Welcome to my first attempt at Percy Jackson and the Olympians.

This is my third longer story, sure to be updated a little faster than the ever-intricate Into the Fold. It's been a real joy writing this the past couple of months, experimenting with word choice and getting furious as plot strings are interrupted by bells and passing periods (laughs). It is my tribute to Luke Castellan, whom I love like very few others in my circle do. I reread The Last Olympian, realized again that this was the end of my time as Percy's (erm, patient) listener, and thought: "...But, but, what happens to him next?"

As my pencil continues to move, a long time after that question was first poised, I learn the answer. I'm here to share it with you.

A note: Percy will be different from the Percy we all know and love. If luck graces my hand and utensil, some of the character traits that made me laugh in the books will pop up here, so it won't seem like I copy-pasted some random dude into Percy's life. Speaking of... life hasn't been going so well for him lately. Prepare for: a quest, some upgraded romance (this is rated a higher-up 'T', after all, and not for Troll), friendship, father-son relationships, and lots and lots of god-sightings. Guess who's first?

Set three years following The Last Olympian. Perseus Jackson is nineteen years old. The majority of the story will be from his point of view, like the books. Any quotes from the books--well, I don't own them. You'll recognize them.

The Legal Jargon: I've been lucky enough to actually meet Rick Riordan (though he probably doesn't remember me. Sigh!). Claiming I owned his masterpiece would be the deepest sin ever.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians:
~The Chain of Souls~

Chapter One: I Have Coffee With a Girl and a God

Perhaps I should have known that for half-bloods, nothing ever ends. But, in my own defense... I'd had a while to let my guard down.

It had been three years to the day. Three years since Mount Olympus was nearly razed to the ground. Three years since all of Camp Half-Blood had fought assiduously (and almost in vain) against Lord Kronos's forces, and the gods (including my dad) had fought against Typhon. Three years had passed since Charles Beckendorf had sacrificed himself on the Princess Andromeda, since I'd visited my father's underwater kingdom, since Silena Beauregard had both betrayed us and saved us, and three years since Annabeth Chase and I had kissed underwater and started our own sort of tidal wave.

And it had been three years since Luke Castellan had died a hero.

To the amazement of anyone who knew me, I managed to graduate from Goode High School without any more problems (well, no one was counting the time some rogue ex-Kronos telekhines snuck in and tried to eat me and Rachel, and everyone else thought we were just being licked by oversized dogs, so I guess we weren't either). Chiron came to the graduation ceremony to congratulate us--we both waved vigorously his way.

While Paul handed out my (hard-earned) diploma, I could have sworn I saw Mr. D, of all people, looking rather bored in the third row behind all the students.

However, I was completely sure it couldn't have been possible for me to see a dark-haired, casual man with Bermuda shorts on, smiling at me, a few seats away from my mom.

KRAAAK!

I jolted up, reaching unconsciously for Riptide.

But Anaklusmos was nowhere near. Instead I knocked over something else, something that hurt my hand. Luckily the thing didn't smash on the floor.

When I picked up the picture frame, Annabeth was smiling at me from her chosen college campus, with Daedalus's old laptop at her side. She'd gone early to scope it out (of course) and had a fellow future-freshman take the photo. On the back was a note I knew by heart: Happy early nineteenth birthday, Seaweed Brain! You know how I like to plan ahead. Sorry I couldn't be there for the party, but MIT insisted. See you soon, lover boy.

The parting line still made me blush.

Rubbing the offended hand and looking around, I found the source of my fright: the alarm clock, now looking as if it had seen better days. Annabeth would approve of the irony--and the fact that, thanks to her, I knew the word 'irony'.

She really hadn't been at my birthday party, but only because her dad insisted she take a tour of her chosen college that 'happened' to coincide with the week of my birthday. I told her it was an omen, fortelling how the Massachusetts Institute of Technology would destroy our relationship, but she punched me and laughed and told me to shut up. Okay, then.

The calendar waved at me from the opposite wall, the date gleaming in red. August 18, the day I was born. I'd had nineteen days like this.

Well, not exactly like this.

In the past I'd had my mom feeding me blue food, a few people giving me half-hearted well wishes in school, Annabeth giving me birthday kisses (definitely my favorite, especially when it didn't end at that), some belated parties, or early ones, at camp--and my dad had even dropped in, twice total, to fix me with the warm green gaze I'd inherited from him.

This was my first real birthday as an adult, with no one directly around me--I had my own apartment now, and I would be in it until I went to... well, wherever I went in the fall. Something, maybe my half-blood intuition, covered with three years' worth of dust, told me that not only would this birthday be different from any one I'd ever had, but it would be really bad.

Perhaps even deadly.

I took Riptide when I left the apartment, just in case.

The number one rule, whether you're going into a fight or leaving one, Chiron had drilled into me, day after day. Trust your instincts.

My instincts probably should have gone off when, while serving up lattes at Starbucks (look, it was the best I could do during summer in New York on top of everything else, so lay off, okay?), I heard a man give Louis the cashier a name that sounded like "Die O. Nices"--but I really wasn't paying attention to who was buying and selling. I was delivering mochas to table three, and almost spilled them over the customers' legs when I saw Rachel Elizabeth Dare, currently deliberating on Northwestern University in Illinois, sashay back through the metaphorical door of my life.

"Percy," I heard Sophia, my manager, call.

When I went to her side, mind still fuzzy, she handed me a large... some kind of drink I'd never seen before. Seriously, never.

"Table six, Percy," she said, smiling when I looked a little too blankly at her. "The customer requested you personally. I believe he has a 'fondness for Greek names'."

My blood seemed to freeze.

Greek names?

"Perseus," Sophia clarified, shaking my shoulder. "Don't you know your own name?"

I stared at her, as if any second I expected her to grow fangs or swell to twice her original size and try to eat me. Somehow I managed to choke, "How do you know my name?"

"...Your driver's license," she said dryly. "And you had to fill out a form asking for your legal name when you applied for this job, remember? Now go on and deliver, it's getting cold." She gave me a look I didn't like.

I blushed and hurried away. Sophia, with her red hair and gray eyes, was a constant reminder of both Annabeth and Rachel. Whether from some misplaced embarrasment or whatever, I couldn't ever look at her long. But at least she'd proved she wasn't a monster.

Table six was occupied by a short, pudgy, dark-haired man who was wearing what Nico di Angelo would have called "granny shades" (to his own peril). He smirked under the glasses as I approached, and when I set his cup down he said softly: "Ah, so Perseus Jackson lives. I do hope that isn't cold from how long you've kept me waiting."

No. Way.

My mouth fell open. I said something smart like "Um, what?"

"As dim-witted as ever, I see. It is true, then, what the mortals sometimes say about some things never changing. --Ah, there the silly girl is at last!"

A blur of red appeared at my shoulder, and Rachel slipped into a chair opposite Mr. Shades. "Sorry I'm late," she breathed, sliding lower in the seat. "Had to find a place to park the limo--impossible, you know..." Then she winked at me. "Hey, Percy. Nice apron."

Nice to see you again, too. "I'm not on break," I managed to say, still in shock over Mr. Shades's possible identity. "So I can't 'catch up' or whatever it is you've obviously planned."

"Well, I missed you too," Rachel mumbled, now sounding sullen.

The man gave an overly-loud snort, then, and removed his glasses as though they suddenly bothered him. Dark eyes, with dancing purple flecks, regarded me for the first time in a long time, and I shuddered.

"Don't be stupid," Dionysus said bluntly. "Consider yourself 'on break' until I am quite finished with you, mortal. I doubt your pretty boss will mind. Now sit."

I sat down immediately.

The god of wine and madness grunted. "If only you'd been quite so submissive and obedient when we first met."

My mother had been dragged to the underworld then, if you remember.

Rachel was 'examining' Sophia with her ever-critical artist's eye. "Oooh, a pretty boss! Does Annabeth know?"

"Shut up. Of course she knows."

"Uh-huh." Rachel looked to the other member of our strange party. "Lord Dionysus, shall I do the honors? It was I who predicted it, after all, or so Chiron says. I wasn't exactly lucid at the time."

"Since when have you started calling people Lord?"

"That would be since she took it upon herself to learn the proper terms of respect, Johnson," Dionysus almost sneered, "unlike one seafaring whelp I have been cursed to know."

"I missed you too, Mr. D."

"Enough!" He slammed his fist onto the table, in a manner reminiscent of Ares, my old nemesis. And indeed, some people looked around uneasily, as if afraid of something they could barely understand. Dionysus's face was red, as though he'd been partaking of his still-forbidden 'happy juice'.

Obviously it wasn't working yet, because suddenly Sophia appeared at my shoulder with a querying look on her face.

"Percy...? Did I hear you say you were taking a break? ...Because that's okay, I just need to know that everything's... okay over here."

She cast a nervous gray glance Dionysus's way. He smiled in a strained manner that was apparently supposed to reassure her. Yeah, right.

"There's nothing to fear. Perseus and I are simply having an... animated Greek discussion of old with... ah... our resident Andromeda, here. All is well in your little shop." He snapped his fingers. The room chilled, then warmed again.

Mist at work.

I didn't approve of his comparisons.

Sophia put a hand on my shoulder. "So everything's okay here?"

"Oh yeah," I said, pasting on my best ADHD false smile. "All is peachy-keen here." Peachy-keen? "I'll just be on break for a short while."

"You're sure?"

"It's a barrel of laughs over here, Sophia. Join us?"

"Oh... no thanks, I don't think I will." And with that, she was gone. My last link to the sanity of the mortal world; now I was stuck with a mortal-gone-wacko and an annoyingly-powerful god.

Oh, yeah, and myself--the half-blood in between.

"I did not come here," Dionysus began, in a quieter tone that gave me goosebumps, "to banter with you, as though we were 'old pals'. If you had wanted that, you would have done well to accept Father Zeus's generous offer of immortality three years' past."

I suddenly felt a hundred times colder. No, not just colder--angry, and hurt, and a hundred other stupid feelings. I looked away from Mr. D and out the windows of the café, my fist clenching. Thunder abruptly rumbled, and I shifted my gaze to my fist instead. Everything trembled around me.

Or was I trembling?

Three years. It had been so long ago.

It had been a year, really, maybe a little more, since I'd last gone anywhere near Camp Half-Blood--but everything had really begun three years ago, after Luke's fall and my birthday and by far the best end-of-camp of my life. Everything had gone downhill so soon afterward. It hurt to think about still.

Rachel gawked. She hissed to me: "You... Percy, you were offered immortality? You never told me--"

"It didn't exactly fit in with you stealing my pegasus and flying off to become the Oracle," I hissed back. I was still on edge. Gods, Dionysus...

He had brought back everything.

"Speaking of Father Zeus," said god butted in, looking for all the world about to pout, "he has delegated to me the simply wonderful task of giving you a message. A warning."

"I thought that was Hermes's territory."

More thunder.

"So did I, Perry. Apparently not."

Dionysus looked sternly my way. I continued to study my hands.

"Percy," Rachel said softly. I ignored her.

"Look into my eyes, Perseus Jackson."

There was no disobeying that voice, the I-am-a-god-and-I-will-make-you-my-eternal-slave-if-you-don't-obey-me voice. I looked up into the black-and-purple infinity again, and felt true resentment, bordering now on fear.

Dionysus's expression softened, if possible. "You are in danger."

I glanced to my left, then my right. Sarcasm colored my voice gray. "Yeah... you know, I did always think the mortals here were more than they appeared to be. I was starting to get an uncomfortable itch and everything. Dangerous, indeed."

My skin started to burn, literally fry, and I flinched. The wine god's expression didn't change. Alrighty, then. No sarcasm.

"There is a decision that you will make. It will put you in danger, depending on what you decide to do. This from Apollo, possibly through Rachelle here."

"Rachel."

"Whatever. I have come with a warning for you, Jackson: 'You will walk the line of death'."

Oh.

I didn't think my skin was burning anymore. Now I couldn't feel it at all. "The... line of death?"

"The 'line of death'--whatever that nonsense means." Dionysus nodded. "The full: 'You will walk the line of death. Be cautious'."

"What, no rhyming at all?"

I stood to leave. As if on command, two identical cups of coffee appeared, under my nose and Rachel's.

"Stay awhile, Jackson. I can practically sense your anxiety to leave--just as you left before."

I hoped my gaze was as angry as I was. The sea doesn't like to be taunted, Chiron's voice warned in my head, telling me of my notorious temper one day. Your father would tell you the same.

"Please--no, just don't. Don't remind me of what happened. Leave it alone--if you would, Lord Dionysus."

Barely remembered to add the last part in. He can't kill me for using his title like he wanted.

Can he?

Rachel gazed queryingly at me. She'd just been watching us 'talk' (if you could call it that), and now she seemed to know that there were things I wasn't saying.

Yet.

"A little over three years ago," I said to her, "shortly before getting hold of you in the mortal world was like pulling drakon teeth, you told me something that saved all of our lives. 'Perseus, you are not the hero'."

I took a sip of the coffee and grinned, and not because it was good. "And I think it applies to me even more now than it did then."

Rachel's gray eyes widened, mixed now with confusion and unwilling understanding. She knew what I was saying. "What...?"

"Speak plainly, hero," the immortal ordered.

"That's just the thing, Lord Dionysus." I turned to look at him. "I have forsworn 'hero work' and quests, and anything like them. I put that behind me more than a year ago, when I left the borders of Camp Half-Blood for the last time. That's why no one has seen me since... then. And that's why no one will see me. So there's no feasible way for that prophecy, or warning, or whatever, to come true about me. Try the next hero."

Rachel bit her lip, an uncharacteristic thing. Then all of a sudden she raised one red eyebrow and looked me over, pretending to survey me for the last time. I realized, a little embarrased, that she was about to cry, and was staving off that urge by poking fun at me now. "'Forsworn'? 'Feasible'?"

"Shut up," I replied, and thought (too late) that I might have been a little rude. "Annabeth... she insisted that I learn some more words, straight from the dictionary, and that I actually apply them--all the time. She's most of the reason I did okay on the SAT, and my finals.

"So, yes, I have 'forsworn' being a hero. Forever. Now, please leave me in peace--thanks to you two, I doubt I have any more 'break time' for the next week."

I picked up the neglected coffee and took a sudden big gulp--and spluttered.

"Spl--ACK!!! What IS this stuff--this isn't coffee, it's--it's like--seawater!"

"...And where does it come from?" Dionysus wanted to know. He was smirking.

"From the Atlantic Ocean, of course," I replied automatically. "What's the... point...?"

I trailed off then, connecting the dots.

Oh, gods...

"Your father sends his well-wishes," Dionysus now said, almost gently. (Note the 'almost'.) "He awaits your return to camp, Perseus. --As do I, frighteningly enough. Things have been peaceful enough with you gone."

I don't know why, but the room temperature seemed to fall about a million degrees just then. Looking around wildly, I saw that all of the mortals in the room, sans Rachel, were frozen--oddly enough, all with their eyes closed.

"I will see you again, Jackson," Dionysus predicted, with strange finality. He started to glow.

"Look away," I warned Rachel, and did so myself. But I also did more.

As Dionysus assumed his godly form in a golden flash, my trembling legs guided me to Starbucks' door for an early (or late) day off--Sophia hopefully wouldn't fire me--and then home from there, with my father's words echoing in my head.