DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN PJO!

OTHER DISCLAIMER: This is my first fanfic. I'm sorry if I'm breaking any fundamental fanfiction law. XD

DISCLAIMER NUMERO TRES: It's been about a year since I read these books, so I'm sorry for any eye color inaccuracies or the like. Feel free to correct me.

Prologue

There was a powerful storm whirling over the Calm Waters trailer park. If you were to watch the storm closely, you might notice that the storm seemed to be originating from one single powder blue double wide… but that would be too strange to be true, of course.

Inside the powder blue double wide that the storm could not possibly be radiating from there sat two figures, not counting the baby asleep on the rickety kitchen table.

"So this is the one?" The man said, his voice hushed, almost scared. Fear was something practically unknown to this man… something he often took pleasure in giving to others, but never truly experienced himself. Fear was for mortals.

He looked human enough. He had chosen, for this particular venture, the appearance of a lean limbed Italian man, with a crooked seductive smile and attractively unkempt black hair. But his eyes… his eyes were unchangeable. They were a deep blue grey, and anyone who stared into them long enough would see the kind of coal black clouds that swirl in nightmares…

His eyes flashed. Lightening cracked outside the trailer.

"Yes," said the woman who stood beside him, "The one." Her voice echoed when she spoke, as if she was calling from some distance away instead of standing two feet from the man. Her appearance was strangely vague as well, her skin was grey, almost faded, as if she had stepped out of a very old movie.

She was smelling a flower, a white magnolia, inhaling it like a kind of drug.

The man's eyes filled with slow malicious anger at the squirming infant on the table. And thunder boomed.

"When?" he whispered.

The woman momentarily lowered the magnolia from beneath her nose, "It shall begin…" she whispered, studying the child with milky white eyes, "In fifteen years time… if the fates speak true to me…"

She turned back to the magnolia and bit into one of its petals, crunching the blossom against the roof of her mouth. It tasted horrible, sticky and acidic. The woman savored it, moving it around her mouth as if it were a fine wine. It had been so long since she had tasted anything, since she had felt anything…

The man spoke to her, although his gaze did not waver from the baby. "Cassandra of Troy…" he said, "I brought you from The Underworld because you were a great oracle… because you remain a great oracle. I brought you here to exchange a prophecy for new life."

Cassandra nodded, her misty eyes narrowing as she wrenched off the magnolia stem with her grey chipped teeth. "Yes, My Lord."

The man pulled his gaze slowly from the slumbering infant, as if afraid to turn his back on it. "I can send you back." He said coldly, "As a matter of fact, I told my brother that that was exactly what I would do after I was through with you… You know how he hates to lose a member of his dominion."

Cassandra's milk eyes widened, "No! You- you can't! You promised! You- you said! Do you have any idea?" she backed away from the man, pressing herself against the wall of the dingy trailer, "You don't know… You have never known death… you will never know death…"

"No." The man said. He eyed the baby coldly, suspiciously, "I don't intend to. Listen to me, Cassandra. You may still escape existence in the land of the dead. Someone, I do not know who, is defending this child. Magic surrounds him, powerful magic I cannot penetrate. Is this magic permanent, seer?"

The grey cadaverous woman stepped slowly away from the wall, approaching the baby, staring into its deep blue eyes. "No." she said, "When the child reaches his fifteenth birthday, you shall be able to do as you will."

The man cursed loudly, banging a muscular fist on the table. Lightening snapped a tree outside the window. "That's not good enough!" he snarled loudly. "By then he will already have skills. Power. Ideas. Anger. That's not good enough…"

"The magic is deep." Cassandra sighed, "That is the only way it may be. It is the work of The Fates, My Lord. "

"I cannot hurt him myself…" the man muttered, "But you can. You may win life… by delivering this child to Tartarus. I do not wish to kill a boy of my own flesh… but no choices remain. Do this and I shall make you immortal, Cassandra of Troy."

Cassandra grinned slowly, "You don't understand, do you? You rule all of the gods and yet you don't understand… The Fates have decided the child's path. Even if I agreed to take him to Tartarus, I would not be successful. It is written in the stars, in the prophecies… Just as your fate was written in the prophecies long ago. Kronos could not stand in destiny's way, no matter how many children he swallowed. You cannot stand in destiny's way, no matter how far or how deep you banish this boy…"

The wind outside howled so loudly that ceiling stripped off of surrounding trailers. The lightening was relentless and the thunder furious.

The man was furious as well. He stood up out of his chair, his eyes flashing so rapidly they practically sizzled… "I SHALL NOT BE OVERTHROWN!" he bellowed, before sending a crackling blue beam of pure electricity hurtling towards the grey woman.

In her last moments, Cassandra crammed the rest of the magnolia blossom into her mouth. Oh, how glorious it was to feel… she savored until her last breath.

Thunder boomed so loudly the ground shook as the man disappeared.

Lightening flashed. The baby giggled.