(Previously)

I looked back at my group and said urgently "Guys, we need to go." Everyone turned and looked off the cliff and swore. Artemis whistled and I looked on in awe as a chariot, being dragged across the sky by flying deer, appeared.

She gestured for us to embark, and I ended up sitting on the edge due to no one wanting to sit near me.

After riding on what was basically Santa's chariot, we arrived at Camp Half-Blood, then Olympus. Artemis then turned around and glared at me. "You, boy, are coming with me. The council must decide what to do with you." she yelled, dragging me by the arm into the throne room.

I yelped, but allowed myself to be dragged in, and paused as 11 pairs of eyes looked at me.

(Percy's POV)

There an awkward, tense silence. Damn, these Olympians needed to loosen up a bit. The silence was broken by a furious Zeus turning to his daughter, "Artemis, why have you not killed this boy, or at least restrained him? I gave strict orders to send him to the Underworld on sight."

Artemis looked at her fuming father calmly, and said in a loud, clear voice; "Father, as much as I regret saying this, we were... mistaken about this male. I will explain everything, but I request you hold out on violence until I finish recounting what happened during the quest."

Zeus was furious, but agreed to at least hear what happened on the quest. And so he did. A half-hour later, Artemis stopped talking, not missing a single detail.

There was a long, dead silence while Zeus appeared to be deep in thought, with his eyes out of focus as he absentmindedly scratched his stormy gray beard.

After around 5 minutes, his eyes finally regained focus and gazed at me intently, more curiously than furious this time around. "Son of Oceanus" he boomed. "I have decided to spare you, for you are a valuable asset that we can use in the war. However, you must swear fealty to Olympus and not betray us."

Without hesitation, I walked right up to the foot of his throne and dropped into a one knee bow. I dropped my head in respect and sealed my fate.

"I, Perseus Jackson, swear on the River Styx to stay loyal and never go against, or betray, Olympus. I will defend Olympus to the best of my ability and serve until I can not serve anymore. Olympus' enemies are now my enemies."

There was a loud rumble as thunder rattled the whole throne room, due to the weight of the oath.

There was yet another bout of silence. I kept my head down, but the sweat dripping down my forehead betrayed my nervousness.

Finally, Zeus spoke. "Very well. I accept your oath. You will head down to Camp Half-Blood and arrive there by tomorrow. Unless someone has something to say, Council dismissed!" There was a brilliant flash as the 12 Olympians disappeared in a whirl of light. I squeezed my eyes shut, and opened them wearily once the light was gone.

Taking a sweeping glance around the room, I slowly began to leave until I came to an abrupt stop. I glanced back at the hearth, which was burning at a medium level, and, sure enough, Hestia was tending to the warm flames.

I couldn't stop a small smile from appearing on my face as I walked up to the Hearth. "Hello, Hestia. It appears your plan worked flawlessly. If there is anything you ever need from me, don't ever hesitate to ask."

Hestia looked up at me with a small smile. "It did work indeed. I'll make sure to keep the potential of your help in mind. However, for now, the best thing you can do is try to fit in at Camp Half-Blood. Remember your oath in the days to come, because your willpower will be tested. Just keep in mind, we both know the Titans would be, and were, worse rulers of this world."

And with those cheerful words, she disappeared in an all too familiar column of flames. Seriously, she had a bad habit of leaving in the middle of conversations. I shook my head slightly at the hearth, then turned on my heels and left the empty throne room of Olympus.

(4 hours later)

I swore as I finally topped the hill that looked over Camp Half-Blood, sweating profusely and heaving for breath.

After only about an hour on the streets of New York, I'd had several monster attacks and plenty of witnesses. In fact, it's more than likely that the cops were searching the city for me.

Finally, I managed to get to the outskirts of the city towards Long Island. I honestly have no idea how the monsters managed to find me this fast. My father must've really been an asshole.

Then I more or less wandered around the forested area of Long Island, and it wasn't long before I could feel this sort of aura of power coming from what I had assumed was camp. After several hours of walking and sometimes sprinting to avoid monsters, I had finally found it.

I sighed as I looked at the picturesque landscape before me, with the Big House on flat, healthy, grass, dozens of acres of strawberry fields, a beautiful but dark forest off to the side, the dusty arena, the tiny dilapidated shed that held the weapons, the dining pavilion on a hill, and, of course, the 12 cabins that surrounded a small lake.

I had to be quite careful with the way I approached camp. If I did anything wrong, I would more than likely be mobbed by the campers. After waiting several minutes to catch my breath, I slowly descended the hill, watching out for rocks and other natural hazards.

Once I was at the base of the hill, I looked up to see the wide eyes of a scared camper. We locked eyes, and a second later he ran like Hades was chasing him, screaming about a "demi-titan" infiltrating camp. Well, so much for a quiet entrance.

But, I find most of my meetings these days involve weapons. In about a minute, I had a circle of campers around me, all training their various weapons at me. Chiron the centaur was at the front of the circle looking right at me. He was probably the only one not looking at me angrily. There was a deathly silence, until Chiron spoke.

"Explain."

I sighed and opened my mouth, preparing for an hour of storytelling and desperately telling the campers I was on their side, however, before I could speak, Hestia appeared next to me. Many of the campers looked at her confused, not recognizing her in her young form. Chiron, however, looked at her shocked.

He quickly dropped into a bow and said respectfully "Lady Hestia." Many of the campers gasped as they realized who the girl was and hastily dropped into bows. Hestia looked around with a stern gaze.

"This young hero is under my protection and is not a threat to any of the campers. An attack on him is like an attack on another demigod. The incident with the camper was an accident. Do not take my words lightly." And with that, she was gone.

All the campers looked at me with distaste, muttering amongst themselves, and walked away. I watched them retreat to their cabins or walk off to do whatever they were doing before my interruptance. I groaned at the thought of having to live in a place where everyone despised me. This was not going to be fun.

(5 Days Later)

My life officially sucks. Look, I tried my best to "fit in", and I even went as far as to try to strike up conversations with people I met. Of course, they all ignored me. I finally found out the kid I stabbed had managed to survive because of the Apollo cabin's quick work on healing him.

The kid, whose name was Zane, now avoided me like if he got too near I would suddenly go berserk and kill everyone. But that was the thing that killed it for me the most. Almost everyone avoided me.

In fact, the only people willing to speak with me were Annabeth and Thalia, who had both witnessed, firsthand, my loyalty to Olympus. Annabeth more or less only spoke to me when it was necessary or when she wanted something, but hey, at least it was something.

Thalia, on the other hand, was someone I could actually hold a conversation with, and, dare I say it, I could consider a friend. Olympus knows those have been pretty hard to come by.

Anyways, she didn't seem to judge me at all for being the child of a Titan, and instead judged me based off who I am, which I couldn't be more thankful for. I barely knew her, yet I couldn't help but feel close to her.

Of course, that wasn't to say we didn't argue. Like, all the time. But hey, that's what friends do... probably. I haven't had many friends to find out, and while my spiky-haired, blue-eyed friend was a big help to my sanity, there was someone who was her polar opposite.

Mason. Just his name made my blood boil. That arrogant little prick of Poseidon thought that he was the ruler of the whole place and everyone in it. What was worse was the fact that almost everyone in camp followed him zealously, which I am honestly not sure how to react to.

It was painfully obvious that he just used the other campers to get what he wanted and would turn on his followers in a heartbeat. However, there was only a few campers who seemed to not be under his spell, and they were often ridiculed for it and some ended up just as much of an outcast as I did.

He would always mess with me and try to get me riled up to beat his sorry behind. As tempting as it was, I never gave into my cravings. I knew he was trying to get me thrown out of camp or killed, and I wasn't dumb. I might not be a genius, but even I could easily see his intentions.

Even though his attempts failed, it didn't really matter, because this meant he could bully me to his little heart's content, knowing I couldn't do anything back. I just had to grit my teeth and roll with the punches... literally.

As you might imagine, they didn't have a cabin for Oceanus. Go figure. So, it was off to the painfully cramped Hermes cabin with me. Don't even get me started on those insufferable pranksters that are Herme's children. Gods, if there was ever a place that you felt like you had to always sleep with one eye open, it was that little run-down wooden cabin.

The constant mischievous whispering, screams of campers who were victims of pure evil pranks, and the all too common "misplaced" items were enough to make you go crazy with paranoia.

All in all, I think I would rather just travel around in the woods. Although, I was practically a prisoner here, under careful watch of the gods, so I didn't dare try an escape. There were only a few things left I had to look forward too, but I cherished all of them.

The first thing I could appreciate at the Camp was breakfast. Seriously, having whatever food you wanted was amazing. That was then followed by a significantly less pleasant task, which was cleaning the dining pavilion.

Each cabin has it's own standards to keep and chores to do, but with demigods with minor gods as their parents or that were unclaimed, they were each assigned unique chores. I feel so special. Anyways, I obviously got cleaning duty for breakfast. After that, it was off to archery. Don't even get me started on archery.

The chances of me hitting a target with a bow and arrow were less than zero. I'm quite sure that anyone good at archery is actually a child of Hecate fooling all of us with sorcery to make the arrow hit the target. It's simply not possible for you to be good with a bow without magic.

After the embarrassing debauchery that is archery, it's off to learning Greek Mythology/lunch. It wasn't like a classroom at all, more of everyone eating at the dining pavilion while Chiron talks about the thousands of myths in Greek Mythology, but it was still a class nonetheless.

Children of Athena would always perk up and not touch their lunch, while children of Ares completely ignored the lecture. Every other table had people with varying levels of attentiveness.

After noon, it was off to warm up at the climbing wall, and it is exactly what the name implies. We spent about 20 minutes there, desperately trying to get a lead on the rising lava. Once we were all "warmed up", we finally got to head to the arena.

The arena was basically every demigod's favorite point of their schedule. You could do anything combat related you want, from sparring, to brawls, to training on dummies, whatever. We would spend 2 hours there, and would end at about 2:30. You had the rest of the day free, until 8:00 to eat dinner and the curfew at 11:00.

During your free time, you could redo any course you want, or do what most everyone did and socialize. This was the time period where I got to meet two of my favorite people, Hestia and Thalia. Due to my impeccable luck, Thalia and I were scheduled for none of the same activities at the same time, so we had to meet afterwards.

Hestia, on the other hand, was usually seen tending to the hearth around an hour before dinner. I would make it a point to go there every day and talk to her, ignoring the stares I got when people thought I was talking to myself. Instead of treating her like a goddess, I treated her like an equal and we simply talked about what was on our minds.

Being around her always gave me a warm and comfortable feeling, so I had no problem opening up to her. Even though being at camp was quite boring and I longed for a change, I should've known to be happy with how my life was. Because change happened, and it certainly wasn't positive.

(Zoë's POV)

I carefully scanned the dense treeline in front of me, taking in all the details, checking to see if our prey had left a trail to follow. Sure enough, there was a tell-tale path of crushed grass and disturbed branches that indicated a medium sized group had passed through the area.

I quickly signaled to My Lady and my fellow hunters, motioning towards the trail. Artemis nodded and, without a word, we followed the trail, careful to not make a sound as the tracks were fresh.

We had been hunting this group for several days now on order of Lady Artemis, who had said it would be important for them to eliminate as many reinforcements of monsters as possible from the equation, to prevent them from joining Kronos' cause.

I looked forward to the encounter, knowing that I would have the opportunity to avenge my fallen sister. As we continued on the path, I couldn't help but feel uneasy, those tracks were quite fresh and they still saw no signs of life in the area.

Lady Artemis must've sensed something aswell, for she put a hand up, indicating for us to stop moving. We all immediately quit moving, and once again all was silent. For a few short, tense seconds, nothing happened. Until, of course, something did happen.

There was a loud sneeze and everyone's head whipped around to the direction of the noise with bows drawn and aimed at the bushes the sound came from. There was a short, awkward, second before a deep and guttural voice broke the silence with a boom. "CHARGE!"

Without hesitation, all the huntresses released the string of their bows, and a loud cry was heard as the unfortunate monster that sneezed was pierced with dozens of silver arrows. However, we had not accounted for all the monsters that had us surrounded.

Before we could get our bearings, they were already on us, forcing us to switch our bows out for hunting knives. It was common knowledge that we Hunters of Artemis were much better with ranged weapons, but if push comes to shove, we can fight.

I swiftly drew both my hunting knives, rolling out of the way of the overhead swing of a Cyclops. I managed to block a clumsy sword strike from an inexperienced Dracanae, who panicked before I drove a knife into it's throat.

I instantly realized my mistake. We were surrounded, and I had focused on that Dracanae and had forgotten my surroundings. I didn't have to turn around to hear the blade whistling towards my left side, which I tried to block without looking. Tyche was clearly not on my side today, as I felt a searing pain as a blade penetrate my rib cage.

Another, shorter, blade pierced one of my calves and I screamed out in pain. My vision blurred and I could feel myself being dragged away from the battlefield, but I couldn't do anything about it. Slowly, my sight turned to darkness as I heard a low, evil, chuckle that sent chills down my spine.

A/N: Hey there! Hope you enjoyed the chapter. I left you all with a little cliffhanger, eh? Sorry about not getting a chapter out sooner, I had some things happen to me in the real world. Don't worry though, you won't have to wait that long for the next chapter again! Please do review, and tell me anything your heart desires! I want to see that review count rise. Enjoy your day.