Hey guys it's me back at it again with the consistency. Shout out to TheTrueSonOfPoseidon for being the first to review twice on the story and PJandLGequalsLove and Raxacoricofallapatoreous for reviewing. Anyway I love your feedback even if your just saying you like it. Keep them coming.
Hecate? Hadn't he once let loose a bunch of angry pirates on her daughter and left her trapped on an island? That Hecate? He sure hoped she didn't remember that, or that she didn't know it was him.
"My daughter sends her regards." She said.
Crap! Well there went that idea.
"Sorry. Wait, what happened to the other ladies that were with her?" He asked.
He hadn't really thought of what may have happened to the girls should they be trapped on the island with a bunch of pirates. He didn't think that the pirates didn't carry any lingering resentment at being guinea pigs for so long. While he didn't care much for Circe herself, he didn't think all the women on the island should be held accountable.
"No need to worry, they were all fine. You could thank your father for that. Any pirates that had any thoughts to harm the women were hit by mighty storms and had their ships collapsed. With them drowning and the girls washing up ashore somewhere alive." Hecate explained.
He secretly let out a sigh of relief. Those pirates didn't strike him as the civilized type.
"As for my daughter. She was fine with a little help from me that is. She was able to see the error of her ways thanks to you. You have my thanks as well, I could never have gotten to her the same way you did." Sometime after her scarf tactic she'd returned to her icy visage.
"Well now that we're done here. You may leave. I won't be showing you the way out. I still need to give my blessing to my nephew here." Hades said coldly kicking her out.
"That tone of yours is far too rude to your dear wife's best friend. One of her only friends other than her nagging mother I should say. How do you think she would react should I tell her I almost didn't return after such a cold reception from you?" Hecate teased.
"Tch, whatever." He could be sworn that his uncle had paled at the comment before he'd caught himself.
He remembered how annoying he thought Demeter was with her daughter when they were arguing and he couldn't find himself blaming his uncle for such a reaction. Especially given the fact that they might have been arguing for millennia. He wondered if Hades would have still kidnapped Persephone had he known her mother was a part of the package.
"I guess I've had my fun for today. I'll be seeing you tomorrow, young hero." She said before walking out.
"That woman really grates on my nerves. One of these days I'll …" his uncle grumbled.
"Yes we get it brother, you'll have your comeuppance soon. Let's get on with things." Poseidon said holding back a smile.
"Come here, nephew." Hades commanded.
He quickly stood and walled over to him, even with his father here he didn't think irritating his uncle some more would not lead to any consequences. He tried to wipe off the smile he'd been trying to hide, but from the further scowling his uncle exhibited, it was safe to say he didn't do too well.
"You'll feel my pain when you yourself are married. I can tell you that you really dodged a bullet with Athena's girl. With your father's and her relationship, you might've never earned her approval." Hades muttered enviously.
With that his uncle gave him a pay on the head and his mind was flooded with pain and power. It seemed that the blessing rooted itself deeply into his very being.
He let out a grunt of pain and closed his eyes to try and use his newfound power to 'see' into the happening within his body. After a moment he could see what was happening clearly.
It seemed that the reason for the pain which felt like little explosions inside his body was because of the constant clashing of the two 'colors' inside of his body. The shadowy one that was his uncle's power and the watery one that was his. They seemed to repel each other.
'How about I try to lessen the pain.' He thought as he tried to get the two powers to calm.
As he got a better understanding of the power inside his body he realised that his wizard magic seemed to cover his entire body, but it didn't seem to clash with any of his powers. He soon threw the thought out of his head when the pain intensified.
He slowly but surely had it so that the watery colour was on the bottom half of his body and the shadowy colour was on the top half since that's were more seemed to be entering. He guessed it was because that's where Hades' hand was.
As soon as he did that the pain seemed to vanish and he could relax. He let the power enter his body freely and began to think about why his wizard magic power was not involved with his demigod power. After observing for a while he realized that while the powers seemed to be inside his body they looked to be on different 'levels' so to speak. Almost as if there was a separate dimension inside his body to contain his wizard magic power.
"Boy, have you reached your limit yet?" he heard his uncle growl.
He opened his eyes to see his uncle in the same position. Actually if he looked on carefully he could see a few traces of perspiration glistening on his forehead. It seemed he exerted some of his strength when doing this.
"Yeah I think it's done." He answered.
While he wanted to suck up all the power his uncle had at the moment he thought it might look suspicious. He also didn't feel like bursting because of his greed. Even now he could feel a sort of tension in his body almost like when one was filling up a balloon. His body couldn't handle the power right now.
"Ok, eat this." Hades said handing him a fingernail sized seed.
With a glance at his father and seeing him nod he swallowed the seed.
"It's so that the power I put into your body stays. After all your not a child of mine so your body doesn't naturally hold the power of darkness. Once your body gets settled down, then you'll be able to use the power I've given you." Hades said stressing the fact that Percy received the power from him.
"Thank you, uncle." He replied.
"Your welcome. Will you still be staying to eat?" he replied him before turning to his father.
"I don't see why not. It's been a while since we sat and ate together in such a fashion, brother. Besides I know Percy has been rather curious about his godly family. Why not start with my least annoying brother, not that I think Zeus would meet my son with being in his godly form and looking down upon him from his throne that is." Poseidon said as they laughed.
"I don't know if your son would really want to have lunch with me though. We've met on a few separate occasions and I don't think I've left the most favorable impression." Hades said.
"Well you try to have me killed every meeting we had so you can't be that bad." Percy teases before he could stop himself.
"That is true." Hades chuckled not seeming to take offense.
Percy let out a sigh of relief at that. Maybe it was because of how similar he was to Nico, but something about his uncle made him unconsciously have favourable feelings towards the man even after what he'd done leading to his rather unthinking comment.
"Well, here comes the food now." His uncle said.
In came a hoard of walking skeletons carrying various different types of food that made his mouth water. He hadn't even noticed how hungry he was until now.
They quietly ate after the food was placed down with Poseidon and Hades catching up on a few things. Percy was too focused on the food to have even heard any of what the two were discussing.
"I see your enjoying the food nephew." Hades said with a laugh. It seemed he was warming up to him.
"Yes, it's really good. Do you eat this all the time?" He asked.
"I'm afraid not. Demeter has a thing for wheat and other similar foods so meat is quite the luxury. Of course you two came at quite the time, all this food was cooked with the finest of ingredients and prepared by the greatest chefs in history. I do like to enjoy such meals when my wife and her mother aren't forcing me to eat cereal all the time." Hades explained.
They continued eating and soon they were mostly full. Satisfied pats on bellies all around.
"I guess it's time for us to get going, Percy. Your uncle is a very busy man we shouldn't keep him from his work too long." Poseidon said after a while.
"It was nice seeing you, brother. Really, it's nice having some company around once in a while. Let's have a drink next time eh?" Hades said. Percy couldn't see any resemblance to how the Lord of the underworld looked when he had first seen him.
"Yes, that would be nice. You don't mind if I bring my son along do you? I don't know if I can even try to prevent him from coming back here for another meal. Bring your son along as well that boy works too hard, he needs to relax once in a while." His dad said.
"Yes, he's done well for himself. He deserves a break doesn't he?" Hades said thoughtfully.
"I'll see you soon." Poseidon said before they were both engulfed in a mist.
They were back at the palace throne room in a blink of an eye. Percy teases straight to his room and laid on his bed without even bothering to change and quickly passed out.
"Young Prince is still sleeping. I will not have you disturbing him!" Percy groggily awoke to the sound of a familiar voice shouting.
"Do you know who your speaking to, servant?" that was Hecate's voice.
"I do not, nor do I care whichever god you are. Under the sea there are only 3 gods with a position higher than the young prince's and you are neither of them, so it is you who should be watching yourself. If you need to speak with the young Prince than wait until I've awoken him and relayed your message, he will decide if he wishes to speak with you further, otherwise you can leave now." He heard Agathe reply.
He really had to give it the merman, he certainly didn't lack guts. He didn't think that there were many who would speak to a god like that and judging from the lack of any other voices it seemed all but he had steered clear of the goddess in question.
"You!" That was all that seemed to come from her lips.
He gave a laugh as he realized that Agathe had shocked the goddess speechless with just words. It reminded him of the time when his friend Rachel Elizabeth Dare had clocked his evil grandfather, Kronos, the Titan of Time. He had been terrified mixed with amused then and it was the same today. He rushed up and ran outside to try and diffuse the situation, though he suspected with how shocked Hecate was he could wait a little longer if he wanted.
He decided that the best approach was to act as he hadn't heard anything and to proceed as if it never really happened in the first place.
"Agathe, good morning. Oh, Hecate, your already here. Do you want to start now?" Percy tried to act as normal as possible, although he didn't believe his stiff acting fooled anyone.
"…" It looked as if Hecate was recovering.
Wordlessly she turned around and started walking toward who knows where.
"Wait up!" Percy said with a laugh, he couldn't continue to keep up his act anymore.
"Never ever have I been so easily disregarded by a mortal… If this was the underworld I'd have that servant-" she started.
"Your not in the underworld though." Percy cut her off coldly.
She looked at him startled by his outburst.
"I don't know how things work in the underworld, but here the servants are my father's people, my people, and you will not have them harmed because you were too lazy to visit through the proper channels." Percy growled.
"Nicely put, Perseus. Do remember where you are goddess. Not even Hades or Zeus themselves would try to fight it out here with my husband, so do keep thoughts of harming our citizens to yourself." A woman suddenly interrupted.
"Amphitrite, what are you doing here." It looked like Hecate recognized the woman as Amphitrite, the queen of the sea and most importantly his 'evil' stepmother. He hadn't met her until today, but he hadn't expected a cold reception from her let alone approval of something he'd done.
"Well, a few servants came to me saying someone was causing a ruckus, to think it was you and your even threatening our citizens." Amphitrite ranted.
"I apologize. I was just a little shocked." It looked to be that Hecate was backing down in this situation.
"Accepted. I'll be going now." Amphitrite managed stiffly.
They stood there in an awkward silence before Hecate started walking off. Percy followed thinking to himself that this training was starting off on the worst note possible.
"This is the room your father prepared for your training and more. Since we're tight on time, we'll using experimental instruments to speed up the learning process. Most of them shouldn't kill you, but some do cause extreme pain." She calmly explained as the walked into a room. He wanted to ask if there were possibly other solutions, but didn't think he should risk more of her ire.
"Our first experimental instrument will be these glasses, they should automatically translate any words you see into an ancient Greek script. They take a negligible amount of magic power, but should you ever need the translate function and are magically exhausted it has a magic storage option that should last you a week without need to restore it." She explained.
That wasn't so bad and here he'd been convinced that she would be using these training sessions to torture him as payback.
"Next we have this." She said pulling out two pieces of headgear that would make death row inmates flinch away in fear.
"Now while these aren't the most aesthetic of devices, they should do the trick. These, if worn by us should allow us to have the same sort of thought process. How does this help us you ask? Well it will slowly expand your mind to match my way of thinking, helping you easily understand even the most complicated subjects with even the most dumbest of explanations. Also since it's expanding your mind to match that of a gods, it does cause quite a deal of pain. The long term effects are unknown and they could possibly cause madness, but worry not Dionysus can fix you right up and we can get back to work." Her voice held a cheeriness that made him wince at what was to come. Shouldn't he have Mr. D look at her instead? That personality change couldn't be normal.
"Sadly enough we won't be needing this as of right now. I need you to first come to your own conclusion on different subjects so it can benefit the both of us. Next let's take a look at our next tool" she said getting more excited as she spoke.
Percy suspected this was less training and more Hecate testing out he'd experiments on a (un)willing testy. To think that he'd been rather hopeful that his wizard training would be nothing like his demigod counterpart. How was he gonna survive this goddess.