Chapter 2

Thanks so much for the amazing reception that the first chapter received! I was blown away by the number of favourites and follows that I got and obviously, I'm also grateful for those of you who took the time to review. I'm really not used to being spoiled so much. But has a token of my gratitude, I've worked my socks off to get this to you early. Warning though, they won't always be quite so prompt.

Percy's POV

My vision was blurry as I woke up, the scene around me just a bizarre mix of colours and vague shapes which could really have been anything. There was a resonating buzz in my ears which stopped me from making out any of the sound around me. As somebody who had been forced to rely on acute senses and quick reactions many times in battle, not having these essentials made me feel fragile and weak. Less essentially, but annoying nonetheless, my tongue felt heavier than a lead weight and it was too numb for me to formulate any kind of discernible words. So basically, my faithful senses were out of action. Attempting to sit up, I was promptly shoved back into a lying position. The first signs of panic began to wash over me, it didn't feel as if I was in a friendly environment.

Stupidly, I decided to attempt to talk. "Where am I?"

If my hearing had been up to scratch, maybe I was lucky that it wasn't, I would've know that really I'd just said 'wre m ah?'. I really didn't help me to get across the whole 'you'd better not mess with me' vibe, and was certainly not a good first impression.

Some of the shapes around me started to shake, and a sound that was probably laughter sounded around the room. Although it was obviously humiliating to be laughed at, it was helpful to be able to tell which of the shapes were people and which were inanimate objects. One of the shapes that I had been able to make out as a person, and the only one who hadn't been laughing, approached me and muttered some words that I obviously couldn't make out. Quickly, my senses began to return – I already felt safer. The annoying buzzing sound in my ears cleared, leaving me with the well-missed sounds of life. My tongue lost its absurd heaviness, my nose cleared and my vision returned, clear as crystal.

I was in a white tent, spacious and simple, on a mattress surrounded by about five, glaring fifteen year old girls. Their t-shirts were all an identical white, matching the plainness of their surroundings. The standard issue trousers that they all wore were slightly more colourful, with an army camouflage colour decorating the thin material. Everything looked very … pure. They were, of course, the hunters. I'd had a few meetings with the hunt before, but none of the girls in the room were familiar to me. Continuing to evaluate my surroundings, I noted that I'd actually been cared for rather well. It appeared that they had washed and repaired my clothes without me even noticing, because they felt new and as smooth as silk. Clothing shops were pretty hard to come across in the middle of nowhere, so I had struggled to find replacement clothes for the ones that I'd brought with me when I'd fled from Manhattan. I was newly clean shaven, and my body felt cleaner and more healthy than it had done in as long as I could remember.

"Thank you for all of this." I thanked the hunters, figuring that this was a good opportunity to grab myself some brownie points for manners.

They sniffed at me, looking at me as if I was the intellectual equivalent of the slime that lined the ocean floor. It was fairly clear that it had not been their wish to help me in any way, they must've been told (or forced) to do it by their superiors. The thought of Artemis actually helping me was so weird that I swiftly pushed it out my mind altogether. I shrugged at their lack of courtesy. If they weren't going to be civil, then I didn't see why I should have to.

A calm voice sounded to my side. "Girls, leave us."

I looked over to see the owner of the voice, alarmed by the fact that I hadn't even noticed that they were there. Artemis stood up from where she was sitting and strode to stand at the end of the mattress that I was lying on. The hunters were gone within seconds, looking all too pleased to leave the tent (probably because I was in it). I didn't let myself get too annoyed about this – I knew the ways of the hunter and I was by no means the only guy that they didn't like.

"Artemis." I growled, similarly to the way that Mrs O'Leary did when she sensed an attack. It was just me and her.

It annoyed me how naturally she could impose herself. I mean, she was in the form of a fifteen year old girl and I was a twenty two year old man, yet just the sight of her striding towards me made me instinctively think, 'yep, she's in charge here.'

"You drool in your sleep." She told me simply. Okay, I thought. I wasn't expecting her to say that.

I glared up at her, but she avoided my eyes. "So I've been told." I replied stiffly. "Why am I in your camp?"

"One of my hunters shot you with a poisonous arrow." The Virgin Goddess explained totally matter-of-factly. If she was sorry for the mishap, she certainly didn't show it. "If we left you, you would have died."

"If you're expecting an apology then-"

She cut my sentence short with the confidence that only somebody with extreme arrogance or self belief could've had. I wanted to believe that it was the former.

"No. But if you had died then your father would've been angry." Artemis explicated coldly.

Her voice, it was just indescribable. It couldn't have been smoother or silkier and I found myself wanting to believe absolutely everything that she said. But it wasn't working by magic or trickery, like the ways that Prometheus had been able to spread doubts in my mind, or the way that charm-speak worked. I genuinely believed that it was her normal voice. I snapped myself out of the trance and snapped some rude comment back. "Oh, silly me for expecting that you possibly cared whether I was OK."

Artemis looked down again. For a god, she suddenly didn't seem too self confident. The imposing aura that I'd just been talking about seemed to have evaporated faster than the speed of one of her arrows. "That's not what I meant."

I couldn't stand it any more, just sitting there talking to the god who'd caused me five years (and counting) of misery. The god who'd cost me everything and everyone I cared about, and for as far as I could see, no reason. I jumped off the bed with a surprising amount of energy for somebody who'd been impaled with a big, silver, poisonous arrow. The moment I was standing on my own two feet I felt dizzy and weak, but I was determined not to show this in front of my least favourite Olympian.

"I'm leaving."

She grabbed my arm. "Wait, boy. You're not strong enough. The poison is still potent enough to kill you."

I shook her off. It was obvious that her heart wasn't in it because she definitely had the power to keep hold of me. I left with one last parting blow. "For somebody like me, that's just an added bonus."

The words obviously struck her hard, making me almost feel guilty about uttering them. Telling somebody that you want to die, and that it was their fault. Well, if somebody said that to me, it would definitely cast a downer on my day. My head held high, I marched from the hunter camp and back to the beach where I felt at home.

Thalia's POV

Bringing Percy to the camp had put me in pretty big trouble, to put it ridiculously lightly, but I thought it was worth it. Of course, being assigned to sharpen arrows for the next six weeks was hardly the ideal situation but again, I thought that it was worth it. I was certainly willing to pay such a price to get Percy and my lady talking.

I threw another freshly sharpened arrow onto the pile with a bored exclamation. This was not the work that a lieutenant of the hunt should be doing.

I admit that the plan had hardly been one hundred percent successful. Percy being shot had obviously made me feel pretty guilty but I was sure that he'd see that I was just trying to get his life back. Gods, he deserves it. I was beginning to put a point on my fifty-fourth arrow of the day when my friend, Amy, came to liberate me from the loathsome munitions tent.

"Hey, Thalia," she uttered as she came through the tent flap, sounding strangely distant. There was an odd look on her face, a face which normally bore a perpetual smile. One of her fingers nervously twiddled with a strand of her short, blonde hair, as if she was suddenly troubled to be in my presence.

I decided to ignore it for now, it hopefully wasn't anything to do with me, and replied enthusiastically. "Amy! Have you come to free me from this hell hole?"

She still didn't return the glowing smile that I gave her. "Lady Artemis wishes to speak to you. Probably about that boy you brought into the camp."

Before I could reply, she'd gone from the tent. It didn't take a genius to work out what she was behaving so abnormally about. Even Percy, hardly the sharpest knife in the draw, would've known what it was that was bothering her. I sighed heavily, but knew that I shouldn't have been surprised. None of the hunters had been particular pleased with me when I'd brought an boy to the camp, but with a certain amount of hope I'd assumed my friend would've understood me. With another disappointed sigh, I set off to Artemis' tent.

"So then, he told me that he didn't care if his injury killed him and stormed from the camp." Artemis finished her story, looking up at me expectantly.

In my opinion, Artemis had always been the most human of all of the gods. She wasn't arrogant, she rarely used any of her powers and was quite emotive. And I've said it before, I'll say it again. She didn't understand boys. In her mind, all of them were the same – stupid, uncouth and unworthy of respect (amongst quite an impressive list of negative adjectives). I supposed that all of the gods had their weaknesses. My father's crippling arrogance, Ares' impressive stupidity, Athena's coldness. They all had one (or more) negative traits, most of them to do with arrogance, and I hoped that I could use my lady's emotional aspects against her.

"I would've thought that the answer would be obvious, my lady." I said, as if the answer was as clear as crystal in my eyes. "Let him go back to his friends and he will be happy again, he won't bear a grudge against you any more."

She shook her head. If her lieutenant had brought this up a few years ago, then she probably would have agreed. But it was too late now. If anything, the boy had been much safer to the gods before his exile. His period of isolation had hardly done anything to make him love us Olympians.

"It's not as simple as that, my girl. I still believe that he is dangerous. And even though I am grateful that he took the sky from me a few years ago, my wish that Olympus stays calm outweighs my gratitude."

I sighed, feeling extremely rare tears emerge at my eyes. Of all of the things that could've happened, I definitely hadn't wanted it to come to this. "Then I resign my place as hunter with immediate effect, my lady. Percy needs a friend, and if you're not going to act on it then I will have to."

The Goddess of the Hunt was shocked. Astounded. Surprised. (Insert more synonyms here). A hunter giving up her immortality was almost unheard of. Sure, a few hunters had left their positions before. That was natural – it wasn't a life for everyone. What surprised Artemis was that normally they'd been the stupid, simple, and weak-minded girls who had given up. Thalia was a battle hardened and sensible hunter, one of the best that the hunt had ever been graced with. And she was leaving the hunt... for a boy?

As ever though, the goddess stayed calm and tried to rescue the situation. "You should be very careful about doing that, Thalia. You'd lose your immortality, your hunter friends and everything that I know you love about being a part of this group. And I'd lose a very fine lieutenant. Would you sacrifice all of this for an outlaw?"

Finally, I let the tears run completely down my cheeks. The hunt had been my life for years now, but I knew when sacrifices had to be made. I didn't see myself as somebody who stood by and watched as injustice thrived. History was made up of people who had sacrificed things, sometimes even their own lives, to bring balance. Standing there in front of the short, shrewd faced goddess I let it all out. "I can't allow the greatest demigod in the Greek history be outlawed because of the paranoia of the Olympians."

The sky rumbled fiercely at the insult to the gods but defiantly, I didn't care. Percy had never been afraid to stand up to them. Artemis was finally left speechless, the outburst of her most loyal hunter surprising her to the point of an outburst of her own.

"I'm sorry, my lady." I choked. "I wouldn't do this unless I could think of any other way to persuade you that Percy is innocent."

For the second time that morning, a person who Artemis was talking to turned their back on her and walked out of the tent.

As I walked from the camp, a small bag of my few belongings over my shoulder, I tried to take in everything that I loved about the hunt, knowing that I would possibly never experience it again. The rows of pearly white tents, which left us living barely metres from our best friends. And then there were the various camp fires magically burning all through the day, making us feel safe and at home. I don't know how they managed to have that effect on us, but they inexplicably did and needless to say, I'd miss them. I'd definitely be sad to leave the archery ranges behind, where I'd loved to go and feel the unparalled feeling of satisfaction when a silver arrow landed in the middle of a target with a soft thud. Maybe the most beautiful thing about the life was the nature that was always around us – whether we were camping in a forest, or a desert, or by a river, or wherever, there was always the calmness that I could only feel in such a natural environment. Infinitely better than the loud, bustling, fake cities that I'd never felt quite at home in. I reminisced wistfully. My time with the hunt had been the best years of my life – better than my time at camp half-blood, even better than those years that I'd spent with Luke and Annabeth (before the former was a crazy, murderous killing machine). As I made my way towards the exit, I noticed that some of the other hunters had assembled to see me go. I hadn't had a chance to tell any of them about the situation behind my departure, so I guessed that they assumed that I was being kicked out because of the incident with Percy the night before. I saw Amy in the crowd, her finger still twiddling with the tomboyish blonde hair that she'd chosen as her style. Was I expecting to see remorse or any kind of sadness on her friendly, appealing face? If I was, I was certainly disappointed. There was only a stony, set expression, displaying a total lack of feeling or affection. This only made me sniffle more as I wandered through the camp exit. I didn't look back. I couldn't.

"Stop crying, dammit!" I shouted at myself, trying to remind myself who I was. I was Thalia Grace (dammit I hate my surname)- I crushed barbie dolls by day and killed monsters by night. My punk hair was so sharp that it threatened low-flying birds. My glare could stop hearts. And I definitely, unquestionably, never, ever cried.

Artemis' POV

I'm a goddess, and a quick-thinking one at that, which means that I don't just sit and mope around after something bad has happened. I get up on my feet and sort it out, much in the same way that Thalia had been known to do. Her undying, everlastic loyalty to her friends was maybe something that I would never be able to understand. Her resignation really did affect me, it shocked me into action. That had been the result that she'd been looking for and I took some satisfaction in believing that I was making her sacrifice more worthwhile. It had actually been a devilishly cunning move, because for it had got me thinking about the boy and the first time I realised that maybe I hadn't been totally fair towards him. You should know that it was very, very, very (there should be more verys) rare that a God apologised to a mortal, it was even rarer that they corrected their wrongdoings and made amends. But that was exactly what I was going to do, which is how I found myself outside the boy's hut about five seconds after Thalia had left my tent (I told you I was quick-thinking.)

Looking at what he'd managed to build for himself, I had to admit that I was impressed by his set up. He had a firm, seemingly weather proof shack, a steady fire with makeshift cooking equipment and home made chairs on the exterior of the hut. I imagined him sitting there in the evenings, one chair always empty as if he was expecting somebody to come and join him. The thought saddened me.

Impressively, he'd also chosen a perfect location to set up camp, something that my trainee hunters had always struggled to get their heads round. I'd never thought of him as a boy with good logic, sense and survival instincts. To me, he'd always just been a somebody who could wield a sword – an Ares type. Maybe there was more to him than met the eye.

With a deep breath, I knocked on the rough bark of the hut's entrance. If all went well then I would soon be welcoming him as the newest member of the hunt.

That's another chapter done. I really do think that reviews are very important – the quicker you tell me what I'm doing right or wrong, the quicker I can eradicate any wrongdoings and do more of the good stuff. Also, it really gets me motivated to get another chapter out. If I feel like people aren't putting in the effort that I am then I can get frustrated and give up the story. I don't want that to happen and hopefully you don't either.

Hope you enjoyed the chapter, keep your eyes peeled for more.