There was a silence that fell upon the two gods as they stared at the door below. It was surrounded by a darkness more intense than any either of them had encountered. It was darker than the darkness that Nyx had cast upon the tree of night, it was darker than a night without a moon and it was much darker than the time Apollo had spent the night in a Vegas trashcan-long story.

The door, however, was not dark. It seemed to be illuminated, like a painting in a museum.

"How do we get down to it?" Cai peered over the edge to see if there was any way they could climb down the rocky cliff.

"I have no idea," Apollo frowned.

"That's a first."

"Don't talk to me like that! I'm your father."

"Yeah? Well, where were you then!" Cai demanded. The two gods seemed to have completely forgotten the task at hand and were squaring up to each other as if they were about to start throwing punches.

"Where was I when?"

"When I was born! When I had to save my tree from Nyx! Where were you when she died?"

"Caius I couldn't control that, it was out of my-"

"Yes, you could have!" Cai shouted, "I would have thought that being mortal for a while would have knocked some ego out of you, but you're still too big-headed to admit that you're the one to blame for everything!"

"Cai, I don't-"

"If you hadn't let Octavian flatter you then the Greeks and Romans would have worked together from the start of the Giant War. If they had worked together then Percy and Annabeth would probably have never fallen into Tartarus, and Mum wouldn't have had to follow them. Nyx wouldn't have known that Mum was pregnant, the gods could have helped defeat the giants earlier on." Cai listed, "and you would never have been made mortal, meaning you would have been there when I was born and Mum would never have died!"

Apollo stared at Cai, completely shocked by the truths that his son was spitting at him. Apollo opened his mouth to answer, but before he could, someone else spoke.

"Oh little godling, it is so much more complicated than you could ever imagine," a cold smooth voice said. Apollo and Cai turned to see a figure dressed in a flowing black dress. The dress was floating around her legs as she floated up out of the pit that they had been observing earlier. Nyx landed neatly in between Apollo and Caius with a cold smile plastered across her face.

Caius narrowed his eyes at his grandmother, "you-"

"-yes me," Nyx said carelessly.

"You killed my mother!" Cai's gaze would have melted any lesser being right where they stood, but this was Nyx, a Primorial being.

"It was necessary," said Nyx, "as was planting the idea to support the Roman Octavian in your father's head and marrying Ariadne to Apollo. All of it served its purpose. All of those things meant that you were born Caius so that you and I could make a new world that belongs to the dynasty of Night."

Oooooh!
Remember to vote, comment and stay tuned for the big Daughter Of Night announcement!
~Em xx