense him—as if he himself was grinning. "I tell you that I am not…fully formed yet."

This time, Percy found that he could speak. "Are you in Tartarus?"

He laughed again, and Percy had to cringe at the sound. "No, demigod. I am—I was—someplace where there is no return, seemingly. But my essence has found its way back to the world. And it feeds off fire."

"Gee, I'd never guess." His own voice sounded like a croak.

"You demigods have a strange sense of humor." The figure smirked—again, he could sense it. "I may seem sadistic because of what I am to do, demigod, but…" He pulled Riptide from Percy's pocket and uncapped it.

The blade seemed to glow, with a powerful light in his hands. He smiled and purred as he ran his hand along the edge of the blade. "This is celestial heritage, you know. It once belonged to—"

He broke off with another chuckle. "Why waste information?" his smile gleamed malice. "You will know your ancestry soon."

He positioned the tip of the sword over Percy's heart, and smiled. Turning his own weapon against him. "I need your fire, sea child." The man put the tip on his skin, where the metal bit into his chest and summoned blood to the surface. The figure smirked. "So burn, Perseus. Burn."

He drove the blade into his heart, and Percy screamed.

Alex was not amused to be woken up in the middle of the night by her brother's incoherent screaming.

She was sleeping pretty peacefully, her dreams mostly consisting of scenes she had no idea what to make of. Swords crossed as a storm dropped from the sky, some words being muttered in a language of the Ancients that Alex somehow understood, words like heritage, and fire, and sanctify, and blood, and a royal purple cloak shimmering with a metallic luster, and eyes—gold and silver and violet and red. And there was something about a curse being handed down, from a primordial, a Titan.

The dream stopped at a scene where a young woman was bent over the form of a man, inhumanely crystalline teardrops shimmering on her face that was turned away from Alex. The woman passed her hand over his face, saying something she did not quite catch, and the man's eyes opened.

Alex gasped. His eyes were a deep, flaring violet—beautiful.

Then a piercing scream shattered her dream.

She got up fast, alert for any signs of a threat. She jumped over the side of the bunk, crouching, her fingers involuntarily closing over Shockwave, seeking the warm safety of familiarity. She blinked rapidly to adjust her vision to the darkness, and looked around for threats. Her eyes scanned the room, and stopped and narrowed when they fell on the writhing body of her brother.

She dropped her fighting stance and walked over to him, her brows knitting together in concern. His body was sweaty, tangled in sheets, his chest heaving as he strained against invisible restraints. His pillow lay on the floor next to his bunk, and his mess raven hair was matted against his forehead, beads of perspiration against his cheekbones.

Alex rolled her eyes in annoyance and threw the sheets off him, leaning over to grab his shoulders and shaking him hard. No response. She scowled. He'd just woken her up from her—for once—non-nightmare night and now absolutely refused to wake up himself. She dug her fingers into his shoulder blades and shook him hard, hissing, "Wake up, Percy!"

His eyes flew open, pupils blown wide, almost consuming the green which was now only a thin ring around the black. She frowned again, reconsidering her infuriation. Maybe he had a pretty bad nightmare.

His hand drifted to his chest, to the place where his heart would be. He pressed his fingers against it and moved to examine them, sighing in relief when he sighted them.

Alex looked at him in confusion. "That must've been one hell of a bad dream."

Percy registered her presence and sat up, breathing hard. "It was."

She raised her eyebrows, questioning.

He shrugged. "Torture scene. And Annabeth."

She looked at him in mild, thinly veiled amusement. "So you too live in fear of 'the girlfriend'?"

He scowled at her. "Annabeth first. Scene change, weird smoky guy, Riptide through my heart."

She didn't even try to hide her confusion. "Run that by me again."

"I was in a courtyard, overlooking a city. A goddess was there, and she…" he hesitated. "She looked exactly like Annabeth, except her eyes were blue-green. Like, dark blue with tiny bits of neon green."

She raised an eyebrow. "Highly descriptive of you."

Percy rolled his eyes. "She said that 'we'," he made air quotes with his fingers. "are influenced by our 'anchors'. So, these gods have anchors. Then she pointed out that I have green eyes, which seems unnecessary. And then she was all like, "he's calling you, you gotta go, and trust your legacy, by the way." Kind of weird. And then I was in a place that was all fire and lava. And I was chained to the side of a mountain. Next to me was this weird humanoid dark figure who said he had been chained and fed on 'fire'. He said that he needed my fire, and then he drove Riptide into my heart."

Alex cocked her head to the side. "That's…confusing. Are you sure it was just a dream and he wasn't a real mythical figure."

He hesitated. "Well…his speech made it sound like he escaped from somewhere, and needed to 'feed' to regain his full power."

Something nagged at her mind, an idea that ran away when she tried to chase it. "Well…we should sleep now. We could ask Rachel later."

Percy nodded, looking weary. "Yeah. It's better to sleep right now rather than, you know, chat about nightmares."

She gave him a curt nod and walked back to her own bunk. Before laying down, she hesitated and looked back. "Percy?"

"Yeah?"

"Did he say something about…you know, handing something down from protogenoi?"

A moment of hesitation. "I think so…Titan heritage. Why?"

She swallowed, the prophecy swirling in her mind. "Nothing. Nothing at all."

"…Rachel?"

Nothing. If the prophetess was in the cave, she certainly gave no indication of being so. Alex stepped cautiously through the curtains, looking around curiously. A bed was pushed against one wall, a red leather armchair and a couple couches in the middle. The cool, damp walls of the cave were occasionally smeared with paint, and there were a few easels scattered around.

She walked to one that seemed the most recent, paint still clinging in splatters to the rough canvas cloth covering the picture underneath. Alex's sneakers pressed against the damp floor, successfully eliminating any noise footsteps might have made.

Alex grabbed one end of the coarse cloth and flung it aside, wondering what Rachel had painted. The paper was covered in orange and grey and red and –

In a sharp movement, she sucked in her breath, reeling from the shock, eyes wide at the scene before her.

Percy—her brother—stood with outspread arms, a firestorm raging around him. Rivulets of water shot through the flames, steam billowing from the fire into a cloudless, crimson sky. His camp T-shirt was torn, jeans ripped with claw marks, clothes smoldering—but he looked unharmed, his eyes shining with wild content. His lips were drawn back in a snarl, and his eyes—

Pupil less, consumed in unhallowed fire.

Alex stumbled back in alarm, her legs tangling in the lavender curtains as she stepped out of the cave and ran as fast as her feet would carry her, determined to ask Percy if it rang a bell.

The cabins came into her line of view, and—

She crashed into a boy, sending them both to the ground. Groaning, she got up and scowled at the imbecile who'd made her fall.

She opened her mouth to curse him, but faltered as she noticed his features. Sharp, almost colorless irises, shaggy black hair, and the unmistakable aviator jacket. Nico di Angelo, son of Hades extraordinaire.

He got to his feet and rolled his eyes at her, which made her own green ones narrow.

"Watch where you're going." She hissed.

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "I was sent to find you. So I guess you should watch where you're going."

Alex opened her mouth to come up with a comeback, and then blinked as his words settled. "I'm being summoned?"

He nodded.

"Where?" she asked, dreading the answer.

Nico wrung his hands and rested his fingers on the hilt of his Stygian Iron sword. "Chiron's calling you." he said, and turned away. "The quest is on."

There you go. Finally the story takes off!

Reviews would be much appreciated.