WARNING: Gorey mentions of rape and descriptions of death, as well as human trafficking in the form of slave trading.

She woke up an hour later to screams.

Kallisto woke up with a start a second after Annabeth did. She quickly stumbled out of the bed and grabbed Hecuba, who was wrapped in blankets. She held the baby close to her chest and looked frantically at Annabeth. Annabeth ran out into the hallway to see what the screamed came from and was created by the dead eyes of her grandfather.

"Pappous!" She yelled. She crouched down next to his corpse but was pulled away by Malcolm's arms.

"Come on!" he shouted, "We'll leave through the door of my house and get to the port. We'll board a boat and figure out what to do from there. Where's Kallisto and Hecuba?"

"Here!" Kallisto called out to her husband.

Malcolm led them down the corridor, his arms still on his sister's arm.

"Malcolm, what's going on? Who did this?"

"I'll explain later, come on!"

"Wait!" Annabeth ripped her arm from her brother's grasp, "Where's Yiayia?"

"I don't know, she wouldn't leave Pappous' side until one of the men dragged her away. Let's go," Malcolm grabbed her upper again.

"No! Yiayia! Yiayia!" Annabeth yelled down the corridor and tried to pull away from her brother. There were tears streaming down her face and clouding her vision. Still, she could make out a tiny ball of dark blue robes and long brown hair mixed with white strands.

"Antiochis! Malcolm!"

"Yiayia!" Annabeth ran to her grandmother.

"Alright, let's go. We have to get to the port." Malcolm moved forward quickly, but Annabeth stayed behind with the old woman.

"Malcolm! She's tired, do slower!" She yelled out to her brother.

"We don't have time to go slower! All the ships will be leaving the docks as soon as possible!"

"Malcolm!"

"Anti, my agapitos, leave me here with your pappous. You were right, I am too hold. My bones and heart hurt. I will only slow you down. Go, shoo," her Yiayia shooed her away.

"No, Yiayia!" Annabeth screamed for her grandmother as her brother pulled her away. She was dragged out to the door only to notice a small group of men, only about two or three, placing a torch next to the front of the house. The men looked up and noticed Annabeth's group. Two of the men looked at each other and a third one began to walk over to them.

Annabeth halted her tantrum for a minute to carefully watch the men stalk towards them. Malcolm pulled at her and she remembered the reason she was creating such a disturbance.

"Yiayia! Yiayia!"

The man how had been the first to start walking towards them started running to them. He made to grab at Annabeth's shoulders but Malcolm pulled his sister back.

"Antiochis, dammit, come on, or I'll leave you here!" Malcolm yelled at his still screaming sister.

"Fine! Leave me! Leave me like you're leaving Yiayia!" She responded, thrashing under her brother's hold.

"Yiayia!" She yelled again.

Kallisto made to talk to her sister but the man finally grabbed Annabeth's shoulders and Malcolm pulled his wife closer to him.

The man was looking at Annabeth with something like frantic concern in his eyes. He was saying something to her, but it wasn't in Greek, the only language she could understand.

"Yiayia!" Annabeth yelled again, disregarding the man.

"Yiayia! Yiayia?" The man was repeating her words to Annabeth's face.

"Yiayia!" Annabeth yelled back at him.

The man said more words in his language but Annabeth caught the 'yiayia' at the end.

"Yiayia!" Annabeth shouted again, this time pointing towards the burning house. The man looked behind him and seemed to realize something. He shoved Annabeth back into her brother's arms and went inside the burning house.

Only a minute or so later he emerged carrying something lumpy in his arms.

"Yiayia? The man asked Annabeth and held the thing in his arms out to her.

Annabeth looked down the see the remains of her jewelry box, her grandmother's jewelry box, a woven blanket with a picture of Pallas and Athena on it, a hairbrush, and a handheld mirror resting on the body of an old woman.

"Yiayia!" Annabeth took the old woman's face in her hands. Her face covered in ash and dirt, but she was breathing.

Again, the man said something in his language, but the only thing Annabeth could catch was 'yiayia,' which, this time, was in the middle of the sentence.

Malcolm peeked over his sister's shoulder to see what was in the man's arms. When he saw his grandmother he looked at the man in wonder.

Annabeth could barely see the man's face by the light of the fire, but it looked strong.

The man placed Nemerte in Malcolm's arms and Annabeth took the various objects off her body.

The man nodded once and made a 'go' motion, and Malcolm turned to his wife and began to run as fast as he could with an old woman in his arms.

Annabeth turned to the man to see him watching her brother leave. The man's bold green eyes turned back to her when he felt her grey eyes on him. Annabeth wanted so badly to say thank you to the man, who, from his robes, was not a Greek, and probably the enemy, as he had been with the men setting fire to her house. Granted, he hadn't been the one setting fire, but he had stood back and watched his comrade light the house. Still, the man had gone into the burning remains of a building and not only brought out Annabeth's grandmother but also most of her prized possessions.

Annabeth jumbled the items in her arms in an attempt to hug him in thanks, as Greeks did, but there were too many things in her hands.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you," She repeated over and over again, hoping he might understand.

The man looked confused at her words.

Annabeth growled, frustrated. She tried to think of other ways to show her gratitude, but the only option she could think of was rather risque. Still, she felt like she should show him she was grateful in some form or fashion.

With her bundle of items still in her hands, Annabeth surged up onto the tips of her tip-toes and placed a kiss on the man's lips.

When she stepped back to look at him his eyes were wide and he had a dopey smile on his face. Annabeth grinned at him before turning back and running after her brother, who wasn't very far away seeing as he still had to carry Nemerte.

Malcolm looked back to find his sister running at him and the man who had saved his grandmother standing in the same spot he had left him in.

Kallisto stopped when her husband did to look back at him. The port was in sight.

Kallisto felt a pair of hands grasp her shoulders. They yanked her back and she slammed into hard metal. She clutched Hecuba tighter to her chest. The hands were large, most likely a man's. The hands pulled her backward. She let out a scream but it was muffled almost immediately by a hand. Still, it was enough to make Malcolm turn around. His eyes widened at the image he saw.

He laid his grandmother on the ground as gently and quickly as he could.

Annabeth caught up to her brother, or, at least where he had laid Nemerte, and shoved the items into Nemerte's arms before picking the old woman up and helping her hobble to the edge of the port.

Malcolm rushed to his wife and daughter and reached out for them. His hand grabbed his wife's arm and tried to pull her to him. The man took his hand off Kallisto's mouth and reached for a dagger. He raised the dagger above his head with the knife part pointing down. He swiftly brought it down toward Malcolm's head.

Malcolm fell to the ground, his dark blonde hair turning red with blood. His eyes were open, but he couldn't move any part of him.

Kallisto screamed and kicked the strange man in an attempt to free herself from his hold and get to her husband, but his arm tightened around her.

"Antiochis!" She screamed.

Annabeth looked up to see her sister-in-law in the hands of a brute dressed in the same blood-red garbs as the ones setting fires to the Korinthian houses.

"Kallisto!" She shouted back. She looked into the crowd around her to find someone to take her grandmother but before she could comprehend any of the action her shoulders were grabbed by big hands. She screamed and kicked the man, yelling for her yiayia.

Another man dressed in the red robes said something to the man holding Annabeth, and the man grabbed Nemerte, too.

Still, Annabeth screamed and kicked so much that another man came and grabbed her legs. All she could do was squirm between the two men.

"Kallisto!" Annabeth yelled out again.

"Kallisto! Kallisto! Yiayia! Kallisto! Yiayia! Where are you!?" the men dragged her, still screaming her sister and grandmother's names, to a large moving cart. There was a long rectangular trunk attached to a single brown horse. The man threw Annabeth onto the trunk. A few seconds later Annabeth felt her grandmother's body next to her.

"Oh, Yiayia, oh, Yiayia," She crawled over to her grandmother and held her head in her hands. Nemerte's forehead was bleeding and there were bruises around her wrists and up her arms.

"Antiochis, where is your brother?" Nemerte used Annabeth's arms to sit up.

"I don't know. One of the barbarians has Kallisto, have you seen her?" Annabeth answered.

"Antiochis!" Annabeth turned to see her sister on a cart that looked almost exactly like the one she and her grandmother were on.

"Kallisto!"

Annabeth felt a sharp sting on her back and turned to see one of the men in the blood-colored robes holding a whip. When she looked closer she saw small spiked attached to it. No wonder her back hurt so bad. She was sure there was blood dripping down her back, but that was not what she was paying attention to. In the short span of time Annabeth had taken her eyes off Kallisto to look at the whip the cart carrying Kallisto had disappeared.

"Kallisto!" She shouted again.

"Shut up, girl!" One of the men growled at her. This was the first time she'd heard on of them speak Greek and she was stunned into silence for a second. She soon recovered and began to scream out for Kallisto again.

"Here! I'm here!" Annabeth heard Kallisto's sweet voice call from somewhere up ahead.

Annabeth counted everyone off in her head.

Yiayia is with me, Kallisto and Hecuba are up ahead, Pappous is… she remembered the lifeless eyes of her grandfather and the image of a knife sticking out of his chest back at the house. Surely his body had either burned with or been buried under the remains of the house. That meant the only one unaccounted for was Malcolm….. Malcolm!

"Malcolm!" She shouted.

"Malcolm! Malcolm! Megálos aderfós! Malcolm! Where are you!? Malcolm!"

She felt the sting on her back again.

"Didn't I just tell you to shut up?" The man had his face right in front of her's.

"Malcolm! I need my brother! Where is he? Give him back, give him back to me!" The tears traveled down her face in waves.

The man raised his hand and slapped Annabeth hard across the face. She fell backward into her grandmother's arms.

"Shh, shh, agapitos, hush, I'm here, I've got you. You're alright, my little one. You're alright."

Annabeth continued to sob in her grandmother's arms.

Her body bounced and she felt the cart stop.

"Get off, girl." The man with the whip commanded her. Before Annabeth could even think of whether to follow the order he had grabbed her by the hair and thrown her onto the boarding plant of a large trireme.

She heard her Yiayia's cried as her granddaughter was ripped from her arms.

"Move!" The whip came down again. Annabeth crawled onto her hands and knees and made to turn around to help her grandmother when a callused hand grabbed her upper arm and hauled her up. The man who had grabbed her threw her onto the deck of the boat, where another man grabbed her arms and twisted them behind her back. The man started to lead Annabeth across the deck.

"Yiayia!" Annabeth tried to twist around while still in the man's grasp.

The man grunted and kicked her legs out from under her. Annabeth cried out when her knees hit the deck, but the man just dragged her to a small passageway under the deck. He roughly shoved Annabeth into the room, where at least 50 other Korinthians were already stuffed.

"Antiochis!" She heard her name called and looked up. Kallisto was standing above her, Hecuba nowhere to be seen.

"Oh, Antiochis," Kallisto fell to her knees in front of her sister. It was only them that Annabeth noticed the small tuft of dark hair peeking out from under Kallisto's palla.

"Kallisto! Where's Malcolm?" Annabeth huddled closer to her sister.

Kallisto burst into sobs at the mention of her husband.

"He- he- he's gone!"

"What do you mean 'gone'? Did they take him? Is he back at the house? Where is he?"

Kallisto shook her head and sobbed harder, "No, no, they killed him! One of the men grabbed me and Mal- Malcolm tried to grab me and the man stuck a dagger in his head. He's gone, Antiochis, he's gone! They killed him! They killed him for trying to save me!"

Tears were running down Annabeth's face, too.

"Oh, my brother, my big brother," she continued to cry and hugged Kallisto. Her sister squeezed her tighter, Hecuba stuck between them. They stayed like that until another round of Korinthians were shoved in.

"Kallisto! Antiochis!" Nemerte's voice was almost drowned out by the crow. Annabeth probably wouldn't have heard it if she hadn't been listening for it.

"Nemerte!"

"Yiayia!"

Annabeth and Kallisto yelled out at the same time.

Nemerte's head wiped towards them. Her eyes widened when she saw them and she started to hobble over to them. People jostled the old woman and elbowed her, almost knocking her down.

"Stop! Stop! Let her through!" Annabeth yelled and swung her arms out, pushing her way toward her grandmother.

"Yiayia!" The relief in her voice was evident by the time she reached Nemerte.

"Come, come, Kallisto and Hecuba are over in the corner," Annabeth gently grabbed her grandmother's wrist and slowly pulled her along.

"Kallisto!" Nemerte shouted when she caught sight of her.

Kallisto clutched her daughter tighter to her chest and used one hand to wave them over.

"Kallisto," Nemerte repeated when she got to her, "where is Malcolm?"

Annabeth and Kallisto shared a look.

"No, Yiayia, they.. They killed him."

Nemerte wailed, "My boys, both my boys! They took them from me, they took them from us! They took everything from us!" She collapsed into Annabeth's arms. Annabeth gently lowered herself to the ground with her grandmother. Kallisto followed suit.

Another round of captives entered, making the already tight space even tighter. Nemerte's soft body was pressed right up against Annabeth's. Annabeth herself was pressed into Kallisto's shoulder.

Another 15-20 minutes later another round of Korinthians came in. The women huddled together in an attempt to make enough space for everyone to fit.

The men outside shouted things to each other in their language for a minute or to before Annabeth felt the boat begin to rock.

They were leaving Korinthos.

Annabeth looked around. About ⅘ of the group were female. Only a few children that had managed to hang onto their mothers or other relatives were there. Every child Annabeth saw was crying.

She recognized one of the children. It was Harmonia, Tryphena's daughter. Harmonia was clutching to Tryphena's mother. Neither Tryphena nor her husband were anywhere to be seen.

Kallisto's head was resting on Annabeth's shoulder. Her soft breathing indicated that she was asleep. Nemerte was also asleep, he mouth open and drooling.

Annabeth felt a hot liquid running through the cracks in her skin and looked down to see a damp spot on Hecuba's blanket over her nether regions.

It was going to be a long night.

0~0~0~0~0

Annabeth had a foul night's sleep. Her head swam with the image of her grandfather's dead eyes, the sight of her childhood home burning, and the bittersweet memories of her late brother. Every now and then the green eyes of the man who saved her Yiayia would float into her mind, and she'd feel slightly more at ease knowing there was someone with at least half a heart on the ship.

The men with the blood-colored robes woke them up right after dawn. There were four or five men at the entrance of the small room. They all wore the same outfit with various different medals decoration their chests. They looked like Greek soldier, minus the Greek part. They had a plume on their heads that was facing forward instead of spanning out in the shape of a rainbow. Their robes were a blood red color. Their gold helmets covered their entire face, unlike the Greek's helmets, which sat on their head and covered their cheeks, but not the center of their face. The men lacked the blue cape of a Greek soldier, too. Instead, they had something that resembled a shawl of the same blood red material their tunics were made of. Two of the men carried shields, though they were rounded and had a laurel wreath engraved onto it and letters that looked unfamiliar to Annabeth.

One spoke to them in Greek. He introduced himself and his comrades.

"I am Lydus, son of Isidor. I am a centurion of the 7th Cohort of the Dalmation Legio. This is Tertius Florius Agustalis, son of Augustus, and my Primus Ordinis. This is Decius Veturius Maursus, son of Maursis, and my Pilus Prior. And this is Perseus Pompey Julius, Praetor of Roma."

Each man took off their helmet as Lydus introduced them. Tertitus looked around the age of Lydus, maybe a little older, with the same closely cropped brown hair as Lydus, though Tertius' was lighter and his eyes were brown. Decius was an older man, perhaps Nemerte's age, with hair beginning to turn white and dark brown eyes. All the men, even the old Decius, looked gruff and ready for battle.

The last man, Perseus, was, at first glance, a god on Earth. He had black hair darker than the depths of the Aegean sea, and eyes the color of the Saronic Gulf. His skin was a golden color and looked unblemished, but upon closer inspection, it was marred by scars, bruises, and red spots. His face was chiseled and weather-beaten. He looked like the youngest of the group, though probably still at least five years older than Annabeth.

With a start, Annabeth realized that he had been the man to save her Yiayia.

So he really was one of the enemies.

Lydus kept talking, "Yes, we are Romans. And now you are Romi slaves, as your home is no longer. Sorry about that, by the way," Lydus laughed. None of the Korinthians joined in.

"No? Too soon? Ah, well, you will soon forget of Corinth when we reach Rome. The voyage will take ten days or so. Make yourself comfortable, because you are not permitted to leave this room. We'll give you all a few loaves of bread to share with each other a day. Afterward, you will have to rely on your masters for food. On the sixth or seventh day, we will begin taking you out of the room one by one to see what skills you may have and it is then that we will give you a Roman name. We will inform you of anything that concerns you when the time comes. Try not to die, it's disgusting for your fellow slaves and it costs us money. Have a good day, servorum." With that, he turned on his heel and walked out of the room. Tertius and Decius followed him, but Perseus stayed behind. It was only when the other two men moved that Annabeth realized he was holding something that looked like a long scepter with a centaur on the tip.

Perseus looked around the room, glancing over the faces of every Korinthian until his eyes locked with Annabeth's. She was still conflicted on how to feel about the enemy who had saved her grandmother, so her face remained neutral. His held no emotion, but he nodded his head towards her. He turned and left the room, shutting the door behind him. Or, attempting to shut the door behind him.

The bloody foot of a Korinthian stopped the door from closing all the way. Perseus glanced down the see what was blocking the door. He followed the leg attached to the foot up to the face of a young boy, maybe 10-11. Perseus glanced back down at the boy's foot. There was a cut on it so deep you could see the off-white bone peeking out. Again, Perseus looked back to the boy's face. The child cowers under the Roman's gaze and attempted to pull his foot back. However, it seemed to cause him pain when he moved it because he cried out. He quickly but his lip to silence it, but the agony had been clear

Perseus lowered himself on one knee using his oversized scepter as a means to steady himself. He lowered his other knee to the ground and placed the scepter delicately on the ground next to him. He pulled out a glistening sharp knife from behind him, hidden by his cape. Perseus raised the dagger over himself and the boy and swiftly brought it down. Annabeth gasped as she thought Perseus had maimed the boy. Kallisto buried her head into the crook of Annabeth's neck.

But, amazingly, the boy never screamed. The only sound was the soft ripping of fabric. Perseus had cut a section from his shawl-like cape. He placed the dagger back into its sheath. His hands reached out to grab the boys foot. Before he reached the foot he asked something in his language. The Greek boy sat, confused. Perseus growled and shook his head, obviously frustrated with the language barrier. He simply made a motion with his hands for the boy to hand him his foot. The child did so and Perseus gently wrapped the fabric around his foot in a bandage. He tied the knot directly over where the cut had been.

Perseus smiled at the boy and patted his leg. He grabbed his scepter and used it to push himself up to his feet. With the boy's foot bandaged and out of the way Perseus was able to cloth the door, but not before looking over in Annabeth's direction and giving her a soft smile when he met her eyes. Annabeth peered back at him curiously. His smile just grew wider as he shook his head and shut the door.

Okay so here's chapter 2, posted literally right after chapter 1 because this is where everything gets, ah, interesting. I don't know what the average length of the chapters will be, or how often I'll post, but school is almost over so I'm hoping I'll be able to post pretty quickly after exams, which are next week. Anyways, tell me your thoughts. Let's talk, my friends. Love you, mean it, make good choices.