A/N: Thanks to both arandomreviewer and Emerald Swordsman for their ideas on the plot – I appreciate it. There's not a whole lot of action this chapter, but worry not! It will pick up eventually, once I get my ideas straightened out and on paper. So, here's chapter five, and I hope you enjoy it!

Chapter 5

-Annabeth

I woke at dawn as a bandit pulled me from the horse and loosened the ropes that bound my hands and feet. My limbs had gone to sleep a long time ago, and the agony of returning sensation almost made me pass out again. I clenched my teeth and resisted the clinging darkness. The bandit handed me a piece of stale bread and a hunk of half-cooked deer meat. What was it called? Venison, that's it. Had I not been half-starved, it would have tasted awful, but I hadn't eaten since before we were transported to this godforsaken dimension. I devoured the bread and the meat – hoping fervently that I wasn't going to get E. coli or salmonella or intestinal worms – and took a few gulps of stream water. A different bandit approached me, and looking at the bloody bandage on his arm, I realized it was the bandit that had gotten under Percy's guard and shoved him in the river. If Percy was dead, then it was this man's fault.

I glared at him, filled with a sudden desire to leap forward and punch him in the throat, but he didn't notice, or maybe he just didn't care. He took a fresh rope and bound my hands in front of me. My feet he bound more loosely, with about six inches of rope in between each foot. Clearly, they had decided to give their poor horse a break and were going to make me walk instead of ride.

Looking at him up close, I realized how foolish it would be to attack him bare-handed. Even hunched over, he was still almost six feet tall, with greasy hair and muscles the size of grape fruits. I watched him as he tied me up, memorizing his features. If it was the last thing I did, this overgrown rat would die at my feet.

-Nico

I woke up a few hours after dawn, blinking groggily and still as sore as I had ever been in my entire life.

Thalia was already up, obviously. I pulled myself into a sitting position, biting back a groan, then crawled out of our little shelter. She was bent over examining the ground on the very edge of our clearing, her face creased in worry.

"What is it?" I asked hoarsely. I coughed, surprised by how rough my voice was.

Thalia looked up and frowned. "You're probably dehydrated. Follow me."

Good morning to you too, Thalia.

I followed her through the woods until we reached at small, clear creek. I knelt and, on an impulse, stuck my entire head into the water. After a second, I jumped back with a yelp. It was cold! Thalia snorted in amusement, and I drank my fill. The water was the cleanest I'd ever tasted, with a hint of metal and glass.

I cleared my throat and tried to speak again. "So, what were you looking at?"

She frowned. "I think they were dragon tracks."

Fantastic.

-Elincia

I sat with Lucia on the wide, padded window ledge in my rooms, quietly embroidering the sleeve of a pale blue shirt. Lucia was – or, perhaps more accurately, should have been – weaving a pattern of flowers along the hem of a nearly-finished orange dress. She fidgeted, picking out her stitches and beginning again with a frustrated sigh. I resisted the temptation to mirror her sigh – she was starting to grate on my nerves. I knew she was just taking out her anger at being left behind, but that excuse had worn out quite some time ago.

I glanced out the window, searching the horizon for any sign of the hunters. I had to turn away after a moment because my window faced directly to the west, and now the sun was just lowering itself to touch the horizon, its light growing more and more intense. Lucia shook her head at me. "Tsk tsk," she told me in a remarkable imitation of her nurse, a strict old woman from the deep south who Lucia hated wholeheartedly. "Yous peepers won't thankee fur dat when you mah age, hun."

I laughed, glad that Lucia had momentarily broken out of her gloomy mood. "But fourteen is positively ancient! Surely I'll never be that old." More seriously, I added, "I know. I just…"

"Geoffrey will be fine," she told me, and then her face twisted into a bitter smile. "If Father thinks he's up to it, then he certainly is."

I winced. I hadn't meant to remind her of her father's cutting words when she had asked to come along on the hunt. But she patted my shoulder, her tight expression softening into a genuine smile. She didn't say a word, but she didn't need to.

We returned to our sewing, but that didn't last long; the reddish light of sunset faded quickly. We could have lit candles or lamps, but I had long ago discovered that there is something heart wrenchingly forlorn about trying to embroider by anything but sunlight. Lucia made no effort to mask her intense relief at finally being freed from a task she hated, and quickly shoved the offending needles and thread back into a small wooden case. The dress was left folded on the window ledge beside the shirt, which I'd finally managed to finish. Before I left the windowsill to dress for bed, I glanced out the window one last time. I frowned. It looked like there were two mounted horses riding at a canter down the path to Delbray. One was small enough to be a pony, but the other was larger. It was difficult to tell in the fading light, but I thought the larger horse might have been carrying a second passenger.

No sooner had I seen them than the watchman on the gate called a warning to the gatekeeper. As the riders came closer to the gate, I recognized the smaller of the two as my foster brother, Geoffrey. At first, I was delighted that he had returned so soon, but then my heart twisted with anxiety as I wondered where the rest of the hunters might be. The other was older with blonde hair. He seemed familiar, but he was too far away for me to recognize him. Lucia, craning her head out the window, curled her lip in disgust.

"Oh, fantastic!"

The sarcasm startled me, and I looked at her curiously. "What?"

"It's that ridiculous fancy fop, Bastian." She spat his name as if it was the worst curse word in her vocabulary.

"The Count who asked to court you a few months ago?"

"Yes." The word dripped with venom.

With great difficulty, I resisted the powerful urge to give in to a fit of laughter. The day Count Bastian had ridden through our gates flinging roses from a basket on his saddle and speaking to Lucia for nearly an hour with the most flowery, poetic and utterly ridiculous speech I'd ever heard would go down in Delbray history as the funniest thing that had ever happened in this fief. Especially after Lucia dumped a bucket of raw meat on his head and sent him off with language that would have done a dock hand from Daein proud. Even the men at arms on the castle walls were laughing as Count Roger's (1) pack of hounds chased Bastian out the gate, attracted by the smell of meat. But if I had so much as giggled at that moment, Lucia might've thrown me out of the window. Wait, nevermind. She would definitely have thrown me out the window, and probably speared me with a sewing needle or two.

It took me a few minutes to convince Lucia to come with me to greet Geoffrey and see why he had returned without her father; she was loathe to be anywhere near her would-be admirer, but she and her brother were very close, and she wanted to make sure he was alright. We swept down the stairs, lifting up our skirts and running. The guards had taken the riders and their horses into the courtyard. A few feet from the entrance, Lucia and I settled our skirts and glided over the stones as we had been taught.

Geoffrey was uninjured but clearly worn out. Bastian seemed just as energetic and flamboyant as ever as he explained their situation in an elegant prose that no one quite understood. When he paused to take a breath, Geoffrey cut in.

"Count Roger and the rest are fine – they stayed behind to hunt down a group of bandits and sent us to get help for him." He nodded at the limp figure slumped on Bastian's saddle.

Comprehension dawned in the soldiers' faces. Bastian began a monologue on the elegance of simplicity, but stopped, dramatically, midsentence when he saw Lucia approaching. "Surely my eyes are cheated by some wondrous enchantment, for the beauty before me exceeds –"

He yelped when Geoffrey stamped – hard – on his foot. I hid a smile as the blue-haired twelve-year-old glared at the older, taller Count. Geoffrey's patience had obviously run out, and if he'd been traveling with Bastian for the entire day, I really couldn't blame him. Despite the age difference, Bastian actually seemed repentant, or maybe he just knew when he'd gone a bit too far. He leaned meekly against the stone wall, still glancing at Lucia from time to time. The men at arms shook their heads in amusement as they lifted the boy down from Bastian's horse.

I took a few steps closer to examine our visitor. He wasn't as old as Bastian, perhaps, but not much younger. His hair was black, cut short but still messy, and his features were strong and handsome, though tense, as if his dreams troubled him. If he stood, I guessed he'd be at average height, a few inches taller than Bastian, and his hands were callused in the manner of a swordsman who had plenty of opportunities to use his skill. A simple, leather sheath was strapped to the saddle – I assumed it was his, as neither Bastian nor Geoffrey carried a sword. Strange letters were etched into the leather with black dye, along with the symbol of a staff with three barbed prongs in blue. It looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn't think of the proper term for it.

Lucia, ignoring Bastian's imploring gazes from the corner Geoffrey had banished him to, joined me. She loosened the leather ties and pulled the sword from the sheath. The blade was a deep bronze color, but surprisingly high quality. Most of our guards preferred to use iron or steel for their weapons, silver if they could afford it, but not bronze. It was a weaker metal – usually. The same strange letters were carved into the hilt, and the sword showed none of the wear and tear I'd expect a used sword to show. Power seemed to emanate from the blade, which gleamed as if it held a light of its own instead of merely reflecting sunlight. Holding the hilt in both hands, Lucia hefted the sword and lifted her eyebrows. "This is a great sword," she told me. "Perfect balance, which is unusual. Bronze is hard to balance."

The captain of the guard, a large, muscled man whose gruff demeanor hid a very kind center, coughed, almost apologetically. Count Roger had forbidden Lucia or me to handle weapons, and the captain was bound by his oath of loyalty to enforce this. Lucia sighed and slid the sword back into its sheath. She carried it up the stairs and laid it by the boy's bedside. The soldiers had placed him in the infirmary, a clean, sweet-scented room. One of the few activities Count Roger encouraged in Lucia and me was healing, which I loved and Lucia hated, so I spent plenty of time there.

"The healing woman said he'd sleep until tomorrow morning," Geoffrey said. I jumped, startled. I hadn't seen him come up behind me.

Lucia grabbed his wrist and sat him down on one of the beds. "Tell us what happened," she demanded, eyes sharp.

He nodded tiredly, and related the entire tale. By the time he was done, the stars were beginning their nightly dance overhead and he was half-asleep. I could see that Lucia wanted to ask a dozen different questions, but I shook my head at her. There would be plenty of time tomorrow, when all three of us were well-rested, and our guest would – hopefully – wake. Lucia and I helped Geoffrey up the stairs to his room. Bastian was resting up in the guest quarters in another wing of the castle.

Our own rooms were up another staircase, through a long, poorly-lit hallway, and into a secret passageway hidden behind a tapestry. I wished Lucia a good night, and she nodded distractedly. I could tell by the gleam in her eyes that she would lay awake half the night wondering about the boy and who he might be.

To be totally honest, so would I.

(1) - I don't know what Lucia and Geoffrey's father was actually called, so in my story he's Count Roger of Delbray.