(A/N) So I know that the first thing you will read will say it had been ten year, but this chapter and probably the next will be an explanation of what happened over those ten years. Enjoy!

Oh, and before I forget. This happened awhile ago, but it still gives me a warm fuzzy feeling when I saw that my story was on someones favorites list.


(A/N) So I haven't really take the time to respond to reviewers with I believe two exceptions. One led to a different format for how I post the story and the other led to a chapter rewrite to correct grammar mistakes. Both were excellent and appreciated reviews. Now though I am a bit baffled by the review Mundster Madman posted. He claims that I have have not explained how Percy has become such a powerful warrior or how he escaped Tartarus. He even says that I should explain how Percy met his daughter. Honestly Mundster, I have no idea what you have been reading if that is you review. I would suggest you take your own advice and have someone proof-read your reviews. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that you are attempting to help me and I am not trying to make you upset. It's just I don't think you have even read the entire story like you have claimed.

Anyway, in other news I was able to start writing more of the story line today as I have never actually watched the Superbowl. Never got into it. Quickly approaching the point in the story where the hunters met up with our hero again. Only thing I am deciding on is if it would be more interesting to hid Percy's identity from them for now, or just get it out of the way. BTW, when I say quickly approaching in the story, I mean for me, you guys have a few more chapters to go.


Percy

It had been ten years since I had adopted my dearest daughter. Ten years since I have searched for the essence of Ouranos. I know I had been eager to see all of my friends as soon as possible. My love for my daughter and my dedication to keeping her safe overrode all other feelings.

The day after I adopted her I was wondering who her godly parent could be. I wasn't really concerned who it was, they didn't deserve my daughter as their daughter as well. My interest in her parentage stemming from the desire to know the best way to teach her over the next few years. I shifted through the knowledge of Ouranos for a good five minutes before I came up with a fool-proof way to determine ones divine parentage.

I had woken up early, so Lily was sleep asleep while a created a table of stone that reacted to the divine powers within a demigod. When she woke, I had her place her hand on the tablet and we watched as hundreds of different symbol shifted across the stone before the symbols of magic glowed brightly at us. My adoptive daughter was a child of Hecate, a goddess whose children I didn't always get along with, mostly the empousa kind.

I know what you are probably thinking, how can I possibly teach Lily about magic when I didn't know the first thing about it? That was the kicker though, I did know about magic. I knew a lot about it courtesy of Ouranos's memories. If I had to hazard a guess, I might know more about magic that Hecate herself. I didn't immediately start training her in magic though. It would be a few years until she could properly control the energy required to master it.

I instead started out with something much more comfortable to me, melee combat. I gave Lily one of the daggers that I had claimed in Tartarus, and then I proceeded to teach her everything I knew about it. She progressed quickly, had I not known any better I would have said that she was a daughter of Athena based on how well she handled that dagger, she reminded me a lot about Annabeth in that regard.

She learned the different grips that could be used with a dagger, and the situations to use those grips in. She became good enough that she could disarm a person using any type of weapon with her trusty dagger. When she had fully mastered it, I knew she could easily hold her own against opponents using larger weapons.

For mastering the dagger, I gave her an imperial silver one I had spent months creating named Silver Light. The blade was a foot long exactly and decorated with different flora with the hilt wrapped in silver wire and a ruby on each side. I had originally planned on spending a year teaching her about melee combat with a dagger, but she had mastered it faster than I expected a six-year-old to be able to.

Combined with the fact she was too small to wield a sword, I decided to focus on the ranged aspect of combat. I also decided to go a bit easier on her during the weekends. I had her practicing every day with the dagger until she had mastered it with little time for fun. I was originally guilty at first, but I knew I would not rest easy until my little girl could protect herself. She now had the weekends to do whatever she wished as long as I was there with her. We were on the road a lot, so weekends usually involved use exploring the new places.

Normally I would have been no help at all when it came to a bow, but I wasn't normal anymore. Under my tutoring, Lily was able to hit the bulls-eye every time the second day in. With a lot more practice she could hit it from anywhere, no matter what was going on around her. Snow storm, heavy winds, being shot at herself, running, jumping, even swimming didn't phase her, she was a natural archer.

"Note to self, do not let Lily set foot near the hunters until she is older." I thought to myself.

When she had fully mastered the bow, I did the same thing I did when she mastered the knife. I created a bow with an imperial silver shaft decorated with vines, with a bow-string made up of thread I had woven from fur from the Neman Lion.

Yeah my luck was that bad or good depending on how you looked at it. I killed the beast quickly while my daughter was studying the other subjects I was drilling into her. Math, geography, science, and a few subject they didn't always teach in school like metal working and how to read Greek and Latin.

Back on subject, I had killed the beast while she was studying and managed to sneak its pelt into the tent without her noticing. I had willed some of the fur to part from itself while leaving the rest locked in a chest for a future project. About an hour of high quality weaving later, voila, indestructible bowstring. With such powerful objects making up the bow, I decided that the arrows could be higher quality than most. So when I gave her the bow, I explained to her how the arrows worked, because I did not give her a quiver to go with it.

"These arrows," I told her, "Are tipped with imperial silver. You remember what I told you about Imperial Silver?" She nodded at me.

"These arrows act similarly to my sword Riptide. When you shoot them, they will always return to you. It may take a while depending on the situation, but they will always return. Now, you must be wondering where these arrows are?" She nodded at me looking excited.

"Take aim at the target Lily." I waved my hand, and a target appeared a few hundred feet away.

She immediately raised her bow and waited for me to continue. "Now imagine an arrow ready to be drawn back."

She concentrated for a second and, with a silver glow, an arrow appeared right where her hands were in position, ready to be drawn back. She complied,and we both watched the arrow strike the bull eyes. After a few second, the arrow glowed again, and disappeared.

"Again," I told her.

She repeated her actions for about ten more shots before she got the hang of summoning the arrow. The target quickly became overloaded on arrows as her speed was now only limited by how fast she could draw back and release the bowstring. She turned back to me grinning, and I couldn't help but grin back.

"There are exactly two hundred arrows that you can call upon," I continued, "So you should have a hard time running out with that many and the magic in the arrows. If for some reason your arrows are slow in returning to you, there is a number on the side of the bow that shows how many are left for you to summon."

She nodded again, and began to run off to our personal archery range to play with her bow some more as the target I had summoned was about to fall apart. I waved my hand again and it disappeared as I began to walk after my daughter feeling immensely proud of her.

After Lily had mastered the bow we progressed into knife throwing, and while it was a little more difficult for her, through her hard work, she eventually mastered that art as well. She could throw it with the same accuracy as her arrows and could almost rival the speed of her new bow. Like the previous two weapons, when she showed me that she had mastered the throwing knives, I granted her the weapons.

Her test that how shown me her mastery was a feat that involved her free-falling into a lake after jumping of a large boulder. While she was upside down, she managed to hit a bulls-eye on all ten targets on the way down. What made it even more amazing was that it wasn't just a single bulls eye on all the targets, there were an average of three, with no misses and nothing but the bulls-eye.

For that I made her four throwing knife sheaths that was similarly enchanted like her bow. The knives would return to the sheaths after a unset amount of time, clean and ready for action. The sheaths I had fashioned out of simple silver and titanium, as it would have been pointless to make them out of imperial silver.

The knives themselves however, were made out of imperial silver. Each one was sharp enough to split a hair, and all had either the sun or moon etched onto both sides of the blade. The sheaths held ten knives at a time, and I had her place one on each shoulder, and the last two on both sides of her waist.

Thanks to all of the training we were doing, her birthday came faster than we thought and she turned seven. I was happy for my daughter and I tried to give her the best birthday I could.

I took her into the ocean with me, and showed her all the wonders of the sea. I knew she liked it because I could feel her all of her emotions while I maintained the energy that was required to allow her to breath under water. Not to mention she kept begging me to take her back the next few days. To end her birthday, I gave her the first birthday-present she had ever received. A book of magic.

"As you grow older," I told her as she sat on my lap, "The book will grow larger as well, filling itself with more secrets of magic, study it well my dear."

She stared at me with wide eyes then hugged me tightly whispering, "Thank you daddy."

The next day I began instructing her on how to use and control the magic that lay dormant inside of her. It was a long process due to not being able to spend much time on it per day. She was almost done with her other studies and I wanted her to finish those first as they would help her with magic in ways she didn't know. She was almost halfway through calculus, not to mention done with chemistry and well on her way through physics, the subjects that could help her understand magic.

She still practiced daily with her dagger, throwing knives, and bow, as she had no wish to grow rusty with them. Sometimes I think she was more interested in pushing her equipment to the limits but I couldn't complain if that got the job done. I grew concerned though when I realized that she was learning nothing from it.

I eventually cut down the time she had to use her old weapons, as it was also starting to cut into the time I wanted her to spend learning new things. In a shocking move to her, I put the lessons on how to use new weapons on hold. She did not understand my intentions from it until I began teaching her martial arts.

Another year passed and she turned eight. She had managed to earn a black belt in every fighting form, as well as master the basics of magic. A few day before her birthday she had also finished all of her studies of the mortal realm. Honestly, even though I have seen her use magic and saw the results on the stone tablet myself it was hard to believe she wasn't a child of Athena.

On the morning her eight birthday, the magic book grew larger as I had promised, filled with even more knowledge for her to devour and master. I did not allow my daughter to read it though as it was her birthday, and I had other plans. I took her to Disney Land for the first time, and she was enthralled by all the rides. She seemed to love the tea cups ride the most and I didn't think I would ever walk straight again after the tenth time riding it.

We stayed there all day until night was upon us, then we watched the firework show with the music playing loudly in the background. It wasn't as good as the firework show at camp, but sharing it with my daughter made up for it. We returned to camp afterwards, at which point I gave her the present I made specifically for the occasion. Clothes made from my second pelt I won from the Nemean Lion.

I had altered them so they would always stay clean and would always be in the style my daughter wanted. She pranced around for hours before I was finally able to get her to sleep, changing her clothes faster than I thought any mortal could think. She may be a heck of a fighter, but she was still my little girl at heart.

She never wore anything but the lion skin clothes after that birthday, for no other armor or clothes came close to comparing with it. She never did wear the same appearance more than once every few months though, a trait that I am fairly sure would cause Aphrodite to squeal in delight.

The day after her birthday, I began to teach her in the martial art combat style using the various weapons of the world, as well as steeping up her training in the world of magic. I started by teaching her how to use Incantations, as before when she used magic it was simply to use it and bring it forth into the world.

Now she would be learning about how to shape it into whatever she desired. It was a long process, fraught with massive fireballs and the occasional uncontrollable constructs. When we finished though, with finished being relative as there was still more to learn, she was able to bend magic to her will almost as easily as a god. Though without the same level of power of course.

Her test to show that she was able to move onto the next step had her creating balls of fire that crashed into balls of lightning, all the while she levitating in the air. For her finale, she let herself fall onto the lake she was currently hovering above. When she hit the surface it held her as easily as it held me and the rest of the water erupted from it into the air where she promptly froze it, giving the lake an appearance of having a giant bowl on top of it.

With that I knew she had shown both her power and control over the magic she wielded, and began making the preparations for the next stage in her training, runes.

It was around when we started runes that I realized that while I was doing an excellent job of teaching Lily, I had not practiced with or help develop my own powers.

I decided to rectify this with whatever spare time I had, which wasn't much honestly.

I already knew what I was capable of, but knowing and doing are to different things.

I decided that the best starting point would be my water powers as they came to me the most naturally. When I accessed Ouranos's memories about water, I was shocked with how little I knew about my own heritage.

"Water can take any form, hold any shape, and overcome any obstacle," I said out-loud when I realized this.

I began to slowly but surely master the power that is water. Vapor-Travel came easily to me, though I found it to be more of an annoyance as I had not discovered it sooner.

Manipulating the water into any shape I wanted became a second nature for me, and became much more dangerous for my enemies when I was finally able to control the state of the water. I could now make water boil and freeze in less than a second with just a thought. With another thought I could form the water into the shape I want, a spear for instance, and control it mentally. I found out that my ranged attacks became much better due to this as my mental control was good enough to hit the bulls-eye of multiple targets without even having to see them.

Thanks to the memories, I also discovered how much water saturated the air, even in the driest areas. I took to using the water as a million little hands that would allow me to float in the air, which was cool even though it required more concentration when I thought. It was through these practices that I realized how powerful my father was for two reason.

One was that pure water was amazing as it didn't conduct electricity. So basically it nullified the biggest weapon Zeus had, which also meant that my father could have taken the throne of Olympus any time he wanted.

The second thing I discovered was that the body was made up of mostly water.

I'll admit I already knew that, but I never gave it much thought until now. When I think about it, I realize how powerful I could have been earlier in my life, how many more people I could have saved with this secret. I did not dwell on it to much, as I also knew how easily this power could be abused. I often practiced on small forest animal, my power allowing me to do anything I wanted. I mastered the basics fairly quickly then moved to practicing in the cities that we occasionally visited.

Lily didn't know that her father would usually patrol the cities at night looking for law-breakers. As you probably guessed, the law-breakers became my new test subjects. I took great pleasure in taking control over the bodies of the scum and forcing them to do my bidding. With much practice, which resulted in all time low rates of crime in the cities we visited, I was able to fully master the ability.

I could now do anything I wanted to a person under my control. Make them dance, explode from the inside(which was a mistake but the guy was a rapist), and even force them to say what I wanted them to. The speech part of the technique was the hardest part, but it came to me in the end. Then came my proudest achievement. I had mastered the technique so I could control others, but I realized that the technique could also be used to control myself.

You may think I am crazy, but self discipline is the greatest technique one can master. I discovered that I could manipulate the water in my own body, becoming more resistant to others using the technique against me while I was at it. With this new knowledge that I discovered on my own much to my satisfaction, I created a whole new way to use the technique. A way that only I have mastered if Ouranos's memories are correct.

After much practice I could enhance my speed and strength with the technique among other things. Whenever I swung my blade, I now unconsciously applied the technique to the arm I was swinging with. This resulted in my strikes being faster and stronger as well as my footwork. The best part was that because I was augmenting my own actions, it took barely any energy to increase my power with a blade that dramatically.

Once I had mastered the technique with my blade, I used it to fly properly. No more millions of tiny hands of water lifting me up. I had the water in my body lift me up into the air, clearly distinguishing me from children of Zeus who needed to control the air to fly in the air.

Once I had finally mastered my water powers, I moved on to my power over the earth and storms. I had scratched the surface of controlling earth when I had fought Gaea, now I dove into the interesting stuff. I quickly discovered that with my power over Earthquakes came with a sense of fractures in the earth. I did not think that it would be as interesting as it turned out to be.

It turned out that due to this sixth sense, I could sense fractures in anything. I found out how useful this was when I was attacking a drakon who had gotten close to camp. Normally I would kill it by stabbing at its eyes. This time I saw all the weak points in its armor and what it would take to shatter that armor. I had smashed the hilt of Riptide against one such weak point that seemed to have more stress points that the other armor plates. The result were astonishing, the armor plate fractured into triangles, leaving the drakon with no defense in that spot.

A few stabs later and there was one less drakon in the world thanks to my power over earth. I also found that it became easier for me to land on the ground for high distances. Just like when I wanted to start an mini-earthquake, I focused on a piece of the ground and willing it to be hard or soft. I could make it as hard as diamond, or as soft as a water bed.

Last but not least I worked on my power over storms. In the past I had merely surrounded myself in a miniature hurricane while fighting. Now that hurricane was much larger and dangerous. Honestly if you aren't an immortal you probably should stay a good twenty yards away. Then maybe you wouldn't die from it.

I also got great pleasure when I found out I could channel storms on Riptide. The blade would be surrounded by a mini typhoon, and anything I hit with the blade would either get blown to pieces, or knocked back a few hundred feet.

Well enough of my powers, you are probably interested in what my daughter was up to.

When we started with the runes, only a few stayed on her lion skin clothes, glowing blue with the power they contained when activated.

These were the runes of protection that I had drilled into her so she would get them perfect. For the first few days we would see how well they would hold up under mock attack. More often than not, the runes would glow to show that they had been activated, but immediately shatter due to some minor flaws in her logic.

We quickly worked through those difficulties, and in less than a week her first protection rune was embedded into her clothing. This particular rune wasn't incredibly complex or powerful at the moment. What made it amazing was the potential it contained. I taught Lily that runes could be altered at will, to encompass more or even less off what their intent was.

This particular rune stood for "Unhittable." At the moment I had her make it so it would only affect ranged attacks, as it takes less energy to do so compare to melee attacks. To see if had worked, I used a blunt arrow and shot it at her from about thirty feet away. When it got close, the arrow's direction was altered to shoot past her.

With her success on that rune, I had her practice changing its range of control on the world. The next few time I shot at her, something different happened each time. The first time the arrow simply stopped before it reached her and dropped to the ground. The second time it combusted, leaving nothing left that could hurt her. For the final arrow, she made it so that it could curve around her and return it point first to whoever shot it at her.

With that display of skill, I knew that she fully understood the potential of runes and moved onto greater and greater ones. As time went on, more and more runes began to appear on her clothing. The runes did not completely cover her clothes though until her fifteen birthday, as the knowledge of the most powerful runes were not shared with her until then.

Since she had already mastered altering runes, the only thing that could hold her back was her own creativity when it came to what the rune would do. My daughter had a brain that could match Annabeth though, not to mention the carefree nature that I possessed. She always found ways for the runes to work in her favor.

While we continued making huge steps on her magical studies, I still set aside plenty of time for teaching her the martial arts with weapons. I decided to keep an even place with the weapons, giving her a new one to learn after she mastered one.

Unlike the bow, knives, and her dagger, I did not grant her a new weapon each time she mastered one. It was little problem for me to do such a thing, but I already knew that she would never use most of those weapons. She had mastered the weapons, she did not like them though. I was content with that knowledge. I would have loved it if she had been able to pick up any weapon and defend herself with it perfectly.

I instead settled for her being able to counter every one of those weapons so their uniqueness did not surprise her. On average she would take about two months to completely learn about a new weapon. She could fight with all of them if she had wanted to, but she definitely knew how to stop them.

When her ninth birthday finally came around, I decided to introduce her fully to our world. I gave her a set of books written completely in Greek that detailed everything that had happened since the gods came into being. I was not kidding about the everything part either. All the dirty secrets of past kings, the mistakes of the gods, and the deeds of every unsung hero was in them.

Well, the Greek ones at least. I would introduce her to the Roman aspects of the gods after she fully understood the actions of the Greek ones. It turned out that day came sooner than I had ever expected. She had managed to deduce sixth months later about the Roman aspects even without reading anything about them. As a reward, I gave her the Roman aspect of the books as well, and told her that she could tone down on the reading portion of her studies.

I did not want her to become too overwhelmed as battle training, magic training, and all the history of the world could do that to a person. For her ninth birthday I took my daughter hunting with me for the first time.

I was saddened to see that she was growing up, but I knew that it would happen no matter what I did. So in acceptance I decided that this was the best way to introduce her to the more dangerous part of the world. I took many more precautions than I normally would and probably more than I should have when I went hunting with Lily. Her getting hurt was the one thought I couldn't stand, so all those precautions were so that it would be prevented.

We only hunted down monsters that traveled alone or in pairs. I always could have easily destroyed them, but this was something I wanted Lily to learn about even though I was loathe to put her in any danger.

Between myself and Mrs O'Leary, we eased Lily into monster fighting as gently as possible. One of us was alway watching her as she fought, ready to come to her aid at a moment notice.

Though it was incredibly stressful to fight like that, Lily's excitement about the whole thing made it worth it in the end.

Well back to what I was learning I guess. I had already used quite a bit of the powers I discovered in Tartarus in, well Tartarus.

Increased eyesight, flashing anywhere I wanted, empowering Riptide, mentally controlling Riptide, well, you get the idea. I knew that for the most part, my power was only limited by my imagination.

Since I had just finished mastering my water powers, I decided that the best thing to do would be to work on my other link to the past, Riptide. I had noticed when I was down in Tartarus that while I still loved the blade, it was becoming a bit small for me.

It would occasionally fell like an over-sized knife instead of the blade I had grown up with. I was originally afraid I would have to take up another blade when I got to the mortal world again. Fortunately, this was not the case anymore.

I concentrated on Riptide and it glowed once again, though not as brightly as usual. Under my now expert eyes, the blade elongated itself until it was now four and a half feet of Celestial Bronze, with the hilt now just long enough for both of my hands. Instead of a large short sword, I now held a hand-and-a-half sword in my hands. The blade would allow for both one-handed and two-handed fighting with ease.

The longer reach would also be an advantage with my new speed and strength to keep my opponents at bay. Please with the way the blade looked, I now turned my attention towards increasing its power. I wanted it to be my symbol of power for when I returned, so I took the first step into making it so.

I let Ouranos's...no...I let my power flow into the blade and interact with the immortal power of Zoe Nightshade. The blade began to glow brighter than it ever had before, then the metal itself began to shimmer and move. After a few minutes the glow died down, and I got the first good look at my future symbol of power.

The blade was now made of imperial silver, which would conduct my power even more so than Celestial Bronze, not to mention be more dangerous. I looked closer at the blade, and almost dropped it in shock. After a few deep breaths I calmed down enough to focus fully on the sword again.

I saw the Greek name for Riptide was now flowing across the blade in an endless pattern, from hilt to the tip of the sword. Its path was never the same as it kept snaking around the different symbols that seemed to move across the blade, though they did not move as fast as the words. I saw the symbol of the sky on the blade first, which made sense as I had absorbed the power of the primordial of the sky.

What didn't make sense where the other symbols. I stared at one, which was an hourglass, and I heard Riptide speak in my mind.

"Time," echoed through my head. I was so startled I almost dropped the blade again. As I looked at the other symbols, the same thing happened.

"Justice," came when I looked at the symbol of a blade with banners hanging from both sides of the hilt.

"Swordsmanship," as I saw a person wielding a blade in a perfect stance.

"Magic," as I stared at a glowing crescent moon. Those were all of the large symbols, I quickly glanced over the several smaller ones and was told loyalty, courage, and friendship in that order.

"What was that about?" was my comment as I shook my head, thinking I was in Morpheus's realm. I looked at the blade again, and for the third time in less than an hour I almost dropped the blade in shock. I saw all three fates reflected in the blade, but as I looked around hurriedly I realized I was still alone. I looked back at the blade and met the eye of them all somehow.

"This is your future if you prove yourself." The spoke in unison.

"Prove myself how?" was my more than reasonable response. I knew that such power would come at a cost and I was not sure I wanted to pay that cost.

"You must defy fate Perseus Jackson. You must do something that we have never allowed. Only then, will you take your rightful place in the world." As their image faded from the blade, I felt a very strong desire to curse out the ladies for leaving me with another riddle.

The obvious part of what they said was that I would become the Primordial god of the Sky, Swordsmanship, Time, Justice, and Magic. I would probably have the power level of an Olympian over loyalty, courage, and friendship, which was still no mean feat. The only other part I understood was that to claim those domains, I had to defy the fates.

I had an inkling of what needed to happen, but I would make no assumptions until then. Back on track with what I do know, I was still trying to practice with the power I already had.

With Riptide already in its first stage, I had taken my first step to becoming a Primordial god. Now I had to make sure I was not overwhelmed with the new power I would be wielding. I spent quite a long time mastering my other power which was shockingly similar to training with my power over water.

I just needed creativity and the rest would fall into place. Channeling my power through Riptide, flashing wherever I wanted to go, those had just been the tip of the iceberg. But enough about me, my daughter has been busy as well.

Another year passed before I knew it, and my beautiful daughter turned ten. This was a milestone birthday for both her and me. For her, she was now in the double digits, almost grown up. A belief that I reinforced when I showed her the gift this year.

An imperial silver sword fashioned by my own hands. Three feet long and perfectly balanced as she had picked the trait up from me. The blade itself was blank, but that would changed in the future when runes where placed on it. The hilt was another matter as I had spared no expense in its creation. The hand grip was wrapped in silver wire that was enchanted to mold itself to the wielder's grip. The base of the hilt had a large ruby that would act as storage for any excess magical power my daughter had. I had taught her the method of transferring power to items like gems to be accessed at a later time a few days before her birthday in preparation for this. The cross-guard had vines etched across it, with the same permanent rune etched in the middle on both side by my own hands.

The rune literally meant focus, and would cause the sword to amplify her power whenever she wielded it. I did not make her a sheathe for the blade though. Instead, as an additional birthday present I taught her the art of trapping items into other objects. Note-cards, jewelery, even tattoos would all work with this magic. After learning the technique, she decided to stored the blade in a simple silver ring that she wore on her left hand.

The ring was originally plain and blank, but after the magic took effect a detailed etching of it appeared on the ring. Whenever she wanted it, she closed her hand loosely and the blade would appear in it. Now that Lily had a blade of her own, I changed the focus of her combat lessons with me. Before, I had shown her how to wield the many weapons she knew about in a defensive manner. It was expected that she would pick up some offensive move from my teachings, but I never truly encouraged her to learn them until now. Even when we went out monster hunting, the few monsters she had killed had exhausted themselves trying to break through her defenses first. I once again took her through all the weapons she had mastered in a defensive manner and showed off their full capability.

It went by quickly as she already knew the weapons well, so I was able to focus on teaching her my strongest skill, swordsmanship. Soon that was the only weapon we practiced during her lessons, though she would occasionally work with others on her free time. She quickly learned how versatile it was to fight with a sword compared to all the other weapons. It is unique in the fact that only your imagination can hold you back when trying to overwhelm an opponent.

After I felt she had graduated to intermediate level of swordsmanship, I encouraged her to place runes on the blade of the sword. Unlike the runes on her clothes, these runes were silver and blended in perfectly with the blade. In addition to the focus runes already there, she added runes for fire and lightning along with many others. The runes did exactly as they were suppose to, and it was not unusual for her to set her blade on fire while dueling me or cause lighting to erupt from where our blades met.

I did allow her to place runes increasing the speed of her blade on its accuracy on it, but I did not let her use those runes during our duels. I did not want her to become to dependent on magic if I could help it. I spent the next two years teaching her everything she needed to know about combat magic, and swordplay. When her twelfth birthday finally came, I was watching her practicing with her blade in our make-shift arena.

I could honestly not believe how much she has changed of the years. She still wore the Nemean Lion skin clothes I crafted for her, but now runes covered more than half of it. The same held true with her blade as well, but you had to look closely to see that. She had also decided to name the blade shortly after her eleventh birthday. Despite the difficulty of doing such a thing magically, she managed to pull it off all by herself.

She called it Even Star, and obtained a magical mastery over the blade none could match because of that. Even Star would only obey her now and forever more. She had come so far in the past years and grown up so much I teared up a bit inside, but I kept my face calm for her.

"Lily," I told her, "I is time for you to take the final step in your training."

"The final step?" she asked me.

"Yes. The final step. The point in your life when you kill a monster on your own." I told her gently.

With pride in my eye she processed what I said and didn't ask about what she was fighting or how she should fight it, but instead asked, "How is this the final step dad? I feel like there is so much more I do not know."

"Let me rephrase," I told her. "You have learned all you can from me daughter. Once you kill this monster, you and I will walk side by side at long last. You will have to further your own skills and knowledge on your own. Though I will always be there to help you if needed."

"Thanks dad," she smiled, "Should we get this over with?" I smiled at her a merely gestured, flashing her into the middle of a dark forest while I watched from on top of a large rock, invisible to all.

She waited for a few moments taking in the lay of the land, and making sure nothing would be able to ambush her. Just then the wind picked up and she could smell the scent of monster, and of barbecue. She quietly began making her way towards the monster camp I knew to be in that direction. The runes on her clothes dimming as she willed them to and drew her bow silently, notching an arrow in preparation. A dozen more steps placed her right outside the monster camp, a few more and some climbing into a tree gave her the high ground. She silently observed the camp while I did the same with my daughter. She looked thoughtful as she came up with a plan, causing two more arrows to appear and signaling the end of her planning session.

She drew back her bow and fired all three arrows at once. Barely checking to see if they hit, and already drawing back three more, she fired again, and again. In less than two seconds the monster camp was in an uproar. In less than ten they were making their way to my daughter who had already managed to take out half of the monsters. Leaping down from her branch and into the camp, Lily grabbed her throwing knifes from their sheaths and threw as she ran past many monsters. Many of them simply gaped at her as she ran past, while others simply dissolved.

Eventually the monsters closed in on her, and she drew her blade. The runes on it were glowing bright enough to be made out even at my distance, while her clothes did the same and now were glowing brightly. A throwing ax was sent her way, but it bounced off a blue barrier that seemed to surround her.

Pointing her sword down at an angle first, Lily then shouted, "Incatante: Inferno!" She had already raised her empty hand so the palm was facing the monsters. Her blade seemed to gleam brighter and a rune on the blade began to glow brighter than the others. Fire erupted from her palm as she swept it side to side, incinerating all the monsters but the cyclops.

They merely grinned at her before opening their mouths, most likely to brag about their fire resistance. They never got the chance, however. Lily leapt forward, swinging her blade at both of their legs. They collapsed howling in pain, until they were silenced one after another, Lily beheading them both. She was calmly willing her blade back into her ring when I walked up to her beaming.

"It certainly seems that you are ready for your real birthday gift," I told her.

"My real gift?" she asked.

"Yup, you now have my permission to go wherever you want without my or Mrs. OLeary's supervision." She squealed in delight and hugged me after I said that.

"Now help me pack kiddo, we have some traveling to do."

"Where are we going?" she said curiously. We had moved around a few times over the years but not often.

"We are going on a real cross country road trip so you can see the world, and enhance your skills," was my reply.

She had seen quite a bit of the world, but never got to take it all in. She hugged me tightly again, before going to pack up camp. Which goes fairly quickly when everything you really need is in a magical tent.