Legend

Chapter 1: Parallel Universe

Sabire Andrews

My name is Sabire Andrews, the fifteen year old daughter of Persephone, the only daughter of Persephone, as far as I know. Hades basically hates my guts, so I've had a lot of monsters and shit to deal with. His son however, Nico di Angelo, is one of my best friends. I guess he understood how it was; my mom hated him and his dad hated me. Nico took me to Camp Half-Blood the year after Titan War II. I heard a lot of stories about 'the old days' from the campers who had been there longer. But none of them mentioned anything about the secrets and undercover organizations around the place.

Even though it was a peaceful time for demigods, there was still a lot of paranoia. That's why a secret group called the Alliance was formed. I discovered the existence of the Alliance when I stumbled into one of their meetings, literally. Basically, they decided I had heard far too much, and so, as a means of keeping me quiet, reluctantly let me in the Alliance.

It was founded a few months after Titan War II, so I was told, by Annabeth Chase, Clarisse la Rue, Will Solace, Jake Mason, and Katie Gardner. The object was to create an emergency task force of highly trained demigods (later, it opened to anyone who knew of the existence of the Greek world) that would secretly hunt down and eliminate any threats so a new war wouldn't start anytime soon. To be a member of the Alliance was to ally yourself into a group of people who'd do whatever it took to keep peace. You lived in a shroud of false pretenses and lies used to keep your real identity a secret.

There were full members and honorary members of the Alliance. The current honorary members were Thalia Grace and a few of her fellow hunters, Nico di Angelo, Grover Underwood, Aurora Crow and Etriuce Falke (who were known by the Alliance and the Alliance alone to be demitians, who refused to tell their parents' identities). The full members stood at numbers over twenty. It was a fairly large organization, broken into several divisions and guilds.

The guilds were basically groups of the members put together because of their specialities. A few examples are the archers, the spies, and the trackers.

The first division (the highest ranking) was the Founders. The second, the Assassins. The third, Task Force. The fourth, the Scouts. And finally, the fifth (the lowest ranking), the Trainees who got dubbed the Newbies, as I quickly learned. A lot of people didn't even bother to learn my name at first, just called me 'the newbie.' There were exceptions of course, but for the most part, I really didn't like being a part of the Alliance at first. But I couldn't drop out once I signed with them; everyone had made that perfectly clear from the very beginning. Of course, at the very beginning I didn't know what I was getting into.

I received private training from Clarisse using spears. Frankly, she scared me, and had brutal training techniques that left me quite battered. Clarisse also had no patience what-so-ever, and almost immediately declared me unteachable.

I had healing from Will Solace, who was considerably nicer, but I was too squeamish to even look at any of the small, wounded animals he tried to get me to practice on. I loved animals, but I just couldn't bare to see the blood and the pain.

Another child of Apollo, Andre Williams, taught me archery for a bit. But it was clear as day I wasn't an archer. I still had a few people giving me dirty looks for the stray arrows that somehow lodged in their bodies. Someone remarked I was worse than Percy Jackson, who, for some reason, I was told had no knowledge of the Alliance and shouldn't be told of it's existence by order of Annabeth Chase.

Conner and Travis Stoll each took turns teaching me the art of thievery; I wasn't any good at that either. They worked with Nico on trying to get me to blend into the shadows to be a spy, but I simply made too much noise. They also had assistance from Piper McLean on teaching me to be a convincing liar. But I stuttered and looked down and generally was just so unbelievable that most of the people watching my training burst into laughter.

I wasn't terrible at sword fighting, taught to me by Kyle Symth and Nicole Moreau. But Kyle said I didn't have the build for it. And Nicole just kind of shook her head after the first couple of matches I fought in.

Things started looking up for me when Katie Gardner and Ozzy Dickens taught me all about the woods and nature. I really excelled at that because my mother was the goddess of spring time, but, again, I wasn't quiet enough or stealthy enough to be a tracker, which is the guild nature training would lead into.

Annabeth Chase, the head of the Alliance herself, tried to train me to think strategically. But the big words she constantly used gave me a headache and I quickly decided I didn't want to continue those lessons.

In the end, they just gave me a dagger and told me not to opt for the front line.

Nothing seemed to work for me at all. I was hopeless. What made it worse was that the Alliance held all training sessions and meetings around midnight in the woods or down by the canoe lake. There was always a chance of being caught, but it was necessary to meet at the odd hours of the night so as to keep the secret of this organization quiet. I was always so nervous sneaking out of my cabin. It wasn't the contract I signed that forced me to remain with the Alliance, but my determination to prove I wasn't a weakling. My pride was very important to me, because I guess I felt like people dismissed me because I was the daughter of the goddess of flowers. But in my heart I knew I couldn't prove something that wasn't true.

People tell me that I doubt myself too much. But really, if I seriously can't do something, why should I pretend I can? What's the point in dodging reality?

And then came my first mission.

It was simple really. Medusa had reformed and a small group was dispatched to go take care of it the night of the 13th of July, and to return in the earlier hours of the morning of the 14th before anyone noticed we were gone from camp. They told me how hard it was to cover up for people when they were sent on missions for the Alliance, so we had to get the job done quickly. I was permitted to tag along with Hayden Landwen, Kyle, and Conner just for observation purposes.

But Conner ended up turning half to stone from looking into Medusa's eyes. Kyle rammed into Medusa though, knocking her over and breaking the eye contact. Hayden was perched up in a tree with his bow and arrows, but he kept missing because he couldn't turn around to see were Medusa was without being turned to stone himself. Because of his lack of knowing where the arrows were going, one of them accidentally hit Kyle, but he was smart and covered his eyes so Medusa couldn't do anything much to him in his injured state.

Conner was slowly turning back to his regular self (Annabeth later speculated that since Medusa had just reformed, she was weaker and her powers weren't as effective), but at a very slow rate. Kyle was down. Hayden was firing blindly, none of the arrows having the luck to hit Medusa. And the snake-haired woman herself? Well, she was coming at me from behind, I could tell because of the mirror I had positioned to see over my shoulder.

And then something weird happened. I pulled out my dagger instead of running like I should have, like I would have. But something clicked. My demigod instincts were telling me the monster needed to die. So, right as Medusa was directly behind me, I spun around with my eyes closed and stabbed her in the forehead. I heard her scream into my ear, and I swear I was about to go deaf. But then the yelling faded, and I deemed it safe to open my eyes. There was a pile of dust at my feet. My dagger was still in my hand, but it was now held in the air, no longer stabbing the monster.

I had done it; I couldn't believe it. I had actually managed to kill Medusa. The Medusa. All the times I'd ran from Hades' monsters, that's all I ever did: run. The only monster that ever scarred me was a fury, who left a long line of red up my arm. But I didn't kill the fury; Nico, being Hades' son, ordered the monster away. That's when he found me. Medusa was the first monster I physically killed.

It felt weird. It didn't make me feel like a murderer like I thought it would. But rather, I felt a sense of victory and accomplishment, like I'd finally proven myself. And I had.

When we made it back to Camp Half-Blood, most of the Alliance was quite skeptical of the story we told and how no one could even remotely get their weapons near Medusa, and then suddenly I just came out and stabbed her. They made it sound a lot more badass then it had been in actuality. The truth was, I had been quaking in my Converse. I tried to explain this too, but they just wrote it off as modesty, even though it really wasn't.

I was fully accepted into the Alliance that day. It wasn't voiced, but I knew it. Something had changed in the air and in the way people talked to me. They had finally started to tolerate me and treat me like one of their own.

I made several friends in the Alliance, a few of them being Hayden, Kyle, and Shayne Perry. Sure there were still people wary of me, and some who hadn't made a secret of their distaste for me (like Thalia Grace when the members of the Alliance who were also in the Hunt visited), but, overall, I was starting to see them as my family.

My dad died quite some years ago, back when I was still living in England. I'd never actually met Persephone. Nico, my best friend, was really all the family I had, and he wasn't even around that often. But once I started to view the Alliance as my family, I saw life at Camp Half-Blood in a different light too. I made a lot of friends outside the Alliance at camp. I started to view Half-Blood Hill as my home. Maybe it was a little late since I'd been living here for a while now, but I really started to feel that I belonged here. It was a nice feeling that I had missed more than I knew until I had it back again.

But nothing stays the same forever these days. And so, naturally, chaos would have to take over the Alliance upon the arrival of Aurora and Etriuce with another child of a Titan.