Disclaimer: I do not own the works of Rick Riordan, Greek mythological tradition, or any of the derivatives thereof, save for this story.

All right, so I was a day off, but an update every weekend is still pretty good for me, right? Please, join us as the quest begins to unfold at last…

It only seemed like another second before the three of us were all packed up and ready to leave. In reality, it was about an hour, but I barely remember any of it—just sort of a general rush of last-minute advice from my siblings, packing useful books, weapons, and heavy winter clothes, and so on. The next thing I knew, Ashley, Biagio, and I were at the base of Half-Blood Hill, saying our final goodbyes before heading off into the unknown.

"I know it's all pretty terrifying, but you'll do fine," Annabeth promised me, shaking my hand. "Thinking, and planning, and fighting, out there in the world…" she stared wistfully off down the country road that ran past the camp—"That's what we were born for, really. Good luck."

"Careful out there, you guys!" Flint Greenbaum warned good-naturedly, his fedora at its usual jaunty angle. "After I went to all that trouble saving your lives, you'd better hang on to them."

I realized that he had a point—if it hadn't been for him, we wouldn't have made it to camp at all. As dangerous as our current situation was, I still preferred it to being in the stomach of a manticore, and I had Flint to thank for that.

"Look, Flint," I said, my voice cracking with emotion, "Thanks for getting us to camp. I'm really grateful to you for that." The satyr saluted in return.

"Flint…" said Biagio in the same emotionally charged tone I'd used. "The eighties called. They want their clothes back."

I was still snickering at that, maybe a little hysterical from the tension of the whole situation, when I noticed Melanie Adams walking purposefully towards me. I was a little surprised to see her—I hadn't noticed her earlier among the various camp residents who'd gathered to see us off—but I was certainly happy about it. Initially, I'd wondered if she'd basically jumped on me out of some mistaken impression, but for whatever reason, she seemed to have taken a genuine liking to me. I tend not to make friends very easily, so this was something of a welcome change.

Besides, as I believe I've mentioned before, Melanie is…well, she's hot, and I have to admit that I was glad to see her in my capacity of a teenage male, as well.

Melanie said her goodbyes to Biagio in a small blizzard of friendly insults ("Don't die too quickly out there; you'll make me lose my bet"; "I look forward to returning and seeing just how pathetic Cabin Ten has become without me there," etc.), then wandered over to me. Her footsteps crunched on the new carpet of fallen pine needles, and I noticed she was wearing a thick sweater and mittens to combat the cold.

"So…" she said eventually, then drifted off into silence.

"Yeah," I agreed eloquently.

"You know, I was actually going to volunteer to go along on this quest," she informed me out of the blue (or out of the gray, in that day's weather). "I mean, I really wanted to do something to help out with all this, and I think I would've been good on your team. Children of Aphrodite are a lot tougher than you'd think."

I glanced over at the only other child of Aphrodite I knew, who appeared to be trying to shave with a three-foot-long sword, and nodded.

I felt a little bad about what Melanie had said—in my rush to "follow my instincts" and get Ashley and Biagio to accompany me, I hadn't even given any thought to who else I could possibly include on the quest.

"I'm really sorry about that," I told her, not really knowing what to say (and hoping she didn't think I meant I was sorry about children of Aphrodite being tougher). I could feel my face burning red against the cold. Again.

She smiled a little wistfully. "It's okay, Jason. You didn't even know I wanted to go along, and besides, there's enough for me to do right here at camp. The dryads are going to need all the help they can get, the activities will still be running like normal, and, well…" her eyes sparkled. "You'll need something to make you look forward to getting back home from this quest, won't you?"

And that was when she threw her arms around me and kissed me right on the mouth.

Believe me, however surprised you were at reading that sentence, I was more surprised living it.

I would later remember that after this incident, Melanie said something like "Take care of yourself out there" and wandered back up Half-Blood Hill.

At the time, my only thoughts went along the lines of "Oh my gods oh my gods did that REALLY just happen oh my gods my first kiss Biagio's never going to let me hear the end of this oh my gods" on constant repeat, with maybe a little more "Oh my gods" thrown in there for sufficient emphasis.

Just about the only thing that could have surprised me after THAT would have been Dionysus showing up personally to say goodbye. Apparently the gods wanted me to stay surprised for some reason, because the next thing I saw was a familiar leopardskin-shirt-clad god stumbling down the hill.

It was strange enough seeing the director out of the Big House at all. Even though he was technically Chiron's superior, in the month or so I'd been at camp, I'd never seen him, well, do anything. According to my siblings in the Athena Cabin, he spent just about all of his time indoors, misery-drinking endless Diet Cokes, playing Pac-Man, and tying up the camp's only computer by leaving long, complicated posts on wine-connoisseur forums.

But what was even weirder about the god of wine's sudden appearance was the fact that he looked somehow different. The few times I'd met Mr. D in the past, he'd always sported a dark black beard (yes, dark black), but now it was gone altogether, leaving him totally clean-shaven. Perhaps it was just the effects of the shave, but his face looked altered as well.

Despite the changes in his appearance, the really uncooperative look in Mr. D's eyes was still the same. "So, you three are off to save the world, eh?" he asked us, the sentence swallowed by a yawn at the end. "How enthralling." Even his voice sounded subtly different—there were traces of an accent I didn't recognize.

A rumble of voices ran through the small crowd that was present. Evidently, most of them were as surprised to see the director as I was. "Mr. D?" Annabeth asked, sounding bewildered.

He focused blearily on her. "You're that Annie girl who was kidnapped by Atlas a few years ago, right? Well, I haven't the faintest idea who you're talking about. Mr. D, indeed! I'm Bacchus. The god of wine. Surely you've heard of me?"

He was giving Annabeth a dangerous look, and she was quick to say, "Yes, sir," but he turned away disinterestedly. "Where was I? Oh, yes, you three. Jasper, Giancarlo and Amy, isn't it? Well, I can't deny I like the idea of three less of you brats hanging around, but if you die on this quest, the mortality rate is going to make me look bad. Besides, if you don't get that wearisome Titan to give Persephone back, Zeus might make me take over as the god of flowers. I keep telling him, I only work with vine-bearing plants, but does he listen? Noooo! So I guess I really should give you some pearls of wisdom to be on the safe side."

Mr…I mean Bacchus scratched his lack of a beard while the three of us stared at each other in confusion.

I'd been getting a lot of advice lately, and I was guessing that the same was true of my companions. Still, as quirky as he was, Bacchus was at least a god. That had to count for something, right?

"I'd watch out for Romans, if I were you," Bacchus said abruptly. "I'm afraid that not all of them are as kindly and helpful as yours truly. Besides, they just will not appreciate that bubbly reds are going to be the next big thing…"

"Barbarians," said Annabeth sardonically. Bacchus nodded in agreement, apparently not picking up on the sarcasm.

"Oh, and I hope none of you are allergic to large, predatory mammals," he added. "I grew up with leopards and tigers, you know. That lingering threat of being chewed up at any moment is good for youths like yourselves!"

I was still trying to make sense out of that very random speech when Bacchus went poof, disappearing in a cloud of purple smoke that made me a little tipsy just smelling it.

I turned to face Ashley and Biagio, who both looked like I felt: like they wanted to track down Bacchus and yell, "WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT?"

"Tigers," said Ashley instead in a small voice, shaking her head in a very overwhelmed manner. "Romans and tigers."

I headed for the van, kicking up more dead pine needles. "Let's get going before anyone else gives us good advice, shall we?"

Getting into the van immediately stirred up memories. It was a white "Delphi Strawberry Service" vehicle just like the one Biagio and I had arrived in – although, given the lack of manticore-spike damage, I was guessing it was an identical copy. Once again, Argus was driving, and once again there was a disguised part-human seated in the back of the van. This time, though, instead of Flint, it was Chiron, clad in his wheelchair disguise and fancy dark brown suit coat.

"I need to speak to our Oracle myself, so I decided it would be convenient to accompany you," he explained. "Besides, Miss Dare's school tends to be rather, ah …" he paused, apparently searching for the right word – "exclusive, and I might be able to help explain your presence there."

I nodded uncertainly. I wasn't exactly sure what he was talking about; but then again, I was used to that by now. It looked like my only option was to wait and see.

Biagio, Ashley, and I clicked our seatbelts just as Argus threw the van into gear, and in a moment we were rumbling away from Half-Blood Hill.

The windows were tinted slightly, so I caught only indistinct glimpses of my new home as it receded into the distance. I didn't know when I would see the camp again, but I hoped that by the time I returned, the dying trees would be restored, the unnatural winter would be gone, and everything would be back to normal.

Come to think of it, though, I realized, that's sort of up to us, isn't it?

It was a pretty long drive to get to the Oracle at Delphi, who was apparently now the Oracle at Connecticut. Chiron, apparently sensing our nervousness, didn't say much, beyond explaining that the spirit of the Delphic Oracle had been hosted by a mortal girl since ancient times. Then, in 1945, Hades had cursed the oracle, forcing its spirit to live in a petrified mummy for decades. Last summer, Chiron concluded, the curse had been broken, and the old tradition of a mortal host had begun again.

I supposed that talking to another person would be a lot better than chatting with a semi-active mummy, but I was still uneasy about this prophecy business. I remembered an old story about the oracle: a Greek king had once asked her whether or not he should wage a war, and got a vague answer about how if he did, "A great kingdom would fall." So the slightly dense monarch had gone on his merry way, never suspecting that the doomed kingdom was his own…

For what felt like hours, the only sound to be heard was the rush of tires on the highway asphalt. All three of us seemed to be too absorbed in our own very nervous thoughts to say a word. Yes, even Biagio.

Finally, the journey abruptly ended. Argus threw on the brakes, jumped out of the van and opened the passenger doors, lowering a wheelchair ramp for Chiron.

As Biagio, Ashley, and I got out of the van, we all broke the silence by saying "whoa" more or less simultaneously. The reason for this was the building we'd stopped in front of: it was enormous, all glittering windows and red roofs, somewhere on that fine line between "castle" and "mansion."

Biagio didn't look quite as impressed with the massive estate as Ashley or I were, which wasn't surprising – judging from how expensive all of his clothes were, the place probably reminded him of his own house. But my dad, no matter how well-off he is, is still the all-nighters-of-programming-in-a-dingy-basement type, and my mom is, well, Athena, so my house isn't terribly impressive. I hadn't been expecting our destination to be nearly so grandiose.

"Allow me to present Clarion Ladies' Academy," Chiron announced as he slowly descended from the van. "It is one of the nation's relatively few remaining finishing schools, dedicated to training young women in the arts of elegance and social grace. But more importantly for us, it is the current home of our oracle. Please, follow me."

With that, he wheeled up to the massive iron gate that enclosed the campus, removed a key from a pocket in his coat and opened it, motioning us inside.

I wasn't exactly sure that such a high-end institution was going to let us just stroll in, especially since it was a girls' school and most of us were guys, but Chiron was headed resolutely for the front door. I shrugged and jogged after him, the others following me.

The disguised centaur had a head start on us, and by the time we caught up, he was already wrapping up a conversation with an austere-looking woman dressed in gray. She gave us a look of chilly disapproval, but nodded and pulled open the double front doors.

"Please, come in," she invited us, her words ringing with precise efficiency. "I will inform Miss Dare of your arrival."

I glanced at Ashley, who raised her eyebrows in surprise. Whatever Chiron had said, it had certainly been effective. The three of us headed into the school, our footsteps echoing hauntingly on the marble floor.

Perhaps it was just the cold weather, or the fact that I was already nervous, but my first impression of Clarion Ladies' Academy was that it was kind of creepy.

Demeter's curse of winter was part of it, as well: what normally would have been rows of perfectly trimmed hedges out front were now devoid of leaves entirely, looking more like skeletons clawing at the sky to my overactive imagination. The school building loomed menacingly above it all, several stories of frozen bricks and chilly cement.

The interior just made my spine tingle even more. For one thing, it was way too quiet. My school back in Philadelphia is usually noisy enough to make rock concerts look tame (even when Flint isn't playing electric guitar at lunch), but Clarion's halls were almost totally silent.

We passed a fair number of students, all of whom were wearing a fancy uniform and walking briskly to some classroom or other. I'd expected us to draw a large amount of odd looks given how much we stood out, but most of the girls walking by hardly even glanced at us. I noticed Biagio starting to look wounded – evidently, we'd finally found a place where his lethally flirty grin had no effect at all.

We took several sharp turns down various narrow hallways, Chiron leading the way, and eventually found ourselves in a part of the school that clearly held the dorms.

Muttering the room numbers under his breath, Chiron slowly wheeled down the row of identical doors, then stopped, apparently having found what he was looking for. By the time Ashley, Biagio, and I had caught up to him again (Chiron can really move pretty fast in that wheelchair), he'd knocked and the door had been opened from within.

The dorm could not possibly have been more different from the rest of the school. For one thing, it was amazingly messy, even more cluttered that the Athena cabin. Clothes, books, pillow, and seemingly endless sheets of paper were scattered throughout the room like a hurricane had swept through, and the walls were covered with drawings: portraits of gods, monsters, and orange-shirted half-bloods, many captioned in scrawling lines of Ancient Greek. A very strange techno-ish song blared from an iPod somewhere in the room.

Ashley, who'd been looking increasingly uncomfortable about the frosty austerity of the school, visibly relaxed and suddenly looked right at home. "Oh, this is way more like it," I heard her say to herself.

The girl who ran over from the bunk bed to greet us looked like the personification of the dorm's happy chaos. Her hair was frizzy and bright, bright red, and she was wearing a tie-dyed t-shirt and jeans like Ashley's, covered with random marker designs. I would have guessed that she was about Biagio's age, abut she had none of his swanky formality, that was for sure.

I briefly wondered if Clarion's focus on manners and respectability made all of the students rebel like this, but pushed the thought aside as the dorm's inhabitant shook my hand.

"Hi, I'm Rachel Elizabeth Dare; you might know me as the spooky oracle," she announced, a gleam of humor in her eyes. "And you're … let me see if I can remember right … Biagio, Jason, and Ashley, right? I got an Iris-message from camp about you guys yesterday."

As she said this, her grin suddenly grew downright wicked. "You know, I kind of hope that one of these days my roommate will walk in on me using the power of the rainbow goddess to talk to a vision in the air. Just to see her face."

I didn't know about the others, but I was more than a little overwhelmed by Rachel Elizabeth Dare. My mildly dyslexic brain was still sorting out her lightning-quick introduction as she ushered us into the room.

"Make yourselves at home," she invited us warmly. "I got a couple of pizzas delivered right to the dorm – you can help yourselves. And please, tell me more about this quest!"

The word pizza gets my attention better than almost any other, and as Rachel spoke I noticed the stack of delicious-smelling boxes in one corner. As the last traces of fear melted away, I suddenly realized that I was really hungry.

All in all, I decided, my meeting with the oracle was turning out a lot better than I'd expected.

By the time I'd finished telling Rachel the whole story about Krios and Persephone, Chiron adding some helpful clarifications, six slices had disappeared.

Rachel frowned thoughtfully, leaning forward to stare at each of us in turn. "Well, a god or goddess being kidnapped is hardly unusual, although Demeter causing this weather is going to be a problem. But Krios being the kidnapper – now that's unusual. He was never exactly a leader among the Titans-more like one of those names way down at the end of a list. And with the giants attacking now, and the fact that we already beat the Titans last summer …" she shook her head, looking uncertain. "Like I said, that's unusual."

"Jason mentioned that, too," volunteered Biagio, who was sprawled unceremoniously on a bean bag chair in the corner. "Couldn't Krios just be working for the giants – especially if all the other Titans are dead or whatever now?"

I noticed that he alone hadn't touched the pizza, which was typical of him – his standards about Italian food are absurdly high, and there are all of three pizzerias in Philly that he deigns to visit. Personally I thought this was ridiculous, but was grateful that it meant I got another slice.

"Titans and giants working together …" mused Rachel. "Sounds kind of unlikely, but I suppose that finding out is part of your quest. So that means … prophecy."

And with that, she promptly fainted, slumping in her chair with her eyes closed. I immediately dropped my slice of pizza, Ashley gasped, and Biagio jumped up from the beanbag. Only Chiron remained as he was, a grim expression on his face.

And that was when the really freaky part started.

With a hissing noise like an ancient, murderous snake, a dark green mist began to fill the air around Rachel. The eerie fog swelled for a few moments, beginning to fill the room, then separated into four distinct columns with a rush of wind.

Before our eyes, the smoky columns bubbled and writhed, gradually changing shape, beginning to look … human. Well, not human exactly: the first apparition had furry legs and hooves. The smoky, green ghost of a satyr.

But not just any old spectral, dark green satyr-thing, oh no. This one had a flannel shirt and a fedora. It was Flint, or at least a nightmarish vision of him.

The Flintlike entity spoke in a scratchy, raspy voice, like it was dissolving right as it was speaking. "The Alphas Three shall journey forth as stars and heroes rise and fall," it hissed, an echo reverberating behind the words.

The next smoky figure stepped up, towering to the ceiling of the dorm: a shadowy Chiron. "With War and Death shall meet, and beasts released by Titan's hands to maul," it told Ashley, who looked more pale than ever.

The third apparition resembled Mr. D, but fatter and without a beard, like we'd seen him that morning. "The scorpion shall guide your way to heed the captive goddess' call," he told Biagio, who crashed back down onto the beanbag chair in response.

I didn't recognize the last figure at all. It was tall and thin, and a darker green than the others had been. Its serpentine voice sounded horribly menacing as it leaned towards me: "Where ancient and the new must meet, within the dreaded forest hall."

The last word dissolved into a torrent of whispery echoes, and the four ghosts were gone as quickly as they'd appeared. The last of the green smoke quickly faded to nothing.

I blinked, hardly able to believe the bright colors of Rachel's dorm after what I'd just seen. The next thing I realized was that the entire prophecy somehow remained perfectly in my memory, as though it was a song stuck in my head.

Rachel's eyes flew open, and she sat bolt upright. "Well there you are. Sorry about that, by the way – " she took in our white faces and fear-shattered expressions – "The visions are never exactly fun. But at least now you know what to expect on your quest."

I mulled this over. Given that the ingredients the prophecy had mentioned included war, death, a dreaded forest hall and a scorpion, our quest was not sounding all that promising.

Chiron stoked his beard pensively. "The phrasing is unusual," he said eventually, "but 'The Alphas Three' must refer to the three of you: children of Athena, Apollo, and Aphrodite. Meeting with war and death …" he scowled. "It could refer to an actual war, of course, but the Greeks had a habit of referring to some gods by the ides they represent. The Furies, the Graces, and so on. I wonder …"

But whatever he wondered, he wasn't about to share it with us. A heavy silence settled over the dorm.

All of us, including Rachel, jumped slightly as a sudden knock on the door rang out in the waiting air. "Rachel?" asked a female voice, in an accent even more affected than the British one Biagio had once used.

The Oracle cursed under her breath in Ancient Greek. "Roommate," she explained in a whisper. "You'd better go – I can think of some explanation for her." She hurriedly shook our hands again, a tight smile on her face. "I wish you all luck on the quest. I hope the prophecy helps you."

And with that, she threw open the door.

A tall girl with amber-colored hair swept into the room, noticed the three of us and Chiron standing there, and made a sound halfway between a gasp and a scream, her eyes wide. "RACHEL!" she hissed, sounding utterly scandalized. "What are you doing?"

Rachel looked up at her innocently. "Cindy, I already told you about my extra Latin classes with Mr. Brunner. Don't you remember?"

Ashley was the first to take advantage of Cindy's confused silence to quickly head for the door, and Biagio wasn't far behind. I started to follow them, then looked uncertainly back at "Mr. Brunner", who hadn't budged from his spot in the corner of the dorm.

"You three go on," he said loudly, making shooing motions with one hand. "I must speak to Miss Dare further about, ah … the hortatory subjunctive."

And that, I supposed, was that. I strolled quickly past a still-spluttering Cindy and out into the hallway, closing the door behind me.

Ashley and Biagio both turned toward me with nervous expressions, and I won't pretend I wasn't pretty unnerved myself. It was clear that the time for explanations and advice was over. From now on, we were going to be absolutely on our own. And the idea that I was in charge of it all … well, that still made me feel sick to my stomach.

I inhaled shakily, all too aware that it didn't matter whether any of us were ready for this or not. "Come on," I told Ashley and Biagio, trying to sound brave, "Let's head back to the van."

We numbly made our way back through the quiet, ornate hallways, reaching the front doors in what felt like no time at all. Biagio pulled them open without saying a word, and the three of us stumbled out onto the chilly grounds.

And that was when we saw the goat.

I don't want to speak too highly of myself or anything, but I think I may have just created the best cliffhanger ending in literary history. Where on Earth (or elsewhere!) is this going? You'll find out next weekend, with the publication of the chapter fittingly entitled "The Goat Gets Us!"

Sorry again about the one-day delay. I thought I just had a little more of this to type, but I grossly misjudged the amount, and…yeah. Also, homecoming week really takes a lot out of you. Updates every weekend are still on, though, never fear!

I really enjoyed writing Rachel Elizabeth Dare. She's one of my favorite characters in the series, and I always wondered just what sort of hilarity would ensue with her attending Clarion. Hopefully I provided a satisfactory answer to that question!

What do you make of the Oracle's prophecy? What of the exciting new development in Jason's love life? And just what is going on with Mr. D? The answers are forthcoming…

Stay tuned as always!

Maecenas Out.