Happy Birthday to me! As a birthday gift to you all, I have the first draft of chapter one of the sequel for you all!
Chapter 1 Welcome Back!
Hi everybody! I'm glad you all liked my last book. Arty didn't have to force me to write this story, this time. Just so you all know, since I am a god now, I don't really have any need for mortal money. So all the money that my books make will go to charity! If you stick around to the end of the story we do have some news to share with you. No skipping to the end! On to the story!
So far, life as a god has been great. Next to no monsters, as they had been licking their wounds since the war and few were stupid enough to try and attack Camp. The few that did were quickly dispatched though with little to no effort.
The Hunters had gone to Camp Half Blood after the award ceremony, and they had been there ever since. We had too many injuries to be able to effectively move around like we usually did, so we stayed in Cabin 8, and rested while everybody healed up. I had slept for almost four days straight once I got back in my own bed, as my body recovered from the physical exhaustion of war and becoming a god.
Thankfully the girls didn't treat me like a god, which was nice. My relationship with them hadn't changed a bit since my ascension.
The girls were much nicer to the Campers than they usually were. After the war, nobody had the energy to be mad at each other.
Really, there was just no reason for them not to be nice to the Campers, after everything we'd all been through, everybody deserved some slack.
The new Campers though, they were a different story. They didn't know better than to not flirt with the Hunters, so there were some butted heads there. There were a few that didn't get the message from the Hunters, so I had to step in. A golden flash of my eyes and a demonstration of my powers on a flower, usually got the point across of what I would do to them if they continued to harass my sisters.
Chiron's leg had healed just fine and within weeks he was running around again, looking brand new. Percy's friend Rachel had become the new Oracle. Speaking of Percy, he and Annabeth had started dating just after they beat Kronos. They were both going to school in New York, so they could see each other all of the time. I still made it a habit to stop in and see Sally. She had really become a mother to me. Neither of us really acknowledged it out loud, but we both knew how we felt.
Being at Camp was good for the Hunters too, because they were able to test new recruits within the safe space of Camp, and they came to us so we didn't have to search all over for them. We had gained one familiar face into our family, Silena Beauregard. She said she could only ever see herself loving Beckendorf. Because of this, she wanted to join us so she could get away from all the things that reminded her of him at Camp.
I had found out that as the god of heroes, I was immune to the Ancient Laws, which meant I was able to kill monsters chasing kids into Camp. I was allowed to help train the demigods. So while we were staying at Camp I held a class in the arena, for anybody to come to. It was fairly popular, there would regularly be dozens of Campers in attendance. Every week I switched to a new weapon, so that nobody got bored.
What else has happened?
Oh, I suppose you all want to know about Arty and I. Well, what can I say? She was still perfect, still gorgeous, and I was still crazy in love with her, and falling harder every day. We hadn't done anything more than kiss, I mean it has only been a few months, we've got eternity for all that other stuff.
We had started watching movies. Because we enjoyed movies, definitely not for the cuddling that came with watching. A cabin had been built for me at Camp, which I had initially been against. To me it just symbolized infidelity towards Artemis, but they had built it anyway. The two of us put it to good use though, it turned into our hang out spot, somewhere we could get away from everything, like our own little Oasis. There were no annoying gods, godly children or Hunters here to bother us during the time we desperately craved to be alone.
It ended up being where we usually watched our movies, and definitely did not cuddle, away from the nosy Hunters.
Speaking of the Hunters, they had made up their own little game. The goal was to try and catch Artemis and I together. If you found us you got a point, the more *intimate* the catch, the more points you got. I don't know if there was a points goal or a prize or something or maybe it was just about the fun they had doing it, but they were relentless. There was almost always at least one of them following us around everywhere we went, hoping to add points to their score.
Every night after our movie, I would walk her back to Cabin 8, we would kiss goodnight and then I would return to my own bed. There were a couple times where we both fell asleep, so she stayed the night. Much to my own enjoyment.
These instances really got the Hunters going, always asking if we'd done anything in particular. Trying to avoid the teasing and embarrassment, we tried not to fall asleep but sometimes it was impossible not to. After a long day, or just because being together was just so, so comfortable, it was impossible not to some days.
At this point, it was no secret that we were together. We hadn't tried to put it out there by any means, and would have been perfectly fine to keep everything lowkey. The Hunters and Aphrodite however, they wouldn't have that. They might as well have screamed it from the rooftops that Arty and I were in love. I would imagine at this point everyone in our world knew that we were together.
Zeus wasn't too happy when he found out. His precious virgin daughter dating a son of Poseidon was not something he had ever expected, especially after Orion. I definitely wasn't his ideal match for Artemis. He tried talking her out of it, even offered other gods to replace me. Thankfully for me, she stood her ground and told him that she loved me and would never love anybody else.
She even threatened to leave the Council and remove herself entirely from Olympus if he ever tried anything to separate us. And he has not yet tried anything as of the writing of this chapter. To this day I'm still trying to find a way to tell or show her how much that meant to me. I've taken her on lots of dates but, I still don't think she knows how much it meant...
I made it down to Atlantis and visited my father's kingdom, the city of my people. Artemis was hesitant to join me, and I learned at this point that she had never been in the ocean before because she had been scared of the feud between our fathers. I told her I would protect her from anything, and after some other words of encouragement, she finally decided to come with me.
To say Atlantis was beautiful was an understatement. It was easily the most beautiful city I had ever seen. Artemis seemed to glow under the water, like an ocean flower. She seemed right at home in the ocean, which made me smile, we really were meant for each other.
All of that happiness lasted four months.
Four months. That's all we got of peace. The Fates just wanted to get it all out of the way I guess. Put everything bad for the next thousand years within a ten year period.
If you all have read any of my brother Percy's books, which are not nearly as good as mine by the way. But if you have read them, you would know that almost immediately after defeating Kronos our new Oracle, Rachel, delivered the next Great Prophecy.
Seven half-bloods shall answer the call
To storm or fire, the world must fall
An oath to keep with a final breath
And foes bear arms to the Doors of Death
Sounds wonderful doesn't it? As you can tell, the prophecy didn't contain any sort of timeline or specific clues to lead to any people, so there was every possibility that it could be hundreds of years after Percy and his friends were joined in Hades realm.
Unfortunately for us sons of Poseidon, our honeymoon phases only lasted from August to December. In November, Zeus closed off Olympus to mortals and had banned gods interacting with mortals for a reason he refused to share, at least with me. For some reason though, I was able to go to and from Olympus as I pleased. I don't know if Zeus didn't realize I was able to, or if he just didn't care about me bouncing around. Maybe my domain of heroes allowed my continued interaction, it was anybody's guess really.
So thankfully, I was still able to lead the Hunters, teach the demigods and most importantly, get up to Olympus to see Arty. Let me tell you, keeping a goddess who was used to constant movement, cooped up on a relatively small mountain, was not a great move by Zeus.
Artemis was extremely agitated and restless. I could almost always find her in the Olympian arena, either running laps on the track, or practicing with her bow or learning a new weapon so that we could spar with it the next time I came up to see her. Now that I could use any weapon with my domain of weapons proficiency, it was easy for me to adapt to whichever new weapon she had chosen for the day.
But it was definitely out of boredom more than a desire to grow her arsenal or impress me.
She got angry easily, and snapped at pretty well anybody. Unless I was around, then all of the anger disappeared and her restlessness stopped and she returned to the kind, affectionate goddess that I know and love.
It was technically allowed for the gods to leave Olympus, but it was very, very heavily implied to stay on the mountain as much as possible, with more of an emphasis on no interactions with mortals than an actual lockdown. So I was able to take my girlfriend on a few dates, and even on a cross country run to burn some energy. But for the most part, she stayed put as she was supposed to. Zeus probably didn't care about our excursions too much since it saved him from getting complaints from the other residents on Olympus about Artemis' foul mood, but it was better not to test the limits too much.
The other gods begged me to stay on Olympus and with Artemis, but as much as I wanted to, I couldn't. With every sign pointing to the next prophecy happening quite soon, I knew I needed to do everything within my power to have these demigods ready to fight in another hugely outnumbered war. I was determined to cut our losses by at least half this time around.
Everything changed in the middle of December. That's when Annabeth almost broke down Sally's door in the middle of us eating supper.
That's all for now! Thanks for reading!