The twelve of them stood slowly, eyes fluttering between each other nervously. Ariadne wasn't blind to notice that it was twelve of them like there were twelve Olympioi. (Five of the Kronides had kids. Five children of the Kronides were there.)

Whatever had kidnapped them, the Moirai were seemingly the main suspect, had taken their usual styling and placed them into more traditional clothing. Ariadne had smiled to herself when she noticed that she was the only female with a dress that didn't fall to her ankles. She could only assume that it was because she had been wearing one of Apollo's chitons when the two had finally gone to bed.

It was probably inappropriate for her chiton to be as short as it was-–it was mid-thigh after all–, but at least she could still move freely. Clarisse looked as if she were one second away from ripping her himation apart.

Their clothing choice, while irritable, wasn't all that shocking. There were a few times out of the summer where Mr. D had outright demanded that they learn more of their culture and to dress in appropriate attire.

After all, "not all of the brats have divine power" so there was no need for day to day training in those regards.

No, the most shocking thing that they faced was that none of them looked their ages.

They looked twelve.

Ariadne vividly remembered standing over a dead body on her sixteenth birthday.

Looking highly uncomfortable, Chris turned to her, questioning aloud, "Where are we?" She could read the fear in her friend's eyes. He clearly thought that they were in some place within the labyrinth. But despite the fact that she could see and understand that fear, she couldn't help but to stifle a laugh as she moved towards the river. All three sons of Hermes' hair were twisting throughout the air, the strands fluttering as if they were wings. Her brother helped her into the water as she cast another glance back towards the others. Connor's eyes were slipping close in concentration as Will turned his gaze towards the sun and Thalia bent to the ground concentrating on the call of the wild and pressure within the air.

The people around them moved into defensive positions as they froze. It felt like their brains were rewiring themselves. Flashes of their memories danced around their mind. GREECE. Olympos. Seared into their brains like a title sequence to an action movie. Their eyes shot open glowing with divine power before they each fell to their knees shuddering. It was as if their bodies just shut down and rebooted.

Connor leaned heavily into Travis' arms as the ability drained him. Being the son of the god of travelers meant that he had some abilities that never broadcasted; one was to always know where they were no matter how far. Places like Ogygia and Tartarus and the Labyrinth would disrupt their abilities. Hermes had told Ariadne once that some of the gifts his children held would be better for the world to not know they had. Some of them had him visiting their dreams, telling the child in question to keep them a secret.

The youngest child of the Herald was sagging with exhaustion as he looked at the others, "Somehow, we're in the past. Ancient Greece. The future is changing with just us being here. However we gotten here... we can't go back that way. What part of time we're at... I don't know." It was like watching a movie in reverse; trapped within his own body. It was horrible and frightening.

The twins were leaning heavily onto each other. Ariadne breathed through her nose. She was one second away from flopping down into the water. Percy was bracing himself somewhat on his knees, "This is the Eurotas river. Sparta–Ancient Sparta isn't too far away from here."

Once Will managed to catch his breath, he trailed his gaze over the group. His eyes stopped on Ariadnê as she climbed out of the river. He looked between Ariadne, Thalia, and Rachel in confusion, "Is it just me or are the three of you melting?"

The girls in question startled, exchanging glances and blinking in astonishment at the sight of them; for the lack of a better word, melting. Gold and silver sweat was dripping from their pores. They watched silently as small dots appeared in the grass; nature hissing in approval as it happily drank the divine power.

Ariadne brushed at the hair that fell in her face; before she remembered the golden streak that resided within the strands. And yet, that wasn't what had caught her attention. No, she focused on the charm bracelet in which her weapons lay dormant. The caduceus charm was missing alongside the bow and arrow charm. Her heart felt as if it was filled with lead.

She has had her caduceus charm since she was twelve.

Luke, the bastard, had given it to her the day before she had gotten claimed. He claimed to have seen it in a dream. And then, when she was thirteen, she met Hermes. The Olympian had lit up like the sun and personally blessed the charm.

"Even if you were lost, I'd be there to lead you home."

As she stood on an exploding ship, deep within the Bermuda Triangle, burning from the inside out as she desperately tried to hold the CSS Birmingham together...


Ariadne! LET GO! COME ON!"

"Ariadne ,YOU CAN'T HOLD THAT FOREVER!"

"Ariadne, LET IT GO."

"ARI, IT'S GOING TO EXPLODE."

"Even if you were lost, if you call upon this charm, I'd be there to lead you home."


Home had only meant somewhere safe.

[Now, home meant huddled into the embrace of Apollo, Hermes on one side of her and Percy on the other... her father and stepmother smiling across from her. Clarisse and Silena and Beckendorf and Lee and Drew and Travis and Connor and Chris and Nico all sitting around them. Her half-siblings would be cheerfully singing songs of the sea. Persephone and Aphrodite would laugh about as they weaved flowers into her hair. Ares would speak softly with her as they talked about the need to work harder for the acknowledgement that their sibling(s) got with ease. Her uncles and aunts would speak of the times before their relationships failed. They would be a family. Sally Jackson and Paul would be somewhere on the edges. She didn't particularly care where.]

Then safe was a relative word, as she succumbed to the power within her, waking in a moment of lucidity, to the sight of Apollo's arm halfway through her naked chest forcibly healing her by pouring his essence into her body. She had been "blessed" in a way not too dissimilar to Artemis' hunters. She had even managed to shoot a bow and arrow. Something that made her brother burn with jealousy.

She hadn't received his charm until she, Clarisse, and Silena had ventured into Medea's mall. It had been a battle of beauty as Silena drew Medea to the brink of madness with lust and love boiling through her. Ariadne had caught sight of the charm as they ran out the store (succeeding in retrieving the girdle of Aphrodite and half of Medea's potion collection). Apollo, being the asshole he was at the time, placed his blessing on the charm in the middle of the night while it shined directly in her eyes.

Shaking the feelings of sorrow away, Ariadne moved her gaze away. She tilted her head up towards the sun desperately wishing that either god was with her at the moment. Sighing, she turned back to her companions, "I think we are losing our blessings. Goldilocks' essence is draining out of me and Rachel. Thalia is losing the power of Luna. My charms are gone also."

Thalia nodded her head, "As is my shield and bow. I only have my spear and knives from Milady left. But if we're in Ancient Greece, maybe we should use their Roman names instead? They'd have no power over them to draw their attention. Will's dad is the only one who's name didn't change."

Names have power.

"It technically did," Ariadne remembered. "His name actually has an 'N' as the last letter. We tend to call him by his Roman name when we use the one without it."

Still, that was one of the first lessons that they all learned as demigods. As much as Ariadne wanted to see Hermes and Apollon and to throw herself into their arms, they didn't need that attention right now. They didn't need that attention at all but—

When you feel you have reached peace, you will feel my curse.

The twins' eyes were drawn to each other. Even if Ariadne looked like something out of a godly horror movie, the two of them almost always moved as one. Unfortunately, being in constant life or death situations with the two of them meant that Clarisse and Chase also knew how the two thought.

"Whatever you're thinking," Chase started focusing on Percy with a stern gaze. Clarisse narrowed her eyes at Ariadne, and she could feel the call of war in the air, "Stop."

The twins pouted, "You don't even know what we were thinking." Travis laughed a little as a breeze flowed through the clearing twirling around Thalia, Rachel and Ariadne leaving them in pristine condition. "Whenever the two of you think the same thing, the plans tend to be a little off the wall."

Sighing deeply, a small smile fluttered onto Ariadne's face as she moved closer to the group. "Our dear Grandfather cursed the two of us to never have peace. The Three Knitters have clearly taken advantage of said curse and sent us back in time when demigods had little to no peace. It looks like they want us to do their job for them and create a better future. What better way to do so than coming to the root of the problems?"

The other ten demigods exchanged glances with each other. When Percy decided to take control of the conversation, they knew that they would end up going along with their plan anyway. The twins didn't do anything halfway. "Look guys, I doubt we'll ever be able to see our friends and our families again. We're so far in the past that even our great great great mortal grandparents hadn't even appeared on a family tree yet. We can fix things. All our friends and family that we lost in the war. We can save them. We can make sure that their deaths weren't in vain. This is way better than swearing an oath."

Ariadne nodded her head, "Goldilocks once told me that everything during this time was held to a stronger degree. We would've died before we even came out the womb if our fathers made their oath during this time."

The reason Ariadne and Clarisse got along so well was because the two of them thought alike. It was the reason she cherished their friendship so dearly. The older girl nodded her head alongside their words, "If you manage to get them to make the oath to do better by their children now, then the kids in the future won't have to listen to the whisper of him."

Thalia laughed lightly, "It's a plan so out there that it has no choice but to work." No one mentioned how uncomfortable the sky princess looked in her clothing. While Annabeth, Katie, and Rachel looked resigned, Ariadnê looked relaxed, and Clarisse looked murderous, Thalia herself looked as if she would rather run around naked than to wear her chiton. Without her eyeliner, she looked so different. Her hair was longer and her freckles stood out even more than normal. Ironically enough, the blue of her eyes stood out even more. When she furrowed her brow, it looked like little flashes of lightning were dancing alongside her pupils.

Leaning against a tree, Nico finally spoke up, "Well how do we start?" It was taking most of his energy to keep his powers at bay, but the shadows still stretched towards him. Even the tree he was leaning on was slowly dying. Outside of the twelve of them, he couldn't feel any other souls or essences so at least he was okay on that front. He wasn't killing some innocent nymph.

Rachel smirked wryly, "How do the two of them do anything else? They improvise."

Rolling her eyes, Ariadne looked at each of them, "We're going to find our own little country. Our patron god would be our Uncle Pluto. And we're going to call it... Castellan. And you, Nico, will be the king."

There was a moment of silence.

"What."

Though Ariadne no longer paid attention to them as she turned towards her brother, "Maybe we can delegate the roles? Clarisse can be over the training and Will could be over the hospitals. Probably throw him in the fields with Katie. He always did know which were the best herbs to pick back at camp. Oooh, we can bring in a lot of profit by bringing dishes created in the future to the past. And just about every country in ancient Greece had an oracle, and while she may not host the spirit any longer, Rachel had always been intuitive. She can be our own personal oracle."

Connor and Travis were laughing at the sight of everyone's dropped jaws. Alongside Chris and Clarisse, the two of them had already known how Ariadne could get when she got an idea in her head.

There was a gleam in Percy's eyes that hadn't been seen since before that fateful trip when they were twelve years old in age. He smiled at her brightly, "Annabeth can be over the architect. Did you see what she did for the cabins at camp? The Stolls can be over our trade. Everyone knew about their contraband store at camp. And Chris can take over for the traveling. Should we do a traveling fee in and out of the country or would that be pressing our luck? It's three of them though. Their luck is sure to beat out ours."

Shaking her head slightly, Ariadne pointed out, "Yeah, but it's the two of us. Plus, Nico, Thalia, and Katie. That's five against three. Still not enough luck."

"We're naming the country after Luke. That should be enough luck to last a lifetime," Percy countered, crossing his arms. He reminded her of a stick version of their father. She'd hate to see what she looked like considering they were identical. Well identical from a distance.

"Yeah, the same Luke that let Grandfather piggyback in his head. I'm naming it in his honor, not because he was lucky." She may have admired Luke to the point that most people didn't know who had a bigger crush on him out of her and Chase, but she can admit he made a dumbass decision. His reasoning may have had merit, but his actions were idiotic.

"He was our friend," Percy reminded her. "He died a hero."

She knew that. She was the one to hand him the knife.

Nico rolled his eyes from the now blackened tree, "With how out of control our powers are right now, I could probably grasp his soul from the timeline, and he can act like a forcefield to our country. Sort of like Thalia's tree."

The children of Hermes turned to look at each other speaking in that superspeed way that only Ariadne could understand before turning back around, "Make it a sacred tortoise in the middle of the capital."

Katie's jaw dropped just a little more, "That's it. You're really going to do this?" She had taken a seat onto one of the chairs around them. Ariadne's eyes narrowed a little more when she noticed how the grove seemed to cater to their exact likes. The chair Katie was sitting on looked just like a sunflower in full bloom. There was a chair in the shape of a skull and there was another in the shape of a musical note. The fates seemed to have a sense of humor.

Will shrugged, "Why not? Go big or go home but considering we cannot go home; we have to go big.

Chase had stars in her eyes as she looked out into space. Building an entire city? The first female child of Athênê focused more on their weaving skills from their mother. But if she could build a city that'll last a lifetime, her hubris was acting up again. Ariadnê smirked slightly. Her brother was incredibly smart. Chase may blame her pride, but it was her brother that fed it.

All of them sat on their chairs carefully. The children of the Kronides breathed deeply through their noses as their power struggled inside of them before it settled as if the chairs were absorbing the excess. Chase stared at them and then glanced over at Will who was staring at them in worry, "I think their powers are reacting more strongly because their parents are the strongest during this period. Not to say they weren't strong in our time, but now their powers are unchallenged. Christianity didn't exist in this time and more people believed in them."

Ariadne shook her head, "Don't worry about us. It won't take long for us to get used to it. It just feels like someone left the water running in the tub and I'm trying to stop it from flooding with one paper towel."

Clarisse sighed deeply looking to the sky for guidance, "Is it bad that's not even the weirdest description you've ever given?" Ariadne shot her a smile and a wink.

"How are we supposed to start a country," Chris asked innocently. A fire lit in Ariadne's eyes and the ground rumbled underneath her seat. The storm in her soul began to sing as bubbles of water appeared in the air. There was only one answer to that—

Katie pinched her nose as she looked at the princess of the sea, "NO! Don't even think about it. We are not invading a country. I don't care how strong we are. I don't care how you've fought against worse odds. We're not invading a country."

The pout that formed on Ariadne's face wouldn't look different on a baby. She looked so heartbroken. It was time like these when people wondered mistook her for a child of Ares.

Clarisse shook her head at her friend before drawing in the sand with her spear. "We can start off slow. That idea about Katie and Will working in the wheat fields has some merit. But maybe we can start a restaurant? We can call it uhhh...we can call it Sile–Silena's Eatery. Rachel can commission some artwork to put around the building. It has to be good, but not good enough to draw Sunshine's attention. Our parents fell in love easily during this time, and I really don't want to see Ari murder you."

"I wouldn't kill her," Ariadne muttered childishly. Clarisse rose a brow, "So if you saw Apollon declaring his love for her and giving his all to her, you wouldn't—"

The blue of her eyes swirled so darkly that Percy was reminded of looking at a hurricane. There was nothing of the bright girl he called his twin sister. The only thing that was left was a battle-hardened soldier that held the power of the storm at her fingertips that would rip anything to pieces if it meant protecting what she loved.

And she loved Apollo a lot.

"Thought so," Clarisse stated smugly as Ariadne turned stiffly away. She was so not interested in hearing anything about Apollo loving someone else. The two of them had come to an agreement in their time after she had refused immortality and he came to terms that she would eventually die... he proclaimed to love her and only her for the rest of her days and no matter who he loved afterwards, he'd never be able to love anyone else the same. "Anyway, this way we can get a lay of the land and figure out what time period we are in. Thalia is the huntress in the group, so she'd oversee finding unoccupied land to take over. Especially one not sacred to any gods or goddesses. We build there and settle the restaurant there. Nico can declare himself king."

Ariadne turned back towards the group, "Maybe we can expand the area right around here. Instead of Thalia looking for land, she can create a border for our country. This can be our own personal home for us to hide away at. Build the temples to the twelve alongside Uncle Pluto and Aunt Vesta. There's a lot of space across the river to start fields of wheat and strawberries. Just like camp. The restaurant can be adjacent to it with the pathway leading to the actual kingdom in-between the two. Percy and I can steer boats for romantic dinners on the river for visiting guests as another source of income."

Will cast a critical glance around himself, "That's actually not a bad idea. The only tricky part would be declaring Pluto as the patron and then quickly making the necessary sacrifices to appease the others so that we wouldn't be killed immediately. Not to mention, the stigma around the Chthonian gods and their worship."

The twins shared a look with each other before nodding their heads, "If we make Father the secondary patron, it might help. That's two majors and the two of the first six with a considerable war force behind them. Even Uncle Airhead... I mean Jupiter wouldn't rise to the challenge."

Thalia groaned in pain as it felt like her own electricity was being used against her. Her eyes flashed like a thunderstorm as she looked at her cousins, "That's my father you're talking about."

"We know," the twins chorused. Will slapped a hand onto the ground and all the demigods just about moaned with relief as the power of healing settled the feelings emerging through them. Of course, they all yelped in shock when a small fire appeared.

Will looked deathly pale to the point that Nico thought his powers were activating again even though he could feel the chair he was sitting on absorbing them. "I-I don't have any other gifts other than healing."

Ariadne smirked at the boy, "Looks like being around here unlocked your next level of Goldilocks." Will shot her glare and she stuck her tongue out in retaliation. No child of Apollo scared her. She had never feared the sun even when Apollo was actively wishing for her death.

Suddenly, Connor's eyes narrowed in determination and he jumped up from his seat, "We're family. We just beat Mr. Big, Bad, and Ugly alongside his little warriors. We won't let our powers dictate us. We're going to change the past and fix the future. Nico, considering that everything is still in full bloom around here, this is either before Pluto got married or it's just still spring. You're going to go visit your father and tell him of our plan."

Everyone but Travis and Ariadne looked at the youngest son of Hermes in shock. He had never sounded more serious than then. Nico smiled wryly, "Father will know the truth. The dead tell no lies."

Ariadne waved her hands dismissively, "The truth would've come out anyway. It's better for someone to know to start with."

"That's quite true," a voice startled them. The twelve of them stood and immediately fell into defensive positions. Whether it was Kronos' curse or just the Fates manipulation, they all had their favored weapons on them. As one they turned to look at the intruder and all froze in shock at whom they saw.

The Eldest and Wisest of them all.

Lady Hestia.


Word Count: 4,100

Words to Know:

The Moirai - The Fates

Things to Know:

1) While I'll might say that Kronidês as to meaning the first generation Olympians. It's a patronymic from Krónos, meaning son of Krónos, but its more commonly given to Ζεύς instead of shared between the three brothers. Like it applies to Poseidón and Háidēs too, but when ppl say Kronide or Kroníōn, they are more than likely talking about Ζεύς. In fact, out of the sisters, only Dēmḗtēr has the epithet of Rheia eukomos thugater which means Daughter of rich-haired Rheia.


Comments from the Author:

1) Apóllōn does not have fire powers. What happened to Will was that his body temperature has risen tremendously, radiating heat like the sun and the grass caught fire from the focal point where he slapped the ground.