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It takes a moment for his mind to register what Morality said.
When it does, Grover gasps. “A problem?! What happened?! Did Percy and Annabeth get attacked? Did something happen to the others?”
Morality sighs and sits back on the ground criss-cross applesauce. “No one is in any… physical danger right now. At least, not anymore.”
Grover narrows his eyes. “Morality, what happened to my missing friends?”
He watches Morality wince and look down at his hands. The being summons Percy's thread again and starts gently plucking it like a modern-day guitar.
“A lot.” Morality admits. “So much that it's going to take some time-”
“So start talking.” Grover leans forward. “I need to know everything if we're going to save them.”
“...I could also just show you, you know that, right?”
“I don't care! I need to know!”
Morality sighs. “Fine. Here's what happened.”
~~~
Morality tells him everything.
The last thing Grover heard from Morality was that Percy and Annabeth were seven years old, physically and mentally.
Now, Morality is sitting in front of him and sharing really bad news. While Grover, Sally, and Paul have been dealing with the Gods and transporting the three demigods back to Camp Half-Blood, Percy and Annabeth have been traveling an alternate version of Ancient Greece with Luke Castellan himself.
Not only were they kidnapped by horses, they met Pallas and Triton, witnessed Triton get shot, a man in an orange cape who kidnapped them again, then the other missing demigods who broke Percy out of an underground cavern and made an escape for freedom.
That escape was successful, and they even met Chris, until they were found by the Gods of that world.
“But are they ok?!” Grover asks once Morality takes a breath. “How did Chris even get there?!”
Morality winces again. “You'll have to talk with the others once you get to camp. Chris was going to catch us all up to speed… that was before-”
“Before?”
Morality tenses. “Before the Gods showed up.”
Grover's heart sinks. “Who found them?”
“Apollo, Dionysus…” Morality looks at Grover. “And Pan.”
‘Oh.’
“Pan's alive?” He whispers.
He's been Lord of the Wild for about a year now, and he has no real idea what he is doing. Which sucks, because no one is giving him any sort of room or guidance to work with.
‘And in another universe, the God of the Wild is alive.’
He quickly shakes his head back and forth. ‘No, what am I thinking?! I'm here because Percy, Annabeth, and my friends are in danger! I can't focus on my Lord of the Wild duties if they get hurt, or worse!’
“The Gods took them all back to Olympus so they can actually rest for the first time since they got there.” Morality snorts. “Trust me, no one knew what to do when that happened.”
He rolls up his sleeves. “I don't know what the man with the orange cape did to Percy while he was unconscious. All I know is that there's another scar on my arm and this weird symbol in charcoal just below it.”
Morality shows Grover a strange symbol: a circle with two tails coming off it, one on the bottom, and one on the top.
“...but they're okay, right?” Grover asks.
Morality hesitates. “Percy and Annabeth are with everyone else now. That's all I can say.”
Grover stomps his hooves on the ground.
“Dam it! We're not close to getting them out of there at all! Now we have to get them away from these fake Gods?!”
Morality winces. “I'm really sorry, Grover.”
“It's not your fault, Morality.” He groans and buries his head in his hands. “We just can't get a break.”
‘A break.’
Grover blinks.
‘We just need a break.’
Some kind of break, something to give, something to just make everything easier.
But what?
“I need to get to camp.” Grover looks up at Morality. “I think I have an idea, but I need to talk to the Athena cabin.”
Morality frowns. “Athena's cabin? Why?”
Grover hesitates, unsure of how to phrase the idea forming in his mind.
“I need to consult their library.” He admits. “They have to have something on breaking through reality, right?”
“Would that be something Athena would know?” Morality asks.
Grover sighs. “No.
But it's a start.”
~~~
In his dreams, he walks on a road paved in darkness. Red and black bricks cover the ground, and dark green plants grow at the edges of where the road meets the earth.
Clovis, the son of Hypnos, is too tired to figure out where he's going, or to study the details of the dream like he usually does. He just keeps walking.
Every now and then, he trips over a loose brick and falls into a dream, one of his friends who are still here and not missing-
He doesn't remember everything. It's not his business. But as he plummets, he does catch sight of two young boys with blond hair standing at two doors of two different cabins, both waiting for a sister and a cousin to return home.
Clovis opens his mouth to address them, to see if there was something he could do, and falls through the ground into another dream.
A girl with curly red hair stands in a cave, painting the image of a blond haired baby, not noticing a strange yellow thread rise out of the ground behind her.
He opens his mouth to warn her, and falls through the ground into yet another dream.
A girl with black hair stands outside of a quiet dark room. Tears fill her eyes as she stares at her hands- no, her bare and empty wrists. Slowly, she closes them into fists and raises one to knock at the door.
Inside it, someone responds, and she opens her mouth to answer-
Clovis blinks and the dream dissolves.
Then he lands back on the road.
Only this time, he's looking up at a large house, practically a Mansion, covered in an ominous gray mist that sticks to his skin and makes his eyes water.
‘The Stoll brothers would have a great time with this place.’ He thinks.
Clovis isn't sure how he gets inside the Mansion. He just blinks and he's inside.
‘Oh… oh wow…’
Soft, shimmering purple greets his eyes, a surprising contrast to the foreboding outside appearance of the Mansion. From the gentle navy blue above him with a small silver dot tracking the moon and Artemis's chariot across the sky, to the various portraits and paintings covering the lavender tinted walls, he can tell that people live here, enough to make this place their home.
‘The ceiling actually looks like Van Gogh's Starry Night… without the large swirls surrounding the stars.
I'm surprised that a mortal man could paint something so beautiful. It almost reminds me of Mom. These paintings on the walls… I think she used to paint often… before she died…’
For some reason, as he looks- actually looks at the paintings, he notices that each painting is covered by a milky white curtain, with faint silver constellations gleaming just above the crimson red frame.
‘Someone does not want these to be seen… but why? I would look… but I don't want to disrespect the dreamer in their dream.’
He starts walking down the hall he has landed in, following the paintings in their crimson frames. The curtains stay as he walks, refusing to show him anything under the frame.
It's infuriating, but he keeps his mouth shut. As soon as he sees something important, no matter what it is, the dream will change. Or he gets kicked out of the dream and wakes up in reality. Whichever comes first.
At the end of the hall, two doors wait for him. Both are as black as the Mansion's outside, but soft lavender pulses reassuringly through the crack under the doors.
‘Come in.’ The light promises. ‘We won't hurt you.’
‘It's only a dream.’ Clovis tells himself.
Then he shrugs off his fear and pushes one door open.
And freezes the second he looks inside.
There, at the opposite wall, under a soft lavender light, an elderly woman lies still on the bed, her face deathly white, with thin grey hair, small pitch black veins, and closed eyes. The lavender light turns her gray robe purple, and her breathing is harsh and ragged, almost as if she is on her last breath. Every now and then, her mouth opens, and a strange, eerily grainy, black substance, completely different from all the other colors he has seen, spills from her mouth onto her pillow.
‘Sand.’ Clovis realizes with a start. ‘It's sand. Why is it black, though? I've never seen black sand before.’
Four figures lie asleep around the woman.
To Clovis's immediate left is a young fair skinned woman with short grey hair, a lime green, cobalt blue, and sharp red dress with a golden apple pin at her right collarbone, and dull black wings folded behind her. She rests her head on her left hand with her nails painted the exact same colors as her dress.
To her left, a gray-skinned man with obsidian black horns sits with his arms crossed. His long white hair falls past his neck and his eyes are closed with his head hanging low. An elaborate silver bell hangs from a bracelet on his wrist, and golden skulls cover his chestplate and legs, with a pin engraved with an obsidian skull and glowing green eyes embedded in the center of his chestplate.
His face twitches in a smile, but doesn't respond to Clovis's surprise entry.
Then the third figure: a woman with fair skin, long black hair, red-tipped silver wings hovering around her head, and red and silver armor. A red hilted sword is slung over her back, and a shield rests at her feet. Other than a pair of large hoop earrings; she wears a necklace around her neck with a vividly human eye staring at Clovis.
Clovis swallows, shoves his fear aside- ‘this is a dream, after all-’ and approaches the final figure: a young gray-skinned man with white hair. He's dressed in red, but asleep, with a red blanket thrown over him.
He swallows. “Father?”
The man doesn't say anything at first, only blinks his eyes open and blearily stares at him.
“...Clovis?” He mutters sleepily.
Then he blinks again and straightens up. “Clovis?!”
The demigod smiles. “Hi, Dad.”
Hypnos, the God of Sleep, shrieks and shoves the blanket off of his body. “Son?! What are you doing here?!”
“I'm dreaming.” Clovis shrugs his shoulders. “Duh.”
Hypnos stares at his son in disbelief. He reaches out his hands, cups his face, then slowly tilts it side to side as if looking for something.
“Dad?”
“You're okay.” Hypnos whispers quietly, bowing his head as his hands shake on Clovis's face. “You're okay.”
Clovis frowns. While he knows that he and his siblings, the children of Hypnos, can suffer from narcolepsy as a side effect, he does not remember getting full on nightmares when he wakes up. “Dad?”
Hypnos sighs, then chuckles. “Don't worry about me, son. I'm making do with what I have.”
He lets go of Clovis's face, then tilts his head to the side. “What are you doing here? Why are you dreaming of me?”
Clovis hesitates. ‘Why am I dreaming of my father?’
“Because I miss you.” He confesses. “We all do. We haven't seen you in person for a while, and now that Camp is being attacked-”
Hypnos's eyes suddenly glow white.
“Camp Half-Blood is being attacked?!” He shouts, hands gripping the armrests.
“Yes! We don't know who or why, but we need help!”
Hypnos growls again. “Of all the times-”
He cuts himself off and stares at Clovis. “Are you being attacked right now?”
“No, but-”
“Ignore that. That was a stupid question. Stay in the cabin. Your brother and I will be right there.”
‘What do you mean, right there?!’
BOOM
Thunder rumbles loudly outside of the cabin, sending Clovis catapulting out of bed with a loud scream. “AAAAAA!!!”
His half siblings, 14 year old Aisling and 13 year old Johann also snap awake, her sharp green and his soft brown eyes piercing accusingly through his skull as he curls up into a ball.
‘Gods, my head-’
As he tries to catch his breath, he places his left hand on the wooden bunk bed and inhales heavily. Then he blinks at the hazy world around him, fully wide awake for the first time in months-
The thunder rumbles, louder, and lightning strikes a faraway tree through the open door-
‘Wait, open?! We did not leave it open when Matthew came in!’
Then he sees his father standing in the doorway.
Except it's… not his father?
The man in the doorway is gray-skinned with white hair, like their father, but he has red poppy flowers in his hair and his eyes glow a milky white. His red robe, full on robe instead of the blanket from earlier, flows out behind him, and the soft white chiton underneath the robe glows-
Except, no, it's not the traditional chiton Clovis is seeing from his father.
It's sheep wool.
Soft, fluffy, white sheep wool pulses reassuringly with the power of their father, and lamb ears poke out from under his hair.
Hypnos grips the door with his hands, stares at the four children in his cabin, makes eye contact with his son, and smiles.
No.
Beams in pure relief.
“Clovis.” He says. “Aisling. Johann. Matthew.”
“Father?” Aisling whispers in shock.
Now that Clovis is awake, he can actually see his younger sister, with her fire red hair and fair skin, looking every bit like the Faeries he reads in storybooks.
“What are you doing here?!” Johann demands. The pale-skinned boy swings his leg out of the bed and grabs the cane leaning against his nightstand. “You never show your face at camp.”
Hypnos winces at his accusing tone. “I'm sorry.” He says. “But can't I just want to see my children?”
“Not unless you want something in return.” Aisling retorts, crossing her arms.
Matthew and Clovis, wisely, stay quiet as the daughter and God stare at each other.
Hypnos cracks first.
“I'm not here for a quest.” Hypnos says quietly. “Or a prophecy. You don't have to do anything for me. We're here because we are worried about your safety.”
‘We?’
Hypnos looks at Clovis. “Clovis.” He says solemnly. “May we come in?”
‘May.’ He thinks. ‘Not demanding, not requesting, just asking. Asking his sons and daughter for entry into his own cabin.’
“Yes.” He says. “You may.”
Hypnos smiles, bows his head, and enters the cabin, followed by a tall man dressed in gray with purple butterfly wings on his face.
“Hello.” He greets the group. “I am Morpheus, your older brother. We realized you might have questions, so feel free to ask any of them that you like.”
“Any question?” Aisling asks.
The two gods nod.
“Why does everyone call you lazy?” Johann asks.
“Because I was.” Hypnos answers. “I was a lazy coward who cared only for myself.”
A soft smile forms on his face. “It was Thanatos, my twin brother, Pasithea, my wife, and a… few other friends who helped me get myself together and actually take responsibility.”
For some reason, his face saddens, and his ears droop down.
“But that's besides the point.” He straightens up.
“Children, I'm here because I am worried for your safety. I've heard Morpheus speaking with Iris, Hekate, and other minor Gods. While I don't know everything, I know enough about what's going on to try and help you find a solution.”
“A solution?” Johann asks. “To what?”
“To getting your friends back and fighting off this entity taking them, of course.”
He frowns. “Both might be very complicated and take a lot of time, but you can learn from me and Morpheus whenever we are here!”
“Then why don't you take us with you?” Aisling asks. “We can learn from you and your family, and we can be safe!”
Hypnos snorts. “Ha!”
He sighs. “No, Aisling, I can't take you with me. Even if I ask Lord Dionysus, he would say no. Though Camp has been infiltrated, it is still the safest place for you. And my mother, in her right mind, would not allow me to put any more demigods in danger, and I want to honor her request.”
Clovis frowns. “Your Mother? Isn't that…?”
‘The woman I saw?’
Hypnos's shoulders sag. “Children. My mother is Nyx, Primordial Goddess of Night and Darkness. She used to represent the physical night, but the mortal world has changed her into… actual darkness. The evil in the mortal world has corrupted her.”
“She has her moments.” Morpheus adds quietly. “Moments where she is my grandmother again. That's… partially why you don't see us around as much as the other Gods.”
“Because you're trying to heal her?” Johann asks.
Hypnos nods. “Because my mother is closer to the Primordials, we don't change over time.” He explains. “I, or my domain of sleep, is a constant. All creatures, whether God or Mortal, need rest. I can not suddenly go on strike and say “no, you can't sleep anymore” because I'm angry at you. I have the responsibility to oversee everyone gets the rest they deserve.”
“Although you can do that.” Morpheus mutters.
“I can, I just choose not to.” He turns back to his children. “However, none of this is an excuse for how I have acted. I know that I have not been the best father. I have not been there for you like I should have been. I just- never wanted you all to suffer like your family has. The least I could do was guide you in your dreams to Camp Half-Blood, somewhere you could be safe until I could be allowed to see you.”
Clovis sighs. “We get it, father. We really do. It's not your fault the laws were made.”
Hypnos shakes his head. “I am the God of Sleep, Rest, and Dreams. I should have found a way to help my children and my mother. Instead, I have done neither.”
“It's not entirely Father's fault.” Morpheus comments. “Think of it like the mortals and their mood swings. One moment, they're screaming that the world is out to get them, and the next, they're back to a normal. Not… normal, they're still suffering, but it's a normal they are able to manage.”
“So you're trying to cure her?” Aisling asks. “Trying to bring her back to normal?”
Hypnos sighs. “Aisling, I genuinely wish my siblings and I could restore everyone to normal.
But the thing is, you mortals have changed us beyond our limits. You have taught us humility, responsibility, compassion, empathy, understanding, forgiveness, and mercy, among many other things. These concepts were known by our ancient selves, but we did not understand them the way we do now. If we were to restore every God, Deity, and Chthonic Being back to their ancient selves, the mortal world would crumble within days.”
Clovis stares at the floor, his mind reeling. It all makes sense, but still. After years of nothing, their father finally makes the effort to be with them in their dreams. It's not much, nor is it often.
But it's a start.
“Dad.” He asks. “Why are you here?”
Hypnos stares at him. “Because Zeus never told me, Morpheus, Hekate, Iris, Nike, Nemesis, Tyche, or any of us minor Gods that we could see and spend time with our children.” He says quietly. “Because I want to make things right with you. I want to get to know you, help you grow in your strength. I want to be your father, if you will allow me to be.”
Clovis looks at his siblings again.
Or, more accurately, they look to him. He's the Cabin's leader, after all.
And after everything that's happened, after finally being welcomed into a place that understood them, after living through two wars, after reaching out to their father and actually getting a response in person…
It would not hurt to give him a chance, right?
He nods at his siblings and sees Aisling’s shoulders drop. Whether in defeat or relief, he doesn't know. But he catches the soft smile tugging at her lips when she looks back at her father.
“Okay.” She says finally. “We'll give you a chance.”
Hypnos brightens while Morpheus simply raises an eyebrow.
“But you have to come to us when we call for you.” Aisling crosses her arms.
“Done.” Hypnos says immediately. “Every time.”
She sags back in her bed in relief. “Thank you.” She whispers, her voice almost a whisper next to the crackle of the fire.
“...I have a question.”
Clovis turns to look at his new brother, Matthew, who absentmindedly scratches his wrists with a look of hesitation on his face.
“I'm new here and I don't entirely know what's going on.” Matthew admits. “But it sounds like your Mother, our Grandmother is dying?”
Hypnos nods. “We refer to it as fading. It's usually when a God is not worshipped enough, and they start to lose their powers, domains, and identity before returning to Khaos.”
Matthew nods, thinking over the information, then swallows.
“So if the Gods… fade, then what do we do?” Matthew asks. “Is that the end for all of us demigods? What happens to us?”
Hypnos kneels in front of him and smiles reassuringly.
“Some Gods have faded, Matthew.
But they do not fade forever.”
~~~
At the edge of the House of Hades, where there are no spirits to observe it, the River Styx, usually calm, suddenly explodes with violent churning and bubbling as its familiar blue color turns a deep blood red.
Then, a pale skinned hand shoots out of the river and grabs the edge of the riverbank.