Can I...can I just start off by saying that whoever said being a hero would be cool is the biggest idiot ever? Because it's true. All half-bloods are cursed to be followed by monsters for the rest of their lives with little to no help from anyone else. No mortals. No gods. No one.

And all because apparently no one on Mt. Olympus has heard of protection.

I sighed, watching a couple of Aphrodite's daughters watch some guys walk by then giggle in a pitch that only dogs can hear.

They-and every other demigod at this camp- were the luckiest people I knew. Why? Well, that's easy. Because they're demigods.

And yes, I've heard all about that 'monsters follow us around', 'dreams are never just dreams', 'our godly parent never talks to us'. Etcetera, etcetera.

All I can say to that is, 'big whoop. At least you have a general idea of what you'll go through in life.'

'Cause it's true. I'm no demigod. I'm…I don't even know what I am. All I know is that the Fates have no idea what's in store for me because of that stupid prophecy and my parents.

See, a long, long time ago, some prophet sprouted out some future stuff, talking nonsense about the next child to come from the union of a god and titaness (one of the Big Three and titaness of stealth, to be exact) would be a powerful ruler.

Of course, as soon as Zeus found out about this, Leto immediately became off-limits to him, Poseidon and Hades.

Then again, when has anyone followed the rules up there? I mean, look at Percy and Thalia.

But back to the prophecy…

The child of this…uh, thing is supposed to be a very powerful god. Really powerful. I don't think she was able to stress that enough. The only thing she made more obvious then that was the amount of unimaginable pain they'd go through during their mortal lifetime.

And I'm not talking, 'oh I broke my arm! That hurts!' kind of pain, I'm saying that it's all kinds of pain: physical, mental, emotional. And it won't stop there…not by a long shot.

I don't know how to explain what else happens except to say that I'm not the first kid to meet the expectations.

Hundreds of years ago, around the time of Dark Ages, after Rome fell, the Titaness of the prophecy, Leto, and Zeus had a son, Jason (not the one from Greek stories, this is a different one).

To start off, things were good. He was raised by Leto up in Olympus, even though rules say that the child has to be raised by their mortal parent…but Jason didn't have one of those so…oh well.

But technically, Jason was only a demigod. Even if he was more powerful than any demigod before him and was able to eat nectar/ambrosia without burning up and see a god's divine form. A demigod was all he was. His blood was somehow mortal.

But not the current point to the story. Jason trained and learned and had a great overall childhood…until he was sixteen, that is.

According to the prophecy, he would become fully immortal at the age of sixteen. At that point, all the mortal blood in his body would drain itself and be replaced by ichor, the blood of immortals. All of this is supposed to be done in the most painful way possible too.

He was at home when it started; two thin cuts appeared on his wrists, allowing his mortal blood to drain. Then more and more on his arms and legs until he was too weak to stand from loss of blood and dying. At that point, the ichor appeared.

My dreams like to scare me; I've dreamed about the screams that Jason let loose when the ichor suddenly appeared in his heart and began to distribute itself into his body. People across the country were able to hear them and feel the earthquakes that were caused by his thrashing and pain.

Jason begged for death. Someone almost as strong as Heracles couldn't take the pain. His life form began to shimmer. He clawed at himself to stop the flow of gold in his veins, tearing his skin off himself madly in the process. The pain he was going through drove him mad until eventually he stopped trying to survive and let himself burn to death.

After that, no one even tried to break the rule, until Poseidon visited Leto hundreds of years later.

And thanks to them, I'm sitting under a tree at Camp Half-Blood; waiting for the dreaded sixteenth birthday to come.

I know I haven't explained much, but everything else can be learned in time, I guess.

My name is Hero Astra and I'm a to-be goddess.