Up from the Ashes

Up from the Ashes surrounds the story of Dawn Richards, an unclaimed demigoddess, not long after the Battle of Manhattan.

Prologue
I was having a very good day. That much was certain. I had just survived a battle against the Titans and their underlings, and I was a hero.

If I had known what was in for me back then, I wouldn't have been quite so happy. I'm grateful for how happy I was, don't get me wrong - in my life, outside of Camp Half-Blood and my home in California, I don't get that much happiness. But that day in the Hermes Cabin, it felt like I could fly - I was so excited I actually thought that.

My name is Dawn Richards, and that day in the Hermes Cabin I was fifteen years old. I guess you could call me pretty - I've always been told I have amazing eyes, as deep maroon as is humanly possible, according to my best friend Becky I've always had those eyes, and every time I look in the mirror they are the first thing that I notice. My hair is one thing I don't care for, but I've always kept it long - people tell me it's like a waterfall to my shoulders, fresh and shiny and straight, and I like keeping some of it lapping over my shoulders. If my eyes are my best quality, my worst is probably my nose: my nose honestly feels like I have the cork of a bottle between my cheeks.

But that day, nothing mattered. Nor did the scar I got from Ethan Nakamura in the battle, the one that now runs from just above my waist, up to my chest in a thin red smile. It didn't matter that I had been training in the arena with Mike Gage, the big and burly son of Ares with black hair and three silver rings piercing each ear, and that the areas under my arms smelled like the breath of a Hellhound. What mattered was how excited I was that day, and here's why.

Today, we were all gonna be claimed at last. At the Battle of Manhattan against the Titan lord Kronos, who wanted to crush Olympus and bring the Titans back into power, the Lord of Time had been toppled. Demigods named Percy Jackson, Annabeth Chase and Thalia Grace had pursued Kronos up to Olympus with a satyr called Grover. Thalia had been injured pretty bad, as had Annabeth, and a demigod named Ethan Nakamura had been thrown from the heavens to his death, but in the end Kronos had been destroyed in single combat with Percy. As a prize for being the hero of the Great Prophecy, Percy Jackson, who was the son of the sea god Poseidon, had made the other Olympians swear on the River Styx that they would all acknowledge their demigod children.

All of them.

And sitting in the Hermes Cabin, with my friend Becky sitting next to me, I was gripping her hand so tightly, and my heels were hammering madly on the floor so much I was annoying myself - I was so excited.

At this point, I think I ought to mention that back then I had no idea who my godly parent was. I had absolutely no clue at all, and the prospect that I would finally learn who he (or she) was made me want to scream at the top of my lungs.

It should also be mentioned that my friend Becky is, no offence to her, even less of a normal person than I am. She was a big girl, taller than anyone else I knew, and any other person at camp. Taller than the centaur Chiron, or the big ugly Dionysus, or even taller than Luke Castellan, who had fought and died in Olympus at Percy's hands. She had blonde hair that was so untidy it looked like a bird's nest pressed into her skull. She was a Cyclops too - she only has one eye, that's as blue and beautiful as the ocean and as innocent as a three-year-old's. She always dressed in something that seemed too small for her, and that day she wore a Michael Buble shirt the colour of ripe tomatoes, and trousers that would have been baggy on me but seemed like skinny jeans on her.

She was my best friend, and we had fought together so many times already that she felt like my sister - I already had a sister, and a brother, in California, but if there ever was a 'sister from another mister' for me, it was Becky.

"Dawn!" whispered Becky, in a voice so fierce it sounded like she was snapping at me, "Stop that, girl! You're going to punch a hole in the Cabin." She pointed to where my feet were hammering where I sat, and I noticed how the wood looked like it was about to splinter. I stopped, but instead I graduated from chattering feet to chattering teeth, which Becky put a stop to by putting just one finger on my lips.

"You're nervous?" she asked kindly.

"Terrified." I looked over the cabin at another demigod, a short but stunning young girl with brown curls and an eye patch where an arrow had caught her. I didn't know her name, but she was a daughter of Hermes that had been brought to camp before the war. I hoped to the gods I wasn't a daughter of Hermes, because the cabin bored me - I loved the people in it, but the cabin itself was as dull as anything I had ever been in. I wanted to move out - maybe I was a daughter of Ares, which would be so cool because they had awesome weapons in their cabin, and I wanted to go see Clarisse la Rue and train with her. Clarisse Drakonslayer, she called herself now, after a truly awesome feat during the battle where she had brought down a drakon in combat. Even I had been speechless at the feat.

"Tell me, Dawn," whispered Becky, "how's the scar."

"Healing nicely." I said self-consciously. The scar had pricked and pricked me all night after the battle, and it still gave me the worst itches possible whenever I tried to go to sleep.

"I was not going to bring this up, but Tyson's asking after you." she nudged me in the shoulder so hard I almost fell off the bed. Becky was incredibly strong, and always had been - a thumb war with her would have taken my hand off at the wrist. Tyson was the leader of the Cyclopes and he was an awesome guy, sweet and brave but at the same time dumb and clumsy, in such a cute way that, when I first met him he reminded me of my little sister.

There were other demigods in the Hermes cabin, chattering like nothing you could ever imagine, and I knew they were thinking the same as me - that they couldn't wait for my parent to claim me. One of them, a scrawny little boy named Tim Fletcher with green eyes and spiky black hair, was wringing his hands near the corner of the cabin, and Will Solace was whispering encouraging words in his ear.

"What did he ask?"

"How you're holding up after the battle." answered Becky.

"That's so cute of him!"

"I know!" Becky giggled, "I told him that you'd had worse injuries - for example, that time you went against Clarisse in capture-the-flag. When she electrocuted you, you soaked it all up, so she knocked you to the ground with the butt of her spear. You almost lost an eye!"

"She gets angry so easily." I liked Clarisse, for all her faults, and she had a lot of faults. Like most children of Ares, she was big and brawny, though not nearly as tall as Becky, and she threw her weight around so much that it was impossible not to think of the Tasmanian Devil when she fought you. She was wild, and arrogant, and full of herself, but she could be so sweet that she made you forget about it, and she was as brave as a lioness in a battle. Ares kids had that reputation - self-righteous and surly, but fearless.

"And I was telling him all about how you were in the battle, how you saved your siblings from that Laistrygonian Giant." Becky added. I laughed, remembering what had happened after Clarisse had killed the drakon, when the battle had continued. I had found my family - that is, my mother, her boyfriend, and my two little sisters Cathy and Tina. They had been trapped in the city during the battle, and had only just woken to the chaos when a Laistrygonian Giant broke through the ranks and tried to attack them. I had been there, and I had rushed to the scene with a speed that still baffled me. When I reached them, the Laistrygonian was wielding part of a lamppost as a club and bearing down on them. I brought out my sword in an instant and cut through the lamppost quick as a flash.

The giant had snarled and lashed out, and I dodged out of the way twice because I was sure one hit would squash me where I stood. At last, I cut it on the heel and brought it to its knees. Taking its head with a single stroke and dissolving it into dust that flowed in the wind almost prettily, I turned back to see that it had brought two buddies to the battle - two bigger, uglier giants. It took a lot longer to fight them off, and by the time I had taken one of them down, the last one had knocked my sword from my hand and pinned me to the ground under one foot. Before it could crush me under its ugly, smelly foot, Becky had been there. She had been fighting on the roof of one of the buildings nearby at the time, and when she saw I was beaten, she ran and jumped with a great howl of rage.

The giant had turned her way just as her cannonball fist was about to smash it across the cheek. I could swear I felt the force of that punch from all the way down where the giant was pinning me, and when the giant hit the ground, it shook. Becky, who could never control herself when she dived to the rescue, kept on flying straight on, crashing into a nearby car and going right through it, before coming to an explosive stop on a sidewalk, sending up several chunks of concrete and mud. It was the maddest, bravest thing I had ever seen in my whole life, but Becky never spoke of it.

"That was one ugly giant," I said, remembering how I pulled my family out of their car and carried them to safety, before going back for Becky. To my alarm, Becky had detached herself from the crater she had made, and was brushing rubble off her shoulders almost lazily. She had smiled at me and then went on to the battle without saying another word.

"Ugly, and smelly!" Becky sniggered.

At last, before anyone could say another word, the symbols appeared. Spears, adders, bows, hammers, rolling eyes and bulls. All of them materialised, literally like flashes of light, surrounded by glowing clouds of different colours. Above Tim Fletcher's head appeared a great crane with its wings spread and its beak open in a voiceless cry. He was from then on recognised as a son of Demeter, the Olympian Goddess of the Harvest.

At once, the Hermes kids who were already known to their godly father fell to their knees and chanted in a clear choir of voices: "Hail Tim Fletcher, son of Demeter. Hail Charlie Howard, son of Nemesis. Hail Stephanie Green, daughter of Apollo. Hail Michael Ash, son of Athena. Hail Josie Lawrence, daughter of Hephaestus. Hail Dawn Swann-"

For one horrible moment, all eyes fell on me and, overcome by a burning sense of dread, excitement and anticipation, I looked up. The air above my head was completely clear, and no object or animal hovered there. Immediately, my breath caught in my throat and I felt like I was going to be sick - more so than any other time I had felt until then. I stared up at that ceiling, waiting for something to appear there with desperate, yearning hope.

Nothing happened.

The very next thing I felt then and there was Becky's thick arm around my neck, her hand resting on my bicep.

"I'm so sorry, Dawn." she said softly, and she was looking at me with one sorrowful eye. I only saw it out of the corner of my vision, for I was still staring up above me, waiting, praying, for something to appear there. Still, nothing happened.

"No!" I said at last, the word choked out in an ugly voice that couldn't possibly be mine. Before anyone could say anything more, in comfort or mockery, I swept Becky's arm off and stormed out of the Hermes Cabin. It was the largest of all the other cabins in the Camp, so that took a while, and I was aware that people were reaching out and calling my name. I was also painfully aware that I was the only one storming out, which meant that I was the only one this was happening to. People had started cheering for each other, some crying with joy, some of them waving their symbols aside and not thinking much of it. By the time I had left the cabin, it was the loudest building there.

I stormed down into the forest, where I had fought with Scythian Dracanae during the Battle of the Labyrinth, and ripped out the only other thing I had on me that day - my sword. In its dormant form, my sword was simply a yo-yo that was given to me when I first came to camp. However, when I threw it and caught it, it became a sword longer than my arm made of Celestial Bronze. The crossguard is straight and cylindrical, and the pommel weighs the weapon in the form of a sapphire filed into a sphere. On either side, an inscription on the blade reads, in Ancient Greek, 'Eclipse ', which was the name that I gave the weapon when I got it. I've had it since I was eleven years old.

Setting up myself in one of the clearings which had been re-established as a training ground lined with dummies, I faced one of them and lashed out without a second thought. I opened most of my fights this way, with an overhand strike with one hand that would cut through my enemy's neck - if they blocked it, my first instinct would be to spin back around and cut their legs from under them.

The dummy didn't move, so it made no objection when I beheaded it and then cut it in half with my second blow. Turning around, I cut at the next dummy, cutting it from top to bottom so that it fell in two equal pieces. I then shredded the third dummy, into sevenths, and battered the fourth one back with a roundhouse kick that Becky had taught me when I was a little girl. The dummy bounced against a tree and disappeared. The fifth one, I shattered, overcome with despairing rage. The sixth, I impaled right through the nonexistent heart with a roar that made my voice crack.

"Having fun?" said a voice, and I screamed, spinning around and making another overhand strike for my intruder's neck, blind to all reason. My sword, much to my amazement, met Celestial Bronze and a great, sonorous clang rocked the clearing. In front of me was Becky, and she had taken a practise sword that had blunted edges. She had moved quickly, and from the way she was holding the sword she had literally unsheathed it in the bare second before I could cut her down. Becky was smiling, and considering that she only had one eye, that smile seemed to spread further than a human being's. It was a warm, wonderful smile, and suddenly my heated rage faded.

I felt exhausted, and hot, and I was sweating even more than before now. I turned around and wasn't surprised to see that the dummies had been restored magically to their original place - that was an enchantment put on the clearing by Ares, so that there was never a shortage of targets to fight.

"Are you alright?" asked Becky gently. I snarled and slashed my sword down, so that our blades parted with an ugly shriek and we were eye-to-eye.

"No." I spat, "I'm flaming not alright! How could I be?" I raised Eclipse again and sliced right through the nearest dummy, before kicking the upper half that I had cut into a tree.

"I'm so sorry, Dawn. I wish there was something I could do for you to help." Becky extended an arm. Before I could think, i fell into her arms and she hugged me. I was sobbing my eyes out now, my cries loud and undignified and really embarrassing, but Becky held me. For all her strength, her hugs were gentler and kinder than anyone's. While my tears stained her shirt, she stroked my hair softly and I let her.

"It's not fair." I sobbed, "Why wasn't I claimed? Isn't that the promise the gods made, on the River Styx?!"

"It is." agreed Becky affectionately, holding me closer as I let Eclipse clatter to the ground. I hugged her back. It was like cuddling a punch-bag with arms and legs.

"I'm a demigod, aren't I?"

"You must be." Becky added, "You've got powers. I've seen you fight. You're really strong, and monsters are...attracted to you." She had a habit of choosing uncomfortable words when she couldn't decide how to put something, "Dionysus himself said that you were a demigod...demigoddess, whatever. You can see through the mist..."

"But who?" I wailed, pulling away and looking up at that great blue eye of hers. The angry heat was fighting to return again, but so long as I was looking into that eye it seemed like I was incapable of being truly, openly angry at anyone.

"Come on, sit down." Becky pulled me over to a tree stump nearby, where she seated me down and then knelt in front of her, "The gods swore on the River Styx, right in front of me, that they would claim their children. Maybe it's Hephaestus, he's still recovering from the beating Typhon gave him. We all know how you are with heat!"

To make her point, she picked up a twig and handed it to me, and I rubbed both hands against it vigorously. In a matter of seconds, sparks were flying from the twig and it caught fire. My hands didn't feel it, but the heat was washing over my eyes and I was transfixed, before Becky took it from me and stamped on it, snuffing out the flame. One thing we both had in common was that we didn't respond to fire the way other people did.

Despite myself, I smiled, and I was made aware of the fact that Becky was still smiling - she wanted me to smile, and when Becky wants you to smile, you smile, or you'll feel ashamed you didn't. That's the effect that Becky had on people.

"You're right," I wheezed, and then suddenly a light appeared above my head. I looked up and my face was bathed in a warm orange light - a flame was hovering above my head, beautiful and bright, and it made me smile even wider than Becky had. Fire, I thought, the symbol of Hephaestus, god of Fire.

I became aware of the fact that Chiron was standing at the other side of the clearing, and he was watching us. He was a great centaur with long hair and a dark beard. When he saw the flame, which didn't burn a single tree it touched as it danced above my head, he nodded, and knelt in front of us.

"Hail Dawn Richards," he called, "daughter of Hephaestus, god of fire, forges, blacksmiths, volcanoes and sculptors! Hail the daughter of the Blacksmith of the Gods!"

Looking back, I remember hearing the sound of rolling thunder far away, and of how the sky outside Camp Half-Blood turned black as sin. If I had noticed that earlier, I would have known something was wrong, and I would have been at least slightly aware of what was to come.

Chapter One - I sunbathe with a Cyclops
I hadn't spent a day in the Hephaestus Cabin, because the very next morning I went home to Orchard Beach. I had missed my family so much, and hadn't seen them at all since the aftermath of the battle, where the Apollo kids were treating me for my scars. When I finally came home, it was to the cheering greetings of my little sister. Cathy Swann was half my height, but just as slim as I was, with brown eyes and tousled auburn hair just like our mother

All four of us were auburn-haired, but I was more than the others. My hair was the colour of blood, people said, and when I was very little other kids joked that I had put blood in my shampoo and used that. Little Cathy was eight years old, and she was one of the most energetic little girls anyone could meet. Our littler sister, Tina, was only three, and couldn't quite walk yet. She was growing her red hair too, but it was shorter, and her eyes were a little bigger.

My stepfather was a big guy, with grey eyes, and he always wore a white shirt, black trousers and suspenders. He looked like a builder, but he was actually just an architect who helped write the designs for other buildings. His name was Jerry Richards, and he had been married ten years to my mother. When he met me and Cathy at the door, he was smiling, and he had obviously been cooking because there was tomato sauce streaked across his cuffs.

"Hey there, Dawn!" he hugged me when I went up to him, and I hugged him back. When he let me go, I smiled at him.

"How's it going, guys?" I asked.

"Busy." he said wearily, "With so much done to New York after the...incident, the company's been on fire for days and I haven't had a moment's peace from the office. Thank the gods for the holidays."

This was why my parents were so awesome - they never said anything bad about what I was, or the fact that I was the only one in the family. When I had come home at twelve years old with my sword and scars from my first quest to the Temples of Hera, and when I explained what I was to them, my mother had nodded and taken it in her stride, but Jerry had laughed and said '''Well, aren't you a lucky girl. We always knew you were special'' ' and it was true, he had always said so. Every time I came home from school, he asked me how his special girl was getting on, and I always felt like my day was gonna get better with him in the house.

The only exception to his coolness was how he referred to the Battle as 'the incident'. He still had bad dreams about the giants that had tried to kill them.

Going up to my room, I placed Eclipse in its dormant form in my bedside drawer, and it didn't come out for a few days. I spent the first day back with my mother, trying to help her around the house - she was a stay-at-home mom, who helped with the finances of Jerry's job, and she was always around. She was slightly stouter than me, and her hair was always short, and she was constantly surrounded by the smell of ink, but she was my mom and I loved her. There was nothing I couldn't tell her.

The second day, I played with my little sisters in the garden for almost the whole afternoon - I found that I often overslept coming home from camp. When I at last got the courage to tell them that I was a daughter of Hephaestus, my mother and father both smiled at me and congratulated me - Jerry laughed that, when I turned eighteen, I could come and work with him at the company, which made us all laugh. In private, however, I was lost in thought.

One night, I remember, I was sitting upright in my bed, completely awake and unable to think about anything other than that day in the woods with Becky. I remembered that kids born of Hephaestus were really tech-savvy, and amazing at making things for other people. Some of them, though very few, could control fire, like I could. I had never made a habit of it, but that night was the first time in a while I actually tried. Completely absent-minded, I had gone down to the back garden, not making a sound. When I was sure I was outside, I reached out one hand and snapped my fingers. I didn't know what I was doing, or what I was hoping to achieve, but I just felt like I had to do it. I wasn't surprised when nothing happened, but frustrated, and tried three more times. On the fourth try, it happened.

A small flame appeared, threaded between my thumb and forefinger. When I clenched and flexed my finger, to my amazement, the flame spread across my palm and licked at my fingers. For a moment, I was awestruck, breathless, unable to speak. The flame didn't hurt me - in fact, it felt like I had grown a sixth finger on my hand that I had always had but never been aware of - but for a moment I was curious. Without a word, I reached back and thrust my hand into the air. The flame, suddenly becoming a stream of fire, shot up into the sky like a flare and disappeared into the sky. When I looked back, my hand was empty and the heat was gone. I snapped my fingers again, and the flame returned, and this time it was threaded between all five of my fingers. Clenching my fist and splaying, I made the flame a bulb of fire that blossomed right in the middle of my palm. I laughed, and suddenly the flame started dancing wildly in my hand, and when I stopped laughing it stilled. Closing my fingers, I snuffed out the flame.

That was when I heard a sharp movement behind me and I turned around to look up at the window above me. There was a silhouette there, of Jerry - he was looking down at me, his mouth agape. Without saying a single word, I covered my face with my forearm and rushed inside, shutting the door and scuttling up to bed. I threw myself under the covers and fell into a deep sleep. Neither of us spoke of what had happened, but it didn't matter because what followed that night was much, much worse.

I dreamed I was trapped inside the cubicle of the girls' bathroom at middle school, and the big ugly Tammy Goldfinch was walling the door shut. I couldn't get out, and I dare not climb out because Tammy's friends were surrounding me. They had completely caged me in, and I was screaming out for help.

"Go on, scream!" laughed Tammy, in that terrible cackle that I remembered so painfully. As she laughed, I hammered on the door, but that didn't stop her, "You're never coming out, girl! You can only come out if you promise us your lunch money!"

"No! Never!" I hissed at them.

"Well, there we are then."

"Leave me alone!" I screamed, and suddenly a fierce light burst across my vision and filled the whole of the girls' toilets.

In fact, when it happened, the fire that followed filled the whole corridor outside and sent Tammy and her cronies flying through a window. Their screams, matched with mine, shocked me awake. When I came to my senses, I realised I was sprawled on the floor, entangled in the sheets and crying. When my mother found me in that position, she wrapped me in her arms until my cries ceased, and I told her that I was fine, that nothing was wrong.

But I knew that I was lying.

The nightmare had haunted me since I was eleven, when it happened. When I had set the bathroom on fire, I hadn't felt a thing, but the light that I had unleashed was so strong it blinded me. I had carried on screaming, even when the door of the cubicle dissolved into splinters and I burst out into the corridor, crawling out with my clothes on fire. One of the teachers had found me, and doused the flames on my clothes with his coat, and carried me out to safety. I still felt guilty that I couldn't remember his name. When the flames were doused by the firemen, it had been blamed on a gas leak, but when Tammy looked at me next, huddled in with her little brothers and shivering from shock, our eyes met and I knew she understood that, somehow, I had caused it. I had almost killed her.

I never saw her again, and she never bothered me. I don't know if she moved school or class, but the simple fact is that Tammy Goldfinch was scared of me and had disappeared from my life.

That morning, while I was resetting the sheets on my bed, Cathy found me. She always knocked three times before entering my room, and she only ever entered my room when I nodded - it wasn't cos I had told her to, just a habit of hers. When she entered, she was wearing Pokemon pyjamas and her hair was really messy. She yawned as she went in.

"Are you alright?" she asked. I turned to her and nodded, before going back to fitting the sheets, on my hands and knees over the bed.

"Fine. I just had a bad dream, is all." I told her assuredly. She walked up behind me.

"I heard you screaming last night." she said, "You were asking someone to leave her alone."

"I know." I said flatly, not giving any more of an explanation. I was wary that Cathy knew some of the details of what happened, but the idea of her knowing it was me who had set off the fire in that bathroom scared the hell out of me.

"The same one again?" she asked persistently.

"The same one, Cathy." I don't know how often I've had that nightmare since it happened, but it was often enough that the words 'the same one again', 'the same one, Cathy' had been sufficient to summarise it. Cathy was coming closer, and I felt her hand pressing on the bed.

"I have nightmares too, you know." she said brightly.

"Really?" I looked at her, an expression of overt shock on my face, which made us both snigger, "I did not know that, Cathy."

"Hey!" she she slapped my left toe, which made me flinch it away, and I looked mischievously at her again. She looked at me, smirking.

"Don't do that." I warned her. She sniggered again and grabbed my left heel, before reaching down to tickle the middle of my foot. I was so much quicker than her, snapping my foot back so sharply that I yanked her on to the bed. She squealed as she was sent, spread-eagled, over my legs, her belly thudding on to my knees as I sat down to receive her. I didn't give her a moment to recover herself, grabbing her left arm and pulling it up above her head, before reaching down with my free hand and tickling her exposed left side. Cathy was a sweet and rather mysterious girl, but her greatest weakness was that she was really ticklish.

"Ah!! Stop!" she cried, a gale of loud laughter rocking around the room as she wriggled and struggled against me on the bed. I ignored her and carried on tickling, making her legs flail wildly, before pulling her in close enough that we were nose-to-nose. I made a face at her, before pinning her down between my legs and tickling her with both hands. Her giggles turned fiercer and higher and she continued to swipe futilely at my arms, before trying to pry my fingers away only to realise that every time she tried, I dug the tips of my fingers in and found even more sensitive places under her ribs and make her giggles take over her.

When I finally stopped, she rolled away and I watched her catch her heaving breaths. When she looked sheepishly at me, I smirked at her and she giggled.

"I'm fine, Cathy. You just worry about how red your face is now." I pointed a finger at her, and she blushed, turning away, before the two of us started laughing again. Later on, when I joined everyone for breakfast, I wolfed it down before anyone else, and still felt the slightest bit hungry - this was a surprise to me, because I was usually done after a full English breakfast. I didn't complain, though, because I didn't want to upset mom. I couldn't meet my stepdad's eyes, for fear that he would say what I had been doing in the garden that night. He didn't say anything about it, but I was still scared that he would.

That was when I got a text off of Becky - she was inviting me to the beach with her, which was one of our old habits during the summertime. That got me excited, because I loved spending the summer with Becky. When I brought it to my mother, she shook her head.

"I don't like you being outside of the house with Becky," she said softly, "I don't think it's a good idea, even now." She had been like that over the past couple of days - I had been completely at home for those days, and she had hinted to me that she didn't like the idea of me going out with Becky because she was a Cyclops, and I was a demigod. The last time we had done that, after the Battle of the Labyrinth, we had been attacked in the streets by a hellhound. But, I was so happy that I just felt like I had to disagree with her - ever since I had gotten home, I had felt like I was missing out, even though I had been with Becky ever since Manhattan.

"I know, mom," I said, leaning into the chair as I swallowed a second helping of bacon, "but, it's such a beautiful day. I've barely left the house since I got back."

"I know, sweetie, but I just-"

"I'm not a little girl." I pressed suddenly ashamed of how aggressively I had turned in the conversation when I wasn't really angry.

"I know!"

"I'll take Eclipse with me, if you want me to. I'll be fine!" she had only just learned that I called my sword Eclipse.

"If you really want to, Dawn," she sighed, "but, at least let your dad drive you down to meet her."

I knew that, in that regard, I had no choice - I had always appreciated that my mother was protective of me, but sometimes it was a kick in the guts to hear her turn my pleas on me with that protectiveness. She was protective of me long before Camp Half-Blood, and long before Manhattan, but it's only now that I'm realising it, I thought. When the others had led the table, with Cathy leading little Tina along and Jerry going up to get dressed. It was just me and mom, but somehow I knew that we weren't finished.

"How are you?" I asked her.

She shook her head. "I'm doing just fine. It's just...it's a bit harder to accept, the world you're in, now that I've seen it first-hand."

"I get it," I wasn't lying there, because in my first battle with a monster I remember being too scared to leave my bed for fear that there were basilisks under it.

"Do you?" she asked doubtfully, "You haven't any daughters of your own, Dawn. All the same, thanks for understanding. I've not said 'Hell no ' to you on this, though, haven't I?"

"Fair point."

"Your father's more worried for you than I am." she added, "He told me what he saw outside, he thought that someone was making a campfire in our back yard."

My insides froze. I looked at my empty plate and didn't say a word. For a moment, i wished to Olympus above that I could turn invisible so my mom couldn't see how red my cheeks were turning.

"I'm sorry."

"You didn't set the house on fire, so no harm done." Mom shrugged, "Besides...I've kinda known you've been able to do that from the beginning. You might not remember, but...you set your first cot on fire!" She laughed, and I stared at her.

"You never talked to me about it."

"I didn't know it was you that had done it before, but now that Jerry tells me that you can make fireballs by clicking your fingers, it's obvious. And from what you told me about Tammy, when you were eleven." she didn't say anything else. She didn't have to. I suddenly grinned at her, the blush in my cheeks fading.

"I love you, mom." I breathed.

"I just want to say that...to tell you to be careful. Don't set anything else in this house on fire, now that you know how to do this." she stood up and kissed my cheek as she passed by. I smiled to myself. Going up to my room to pick up Eclipse, I caught Jerry's eye as he hooked his tie around his neck. Taking up Eclipse in one hand, I studied the design of it - the yo-yo itself was bright yellow, glittered with white, and the thread, unbreakable as the thread given to Theseus in the Labyrinth, was pure silver. I pocketed it, before looking in the mirror and seeing myself for the first time that morning. I was aware that there was still a lingering look of exhaustion in my eyes, but I brushed it aside and turned around to pack for my trip to the beach.

The drive down was utterly silent, until at last we came to a red light and Jerry finally spoke.

"You don't have to worry about what you did in the back yard," he said gently.

"Why not? Because I didn't set the place on fire?"

"More or less." he turned towards me and I met his eyes reluctantly, "I heard you crying out too that night. You have bad dreams, Dawn. Everyone does, you don't have to be ashamed of them."

"You don't have them like I do."

"No?" he sighed, "I guess not."

"Did Tammy ever recover, after the fire?" I asked blankly.

He looked curiously at me, "She moved school. She's under watch from other teachers now, you don't have to worry about her. You haven't had to worry about her for a long time, Dawn."

"I haven't been able to do that, since." I told him, "What I did at that school back in that bathroom. Even in the battle, I've not been able to. Last night was one of the strongest results I've had in a while."

"Until you saw me." he nodded, "When you're back at camp, you can try a little harder. This...Chiron would be more accepting of it than us 'mortals'." It was the free way he used the word 'mortal' to describe himself that made me want to smile at him.

"Thank you." I said. I turned and saw that Becky, in a blue Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts, was waiting for me at the other end of the car park. I hadn't noticed how we had long passed the red light and were coming up to the beach - the sun was already kissing the hood of the car in a deep silver light.

"Dawn," he turned to me, "did you expect your father to be who he was?"

"I didn't meet him."

"I know, but...did you expect him to be Hephaestus?" he seemed to struggle to find the words for his question, and asked awkwardly when he did so.

"I didn't want to be a daughter of the Big Three, that's for sure." I muttered happily, "There was a Prophecy about them, and it almost killed a couple of my friends. They're still mourning one of them, back at camp...I didn't know him that well, but he seemed like a nice guy, despite all they're saying about him."

He nodded, before turning away and putting both hands on the wheel, "Well, have fun. Be back before tea, Dawn. You know what your mother can be like!" I laughed and got out of the car. Looping a bag over one shoulder, I walked up to join Becky, who eyed me up and down sceptically.

"You're not really dressed for it, aren't you?" she eyed me baggy jeans and grey shirt with sleeves that drooped over my wrists. I smiled, slipping on a sunhat and shades, before unbuttoning my shirt to reveal the bright greeen bikini underneath. She raised an eyebrow.

"Better." Becky pointed to where a deck-chair had been set up, showing me that she had been there ten minutes early. Becky had no parents, and I didn't know where she came from, but wherever she went she came prepared - the rainbow-coloured umbrella that loomed over us seemed big enough for her, and could probably fit a full-grown horse underneath in the space left. She had left a blanket out for herself with a pillow, and already poured a great cup of lemonade for each of us.

I slipped off my shirt and jeans, and sat in the deck-chair, looping one leg over the other. Sitting at my right, Becky yawned loudly and stretched her arms, the fabric of her shirt flexing so that it highlighted her powerful shoulders in a way that made me think of a boxer. I slipped my hands behind my head and smiled as the sun blazed on me. From time to time, the odd high-schooler would pass by and gape at me, and I would smile at the bikini I was wearing, but sometimes they would gape at Becky, whose shirt clung to her so much it did a great favour for her boobs. Eventually, we started gossiping, as we always did, about what had happened at camp. We went through how we had never expected some demigods to be claimed by a certain Olympian, and how stunned we were that there seemed to be twice the number of children by minor gods as great ones.

Eventually, I started to feel sleepy. The sunlight that gleamed over my body had much to do with it, but as I started drifting into a snooze I became aware of a figure sitting in a deck-chair next to me. He was slim and wore a loose blue shirt, but otherwise I didn't see much of him, for soon I was lost in a blissful daydream. I can't say what I dreamed of, but only that it made me smile and feel really peaceful, until suddenly I was awake again and Becky was talking to me, very energetically as if she hadn't noticed that I had drifted off. When I looked up, I saw the figure again.

I could see that he had long silvery hair and that his loose shirt was embroidered with crescent moons, and that he too was wearing shades. He was looking at me in a way that made me feel very, very queasy. No...not queasy, but like I wanted to stay lying down, like getting up would be a task not worth taking. When I finally looked away, he vanished. I turned to see that Becky had stopped talking and was now sipping lemonade from her cup. She had utilised Mist so that she looked like a normal girl - big and burly, for sure, but with two blue eyes instead of one. When she looked at me, though, the two eyes seemed uncomfortable to look at, because I preferred her with one eye.

The sound of feet on the sand trudged along behind me, and I craned my neck to look up. Above me, wearing a broad-rimmed blue hat rimmed with red, a white beach shirt that tailed around her thighs and flayed jeans that were cut just above her knees. As she circled around us, I saw that she was only thirteen or fourteen, and that her hair, a long ponytail of deep black, was coiling around one shoulder. Her eyes, when she removed her sunglasses, were as pale as the clouds above her.

"Hello." she had a very smooth voice.

"Hi." I answered back.

"Do you mind?" she gestured at the blanket where Becky was now curled up. I nodded, wary of the girl as she sat down with her legs crossed and her hands on her knees. She was looking at me in a way that I really couldn't tell if I liked. Looking up, I saw the silver-haired boy again and, before I could make out any more of him, he got up and drifted out of sight. I looked back at the girl, who seemed to have been looking at him too.

"Can we help you?" asked Becky flatly, stretching up to face the girl - even sitting down, Becky towered over her, "Are you lost?"

"I'm exactly where I want to be."

"Who are you?" I demanded, slipping my legs over the deck chair and eyeing the girl, feeling for Eclipse with one hand.

"You needn't bother with that." the girl extended two dainty hands and clapped them three times. As I was fishing in my bag for Eclipse, it flew from between the zips and the girl caught it between her hands like a flytrap catching an insect. Threading the string around one finger, the girl threw it and caught it before I could stop her, and Eclipse emerged between her fingers, "This is a good sword."

"It's mine!" I hissed lashing out to take it from her. Any other child would have flinched away and clutched the object they had stolen with both hands, crying out for an adult. The girl simply smiled and caught my wrist as I came in to take back my sword.

"I know. What do you call it?" asked the girl.

"Eclipse. How can you see it?" Mortals shouldn't have been able to see Eclipse as a sword, thanks to the Mist that clouded their perception of the world. But this girl clearly could see through the Mist, which made me even more uneasy around her.

"I'm not a child. I'm a daughter of Zeus." she let go of my hand and turned to Becky, who thus far haven't moved. The girl reached out to shake Becky's hand, "How do you do?"

"Thalia?" I gasped. I had never met Thalia Grace, the daughter of Zeus who had lived as a tree for the past few years until she was recently brought back by the Golden Fleece of Polyphemus.

"No." The girl shook her head, "I'm not Thalia Grace. My name is Artemis."

"What?" I stared at her.

"You heard me," she smiled warmly, "My name is Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt and Wilderness. I need you to do something from me."

"My lady," two words I had never once said to anyone slipped out of my mouth before I could stop them, "it's an honour to finally meet you. I'm sorry I wasn't that much of a welcome a moment ago-"

"You don't have to worry about that!" Artemis put a hand on my shoulder. "Clarisse la Rue gave me worse welcomes!"

"What can we do for you, Artemis?" asked Becky, "I don't suppose you'd like me to go in there and kill a shark, because I can. I've done it before!"

"No!" Artemis threw back her head and laughed a little girl's laugh, "I have my Hunters to do that, besides we only hunt monsters."

"Sharks are monsters. One almost bit my leg off when I was a kid." It took me a while to realise that Becky was probably a fair deal older than she looked, as Cyclopes' longevity is different from humans.

"Sharks are beautiful creatures - don't believe me, ask Poseidon!" Artemis leaned in, "I need you to do something for me."

"What?"

"I need you to go home."

The instruction hit me harder than I expected - up until then, I was having a really nice time. I just wanted to sunbathe - i hadn't taken the moment to notice how silvery the sea had turned, or the tiny specks of seagulls that were dancing over it.

"What?" I gasped. Artemis closed her eyes and smiled patiently.

"I said, I need you to go home." she repeated, "Pack up your unmbrella and blanket, put something over that bikini and go home!"

"Why?"

"You have to."

"Why?" I was getting angry at Artemis. Those pale eyes of hers were fixing on me like a wild stag's.

"You have a sister. Two sisters, actually. And you have a stepfather, and your mother. You have to go home, Dawn."

"Answer my question!"

"I have." Artemis was completely calm, but her voice had started to disturb me - as calm as her face, but with the rumblings of a storm behind it, as if she was trying desperately to make me understand without breaking some kind of terrible rule. "You need to go home. I'm afraid I can't stop her!"

"Who?"

"I..." Artemis' hand fished into my bag and threw my phone at me, and I caught it in my free hand, "Call home."

"Why?"

"Do it!" shouted Artemis, her serenity breaking momentarily, and before she could get any angrier I dialled my mum and put my phone to my ear. I was suddenly scared of this fourteen-year-old girl, although I knew she was much more than that. ''You're letting a child tell you what to do! She's a goddess, but she looks like a child. How can this get any weirder?''

I got my answer in the form of little Cathy answering the phone, "Dawn?"

"Cathy?" I remarked. I hadn't expected her to pick it up at all, "Are you alright?"

"Mommy....something's happened to mommy, and Tina...Dawn, you have to get here! I'm scared. She's here!"

"Who?"

"Help!" Cathy screamed, and suddenly the shivering sound of a snake's hissing took over her screams. She hung up. I stayed like that for...I don't know how long, the phone pressed to my ear. The look on Artemis' face was a mask of sorrow.

"You have to go." she said quietly. I sprang out of my chair entirely, summoning strength and velocity that I didn't know I had. I seized Artemis by the shoulders and pinned her against the umbrella. She didn't look surprised, but her hands prying into my fingers showed that she was scared. There was smoke seeping between my fingers as I held her shoulders, but I ignored that.

"What have you done?" I shouted, spit flecking her face as I did so. Artemis gulped and shook her head frantically.

"Go!"

"Answer me!" I hiss.

"I didn't do anything. You have to go! You heard her, she needs your hel-"

I threw her to the ground and stood over Artemis with a look of what I hoped was fury on my face. For a moment, Artemis looked truly terrified, like the child she was supposed to be.

"Tell us what's going on!"

"What is it?" broke in Becky, who looked deeply worried and completely confused.

"Something's happening at home," I pressed my heel into Artemis' calf and held her down, "Tell me!"

Artemis reacted more violently than I could have expected from her - her free foot crashed into my leg and sent me sprawling to the ground. When I looked back, Artemis was gone and the only trace of where she had come from, and where she had run to, were a streak of frantic footsteps that disappeared towards the sea.

"What is going on?" begged Becky, who had risen from where she was sitting and was watching me with concern that I had never seen on her before.

"We have to go." I muttered, before breaking into a run towards the road, to catch a cab home and find out what in hell was going on.

Chapter Two - My home is trashed
The cab home was completely quiet, except for the chattering of my knees - one of my worst nervous habits, in a time where I was absolutely racking my brain to figure out what was going on. I had heard Cathy say 'She here! ' before she hung up, but I knew for a fact that this told me little - one of her habits was to refer to her tormentor by gender instead of saying who they really were.

When we came close to my street, I slipped a few dollars to the driver and burst out of the door without looking back. The cab surged away moments later, and soon I was pelting towards my house. Come on, legs, work! I screamed at myself, aware that, for once, I was going ahead of Becky, whose heels were thudding into the road so hard they were probably leaving dents.

"Dawn, at least tell me what's going on?" she was calling at me.

"Cathy says she's being attacked." I said, knowing that this was a very vague explanation for what I thought was happening. My heart was thudding harder than my feet, and my mind was spinning with images of Cathy curled up under a table, her hands over her mouth, hiding from whoever, or whatever, had come to our home and had threatened her.

"By what?"

"I don't freaking know!" I snapped, as Becky started catching up with me.

"What did you hear after it?"

"Something...hissing." I panted, turning a corner towards my house. I could see, right in front of me, that the front door was ajar and that something had broken through the gate to get towards it.

That was when I stopped dead, for two reasons - firstly, because I was somehow shocked to see how something had ripped the door off its hinges. Second, because I could see something standing in front of it, on four legs and a curling, bulbous tail.

"Hey!" I screamed. The creature turned towards me, and I snapped my fingers. A string of flame formed between my thumb and forefinger; I clenched my fist and then splayed it, throwing my arm back and then forwards as if I were throwing a shot put. The flame - in a shrieking, orange arc - spiralled towards the thing in the doorway, and it pounced out of the way.

The fireball hit the wall to its left and flashed violently, but I was already summoning a flame to my hand. This time twirling my fingers, causing the flame to dance and swell until it was bigger than my hand. As the creature crawled from behind the gate towards me, I threw my hand out again and the flame streaked towards it. The creature, whatever it was, cried out and pounced out of the way just in time. The trash can behind it buckled under the force of the fireball.

The creature was already slipping closer towards me.

"What the-" Becky gasped, before I raised a hand to shut her up. I could now see the creature in the light now. I had seen Scythian Dracaena, and Hyperborian Giants, and all sorts of monsters - but this one took the cake, because it was one of the weirdest monsters I had ever seen in my life. It had the head of a lion, with a mane as red as cherries, and the body of a goat. To add strangeness to ridiculousness, its tail was longer than the rest of its body - a great blue snake, curling and hissing in the air over the lion's head, with fangs longer than my little finger.

"A chimera." I had never seen one before, but Annabeth Chase had told me enough about it to know that it was bad news.

"Di immortales!" Becky hissed, before the chimera hissed again and threw itself at us. Suddenly, it was larger than a Great Dane and its snake head was swerving back as it broke into a run. It launched into the air with its teeth bared and I lunged underneath it. The creature landed behind me and opened its mouth to scream. Much to my shock, instead of just screaming, it spat a stream of red flame at Becky. The flames licked her arm as she raised it to protect herself. The fabric of her jacket turned black and flaky, but her arm did not burn with it. Bethany screamed, and launched her other arm at the chimera, which swerved underneath it. The snake head stabbed at Becky, but she ducked to avoid it.

I caught up with the chimera and raised Eclipse above my head. The chimera turned to look at me and hissed. I knew what was coming as it opened its mouth, but instead of breathing fire it lunged and snapped its teeth at me. The teeth were thinner and sharper than needles, and when I threw myself back to avoid them I lost my balance and landed brutally on my butt. The chimera lunged at me, its front hooves punching into my stomach as it crawled on top of me, opening its mouth again.

Before it could try and bite me again, I swiped out with Eclipse and the crossguard caught it across the neck, knocking it off me and sending it sprawling to the ground. The hissing sound it was making became a snarl and it lunged at me again, but Becky appeared out of nowhere and seized the chimera with both arms. The monster screamed as she wrestled it away from me, her brawny arms contending with the hooves and the jaws of the chimera.

"Don't let it sting you!" I screamed, struggling for my sword and bursting to my feet. As Becky struggled, the snake tail looped on top of her and lunged. Becky's one eye swivelled up to see it coming and she shrieked, freeing one hand to clutch at the snake as its fangs bared to bite her. Her fingers clamped around the snake's head, and then her other hand and she swung it like a hammer, once, twice, thrice, before hurling it across the street. It sailed to the very end of the street and crashed into a sidewalk, where it rolled several times and came to a stop.

"Get in!" roared Becky, "I've got this!"

Without a moment to refuse her, I turned and hurtled towards my house. My belly was hurting considerably where the chimera had kicked me, and running made my guts howl at me to stop, but I kept going.

And then something else entirely appeared in the doorway and I skidded to a halt so suddenly and unexpectedly that I slipped and grazed my knee on the tarmac. Crying out, from the thing that had emerged from my home, and from the blinding pain of the road beneath me, I crawled on all fours behind a trash can, aware that something was slithering into the light. Something that was not the chimera, nor a human, nor Artemis. It was making a low, hissing sound as it moved, which was soon joined by a cacophony of identical noises that rattled across the street like the rumbles of an earthquake.

I dared to look over the trash can and saw a bipedal figure tear from my house and pounce over the fence, before turning around and looking directly at me. I flattened myself to the ground before it saw me, and I was made aware of sharp, short footsteps creeping up to me, gravel crunching underneath them. I was holding my breath, aware of the chimera that was now charging across the street towards Becky, who was standing prepared with her fists raised. Had she noticed what new horror had entered the battle? How had she not heard the sounds it was making?

"Get down!" I bellowed, and Becky turned just in time to see what I was hiding from. She broke from where she was dancing and dived for cover, and the chimera exploded past her, its hooves hammering on the ground as it went.

"Are you kidding me?" she rasped, and I heard the hissing thing slither away from me, into the night. Unconsciously aware that it had gone, I got up, but before I could blink the chimera was on me. I had turned back to Becky, my chest heaving with relief that the terrible creature had vanished, but then I saw the lion's head of the chimera flash towards me. Its hooves hit me right in the chest before its face did, and I howled as the hooves punched into my skin and pinned me to the sidewalk. Kicking out, trying desperately to keep those jaws away from me.

Eclipse was in one hand, and in the other hand I conjured another flame. It was small and feeble, but when I whirled my hand at the chimera, it became wide and fearsome and I sent it straight for the monster. The serpent tail had been coiling around to finish me off, and those serpentine eyes had only a bare moment to see the white hell I was sending its way, before the whole tail dissolved into ashes as it caught fire. The chimera roared with pain and writhed in circles, biting madly at its tail, but the flames had already extinguished.

Turning, its eyes wild and vengeful, the chimera pounced, but I brought Eclipse up in a senseless swing that struck my opponent above its front-left leg and sheared through its whole body. The chimera made no sound, erupting into golden dust that left me blind to what was in front of me.

"Come on!" I called to Becky, turning and leaping over the fence into my house. I noticed, at once, that the chimera hadn't been what had broken inside - it wouldn't have torn the door off its hinges, but smashed a hole through it instead. I couldn't get out of my head the creature that had emerged only moments ago and given me such a fright.

I noticed that there were ugly claw marks along the wall to my left, and fabric had been torn out of the stairs, but my attention was immediately drawn to my left - I could see a hand clinging to the door into the kitchen, grey and jagged. Fear clawing at my throat, I moved closer to the hand, to notice the silver ring that was encircling the middle finger.

"No..." I went into the kitchen and my jaw froze at what I saw. My mother was clinging to the doorway. She was half-falling, half-running from whatever had attacked her, and she had little Tina clutched in her free arm, and Tina was staring gape-mouthed at me. I at first thought I was seeing things, but then I realised something worse - they were all as grey as thunderclouds, and made of stone. I knew exactly what had happened to them as soon as I noticed this, and it sent weeds of ice through my spine that made it almost impossible to breathe.

"Mom!" I cried, grabbing her and trying to pull her away from the door - her hand was clutching the doorway with a deathly grip, and she didn't move an inch. Nor would Tina. I realised at once that I was howling my mother's name, and that there were tears flicking from my eyes as I tried to pry her from her spot. Then I remembered who had picked up the phone.

"Cathy." I choked, turning and scouring the kitchen for my other sister - I ripped open cupboards and upturned the dinner table, hurling chairs from where they stood and even searching the empty oven. I tore apart the whole house looking for her, before I went into her bedroom. There, hiding under her bed, was Cathy. For a moment, I froze, thinking that she was looking at me and that there was surprise, maybe shock, in her eyes. But then I saw that her eyes, which were so pretty and so bright, were now dull and hard, as was the whole of her body. She too had turned to stone. I reached in and pulled her out. She was probably three times heavier than when we had played together that morning, and when I saw how her hands were clasped together and she was curled into a ball, I screamed.

That was when Becky found me. She was crying, the tears coming out of her great blue eye were twice the size of my fingernails, and they left glossy streaks on her face. She rushed towards me and tried to take Cathy's stony corpse from my hand, but I fought her. For the first time, I felt like I was much stronger than her, and when I shouted at her to leave me alone, she recoiled, in shock that I could say something like that to her. I held Cathy's corpse close to my body, my forehead touching on Cathy's cold cheek.

"Medusa." Becky rasped, going to her knees and putting an arm around me, "It was Medusa here...that thing in the doorway-"

"Don't speak." I begged her, lost in my tears still.

"We have to go. She'll be back, we have to go..." Becky pulled me to my feet, with Cathy still in my arms, but I couldn't look at her. I was trying madly to find some colour in my sister's eyes. The lump in my throat, which had begun when I found my mother clawing at the doorway, suddenly became unbearable and I let out a harsh, high scream.

The whole house suddenly shone, and my scream tore through the walls and peeled the paper from their surfaces. My sister's bed caught the light and became a black skeleton engulfed in flames, and I felt a shockwave rip from my face and shatter the windows in the room. Becky flinched and shielded her eye, and I let out another scream that let loose a flash of flame that burned a hole in the floor beneath us.

I fell first, but Becky grabbed me and was pulled down as well. Just before I hit the kitchen table beneath us, my clothes increasingly ruined by fire, Becky spun us around so that she was underneath me and, when we landed, she let out a snarl as she took the full brunt of the blow. My head smacked into her shoulder and I yelled, but I was otherwise unharmed.

The house, however, was burning.

"Get out!" cried Becky, batting heatedly at my clothes to try and douse the flames. She succeeded, but I was still smoking fiercely. I still had my sister's body in my hand, and she weighed me down a lot, but I ran as fast as my legs could carry me before a burning section of the ceiling came down on my head with a crash. We were out through the front door with a great leap, and Becky stopped once we were back on the sidewalk.

Turning around, we watched as my house burned, completely blind to the neighbours who were pouring out of their homes and screaming at the burning ruin that the house was becoming.

"Come on." whispered Becky, pulling me along. I thought that she was worried about the mortals who were now gathering on the street - how they hadn't seen us, or heard the battle with the chimera was beyond me, but I didn't care.

A shadow fell over the two of us and I turned around. Another chimera was prowling across the street towards us. I could see it from this far, and I could see that it was so much bigger than the last one - this one was probably three times bigger, and its tail twice as long. Unlike its predecessor, this chimera had a black goat's body and its beard was dark, and its snake tail was pure golden with a king cobra's head at the end. Mortals everywhere had started screaming at it, forgetting the burning house altogether, and they were turning and running for their lives.

I was aware that a car was pulling up and that somebody was getting out of it. He was slender and about an inch shorter than me, but the moment he appeared I recognised him. I had seen him earlier that day, and up close I could make out the pale skin and silvery hair, before I skidded to a halt.

"Stop!" he shouted, jabbing a finger over my head. I completely turned to stone, awed by the power in his voice. I couldn't speak, I could barely breathe, but I knew at once that he wasn't even talking to me. He wasn't even talking to Becky, who had also frozen on the spot. The boy was pointing straight at the chimera, and when I dared to look out of the corner of my eye, I saw that the beast was only two feet away. It was backing off, and the gouges in the road told me that it too had skidded to a stop, as if the command had come completely abruptly. It was looking at the boy with something that I hadn't expected at all - terror.

The boy turned to me. He had the most beautiful eyes.

"Come with me." he said gently, and I stepped forwards. That was one of the dumbest mistakes I had ever made; I had only taken three steps when his hand rose up and two fingers cupped under my chin, almost affectionately. The effect was jarring - I Felt like, suddenly, I was being ripped from my body, like a snail being torn out of its shell. My eyes blazed with ferocious pain, and I lost all sense of being, all sense of awareness....and suddenly, I was floating on a breeze, and all of my pain had drifted away. I felt incredible, like I was walking on water.

When I turned around, I could see that I was no longer in the street where we had fought the chimera, and where my family had been murdered. I was standing in a bar - a huge bar, wider than my house was, with ebony tables and chairs, a huge pool table to my left, dartboards and even a fireplace with a great white fire burning in it. I had never been here before, and when I turned around I saw that I wasn't alone. There was a man there, with the build of an Olympic weightlifter, long arms with thick shoulders, a broad chest and a huge jaw. The man was wearing a velvet smoking jacket of deep maroon, black pants and a bow tie, and the whole thing seemed to cling to his body. When I studied his face, I noticed he rather handsome, with a mane of red hair. His eyes were, much like the boy's, his most startling feature - they were a fierce, dark shade of red that glittered menacingly in the firelight.

"Hello," he addressed me gruffly, extending a hand which had a huge glass of golden liquid in it, "glad you could come here."

"Who are you?"

"It doesn't matter," muttered the man, "I suppose I should say...Welcome to my humble abode. The thing is, I don't even live here, and this isn't as much a humble abode as it is a glorified prison cell." He laughed boisterously to himself.

"Why am I here?"

"I was about to ask you the same question." the man said sceptically. He downed the whole glass in one go, before snapping his fingers. A figure standing behind the bar, whom I barely noticed, extended a hand slowly up with three fingers extended. The wine - if that's what it was - rose up in the glass in time with the cloaked man's fingers, and the red-haired man smiled, "I suppose, you were sent here to see me. Would you mind giving me your name?"

"I'd rather not trade my name with a stranger." I said, sounding like such a child. Even now I'm amazed that I resorted to something so unoriginal as that.

"I suppose not. Athena would call that wisdom. Ares would call it cowardice, though. Since your here, could you join me in a drink?"

"I'm too young to drink."

"So? You're too young to set things on fire, but you did that rather nicely." he laughed again, before drinking the whole glass in one go a second time. He snapped his fingers and the glass refilled. I was starting to remember the queasy, lazy feeling that the boy had given me back on the beach, and when I looked down I couldn't even see my feet. Was I even standing up, or sitting down, or flat on the ground, I couldn't tell. Was I still lying on the road where the boy had stopped me?

"Is this a dream?"

"It is." The red man swept a glass across the table towards me and I caught it with one hand. There was already some ale in it, "Drink."

"Why?"

"Is a reason necessary? Drink!" he shouted, and I reluctantly drank. The stuff was like a kick to my stomach, and it left a volcanic sensation in my throat, but suddenly I was throwing back my head and belching coloured smoke, and the red man was laughing.

"I forgot that some mortals couldn't take it." he cackled, and I glared at him.

"I am not a mortal." I said indignantly, and he stared at me, as if amazed that someone who was probably half his size could have the gall to speak up to him, "I'm a daughter of Hephaestus!"

"Oh. Are you a god?"

"No." I spat.

"You're a mortal, then."

The ground was lurching underneath me, wherever they were, and I was conscious that the shadowy man behind the bar, and the huge red-haired man before me weren't even shuddering under the quakes that were happening beneath our feet.

"Drink!" he commanded again. I drank, and belched a purple stream of smoke at his face. He wrinkled his nose, and smiled, before turning back and drinking in silence.

"If you've been sent here, you're obviously special. I know who you are, Dawn Richards. You don't know who you are, though. That much is plain, or that stuff won't be burning your throat." he seemed to enjoy the way my face reacted to drinking that stuff.

"What do you want?"

"To empty this whole bar, if that's even possible. Whatever you want, get on with it. I haven't got all eternity to spend with the likes of you-" his words became inaudible, and suddenly the ground toppled underneath me and I was falling. The sense of solid being returned abruptly to me, and I was suddenly in my own body. And my own body was falling now, lost in the violent mists of the dream.

Chapter Three - I go swimming
When I woke up, I was in chains.

I don't, for the life of me, know how I got in those chains, but when I opened my eyes, my arms were bent behind my back and golden links were binding my wrists. Somehow, Becky had been restrained the same way, but there were four more chains to her arms, two of them above her elbows. And she still hadn't woken up.

"Where am I?" I asked, before I heard footsteps behind me. I turned, and a boy of about sixteen appeared behind me.

He was the boy from before, and up close I noticed how thin he was - with wiry arms, a narrow frame, bony fingers and a long neck, the boy looked like he had been stretched so hard there wasn't an exhausted inch of skin on him. He was wearing the blue shirt with moons lined across it, and underneath a white vest. His shorts were khaki, and his legs were hairless. He had a shock of silver hair, and his skin wasn't as pale up close. When he turned to look at me, I flinched so sharply I felt something tug in my neck and cried out. The boy chuckled.

"Hello, Dawn." he greeted calmly.

"How do you know my name?"

"I know more than just your name." he laughed, "Tell me, because I'm curious, did you kill the first chimera?"

"Yes." I spat at him.

"And Medusa?" he smiled thinly at me and I shivered. I was focusing completely on his lips that were so thin that, pressed together, they almost disappeared. The boy was a freak, but somehow made it handsome. If I could only bring myself to look up at him, I would make up my mind about that.

"She got away." I said bitterly, and bent my head down. I turned and saw that the boy had company. There were four other demigods there, all of them taller than him and almost twice his size, two of them boys with spears, one of them (the tallest) a girl with a bow and arrows, and the other one was unarmed, with close-shaved hair and shades. The tallest, the girl with the bow, was standing closest to the boy with white hair, and she had frizzy brown hair and hazel eyes.

"If you'd have killed her too, I'd be frightened. Medusa is a nuisance, you know. Killed five of my friends before I could convince her to go after you." the boy knelt down and studied me - I had never felt a gaze like his on me before, like he was commanding you to look away and daring you to look him in the eye at the same time.

"Who are you?"

"My name is Eric," answered the boy, "Eric Silk. I'm like you, though perhaps not as unique or as pretty. A demigod. I doubt you'd remember me, you never looked my way, but we lived in the Hermes cabin. You came a year or so before me, but you were there when I was claimed, as I recall."

"I don't remember you," I closed my eyes, "why did you send her after my parents and my sisters?"

He seemed startled by the question, "I didn't. I sent Medusa after you, Dawn. When your...keepers got in the way, she assumed they were protecting you. She could smell demigods, and you'd lived there a good long while. And she smelled your friend had been there," he cast a curious, almost friendly glance at Becky, who was snoring loudly, "and she pounced. She can get very carried away."

"She killed them all." I said, my voice cracking. I lunged for him, my teeth bared like I wanted to chew the flesh from his face, but I didn't get far. Somebody was pulling on my chains, and they yanked me back so hard that I landed on my arms and yelled.

"Your sword." he reached into his pocket and withdrew a yo-yo. Throwing and catching it, he watched with fascination as Eclipse transformed in his hand. He spun the blade several times in a way that told me at once that he'd held a sword before many times. He tossed it to the girl with frizzy hair, "Another interesting gift to demigod children. A fairly basic weapon. I remember seeing you fighting in Manhattan. You were good. I wonder, how good have you gotten since, lying in the sun with your body bare while demigods litter the streets, alone and afraid and vulnerable!"

"You're faulting me for that?"

"No. But it's a factor."

"What do you want from me, Eric?"

"You were recently contacted by the Goddess of the Hunt. What did you discuss?"

"She warned me to go home.

"What did you talk about?" he hissed at me, impatiently. I smiled at him, and then I realised something about his eyes. They were paler than the rest of him, a white so pure and fine and clean that I was somehow convinced there was another colour in there somewhere, hidden from all view like a buried treasure. His pupils were just visible, but they were pinpricks of black, dull and uninteresting, and there was no hint of life behind them.

"She told me that she wanted something done for her."

"And?"

"That's it."

He came in closer to me. His breath was very cool, almost frosty. When I met his eyes, I felt like crying out. It was like looking into the eyes of a spider - they were round and clear and glossy, and I could see my reflection in them. I looked like a child, and I was close to crying.

"Artemis told you she wanted something from you, then she told you to go home?" he remarked doubtfully, "I find that hard to believe. She's angry, and vengeful, she wouldn't just ask you to do that. She would try to recruit you first, and if she had sent you home, it would have been in time to kill Medusa."

"Why are you holding me here? What do you want?"

"Here, as in the Hera's Hero?" he surveyed the area around him, and then waved to the figure who was standing behind me. I was pulled to my feet and dragged towards where the boy was standing. As I got closer to him, I felt my eyes dull a little, and immediately kicked myself in the heel to wake myself up. I couldn't tell what he was doing to me, but this Eric was a powerful person. I hadn't encountered a demigod who could do what he could do, "Beautiful, isn't she?"

We were standing on a huge ship, which was pearl white and three stories high. We were standing on the highest area, which was probably the smallest and was lined with sun loungers, around the edges. Each of the loungers was occupied by a young demigod, and the only one I noticed was a fat girl with black hair and a flowery dress.

"She's certainly something." I said, noticing quickly that there was a swimming pool to our right on the lower level, and that a ladder was reaching down to the pool. It was round and had a shallow end and a deep end, but I couldn't tell how deep it was.

"I called her after my grandfather." he smiled, "Hera had him bewitch the King of the Gods, and she has owed him ever since."

"Your grandfather?"

He glanced at me, and I met his gaze bravely. He fixed me with a gaze of total indifference, "Hypnos. You haven't figured it out. I am a son of Morpheus, the God of Dreams!"

"What?" I was surprised. I had never heard that Morpheus had any demigod children - I knew that Hecate, Khione and even Janus had the odd child, but I hadn't thought about it until after we were all claimed in the Hermes Cabin.

"I have been at Camp Half-Blood my entire life, you know." he smiled at me, as if completely lost in the memory of Half-Blood Hill, "All of my life, until recently. And you've met me before, though it didn't last long at all. You fell asleep during our chat, when you first arrived at camp! I was only just discovering what I could do, so that may have been my fault. Welcome aboard the Hera's Hero, Dawn."

"What have you done to Becky?" I turned furiously around and looked at Becky. She hadn't got up - she was stooped over and snoring still - the umbrella over her head, and even the one which had been over mine when I woke up, was rippling under the force of her snoring.

"She'll wake up when I want her to." Eric said coolly, "But, we have something to talk about."

"What?"

"When I found you, you were running from the chimera. Why?"

"It was bigger than the old one, and I'm still mad from when you set Medusa on my family."

"I set her on you, but you weren't there. I heard that Artemis was at that beach, I never expected you to go there." Eric seemed really disappointed in me, "Your family got in the way."

"You little son of a -" I threw myself at him, my hands burning as rage filled my head. I became aware of something boiling between my arms, and knew that my chains were shivering, but it didn't matter. Eric was ready for me this time, sneaking a foot out and tripping me up as I met him. I tumbled to the ground, yelling, and I heard the hissing of steel. Turning, I saw that Eric had pulled out a sword. This one wasn't like any I'd seen previously - the blade was shorter and much thinner, and it was more of a rapier than a Greek sword. Extending the blade and pointing it at me, Eric smiled.

"If you want to fight," he called, "then I'm going to have to kill your friend. I can't have her interrupting me while I'm distracted."

"She's asleep!" I gasped. Eric snapped his fingers and Becky screamed, recoiling violently and ripping her chains off with a disgusting sound of breaking links. She didn't get up, but sprawled on the floor and writhed. Eric was smiling triumphantly to himself.

"Leave her alone!" I charged for him, before remembering that I was unarmed. Eric was clearly aware of this, aiming his sword right at me. I ground to a halt moments before the tip of his blade cored the apple of my throat. I was transfixed by the patterns of light on the blade from the descending sun.

"Temper, temper." he remarked.

"What are you doing to her?" I demanded.

"I'm inside her head. I'm giving her a nightmare. It's fun, you should try it." he angled his hand so that the tip of his sword touched icily on my skin. I froze.

"Get out of her head, you maniac!" I snapped.

"Back away." he commanded. Reluctantly, acknowledging the look of tight pain on Becky's face as she wriggled on the ground, I took several steps back. Nodding, Eric waved his hand and Becky splayed wide, taking several heaving breaths. Then, suddenly, she started to giggle, and her arms and legs twitched again and again, as a huge grin broke across her face. Her giggling turned to hoots of laughter and she kicked wildly, tucking her arms in.

"She thinks you're tickling her now." Eric observed, "She knows you're ticklish, but you can't stand being tickled. Didn't you and your sister play around like that before you left them to die?"

"Shut up!" I shouted, taking a step towards him. He arched an eyebrow and flexed a finger, and suddenly Becky shrieked in pain before returning to a chorus of laughter.

"Not the belly! Please, not the belly! Please! Hahahahahaha!" howled Becky, her grin reminding me of a child.

"Get out of her head, please?" I asked him, trying so hard to keep my voice clear. Eric nodded, and clapped his hands twice. Becky snapped awake and her giggles slowly faded.

"Where am I?" she asked. She bolted to her feet, her hands free and her fists clenched, but I held out a hand and she froze.

"Don't move!" I shouted, turning to face Eric eye-to-eye. His smile hadn't faded at all - in fact, he seemed to be enjoying what he was seeing.

"Where am I?" demanded Becky.

"We're at sea, Becky, and we're in danger."

"Oh no, you're not in danger." Eric cut in, "Put the sword down, Dawn. There's no need to make this more bloody than is needed."

"What do you want from us?" I hissed.

"We're going to a place where Chiron can't find us, and when we get there, you're going to meet your father. You're going to give him what he wants."

"Hephaestus?" I gasped, "What could he want from me, I'm not the only daughter of his!"

"I know not who your father is. It's Hephaestus, I suppose, cos you can control fire." That made him smile, "I wonder, how are you gonna hope to beat me? You're at sea, you're alone, and if you kill me my friends will all gut you. That's assuming that you can get past me first."

"You're a modest guy, aren't you!" I quipped. He laughed.

"I prefer to think of myself as assured." he added.

"If you're a son of Morpheus...you're working to bring back Kronos, aren't you?"

"Kronos?" A shadow passed across Eric's face and he glared at me, edging forwards so sharply that I leapt back. He looked furious, "I'm not one of Kronos' lackeys, girl. Don't take me for another Luke, another Ethan, another Chris Rodriguez!"

"Then why would my father want to turn on the Olympians?" I asked.

"That doesn't matter to me, and it shouldn't matter to you. The gods command, and I obey." he smiled to himself, "As if the gods were any help last time."

"What are you talking about?" I grimaced.

"Get away from her!" shouted Becky, lunging towards Eric. One of the demigods lunged in with an electric spear, which she stabbed into Becky's thigh. She cried out and fell to the ground, twitching more jaggedly and painfully than when she dreamed of being tickled.

"Leave my friend alone." I charged towards the demigod, but Eric moved first. The tip of his blade cut at my knee, and I blocked him. I swept back at him once, twice, three times, and he weaved around each attack like a dancer. He attacked again and I blocked, and suddenly I was staggering back, feverishly blocking lunges for my belly and neck and shoulders.

I hadn't anticipated what kind of a fighter Eric was. He was completely different to any other fighter at camp - he didn't immediately follow up with one attack, until you had recovered and only had a naked second to block his next one. Anyone else would have carried on immediately after, but Eric fought with a precision and patience which simply wasn't human.

I cut at his legs and he jumped over me, and his sword plunged for my right shoulder. I jerked out of the way, but the moment he landed he kicked me in the stomach and sent me crashing to the ground. By the time I had recovered, his friend had moved away from Becky and was enjoying the way she was jerking and writhing, the electricity buzzing through her body.

"I've never seen a Cyclops before," Eric stated, "Until they helped bring down Typhon, that is. She's an impressive specimen, isn't she?" He took another step towards me. His friends, who were all focused on Becky, seemed completely ignorant of him.

"She's my friend. Don't touch her!" I shouted.

"Put the sword down." ordered Eric.

"I'm not asking you to leave her alone for my safety. For yours." I smirked at him, and watched the confidence wash from his face.

"Why?"

"If I don't put my sword down, you won't kill her. You won't have the limbs to do so. I promise you that, Eric!"

"She won't harm any of us so long as we have you."

"Do you really want to take that chance?" I queried, unaware of how much I was smiling. Snarling, Eric attacked, his blade cutting down between my legs. I blocked him, but his blade snaked up and I screamed as something cold and sharp sheared through my face. Covering my face with one hand, I stumbled back, feeling blood seep through my fingers.

"You've already lost!" Eric announced, "You can't beat me, Dawn."

I reached out and pounded towards him, my sword arcing above my head and coming down in a stroke that sent his sword-arm swinging out of the way. His entire body open, he retreated, but I was much too quick for him. My knee punched into his stomach and he doubled over, before kicking back and catching me right between the legs. I fell to my knees, lost in absolutely blinding pain, my hands clutching my groin. Eric's eyes betrayed nothing but triumph.

I was expecting him to punch me, but he did the exact opposite and it caught me off guard.

He stroked my cheek, and in an instant I was plunged into a white hell - something between pain and pleasure overwhelmed me, and I screamed. I was aware that I was falling from a great height and I was rolling back like an umbrella in a strong wind. When I came to a halt. When I looked up, I was standing on a black desert, and Eric was standing, taller than a giant with flaming eyes, in front of me.

I only had time to see the look in his mesmerising eyes turn to triumph before a fist the size of my head smashed into my face and sent me flying into the clouds. Pain rocked through my cheek, and when I landed the ground erupted around me. ''How am I still intact? Is this even the real world? ''Such questions buzzed through my head.

Eric, still a giant, lunged for me again, but I dodged around him only for the ground beneath to my feet to fix around my ankles and hold me firm. I knew at once that I wasn't in my own mind anymore - i was in his world, another dimension, somewhere that he had an advantage.

"Damn you!" I shouted, before lunging for him as he attacked for the third time. My fist, a normal sized one in comparison to his, struck his middle knuckle and sent a shockwave through him. He howled and staggered back. I was aware of the black wasteland turning maroon, and then brown, and now red, and Eric flew back, clutching his hand. He swept his other arm around and I screeched as I was suddenly covered in scorpions, which scuttled and pinched and stung every inch of my skin they could find. I wriggled and batted, but they carried on stinging, sending bolts of pain all over my body as their legs tickled up and down me. Then suddenly, the scorpions were gone and Eric was standing right in front of me, normal-sized, and his hands were clutching the scruff of my neck.

When he opened his mouth, between his jaws was a chasm of blue flame.

"We're just getting started now, Dawn." he cackled. I shoved him in the chest with all my might.

"Get off me!" I screamed. And suddenly the white hell filled my head again and I was falling. I hit the ground of the Hera's Hero with a resounding clatter, and Eclipse bounced out of reach. As the whiteness flickered out of my vision, I clutched at my chest and neck, expecting to find his hands clutching me to strangle me, but instead Eric was standing on the other side of the deck.

Becky was on her feet, and she was furious. The girl who had tried to keep her down was rolling around on the floor, clutching her arm tightly and roaring with agony, tears flooding her red face. Becky was flying at Eric, her fists rolling down towards him. Eric dodged out of the way of her first blow, but her upcoming blow to his chest sent him slamming into the barrier behind him.

However, Eric recovered with amazing speed, diving underneath Becky's third blow and rolling across the floor towards his sword, which he picked up with a flourish and turned back to face Becky. Becky came on, bellowing. The bushy-haired girl rolled around still, screaming and weeping. Becky had broken her arm. Two more of Eric's friends lay senseless, one of them twitching, one of them not moving at all.

Eric's turned and Becky met him as he stabbed. Somehow, she had picked up Eclipse, and when Eclipse met the rapier, the sound that bounced around the Hera's Hero was both ugly and loud. Then Eric twisted, turning Eclipse out of the way, and plunged. His sword pierced Becky's stomach and came out the other side, bloody and sparkling. Becky howled, and I screamed her name. Blood was already stinging one of my eyes, but I didn't care. I crawled towards her, feeling for Eclipse as Eric threw Becky on her back and stood over her, his hair a bird's nest and his eyes blazing in a million colours at once.

The bushy-haired girl moaned as I picked up my sword, coming up behind Eric without making a sound.

Then the girl croaked, "Behind you."

Eric snapped around, but I kicked the sword from his hand, coming close enough to cut right for his throat. That was a mistake, because now both his hands were free. His palms pounded to either side of my face and his fingers clutched my hair, and suddenly I was in that white hell again.

"No!" I roared, spreading my arms and hoping to rip Eric apart, and to send the Hera's Hero to the bottom of the sea. The white hell broke and my vision returned to me, but when my eye adjusted all i saw was fire. The ship was up in flames, and Eric was sprinting away from me, throwing himself into a dive that took him almost two feet off the ground and down into the waters. I realised that the deck was turning into a barbecue, and that the other demigods who were there had the same idea as their leader. I turned to see Becky, who was curled up on the ground, dark blood in a circle around her.

"Becky!" I cried, running up to her, paying no mind to the inferno that the ship had become, and the flames licking my clothes. I picked her up by one shoulder - which took all the strength in my body - and limped towards the open deck to our right. I threw her in front of me. She crashed through the barrier and I dived in after her.

I was expecting the air to hit me like a freight train. The black water blurred beneath me, and I saw Becky hit the water, sending up a gout of white foam four times her size. Instead of going in through the fissure she made in the ocean, I carried right over it...and onward. I was flying.

I can't possibly explain how it felt to fly, and at the time I had no idea how I was doing it, but there was a tingling sensation burning through me and I was aware that I was soaring over the ocean, away from the Hera's Hero, which was splitting in half under the flames. I turned back and, somehow realising that I had left Becky behind, I burst down to where she had landed. The air thrummed through my body and turned my hair into a comet's tail that flew behind me. I reached the water much quicker than I expected, and when I entered the ocean, the tingling feelings gave way for a cold slam of icy water.

Becky was sinking several feet beneath me, and shards of debris were descending after her. Thrashing madly, I swam after her, my fingers clamped together to give me speed. My throat straining from the effort, I finally reached Becky and picked her up under her arms. Even underwater, she was impossibly heavy, but with a great cry that send bubbles rushing up my cheeks, I pulled her up and screamed as her weight battled against me. Finally, after an eternity of kicking my way up to the surface, my face broke into the open air and I took in a huge gulp of air. Becky's breathing echoed after me, and her hands clung to my shoulder. I could see that her stab wound was knitting back together, and that the black streaks of blood behind her were slowly dissolving.

"Becky?"

"I'm alright." she croaked, "What in Hades happened?"

"The boat caught fire." I turned and saw the Hera's Hero, split into two smoking ruins, start to dip into the water. I couldn't see anyone else on it, but I hoped against all hopes that nobody else was. I couldn't hear any screaming. But, maybe, that's because they've been burned to a crisp! The thought made me shiver, just like Becky was doing. For a moment, I was aware that I was clinging to her for dear life, even though I wasn't very cold.

"Who was that?" asked Becky, "The boy? Who was he?"

"I don't know." I answered, "We need to get out of here. We need to. We need to..."

And then everything faded. I felt something different from the tingling sensation going through me - a queasy, dreary feeling, and I could feel my eyes drooping.

"No..." I wheezed, but it was too lat.e I could swear that Eric was in the water with us, because I could feel him again.

I slipped away, conscious of a great silvery wave coming our way.

Chapter Four - I become the terror of camp
Having two dreams in the same day was a really weird thing to have - and probably within less than an hour of each other. This time, I wasn't in the bar, but the smoking jacket guy was there. He was wearing the same things as the last time, but now that he was standing I was aware that he cast a huge shadow, twice as large as he was. We were standing in what looked like a great wheat field, under a very blue sky.

There was a woman in front of us, and she was very tall - in fact, she seemed to tower much higher than she actually stood, giving off an aura of amazing power. She wore a lustrous green dress and a hood over her head, but streams of black hair lapped over her shoulders. Her eyes were pools of brown, and her face was the colour of fresh bread. She was watching over two boys, who were both duelling with swords and shields, hacking at each other like children.

"Who is she?"

"Wait." said the smoking jacket guy, gesturing towards one of the boys.

He was really fit, with long blonde hair that danced around his head as he moved. His eyes were blazing gold. He was wearing a yellow T-shirt, and brown short. That was when I realised that he didn't even have a sword or shield - his weapon was a huge golden scythe, with a six-foot blade that was shining in a way that made the sun looked like a torch with a fading battery. He was losing the fight.

The other guy was different - he was taller and quicker, and his hair was brown, and he wore a Camp Half-Blood shirt emblazoned with red poppies. His shield had a loaf of bread on it, and he was moving like a demon. The blonde boy was staggering back, his scythe soaking up dozens of blows, while his opponent's shield acted like a boxing glove pummelling for the parts of his body he left open.

"Who is he?"

"He is one of creation's greatest creatures." stated the smoking jacket guy, gesturing towards the boy with the scythe.

"Is he?" I laughed despite myself, "And who's the other guy?"

"His name is Francis Blake." announced the red man, "And that is his mother."

He gestured to the towering woman, and I gasped, "Is that..."

"Demeter. Goddess of the Harvest. Watch."

Francis was smiling now. He was pressing the other boy towards a ditch, and I could see that the blonde boy was starting to realise he was losing. His deflections shrank and became sparse, and suddenly he was on his knees.

"Come on!" screamed Francis, bringing his sword down in an arc for the back of the boy's bare neck. The blade contacted the blonde's skin, and suddenly a noise akin to a thunderclap ripped through the field, bending the wheat in the field right back, and Francis recoiled, his sword shattering into five jagged pieces. He collapsed, and suddenly the blonde was up on his feet and roaring triumphantly.

"If you insist." sneered the boy, and suddenly I recognised his voice - it was Luke Castellan!

"But Luke's dead."

"Watch!" the smoking jacket guy ordered. The scythe rose up into the air, and blazed white, before coming down in a violent curve that seared through the fingers of Francis' right hand.

Francis screamed. I'm not an expert on pain, but I think I can distinguish between a scream from losing your fingers, and a scream from being bathed from head to toe in sulphuric acid. Francis was screaming in that way, and it made me cover my ears and cry out.

"You came closer than most." Luke said, in a mockingly assuring voice. A voice that sounded like it came from the very depths of the earth. And suddenly the earth around him came alive, and the wheat became golden claws of thorns. They latched around Luke and coiled his arms and legs, until they covered his whole body, like a mummy. Luke snarled and ripped out with one arm, sending tatters of wheat flying. Francis splayed his other hand and I saw more wheat come up again and wrap around his neck. It was hopeless. Luke tore his way free.

"Burn in Hell!" hissed Francis.

"I've been to Hell, Francis. I'm never going back, believe you me." Luke cackled, going down on one knee, "Now, where is he?"

"Who?"

"The boy." Luke snapped.

"Percy?" Francis rasped, "He's back at camp, by now."

"Not Percy!" Luke clutched the fingerless hand of his defeated enemy, and the boy screamed, "I know all I need to know about Percy Jackson. Where is he?"

"Who?"

"You know exactly who I'm talking about." thundered Luke, his voice suddenly taking an inhumanly deep, monstrous tone, and I was reminded of nails on a chalkboard.

"What's happening to him?"

"The mortal doesn't matter." the smoking jacket guy said, "Nor does Francis."

"You said he was one of creation's greatest creatures!"

"I wasn't talking about him." the guy seemed insulted by the very suggestion that Luke was the person he was talking about.

"What?" But I was distracted by what I was watching: Luke was standing over the boy, he had extended a pale hand.

"You're not going to tell me where he is. Come to think of it, I don't need to..." he clenched his fist, and I clamped my eyes shut, awaiting the scream, but when I opened my eyes at last, I saw something truly horrible happening.

Francis was changing. He was coiling around on the field, and he was getting a lot taller and a lot thinner. His brown hair turned darker, and his nails lengthened, and suddenly I noticed that his skin was turning to sandpaper. His shirt tore in half as he grew, and underneath the hair on his chest thickened, before turning deep grey. With a gut-crushing feeling, I realised that he was ageing right before my eyes. Before long, Francis started screaming, but his voice had cracked in half and turned weak and hoarse. He was an old man now, and his hair was coiling around at his ankles, as pale as ice.

"Stop!" somebody screamed, and suddenly a boy rushed out of the shadows - he couldn't have been more than twelve years old, and his hair was black. I didn't see where he came from, but the moment I noticed him he was thundering towards Luke with an unearthly roar.

Luke turned away and stared at him, before unclenching his fist and snapping his fingers. The old, skeletal man that had been Francis let out a cry, his arms spread, and then he splayed on the ground and didn't get up. My jaw dropped at what I had just witnessed, but I didn't have time to look any longer at Francis before the boy leaped into the air and unsheathed a sword from his belt. He cut down on Luke, who dropped the scythe and spread his arms, gleefully awaiting the attack. Sure enough, the blade shattered and the boy was thrown back, landing with a crash on the ground two metres away.

"Well, there you are. You've got spirit, haven't you?" Before the boy could answer, Kronos raised a hand, and the boy let out a cry of anguish. Then suddenly the whole scene faded into white, and we were back in the bar where I had first met the smoking jacket guy, who was now looking at me with a cool smile on his face.

"What in Hades was that?" I demanded, advancing on the man with my fists clenched. His smile didn't fade, and he looked at me proudly.

"Impressive, wasn't he?"

"What was that?" I shouted.

"Calm down." he waved a hand dismissively at me, "Why did you show me that?"

"I had to make you understand who he was."

"Who? Luke? I knew who he was. He was a hero!"

"Ha!" laughed the smoking jacket guy, "He may have been considered a hero, but he was weak."

"He defeated Kronos!" I shouted.

"Did he?" the man asked, "Did you see what happened back there? How could anyone possibly defeat that?"

"Kronos is gone. He was defeated, by Percy, Luke, Annabeth, Grover and Thalia!"

"Killing Kronos destroyed Luke. He died an idiot!" the guy sneered, before turning away, "I showed you that to make you understand something: the gods don't care!"

"What do you mean."

"Demeter, one of the elder gods of Olympus, just watched a son of hers die in a really painful way, a horrible way! What did she do? Nothing!" the man looked back, and suddenly he was deadly serious, "People said the Titans were bad, but the gods continue to not give a damn about their children. Granted, they never ate their children, but they did so much worse thing to them."

"Who are you?"

"I'm somebody who fell in battle. That's all you need to know." he said aloofly. Then, right before my eyes, his face started to fade, as did his environment, and suddenly I was back in darkness.

TBA