Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters from Percy Jackson and the Olympians. The only character that actually belongs to me is Terance...

CHECKMATE!

I look up at the words flashing on the screen, slightly startled.

"Awesome! You won again!" One of the other kids (I'm thinking it's Robert, but then, who can be sure with this many people around?) yells and patts my back.

"…It's chess." I mumble, shrugging his hand off.

"So?"

"…I wasn't even playing against a real person."

"And?" He asks again, apparently not getting my point. "That was, like, the highest difficulty!"

"I'm gonna go to bed." I say while standing up.

"Aw, really? Don't you want to play some more games? I hear there's supposed to be a new one coming…!" Realizing that I really am leaving, Robert shrugs, then runs over to another game.

I walk past a bunch of other kids, crowded around bleeping games, and then I'm finally in the entrance hall.

"Hi! Would you like – " The doorman starts, then, recognizing me, stops.

"Umm, hi. So…has there been any news from my parents? Or my uncle?" I ask anxiously.

I have asked this same exact question every day since my uncle dropped me off here with the words, "I'll come for you soon." However, that was six months ago.

Which, I'm sure, explained the doorman's look of complete annoyance.

But then he got himself to smile, which made me cringe. It just didn't look right when a man who had apparently either lost all his teeth to some sort of rotting disease smiled at you. I know that's rude, but still. Eew.

"Actually," the man says (thankfully hiding his teeth again) "yes. Your uncle is here. I was just about to send somebody to go fetch you."

"Finally! Can I see him, then?" I was practically bursting with joy. My uncle would be my ticket out of this place…stupid Lotus Hotel. I would've gotten out way sooner if the doors hadn't been locked all the time.

"Please follow me." The guy smiled again (I'm not even gonna comment), then started to walk off into the hotel's depths.

I did my best to follow him, which meant that I practically had to run since the doorman was just incredibly fast, until we had (after 2 elevators, a stair, and a near-crash with a food wagon) come to a stop in front of a golden door.

It was weird seeing that door, not because I hadn't seen it before, so nooo thank you to that cliché, but because I was sure that I had seen it before, just not in this place. Then the picture of my uncle and my father, going through this (?) door and leaving me outside flashed through my head.

"Well, aren't you going to go inside?" The doorman asked, annoyed (once again).

"O-oh, yeah."

I smiled at him briefly, the opened the door. And there was my uncle, sitting on one of the chairs that had been placed throughout the room.

"Terance! How good to see you again!" He stood up and smiled.

"Uncle! So Father is back, right? Does that mean I can go home?"

"Kind of…your father and I want you to go to this camp…because we want you to learn a few other things."

"Aww…" Bummer. But, heck, anything was better than this hotel with it's gaming addicted kids, so I didn't argue.

"However, " He continued, noticing my displeasure, "it won't be as long as your stay here. A few weeks at most. Then I'll come and get you so we can meet up with your father."

Good news, although something seemed…off. So I said, "Meet up? So the war isn't over yet?"

To my surprise, my uncle laughed at that. "Oh no, Terance Dark. That war is long over." He laughed again, apparently enjoying some private joke. Before I had time to wonder if he had always been like that, he got serious again. "However, there's a new war on the verge of breaking out. And now that you're 15, you're going to have to fight."

"Y-you mean with weapons?"

"No, with your bare hands – yes, with weapons! What else did you think, girl?" Now he was mad. That, at least, hadn't changed.

And my opinion about fighting hadn't either.

I'm fine with the concept of 'fighting' – just not when I'm the one holding the weapons. I despise it, and that for a reason.

Back when I was 12, my mother and I were at this military camp waiting for my father and my uncle. Back then I hadn't been as opposed to fighting as I was now, so at night when my mother was asleep (she didn't want anything to do with the war) I got out of bed and took a stroll around the camp. Most of the soldiers (both human and non-human) were already asleep, which was probably the reason nobody stopped me – or found out about the intruder, for that matter.

He had taken me hostage before I knew it. I still remember his eyes, cold and calculating. I remember my father killing him with a single sword-stroke not soon afterwards, too.

But…but the look in the man's eyes as he had died had been so…sad, for lack of a better word. I'm sure that he had known that he would be killed if he was found out…which he wouldn't have been (at least not so soon) he had just killed me instead of taking me hostage.

My uncle had gotten very mad when I had asked him why Father had to kill him.

"He's the enemy, Terance! Of course he had to die! He would have killed all of us if your father hadn't killed him!"

"But he didn't kill me, although he had the chance."

"Well, yes. But with your black hair and gray eyes, you look exactly like your mother, and he wouldn't have wanted to kill one of his allies, would he?"

"You're telling me that my mother is a traitor?"

"Oh, girl! Of course she was a traitor! She was the one who let him into the camp into the first place."

Afterwards, I had ended up crying, my father and uncle mad, and my mother…well, dead. Apparently there had been another intruder who had killed her while my uncle and I were talking.

That made me loose my interest in fighting and war, for obvious reasons.

"I'm not fighting. I'm sorry, Uncle, but I'm not taking another person's life." My voice was as firm as I had hoped it would be.

"Psh! No matter. I'm sure you'll change your mind after you've been to the camp."

He pushed me out of the room and through the hallways back into the entrance hall before I even had a chance to argue.

"Nice seeing you again, Lord Kronos!" the doorman yelled after us while I, at least, headed into the unknown.