Author's Note

Hey guys! Before we get started, yes, this is a little bit of a filler chapter. I'm holding off on introducing more of the action until I figure out some more members of the main cast, but you'll be able to find all the main cast characters that have been accepted so far in this chapter.

To those of you who have submitted characters: thank you! I really appreciate it. I'm sorry I'm taking a little longer to reply. Since all the characters will be interacting with each other regularly, I'm still trying to figure out how to fit new submissions in with characters that have been already accepted. For those of you that have submitted but haven't been accepted yet, I might ask you to change some part of your character (most likely age, or maybe gender) so that I can even out the character cast a little bit - I'm getting a lot of 16-17 year olds, and a lot of girls, so if you're thinking of submitting a character, a character that is neither of those things would be appreciated.

If I accept a character as background cast, don't worry! They'll get their time to shine, it just might not be as prominent in the first half of the fic. I'm going to do my best to give as many characters as possible arcs that are important to the plot. As a final note, feel free to submit more minor character profiles!

Breakfast usually began as the quietest meal of the day. The campers were all still a little drowsy from just having woken up, and they generally started their days with no injured campers and no major incidents.

Elisa looked over to where Lyda and Aron were sitting. Lyda seemed quite upbeat - probably because she didn't have to referee the chariot races happening later. She had a notorious hatred of horses. Meanwhile, she'd most likely shifted the responsibility to Aron, who foolishly believed that one day, horses would overcome their hatred of him.

It was a recipe for disaster. Then again, all of their war games tended to end poorly one way or another, so Elisa wasn't sure why she expected anything else.

She glanced down at her list of chariot assignments. There were two people on each team; one steered, and the other one was free to try and sabotage their opponents. It wasn't quite how the Romans had done it in the age of the Empire, but the legion found it amusing enough. At least the spectators aren't allowed to throw stones.

Most of the assignments had been given out last week, but one of her pairs had withdrawn. Medical issues, Todd had said, but Elisa knew he'd just broken up with his girlfriend. That was what you got for making your significant other your chariot partner.

Her co-centurion, Phoebe, had been the one to draw up the list of names, but she'd been called to help with last-minute construction. That left Elisa to track down the two replacements. She traced her finger down the numbered pairs until she reached the last ones, all written in Phoebe's neat hand. Dahlia Marseilles and Lilith Zagon. Elisa liked Dahlia, even if she was a little loud and had a tendency to run her mouth. Lilith, on the other hand, was basically a stone pillar whenever Elisa tried to talk to her.

She cursed Phoebe's insistence on making all of their legionnaires 'learn from their experiences'. Sure, they could do that on the training grounds or when they were assigned to work around camp. Elisa wasn't great with younger kids, but she tried her best to help them learn. In a chariot race? They needed people who could work together, not two relative newbies who were total opposites and had barely ever interacted.

It would be better to find the less difficult camper first. Hadn't Dahlia dyed her hair recently? She walked around the perimeter of the room, looking for a head of frizzy blonde hair, or the rest of the Bacchus kids. All of the ones in her cohort always tended to hang around in a group.

Elisa found Dahlia seriously contemplating a cup of grape juice at one of the far tables, her dark eyes focusing on it like she expected it to start spewing prophecy if she stared hard enough. She was sitting with a few of her friends, who immediately quieted down as Elisa approached.

Dahlia nearly dropped her muffin. "Oh! Centurion."

The other legionnaires at the table chimed in to greet her as well.

"Good morning. Dahlia, do you have a minute to talk alone?"

"Yeah, sure." She suddenly looked very nervous as she was left alone at the table. "What's it about? I swear I made my bed this morning. And if it's messed up, it's Todd trying to frame me for telling Phoebe that he's slacking off on guard duty-"

"No, it's not that." Elisa cut her off before she could incriminate anyone else in the cohort. She honestly wasn't too concerned about her legionnaires getting bored on guard duty, either. It was a pretty monotonous job, unless you were unfortunate enough to get jumped by a monster. "I need to talk to you about the chariot races this afternoon."

Dahlia squinted at her in confusion. "Um, with all due respect, I don't know how to drive a chariot. You'd probably be better off asking someone else. I really don't want to contribute more to the Fourth's losing record."

Elisa decided to ignore that last comment. "You've trained with a bow, right?"

"Yeah, but-"

"That's better than half the cohort already. Look, you haven't been in any of the races before, right? It's fun." And we need people who can actually shoot. Half of the time her cohort's teams resorted to throwing rocks and other projectiles at the other chariots, which made sense - she really didn't want to see them trying to throw their swords - but it wasn't as precise.

There wasn't really any reward for winning besides bragging rights. Elisa guessed that was why her cohort was the least enthusiastic about chariot racing.

"Am I going to shoot people?"

She sighed. "No, but you get to shoot in their general direction. Or at their chariot. C'mon, give it a go at least once."

Dahlia nodded reluctantly. "Okay. If I win, do I get relieved from digging trenches for the next war games?"

"Nope," Elisa laughed. She stood up from the table before Dahlia could try and guilt her into giving in. Usually she'd try to be more mindful of dishes flying around, but breakfast was almost over and the campers were starting to leave the room. Hopefully not all of them; she still had another person to coerce into joining a chariot team.

Convincing someone to stand in the chariot and shoot at people was one thing. Convincing someone that they should drive was much harder. The chariots were controlled in the Roman style: the reins were wrapped around the waist instead of being held in the hand. If things went south, the driver had to be quick enough to pull a knife and cut themselves free before they got trampled to death.

If she'd thought Dahlia was sitting far away, Lilith had somehow found a position even further towards the back of the room. She looked vaguely glum and ghostly, all pale skin and black hair. Underworld kids had a reputation for being dark and broody, but there was really no reason for it. Aron was a perfectly normal, sociable guy, and he hadn't even brooded since his early teenage years.

If only I had a cohort of Arons, she thought. Alas, she had eleven year olds almost impaling themselves on spears and fifteen year olds who didn't seem to like her very much.

Lilith was tall-taller than Elisa-and there was something in her dark eyes which seemed cold and a little removed. Shy, maybe, except not once in the past year and a half had the two of them managed to hold a conversation that hadn't rapidly progressed to awkward silence.

Elisa attempted to meander inoffensively towards the table. She could make it casual. Hey, it's me, your centurion who you never make small talk with, coming over to make small talk!

"Hey, is anyone sitting here?"

Lilith shrugged. There was very clearly no one else at the table, so Elisa just sat down.

"How have things been going?"

"Fine."

"Yeah? Excited for the games today?"

That earned her an unimpressed look, which Elisa couldn't really blame her for. "I guess."

Clearly, her approach hadn't worked. Elisa decided to cut straight to it. "About that, actually. We're short a chariot team and Phoebe had you down on the reserve list. Would you be okay participating?"

That seemed to spark a little more interest. Lilith straightened up. "I'll do it."

"You will?" Elisa said, a little surprised. She'd expected Lilith to need much more convincing than Dahlia.

Lilith nodded. "Who's driving?"

"You are." If it had been up to her, and there was more time, Elisa would have switched their positions. Dahlia would probably be a better driver if she had the training-she was nothing if not decisive. And from what she'd seen of Lilith in training, the daughter of Discordia was probably far more useful in making their opponents fight among themselves.

Whatever. Phoebe had set the teams so that they could learn from their weaknesses, or something. It was a perfectly valid reason. The chariot races weren't all about winning, even if the Fourth was a little sore that they hadn't placed for months.

When Lilith said nothing, Elisa pressed onwards. "Do you have a knife, or a dagger? To cut the reins if you need to." If you got tangled up, it tended to be quite difficult to cut yourself free with a sword.

Lilith gestured to the blade propped up against the couch. It was about the shape of a gladius, but a little thinner and longer. A present from Discordia, apparently, made of Stygian iron.

If only she could get cool presents from her godly parent. Some campers did - magical items or weapons which seemed to be quite useful.

When she left for camp, her mother had given her a single denarius, apparently from her father. Upon arriving at camp, she'd discovered that it was neither magical nor legal tender, so it just sat in her pocket most of the time. Thanks, dad!

Elisa ran her hand over the two daggers fastened to her belt, both of which were plain, standard Imperial Gold. One of them was an anelace - not a Roman weapon by tradition, but it still held a good, sharp edge. It had been a present, and not one she was too willing to part with.

"That won't be short enough." She unfastened the other one instead and pushed it across the table. It was a short, curved dagger she'd pulled from the armoury just a few days ago. "Careful. It's only sharp on the inside edge."

"Thanks," Lilith mumbled as she took it.

"The teams meet at the stables at twelve, okay?"

"Okay."

"Good luck," Elisa said. You're probably going to need it.

"Heads up!"

Lu immediately threw himself to the ground just in time for a...something...to go whizzing past his head. When someone called 'heads' in the middle of war game preparations, you ducked or lost your eye. Or at least a chunk of flesh.

The thing embedded itself into the ground a few feet past his face, which was now pressed against the flag that had been slung across his shoulders. A haphazard coil of wire made a wobbly trail across the path the projectile had taken. He squinted at the wire, pinching it between his fingers, and noticed that it was wound across the shaft of an arrow.

"Control your damn kids, Robin," Lu yelled, wrenching the arrow out of the ground and standing up. It was driven in deep. He didn't like to think what that might've done to his face. "No maiming, during or before the games."

Not that anyone was taking that rule very seriously. Most of the camp was abuzz with restless excitement. He couldn't really blame the kids for being high energy, even if he'd taken part in far too many games of Capture the Flag to feel the same. Not to mention the fact that being up against the Apollo, Ares, and Athena cabins guaranteed that he'd definitely have a lovely patchwork of bruises the next morning.

A kid, presumably the one that had shot the arrow, darted up to Lu, looking embarrassed. One of Robin's siblings for sure, he had the same blond curls and blue eyes as Apollo. "Sorry," he said breathlessly, his face scarlet. He looked only about eleven or twelve.

Lu sighed and let his face relax into a grin. "It's all right, kid. Just watch where you're shooting next time, all right?"

"Yeah," the kid nodded vigorously. "I - yeah." He picked up the offered arrow and ran back to the clump of Apollo kids loitering around the edge of the forest.

By the armory was a much rowdier group. Shouted insults and encouragement alike and the clang of blades filled the air as Lu approached. They were in a haphazard mix of armour and casual clothes and seemed to be having the time of their lives - well, most of them, anyway. Some of the newer campers and most of the younger ones were hanging back, looking more than a little intimidated by all the action.

One of them, a slender, androgynous-looking teen looked up at his approach and half-raised a hand in greeting. He had made an effort to remember this one, he knew that much, but it was hard to remember why - ah. Right.

He nodded at her and made his way over to where she was lingering at the edges of the melee with her eyebrows drawn together. He didn't blame her. Whatever was going on seemed to be a perplexing mix of sword fighting, wrestling, and charades. As he watched, one of them - one of the Ares kids, by the looks of it - yodeled something unintelligible and launched himself at one of his siblings groaning on the ground.

"Excited? Nervous?" He asked her. "Both?"

"Maybe a little nervous," Jacey admitted. "There's, um, a lot going on," she said, glancing back at the group. "It seems unsafe. To put it lightly."

"Nah," Lu said, grinning. "What makes you think that?"

Her eyes were partially obscured by her tinted Ray-Bans, but the look she shot him was admirably deadpan.

"Okay, yeah, it's pretty unsafe," Lu admitted. "It's supposed to prepare you for what's out there, though. You know, tactics, strategy, being tackled by things that don't smell great."

"And this is what's out there?"

"Well, kind of. Not really. There aren't any 'no maiming' rules out there -"

"Ow!" Came a shriek from the middle of the action. Both of them winced.

"- not that it really does much good here, either," Lu muttered. "You'll find out soon enough, we leave in a few days. And anyway, you'll be fine. I'll make sure you get back to Camp in one piece."

To his relief, Jacey did look a little reassured by that. "Right," she said. There was still a tightness to her jaw that told Lu that she wasn't entirely at ease, which was probably a good thing. Smart girl, he thought wryly. "I'm just not used to the idea of, um, open warfare, I guess."

"Ah, you'll be fine," Lu said easily. At least he hoped she would be. There was no harm in boosting her confidence a little, after all. And he didn't remember her being spectacularly terrible during training, so she was probably at least decent, which was saying something for a newbie. "Just stick close with your siblings. Athena cabin's got a pretty good track record. And I'll try and go easy on you if I run into you," he said, grinning, gesturing at the sword sheathed at his side.

Jacey laughed a little and seemed to relax as her hand drifted down to her own slim sword strapped to her hip. "You won't have to."

"That's the spirit," said Lu, grinning. "For the record, though, I haven't lost a fair fight in years, so…" he trailed off deliberately.

"So…" she said in the same tone, looking a little stunned with herself for doing so, "maybe it's about time you did?"

Lu laughed out loud. "All right, maybe I deserved that. Go ask the other Athena kids to help you get fitted for armour. I need to set up our flag, and you're the enemy." He readjusted the silvery Hermes flag across his shoulders.

Jacey smiled briefly and nodded, looking less tense than when he'd first gone up to her, and approached one of the older Athena children, who nodded and beckoned for her to follow. Lu set off again on his original path, scanning for two reasonably competent people who he could coerce into taking a hike through the woods with him without too much difficulty.

As he passed the armoury, he heard an insistent rustling from a few feet away. A gust of hot air wooshed past him, blowing his hair across his face, followed by fluent cursing and a thud.

"Huh," said Lu, for lack of pre-prepared sentences to utter after having witnessed someone fall out of the sky.

The person was lying in a heap on the ground. Briefly, Lu wondered if he should call for a medic, until they rolled onto their back and looked up at him.

"I fell out of a tree," Quinn said conversationally.

Lu glanced upwards to see branches stretching out above his head, belonging to a tree at the edge of the woods. "I can see that."

"Turns out that climbing up a tree with the power of hot air is a lot easier than getting back down," they confided. "Lesson learned."

"Right," Lu said. Seizing the opportunity, he offered Quinn a hand and gestured to the flag draped around his shoulders. "I'm off to set up the flag. Want to come with me and help co-captain later?"

"Oh. Yeah, sure." Quinn grasped Lu's hand - their skin was always a few degrees too hot, almost feverish - and stumbled to their feet, staggering a little. "Who's your third?"

"Mari, probably. If I can find her, that is."

"Oh, that's easy," said Quinn. "Just follow the sound of child friendly cursing."

With Quinn in the lead, a little unsteady on their feet, they soon found Lu's harried-looking half sister. The source of her frustration was immediately clear as the small child clinging to her leg, chattering excitedly.

"Hey," Lu offered. "I can...come back if you're busy?"

"No," Mari said immediately. "Take me with you, please, I don't care what you're doing, just let me figure out a way to - yes, Ava, I'm looking - did any of you bring backup by any chance - yes that is a very pretty flower - help me," she hissed at Lu and Quinn through gritted teeth.

"She's just lonely," Quinn defended Ava, after they managed to lose her in the company of a few of the demigods not quite interested in participating in war games. "She's, what, five? Can't be easy to be the only kid that young here."

"Yeah, it's all very tragic, but you try entertaining a five-year-old child of the spirit of insanity," Mari scowled as they traipsed through the woods. "I don't know why she likes me so much."

"I think it's your hair," Lu suggested.

Mari rolled her eyes. "If that was true, she'd be attached to you, too. Maybe even more attached to you, since you have more of it than I do now." Mari ran her fingers through her raggedly-cut dark hair a little ruefully - it hadn't been long since one of their younger siblings had stuck gum in it while she was asleep. "And by the way, you might want to fix yours," she suggested.

"True," Lu conceded. "But it can't be your stunning personality, so -" he laughed and dodged hastily as Mari tried to elbow him in the ribs. He belatedly registered the second half of what Mari had said and patted down his hair, which he realized was sticking up in odd angles out of his partially undone braid. He'd been walking around with Quinn looking, he was certain, like a startled crow. He gave up on trying to salvage his braid for now and just pulled out his hair tie, letting his hair fall loose past his shoulders.

It was true that he and Mari looked fairly similar - to the rest of the camp, anyway. Most people mistook them for full-blooded siblings instead of half. They had the same straight, jet-black hair and narrow dark eyes, the same lean and slender builds, even the same crooked smiles, though that seemed to be more of a Hermes trait than anything. Besides Lu, among the Hermes cabin, she was the one that had been at camp the longest. Four years ago, she'd stumbled across the border as a wild-eyed eleven-year-old, and had been there ever since.

"Where were you going to stash that?" Quinn asked, glancing at the flag.

"Up a tree, probably," Lu confessed. "So…"

"So that's why you wanted me."

"No, more like...I got the tree idea after seeing you fall out of one," Lu admitted. "Rules just say that the flag has to be clearly visible, so if I tie it to a tree branch…"

"You fell out of a tree?" Mari asked, completely ignoring everything else Lu had said.

"Not one of my best moments," said Quinn.

"That's not saying much, is it?" Mari ribbed him, a lopsided grin on her face.

"Hey, show me some more respect. I'm older than you."

"By a few months, you just turned sixteen, don't start pretending you're so much more mature. You're so full of hot air."

"My father is the god of hot air."

"You know that's not what I meant, and besides, I have more seniority than you, I've been here four years, and you've only been here one."

"Lu, tell Mari that she needs to start valuing the contributions of her elders -"

"Lu, tell Quinn that they need to stop being an ass -"

"Whoa, settle down, kids," Lu teased, to protestations from both of them.

"Shut up, old man," Mari snarked back at him.

"Ouch, that was uncalled for." Lu resisted the urge to clutch his chest theatrically. Robin was really starting to rub off on him. "Anyway, I think we're deep enough now. That tree look good to you guys?"

"Sure, but only if you're the one climbing, because I'm not going up there."

"Yeah, yeah, I'll do it," said Lu, already unstrapping his sword from his side. He held the sheathed sword to Mari, who took it gingerly. "Don't drop it," he warned.

Mari muttered something about Lu caring more about his sword than he did about most people. Lu didn't try to argue; it was kind of true. There wasn't anything particularly special about the sword, really, a double-edged one-handed sword - even if it wasn't strictly speaking traditionally Greek - that he'd had made especially for him from the Hephaestus cabin when he was fourteen. He'd even commissioned two more exactly like it last year. This one had his name engraved into the hilt, though, so he was a little irrationally attached to it.

Lu grabbed hold of one of the lower branches of the tree and pulled himself up, blowing his loose hair out of his face impatiently.

"I could help you get the flag up there," Quinn offered. "You'd still have to climb up there to tie it, but at least you wouldn't have to climb with it."

A gust of hot air blew violently past Lu's face and the flag was snatched off his shoulders. Mari looked thoughtfully between Quinn and the flag being buffeted steadily upwards.

"You could probably parachute with that, huh?"

"Probably. What's the point in that, though? Something with propulsion would be more useful."

"What, like paragliding? How is that more useful?"

"I think we actually do have a war balloon stashed in a shed somewhere," Lu called down at them, interjecting before Quinn and Mari's bickering caused Quinn to lose his concentration and drop the flag. He shifted over to the branch that Quinn had draped the flag over on his stomach, gripping the branch tightly between his thighs as he quickly knotted the flag to the branch. He gave the flag a sharp jerk to make sure it would stay put and promptly yelped and scrambled backwards as fast as he could when the branch lurched.

"Careful!" Mari yelled up at him. "I'm not ready to be head counselor yet!"

Lu shimmied his way back down the tree, jumping the last few feet and landing lightly on his feet, brushing his hair out of his face. "Come on, have some more faith in me. I leave camp at least once a month and I haven't had any deaths yet."

"Yet," Mari echoed darkly. Quinn reached over and flicked her on the forehead, to her indignation.

"Stop being morbid," they said. "Lu will be fine, he always is." They turned to Lu, their pale eyes bright with uncharacteristic excitement. "So, Lu, you mentioned a war balloon…?"