A/N: Welcome, people, to Ancestor of Time! Or, more accurately, the revamped version of it. You can find the old version using my profile, but this version, is going to be far better. Also, if you read the old version, it'll spoil the suspense up until the point where the main changes set in. Anyway, in this version I'm going to improve the characters, improve the writing, improve every element of the story to be better and more realistic. So, please, read on!
I, Tom Gray, son of Athena, crawled through the bushes behind the rock pile everyone calls Zeus Fist, careful to keep my celestial bronze sword, which was glowing dimly, low enough to avoid giving me away. I was in the middle of a game of Capture the Flag, and was sneaking up on the other team's flag. I reached the end of the bushes and checked where the flag's defenders were. I saw them wrapped in eachother's arms, snogging passionately.
'Guess this is going to be easier than I suspected.' I thought with a smirk, coming up to a crouch.
I crept forwards, and reached the two 'guards'. I swung my sword as I stood up fully, cutting into the arm of the nearest of the pair - a girl from the Aphrodite cabin. She yelped and went to run, but I kicked her hard in the back. She fell to the floor and curled up into a ball as her boyfriend, a pissed off son of Aeolus, the wind god. He swung his celestial bronze shortsword at me, and I blocked. Our blades clanged and locked together for a second before he blew me backwards with a blast of wind. I went flying back into the bushes I only recently left.
"Urgh!" I grunted as I landed heavily on my back.
He charged me, murder in his eyes, but before he even got halfway across the thirty feet gap between us orange energy crackled over him and he fell to the ground. I got to my feet, and saw my 'saviour'. Sophie, the incredibly beautiful daughter of Hecate, godess of magic.
"Aren't you going to thank me?" she asked angrily.
'Almost forgot she's a bitch for a second.' I sighed internally.
"I heard that thought, you asshole." she snapped.
Hypocrites who can read minds are not my favourite kind of person, no matter how beatiful, so I just grunted and walked over to where my sword fell.
"Thank me, dammit!" Sophie spat, getting angrier by the second.
"Hmm... How about... No?" I replied.
She walked up to me and asked again, this time seductively. I resisted for a second, but she adjusted her shirt, tugging the bottom up higher above her waist, and I crumpled.
"Thank you." I said, knowing what she was doing but powerless anyway.
"About fucking time." she grumbled, back to her usually bitchy self.
She slapped me on the face. Hard.
"Ouch." I complained, glaring daggers at her.
"Now you're done wasting time, let's continue with Capture the Flag." she said.
I struggled to stop myself from thinking something along the lines of 'I was wasting time? It was YOU wasting time!'. Thankfully, I suceeded, and my left cheek remained unslapped.
"Help me!" the Aphrodite child I kicked to the ground earlier shouted, having calmed down enough to call for help.
I doubt it was help being knocked out she wanted, but that's what Sophie gave her, using one of her orange energy blasts.
'Ouch.' I thought, seeing the girl collapse on the ground.
"It's painless." she commented, then she reached towards the flag.
I saw someone appear in the shadows behind her, and spent a split second considering whether to shout out a warning.
"Look out!" I shouted as the person behind her raised his dark grey sword.
Sophie kicked backwards, and I saw who it was trying to attack her from behind - Henri, son of Hades. I guess that explains how he popped up so suddenly. He vanished into a shadow, leaving two skeletons behind, who charged Sophie. She blasted one, but it kept on going. Henri appeared again inches from me and launched into a flurry of quick blows, striking first to the right, then the left, then up high, then down low, making me struggle to keep up. His sword was made of Stygian Iron, which is lighter than Celestial Bronze, and was shorter than mine, so he had to work less to reach so many different places with his blade. I snapped out of my thoughts, which were constantly hijacking my mind, and sent a knee into Henri's chest. He grunted and stumbled back.
'Victory is mine.' I thought, batting his sword out of his hand.
But then he vanished into the shadows, and reappared behind Sophie, who was struggling against the Skeletons, who were immune to most of her spells. I grabbed a throwing knife from my belt and hurled it at him. It caught him in the upper torso, and he fell to the ground in pain. I moved in behind the Skeletons and took them down with one blow each.
"Aren't you going to thank me?" I asked, doing a bad imitation of Sophie's voice.
She slapped me again, then grabbed the flag and went to run off.
"Hang on, we need to check Henri's okay, I hit him really near his lungs, and-" I started, not wanting to end up killing or crippling a fellow half-blood.
"He's an enemy, leave him." Sophie interuppted, sneering at me.
"It's Capture the Flag, not a real battle." I said.
"All right then, I'll send up a fucking signal." she grumbled, pointing her palms upwards.
A flashing orange light appeared in the sky. Flashing orange lights were the 'help' signal. Almost instantly, an arrow sliced straight through the air next to my head, and I crouched down behind one of the boulders making up Zeus' fist.
"Good idea, smartass!" Sophie shouted at me as arrows rained down on us.
An arrow hit the flag and it flew out of her hand. I caught it and sprinted off into the forest, leaping over thick, gnarled tree roots, smashing through weak branches in my way and dodging ones I couldn't break. I could hear Sophie running along behind me. I ran for a few minutes before seeing a fight up ahead. Two Ares kids were closing in on my half-sister Jenassa, wielding swords that glinted in the moonlight. One of them had my team's flag.
"Go help your sister, I'll take the flag." she said.
"Half-sister. And I don't trust you with the flag." I replied, knowing that she had betrayed her team before.
She smiled at me seductively.
'Damn it!' I cursed at myself as I tossed her the flag and ran over to help Jen.
I snapped off a branch from a tree and swung it at the first Ares kid. He laughed, and I could tell he thought I was no threat. Then I stabbed him several times in the side with one of my throwing knives, and he groaned and fell to the ground. His half-brother lunged at me, and I leapt backwards. I threw the stick into the air after a second of timing and drew my sword. His sword blurred as he struck at me with lots of power, and I barely managed to block the blows. I frowned as I began to lose, then smiled as the stick hit my much tougher, taller opponent on the head and dazed him. Jen knocked him out with a heavy blow to the back of the head with the butt of her sword. As soon as the unconscious Ares kid hit the floor, she started talking.
"You trusted Sophie with the flag?" she asked me, angry and surprised.
"Hard not to." I murmurred, embarrased.
"Tom, you've got to resist her charms!" Jen snapped.
"She's no threat, she's on our side." I said.
"I mean all girls who can do that to you. It could be-" Jen continued.
"My fatal flaw?" I guessed.
"Yes, exactly!" she said, then she winced.
I noticed she was bleeding from her side.
"You're hurt." I said, concerned for my half-sister.
"I don't have any Ambrosia." she said.
"I do." I said, getting out my block of Ambrosia.
Ambrosia is the food of the gods. Demi-gods are healed by it, but if they take too much they burn, so it's risky to use large amounts of it. She took it and ate it, and her wound sealed up.
"Thank you." she said, looking into my grey eyes.
Our eyes were one of the few things we had in common. Almost all of Athena's children had grey eyes, and the majority, including me and Jen, had black hair. However, most of Athena's children got their facial structure from their dad, as well as skin tone. That was one of the main differences between me and Jen - whilst I was pale with a thin face, she was tanned and had a more circular face.
"C'mon, let's get going." I said, readying a throwing knife.
Jen and I sprinted into the forest in the direction Sophie had headed in, quickly catching up. Sophie was being chased by a Hermes cabin member who I don't think had been claimed. I threw a knife but missed and hit a nearby tree. Jen's attack was more accurate however, as she scored a direct hit on her target's leg with her longbow. He stumbled and almost fell. Jen 'missed' her next shot and hit Sophie in the arm just as she leapt over the boundary into our side's land.
"Nice one." I smirked.
"It was an accident." Jen replied loudly, before winking at me.
'Owned, Sophie!' I thought, deliberately making sure Sophie would pick it up.
She fired a blast of energy at me and Jen, and we both dodged. She kept sending them at us, and we were pinned down until my half-brother and good friend Mark knocked her to the ground from behind. She blasted him and he fell backwards, unconscious. I closed the distance between us as she got up and turned round, then stopped as she gave me one of her seductive, magically enhanced smiles. Jen, however, didn't. Sophie cried out in pain as her nose met Jen's fist. Before the fighting could escalate any more, however, Chiron, the camp's Centuar 'leader', broke it up. After a few minutes we returned to the Athena cabin. It was pretty cool inside, with plenty of bunkbeds with desks for reading, planning, whatever below the bed parts. Mine had a lamp, laptop, pad of paper and collection of pencils and pens on it. I mostly used it for drawing pictures of monsters I had slain or campers I had defeated, but I did use it for other things too. I climbed the ladder into my bed, laid down, and was instantly asleep.
A/N: So, how was this new start? Reviews please, as they help make this story better.