Hmm. How many clothes do I have to bring? It was three days that I'm packing for after all. The set of bronze knives definitely needed to be in the bag of plenty, which was the name I have dubbed my magical duffel, it having the same properties as the corn of plenty – the Cornucopia – and all. It was quite fitting after all.

As I rummage through my drawers some more, a pair of sandal clad feet came into my sight from where I was crouched by my bed. I casted my gaze upwards and found Xav's amused face staring back down at me. I was surprised by his sudden emergence in my presence. A bitter feeling welled up as I thought of where his attention had been directed to the last few days, but the image of a smiling Xav popped up, and it quelled the negativity, for the moment.

"Hey!" I greeted as I rose from my crouch, brushing an errant hair that had managed to escape from the pony tail I had gathered together earlier this morning. Xav seemed to be surprised by my reaction, but that quickly went away as an expression of worry took over.

"What are you doing?" Xav asked, his brow furrowed in concern.

"Oh! This?" I gestured to the mess I'd turned up in my space in the cabin. I guessed it did look a bit worrying. "I'm packing for a quest. A three day quest, for the matter. The Olympians decided to chuck a newbie to the wolves and try retrieve Hera's diadem all the way across the country with a time limit," I explained, well, ranted really, then turned and gave Xav a tense smile, the bitter bite of jealousy rising, continuing, "Not that it's a big deal. Tell me more about your new friends, would you? You're a busy man nowadays, and I don't know when I'm going to get this opportunity to talk," I barely managed to keep the frost out of my words. I had no right to claim and keep him to myself after all. This irrational sense of jealousy needs to go.

Fortunately, Xav didn't catch on to my tone, and proceeded to tell me about his new gang, though he seemed to be overly cautious about the information he's giving me at the same time. It was when I started packing again that my previous words caught on to him.

"Wait, you're going on a quest?" he asked, incredulous.

I stomped down on the anger that flared up at his unintentionally condescending tone.

"Yes, I am," I answered calmly. "Now if you would excuse me, I need to finish packing."

Xav shuffled his feet nervously at the tension in my voice. I guessed he caught on this time. "Well, when are you leaving?"

I paused at his question. I had wanted to ask him for his companion on this highly dangerous and fatal adventure. But looking at the situation now, with Xav's budding friendship and the possibility of death in this quest, I can't be selfish enough to drag him on. Can I?

"I don't know," I lied.

He started pulling at his left ear, a nervous habit of his. He must have felt unwelcomed. After a silent moment, he said, "I should get going. Good luck then," he waved a little and left the Hermes cabin, the tentative smile on his face creating a ball of guilt in my stomach at treating his so badly and lying to him.

I didn't go to the dining hall for dinner that day. I had realized that I hadn't asked Xav to keep it quiet on the quest, and I didn't feel like facing the hordes of questions that would come if I did show my face somewhere.

It might be a little stupid not to enjoy the last night of peace before the dreaded challenge. I had heard of how difficult it is to survive a quest. Camp Half-Blood had only been successful in those since the prodigal son of Poseidon arrived here, and he hadn't had good things to say about the rough days outside of the camp's borders. It doesn't seem real to me. The threat against my life hadn't sink in yet. But perhaps it was my goggled vision from growing up in Olympus. Danger was a creation of fiction. And this quest, it can't be that bad if it was some sort of test from the gods, right? And Hera knew of my pure bloodline, untainted of ichor. Maybe it was childish of me to hope, but I had held out the fact that Hera would help me cheat on this quest.

This train of thought led me to notice something odd after the 'beach incident'. I had started taking notice of other campers' capabilities. Some were very good in running, others were great shooters. None of them could control water; nobody fit the criteria, except for Percy Jackson. I realized that I had been able to keep up with the more aggressive opponents during combat classes, even without the heightened sense of their surroundings that most of the others were equipped with inn the form of ADHD. Then, I thought back to the accident that had happened during the latest capture the flag a few days back. One of our campers was strike down by one of Artemis' hunters. I had watched as they fed a young Demeter's son ambrosia and made him sipped nectar when he woke. It was then that it came down on me. When I was sent to the infirmary the day I was attacked by the chimaera, had they fed me ambrosia too? I knew that I had never come close to the foods of gods, knowing that one bite would be fatal to my body. But if I had eaten ambrosia that day, and I am still breathing steadily and standing firmly on the ground today, that would only mean…

It was a dangerous thought that I couldn't help but follow. But as I looked away from my firm gaze on the bottom of the top bunk to around the cabin room, I realized that the hours had flew by and the muted light that came from the creak of the door suggested it was about an hour after day break.

I quickly put the important thought away for the moment. Reaching for my packed duffel under the bed, I pulled it up my shoulder and tip toed out the cabin.

I jogged as silently as I could across the hearth and the cabins, uphill towards the cave. Chiron did say that I have an audience with the oracle after all. Let's just hope that she's there.

I stopped in front of the flimsy barrier hanging from the rocky ceiling of the cave, swaying gently in the summer wind.

I cleared my throat. "Rachel?" Since there was no flat surface to knock on, I supposed calling would suffice as an indication.

"Yes?"

The voice I had expected to answer from inside the cave sounded behind me, making me jump up in surprise. I turned quickly and was face with the hooded figure of our beloved oracle. She took down her hood, revealing a mess of fiery red curls and a pair of sleepy green eyes.

"I suppose you are the one then?" she half yawned out.

I nodded.

"Come in, then," she waved me through the opening of her cave.

She sat down in one of the comfy looking arm chairs and gestured for me to do the same.

"I'm sorry for popping up behind you like that," she waved back towards the entrance as she was pouring a cup of tea, "I was up for a stroll, not that I'm much of a strolling person, but I got this urge to just go out you know. Being the oracle and all, I should be used to it by now…"

Rachel went on and on, and I thought that it was odd that she had called me by my name several times without me ever telling her in the first place. She probably got it from Chiron, being already informed of my probable presence as shown before I was invited in. but it still remains that she was one odd woman indeed.

"Excuse me, Rachel, but could you possibly tell me how does the prophecy thing works?" I asked, interrupting her speech on how horrible her recent art works had been.

She set down her cup of tea on the low coffee table, "I've been told the color green was involved and that I pass out during the process but-"

Well, I can tell you that she did pass out, and the color green was very much involved.

Rachel was interrupted, from what I was gathering was another speech, by the green mist that came out of her mouth and slithered around the room like a serpent.

Her voice echoed through the cave, branding itself into my memory, a memory that I was certain that I would never forget.

"You shall travel west, and be tugged back to east;

You shall uncover truth, and the deceit that lies within;

You shall find what you seek, yet be downed by your undoing;

You will be the death, or the salvation, of your own being."

Rachel woke up shortly after, and the rising sun simmered through the slits in the barrier, warming up the cold.

She gave a yawn, and then straightened up at my expression, which must have been quite alarming, after what had just been heard.

"It was bad, huh?" she gave a reassuring smile.

"Yeah, you could say that," I murmured, my voice breaking at the end. "I, ah, should be going. Thanks for the prophecy," I said, tuning my back towards Rachel's smiling face and walking down the hill and moving to the Big House.

Her tripled voice echoed in my head.

Deceit. Undoing. Death. Salvation.

Truth.

My life had been dictated by others for thirteen years now. I don't know what's real or fake. I only know what I've been told. Truth had been the one thing that was absolutely foreign to me. I had been told that it was truth. But how could I know for sure with everything that has been up turned and challenged during the past weeks?

I knocked on Chiron's door, checking for illumination form the slits of the door before doing so. He was awake, of course.

"Oh, Ambrosia. You have decided then?"

I took a breath. "Yes I have," I lifted my head up to meet his eyes, "and I have also decided that I'll be leaving early, right now, if it's possible."

Chiron raised an eyebrow, but opposed to nothing otherwise.

"Alright. Will you have any friends accompanying you?"

"No," another eyebrow went up, but nothing from that ancient mouth.

"Argus will drive you to the central station in New York, that's as far as we'll be able to take you," Chiron's gruff voice said, and I raised my eyebrow questioningly at his words.

"I kind of expected you to make a spontaneous leave, so I had Argus to wait on you," he explained in a comforting voice.

I felt my face heat up a bit at the fact that he knew me so well in just a matter of weeks and that poor Argus had to wait up for me. "Thank you."

Chiron looked down at my small form, leaning forward slightly to be able to see me properly.

"You take care, Rose. Or some people here will be quite upset," he said quietly with mirth.

I shrugged, still feeling a little embarrassed at his words before. "Not that it seems to be now, anyways."

Chiron rose from his hunch and straightened back to his full height. "You might think so, but often what you see does not say for what you don't see. Argus is waiting for you in the garage. May the gods be with you."

Every step I took to the garage felt like it took an hour. When the click of the doors locking and the start of the engine sounded, my heart gave a leapt.

This was it.

"Percy!"

A young boy with messy brown hair came barreling through from the forest and onto the beach, a tangle of long limbs spraying up sand and disrupting the otherwise peaceful Sunday morning. Two figures sat near where the waves were touching the coast, heads put close together that were quickly shot up at the alarming shout that rang across the beach.

Percy rose from his perch in the sand, brushing slightly at his shorts, before waving to the boy.

"Xav? What happened?"

As the boy reached the couple, his features cleared up. Clad in full body armor, he appeared to have been patrolling the camp borders. And under that mess of hair was a pair of liquid golden eyes and a handsomely angled face, hidden under the baby fat resting still at his young age. Percy pushed away at that irrational fear as a shiver that ran up his spine. This was Xav, not any other being that has any malicious intent. Not even when he looked so similar to a face that had caused him his nightmarish reality when he was all but a teenager.

"What's the problem Xav?" he asked as he clutched the shoulders of the gasping boy.

"I did it!" Absolute joy and pride lit up young Xav's face as he grinned widely up at his hero's worried expression. Percy felt himself smiling back instinctively, and tried to keep it down before finding out what has happened exactly.

"Hold your horses, there. You haven't answered my question," Percy reprimanded, but it didn't seemed to register in the boy's mind, it being focused on the 'horses' and how cool it was that Percy could speak to them.

"Would you tell me what happened?" Percy kneeled to be eye level with Xav, and got ready for one of his outrageous adventures.

"I went to Zeus' fists yesterday and I found the door! I found the door to the Labyrinth!" Xav raised a victorious fist and started doing a weird dance right at the beach. If it hadn't been what he had said just a moment ago, Percy would have laughed so hard he would have tears rolling down his face. But he was frozen at the mention of the Labyrinth.

"What did you say?" Percy's alarmed tone, eerily silent, stopped Xav in his tracks.

"I found the door to the Labyrinth, at Zeus' fists," Xav said slowly, as if explaining to a child.

"Did you go in?" Percy asked, an urgent tremor lying beneath the calm surface.

"Of course I did! Who wouldn't if they had even managed to find it in the first place?" Xav was back to his victory dance again.

A boisterous laugh came from behind them, and what they found was a keeling Annabeth with a hand clutching her middle and tears rolling down her face.

"What are doing, Xav?" Annabeth managed to get out between the laughs.

"Xav, why don't you head to the dining hall for some dinner? Could you keep it quiet on the Labyrinth though? It could be our secret," Percy interrupted and gave a wink, then waited for Xav to be out of sight before turning to speak with Annabeth.

"He got into the Labyrinth, Annabeth," Percy rushed. Annabeth's eyes widen at the implication, then stared back at where Xav had disappeared through the forest.

"What are we going to do, Percy?" she said worriedly.

They had taken up to the task of Xav's mentor after rescuing him from a drakon attack. He was an orphan who had run away, and his innocent belief in the world had drawn them in. Xav had been enamored by the duo, and strived to be just adventurous, often causing problems in camp. This time, they were not sure how they could convince Chiron that it had been another bout of adventure finding.

Because they had not been able to find the door since the last time it was opened, and the one to locate it, the only one who has access to it, was prophesized to bring a rain of havoc down onto Camp Half-Blood's impenetrable borders.

A/N: Hello! Sorry about the lateness of this chapter, the next might be a little off schedule as well, but I'll try to keep to it. Thanks again for reading!