A/N: To all my readers, thank you!

Chapter 5: I Have a Nice Talk With My Doom

I woke up on the bed. Luke had apparently been nice enough to move me. I blinked, trying to get rid of the last of my dreams from the night before. There had been the woman from the woods begging me to trust the gifts and stay strong. She looked nervous but I couldn't understand why. She'd warned me- something- about Luke as well… I shrugged mentally to myself. The dream was mostly gone anyway.

I blinked watching the door quietly close behind Luke. He was carrying another change of clothes.

"Hey!" Luke smiled at me. "You're awake!"

"How long was I asleep?" I blinked groggily.

"A good couple of hours," Luke replied. "Portal leaping can do that to a demigod. Our bodies aren't totally up for the strain and we need a good couple hours of rest before we fully recover. I really didn't expect you to wake up so quickly though."

"Is that a bad thing?" I asked.

"No," Luke replied. "It means you're powerful."

"Powerful?"

Luke dropped the new pair of clothes on the bedside table.

"You know, dangerous," Luke told me. "I'm sure you'll pick up weaponry soon enough. I think we might have a blade that would fit you."

I shuddered thinking about all my failures in the woods with Andromache. Tripping and knocking myself out had been the worst of the experiments but none of my other attempts could be called anything remotely successful.

"Did you find Andromache?" I asked.

Luke nodded absentmindedly.

"You didn't mention that she'd been knocked unconscious by Dr. Thorn's spikes. She wasn't even at the orientation along with o- the more troublesome recruits."

"Dr. Thorn?" I asked.

"The Manticore," Luke explained. "Dr. Thorn is a manticore. He's got spikes that he can shoot that have a poison that's extremely painful for demigods. As for your Andromache, she was so young, it seems to have overloaded her and made her pass out. It happens on occasion. She seems to be recovering rather nicely, but you won't be able to escape with her anytime soon. Not unless she happens to have some hidden healing talent?"

I shook my head. "Not that she's shown."

"So you're going to be stuck here with me for a while, I guess," Luke smiled at me. "I've been kind of lonely anyway. Don't exactly have anyone close to talk to anyway."

My face flushed. My wrist itched.

"Would you be able to let me check on Andromache?"

There was something wrong with it. I rubbed my wrist nervously. It was like the bracelet was vibrating, trying to tell me something.

"That's a little…" Luke protested.

"You did it, otherwise you wouldn't have had that information. Show me how you got there and if I get caught I won't rat you out."

I had no idea what was making me so irritable. It was like something was... off.

Luke raised an eyebrow. My will crumpled.

"I'm sorry," I apologized. Luke was the person helping me. He understood far more than I did. I deserved to be understanding. He didn't deserve to deal with me snapping just because I felt a little bit irritated. He at least deserved an explanation.

"I'm just worried about Andromache. I guess, I just really want to make sure she's fine with my own eyes."

Luke didn't seem too concerned. If anything, he seemed amused.

"No worries," Luke told me. "I get that. Back when I was traveling with Annabeth and Thalia..." He smiled fondly instead of completing the thought. "As soon as seeing Andromache will actually be useful, I'll let you run into her. Sounds like a deal?"

I nodded. Luke seemed to be my only ally on this ship. Besides, he actually seemed to know this ship like the back of his hand.

Luke gave me a tour of the ship. They had everything from an all-you-can-eat buffet to a practice field with real weapons. I saw a cyclops eating from the buffet directly in front of a mortal family, which was what Luke called a person who was totally normal or "not messed up in the whole stupid god business".

He showed me the practice fields.

"We've- They've recruited hundreds of demigods every day," Luke told me. "All are highly trained, but none are as good as their leader. A demigod. His father Hermes betrayed him and he was the leader who started this revolution."

Luke's voice almost seemed to have a hint of pride.

"Won't they get eaten by the monsters?" I asked, remembering my experiences. "Monsters tend to like to eat demigods."

Luke shook his head.

"The ones who work here are too useful and smart to be prey."

"What happens if you don't work here and are captured instead?" I asked.

"Once you're healthy enough and have gone through the orientation period, you're given the choice whether or not to join the team."

"What if you say no?"

"You can go, but every single monster on board is allowed to hunt you and eat you. No one has said no and escaped alive."

I shuddered.

"Makes it kind of challenging to plan a jailbreak."

"But you weren't eaten?" I asked.

Luke looked uncomfortable. "I was never captured." He explained. "There are hundreds of demigods on board. They can't tell most of us apart."

I thought about that, rubbing my still itchy wrist. Something wasn't adding up to his story. At least his story seemed to make sense, it was his part in it that didn't work.

"What happened to the demigod you came to rescue?" I finally asked.

"What?" Luke asked and then suddenly remembered the story I realized I had made up about him. "Oh, he's fine."

"But you agree with them," I insisted.

"Nora," Luke tried to calm me. "It's complicated."

"If there are hundreds of demigods and monsters around," I said. "How come we haven't come across a single one of them? I thought I saw a few of them, but they vanished as soon as they saw you. As if they were scared."

I hadn't paid much attention at the time, but I remembered it clearly. I suddenly had chills.

"You never came here to rescue a friend," I said. "You came here to lead. You're the leader."

Luke's eyes widened startled. Then they flashed. In an instant, he had drawn his sword and pointed it at me.

"Yes," he finally admitted. "I am the master of this ship."

That explained why he'd been in the orientation screening. He was watching to make sure there wasn't any trouble. Like, say other demigods coming to rescue their friends. That explained why he had such a nice cabin. He was in charge.

"What do you want from me?" I asked, my throat suddenly dry. It wasn't like I'd been able to pick up any weapon to use as some semblance of protection during the tour.

Luke didn't reply. He stepped forward; His blade still pointed at my neck. I stepped back into the wall. I got a sense of Deja Vu.

"Ideally, your support," Luke's voice suddenly calmed. It reminded me of an adult trying to soothe a child. "But before that, a few answers."

"Such as?" I squeaked.

"For starters, is Andromache the lost child of the sea?" Luke asked. He sounded like he was reading off a list. "Or is she the child who shouldn't exist?"

I didn't reply, my mouth stuck in an oh shape. Luke remained steadily staring down at me.

"How do you know that?" I finally asked. He shouldn't have. I had transferred it secretly when I'd changed clothes. It was still in my pocket. I could feel it.

"A powerful demigod makes her way undetected on board my ship," Luke told me. "It's my job to learn as much about her as possible. It's my duty to make sure my ship stays as safe as possible. To tell if you're secretly a threat."

"And am I?"

"Are you what?"

"A threat. Am I a threat?"

Luke smirked. "Not really."

"Then why are you pointing a sword at me?" Apparently, a bit of Andromache's careless and instinctual manners had rubbed off on me. Or maybe it was just a sign that I was sick and tired of being blackmailed with weapons.

"To make sure you don't run away," he explained.

I glared at him.

"Run-away where?"

"Good point," Luke's smile no longer seemed so welcoming. He sheathed his sword.

"Just to be clear, I don't trust you anymore."

"Fair. Still, I was going to tell you, eventually," Luke sighed. "That was a downside of the approach I took. We don't typically get stowaways. Particularly ones we didn't plan for.

"You presented a narrative. I simply chose to go along with it. Once you got settled and were no longer on 'my friend was brutally kidnapped' alert, I was going to reveal the truth. Just because we work with monsters doesn't mean we are ones."

"You kidnap people!"

"We rescue them," Luke corrected me. "You saw a little bit of the orientation video and if you've been on the road for any bit of time, you know how dangerous and unforgiving this world is. Anywhere else, monsters will literally have one of our kind for a snack. But here? Here the only snacks are the store-bought kind. Here we're safe. Here we're happy. And we want to share it with others.

"So what if we have to resort to kidnapping? You might have noticed; this world isn't sunshine and rainbows. It would be nice if we could just go up to people and convince them that this exists. Ideally, that's what we would do. But, and be honest, if someone came up and offered you food, shelter, and to never have to worry about monsters again, what would you think? Would you trust them?"

I opened my mouth to say that I would… Of course, I would believe they were good people. Only… I'd been on the run for a few weeks. The most reliable help we'd gotten was probably Hades deciding not to send a few hundred monsters. Some of the friendliest acting people had turned out to hide the worst sort of monsters. Could I really have to say that I would have eagerly followed a stranger promising what seemed like paradise? And that was without Andromache to even think about.

Luke sighed. "That's why we resort to kidnapping. We don't have the time to show everyone that we're trustworthy. We don't have the resources to spare on it either. This is the most reliable way we can save lives. Yeah, the kidnapping might leave a bitter taste at first. But once they get to experience this-" he gestured proudly to the deck. I could hear laughter in the distance. "-that's when they realize what this is all about. Saving lives. Making everything better. This is what I left to do. Making sure no demigod is left behind."

It was so hard to think. My stomach churned. I wanted to vomit. I wanted to run away. Luke's story makes sense. But there was something that… I kept feeling like I was missing something. Like there was something unspoken.

My mind raced over everything Luke had dropped. Trying to fill in the holes with the little hints he'd dropped.

"But this is a revolution."

"Well, how else are we supposed to live free? The gods don't care. The most one ever did was turn his daughter into a literal tree! And that was only because he got cold toed about watching her die!"

Luke's eyes glowed with an energy that terrified me.

"I thought I made it obvious. I want to bring down the gods. They've done a horrible job ruling it so far and it's time to make them pay. You can't tell me you don't feel the same!"

"Aren't they, like, all powerful gods? How exactly are you planning on making them 'pay'?"

Luke's face lit up in a way that I could tell he had been waiting for that question.

"We've got allies older than the gods," Luke smirked. "They're returning and we're going to help them regain their power." I remembered Andromache telling me something about monsters regenerating even after they were killed. Why had we assumed that it would be different for their old enemies?

I tried to wrack my brain for old enemies of the gods. My parents had taught me only a little bit of Greek and Roman Mythology. I remembered my father mentioning something along the lines of the more knowledge a demigod has, the more they smell in the car before we'd been attacked by the hellhound. Of course, that would blow up in my face, now.

"You mean like the giants?" Weird how that was what I remembered. They hadn't been all that important.

"I meant the Titans," Luke told me. "Times are changing. Kronos is rising. The minor gods are rallying to us. You can be a part of this too."

I racked my brain. The Titans were the deities the gods had overthrown to take their thrones and if I was remembering correctly Kronos had something to do with time. I felt a chill.

I felt watched. I needed to be sure I was right.

"You're not the real leader, then. You're his figurehead," I reasoned. "The shadow you listen to is in charge. Kronos is the voice giving you orders and telling you what to say?" I asked.

"What?" Luke looked startled again.

"The voice," I tried to explain. "It's sort of a cold presence. Sounds kind of like nails on a chalkboard, but also kind of soft."

Luke froze. It dawned on me that this was my first time seeing him truly off-balance.

"You shouldn't have been able to hear him," Luke told me.

I shivered as I felt the cold presence seriously consider me. It felt like sand trickling down my back.

Then the voice spoke. This time I knew I wasn't making it up.

'I think we can trust her to visit me in person. It will be much easier to explain things. She's confused.' The cold presence told Luke. 'Please, Eleanor Freysan. It's been a long time since I met someone I could truly connect with. I promise there is much more to me than this cold exterior you see.'

Something about that voice called to me with promises that I would be less confused if I just talked to him. I also knew that voice was male and that somewhere along my family tree we were related. All I had to do was go to where he was. What can I say? Normally I'm really, really bad confrontations. This time wasn't an exception.

I let Luke lead me through various passageways until we came to a room that was really, really impressive. Light shone in from the windows.

In the center was a brilliantly glowing sarcophagus. It glowed with a dark magnetic pull. The walls were nicely furnished with long flowing woven curtains depicting various scenes I wasn't particularly familiar with from mythology.

'Welcome to my home, Eleanor,' the cold voice greeted me. 'A coffin. My own children forced me into this, you know. We got into a small family spat and as per family tradition, they decided to slice me into a million different pieces. Seeing as how I'm immortal, it didn't kill me and now, very slowly, I'm finally pulling myself back together.'

"You're Kronos?" I tried to remember what my parents had let slip about him. "Didn't you eat your children? Or was that Saturn?"

'Always the first question,' Kronos sighed. 'A Titan makes one silly mistake ages ago and he must pay for it for the next few hundred centuries. I am also Saturn, just pick one name godling, switching between the two can give anyone a… headache.'

"Oh, but you're getting better?"

'I am indeed rising again,' Kronos told me. 'I just need a bit more time and then I'll be back. Funny, I used to bend time to will and now my will must bend to time.'

"You're the Lord of Time?" I asked, startled. It was a bit too late to hide my fear.

'I could indeed be called the Lord of Time,' Kronos admitted. 'However, I have no intention of harming you child of Flames. If you join me, you shall have no fear of ever truly falling.'

Chills ran down my spine.

'I'm sorry,' Kronos apologized. 'I've never really been a people person and I'm still struggling with a bit of long-term paranoia that any reasonable parent whose kids rise up and decide to chop you into a thousand pieces would be expected to have. I asked Luke to check your pockets for any hidden weapons. He found your letter in your pocket.'

I turned, startled, to Luke.

"You can't tell me that your arrival wasn't suspicious," he shrugged. "Besides you can't blame me for my kleptomaniac tendencies. I got them from dear old Dad. Besides, I put it back before you woke up. So technically I only borrowed it for a few moments."

I checked my pocket. It was indeed there. I opened it. Nothing seemed to have changed.

"My dad's Hermes," Luke explained to me. "I know how to take and return things without people noticing."

I finally put my mind toward figuring out who his dad was. One of my mother's bedtime stories flew to the top of my mind.

"Hermes or Mercury, depending on your version," Mom told me as she tucked five-year-old me in bed. "Was the god of thieves, travelers, wanderers, etcetera. When he was newly born, he spotted Apollo's sacred herd and decided to steal a couple of cows.

"Naturally, Apollo got rather angry about this because these were his cows that had gotten stolen. He found Hermes, who was only a few minutes old, and brought him before Zeus or Jupiter. Hermes or Mercury-"

"Why do they have so many names?" I had asked. Switching between the two was really annoying.

"It's important to know everyone's names," my mother had told me. "That way you can always know what to call them. Who knows, maybe your ability to think between the two without a headache might somehow help you in the future?"

"Hmm?" my five-year-old brain questioned.

My mother kissed me on the head and finished the story.

I giggled at the part where Hermes/Mercury pleaded innocent on being a sweet and innocent newborn child. For a five-year-old, the logic of the ending where Hermes/Mercury compensated Apollo with a musical instrument in exchange for stealing their cows didn't make a whole lot of sense, but it was a story, so I figured I'd understand it more when I got older.

I never did exactly, but each to their own. At least the ending did give me some smidgen of knowledge to build off of.

"Your dad is the god of thieves?" I asked.

"Yes," Luke told me. "Among other things."

"Good to know." I thought rapidly. "What do you want from me?"

A part of me was impressed with how calmly I was dealing with the situation. This was the first real-time I'd ever been really blackmailed, after all.

'I only want your help,' Kronos told me. 'It hasn't been an easy few thousands of years. I'll admit that I am rather flawed when it comes to relationships, a trait that I fear I passed onto my children. I'm sorry if in my lapse I frightened you. I'm a bit too used to people being willing to listen to me only if I frighten them first. It is unfortunate and I suppose that it comes from my own failure when it comes to my children.'

Kronos sounded weary and sad. My heart unwittingly went out to him.

'My children have gotten used to me not being around. They have long since slipped into the same practices I fell because of. It pains me to know that even my offspring haven't managed to figure out how to be better parents than me. Luke is an example of how they failed their children. I'm glad I chose to come back.

'This time around will be different. This time I'll be the parent my children deserve. Your mother won't get away with abandoning you.'

"My mother is dead, she didn't abandon me," I insisted.

'I may not be back at full strength,' Kronos told me, 'But I can tell that you have far purer Olympian blood flowing through your veins than a mere descendant. You, pardon the terminology, reek with power.'

I shook my head.

'I'm sorry,' Kronos backed away. 'I know it's hard, but your parents must have lied to you. They must have loved you very much to keep the truth from you. It's still undeniable that you have an Olympian parent rather than being a legacy.'

He let me kneel just thinking about that for a moment. Luke knelt next to me.

"I'm sorry," he told me. "It's never easy to discover your parents kept things from you."

I swallowed. My parents wouldn't have lied about something like me having an Olympian parent. Would they?

'Listen, Eleanor,' Kronos told me. 'This is the sort of thing I want to stop. All I want to do is return to give my children the care and love they deserve. Will you give me the opportunity to have another go at being a thoughtful parent? With you on my side, I'm sure we'll be able to avoid any needless bloodshed. My children will fall in line when I come to them. The world will be returned to the glory it ought to be. One where people can actually look up to their deities, instead of telling tales of their misdeeds.

'I'll be able to help Andromache as well. If you talk to her, I'm sure she'll understand and come over to our side. You're looking for her family, aren't you? I'll reunite her with both her father and her mother. She has a brother too. A half-blood just like herself. You can bring Andromache home.

'All you have to do is swear yourself to me.'

I'm going to be really honest. I was really tempted. I know everyone talks about the people who turned. How treasonous they were. How ungrateful. All that nonsense. The honest to goodness truth is, if Kronos cares enough about turning you to his side, you're pretty much a goner. His words have a way of sneaking into the cracks of your mind and filling it with a vision of splendor, the one he wants you to see. I didn't notice or even care that he knew far more about Andromache than I had shared. If it hadn't been for the bracelet on my wrist I probably would have enlisted right then and there.

I opened my mouth only to find my wrist seriously bothering me. The gem on my bracelet glowed. I rubbed it and the gem faded. I suddenly became really aware that Kronos had been lying through his teeth towards me. Sure, he wanted to treat his children the way they deserved, but his definition of what they deserved was very different from mine. He wanted to utterly destroy them. While I get that people have different ideas about parenting and other stuff, I couldn't condone anyone murdering their children.

"No thanks," I mumbled.

Kronos swore.

'Bind her,' he commanded Luke. 'We'll have to do this the hard way.'

I screamed as Luke grabbed me roughly. It was silly but none of the self-defense techniques I had tried to learn were working. I could no more hurt Luke than escape his really, really strong grasp. He no longer seemed as friendly and trustworthy. Then all of a sudden he was swearing and holding his eye. I was free.

"Come on." I ran to the door where the voice had come from. The person who had saved me was a young girl my age somehow looking even paler than normal and really seasick. Robyn had come after me.

A/N: As always, thank you for reading! Let me know what you think! Comments, concerns, and conjectures of what's to come are always welcome!