The third house seemed empty, like it had been for years, but there was no mold. No moss, nothing to say that this house had been abandoned for years, though it was only a few yards from the ocean.

He knocked on it carefully, as if the door would fall to pieces. It held solid – no sign of wanting to crumble into sand like a monster did when it was killed. After a minute, he carefully turned the handle of the door. The inside looked lived in, despite the outside appearance. There was a small dining table straight across from the door, to the left of which was a small kitchen pressed up against a staircase. He walked up the stairs, and looked around. There was a door that lead to the balcony by the other end of the stairs. A double bed with a chest at the end sat across from the door, beyond it was a large wall of books.

Lying on the bed was a girl. She had some sort of gauze over her right arm, though nothing looked hurt. Though it wasn't too late when he had left, the moon was high in the sky wherever he was, so he supposed that it made sense that she was asleep. As soon as he hit the top step, she sat up and grabbed something on the side of the bed out of his line of sight and stood up. The item she grabbed was a sword, and it was now pointed at his neck.

This was all done so quickly that he didn't really have time to react, other than to lean back.

"Who are you and what do you want?"

He raised his hands in surrender, temporarily forgetting that he was kinda immortal. "I'm Percy Jackson. I wound up here somehow, and I don't know where I am." The girl relaxed her sword a little bit.

"Well, Percy, we're sort of in the middle of a war right now, so excuuuse me if I don't sound the most hospitable right now. Prove you're not a spy!" Her voice was laced with venom.

"Tell me where I am first. I kind of need to know some things before I go spouting things you won't understand." I said, unsure what sort of reaction I would get from her.

"You're in Celestia. The Floating Land." She said.

Okay, what?

"What kind of trick is this?" He asked. "There's no such thing as Celestia."

"Well, then, Percy, tell me something famous from your realm."

"The Empire State Building." He said, without much thought. The girl raised an eyebow and lowered her sword.

"So you're from Earth, then?"

"Uh, yeah?" The way she had phrased it made it sound like she wasn't from earth.

She leaned on her sword, scowling. "And how did you get here? This beach is private property and off limits, you know."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Percy replied. "I didn't know. You see, I was... sitting around a campfire back home and something reached out and pulled me through it. The fire spat me back out here."

She looked skeptical of his story. Percy shrugged. The girl rolled her eyes and sighed. "Well, since you obviously came here without knowing where you were going, I take it that you can't get back, either?" When he shook his head, she continued. "Great, just great. School starts back up in a week so we'll just go ask Headmaster Ambrose what to do. Until then, you're welcome to stay in one of the other two houses on the island."

"Aren't there three of them?" He asked, frowining.

She nodded, but didn't elaborate. "Oh, by the way," she held out her left hand, the one not wrapped, "I'm Caedis Storm."

"Percy Jackson." He shook her hand. He tried to not be offended when she wiped her hand on her pajamas afterwords.

She motioned at him to follow as she passed him to head down the stairs, and he followed her. They went back out of the house and by the campfire which was still glowing brightly. She lead him down and past it to the first house that he had noticed, the large two-story beach house.

"Alright, here you go."

He looked at the house and then back to her. "Why do you stay in your little run down shack over there when you could have used this giant one?" He asked, completely missing how her violet eyes flashed in anger.

"Because I can't open it, that's why now just go to sleep." She then turned and went back to her house.

Yeah, okay, whatever.

Percy went into the house without trouble and explored around. It had a weird design, if you asked him. And you did.

The door opened up to a hallway with two rooms on the left-hand side, and the hall opened up to what looked like a living room with a huge wall-window.

The rooms on the left turned out to be a kitchen and a bathroom. The living room had a simple design, no TV, only two white couches that looked over the ocean. Directly to the left of where the hall opened up was a stairway to the bedroom.

In the bedroom was a large bed with sea-green spread and some sort of small card on it. A wardrobe was there, too, filled with all sorts of weird clothing. Each piece had a tag that said things like, "heart plus a number" and "blue globe plus a number", "weird swirly lightning bolt plus a percentage". He could make no sense of it.

That card on his bed was purple, with the same swirly lightning bolt on the top right corner, as well as what looked like a snowflake. The title of the card said 'Posiedon', and on the top left corner said 'x'. There was a childish picture of his father top-center. The bottom left said fifty percent and the bottom right had a fist. The caption of the card said, 'Deals 40 (lightning) (fist) per "pip" and 30 (snow) (fist) over three "turns".'

He made no sense of it.

Everything was so confusing to him, and so he stripped to his boxers and went swimming.

This new world is complex. Swimming isn't.