Twilight Of The Dragonknight (PJO/DQ Adventures of Dai)

[Firewillreign]

Twilight of the Dragonknight


"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/Than are dreamt of in your philosophy"


Picture this.

Within the confines of an ever-growing, timeless omniverse, there is a world.

Now this world did not simply come to be, as was often the case with millions, billions, and countless infinity more.

No, this world was created - purposely crafted with will and intent and the very essence of creation itself made manifest, as was the very universe that it resided in.

Its creator, a being the cosmos themselves only ever remembered and referred to as the Goddess, soon left it behind. It was to be expected - its creation had been nothing more but a passing whim it had chosen to act on out of, dare it be said boredom. For all the great potential the world possessed, it could no more hope to capture its interest than bacteria could attract a star.

Soon, the Great Goddess abandoned its masterpiece to its own fate- and it was a masterpiece for all that it was so quickly left behind - but not before it sired children of a sort - the gods of this virgin universe, who in due time became its sole inheritors.

Eons passed.

The gods descended on a world, the world, chosen at random. Following the example of their creator, or perhaps instinct crafted into their divine beings, they too created, crafted, and gave rise to all manner of new and novel life.

So were born the mortal races.

Unlike their creator, however, the gods were not so quick to forget their creations - quite the opposite in fact.

They watched them, observed them.

The mortal races evolved and interacted, mostly unaware of the presence of their gods even as they found their power and grew.

In time, three races rose to the forefront of them all.

The Darklings. The Dragons. And, most surprisingly of all, the Humans.

Their growth and power drew the interest of the gods, their appreciation, and even a form of admiration from the divine.
Despite their mortality and their status as only three species among tens of thousands, only the three could one day hold the power and the spark to match even the gods themselves.

In time they could have accomplished wonders.

Alas, it was not to be.

War erupted between the three great races almost as soon as they gained sentience, and the world trembled in its aftershocks - The humans were the most plentiful of all the mortal races, but the Darklings and the Dragons alone could freely call upon the greatest - and darkest - of magics.

In time, the world entire teetered on the precipe of destruction, and the gods chose to intervene.

They pooled their power and their might, combining the greatest aspect of human, darkling, and dragon, all to give rise to an entirely new force - a unique power terrifying in its majesty, burdened with divine commandment to bring forth the rage of all the gods on any who would dare conquer the world they so favored.

And so rose the first Dragonknight, born from the womb of the Holy Mother Dragon and destined to fight for the balance of the world unto death before being succeeded by another, over and over and over again for all of eternity.

Until something changed.

...​

It happened like this.

For the first time in twenty thousand years, two dragon knights existed in the world.

One had been carried from the void of stars and brought down to Earth by the Holy Mother Dragon herself, as all his predecessors had been for millennia beyond count.

The second, something entirely new - his son, Dai, born to a human mother whom his father loved so greatly he sundered a continent and fell to darkness upon the eve of her death.

Dai's life was one of strife, of hardship, but also one of triumph.

Raised by a monster, trained by a hero, befriended by all, and at very end, he died barely more than a child, saving the world from the Dark Lord Kiganou Vearn and ushering in a new era of light and justice and hope for a world that had gone a very, very long time without it.

So ended his story.

Except, not quite.

Dai won, yes, Dai passed from this world, yes, but his story did not end there.

In his final moments, as his body was incinerated in an explosion bright enough to illuminate the void of space and he slipped free from its mortal confine - The Holy Mother Dragon appeared once more.

The great dragon god had long since placed her fate in this anomaly - this Dragonknight born not of her, as all of his kin once were, but of a human woman and a former iteration who had loved her enough to do what no other had in millennia and sire an heir.

He was too... unique, too novel to allow his story to end here, not after everything that had been sacrificed to bring him forth into the world and everything he had sacrificed to save it.

The Holy Mother Dragon could not resurrect him wholesale, divine law prevented so blatant a violation of the natural order, but she could grant him a chance, bring him forth unto a world beyond the hold of her gods and the laws that prevented her interference, and in doing so grant him a chance to seize that which no Dragonknight in history had ever had.

True peace, not in the embrace of death, but in a life lived solely for his own sake.

And so the decision was made.

In that brief instance where Dai the Hero's life ended, the Holy Mother Dragon seized his soul and, with the greatest application of her divine granted power, tore a hole in the essence of reality itself and sent it off into the unknown.

And after but an infinitesimal moment of hesitation, it summoned two other aspects of its power, two other last parting gifts for the hero who had given everything to restore order, and sent them off after him, wherever he may be.

...​

For an eternity and a second and no time at all, Dai's soul drifted along the tides of creation, protected from the raw Chaos of creation by the lingering power of the Holy Mother Dragon.

Eventually, that journey ended, and his essence cleaved its way into a world where it would be reborn.

But, as was often the case with the creation of any god, things weren't so simple as to end there.

Dai's soul had intruded upon a universe rifle with the divine - so much so that it couldn't exist without an anchor binding to the energies of this foreign reality without risking complete destruction. In desperation, the last semi-sentient dregs of the Holy Mother Dragon's power lashed out, carving out a chunk of power that it bound to Dai's soul and used to craft a body for him and ensure his reincarnation before it faded entirely, forever gone from this foreign universe.

As it just so happened, that stolen power had come from a goddess.

And so, the influence of the Holy Mother Dragon faded entirely, Dai, new body and all, materialized in the outstretched hands of his new divine and entirely shell-shocked parent.

Had circumstances been even slightly different, the tale could have ended very badly and quite promptly. For all that the former godling possessed the potential to reawaken his old might, in that moment he was nothing more than a mewling newborn infant crafted from a foreign legacy and power wrongfully stolen.

Had the goddess been anyone else, she would have been well within her rights to reduce it to dust.

But that didn't happen.

Instead, with unpracticed movements, the goddess cradled the babe to her chest with one hand and raised another to hesitantly, brush at his skin.

It was a gesture she'd never had much personal experience with - of all her brethren, she was one of the few who had never sired a child, demigod or otherwise. And this was her child, somehow, despite the inherent impossibility of his existence.

How very, very curious.

Hestia, the greek goddess of the Hearth and a great many other domains besides peered down at her child, half-god and half-something, with a state of mind bordering on complete captivation.

"And just where," She asked slowly, donning a pensive expression that hid the sheer turbulence of her inner thoughts. "Did you come from?"

...​

Just a fun thought I had.

A crossover between the world of PJO and the Anime the Adventures of Dai, plus a few aspects from the games the anime is based off of.

 

[Firewillreign]

Artemis, Goddess of The hunt, twitched.

Around her, the moonlit grassy clearing stilled in response to her mood - here, in the woodland wilderness she alone reigned supreme, her conceptual domains stretching out and laying claim to nearly everything within the forest's confines.

She knew where every living creature trode, where every blade of grass rustled in the wind, a near-omniscient awareness of all beneath her purview that ensured her hunt - an unfamiliar, insignificant beast that reeked of the stench of Tartarus - would be an effortless affair.

That meant she registered the intruding divine presence the very instant it materialized in her range of awareness, a mile or so north relative to her position.

For a moment, she resisted the urge to scowl - She had left her hunters and sought out this beast partly because of its great strength and partly because she had wanted peace. Her fellow Olympians should know better than to interrupt her hunts, and most minor gods wouldn't dare try either way.

For a moment, she thought it was Apollo, but discarded the notion almost immediatley. Her twin was powerful, flamboyant, and loud. If he risked interrupting her hunt, then he wouldn't have bothered appearing a distance away - he was far more likely to park the sun chariot right beside her and set half the forest ablaze with irreverent pride simply to irritate her.

Artemis

The presence called out to her, and she frowned as she recognized it, tasting flame and warmth-

Ah.

Hestia.

The goddess of the hunt made no attempt to disguise her annoyance, and the presence dipped in apologetic acquiescence.

Forgive me for the interruption, niece. I have need of your counsel

Artemis raised an eyebrow - among all the gods she had known, Hestia alone was perhaps the least likely to request counsel - as the goddess of the hearth, she was far more prone to giving than receiving, be it good counsel or anything else.

How decidedly strange.

Please, niece - Hestia's presence retreated minutely - finish your hunt, I have the time to spare.

Is that so? Interesting.

This night might very likely be more eventful than she'd first expected.

But first things first.

Very well then, Aunt.

She narrowed her eyes, a mere application of will allowing her to hone in on her prey's trail once, and she took off a moment later.

This won't take long.

...​

A short while later, Artemis stepped into the outcropping where Hestia awaited, and almost immediately stilled in bewilderment.

The warm, blazing campfire she had expected. The plate laden with squares of ambrosia and the chalices of golden nectar were also unsurprising - it was in Hestia's nature to feed and bring comfort with her warmth, be it to mortals or gods alike.

All that Artemis had been anticipating.

Her appearance, on the other hand...

The gods were not limited to the one physical appearance - they could assume any mortal skin or shape they pleased and often changed from one to another for any number of reasons. Yet for comfort's sake if nothing else, most tended to stick to an ideal - a distinctive form that reflected their domain and their state of mind.

For decades now, Hestia had rarely appeared as anything more than a young mortal child, a small slip of a girl with mousy brown hair and fire-red eyes that crackled with flames - low and pleasant, warm and inviting, so unlike Ares's violent bonfires or Apollo's scorching infernos.

Now though... the eyes remained the same as ever, but the girl was gone. Now Hestia appeared as a young woman, her headscarf absent and her rich dark hair spilling behind her in waves.

"Artemis." She smiled pleasantly, but the expression was reserved - almost wary, in a way that Artemis hadn't seen in centuries.

Milleinia even.

The sudden change could very well be meaningless, but given the circumstances, it likely boded ill for whatever path the coming conversation would take.

Regardless, Artemis swallowed her sudden bout of wariness and approached, nodding in greeting as she took her seat on the log across from the other goddess.

"Please," Hestia gestured to the ambrosia and nectar quietly and reached for her own serving. "Refresh yourself."

"Thank you."

For a little while, they did nothing more than eat and drink, each lost in their own thoughts, the crackle of the open flames echoing in the silent night and burying them in's ambiance.

Eventually, though, the anticipation hit a peak.

"As much as I appreciate the meal, Aunt." She set her chalice down with a firm gesture "I doubt that's why you sought me out."

"Of course not" Hestia agreed, opening her mouth to speak... and then closing it with visible hesitation, something Artemis didn't miss. "How goes the search for the Master Bolt?"

Immediately, Artemis grimaced.

"As of yet, it remains a resounding failure." The reality almost hurt to admit, but that was to be expected. The truth was hardly ever pleasant. "My hunt remains unfruitful, and Ares and Hermes's efforts fare no better."

That was why Artemis had gone on tonight's hunt - she needed the satisfaction of a hunt well triumphed over game worthy of her in order to wash the bitter taste of failure out of her tongue.

That, and avoiding Olympus entirely was at the top of nearly every member of the council's list of priorities, courtesy of Zeus. To say that king of the gods was furious would be a primordial-grade understatement - the last time her father had been this angry, that idiot mortal king Salmoneus had let his crown go to his head and pretended to be the God of Thunder himself, all to impress his subjects and have them worship him instead.

Zeus took one look at the situation and promptly lost all semblance of reason. He destroyed the fool first and obliterated the entire city of Salmonea second, innocents and all, just for good measure.

Alas, would that the consequences of this debacle were limited only to the one measly city - with Zeus and Poseidon at each other's throats and the trail for the master bolt gone colder than Khione's ice, all-out war between the Sky and Sea was on the horizon, a clash the likes of which the world hadn't seen since ancient times, and the entirety of western civilization stood to bear the brunt of its collateral damage.

Wonderful.

"I see," Hestia murmured, her expression hooded and her eyes knowing - no doubt she knew full well the gravity of the situation and all that even they had to lose. "Dark times indeed. My choice remains clear."

Oh?

"Choice?" When Hestia remained silent, Artemis's gaze went narrow "Forgive my bluntness, aunt, but given all that's occurred in the last few months, I fear that my tolerance for misdirection and subterfuge is remarkably low. You came to me for a reason. I would hear it from you now, else I shall take my leave."

For a moment, the ever-prest crackle of flames was her only answer.

And then, just before her already frayed patience reached the end of its tether, a forlorn expression twisted Hestia's features and the goddess of the Hearth bowed her head.

"I need your help."

Artemis felt her eyebrows shoot up at the blunt admission.

"In what regard-?"

And then her words died as orange light flared in Hestia's arms before coalescing into a bundle of white cloth wrapped around a damningly familiar shape - a small, slumbering infant held securely in her grip.

...

It... it could not be.

But somehow, it was. Even if Artemis's own senses were somehow failing her, even if the child that shouldn't possibly exist didn't clearly resonate with Hestia's divine being, then the way the other goddess cradled it to her chest murdered any and all doubt without an ounce of hesitation.

Oh Styx.

Artemis didn't rear back, as she was tempted to. She did not throw herself off of her seat in her alarm.

She did, however, unleash a string of old Greek curses so vile they could have stripped paint from walls and likely would have deafened any mortals unfortunate enough to hear her.

Hestia frowned disapprovingly "Artemis-"

"What-Your Oath!?" She hissed and switched tracks, still speaking in furious, rapid-fire Greek "How is this possible!? What have you done!?"

"Nothing at all." Hestia said grimly "And unlike the rest of our brethren, I hold my oaths in the highest regards, as you well know, neice. This was no conscious doing of mine."

That finally brought Artemis up short.

"This..." She closed her eyes and sighed. "Perhaps you should explain."

"There is not much to explain." Hestia's eyes flickered down to the child - her child! - as she spoke "Something reached for me some time ago - a presence, quite unlike god or titan or anything else I've ever felt before in all the millennia that I've existed, and seized a portion of my divine essence. I felt it happen, but I couldn't react fast enough to prevent it - I almost didn't believe it had happened at all until the child quite literally dropped into my hands."

Artemis processed that slowly.

"That is...concerning. On multiple levels." Her expression darkened. "The sheer temerity of the act - the sheer insult, to seize your power without your conscious blessing - this cannot be bourne. This cannot be forgiven."

"I'm not exactly pleased myself, Artemis," Hestia replied dryly. "But whoever the perpetrator is, I've not felt their presence or anything even remotely comparable to it before or since, and that raises its own concern. They are either someone or something entirely new, or very, very old, and a problem one way or the other."

"And you want answers from me?" Artemis paused in consideration. "I could provide them. I am the goddess of the hunt - in time, there is no beast whose trail I cannot uncover, though it will require-"

Hestia raised a hand

"The offer is appreciated, but no." Her eyes narrowed, flames sharpening ever so slightly. "At least, not yet. My sanctity has been overstepped - one way or another, I will have my answers and my justice in due time. Presently, however, I have a greater concern - the greatest concern."

She lowered her gaze, and Artemis followed it back to the bundled infant.

"The child." At her nod, Artemis herself frowned. "He has no mortal parents - that is an issue. You can entrust him to a favored mortal, but there will be no bonds of blood to bind him to them. It would be best to skip the issue entirely and deliver him to Camp Half-Blood - no demigod has been raised under Chiron's care since birth in many an age, but given the circumstances, an exception could be-"

"No."

"-made." Artemis paused. "No?"

"No." Hestia shook her head, and when next she spoke, her quiet voice may as well have been laced with celestial bronze. "My son will remain with me."

...

It took nearly half a minute for Artemis to process the sheer implications within such a blatantly problematic statement.

Then she made a face - she was sure that her expression wasn't at all flattering.

"Hestia," There was a sinking feeling in Artemis's stomach as she took in the implacable expression she was faced with. "Hestia, no. Father will never stand for it."

"I'm certain he'll try to prevent it."

"As well he should! The ancient laws-"

"-are enforced only to a certain extent and by specific prerequisites, and are far more open to interpretation than most would have you believe." Hestia finished, and this time her smile had just a hint of self-assured satisfaction. It was an odd expression on so gentle a goddess. "And my son, however it is he came to be, is no ordinary demigod. He has no mortal parent. The laws do not rightfully apply to him either way"

Artemis's expression worsened. "Do not do this, Hestia. You can not skirt the laws on a mere technicality. We are forbidden to interfere for a reason."

"I am not interfering."

"Hestia-"

"I am not." Her tone turned challenging - and just a tad pleading "I am the goddess of the family hearth, Artemis. I can not abandon my child as the others would their own. I quite literally am not capable of it - the very act would be anathema to all that I am and that I represent. I could no more part with the boy than Ares could part with war, or that you could embrace romantic love-"

Artemis grimaced

"-or any of a thousand other violations of our natural orders." Hestia shook her head, firm and unyielding. "It's not going to happen."

"You know that father will make it so." Artemis snapped in frustration - frustration brought forth in large part because she recognized the truth in Hestia's words and refused to admit it regardless "Now of all of the times, with the master bolt gone, he will be unyielding, even to you. You know this, don't pretend that you don't, and this entire debate is pointless-"

Abruptly, Artemis met Hestia's eyes, and all the pieces fell into place just like that. Suddenly, she knew exactly why the other goddess had come to her.

"You want me to interfere on your behalf." Artemis breathed out the words with dawning realization, silver eyes flashing in incredulous disbelief. "To convince father that you are within your rights to keep the child close."

Hestia grimaced. "Not exactly. I know full well that, as he is now, he would never accept such a request even from you."

Confusion clouded over her realization for but a moment. "Then what-?"

"I need you to cover for my absence."

"Absence-?"

Artemis paused. Considered that. Reached another conclusion.

Her eyes bulged, and this time dignity went well and truly out the window.

"You intend to leave Olympus!?"

She couldn't believe what she was hearing - Hestial was the Hearth made manifest and the oldest Olympian beside - to leave her post, now of all times, would invite disaster.

"Not for long!" Hestia hastened to reassure her, no doubt catching on to her mounting alarm. "Not for long at all. I already told you that these are dark times - darker perhaps than most realize. I can not abandon my family, but in the same vein I cannot leave my son defenseless."

She tightened her grip on the sleeping infant, seemingly unconsciously. Artemis didn't miss that motion either.

"Think of it as a sabbatical - a brief period where I'll step away from away post, just long enough to raise the child and prepare him to face this world on his own. It will not be forever - hardly so. He will have to make his way on his own soon enough, just the same as any and every other child of the gods before him." She gazed down at the boy in her arms and her expression turned forlorn. "No matter how much I wish it weren't so."

That was... no.

Artemis wouldn't address the regret in those words. It wasn't her place and she didn't have the patience for it either way.

"If that child ages like a mortal, you'll need to raise him for at least a decade." Her expression hardened. "That is unacceptable. Olympus cannot go ten years without you, not at a time like this."

And that's when Hestia surprised her again, this time by laughing instead of protesting at her proclamation.

"No, no it can not. Nor will it have to." Hestia smirked - all Chesire-like and unrepentant in her satisfaction. "Where we'll be going, a single year will be all the time we need."

What?

What could she possibly-?

...no. Surely not?

"The Lotus?"

"The Lotus" Hestia agreed. "Time is variable in the hotel - the result of the mist twisting it inside and out and warping its relationship to the rest of the universe. With my power, I can ignore the imprisoning compulsion and restructure the flow of time around us - instead of decades passing us by in the outside world for every week we spend in the lotus, I'll alter it - months will pass us, and only us, for every few days in the outside world. Come the end of the year, I'll have had well over a decade to prepare my son for what's to come, and I'll rejoin Olympus assured of his safety."

Artemis opened her mouth to speak... and closed it again.

The plan was, despite her reservations, functionally brilliant. But nothing was without its risks.

"The kind of power you'd have to use... even as an Olympian, it will not be a burden easily carried." She warned, and at this point, she wasn't sure whether she was trying to dissuade her or help her wholesale.

"I am aware. It doesn't matter." Hestia raised an eyebrow "All I need is the guarantee of your assistance, if you're willing to offer it."

She asked, point blank, and Artemis resisted the urge to grit her teeth

She wanted to refuse. She should have refused - between the ancient laws and Zeus's wrath, to say nothing of her own reservations, the obvious choice was clear.

She was no fool, in the end. The blatantly obvious truth was that Hestia would not be deterred, and Artemis's help wasn't a deal breaker - it just made matters more convenient.

At least this way, she retained at least a little control over the situation, for whatever good that would be worth.

Carefully masking her hesitation, she nodded, once.

"Very well."

And Hestia beamed.

...​

The next day, a woman and her newborn infant checked into the Lotus Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada.

Almost immediately after the fact, the building shuddered as a wave of pure power swept over the building, ever so slightly restructuring it's connection to the mist and otherwise doing nothing at all. Its inhabitants hardly noticed the.

As a new day dawned, Hestia smiled, cradling her first and only child to her chest.

She owed a great debt to Artemis now, but the price was well worth the reward - her son was safe, and she had all the time in the world to guarantee that would always be the case.

She had her work cut out for her. After all, she hadn't been entirely truthful with the Goddess of the hunt - she kept the child close to her because he was hers and her very nature compelled it so, but that was not the only one of two reasons.

The other reason she had felt when she had first held him in her arms, the well spring of unfamiliar but unmissable power shimmering in his soul, intertwined with her own essence. A great and mighty potential, slumbering for now, but one that would inevitably awaken in time.

She could not have allowed Zeus to see it - not him, or any other Olympian - Her son was an anomaly by every metric of the word, and with the encroaching darkness of the Great Prophecy in play, none of the Olympians would have suffered him to live. Not on the off chance that he could become a weapon against them.

"But you won't, will you?" Slowly, she pressed her lips to his forehead and imparted the lightest, faintest of blessings. The magic washed over him and he stirred suddenly, brown eyes flickering open as he began to wriggle and mewl. "You're something special, and more precious than any weapon or tool could hope to be. I can tell, you know. You're going to accomplish wonders, o child of mine."

and as he started to writhe with more energy, she smiled a final time and whispered the name that she had half-consciously read from the remnants of his soul, the name of a hero who had saved one world and would one day be a lynchpin that would change everything.

"You're going to accomplish wonders, Dai."

...​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

 

[Firewillreign]

The very first time Hestia stepped foot in the Lotus, the entire structure shuddered and convulsed imperceptibly as the layers and layers of thick, occluding Mist woven through its very foundations twisted to accommodate her will.

As Artemis had warned, it was no easy feat, but Hestia had the power to spare regardless - At her command, an entirely new wing of the Lotus Hotel and Casino sprang into existence - one reserved solely for her and her son and barred to all others.

Naturally, the 'staff' had no objection - they never did, not unless their guests attempted to leave, and after but a few moments very few could ever muster the will to try.

Her new home away from Olympus was as convenient as she could make it, so far outside her own domain - a refurbished Greek temple in her own image complete with open-air pavilions and flowering gardens that were somehow melded into a multi-story western extravaganza of a building to create an end result that would have made any mortal with clear enough sight to see it have a stroke trying to comprehend how any of it fit together.

Hestia didn't care all that much for all that she had shaped herself. She'd have much prepared to raise her child on Olympus, but with the current situation being what it was and Zeus being... well, Zeus, she'd had to settle for the next best thing.

Still, it was undeniably a bit...much.

"Oh, well. It'll have to do. At least we'll never lack for luxury, will we?" Hestia cooed at Dai as he roused in her arms, warm brown eyes flickering with infantile curiosity. "Though I fear we'll have to be careful, or soon we'll find you spoiled silly ."

Dai blinked some more and gurgled in response, and Hestia smiled.

Yes, it wasn't her favored choice, but it would do nicely all the same.

....
​

Years passed - sort of.

After thousands and thousands of years of the Mist warping the concept of it inside within its confines, time itself acted strangely in the domain of the lotus eaters, its flow far less defined and more open to interference, a fact that Hestia abused maliciously.

As a goddess, the quietly malevolent allure of the Hotel failed to ensnare her mind - in reality, it couldn't affect her at all - and with a not-inconsiderable application of her power, she succeded in twisting the rules and flipping the script just so - at her command, time would travel through the little domain she'd carved in the Lotus far more swiftly than it would in the outside world.

Just by willing it, she made it so, and just like that a year for her and Dai was stretched to little past a decade.

It was the ruinously powerful application of the mist, but well within her capabilities and well worth the cost - The perks of bieng an Elder Olympian, throne or no.

...
​

Dai's formative years were... interesting, to say the least.

With the both of them effectively cut off from the rest of the world, such that even her brethren could not interfere with her affairs save perhaps for Artemis - and she wouldn't, their agreement had been clear - Hestia had all time and attention to devote to her son and she took to the experience like a duck to water.

Or at least she hoped she did - she had never raised a child of her own, and her only personal experience with parenting came from Kronos.

She grimaced in distaste - The less said about that ancient, miserable debacle, the better.

In every her endeavor was new, and by new, she meant unprecedented, even by the standards of other gods.

Especially the standards of other gods.

None had ever spared their demigod children a tenth the time Hestia intended to devote to Dai and their divine heirs were no better, growing and coming into their own far too quickly to count.

But that was beside the point,

Dai, whatever he was - for she knew with certainty he was certainly no ordinary demigod or godling - grew quickly, from a mewling infant to ungainly toddler and then into a remarkably precocious child in exceedingly short order.

She reared him with all the love and affection she had to offer, cloaked him in her blessing and held him close as he grew - Everything she wished her family would set aside their pride for and embrace, she offered him freely.

And he offered back, unknowingly and with everything he had, returning her love and affection with a kind of pure innocence that only an unjaded child could truly muster in this day and age - in any day and age, truly - and somehow, she loved him all the more for it.

And what a dangerous thing that is, a part of her whispered, the love of a goddess freely given.

She ignored it, time passed swiftly.

Or perhaps it just seemed that way - Six years was nothing to Hestia, she had thousands under her belt, but where before they would have been akin to minutes, now she felt them pass her by as less than fleeting seconds.

Rationality, she knew that was the sentiment taking hold - the attachment to mortals that so often ended messily when gods became involved - but rationality truly had no hold on her when it came to the boy she so quickly learned to love.

And wasn't that a terrifying thought?

"You'll leave?"

Dai's voice drew her from her musings, and her attention shifted back to her son.

Her son who was looking up at her with wide, startled eyes, shoulders slumped and lips wobbling, his crayons forgotten - he'd taken to drawing the oddest things, her child - and his tone ringing with uncertain sadness.

"Not now." She promised as she kneeled before him and drew him close "Not for a very long time."

Belatedly, she realized that perhaps telling him that their relationship as he knew it had an expiration date was not the wisest of choices. A mistake, in hindsight, one that she hadn't anticipated until she'd blundered into it.

Dai knew that she was a goddess, she had never hidden herself from him. He knew that he was a demigod - technically a half-truth she perpetuated for simplicity's sake - and that he would one day be a hero (That, she could not stop. She'd already exhausted all the leeway she would get simply by raising him). She'd all but reared him on the stories of the demigods of old to acclimatize him to the idea.

(And to prevent him from ending up like a great many of them - dead, and often in exceedingly, suicidally stupid ways. What that idiot Theseus had been thinking-)

But she'd overshared - he was still young, too young for all that he was so intelligent. As quickwitted as any child of Athena, but he had no experaince to temper that knowledge. All the stories she'd told him were just that - stories, ideas, and concepts that must have seemed so very vague and far away in his mind's eye.

Her being ached as she took in the look of burgeoning devastation on his features.

"I am a godess, my son." She grasped his shoulder and tilted his chin up with her free hand. "One day, I will have to return to my duties."

"The Hearth," he mumbled lowly.

"Yes, among others." She agreed sadly.

"I won't see you again?"

"Not as freely and not as often as you do now," She agreed - the amount of maneuvering she'd have to pull to manage that would border on the obscene "But once you've trained and become a hero worthy of legend, as I knew you will, you'll be able to see me plenty - and no matter what, I will always listen for your calls. This I swear on the river Styx."

The mist surrounding them rippled as she swore the primordial oath, and Dai's features scrunched - He'd likely felt that.

Her son had always had a strange relationship with the mist, a little too in tune with its flow even beyond what she'd expected of him. He recognized that Hestia had done something, even if he was far too young to understand its sheer weight.

Finally, after an age, he shook his head.

"But you won't go now?"

"No." She reassured him again. "Not for many years yet."

"Okay. That's good." He tilted his head in thought, and then he raised his hands. "Hug?"

Hestia smiled and pulled him close.

"Always."

"I love you mama."

Her breath caught in her chest.

"... and I love you, my child." She tightened her grip on him. "Now and forever."

Truly, this was so very new.

And all the more special for it.

...
​

More time passed.

Dai grew, and grew, and grew, and they passed the years making the most of the time they had - Hestia consciously savored it for all that it was worth, knowing that it had an expiration date that was drawing ever closer.

And then one day, out of the blue, reality came calling

"Mom?" Dai came up to her and drew her attention from the script she had been perusing "I want a friend."

That drew her up short.

"A friend?"

"Mhmhm." He nodded seriously. "Heroes should have friends. It's important."

She felt her lips twitch in amusement despite herself.

"Oh? Is that right?"

"Yes. It's important, because-" He cut himself off suddenly and frowned, expression twisting in concentration.

Hestia raised an eyebrow. "Because-?"

"...I dunno." Dai looked lost for a moment, but then he shrugged and beamed. "But I know it's important. I want to go make a friend. Over there."

And then he pointed to the partition - a layer of condensed Mist that separated their wing of the Lotus Hotel from the rest of it.

Hestia frowned.

That wasn't the first time Dai had asked to explore the Lotus - in truth, it was a weekly occurrence. That was, however, the first time she considered granting the request.

She'd prevented it beforehand because it would have borne no truth - the hotel was ultimately a prison, its residents prisoners. Dai would gain nothing from them she couldn't grant him herself, assuming he could even draw their attention from the nearing influence of the Lotus's mists.

Now though, he was, by her estimates nearly ten years old. The time for their little life in this home-away-from-home would soon come to a close, and she'd have to return to Olympus with due haste.

Better that her son finally began acclimatizing to people, even if his best efforts were unlikely to bear any fruit. If nothing else, this would be good training - Hestia was quite curious to see if he could overcome the Lotus compulsion without her influence shielding him from the worst of it.

"Very well then." She pulled him close, pressed her lips to his forehead, and sent him on his merry, ecstatic way.

Even had he achieved nothing of value, just seeing that look of delirious excitement on his face would have been well worth the hassle.

Except, he did achieve something.

Really, she should have seen it coming - she'd known right from the beginning that her son was something inarguably special and that fate would have much in store for him, and she'd never received greater proof than when he returned, dragging two mortal children behind him by the arm and somehow pulling them into their wing - despite her protections theoretically rendering such action effectively impossible.

"Look, mom!" Dai grinned and pulled the duo - a boy seemingly about his age and a girl perhaps a couple of years older at most - and dragged them right up to her. "I made friends!"

"I see-"

And then the Goddess of the Hearth all but choked on her next words, because she reached for the children with her sense, intending to brush against their minds and learn of what had caught her son's interest so, and she just knew.

"Oh, Styx."

Fate had finally come into play.

(A child of the Eldest gods - that meant her, too, didn't it?)

Her whisper went unheard - Dai was still chattering a mile a minute.

"This is Nico, and this is Bianca! They're my friends - we're going to go on so many adventures and fight monsters and-"

He kept talking, gesturing at the duo excitedly, and they shrank back shyly as her eyes looked from him to them to him again.

"Oh, Dai." She breathed, and this time her tone must have caught his attention because he finally paused and started at her funny. The children just shrunk further in on themselves at the odd silence. "My sweet child, what in Zeus's name am I going to do with you?"

...

The silence stretched as Dai tilted his head and frowned, clearly putting a lot of thought into the entirely rhetorical question.

And then he shrugged.

"Dunno." He smiled up at her, all sunshine and rainbows, and raised his hands up in askance. "Hug?"

...
​

Years later/Months later - Camp Half-Blood:

Chiron tore through the grounds of Camp Half-Blood, bow drawn and first arrow knocked as he shot towards the boundaries of the camp.

The last few months had not been kind to them - Percy Jackson had retrieved Zeus's master bolt and defused the threat of war among the Olympians, but the euphoric peace was quickly shattered by Luke Castellan's betrayal.

The entire camp had been on edge for months, and so when the alarms started ringing and calls to arms were raised in response to an honest-to-gods explosion going off at the camp's border, Chrion had tarried only long enough to call the campers into action before he launched himself towards the source of the commotion.

At last he crested the hill, arrow at the ready -

"Nico, you idiot!"

- and froze as he took in the scene laid out before him.

There was Argus, his many eyes head off security - looking angry, furious even... and more than a little singed, a victim of the explosion no doubt.

Facing him down was a pair of children - literal children.

A boy in black jeans and a hoodie, olive-skinned and shaggy-haired, brandishing a gleaming celestial bronze dagger and looking to be no more than twelve years old.

To lift was another child, the same age he'd wager, and something about him drew Chiron's focus immediately -fair skin, dark hair, brown eyes, and a genuine circlet of what had to be celestial bronze on his head, plain save for the greek scrawls etched onto the band and the single ruby at its center, flush against his forehead.

"-I told you, Mom said that Argus worked for camp-half-blood - he's head of security!"

"I know!" The other boy - Nico, apparently - snapped right back at him "He scared me okay? You try and stay calm when a dude covered in friggin eyes comes at you outta nowhere-!"

The boy hesitated and flickered his gaze back to Argus.

"Er - no offense?"

Argus growled lowly, and the other boy winced.

"Great. Now you've made him mad!"

"I'm not the one who launched a fireball at him!"

"I didn't mean to, I'm still new at his magic stuff! You're the one who tried to stab-!"

And then the boy seemed to finally catch sight of him because he cut off entirely and turned to face him.

"Chiron!"

The centaur blinked.

That had been positively cheerful - hardly the common response to having a knocked arrow pointed your way.

"Pardon me?" He smiled - in for penny, and all that - "I don't believe we've met?"

"We haven't!" the boy agreed, and goodness - that level of enthusiasm was almost staggering. Assuming he wasn't a monster in disguise, Chrion was already betting on him being a child of Hermes. "But I know you! You're the trainer of heroes! I've been waiting to meet you forever!"

Oh? What's this now?

"Then perhaps introductions are in order, Mr?" He trailed off, and the boy beamed and put his hands on his hips

"I'm Dai-"

"-And I'm Nico-" His friend cut in

"We're both demigods-"

Dai grinned, and the pair of them finished in sync

"-And we're here to heroes!

...

It took millennia of effort not to let his disbelief show - or his amusement, because gods, it had been a good long while since something had pushed him to the edge of incredulous laughter.

Gods.

"I see." Chiron nodded agreeably and lowered the bow - but kept in knocked, just in case. "Then I suppose you didn't intend to attack our dear Argus-"

The man growled again

-here?"

The boys blinked and shook their heads, also in tandem, and then Dai stepped forward - presumably to speak.

He didn't make it that far before a third voice derailed his attempt.

"You idiots!"

Dai and Nico had just enough time to exchange a panicked look before the girl who'd been stomping her way toward them moved, throwing out both hands and seizing each boy by the ear.

"Owowow-!"

"Bianca, gerrof-!"

"You two are so dead. " The girl growled at them, tugging viciously even before she caught sight of him and her eyes went wide. "Oh - Hello, Mr Chiron!"

She bowed in greeting, hands still griping the boys and forcing them down with her.

"Bianca-!"

"I need that ear, Bia!"

"My name is Bianca Di Angelo." She smiled uneasily as she ingnored the duo and raised her head. "and I am so, so sorry about these idiots."

Chiron blinked at the sheer exasperation in her words and leaned back to take in the mess in front of him again.

Once. Twice. Three times.

Then he sighed and stepped back entirely, quietly signalling Argus to stand down.

This was going to be one of those days, wasn't it?

And that was the real beginning.

...​

Next time, we begin at the Sea Of Monsters

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it please be courteous.

 

[Firewillreign]

Hermes Cabin - Midnight:

It was about three and a half months after Dai arrived at Camp Half-blood, give or take a couple of days, when the longing to see his mother abruptly woke him up in the middle of the night and he promptly decided to do something reckless about it.

That's what Bianca would have called it, anyway - Actually, Dai thought that his spur-of-the-moment plan was pretty clever for something that he'd come up with in about five minutes and with a brain still half-drowsy with sleep, but eh.

Either way, he wasn't waking her up to ask - even if she wouldn't be liable to slap him upside the head for how many camp rules he was planning to break, the last time he and Nico had gotten the bright idea to wake Bianca from her sleep - a stupidly ill-advised prank involving a bucket of ice-water and a way, way over-inflated estimation of their ability to outrun the furious girl... well, it hadn't been pretty.

He shuddered.

Yikes.

It was probably just as well that she didn't share a room with them. With their luck, she'd wake up the second they set one foot outside and they'd really be in for it.

Quietly, he pulled the covers off him and slid off the edge of his mattress, creeping along the space between his and Nico's beds and reaching for the other boy.

"Psst. Nico?" Dai whispered as he grabbed his shoulder and shook him back and forth. "Nico? Wake up!"

His best friend evidently didn't appreciate his efforts - he groaned and rolled out of his reach, limbs stretching out lazily as if to shove Dai away and missing wildly. He just ended up flailing like a fish out of the water and trying to burrow under his covers, a feat that was apparently especially difficult to manage when the covers in question were pinned underneath ninety pounds of your own half-conscious, uncooperative bodyweight.

Who knew?

"Nico!" Dai redoubled his efforts, shaking him vigorously - hilarious as that had been to watch (seriously, what he wouldn't do for a camera - maybe Beckendrof could work something out for him?), he was on a schedule here! "Wake up!"

Finally, Nico stirred. He hissed like a cat when Dai poked him in the cheek for good measure and batted his hand away in frustration.

"What?"

"I need your help." Dai whispered lowly, leaning forward and smiling conspiratorially "I want to call Mom."

Nico blinked at him blearily, clearly processing and still half dead to the world.

"Auntie Hess?"

"Mmhm."

"How? She said we shouldn't use the-" Nico hesitated and tilted his head, trying to remember. "-rainbow goddess thingy?"

"Iris messaging?"

"That, yeah." Nico yawned and rolled back against his pillow, stretching out his arms with a pop. "She said we shouldn't use those to call her - lay low and be all sneaky for the year."

"I know, duh." Dai flicked him on the forehead and he hissed again and lobbed a pillow at his head. He sidestepped it easily. "But I have an idea and I can't do it without you - I need a lookout."

In theory, Dai could have managed without one, but he felt better about it if Nico had his back. Things just worked out more often that way.

Besides, it'd be like a mini-adventure!

"It's late." Nico's answering whine took the wind out of his sails - evidently, a lack of sleep yanked the dare-devil right out of him. "Can't this wait-"

"I can't do it during the day!"

"Do what?"

"You'll see - it's magic!" Dai grinned at the reluctantly curious look that comment earned him - almost there. "And besides, you have to help me - I helped you and Conner get those Ares kids with stink bombs-"

Nico sniggered at the memory - that had been fun, even if they still had to be on the lookout for payback shots every other day.

"-so you owe me." Dai paused, and another thought popped into his head that had his eyes gleaming. "And if you don't help..."

He trailed off leadingly, and Nico's eyes narrowed in sudden wary suspicion.

"What?"

"I'll tell Bianca what really happened to her favorite green scarf."

Nico's look of horror was priceless. Tartarus himself wouldn't have caused a reaction like that if he'd popped out of the ground right then and there and started break dancing.

"You wouldn't."

Dai smirked. "Try me."

...
​

Five minutes later, his plan was a go.

"I hate you." Nico scowled and whispered at him as they crept out the doors of Cabin Eleven, sticking to the shadows as they began the trek down the path to the dining pavilion. The moonlight gave them plenty of illumination to navigate with even as they inched along in the darkness - not that they needed it. Dai had never had trouble finding his way in poor lighting before and Nico and Bianca were pretty much bats in the dark anyway.

(He'd often wondered why that was - a blessing from his mom, maybe?)

"No you don't." Dai just beamed at his disgruntlement - blackmail really was a wonderful currency, if not a very heroic one. "Now hurry up - I don't want to get eaten by the cleaning harpys."

The reminder had Nico cursing with feeling and both of them started picking up the pace. Neither he nor Dai could decide whether or not any of those rumors were actually true, but neither one of them was willing to tempt fate any more than they already had. Dai had seen a cleaning harpy only once - he didn't know whether it had been Aello, Celaeno, or Ocypete - but just one look at those talons had been enough for a lifetime.

Eventually, they reached the dining pavilion.

It was probably his favorite spot in camp, really, built high on a hill that overlooked the sea, great columns rounding it and giving it an air of majesty. It reminded him of home - the temple that his mother had restructured their wing of the Lotus to look like.

The added nostalgia and longing for a place that probably didn't exist anymore just added fuel to his motivation, and the two of them hurriedly slipped between the columns and into the pavilion proper.

In here, was no roof to cover the mess hall, and torches blazed from the columns and lit up the space inside with a warm, orange glow. The tables were empty, devoid of anything but purple trim cloths, but Dai hadn't come here for food anyway.

Instead, his focus centered entirely on what lay at the heart of the pavilion, positioned an equal distance away from every table and burning with a low, but steady flame.

The campfire, burning merrily along in a low-placed brazier the size of a bathtub.

"Jackpot!" Dai grinned and dragged Nico over to it, who was giving him a side-eye.

"You're sure this is going to work, right?" He asked crossed his arms and tapped his foot impatiently. "Because it'd really suck if we did all this for nothing."

Dai elbowed him in the side in response.

"Trust me, that'll work. Mom tends to the flame in camp half-blood all the time, so just keep a lookout and let me do my thing. If this doesn't get her attention, nothing will."

Nico glared at him flatly.

"Dai, if this doesn't get her attention and it turns out you woke me up at midnight and risked us crossing the harpies for nothing, I will kill you."

Dai grinned cheerfully "If this doesn't work, the harpies will probably kill you."

"And I will drag you down to Hades with me!"

Gods, cranky much?

Rather than needle him again, Dai chose to take the high road and get on with it... right after sticking his tongue out at him and laughing at the look that got him.

Then he turned around, rolled his shoulders confidently, and hopped into the flames. The moment his feet hit the brazier, the flames surged and washed over him completely.

...​

"Mom?"

His voice echoed in the flames, and despite his earlier confidence, he felt a little silly.

Not about the flames part - no, he was a hundred and ten percent fireproof and had been for years, probably since birth even. His mother was the goddess of the hearth, and flames fell well within her domains by dint of association. Dai was still figuring out all the stuff he could do with it.

Honestly, sometimes he doubted people even understood just how awesome his mother was - Hestia was far more powerful than even most gods knew or willingly acknowledged, not that she particularly cared to correct their misconceptions.

His mom was cool like that.

But anyway, he was fireproof. Completely and utterly.

The flames tingled pleasantly against his skin and lapped at his clothes, but even they didn't catch fire.

Still, comforting as this was - the campfire thrummed with life and warmth beyond just the heat of ordinary flames, he could almost taste it - Dai still felt just a tad awkward, the sensation growing more pronounced as the minutes ticked by and nothing else happened.

He knew his mother visited this spot plenty of times a year, and that she often spent a great deal of time tending to the campfire by hand, a fact that most of the demigods at camp would have found inconceivable had he felt like sharing it.

He'd thought for sure that he'd be able to speak to her through these flames over any other - he'd never done anything like that before, sure, but he'd never needed to, and his instincts had pulsed in certainty when the idea came to him.

Following through on a random whim was probably a little foolish, maybe, and that probably rang doubly true for demigods in general, but it's not like there was a manual for this stuff - he was a child of the Hearth (and something more, not that he consciously knew it), the first to ever exist. Not even Hestia herself knew what he'd be capable of eventually, so why not try and find out?

"Mom?" He tried again, but nothing happened.

The flames crackled and the silence stretched on.

Dai frowned. He really hoped this hadn't been a waste of time. He's missed his mother.

(Also, Nico would be insufferable about it. He'd never let it go.)

More time passed - too much time, really.

He'd just about given up hope and slumped in defeat, readying himself for the march back to the cabin one when the flames... twisted, for lack of a better term, and his vision was suddenly filled with a dizzying array of colors.

He felt a change, a shift in the mist, layers and layers of the great veil that he'd been particularly attuned to since youth swirling around him furiously - it felt like he was standing in the middle of a tornado - and it stilled, just as abruptly as it had appeared.

"Dai."

Suddenly, his vision was his own again, a familiar voice ringing in his ears even as he blinked the spots of color out of his eyes and realized that he wasn't in the brazier anymore.

Instead, he was back home - his room in the Lotus with its towering arches and the walls filled with strange, colorful drawings and the floor littered with little the figurines that he and Nico zealously hoarded.

And his mother was standing right there, smiling softly as she took him in.

"My son."

"Mom!"

He threw himself at her, arms latching around her tightly, and he pretty much melted on the spot when she laughed and hugged him closer - the warmth from the flames was a pale imitation of the sensation that spread through him at the contact, heat sinking into his bones and safety wrapping around him like a cloak.

She ran her hand through his hair, and he sighed deeply - when he inhaled, the air carried the scent of grassy plains and smokey campfires and all manner of pleasant things.

"I missed you." He whispered, and he had - Camp half-blood was amazing, and finally being around more people than his mother and Bianca and Nico felt like visiting a whole new world ripe with adventure, but after three and a half months of absence his mother's hug effectively turned him into putty.

"And I you. I've longed to visit you, but I have hardly had the time to breathe on Olympus, let alone steal away camp."

"S'okay" He mumbled, finally breaking the hug and stepping back. "I'm just happy we could talk."

"Yes, about that." She raised an eyebrow, head tilting to one side in a familiar gesture - he did that when he was confused too. "I know you have nothing to fear from the flames, but what exactly possessed you to leap into the brazier wholesale?"

"Dunno. Wanted to see you." He shrugged and scratched his head abashedly. "Just felt right."

Hestia blinked for a long moment before tilting back and mirroring his shrug. "I suppose your connection to my domains must have given you an intuitive understanding of what you can and can't do. That's hardly uncommon among demigods."

Dai considered that for a minute, before nodding his head sagely. "Cool."

"Quite." She agreed, wryly amused, before reaching out and tugging him to her side. She raised her free hand and snapped her fingers with a loud click. Immediately, The mist shuddered, and two leather recliners appeared beside them, side by side.

"Come." She gestured. "Tell me about your days at camp."

Dai beamed and did just that, taking his seat and starting right from the beginning - How they'd made it to Camp after Hestia had dropped them off at the edge of the boundaries, how they'd met Chiron (Dai may have minimized his role in the famous Argus incident - there were no explosions and anyone who said otherwise was a liar), how they'd been settled into cabin one, as was expected of the unclaimed children of the gods.

"So you have not revealed your parentage to anyone," Hestia asked him and he paused, features scrunching confusion.

"No? I wasn't supposed to, right?"

Hestia had expressly forbidden it - He wasn't supposed to name her as his mother until she either claimed him publically or he returned from his first quest, whichever came first.

"No." She agreed, reaching out and brushing his hair. "It is not yet the right time - Dark forces are stirring, and Olympus is in disarray - to claim you now would bring about unnecessary chaos in times of strife and bring the Council's attention on you."

Dai frowned. "Would that be bad?"

"In these times? It is distressingly likely. The existence of a son of Poseidon has already... rocked the boat, so to speak, and now that the three of you are at camp and under Chiron's purview, other... problematic truths will soon come to light." Her eyes shifted in that way that meant she knew something he didn't, which wasn't unusual in and of itself but still left him feeling like he'd missed something. "Your uncle Zeus alone is not fond of dangerous surprises. More often than not they drive him to anger, and the anger of the thunder god is a terribly dangerous thing -to say nothing of the other gods who will be displeased by what they discover. I've laid the groundwork to unearth the truth, but it is yet an unstable path, and fraught with great risk."

That... that made sense, Dai decided, even if he knew he missing a lot of the picture and a good chunk of what wasn't missing still ended up flying over his head.

Too many missing pieces.

"So you can't claim me. Okay," He totaled it up and then blinked. "But what about Nico and Bianca - can't you tell them who their parent is yet?"

Hestia shook her head at once.

"No."

The vehemence in her tone almost had him rearing back in bewilderment, though the answer itself wasn't really all that surprising. He'd asked on a whim, but it looked like the original plan was still going.

Hestia had known Nico and Bianca were demigods from the moment they'd met - clocked them on the spot, actually, and just before she'd sent them off to camp, she'd promised to reveal the identity of their godly parent if they weren't claimed in a year.

"I swear it on the River Styx" She'd proclaimed solemnly, and all three of them had stared with wide eyes as they felt the sheer weight behind the proclamation settle around them - not even the gods themselves could freely make or break an oath involving that particular primordial, not if they intended wanted unscathed.

That had been scary. Impressive, yes, but Dai knew for a fact Nico and Bianca would have settled for a pinky swear instead, and why wouldn't they?

His mom would never lie, binding oath or not.

"I'm sorry, Dai." She smiled somewhat sadly, and his stomach twisted at the expression - he didn't much care for it. "I would reveal the truth and claim you in a heartbeat were it so simple, but-"

"I don't care." He cut her off and flushed as she raised an eyebrow. "I mean - I don't care about it if it makes things harder for you. You're my mom. I already know the truth and nothing's going to change that, so it doesn't matter if you can't claim me right now."

And that was the straight truth, too. He'd have liked to be able to tell the world about his parentage if only he could be smug about how awesome his mother was, but it's not like he was in a hurry.

Dai had nothing to prove.

"You're my mom." He repeated again and smiled. "And you love me. That's all I care about. I don't need to be claimed in front of everyone else to know that."

...

"You are a gift." Hestia breathed, sounding something close to reverence, and Dai's skin went crimson.

"Mom!" He complained, pleased and oddly embarrassed, and the goddess took pity on him.

"Come now." She shifted in place and leaned forward. "We still have some time left to us - tell me what else you've been up to."

They passed the rest of their time like that, and Dai didn't think that he stopped to breathe more than four or five times in the next gods-knew how many minutes as he regaled her with pretty much everything else.

His new friends - The Stoll brothers and their prank war against the Ares Cabin (it started with a girl called Clarrisa or something and one particularly nasty swirly and it just snowballed on from there), Charlie Beckendroff, Michel Yew (Though really, he only liked him and Nico because they made the Ares campers miserable), Pollux and Castor and all the others.

It's not until he mentions their vendetta against the children of Ares for the third time that his mom finally interrupts him with a curious look.

"Dai, why does it sound like you and Nico have started a war against your fellow campers?"

Dai paused, thought about it a bit, and coughed sheepishly.

"We... uh.. kind of did?"

...​

A few months ago:

It started with a sword.

Demigods didn't tend to last long without a weapon of their own, and even in camp all but the most inexperienced campers walked around without a celestial bronze armament of some kind.

Now Dai and the Di Angelo duo had celestial bronze daggers - courtesy of Hestia - but none of them were all that experienced in using them and Dai himself just flat out didn't like using his.

It was strange - the blade had been a gift from his mom, and that made it special to him - but every time he drew it from its sheath he was struck by a pervading sense of wrongness. It felt as though something had woken up at the back of his mind and started shaking its head judgementally.

This is not my weapon.

He mentioned it to Chiron, and the trainer of heroes had just given him an odd look. He did that a lot actually - Dai got the sense that that the wily olf centaur didn't really believe their story about being ordinary demigods, even though the three of them had pulled out all the stops to convince him. They liked him well enough and he seemed plenty fond of them too, but every once in a while he'd look at Dai and hesitate, as though he wanted to say or do something important but changed his mind at the very last second.

Or maybe it was just Dai who was being weird - no one else seemed to notice anything odd, not even Nico and Bianca themselves.

In the end, Chiron had just reassured him that nothing was wrong and sent him off to the weapons shed with Pollux.

"We've never really had a shortage of weapons." The son of Dionysus had told his new friend, amused as Dai turned wide eyes on the rows and rows of gleaming bronze weaponry. "Maybe the camp did way back then, but these days there just aren't enough demigods to go around, and the ones we do have don't really last-"

And then Pollux had hesitated, scowled, and rather abruptly switched tracks.

"Just pick a weapon, dude. Whatever one you want, but do it fast. Everything here works on finders keepers and if someone picks up something you wanted before you've had a chance to claim it, then it's theirs, fair and square. Got it?"

"Yeah!"

It had seemed really simple too - and Dai had spent an entire day trying out every kind of sword, spear, axe, bow, and even a warhammer that had been left in the shed, unable to shake the unpleasant sense of wrongness, and he realized that picking out a weapon was going to be much harder than he thought.

In the end, he settled on a plain-looking blade with a worn leather grip and not meant much else to its name - Chiron had called it a Xiphos when he'd excitedly shown it to him, a double-edged, one-handed greek short sword.

Mind you, it still didn't feel like a good fit, but Dai needed a weapon rather desperately and this one at least felt bearable, not like others - those would have been pretty much impossible to use, so he settled.

Moving on now. Things happened, stuff went down, and all was well and good in the world... for about a day before the real mess started.

Dai and Nico had gone down to the training grounds with Travis and Pollux - neither of them had really had much solid practice for combat, and Dai wanted to at least get an idea on how to swing his sword without taking off someone's head (or his own) by the time the next game of inter-cabin capture the flag rolled around - Those were apparently legendary, and he and Nico were dying to get take part.

Sweet Olympus, even Bianca had gotten roped herself in with some of her new friends and wandered off to train in preparation - she was a quick hand with a spear she'd picked out herself.

Anyway, Dai'd been sparring with Pollux, getting a feel for his new sword and adapting with surprising grace (the sword was all wrong, but the movements came to him as natural as breathing. That was weird, right?) when a bunch of Ares kids had stalked onto the training grounds, with a particularly large, muscular and rough-looking at the lead.

His name turned out to be Sherman Yang, and he wasted no time getting on Dai's bad side - and, considering Dai didn't have a bad side until that afternoon, that was a feat.

"Stollt, you little turd!" Sherman's voice was deep and grating as he bellowed, the words so loud a flock of birds on the other end of the pitch took off in a startled frenzy. "I'm going to feed you so much dirt you'll be half dryad by the time I'm done with you!"

For his part, Travis had been doing his best to look unconcerned as Sherman stomped over to him, but Dai could see that he'd paled and looked half a second away from bolting.

Something twisted inside of him at that look - Travis was his friend.

No one should scare his friends like that.

He was moving to block Sherman before he was consciously aware of it, really, but Pollux beat him to it as he neatly stepped into the enraged son of Ares's path.

"First of all, Dryad's are female." Pollux corrected him dryly, posture loose and weary and utterly unbothered by Sherman's acidic glare. "Satyr's are the male counterparts, so you'd be better off feeding him goats instead of dirt - I don't think it'll work, mind you, but crazier things have happened, and at least you'll be getting your terms straight.

Sherman blinked, considered that for about half a second - a new record, really - and promptly redoubled his glare.

"Get the hades out of my way, grape-fruit." He seethed, glaring over Pollux's shoulder at Travis. "He's a dead man."

Dai's scowl darkened, but Pollux still looked unbothered even as he continued blocking Sherman's attempts to get around him. The rest of the Ares campers didn't move either, seemingly content to let things play out.

"Calling the son of Dionysus a grape-fruit? How original." Pollux deadpanned and leaned to the side when Sherman tried to side-step him again. "Also, no. You're a big boy, Yang, use your words. You're not doing the stereotypes on you Ares kids being dumb brutes any favors right now."

For a moment there, Dai had been sure that Sherman was going to try and deck Pollux in the face, and he'd been ready to charge - but the son of Ares actually stunned everyone watching when he stepped back, his siblings included.

"Him and his brother" Sherman spat the word out like it was something foul, and Travis's expression flickered from hidden worry to a scowl right away. "Spray-painted my cabin's supply chariots. All of them."

Polux blinked. "Well-"

Sherman growled "In. Bright. Pink."

"No, we didn't!" Travis yelled angrily, before - and Dai had to admit this next part was entirely stupid and entirely on him - he smirked. "And you can't prove a damn thing, you great ugly gorilla."

...

There was a pause, and then Pollux sighed.

"Why do I even bother-?"

"You're dead!"

Sherman shot past Pollux - his friend tried to intercept again, but this time the son of Ares barreled shoulder-checked his way past him, and for all that Pollux was skilled and had honed his reflexes to a sharp point, Sherman had him soundly beat in the strength department.

His friend went sprawling, the air knocked out of him as he landed roughly, and he was just about to tackle Travis when a lot of things happened at once.

First, Travis yelped and threw himself to the side, self-preservation a much-valued trait in the son of Hermes. Unfortunately, his quick footing was just a tad unsteady this time and he tripped, toppling backward with a yell.

Sherman moved to take advantage of this, gleeful at the opportunity and just about ready to launch himself on top of Travis - the better to pummel the life out of him - when Dai, who was consumed by a burst of indignant outrage at the attack on two of his friends decided to acquaint himself with Sherman by way of his furious bullrush.

It shouldn't have done all that much - Dai was both a head and half shorter than Sherman and he weighed that much less than him, but the son of Ares still went flying with a bewildered yell as Dai side-tackled them and drove them both into the ground.

The Ares campers started jeering - they loved a good fight, no matter the expense - and Travis started cackling like a madman.

Pollux had just sighed again looked so done with everything.

"You little brat."

Dai had been ready to apologize - it never hurt to be nice, he knew that on instinct - but Sherman had shoved him off him roughly and shot to his feet, looking ready to fight and Dai's hackles had gone right back up again.

"Your mean." Dai decided right then then and there. "I don't like you."

Sherman snorted.

"Oh, no. I'm going to cry." His eyes lit up when he saw the way Dai's hand had curled around his new sword's hilt, an unconscious act he hadn't even been aware of (seriously, it was like he'd moved on autopilot) until Sherman started crowing. "Oh, this is precious. You wanna fight, you little punk?"

"Sherman," Pollux called out, and this time his voice had gotten just a bit colder. "Lay off, now."

"Shut it, grape-fruit. I'm just giving the kid what he asked for." Sherman grinned and gestured to one of his siblings, who promptly tossed him their spear. "

Even Travis stepped back in then, looking furious all of a sudden.

"Picking on the newbie, really? That's just pathetic."

"Oh, you'll get yours too, Stoll, right after I teach pipsqueak here some manner." He gestured again, and the rest of the Ares cabin campers suddenly broke out, circling Travis and Pollux but doing nothing else.

Trapping them, Dai realized, and now he was getting really angry. There was a strange sensation pulling at him now, like his anger was suddenly gaining a will of its own and pulling at his gut.

Acting on sudden instinct, he drew his sword from his sheath and held it out at an angle in front of him, locking his knees in a perfect pose and securing his sword with a picture-perfect double grip.

(Later, he'd wonder about how he'd managed that when he'd never even held a real sword before.)

"I really don't like you." Dai announced, narrowing his eyes at Sherman and readying himself for the first real fight of his life. "Travis pranked you, but you're just nasty."

"Oh, I'm not just nasty, pipsqueak," Sherman informed him darkly, looking smug and assured at what he thought was an inevitable victory. "And you're about to like me a whole lot less."

Arrogant, a part of Dai whispered.

"Arrogant," Dai repeated out loud and crouched just a bit lower.

"We'll see." Sherman grinned meanly one final time before he leaped for him with his spear and a bellowing war cry, his charge textbook open and entirely dismissive of anything he thought Dai could do to him.

And Dai, who had never fought anyone before, recognized the openings for what they were and moved.

...​

Present time:

His mom blinked, opened her mouth, and then closed it again.

Dai just rubbed the back of his head nervously and smiled.

"You..." She finally found her words. "You won."

"Yeah."

"You beat a trained camper, a son of Ares, even though you've never once been in a real battle."

He grinned "Uh huh. It was easy"

And it really had been, which no doubt infuriated Sherman that much more - Dai didn't know how he'd done, but he'd wiped the floor with the other boy, so much so that he'd ended up cleaving his spear shaft in two halfway through the match and pinning his sword an inch away from his throat.

In about five moves.

Pollux had been left gaping, Travis had laughed so hard he'd been a wheezing mess by the end of it, and one look at Sherman's shell-shocked, apocalyptic expression had made it clear that he'd just made his first enemy and subsequently started a payback war against half the Ares cabin in one go, and in less than a single conversation too.

That had to be some kind of record, right?

"That's incredible, Dai." There was an odd gleam in her eyes. "And odd. Very odd. How ever did you manage it?"

"I don't know." Dai frowned. "I thought it came from you? A blessing or something?"

That's what he'd convinced himself of, anyway, but his mom wasted no time shaking her head in firm denial.

"My domains are powerful, Dai, and more expansive than many know, but they don't encompass swordplay. Nothing you got from me could have granted you intuitive mastery over any weapon, which means-"

She cut herself off, and Dai frowned.

"Which means what?"

She let the silence drag on for a long minute before shaking her head.
"Nothing certain, not as of yet. You say you've been having strange sensations? Urges, impulses, may gut instincts you can't explain?"

"Nothing except the fight and my sword." He frowned harder as he remembered the sensation. "It felt like no matter what weapon picked up, they were all wrong. Like all the choices were only bad or worse, and the right one was out of my reach."

"...Interesting." She whispered at last. "Very interesting."

Dai would have asked her what she was thinking, but he had a feeling that she wouldn't tell him just yet. Call it another gut instinct.

So he stopped himself from asking and waited for her to gather her thoughts.

It didn't take long.

"One last matter, before I send you back. Tell me about Dionysus."

That took Dai by surprise.

"You mean Mr. D?"

His mom nodded. "Have you spoken?"

"Once, a bit I guess?" He thought back, remembering the experience. And yeah, now that he was thinking about it, that had been a little memorable. "He looked at me funny."

"Oh?"

He nodded. "It was right after we arrived. Chiron gave us the orientation tour, and we saw him in the Big House. Nico and Bianca said hello, but he ignored them - Then I tried to say hello, and he kind of just stared at me?"

It had been weird - maybe the weirdest thing he'd experienced in Camp yet. The god's gaze had been nothing like his mother's - abruptly sharp and deep, and the flames that flickered to life at the edges of his eyes were neither pleasant nor warm. They'd been purple, and they crackled with power and a promise of something a great deal more intimidating.

Madness.

And then the strange moment passed, and Mr. D snorted and waved him off.

"He called me Doug." Dai remembered with some disgruntlement. "Doug. That doesn't even sound like Dai!"

Hestia snorted. "Don't give it much thought. Dionysus has his... quirks, as do all the gods. I'm more curious about his focus on you... It's likely he suspects what you are."

Whoah.

He reared back in shock "Really? I didn't say anything!"

"I didn't think you had. Dionysus and I have an... odd relationship" She paused, clearly considering her next words. "You remember the story? How I gave up my throne for him"

Dai nodded in remembrance. "You stepped down so there wouldn't be war, and he became a ruling Olympian in your place."

He didn't really care for that story - it seemed pretty unfair to him - but his mom was happy and so he didn't bother thinking about it all that much either.

"Indeed." Hestia agreed. "And for centuries after that, Dionysus kept a very close eye on me - I think he suspected that I might one day resent his ascension and seek retribution for my lost throne. When at last he was convinced that I meant him no harm, we became friends. Good friends, even. He's quite in tune with my power, and as my son you're all but dripping with it. I'd be very surprised if he didn't recognize it for what it was and what it means."

"Oh." Dai paused. "Is that a bad thing? Will he tell?"

"I doubt it." Hestia shrugged. "Like I said, we are friends. Though I suspect I'll be facing some very pointed questions the next time I drop by the camp. Nothing to be worried about."

Dai was about to ask if she was sure, but Nico's voice of all things headed him off.

"Dai? Dai, I think we're about to get caught! Hurry up!"

"Nico's here too?" Dai spun around, but his friend didn't pop up out of nowhere as he'd been half-expecting.

"No, and neither are you."

"What?"

"This isn't your room in the Lotus, but a representation of it. You're still in the brazier at camp, and I'm still on Olympus" Hestia explained gently " Your connection to me through the flames allowed me to pull your mind across the mist and meet it halfway - a waking dream of sorts, in the simplest terms. In a moment I'll let you go, and you'll return to your own body whole and hale."

"That's awesome." Dai grinned. "Can I do that too? With others, I mean?"

"Perhaps, but I suspect it'll be exponentially more difficult - your friends and allies won't be me and they won't have a connection to the hearth, not as you do." Hestia reached for him one final time and brushed his hair back from his face. "But you never know - there'll probably be a great many more things you can achieve with your powers. More than even I could begin to guess at - You are my first and last child, and you are unique for it. Don't limit yourself - explore your powers and hone them, You're going to need them very soon."

Dai froze at her abrupt change of tone, and his eyes flickered to her own suddenly weary gaze.

"Mom?"

"I've told you before - these are dark times. Great dangers are brewing, and you'll have to be prepared because they'll be at your doorstep any day now."

She reached forward and hugged him suddenly.

"Watch yourself. Watch your friends." She whispered suddenly, and Dai was struck with a bad sense of foreboding. "And be ready."

"Mom." He hugged her quickly - and a little desperately too. "Are you sure everything is okay?"

He was worried - more worried than he'd ever been, actually, and for once his mother's presence wasn't doing all that much to change it.

What's wrong?

"With some luck and the blessings of the fates, all will be well," Hestia promised, and her eyes flickered to the side, as though she was seeing something he couldn't. "I'm needed, Dai. It's time for you to go back. Say hello to Bianca and Nico for me."

"I will," Dai promised, and then he hesitated. "Will I see you again soon?"

His worry had yet to dispel.

"Soon." Hestia agreed, and this time the warmth and the firmness of her words put him at rest. "Sooner than you think, even. Until then, be prepared. You still have your circlet?"

"Yeah. I left it under my pillow."

"Good. Do not leave camp without it."

"Sure." Then the words registered and he did a double-take. "Wait, why would I leave-?"

But his mom had already snapped her fingers, and the world dissolved into swirling Mist and far too many colors.

...​

"Dai!"

He blinked. He was back in the brazier.

"Dai!"

"I'm here." He hopped out of the flames and brushed his shirt. "Mom say hi."

Nico's eyes flickered to the flames. "Hi, Aunt Hess. Bye Aunt Hess!"

Then he seized Dai by the shirt and bolted, dragging him across the pavilion.

"Nico, let go!" Dai scowled. "I can run on my own and you're ruining my shirt!"

"Then run right-!" Nico started to hiss, and then he froze when a loud screech cut over him and froze them both.

"Demigods out of bed!" The cackling voice called, and the air around them started shifting unnaturally. "A midnight snack, all for me!"

Oh, gods.

The harpies.

Nico and Dai exchanged a look of pure, unmitigated terror, annoyance completely forgotten

And then they turned and high-tailed it out the pavilion so fast they may as well have been flying.

...​

Somehow, neither of them got eaten, and they woke up the next day right and drowsy.

Nico stole Dai's last pack of sour candy - Travis had gotten him several bags as a thank-you for beating Sherman - and Dai let him have it. He really did deserve it after last night.

For a while, his mother's warning echoed in his ears.

Be prepared, she had said

Prepared for what?

He didn't know, and as camp life moved on, pleasant and bright and full of so much stuff he'd only ever dreamed of doing, he quickly forgot.

Life moved on. He trained, he learned, he pranked Ares campers and got lectured by Bianca, and the three of them made friends and grew and had the most interesting five months of any of their lives bar none.

And then reality came back with a vengeance the day Chrion called emergency counselors meeting out of the blue, and the news spread through the camp like wildfire.

The barriers that protected the camp were failing.

Thalia's tree had been poisoned.

...​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

 

[Firewillreign]

Nico popped a strawberry in his mouth and bit into it with a pleasant crunch.

Then a hand caught him upside the head and he half choked, half spit out the chewed-up fruit (gross) in startled shock.

"Dude!" He glared over his shoulder, where Pollux stood giving him an unimpressed and totally unrepentant look. "I just took one!"

"You're not the one who has to listen to the lecture if one of the nymphs catches you picking out fruit without express permission." The son of Dionysus retorted heatedly and crossed his arms. "And if you have to, at least wash it before you go putting it in your mouth. Do you have any idea what we use for fertilizer here? Cause I can tell you this much - it does the job, but it sure as hades isn't pretty."

"What? …Oh."

Nico paled when the implication settled in and Dai started out and out cackling.

"Nico, listen to Pollux. Dai, be nice." Bianca admonished, but no one was buying it - her lips kept twitching and she couldn't stop her shoulders from shaking in mirth.

"I am." Dai grinned, ignoring the sound of Nico's intermittent gagging. Such a drama queen. "I'm helping out. It's not my fault if Nico likes to eat-"

"Finish that sentence. See what happens!"

Dai just kept laughing, and Pollux sighed in exasperation as he turned to another strawberry bush.

"You're all idiots and I regret asking for your help." He paused. "Not you, Bianca. You're okay."

"Thank you." She said primly.

"Suck up."

Her eyes flashed immediately and she whirled on the spot. "Nico, I swear-!"

Ignoring the squabbling Di Angelo's, Dai exchanged a look with Pollux, the other boy seemingly amused despite his best efforts.

"Never mind. Like cats and dogs all of you, I swear to dad..." He muttered lowly under his breath, hands reaching out to touch the plants. Dai watched in rapt fascination as his hands brushed against them and immediately lit up with a dull but steady purple glow - the power of Dionysus. Slowly but visibly, the strawberry runners (calling them branches had earned him a half-hour talking-to from a particularly irate dryad and a glare so nasty it could have fermented wine all on its own) began to shudder and writhe, and then they were blooming impossibly quickly, green unripe fruit swelling and gaining color and luster by the second as the purple light appeared to seep into them.

In no time at all, the runners were heavy with fruit - entire buckets worth of gleaming red strawberry, healthy and whole and more than a little mouth-watering.

Nico's temptation was pretty justified.

"That's so cool." Dai breathed

"Eh. It's nothing much." Still, he wasn't fooling anyone, not with the way his features kept curving in happy satisfaction.

Ordinary demigods ordinarily didn't help out with the camp's strawberry farms. Heck, most were expressly forbidden from setting foot anywhere near them something about the nature spirits who typically ran things threatening to revolt after a mess with a child of Hephaestus and a faulty cache of Greek fire a few decades back.

Pollux and his brother Castor along with any of the campers from cabin 4 were the very few typically granted an exception - children of Dionysus and Demeter respectively. Their innate powers and the way those translated to dealing with plant life were just too good to pass up.

Still, none of them bar Pollux were technically allowed to be there, but after weapons practice and slogging through one of Chiron's heroics 101 lectures (Alternatively titled - how to not die stupidly painful and painfully stupid deaths) none of them had anything better to do and Pollux had managed to get them in with him. Barring a few suspicious looks from the dryads and the various nature spirits that flitted past them, no one had bothered doing anything else. Pollux's word was golden - That, or maybe it was just that no one was willing to question the son of the god of wine when said deity happened to be the current, whimsical, and easily irritable camp director with a historically proven track record of transforming people who irritated him into various animate or inanimate objects depending on his mood.

Could be either or, really.

Either way, it worked out for them - really it did, what with everything going on and the fact that Camp Half-blood had undoubtedly changed.

It had only been a week since the poisoning of Thalia's tree had been discovered, but just as soon as the Apollo cabin's best healers and Chiron had failed to cure it, a nervous, tentative fear had begun to thread its way through camp. That had quickly devolved into a thinly veined and far too widespread panic when Mr. D himself had announced his inability to purge the poison the night after two-thirds of the campers had all but begged for his interference.

"Too old and too potent." Dionysus shrugged, seemingly bored with the resulting commotion and far more interested in pouring himself another coke. "And not my area of expertise anyway. Such a shame."

Despite the nonchalant delivery, though, Dai hadn't missed the way the god's eyes had flickered to cabin 12's dinner table - to Castor and Pollux. Sure he'd only caught the nearly imperceptible motion by luck more than anything else on account of the barely contained pandemonium that had erupted following that lovely dinner proclamation, but it had still been nice to see that the god wasn't as uncaring as he wanted them to think.

That was about the only good news, though, and even days later Chiron's best attempts to reign in the peace had done nothing to dispel the tension that seemed to trample the good cheer right out of camp.

Dai hated it

He understood why though - Thalia's tree protected them all, maintained the camp's nigh-impenetrable maagical barriers.

No tree, no barriers.

No barriers, and it wouldn't be long before it started raining monsters - the scent of so many half-bloods all conveniently grouped together would probably draw them in from halfway across the state.

He'd never fought a real monster, never even seen one outside of picture books and bedtime stories (and those had been plenty bad on their own), but a lot of the other campers had. The idea that camp-half-blood would no longer be protected from them, that they could maybe even attack in force…. well. That had to be all kinds of terrifying.

Still didn't make the paranoia everyone and their uncle was living through suck any less - Yesterday one of the newer unclaimed half-bloods over at Cabin Eleven had nearly gotten himself decapitated when he'd bumped into one of the older Hermes kids getting back from sword practice.

And the poor dude had only been looking for directions too.

"Has your dad said anything else?"

Dai hadn't meant to blurt the question out, but the way they all snapped their attention to him the second the words were out of his mouth meant didn't leave a lot of room to back out of it now."

"…Nope." Pollux finally answered, and quite grudgingly at that. He looked uncomfortable, but whether that was because of the question in itself or the answer was anyone's guess. "Dad doesn't really talk shop about camp stuff with us, and even when he does… it's all no good. They haven't figured anything out yet."

Bianca shook her head in confusion "I still don't understand it. How did this even happen?"

And wasn't that the multi-million drachma question?

"Same way it always does. The fates decided things weren't hard enough for us already and decided to stir the pot of crazy. Probably rolled dice to choose how badly to screw us over." He snorted wryly at Bianca's frown. "What do you think happened, Bianca? Some scumbag is out to get us and they poisoned the tree. End of story."

"But how would they even get into camp? Monsters aren't supposed to be able to cross the boundary."

Pollux scoffed.

"Yeah, so? Obviously, it was another half-blood."

He blinked at the startled looks that got him.

"Oh come on, seriously? How exactly is this a surprise? I know you guys have heard the rumors."

Dai frowned, but it was Nico who beat him to the punch.

"But that's crazy. Why would any demigod risk camp - there's nowhere else for them to go!"

"Beats me," Pollux grunted bluntly. "But my dad's the god of madness, so take it from me when I say that there's no limit to how nutty people will get. Especially when they think they've got a good reason. Last summer, a few months after you guys arrived, there was this camper. Luke Castellan, the son of Hermes"

Oh.

"The lightning thief," Dai remembered, and Pollux frowned again.

"That's right. Guess you heard the story?"

"Sure, my m-"

Dai cut himself off half a second before Bianca's expression twisted in panic and Nico's eyes went wide - damn it, he wasn't supposed to talk about Mom!

"-cabin-mate told me." He finished awkwardly, resisting the urge to wince when Pollux gave him an odd look

"…Right. Okay. Anyway, Luke was a great guy. Stayed here year-round since he was a kid, made friends with everybody, and was basically half the camp's defacto role model. Total goody-two-shoes, even the Ares kids liked him."

All three of them reared back in shock.

"What?"

"Heh. Well, like is a strong word I guess. But not one of them had a grudge against him outside of capture the flag and they only ever badmouthed him to his face, and that's about as close to an 'I love you' from the muscleheads as anyone's ever gotten." He shrugged. "Anyway, long story short, he ended up going complete psycho last year - stole Zeus's master bolt, Hades' helm of darkness, the frigging works. Then he capped it all off by trying to kill the dude he framed for both thefts and nearly managed it too before he just up and left."

"Percy Jackson." Dai finished slowly. "The son of Poseidon."

His cousin, who he hadn't yet met.

"Yep."

Then thought occurred and Dai blinked in the beginnings of realisation.

"Wait, do you think that Luke Castellan is the one who poisoned the tree?"

…

The moment of silence in the wake of that question stretched on, and Pollux slowly stood from where he'd been brushing the plants, dusting off his hands as he rose.

It made plenty of sense - the thief who committed heinous crimes against the gods and his fellow demigods vanishes, and then not even a year later the camp he betrays is attacked in what was probably the most horrifically efficient way anyone had managed in centuries, if not ever. You didn't have to be a child of Athena to make the connection.

"If he did." Pollux's voice was darker now, the undertone almost menacing. Dai almost flinched back at the first three words (son of the god of madness indeed.) "Then he's a bigger sack of shit than anyone here's given him credit for, and that's saying something."

"Don't repeat that word," Bianca whispered to Nico, who looked at her like she'd gone crazy.

"Seriously?"

"Deadly-"

"Okay, whatever," Dai waved a hand and signaled at them to cut it out. "What does that mean?"

Poisoning the tree, stealing from the gods… why would one be worse than the other? - bar the obvious reason of said gods nearly starting a cataclysmic world war in response. The way Pollux had worded it…. there was something deeper there, something more personal.

Something that made Luke's (alleged) attack that much worse.

"Just… old history." Pollux pinched the bridge of his nose. "Rumours and old stories about the way Luke and Annabeth - Daughter of Athena, you'll see her around soon - came to camp. I'm not going to get into it now, but the way it ended was ugly. Ancient Greek hero style ugly. "

And given the ancient heroes' track records with endings - Hercules, Orpheus, Jason, and all the rest of them…

Yeah. Yeesh.

Dai swallowed, throat suddenly a little parched. "That bad?"

"About a solid six out of ten, minimum."

"That's bad."

"Oh yeah." Pollux tilted his head back and sighed. "Look, none of this matters right now, okay? Maybe it was Luke, maybe it was some of the other missing demigods that have probably gone to him. Heck, maybe it was neither, and this was one of those rare monsters with some strange magic power and an IQ score past the single digits. Anything is possible. That's just demigod life, and worrying about it is just going to give you headaches. It's already giving me one, so how's about we let this go, finish up here, and get lucnh, yeah?

Dai hesitated, then exchanged quick looks with NIco and Bianca.

"Okay, sure."

Dai wasn't sure what to think - His mom had warned him of something like this, very vaguely, but he still felt lost at sea.

What exactly was going on with Camp Half-blood? What was going to happen? And assuming she'd seen it coming, why would his mother send them here now of all times?

They finished up in relative silence, all of them lost in heavy thoughts.

Until Nico pulled a Nico.

"Di Angelo, put them down." Pollux snarled. "Right now."

Nico froze, caught red-handed (literally) trying to smuggle half a dozen ripe strawberries into the folds of his shirt.

Heh. Travis must've taught him that one. Hermes kids were good thieves.

Nico backed up slowly "In my defense, I am going to wash them."

Dai snorted, Bianca sighed and Pollux went from chilled and worn-out to angry real quick.

"Like hades you will - there's an inventory for a reason, numb nuts! Put'em down and wait until they're distributed!"

"No!"

"You little-!"

"If you try and take them away, I'll tell Katie Gardner about your crush!"

Pollux froze.

"Wait, what?" Bianca leaned forward, suddenly delighted.

"I-That's not-" Pollux panicked taking in the gleam in the elder girl's eyes and immediately realizing that the fate of his social life now hung only a thread and Bianca's mercy both. Camp gossip was a vicious, vicious thing. "I-Don't!"

"What?" NIco jeered victoriously. "You don't looooove her? You don't stare after her when she walks away? Hey Dai, wanna hear a song? Katie and Pollux sitting in a tree-"

And then he froze as Pollux went still.

Dangerously so.

Dai winced again. "Well, you're dead."

"Okay, that may have been a bit much." Nico backed up slowly, dropping the strawberries as he went along, his voice rising in a panic as Pollux started twitching and reaching for him. "See, I put'em back! Right back! And I won't tell Katie a thing, I swear-"

"Nico."

Pollux whispered, and Nico paled.

"I," He started slowly, paused for a breath, and bellowed out the rest. "Am going to use you as fertilizer!"

And off they went, bolting over the nearest hill as the older tried to strangle the younger.

"K-I-S-S-I-N-G!" Nico raced over his shoulder, and Pollux screamed a curse so vile it could have likely made a mortal's eyes bleed. As it was, it made the plants nearest to them wilt.

Magic was scary like that.

…

"So…" Dai muttered, eyeing their disappearing forms slowly. "We should stop that."

Bianca nodded "Totaly should."

There was another pause.

…

"Wanna go watch instead?"

Bianca grinned and he mirrored the gesture "Heck yeah I do."

…​

Time passed, but things didn't get any better.

Border patrols were ordered in triplicate (and given that they hadn't had border patrols before, that was really something.), security measures were revamped to the point of ridiculousness, and half of everyone Dai knew had taken to jumping at shadows like professional tap dancers.

It got about a hundred times worse when Chiron was dismissed, the legendary trainer of heroes evicted from camp on the order of the gods (Not his mom though, some people still had sense) and replaced by an absolute nightmare of a person called Tantalus.

Petty, vindictive, and with an origin so sickening Dai would have stabbed him if he thought he could get away with it. He wasn't the only one either.

The tension was coiling, building to snap, and nobody had any idea what it was going to look like when it finally did.

And then the breaking point was reached, exceeded, and left behind faster than Hermes on a trip (the fun kind) courtesy of Hephaestus's poor organizational skills coming back to bite them all in the ass.

…
​

The day started off pleasantly enough.

Dai had been hanging out with Pollux and Castor around the dining pavilion after lunch, trying to track down the rumored nest of Myrmekes.

"Why?" Castor had been asking him, wide-eyed. He exchanged a disturbed look with Pollux, who immediately shook his head and raised his hands.

"Nope. All him."

"Come on, it'd be fun!" Dai smiled, blood pumping at the mere thought of it - he'd been at camp for months and there wasn't anything else he hadn't at least tried. "Chiron says they're invulnerable and Celestial Bronze bounces off their armor plates!"

The memory of Chiron dampened the mood somewhat, if only for a second - what happened a few weeks ago was unfair, plain and simple.

Also, Tantalus was a jackass.

"Yes," Castor answered slowly, and Dai refocused on him. "Yes, exactly. That's why people avoid them. So they don't die."

"I won't die!" He protested. "I already am Dai!"

…

Castor groaned and Pollux let his head drop to the table with a dull impact. "That's the worst joke I've ever heard. Name puns, really?"

"It's a work in progress," Dai admitted, scratching the back of his head - there was a good joke in there somewhere, he just had to find it. "Come on though, wouldn't this be awesome?!"

Monsters in camp - real monsters! And the kind they could practice against, or tame (Hey, greek mythology was wild, crazier things had happened!), or anything else!

He'd tried to search the woods himself, but he might as well have been looking for a needle in a haystack, and none of the nature spirits were any help either. The one he had managed to corner - respectfully, of course - had just screamed something about dragons and leaped back into her tree as if expecting one to jump out at her out of nowhere.

He'd been plenty disappointed when that didn't happen - dragons were awesome.

"Dai, bud, I need you to hear me out on this one. " Castor warned him, eyes shifting warily. "Dad would turn us into grape-fruits if we ever tried that. Literal grape-fruits. And that's just us. He'd do a lot worse to you."

"No, he wouldn't."

"Uhm." The twins exchanged another look, seemingly a lot more nervous now. "Yes, he would. Dude, I get that the whole camp director bit he has going on right now doesn't look all that impressive, but he's still an Olympian god. He totally has, can, and will do stuff like that if you give him a reason."

And looking at their weary looks, their slightly stiff frames - as if they were afraid Dionysus might be listening in right that second…

Dai frowned

His friends were scared of their own dad - maybe not of what he would do to them directly, but to their friends.

That… that was just sad. And horrifically justified."

"I know," Dai muttered lowly, remembering all the stories - Hestia had been thorough in rearing him to know his Olympian history - the good, the bad, and the really really ugly. "But he still wouldn't do anything to me."

"Dai-"

He shook his head stubbornly. "No, really, don't worry about it. My mom would never let-"

He froze.

Oh, shoot.

"Your mom?" Castor frowned and Pollux raised his eyebrow, suspicion beginning to glint in his eyes. "Your mom? What's she - wait."

Realization dawned.

"You know who your divine parent is?"

Umm…!

Dai's eyes flitted about in a panic - this was bad, bad, grade a capital 'B' Bad! He wasn't supposed to let anyone in on the secret!

Desperately, his eyes found the pavilion's brazier, the campfire burning low and slowly, and in. a fit of inspiration tossed a panicked prayer his mom's way.

'Mom? You're probably busy, but I could really use a distraction right about now. Please?'

Now, full disclaimer - He hadn't been expecting it to actually work.

Dai's mother didn't do parenting the way the other gods did - he'd never once prayed and not had an answer, even if it was just a brief feeling of warmth that seeped into his bones and made his lips twitch in smiling comfort - his mom was just awesome like that.

All the same, he'd been fully prepared for her to let him sweat out this blunder. It was entirely on him.

But wouldn't you know it, the very second he'd gotten the thought out, all three of them were nearly deafened when bells started ringing loud enough to wake the dead.

Dai snapped his hands over his ears and resisted the urge to howl - Enhanced hearing was something he'd always had (Hestia still couldn't figure out where exactly that had come from) - but it was all fun and games until something like this happened and it felt like someone was stabbing his eardrums out with a pencil.

"Holy Apollo, what is that?!"

Conner and Pollux didn't answer immediatly, and one look was enough was enough to show him why.

They'd both gone pale as a sheet.

"Perimeter breach," CAstor whispered, utterly horrified. "Camp's under attack."

There was a half-second pause where they all processed that, and then the duo was just gone, sprinting out of the pavilion as fast as they could.

Dai lingered behind, just long enough to gape and whirl on the campfire with an indignant screech.

"This isn't what I meant!"

And then he moved.

…​

For a bunch of people who'd been expecting an attack for months now, the campers were almost hilariously unprepared - It was chaos, people screeching and bellowing and running around like headless chickens, trying to enact camp protocols every which way they thought was right.

Secure the younger campers, arm the older few, get to stabbing the hades out of whatever ugly rat-bastards fate had thrown at them this time around, and send them back to the Pit they crawled out, literally.

All that was easier said than done, and the brief glimpse Dai took in as he blitzed his way past the masses showed him that they were halfway to anarchy already.

Lovely.

He gritted his teeth and ignored everyone as he moved - not that anyone was aiming to stop him, but they wouldn't have managed it if they had tried - because today Bianca was on border patrol.

Yeah, no.

So he ran, and ran, and ran, faster than he'd ever had reason to before (faster than anyone bar Chiron could even hope to match, as he'd find out later), a faint sensation of warmth guiding him to where he needed to go even though he had no idea where that would be.

Thanks, Mom.

When he finally sprinted past camp's fading barriers and Thalia's dying tree and crested the top of Half-blood Hill, what he saw waiting for him down the slope nearly froze his blood cold, son of the goddess of warmth or no.

Six campers, a seventh down, divided into two teams of three desperately trying to wrangle a pair of bulls.

Only, these beasties were the the size of elephants, and made of solid interlocking plates of bronze to boot. Their eyes glowed molten red, the sheer heat warping and distorting the air, setting it to a low shimmer. Every time they moved, it was with a speed that was nigh on terrifying, far quicker than anything of their size should have been able to manage.

As Dai watched, a camper in slightly charred armor charged the one closest to her, hefting a spear that crackled with electricity and with a fearless, downright intimidating roar sounding in her wake- Clarisse La Rue, daughter of Ares. The guts it took to charge one of those things were amazing, but the attempt ended prematurely when Bull number one rounded on her blindingly quick and let rip its own battle cry, only this one was accompanied by a plume of red hot flame almost as tall as he was. Clarrise howled and tossed herself to the side, rolling away down the hill to avoid being trampled when the bull tried to charge her again.

"Clarisse!"

This time his blood really did freeze - that was Bianca.

His heart promptly tried to punch his way out his rib cage and throw itself into the chaos when the girl who was as good as his sister charged after bull number one… and in doing so, left her side open for the second bull to abandon it's other demigod quarry and freight-trained for her unprotected side, head lowered and silver horns gleaming

"Bianca, look out!"

He hurled himself forward, full tilt and then some, closing the distance between with such a furious pace that even the cacophony of noise surrounding them seemed to die - and then the oddest thing happened.

Bianca's head suddenly snapped to the side, her eyes blown wide open beneath the arc of her helm, and with a panicked yelp, she raised her foot and stamped on the asphalt below.

How she knew to do that was anyone's guess, but the effect was instant.

The earth rippled, tremoring with force every last one of them felt in their teeth, and a great yawning chasm spread from the point of impact, the material beneath the caving in and promptly getting swallowed by the subterranean cave at a ludicrous pace.

The bull's charge faltered and broke, and with a call of confusion and rage it leaped, missing Bianca entirely and skidding six feet off to the side. Its hoofs tore through solid ground in an attempt to cut off its momentum, but it didn't have even half a second's worth of pause before Dai's fist rammed into its snout with vicious strength and sent it careening on its side, resulting in a sprawl so undignified it would have been hilarious had the son of Hestia not been blindingly furious and not even close to done.

Credit where credit was due, the bull was on its feet between one blink and another, belting flames hot enough to flash-broil an ordinary mortal in less time than you could say 'barbecue'.

Too bad it didn't do jack to him, and Dai chose to prove as much by reaching through the flames and snapping its head back with another punch to the snout, indignant irritation loud and clear.

"Cut that out!"

The bull reared back, a dent on its gleaming visage dented and looking almost dazed by the fact - did magic Automata even feel pain? "Moo?"

Translation - Why are you not dead?

"I'm built different," Dai growled, and then he punched it again.

The bull shuddered, arcing back again and exhaling furiously as its confusion cycled back to rage - the homicidal variety, naturally.

Its ruby eyes gleamed, and that was about all the warning he got before it lowered its head, leaping forward as it tried to gore him, Instead, Dai grabbed it by the silver horns and locked it in place in a feat of strength he'd never even suspected he was capable of it in place.

Predictably, the bull was not amused.

"Moo!"

Translation - Die already!

Or so he assumed.

Instead of cooperating with that oh-so-reasonable request, he gritted his teeth and held on tighter, muscles straining as the celestial bronze monstrosity began to push him back ever so slightly.

"Dai!" Bianca yelled out behind him, and he panicked and almost lost his grip.

"Don't get any closer!"

It didn't hurt him any, but he could feel the heat wafting off its skin - he doubted anyone in camp could even touch this thing as it was now, and he needed it to go down right now.

I'm not letting Bianca get hurt!

And that's when the second oddest occurrence of the day washed over him.

Then finish it.

A voice in his head suddenly sounded, and all of a sudden his mind cleared.

The stress and the building, thinly veiled panic dissipated, the sudden relief almost leaving him light-headed. He knew what to do right then and there, certainty echoing in his heart with brilliant clarity.

He felt the bull's struggles, and rather than continue to push back, he let his grip relax ever so slightly.

The bull noticed this and all but crowed in victory - that's not a sound a bull should have been able to make, gods - and drove him back, unknowingly giving him just the right amount of leverage he needed.

"Game over" He muttered, and then he pulled, drawing strength from the heat of the flames and belting out his own war cry on instinct alone.

"For Hestia!"

He'd probably regret that later, but right then, Dai was invincible.

The bull suddenly lost its footing, and with a startled call, it tumbled forward, all leverage lost as Dai heaved it to the side and sent it tumbling down half-blood hill one last time.

This time though, he didn't give it a chance to get back up. Unseathing his ill-fitting sword (And where had that come from, he could have sworn he'd left back at Cabin Eleven) reversing his hold and pulling it halfway behind his back at an angle that would have seemed almost comical to anyone else.

But they didn't know what he did, or what he could do.

(To be fair, neither did he. He was working entirely of instincts he didn't understand here, but if it worked-!)

Things moved very quickly after that.

For the second time that day, all the noise in the world just died.

The Bull stood up. A strange tug pulled at Dai's gut, and his sword lit up with a blue-white glow - as though he was pouring his soul into it.

That's not all that far from the truth, actually.

The bull attempted to move. Maybe to charge, maybe even to flee.

It didn't matter. He'd already beaten it to the punch with a running leap that closed the distance between them, and it had just enough time to try and rear back before Dai threw his sword up and forward and brought it down on its head, words spilling out of him with no conscious control of his own.

"E̶̜̕a̴̡͍̋ȓ̶͔̫t̸̞̜̊̕h̵̛͎̞͠ ̵̛̻S̶̳̋̂ͅl̴̓͆͜à̵̲̞̌s̸̪̈́̂h̵̘̙́̽!"

And then there was light and heat and a sensation not unlike pushing a hot knife through butter.

For a moment, even the mist itself shuddered.

And then it was over, the brightness died, sound rushed back to his ears and woah.

There wasn't a bull anymore. Instead, there were two… heaps of molten celestial bronze slag shifting on either side of him, and a new trench carving its way through the road for about a solid meter ahead.

He'd cut it right in half and melted what was left.

"I..." Dai almost dropped the sword (which was steaming in of itself, he noticed. "I did that."

How even-?

You'll figure it out eventually.

"Dai?"

He whirled and someone - Bianca again - yelped.

Oh.

He finally dropped the sword like a hot potato (not that that would have hurt, mind you), aware of how close he'd come to cutting into her side, and raised his hands in a panic.

"Sorry!"

She shook her head mutely, expression strained with disbelief and awe and something else he couldn't quiet place. And it wasn't just her, either.
All of the campers had stopped to stare, and the only upside was that it wasn't just him drawing the attention.

Bad Cow Number Two was done, its head having been pulped and scrunched like a sheet of aluminum foil, and standing over it was...

Dai blinked.

Then he stared again.

... Nope, the image in front of him didn't change.

"Is that a cyclops?"

…​

Things happened after that. Lots of them.

Cliff notes version?

Bianca was celebrated back at their cabin, the cyclops wasn't, and Dai spent the rest of the day answering questions he didn't know the answer to and avoiding Pollux and Castor with professional dedication.

But anyway, that had to be it, right?

Colchis bulls (Made by Hephaestus - that should have been obvious, actually), the arrival of Percy Jackson, Annabeth Chase, and a cyclops (Not that he was judging, Tyson seemed cool) should have been enough for one day, right?

There had to be a line somewhere, right!?

Nah, of course not.

It happened somewhat like this:

Dinner was in full swing, people chattering away at everything and nothing at all, Dionysus was there as always and the new activities director was introducing himself while putting up an embarrassing display of chasing after a cheeseburger.

Dai and pretty much everyone else had been quietly rooting for the cheeseburger - Seriously, Tantalus was the worst.

And then all of a sudden, the chatter died out. As in, it all went from full swing to zero silence between one breath and the next - even the Ares campers had gone shock-still, and wasn't that a cause for alarm?

To his left, Nico dropped his fork, and Bianca choked silently.

Hovering over both Di Angelo's heads was a resplendent symbol in all black, a great staff tapped by two branching prongs reaching up at opposing angles. A scepter, black as night and drinking in the torchlight as though ready to plunge them all into darkness.

Oh.

Oh, no.

"Well, fuck." Mr. D muttered low under his breath, but it carried far and wide.

Dai was pretty sure that reaction was justified.

After all, the scepter was the symbol of-

"Hades." Tantalus hissed in a malevolent fury, and half the pavilion flinched before exploding into growing murmurs, growing louder with every passing second. "Children of the Underworld! Children of Ha-!"

And that's when the thunder tore open the heavens and the screaming started in earnest.

Dai wasn't sure what exactly went down in the next thirty seconds - it was all a blur, what with everyone screeching and pretty much the entire Hermes Cabin either throwing themselves to the ground in an effort to get away or leaping over the table and bolting every which way.

You didn't really stop to think when Zeus was angry - and it was Zeus, lightning storms didn't just blink into existence out of nowhere. - you just groveled and prayed for mercy.

For his part, Dai ended up dragging Bianca and Nico behind him as the sky itself devolved into furious white and blue flickers and bangs of thunder so loud they rattled his teeth.

This was so, so bad.

What was he supposed to do here? Pray? Beg? Try and cut freaking lightning?

Damn you, brother. Damn the both of you

Dai spasmed and almost fell on his face when the voice echoed in his head.

"Mom?"

I'm sorry, child. I'm so, so sorry. I wanted to wait for the right time - I warned Hades not to do this, but it's too late. It must be now.

And there's the panic again.

"Mom?!"

Hestia didn't respond - not in words, at least,

Instead, Dai was treated to the sight of the brazier exploding and the campfire surging up into the sky, higher and brighter than was physically possible, before arcing down to the earth in a serpentine movement and lunging.

Towards him.

"MOM?!"

He had enough presence of mind to shove Nico and Bianca well out of the way before the flames washed over hi whole, his mother's presence almost overwhelming in that one split second of contact before they flickered out and vanished.

Mostly.

When it was finally safe to look again, the pavilion was stunned into silence again - even the thunderstorm had abruptly died, as if Zeus had just done a spit-take and backed away in disbelief.

"Huh. About time." Dionysus grunted, leaning back and kicking his feet up onto the table. He gestured to Dai, finger lingering on the on the orange glowing projection of a tree lingering above his head.

A chaste tree, the symbol of his mother.

"Hestia," Dionysus said aloud in the tone of someone announcing the weather - or it would have been, if every other word didn't echo with pure power. "Guardian of homes and bequeather of warmth, the lady of cals and fire. Hail Dai Prytaneia, son of the Hearth Goddess."

...

"...Yeah, I'm done." He cracked open his can of coke and took a sip, closing his eyes as he reclined back further. "Feel free to lose your shit now or whatever, I don't care."

And wouldn't you believe it, everyone proceeded to do exactly that.

...​

Next chapter: Hestia, the nicest goddess, visits the underworld and kind of - sort of - definetley loses her cool.

 

[Firewillreign]

The Underworld - Domain of Hades:

When Hestia materialized in the Entry Hall to Hades's Palace, she did so with a form that flickered and twisted from one shape to another - from child to adult to something in between, none of them solid and all as interchangeable and ephemeral as the flames she tended to.

Anger was not an emotion that often overcame her - she was warmth and peace and the safe, welcoming embrace of home and hearth. To slip into true rage was contrary to her nature in all the ways worth acknowledging.

But even the Eldest Olympian had a breaking point.

So when she appeared at the proverbial doorway of her brother's home, her avatar shifting in instability born of legitimate fury and bleeding divine power and force like an open faucet, it had the immediate consequence of reducing everything in her general vicinity to dust and slag and little else. Ghosts and minor spirits were banished to the farthest edges of Erebos, security ghouls and animated cadavers disintegrated, and the opulent trophies and murals that decorated the cavernous were incinerated into virtual nothingness in an instant.

Ordinarily, she would have felt quite guilty about all of it even if the effect were hardly permanent - barring exceptional and indescribably dangerous exceptions, the underworld was a realm of eternal existence or the closest thing to it (There was great irony there for any wise enough to see it). Given enough time, those-whho-once-were would be restored and the impacts of her passing would fade as if they never had been.

All the same, immortality did not grant leave or just cause for wreckless cruelty (a lesson a disheartening number of her kin and kith had yet to grasp, if they ever truly would), and she would have been beside herself at the lapse in control had circumstances been any different. Unfortunately, at that present moment, she was far beyond experiencing more than a moment's worth of regret, quickly smothered and buried for a later time as she seethed.

Such was the force of her presence that even the stone walls trembled and shook under its weight - for all of a moment, before they suddenly stilled and regained their former strength when another presence washed over them and made itself known to her.

'Sister' The Lord Of The Underworld's voice whispered without words as the divine often tended to do 'This is unbecoming. If you have something you wish to say to me, then come to my throne room and say it to my face. Preferably without further damaging my home's structural integrity, thank you kindly.'

Then he retreated - mostly. The remnants of his power lingered, his rather unsubtle way of insinuating that he could step in again at any moment.

In response, Hestia snorted angrily but actually managed to steady herself - at least she was not being dismissed, this time. If Hades erred twice in that same manner, then peaceful nature or not, his palace would have been the very least of his concerns.

With a step and twist of light and heat and power, she appeared in his throne room directly ahead of him in a form that was finally semi-stable - a flickering young woman with fair skin and auburn her, warm flames flickering in her eyes. The very same form she'd first donned when she'd become a mother, and one that seemed to become more and more natural to assume as the years passed.

By contrast, Hades towered over her - literally, he was twelve feet tall. His skin was albino-wight as she knew he preferred it, clashing against his shoulder-length black hair strikingly, though nowhere near to the extent of his eyes - acute, glittering things those were, gleaming like frozen tar and betraying a glimpse of the aptly terrifying intelligence behind them. He reclined on his obsidian-black throne as she took him in, studying her with a guarded gaze and stone-still features.

"Brother." By some intervention of the fates, her voice was almost pleasant when she spoke at last.

Almost.

"Sister."

He leaned forward as though to regard her, and his purple robes crinkled with the motion - the souls of the undead she could see through her avatar's eyes and sense through her divine awareness screamed endlessly, and it was an effort in itself not to close her eyes as disappointed sorrow momentarily overcame her anger.

For all his faults, (she was not blind to their existence, family or no) Hades was fair and just in his rulings - their punishments had been earned, no doubt, but it brought her no pleasure to familiarize herself with them even at a distance.

"I've been expecting you." If her brother sensed her discomfort, he chose to make no mention of it as he continued to address her, his voice booming and reverberating in the deserted throne room - deserted for her sake, she had no doubts. "I expected you two days ago, in fact."

There was a question there, and she chose to answer it with a fiery glare - literally, the flames in her eyes blazed all the brighter for it.

"I would have come the very second you chose to break our agreement-"

He bristled. "I broke nothing-

"-Unfortunately-" She ignored and drove on with nary a pause "I have spent that last thirty-nine and a half hours, to the very second, getting hounded by every god, nature spirit and 'well-meaning' immortal brave enough to approach me and demand to know why I broke my sacred oath among a thousand other inquiries beside."

Hades smiled, though the expression was entirely devoid of humor. "A valid question."

Her eyes flashed again, ever more fiercely than before. "I have devoted every moment I've had to my own since you're colossal error in judgment desperately avoiding confrontation after confrontation and running every manner of damage control known to mortals and immortals alike. Do not test me, Hades."

"'Error in judgment'? Test you?" His own gaze narrowed dangerously. "You forget yourself, Hestia. Do not presume that you can so freely insult and order me in mine own domain, sister or no."

Hestia seemed to pause and consider that… for about half a second.

Then she smiled.

For the first time in millennia (and perhaps ever), she did not wear the gesture well.

"Get off that throne, Hades. And shrink down while you're at it." She spoke lowly, tone still very much conversational. "I can't take you seriously while you insist on assuming that preposterous size for this."

His nostrils flared "Do not dismiss my words-!"

Said words immediately stalled when Hestia burst into flames.

As in, her body detonated and expanded into a self-contained pillar of godly flame, swirling in on itself and flooding the throne room with luminescence and heat akin to the inside of an active caldera. Hades and his throne remained untouched by the explosive change save for the outraged look on the Death god's face, but the rest of the throne room was not so lucky - stone-work shattered and liquified, metal ornaments melted into slag and pretty much everything else just lit up and kept burning well past the natural point of complete destruction.

"Listen and listen well, little brother." When the goddess spoke, she did so in a tongue (of sorts) beyond mortal ken, and her words shook the closet over-arching layers of the Mist itself. "In the millennia I have existed, I have always been patient - since the dusk of the Golden Age, that is all I have been, with all of you. Zeus. Poseidon, our sisters and all their children, to say nothing of the countless other gods and celestial spawn beyond them. I was there for all of it, through all of it, and I have held strong to the spheres of my domain and to my love even when I was well within my right to retract both and denounce each and every one of you for savagery beyond reckoning. Atrocities are as great as any Titan's. As any Primordial's even."

The living inferno pulsed, denying Hades the opportunity to speak when he went to do so.

"Yet you, in your arrogance and your pride, have nearly cost me the one thing that is completely and entirely irreplaceable to me, by every definition of the very concept of the word."

The sweltering fury quadrupled and skyrocketed in tandem with the pitch of her final words.

"MY PATIENCE IS AT AN END, BROTHER! I DO NOT CARE FOR YOUR POSTURING, I DO NOT CARE FOR YOUR STATION! GET OFF THAT RIDICULOUS THRONE AND SPEAK TO ME WITH ALL THE GRAVITY YOUR CATASTROPHIC OFFENCE WARRANTS! I AM OWED NO LESS! I SAY AGAIN, FOR THE FINAL TIME - D̴̜̀O̵͝ͅ ̷̙́N̴̯̂Ȏ̵̪Ț̸̅ ̵͇̀T̷̺̑E̸͙͘S̷̞͐T̸̞̀ ̶̘̈́M̸̡͠E̸̯̚!̵͓̃"

...

The lapse that followed that proclamation was indescribable - Many, many things could have occurred at its conclusion, and the greater sum of them was cataclysmically unpleasant.

Yet, in a move that would have distorted the worldviews of most everyone who knew him, Hades did not devolve into senseless black rage as would have been expected from him.

Oh, he glared and let his own eyes ignite in black and purple flames, divine presence once again battering against his sister's, but in the end he merely scowled wrathfully and stepped off his thrown. He took another step and shifted, shrinking down until he stood at a measly (by the standards of the gods) six feet, expression still unforgivingly irritated as he stared up at Hestia's firestorm of an avatar.

"There. Happy?"

The pillar of flames continued to burn for a long moment still, as if assessing him, before it too flickered and melted down to virtual nothingness as Hestia retook her mortal avatar.

"It'll do." She answered curtly, and Hades's look blanked out again as he tilted his head.

"Were you anyone else, sister, even another Olympian-"

"I know." She cut him off. "But do not expect me to thank you for the courtesy. Not now of all times, not after what you did."

"For the love of- I did nothing wrong."

"You claimed the children, after everything-!"

"If you did not want me to, then you should have delivered them straight to the underworld, where I could personally watch over them! Or better yet, you should have left them in the Lotus where I placed them, where they were safe!"

"Do not use that as an excuse!" Hestia snapped. "The underworld is no home for demigod heroes, even yours, and a gilded cage is still a cage. The lair of the Lotus Eater is the greatest cage of them all, and far more insidious than even most minor gods would assume, do not pretend otherwise. I at least informed you of what I was doing before I did it, and I took precautions, and made countless preparations, and now they've all gone to waste! I warned you not to claim the children, not until they've acclimated to camp, not until they've integrated themselves and had at least one successful quest to earn the favor of other gods!"

"They are my children." Hades scoffed derisively, but there was nothing to disguise the bitter edge lacing his net words. "They are of the underworld. They would never have had the favor of any of the others, and they don't need it. Mine own will suffice, as it always has. My daughter survived a fight against one of Hephestesus's own creations - inferior half-bloods have been claimed for far less, and if you are so set on their freedom, you will not begrudge me granting them their rightful due."

"At the moment, I am set on their survival." Hestia hissed, "A goal you nearly compromised by claiming them - these are no ordinary circumstances, Hades. You cannot shield them on your own - they need other gods in their corner, minor and great alike if we are to protect them. What they categorically do not need is their father provoking their uncle, the King of the gods into smiting them."

Hades tensed and turned his back to her

"I did no such thing."

"Claiming them at Camp-Half blood?" She shook her head in disbelief. "I can not even comprehend what you were thinking."

"I gave you my reasons."

"We both know that Bianca's efforts alone were not what motivated you!" Hestia refuted that hotly. Truly, did he think her so dense? "I suspect I know what you were thinking, brother, and it nearly backfired horrifically. Zeus is not a fool-!"

Hades turned back to her, his expression incredulous.

"Excuse me?"

"He's-" She paused and rolled her eyes "Fine. He's not an idiot, then."

"That's what you think."

She chose not to respond to that one.

"He knew who those children were the moment they set foot in camp - by our mother's name, he probably recognized them the second I dropped them off at Half-blood Hill. But he didn't do anything about it because he couldn't. With our ancient foes stirring, with Father's return-"

They both ignored the faint chill that overcame them at even the vague mention of Kronos's continued existence, a feat made easier with practice.

"-and with a second Titanomachy no longer being a mere possibility but an active threat, he can't afford to make an enemy of you."

"Hah! You think I am Olympus's ally?"

"As it stands, and as much as it pains me to admit it, I know you're not." Hestia shook her head. "And so does Zeus."

Hades frowned.

"He knows he cannot count on your aid, but he also knows that you are unlikely to side with the Titans. That's what he's counting on - Olympus might survive your neutrality, but it will fall if he earns your enmity."

"Oh, my sweet sister." He chuckled darkly and she frowned despite herself. "Zeus has earned my enmity long, long ago. Everything he's done since has only reinforced it."

At that, she closed her eyes.

Even millennia later, the images of what could have been still haunted her. If only things were different...

"I know," She opened her eyes and leaned back. "But killing your children, now of all times, would have been the very last nail in the coffin."

"Death puns? Really?" He tutted and shook his head, still darkly amused. "For shame, Hestia."

What?

"I didn't - no!" She scowled. "Stop it! This is dangerous - Zeus knew not to attack your children, he would have kept himself in check - long enough for me to lay the groundwork and reveal them the right way, the safe way, however long that may have taken. And then you chose to circumvent me and claim them despite everything I tried to tell you!"

"I will not apologize for that." He stated flatly as he crossed his arms. "I will never apologize for that."

"You know what it looks like, Hades!" Why did he so stubbornly refuse to see sense?! "You claimed them at a time where the camp is vulnerable when Thalia Grace's tree has been poisoned-"

"So? Have Apollo fix it. " Hades's expression soured even further. "Or that death-defying, natural order-perverting physician of a son of his - What's the point of having a god of medicine and healing if he can't provide at least one useful service in thousands of years?"

"The poison is potent, and beyond Apollo - most likely it's something out of Tartarus itself." Hestia shook her head despondently. "And Asclepius has been barred from leaving the Asclepion, on the order of Olympus - the risk of the Titans capturing him and using his powers to heal their own - even father would benefit-!"

"Yes, yes, I get the picture." Hades grunted "Still not my problem. the children had nothing to do with that."

She looked at him like he was an idiot.

"That does not matter, or did you forget what happened when Poseidon claimed his own son the year before? Few will accept the truth, because of their parentage and the timing of it all. And even if we set aside the inevitable accusations that will come, to an outside observer, to Zeus, it looks like you're gloating. Celebrating the lives of your demigod children while his own dies, in a very roundabout way, because of you! He's always been prideful beyond measure, and what you did two nights ago pushed him past all reason! He would have killed them both right then and there!"

"He would not dare." Hades snapped, "And my interference with his spawn - in tree form or any other- ended years ago."

There was a pause.

There shouldn't have been, she wasn't willing to distract herself from why she came so quickly, but the way he said it drew at her in a way she hadn't quite expected.

...

"Is that why you call it?" Hestia asked lowly, and his eyes snapped to her, swimming with something dark and foreboding. "Is that what you call what you did? Interference?"

"Do not-"

"You were wrong, brother." She tilted her head, refusing to break eye contact even in the face of his growing rage. ""

"I settled a debt, nothing more! After what he did, you call me-?!"

"I can accept your rage." She shook her head. "But that alone doesn't justify what you did. It was unjust and very, very cruel."

Hades eyes burned as his temper frayed.

"UNJUST?! CRUEL?! He bellowed, and it felt like all the underworld was tremoring beneath their feet. "MY CHILDREN DO NOT HAVE A MOTHER! THEY DON'T REMEMBER HER NAME, THEY DON'T EVEN REMEMBER HER FACE! YOU SAY I CLAIMED THEM FOR PRIDE!? I CLAIMED THEM BECAUSE THEY HAVE NOTHING LEFT! HE TOOK EVERYTHING FROM THEM AND DAMN HIM TO THE DEPTHS OF TARTARUS FOR IT!"

And just as abruptly as his own flared, Hestia's rage returned with a vengeance.

"THEN PROTECT THEM! YOU NEARLY SENTENCED THEM TO DEATH THE OTHER NIGHT! I HAD TO STEP IN TO SAVE THEM, TO DRAW HIS IRE AWAY, AND I HAD TO USE MY SON TO DO IT! NOW ALL SHALL KNOW OF WHAT HE IS AND MORE ENEMIES THAN THERE ARE STARS IN THE HEAVENS WILL SEEK HIM OUT FOR IT, AND THAT IS ENTIRELY YOUR FAULT!"

...

The silence after that exchange was no less heavy than the last.

When the dust finally settled, Hades just sighed bitterly, and it took effort for Hestia not to mirror the gesture. Gods could not lose their breath -- they didn't need to breathe - but the sensation swamping them both was not all that different.

And then Hades inclined his head wordlessly, and she reared back half a step in surprise.

It... was not an apology - she hadn't been expecting one, nor would she have demanded one even in the greatest depths of rage, but it was still something.

Acknowledgment. That was better than nothing at all.

"So what now?" He asked her quietly, and she lowered her head.

"A Child Of The Eldest Gods." She whispered, ignoring his sharp inhalation and the sharp curse that followed. "We always assumed it referred to you three, the strongest, the rulers of your respective domains- Hera would never sire one of her own and Demeter's children are a gray area she would never compromise on. I was never meant to bear any, but now that he's here, in this time of all others-"

"It does not bode well." Hades agreed, just as quietly. "Your first child is born, mine are reintroduced to the world by factors out of our control - you're certain you did not know they were in the Lotus?"

"I didn't even know they existed before Dai literally stumbled into them after I allowed him to explore. On a whim, Hades. A random whim. Or so I believed."

"Fate has played us both for fools, then."

"And it will continue to do so. Which is why we need to protect them." She snapped her gaze to his. "Truly protect them, for as long as are able - that means no more circumventing me, no acting on your own no matter what justification you may have. For the sake of our children, we do this together, or not at all."

...

For the longest time, he simply regarded her impassively.

And then he closed his eyes and exhaled, the gesture symbolic and heavy in a way neither of them had the words for, and nodded once.

"Very well. I swear it on the River Styx."

She started - A surprise, but finally one that was welcome

"As do I."

The earth rumbled, this time devoid of Hades's influence - the Goddess of Hatred had acknowledged their oath

"What in the-?!"

And right on time too, because not even a second passed before Hades suddenly twitched and snapped his head to the side, eyes growing wide and vacant as he stared at something only he could see.

Then he... well, he slumped, posture loosening and features going slack with shock.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me!"

"What is it?"

"There's been an incident. At Camp Half-Blood."

Terror quickly overrode reason "What-?!

Not Dai!

Hades waved her away.

"At ease, sister. There's no active threat. It's just-" He sighed, once again at an obvious loss for words. "Well, it's something."

That... wasn't exactly reassuring.

She took in his posture, the look on his face, the context... and then she connected the dots and felt herself slump just as quickly.

"Don't tell me." She moaned and resisted the urge to put her head in her hands. "Mine or yours."

"All three of them." Hades answered, sounding just as miserable "Though honestly, they did have just cause. It's Tantalus."

...

"Oh," Hestia whispered, and white flames flickered back to life in her eyes. "Him."

...​

As always leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it please be courteous

 

[Firewillreign]

"Impossible."

When Dai opened his eyes, he found himself in a room that he'd never been in before.

A ceiling rose above, high and flat and supported by ornate pillars engraved with scriptures too small to make out. The walls were painted a deep shade of bronze, and the floor was carpeted in all the way over with white wool, the kind you'd see in a hotel room or an office meant for work.

A large bookshelf dominated one wall, crammed with leather-bound books and scrolls - actual scrolls, crammed into every nook and cranny as though someone had refused to let any space go to waste. A wingback armchair was nestled in one corner, and across from it was a large, ornate wooden desk colored a deep reddish brown, covered in so many assorted papers, scattered parchment and tools for writing and drawing that he couldn't see an inch of the wooden surface underneath.

In the center of the room, though his attention lingered. A hearth burned there, a low flame ignited from red-hot coals that painted the room with a pleasant golden brown hue, the warmth that followed after it distorted and dulled but still made him want to sigh in contentment regardless.

"This cannot be."

"My source says differently."

The voices drew his attention, and Dai turned (or did he? Vaguely, he realized that he couldn't feel his body at all, but somehow that didn't seem the least bit strange or concerning - odd) to stare at their source.

The first person he saw was a boy, older than him, but by a few years at most. College-aged at the absolute oldest.
He was that much taller though, with sandy blonde hair, blue eyes, and a sharp nose. He had a peculiar and rather unmissable scar running along the right half of his face, stretching down from beneath his eye and trailing all the way down to his chin.

He wore jeans and makeshift leather armor over a plain t-shirt, and something about him niggled at the back of Dai's mind - he'd never seen the other boy in his life, he was sure of it, but there was still something inarguably familiar about him. Whatever it was, though, he just couldn't put his finger on it, whatever slow connections his subconscious was starting to make were completely derailed the second he focused his attention on the other figure present.

If the other boy was tall, then the man standing across from his was an inch of being downright gargantuan - He had to be something like seven feet tall at least, and somehow, that was the least intimidating thing about him. He loomed over his companion, dressed in a tuxedo sized to fit him perfectly and covered his eyes with a pair of shades that did nothing to distill the golden glow emanating from behind them. His shoulder-length hair was tied back in a low ponytail and most striking of all were the silver-white splotchy scars splayed across his face, descending from forehead to chin and down across the visible flesh of his neck before disappearing under his collar - he didn't know why, but he got the sense that there were far more of them below even that, and each one was every bit as deep and ugly at that.

Whatever had inflicted them on this man had done it with savage, animalistic barbarity, and if the faded scars were this bad… Dai didn't even want to imagine what the fresh wounds must have looked like, or what it must have felt like to endure them.

"No source is beyond reproach, and spies are liars by nature." the man murmured, and the boy scowled.

"Not this one, and I've had the information corroborated anyway. It's legitimate. Hades has broken his oath and sired not one but two demigod children and claimed both at camp half-blood." The boy sneered, something violent and utterly hateful twisting his features. "After everything that hypocritical bastard did when Zeus broke his oath - After Thalia-"

"The gods excel at applying double standards to their every passing whim and fancy. This should not be news to you." The man smiled, clearly amused at the boy's frothing rage. "Hades is not an Olympian, but that state of affairs is a petty distinction and a sign of Zeus's hubris more than anything else - in the end, for all his purported honor and majesty, the Lord of the Dead is no different to either of his brothers and the rest of their glorified brethren as well. He is just the same as all the rest of the great gods - every bit as prideful, arrogant, and utterly lacking in self-control."

The man chuckled, his eyes glowing brighter beneath his shades.

"Honestly, I don't know who they thought they were fooling when they made that ridiculous oath. No more demigod children?" He snorted derisively. "Please. It was a delaying tactic, a transparent and woefully desperate attempt to find a loophole or some other underhanded means of escaping the Great Prophecy, and it failed miserably as everyone with even half a brain knew it would right from the onset. If anything, I'm surprised the three of them lasted as long as they did in the first place. I'd almost commend them for it if I thought I could get away with it, but alas. If all goes as it should, Olympus will be razed and its denizens laid low as they should have been long ago, and I'll have my satisfaction either way. I suppose I'll simply have to content myself with gloating after the fact."

"That isn't going to happen unless we make it happen" The boy snapped, clearly eager to be heard. The man just raised an eyebrow "And I don't like the way our odds are shaping up right now - when there was one child of the big three, we had a working plan. Percy Jackson could have been swayed under the right circumstances - I could have made him see the light or dealt with him if he didn't, one way or the other. But now there are three demigods who fit the prophecy's bill, and we can't even be sure of Hades's neutrality anymore - all of our plans hinged on the Lord of the Underworld keeping his nose out of it until the Olympians were dealt with and he could be handled independently, but now there's no guarantee he won't get involved. If his children are at camp and Zeus and the other gods haven't expelled them or had them killed yet, then chances are they just plain won't. And if they can't be swayed, if they choose to fight for Olympus, then Hades-"

"-will do whatever he wants to do." The man cut him off, raising a hand to demand silence as the boy went to speak over him. "Whether he chooses to move against us or not is inconsequential - our king has planned for every eventuality. It would be a setback, yes, but a dealbreaker. Hardly."

"But-"

"Have some faith, child. It hadn't led you astray yet." the boy bit down on his next words as the man moved, turning his back to him and stepping towards the flames of the hearth with a smile that sent shivers down Dai's spine. "Besides, you're missing something rather important - there aren't three likely contenders for the great prophecy - there are four."

"What?"

"You told me yourself, didn't you? The unprecedented has occurred. Hestia herself has sired a child, against her oath of maidenhood - or perhaps not. Athena's children are living proof of how easily that 'binding vow' can be circumvented, but the timing is far from a coincidence. And the prophecy was clear - 'A child of the Eldest Gods'" The man's smile grew more pronounced. "Gods, a plurality that can refer to either gods or goddesses, of which Hestia Prytenai is the eldest. First born daughter of our king himself, even if Zeus would rather strangle himself with his own beard than admit it, or acknowledge the implications therein. For her child, her first child, mortal or otherwise to be sired now of all times.... only a fool would miss the signs, and previous mistakes aside, I have never lacked for foresight. Fate stirs, child-"

"I am not a child" Came the low, rather put-off reply

The man rolled his eyes. "You're all children to me. But that's far beyond the point. Focus on your mission, and leave this latest complication to me."

"Don't dismiss me, my lord." There was a displeased protest in the words, loud and clear "I've been ordered to personally deliver this information to you for a reason-"

"A reason you've already seen too." The man waved his hand dismissively. "The king wanted this brought to my attention - he wanted Hestia's son in particular brought to my attention, and I suspect I know why."

"Are you going to tell me?"

"Were I anyone else, I'd probably refuse. But I've always been one to reward curiosity." His smile turned indulgent "You need only ask - go on, I know you want to."

…

For a moment, Dai thought the boy would refuse.

Then he gritted his teeth and exhaled lowly. "Fine. Why is Hestia's son important, and what does he have to do with you?"

"Because, my dear demigod - of all the gods who rule over Western civilization in this day and age, Hestia alone is the one I bear no grudge against, despite her involvement in my… fall." His expression twisted the last word reverberating in his mouth with something dark and powerful. "Hestia alone is the one goddess whom I actually consider worthy of a degree of respect. And if her son is anything like her, and I suspect he is solely because I'm certain she herself would not allow him to be anything else, swaying him to our side is not only possible but something that I can achieve in very short order. Though I'm afraid you'll have to do without the details.

"My lord?"

"Operational security and all that. I do not mean to disparage your loyalty, but my methods work best when I lay them out myself, and you've done your part ten times over - poisoning that tree was a masterstroke, a lynchpin for half a dozen plans long since sat in motion."

Dai startled violently.

"And besides, speaking of the Son Of Hestia is quite unwise… when the boy in question is right here alongside us."

Golden eyes snapped up and locked unerringly on him, and Dai - who had been feeling nothing past vague confusion and growing alarm as the two spoke - immediately felt a frisson of frenzied, wild-eyed panic.

"Hello there." The man crooned, golden eyes burning - literally burning, golden flames igniting behind the cover of his shades. "Won't you introduce yourself?"

And then a hand reached for him, and Dai reared back on instinct, trying to get far, far away-!

...
​

-And he gasped as he startled awake, eyes snapping open as he shot up in bed.

In the darkness of his room, he heard a sound - Nico, who had stirred in his fretful sleep slightly but just rolled onto the other side of his bed and returned to snoring.

Slowly, last night's fiasco came back to him - the attack on the camp, the Cyclops son of Poseidon (Still no judgment, because Tyson seemed to be a cool sort), and how that little tidbit was immediately overshadowed by their triple claiming and the pandemonium that had ensued in their wake.

The oddly fascinated looks Dai had gotten, the fearful, unabashedly terrified ones Nico and Bianca had been hit with, abandoning dinner and locking themselves back at the Hermes Cabin in a desperate attempt to avoid the stares….

(Not managing to sleep until the early hours of the morning because nothing was going according to his mother's plan and he'd exhausted himself trying to think, only to have that mess of a dream…)

Slowly, he sighed and reached out to cradle his head in his hands.

"What's going on?" He whispered lowly in the darkness.

Fear… fear wasn't something new to him, but it also wasn't something he was truly familiar with. He was self-aware enough to know that, compared to any demigod in the history of ever, his childhood had been the stuff of living fantasy. Raised by his divine mother in the closest thing to absolute safety this world could likely offer, his every whim tended to and never wanted for anything… he'd never had a reason to be afraid before.

Not truly.

No in this life, anyhow.

But now…

It wasn't fear - he wasn't a coward. But he was uneasy

"What's going on?" He whispered lowly in the darkness.

What had that dream been? What was going on?

Things at Camp half-blood had steadily been getting worse all year, but this was a god-tier escalation.

Literally.

He didn't know what was coming, couldn't predict what was going to happen, but…. there had to be a limit, right? A cut-off point?

Whatever it was that was happening, between the poisoning and everything else… It couldn't actually get any worse than this, could it?

...​

One day, seven hours later:

Behind him, Tyson whimpered in pain, clutching at his bloodied, wounded shoulder and trembling in terror. To his left, Nico looked about as pale, the ground beneath their feet having finally stopped rumbling and having achieved a grand total of nothing.

And just ahead, expression one monstrous and rapidly shifting with mottled fury, was Tantalus.

"I will flay you alive!" The once-living son of Zeus snarled, and in response, thunder roared overhead even as a furious wind began to pummel at their forms - the beginnings of a rapidly forming hurricane.

And somehow, despite everything, Nico still had the gall to smirk. "Was it something I said?"

Tantalus twitched - blue sparks crackling over his skin, and Dai resisted the urge to gulp.

"DIE!"

"Scatter!"

As they bolted to avoid the oncoming rain of lightning, Dai realized that he had his answer -Yeah, things could get worse.

They could get so much worse.

You have no idea.

...​

Demigod dreams - ain't they a bitch?

As always leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it please be courteous.

 

[Firewillreign]

Dragon Quest Dai - Sea Of Monsters - Part 3

A day and a half before the event that would henceforth be known as the Tantalus Clusterfuck TM, Dai woke up to something of a literal rude awakening, in that he was woken up at the very crack of dawn to a whole mess he didn't want to have to deal with.

Not after having that absolute banger of a dream hours earlier and subsequently not managing to get back to sleep for gods knew how long, trying to understand what it all meant (and whether or not his friends - Nico and Bianca and everyone else were in as much trouble as he was starting to fear they were)

It all started when Travis roused and pulled him out of bed despite his protests, equally bleary-eyed and miserable at having to wake up at that ridiculous hour.

"Why?" He groaned, pawing for his covers, but the son of Hermes was quicker on the uptake and mercilessly tore them away.

"Message for you," Travis mumbled, still looking half-dead on his feet even as he gave him a baleful glare as if this was somehow Dai's fault - he wanted his rest too, damn it!

"What message?"

In response, his friend ever so helpfully shoved him towards Cabin Eleven's door without so much as a 'by your leave' before immediately turning right back around and heading off to his bunk.

"Dunno. Don't care. I'm going back to bed."

Great. That was exactly what he had wanted to hear.

Dai made a mental note to ask Conner and Nico to plant a stink bomb under Travis's bed and trudged out the door, still rubbing his eyes tiredly.

Outside, he recognized the figure of Lee Fletcher, the Apollo Cabin's head counselor, who had his back turned to Dai and was watching the sun steadily rise over the horizon and paint the heavens with arcs of red, blue, and orange, with the occasional brushstroke of violet mixed in the backdrop as well.

It was beautiful - Almost enough to lift the lingering drowsiness off him.

Almost being the operative word.

Then the other boy turned around, and Dai spluttered indignantly.

Despite the nervous pull to his expression and the body language that screamed 'I don't want to be here', Lee looked wide awake and almost peppy.

Given how exhausted Dai was, the sight of him was downright insulting.

"Dude. How even?"

Lee obviously understood what he was asking (probably got the question a lot, now that he thought about it) because the hesitation washed off him and was replaced with a grin - naturally, even that was unfairly bright this early in the morning.

"Son of Apollo." He explained, smiling cheerfully. "We're wired to rise at the crack of dawn, every day, every time - unless we're wounded or something. Guess our dad doesn't want us missing out on his sunrise."

He wasn't showing off, Lee was too nice for that, but there was an undeniably pleased undertone to the words that he seemingly couldn't suppress and Dai didn't blame him for it. Right then, he was more than a little jealous (Then again, he was totally fire-proof, so he still came out ahead in the end)

"That's unfair and you should feel bad." Dai glared playfully before he smiled back lowly and shook his head. "So what is this about?"

Lee's smile fell off.

"Right. Well, Mr. D asked me to deliver a message."

Dai listened as Lee spoke, his eyes widening and his eyebrows rising higher and higher with every word. When he was done listening, he couldn't help the confused, wary look he gave him in return.

"I'm sorry, what?"

Lee shifted uncomfortably, his earlier discomfort back in spades.

"Mr.D is expecting you at the Big House." He repeated unenthusiastically, and he seemed to have a hard time looking Dai in the face. "You and Nico and Bianca. He said to grab all your stuff, too, and get down there as fast as you can."

Yeah, that was what Dai had thought he heard - also, coincidentally, that's exactly what had his stomach sinking so far down it was basically halfway to the Underworld already.

"Why?"

It was a stupid question, and they both knew it - Two children of the lord of the dead didn't get claimed in quick succession followed by a demigod (maybe) who by all rights shouldn't even exist without there being consequences - and seeing as their divine parents were, you know, gods, the odds were high that it would be the demigods in questions who had to deal with them.

Nico and Bianca being his Uncle Hades's kids was really, really bad. Thrilled as he was to have cousins (And he was - they were always family, but now it was official), Hestia had clued him on bits and pieces of the context behind all the chaos.

Dai knew about the great prophecy. All three of them did

Not all of it, of course. No amount of begging or pleading would have managed to get Mom to budge on that, but he still had a general idea

Child of the eldest gods, Olympus in peril, terrible danger, and bad times coming for basically everyone - Dai got the gist.

It was more than enough for him to realize that after everything that happened over the years, from Thalia Grace to Percy Jackson and Nico and Bianca (and now even him, for who was Hestia if not the eldest of them all) ... with a few possible exceptions outside of his mom, the gods of Olympus were going to be greatly displeased at best, and furious at worst.

Likely more the latter than the former, if their recent string of bad luck was anything to go by. And while no one bar maybe an oracle could predict what exactly was going to happen next (preferably without a world-ending prophecy this time around), you really didn't have to be one to know that having the attention of angry gods fixated on you was absolutely terrible for your future chances of survival.

"I don't know." Lee finally said, sounding genuinely regretful for all the good that sentiment would do. "But you really should get going, and make it snappy. Remember Chiron's lecture a few months ago? Heroic Questing 101? If a god asks you to do something, you do it fast."

Dai nodded, swallowing an uncomfortable lump in his throat - whatever Dionysus wanted with them, it couldn't be good. Not after last night.

"Thanks, Lee."

That got him another smile, even if it was somewhat weak.

"Anytime."

Dai stood on the porch for a while longer after LEe left, watching the son of Apollo presumably head off back to start his day for lack of anything better to do, before he exhaled lowly and turned to go back inside.

Time to wake up the others.

...

Bianca didn't have much of a reaction - always the lightest sleeper among them, Dai had barely shaken her awake and told her what they were expected to before she was rolling out of bed and grabbing her backpack from the nearest hangar, gathering up all of her stuff (which wasn't much, really) with the kind of determined efficiency of someone eager to get things over with.

Dai got the impression she'd expected something to happen - she'd seen the reactions and the looks everyone had been giving them, after all, but she was handling it a lot better than most would. Not perfectly, of course - was nervous and pale, sure, the silent implication of 'we're in a lot of trouble' simplicity clear to her just like it was to him, but at least she was calm.

Nico, on the other hand?

Nico was not calm about it. Nico was very not calm about it.

"They're going to kick us out of camp!" He hissed, eyes wide and frazzled. IT had been a trial and a half to get him to wake up- seriously, if he ever went on a quest his heavy sleeping would almost definitely get him eaten - but the second Dai mentioned the whole 'pack your bags' thing he was up like a bat out of Tartarus and flitting around the room like a lunatic.

"Nico, come on." Dai tried to calm him down, helping him pack both of their bags with middling success. "No one is kicking us out. That's ridiculous."

Actually, it really wasn't - that was one of the suspicions that had occurred to him half a second after Lee was done talking and one he was desperately hoping wasn't true. Innocent demigods weren't driven out of camp-halfblood. It just wasn't something that happened.

But Chrion wasn't supposed to be banished either, yet that still happened anyway, a part of him whispered, and Dai promptly stomped it and locked it in a closet where it belonged.

That kind of thinking wasn't going to help anyone.

"Besides." He pulled a brave smile (it was a lot harder to manage than it should have been) "Mom would never let it happen."

That, at least, managed to get Nico to simmer down - even if only begrudgingly.

"Now help me pack, you lazy jerk, or I'm telling Bianca."

At least Nico's answering squawk was funny.

(Dai did his best to pretend not to hear the words Nico whispered under his breath, the low greeting or the unsubtle plea for help - Everything considered, now was as good a time as any to begin praying to Hades, even if Hestia was already inarguably in their corner.)

...
​

Ten minutes to pack, all in all, and then they made their way down to the Big House.

"Finally. Took you long enough."

Mr.D was already reclined and waiting for them from his seat on the deck, and he harrumphed impatiently in greeting - par the course for the camp director, but Dai still found himself standing ramrod straight when purple eyes locked onto him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Nico and Bianca do the same.

He wasn't surprised - Something about the god's regard was different this morning. The ever-present casual disregard of anything and everything demigod was still there, and so was the irritation at having to deal with them, but something about it felt almost dulled.

Like his immortal heart wasn't in it, and the extra bite he usually had for half-bloods he deemed too lousy to put up with was replaced instead with a glint of sharp annoyance that didn't bode well for... anyone, really.

"Did you need us for something, my lord?" It was Bianca who beat them both to the punch, trepidation in her tone as she addressed the god directly.

"I need many things. A long overdue vacation from this miserable camp and you irritating heroes. A suitable pinochle partner, because Tartarus knows Tantalus is anything but." Came the grumbled reply, and the three of them exchanged uncertain glances. "I'd even settle for a single glass of wine, but seeing as my father in his infinite fairness and wisdom-"

The sky overhead suddenly rumbled threateningly, startling them all. Mr.D didn't even look up.

"-has denied me even that, I suppose I'll have to settle for preemptively preventing at least some of the headaches the three of you will undoubtedly curse me with in the near future from coming to pass - there you are, Pollux."

"Hey Dad."

Dai rounded on the spot, and sure enough, there was his friend heading up the deck steps as he made his way over. He smiled at them and gave a subdued wave as he came to stop beside his father.

"You wanted to see me?"

"I wouldn't have called for you if I didn't." That sounded a bit short for a greeting directed at his son, but by Mr.D's standards, it was positively tame. "Take Nigel and Bailey here-"

"Nico and Bianca" The older girl muttered lowly, and if she was heard she was summarily ignored.

"-and get them settled in with your brother at Cabin 12. They'll be staying with the pair of you for the foreseeable future."

Someone choked.

It might have been Dai, or all four of them for that matter. No one was in any shape to keep track on account of all of their jaws dropping at the same time. For a long minute, you could have heard a pin drop. Mr.D decided to capitalize on the time by pulling a magazine from somewhere - Dai's

In the end, Bianca recovered first and pulled herself up with a cough.

"I'm sorry, my lord." She tried to keep a straight, always polite one, but she still sounded downright strangled as she asked. "We're... moving cabins? To Cabin 12?"

Mr. D didn't even look up from his reading material. The book rustled in his hands a bit, and the title was abruptly visible at an angle 'Decanter, Wine's the Year!"

"Did I not just say as much? I'm not particularly fond of repeating myself, Belladonna."

"That one wasn't even close," Nico whispered to Dai, and Bianca elbowed him viciously and ignored his pained hiss - There was a time and place for sass, this was obviously neither

"But my lord, Cabin 12 is... it's your cabin."

"What an incredibly astute observation." The god drawled mockingly, flipping another page with practiced ease. "Are we certain you're not a daughter of Athena instead?"

She flushed, and Dai frowned slightly. Nico had the surprisingly good sense to bite the inside of his cheek and prevent himself from blurting out something suicidally stupid - and given the fact that gods famously had hair-trigger tempers when it came to insults, deliberate or otherwise, anything the son of hades could have said in defense of Bianca could be perceived as an insult if he wasn't careful.

Mom loved her family, but she'd never made any secret of how dangerous they all were given sufficient (and sometimes even insufficient) motivation.

In all fairness, it wasn't as though Bianca's very wary confusion wasn't justified - they were all feeling it, and for good reason too.

As a general rule, except for Hermes, the Olympians didn't let the children of other gods claim spots in their cabins. If they did, the Hermes cabin wouldn't be crammed full of the unclaimed or the children of minor gods.

Even if no one ever complained too loudly for fear of upsetting the gods (read - getting blasted to bits), plenty of campers were upset about it - for the love of Hestia, Cabins 2 and 7 belonged to Hera and Artemis respectively, and neither of them had or ever will have demigod children.

(How was that even fair?)

Either way, the gods didn't allow other campers in their children's cabins, full stop.

It just didn't happen

Until now, apparently.

Bianco opened her mouth to speak again- probably to ask why like they were all near-dying to themselves but seemingly thought better of it. Instead, she just lowered her head with a shake before turning to Pollux, who still looked just as gobsmacked.

"Dad-"

"Oh, what is it now?"

"I- I just..." Pollux's eyes passed over the three of them again, lingering on Dai and Nico. "It's not that I don't want them there - I really do, but I don't get it. Why?"

"Because I said so." Mr. D huffed and finally chose to look up from his magazine, wearing a lazy glare that still managed to appear half-menacing. "I wasn't aware I had to explain my every whim and fancy to you, my son. Or must I now seek your approval before I make a decision?"

The tone he used was mild as milk - the implicit warning within the word was bloodcurdling all on its own, even if Pollux seemed to be relatively unfazed.

"No, of course not-"

"Then I take it you aren't going to continue disobeying me?"

Pollux frowned. "You know I'd never-"

"Good." Mr.D gaze dropped back to his catalog and flicked past another page aggressively "Then do as you're told and leave it at that."

Pollux's features scrunched, and the look on his face filtered between confusion and frustration in equal parts before finally falling into something woefully resigned.

And a little defeated - Dai felt bad about that.

"C'mon guys." He grunted under his breath, giving his father one last look out the corner of his eye before turning on the spot and gesturing for them to follow. "Let's go."

"Not you," Mr.D suddenly snapped at Dai as he went to follow. "Stay behind, Doug-"

"Dai" He protested - it was one syllable, it wasn't even that hard.

"Whatever. I need a word. The rest you be on your way." Nico and Bianca visibly hesitated, shooting him concerned looks, and Mr.D's eyes narrowed. "Now."

"It's okay." Dai smiled reassuringly. He wasn't scared, for all that Mr.D was pulling out all the stops on being casually terrifying. "I'm right behind you."

The god waited until the three of them were well past hearing distance before slowly rounding on Dai, his expression setting off alarm bells at the back of his head.

"What?"

It only occurred to him that might sound rude after it burst past his lips, but Mr.D didn't appear to take offense.

"Tell me, Prytenai-" Dai tensed - there was that odd name from the night before (what did it even mean? He knew it had something to do with his mom, but...) "Would you like to know why I'm allowing three half-bloods not my own to encroach on my children's cabin?"

It was phrased like a question, but he got the sense that the answer was forthcoming whether or not he said yes. Still, he nodded anyway, and Mr.D smiled - it was entirely devoid of humor, or anything pleasant at all. for that matter.

"Your mother visited me."

Wait, what?

"Mom was here?"

"That was what I just said, wasn't it?" Mr. D rolled his eyes impatiently.

"But why wouldn't she come see-?"

Then he bit his tongue, hard, because revealing just how much attention mom paid to him was a slip-up he didn't want to make. And from the way the god tilted his head, he hadn't missed it.

"Because gods do not typically concern themselves with their half-blood offspring bar the pigheaded few who go on a few quests and think themselves worthy of praise for it. It's always an irritating balancing act with you mortals - If we don't pay enough attention to you, you complain. We pay too much, you complain anyway. Or my father does, by way of his lightning bolts." Mr. D's eyes sharpened a little. "But I suppose that wouldn't have stopped my dear aunt in regards to you, would it?"

It wasn't a question, but an accusation, and not an inaccurate one either. As far as Dai knew, no demigod had ever spent as much time with their divine parent as he had, and from the look he was giving him...

Mr.D knew. Or at least suspected.

Before he could decide whether or not that was a bad thing (or as bad as he feared, because again, the attention of any god or goddess not his mom was never necessarily a good thing)

"Regardless, what's done is done." Mr.D leaned back in his seat again. "Housing you in particular is of no concern to me. A bunk in a cabin I care little for is paltry repayment for an eternal throne, but my Aunt has ever and always been the frugal one of us and I imagine I'll never have another opportunity besides."

Dai frowned. What was that?

He would have asked, but Mr. D wasn't done talking.

"Now, the other two." The god looked like he'd swallowed something sour. "The other two I'd prefer to get rid of entirely-"

Dai tensed, a frisson of real panic blooming in his head. He wouldn't

"-but I'd rather not invite the. mess that'd bring down my doorstep." He either ignored or was entirely oblivious to Dai's relieved exhale - probably more the former than the latter.

"But then why not let us stay in Cabin 11?" He couldn't help but ask just as soon as the god paused. "Why would Mom want us to move at all?"

They liked the Hermes cabin, even if it was ungodly cramped (pun, very much intended). The prospect of moving in with Castor and Pollux sounded fun too, but having Mr.D's attention laser-focused on them... much less so.

"Politics, among many things. This little display makes it look like I'm keeping an eye on your two little cousins." He snorted derisively. "By now all of Olympus will have heard of them, and the gods - those that aren't gossiping about your own impossible existence, for that matter - will have already begun throwing out accusations."

That didn't sound good.

"Accusations?" Dai asked nervously

"Isn't it obvious? Two children of the god of the underworld show up at camp, unannounced, and a few months down the line father's favorite potted plan gets poisoned."

It took a minute for the implication to set in, and when it did-

"What?!" Dai gasped, eyes going wide. "Nico and Bianca had nothing to do with what happened to Thalia's tree!"

That was insane... and, he realized with a sinking feeling, very, very difficult to disprove. The timing was damning, and the reputation of children of Hades in general...

This was terrible.

"Perhaps they did, perhaps they didn't. The truth doesn't matter, only our perception of it, and it isn't looking good for your little friends. Frankly, the fact that they survived the night is only due to Hestia's intervention-"

The claiming, a part of him realized.

"-and her obvious support of the children. And now I've been roped into it. As if my days weren't tedious enough as they were." Mr.D harrumphed moodily. "There you have it. They'll move into my cabin so I can at least pretend to keep an eye on them and as an incentive to guarantee that no one smites them when I'm not looking and leaves me to deal with the fallout. Not to mention it'll assuage old Corpse breath's pride and ensure that he doesn't take offense and start throwing a hissy fit at the idea of the fruit of his high and mighty loins being lumped together with the rest of the rabble. I have enough on my plate as it is - If uncle dearest decided to throw a tantrum and curse a cabin full of you brats on my watch, I'd never hear the end of it."

Dai felt a chill go down his spine - a literal chill, he realized with another start, and his expression went a little slack at the edges from shock as the air around them noticeably cooled.

When he exhaled, his breath was visibly misty.

"Oh."

He felt it, then.

It was near-impossible to describe, but between one moment and the next, Dai suddenly felt like was being watched. Both god and demigod shifted in place as a presence rolled over them, powerful and oppressive, and Dai knew with bone-deep certainty that his uncle (Bianca and Nico's dad) was actively listening and he wasn't happy.

"Bah." Of course, Mr. D looked as supremely unconcerned as ever and more than a little bored, and that was its own kind of impressive considering who exactly was listening in "Theatrics. Your spawn will be taken care of, uncle - both of them. Now unless you have something useful to add to this tedious discussion, and I sincerely doubt you do, do us all a favor and go bother someone else."

And oh, Hades really didn't like that, and for a second the air went from cold to freezing - so much though that the wooden deck beneath their feet began to creak in protest as a paper-thin layer of frost began to condense and spread over the planks.

Mr. D Just rolled his eyes.

A moment later, the presence retreated and Dai exhaled again, this time in relief - the cold didn't bother him the way it did others, but even he had started feeling that towards the end and it sucked.

The god of wine muttered something in Greek that had the tips of his ears going pink before he could tune it out.

Then a thought occurred to him - and wasn't that a miracle, because he'd experienced so much whiplash over the course of one conversation it was a miracle he could still think straight enough to ask.

"Why are you telling me any of this?"

Because unless Mr. just wanted someone to complain to, Dai didn't see much of a reason for any of this bar intimidating him with the knowledge that a great many eyes were on him and a lot of them belonged to people who were gunning for his friends.

He was, in fact, thoroughly intimidated as it was and he didn't care for the feeling.

At all.

And some of his true feelings must have shown on his face because Mr.D just snorted again.

"I'm telling you this because I am now, until further notice and against all my good sense, invested in your continued survival. All three of you." He sounded entirely too unhappy about it. "Therefore, I am warning you you've all drawn dangerous attention and are already treading on very thin ice. Don't step out of line. Don't break the rules. And whatever else you do, stay away from Tantalus."

Dai reared back when Mr.D's eyes started glowing balefully, the last few words thundering in his ears.

"I have been called away to an energy council meeting up on Olympus, no doubt to discuss the recent...discoveries" He put the word in air quotes. "Until I return, I want the three of you to steer well clear of our vaunted activities director and avoid provoking any... incidents."

The undertone to that one word was chilling.

"Incidents."

"You don't know who Tantalus is, do you?" Dai tentatively shook his head "Of course not. Well, I'm not going to give you a history lesson. I have better things to do with my time-"

Overhead, another peal of thunder sounded out and rocked the porch, even more violently than before.

"-and a meeting to attend, yes I know!" Mr. D's head shot up as he yelled at the sky, the glow in his eyes doubling in intensity. He rounded back on Dai with visible frustration creasing his features. "Suffice it to say my unfortunate sibling - unfortunate in that I have to claim any relation to him, mind you - was once a very nasty little bug even by the standards of half-bloods and as a result earned himself a rather inspired and well-deserved eternity in the Fields of Punishment. A fate that is now on hold for the duration of his stay at this camp."

"That's... bad," Dai murmured, losing track of his thoughts again - Tantalus was Mr.D's brother? As in a son of Zeus.

Wait.

A horrifying realization came to him - Tantalus was his cousin? Gross!

"Tantalus is bad news, and we should stay away from him." He nodded his vehement agreement. "Er... no offense, Mr.D, but we were going to do that anyway. Tantalus is horrible."

"More than you know." was the only reply that remark got, and Dai didn't understand the tinge of dark amusement that came with it - nor did he particularly like it. "Make sure the other two are made well aware as well. Tantalus knows his punishment is not voided, merely on hold unless he proves himself competent"

The god snort showed how likely he thought that was.

"-and he may well decide to seek retribution."

"From Nico and Bianca?" Dai asked incredulously. "What did they ever do to him."

"Not them. It is their father to whom the annoying fool holds his grudge." Mr.D stood up then, still smiling unpleasantly, and Dai abruptly realized that the god was a good deal taller than he'd realized. "And that is an old, ugly tale. I daresay the fool may very well try something stupid. After all, what's the worst that could happen? He's already damned forevermore as it is."

Oh, over his dead body!

"I won't let him." Dai snarled, fists clenching as fire exploded in his gut - dully, the lingering chill from Hades's presence banished by a sudden burst of warmth.

Tantalus was vile, but he wasn't touching his friends. He'd get the same treatment the Colchis bull from the day before got before he let him hurt Nico and Bianca.

"I won't let him." He repeated, jaw setting stubbornly "He'll have to go through me."

In response, Mr. D said nothing at all

Suddenly, looking up at those purple eyes, watching the way the light poured out of in strange, twisted patterns that hurt to look at and had nothing to do with their luminescence, it abruptly occurred to him that snapping at a god was maybe a bad idea.

"I... could have worded that better?" He offered nervously, and that did the trick.

Mr.D snorted and rolled his eyes, and a purple glow winked out as though it was never there.

"So long as you stay in line, Dave-"

"Dai. It's Dai."

-then you can do as you please. Don't think your mother's protection-" His gaze lingered pointedly on the celestial bronze circlet on Dai's head "Will shield you indefinitely. Your appearance now of all times, your very existence - it does not bode well for what comes next. I know for a fact that my father is only waiting for an excuse to see you eviscerated. See that you don't give him one."

And with that wonderful parting shot, Dionysus snapped his fingers. His image folded up like a paper display. There was a pop and he was gone, leaving a faint scent of grapes that was quickly blown away by the early morning wind.

...
​

"Are you alright?" Bianca asked as soon as he'd trudged his way down to Cabin 12, lost in thought and trying not to stare up at the sky warily. "What did he want?"

Nico and Pollux didn't talk over her, but they weren't any less focused on him. For a second, Dai almost told them everything.

Then his brain stalled when he tried to imagine how that would have gone down.

The gods think that we poisoned Thalia's tree and jeopardized camp, and our uncle - yeah, the king of the gods, that uncle? He wants to kill us. The word eviscerated was used. Awesome, right?

"He just wanted to warn us not to make a mess of his cabin." He said instead, putting out his best poker face when Bianca's expression narrowed in disbelief. "He also said to avoid Tantalus."

"...Is anyone in camp not avoiding that sorry piece of work?" Nico looked around their little group, his bemused smile growing when they all shuffled in place awkwardly. "What? Everyone hates him."

"And for good reason." Pollux raised an eyebrow when they all rounded. "Honestly, I'm surprised the three of you don't know. You're pretty good with your myths, and Tantalus's story is one of the more famous ones."

"He killed his son, right?" Dai asked uncomfortably, his stomach roiling at the thought. Even saying it was awful. Family was sacred.

Pollux's expression twitched. "... He did. But do you know the whole story?"

When they all shook their heads, he turned on the spot and led them towards the cabin. "Alright, come on. We can talk after you've picked a bunk - fair warning, you might have to skip breakfast when we're done.

And wasn't that ominous?

Still, they followed Pollux up the steps to Cabin 12.

It was long and low, built from lilac stone and overgrown with grapevines that wrapped all around it from the walls to across the roof. Mounted above the entrance was a stuffed leopard head.

The inside, though, looked like a mishmash of the inside of a karaoke bar and a picnic garden. There was an elevated performance stage in the northwest corner with picnic tables for an audience, and a path beyond that that separated into sleeping quarters divided by gender. There were a few scattered coaches and bean bags decorating the open space, all lilac colored with grape-vine themes, naturally, and Dai even spotted what looked like a ladder leading down into a hatch against the far wall.

"It's a winery," Pollux explained when Dai caught his eye. "But don't get your hopes up. It's been closed up since the... er, the last children of Dionysus came to camp a long time ago and Dad won't open it up again until either I or Pollux hit eighteen."

Nico laughed, but not unkindly. "He'd really make you wait that long? Even if he's the god of wine?"

"I know. But I guess responsible drinking restrictions are part of the job description. Well, that, or he's still upset about Zeus forbidding him from drinking, so..."

He shrugged, sounding so disgruntled that the rest of them burst out laughing.

"You guys suck." Still, Pollux was grinning by the end of it either way. "Alright, Dai, Nico, the bunks are that way. Go pick any bed, there are plenty. Bianca, you're the only girl, so you get the left wing to yourself."

Soon enough they were settled in, for a given value of the word. Dai just tossed his backpack on the nearest bed to the fireplace - son of Hestia, need he say more? - and called it a day. Personalizing his little bunk could wait. When he got back to the common area, Castor had joined the other three in waiting for him, and Nico had already whipped out his deck of mythomagic cards.

"Game?" He asked cheerfully, and the rest of them just short of shrugged their agreement. Dai liked the game well enough and had his own deck to boot (mom had seemed amused when she'd gifted them a matching set) and the others didn't exactly care one way or another. Whatever passed the time and all that.

"Right, so Tantalus." Pollux started explaining once Nico had finished dividing up the cards. "Everyone knows that he's a son of Zeus, right?"

Nods all around.

Dai leaned over and nudged Bianca. "That makes him our cousin, you know."

She grimaced. "Oh, ew."

"I feel you." Pollux shuffled his cards a bit. "He was king of an ancient Greek city-state that got its name from him - Tantalis. The locals crowned him king because he was a great warrior and tactician, and a proven son of Zeus what with the lightning and everything."

"Wait, we are talking about the same Tantalus, right?" Bianca sounded skeptical, and Dai didn't blame her. "I mean, he's cruel and nasty, but he looks like a strong breeze would knock him over."

Pollux shrugged. "He's been dead for thousands of years and stuck in the fields of punishment for all that time. Frankly, I'm surprised he doesn't look worse. Anyway, he was a big deal back in his day. He won many battles, conquered great armies and even killed one or two legendary monsters like any respectable demigod - he was the Hercules of his era. By the time he ascended to his throne, he'd become so famous that even the gods were impressed, and he was invited to feast among them up at Mount Olympus."

"Woah." Nico breathed, eyes wide despite himself. "They do that?"

It was Castor who shook his head. "Not anymore they don't. Not unless it's the winter solstice."

"So you can understand why Tantalus being allowed up there was a huge deal, even by our standards." Pollux agreed. "Anyway, the gods loved him. Great warrior, powerful king, fearless demigod, he ticked all the boxes. They invited him back a couple of times over the years, mostly after he won great battles and dedicated his victory to them. And then it all went wrong."

He exhaled lowly, a grim look overcoming him.

"Tantalus got older and weaker. He retired and lost the strength he needed to lead his armies, and he only got worse from there. Eventually, the people of Tantalis started whispering - they wanted Tantalus to step aside and let his son Pelops, who was younger and stronger and a proven warrior to rule instead of this tired old man already past his prime."

Dai winced, already guessing. "I bet he loved that."

"Oh, didn't he ever. " Pollux laughed derisively. "The whispers drove him up the walls. He had the advisors who advocated for his son's rule executed and started ruling over his people out of fear. Anyone who badmouthed him was executed, even little children."

Bianca recoiled in hissed disgust. "Monster."

"No, no, hold it in. We aren't there yet." That dark promise did nothing to calm her down. "Anyway, Tantalus prayed to the gods for help securing his rule and regaining his people's love, but they didn't want anything to do with him. Killing innocents and generally acting like a deranged lunatic even by the standards of the ancient Greeks really wasn't a good look for him. Eventually, he must figured that out too because he grabbed his spear and armor, roused up the Tantalisan army and went out to get the gods' attention the old-fashioned way - by conquering a neighboring energy kingdom and dedicating his victory to the gods.

There was a pause as he laid down his cards, mythomagic officially forgotten.

"The crazy thing was, it actually worked. Tantalus nearly died in the war, but as soon as he made it back to Tantalis Zeus sent Hermes to summon him up to Olympus. He got to feast with the gods, just like old times, and I guess that was the point where he got the worst idea of the rest of his life."

They all leaned forward, and Pollux smirked - He was enjoying this, the jerk,

"Tantalus was allowed to eat and drink ambrosia and nectar with his meal, and he must have realized that would be the last time he ever had the chance, and that gave the idea to take some down with him and share it with the people of his kingdom. He knew he'd never regain his missing youth or lead his armies ever again, but if he could be the man who brought the food and drink of the gods to the people, he would have been loved forever."

"Let me guess." Bianca frowned. "The gods said no?"

"Ding ding, we have a winner!" Castor mimed victorious clapping from his seat.

"Of course, the gods said no. Zeus himself almost threw him off Olympus like he did Hephaestus just for asking - and that probably would have been better for everyone, honestly. Anyway, Tantalus was furious - Remember how I said he went crazy? Well, now he got extra cuckoo. He was convinced the gods were out to get him just like everybody else and he decided to take revenge."

Dai felt his face fall. "Oh, no."

"Yep. He invited the gods to a kingly feast in his hall, and they accepted. Don't ask me why, I'm pretty sure they were just humoring him because they were bored or something, but all of them showed up. And Tantalus? Well, he decided beforehand that he was going to serve them the most insulting meal he could think of as some kind of twisted payback. And he found just the thing, too - he remembered all the stories of Kronos eating his kids when they were still newborns, and then he thought of his own son who he hated and thought was planning to usurp him, and he..."

He trailed off, grimacing in disgust.

"Well, when the gods showed up that night, none of them noticed that Tantalus's son was missing, and none of them realized where he went until Demeter asked what the special, one-of-a-kind stew that Tantalus served them for dinner came from."

...​

​

It took a solid minute for the implication to settle in.

Then Dai's stomach lurched violently and it was by the grace of the gods (and wasn't that an irony) that he didn't dry heave then and there, because what the shit?

Bianca went green. Nico went green. Gods damn it, even Castor and Pollux went green, and they'd heard this story before.

"How is he here!?" Nico hissed in indignant, genuine rage - it might have been Dai's imagination, but he could have sworn he felt the ground tremble beneath their feet. "How is he even allowed here at camp!"

"Because Chiron is gone, and suspected to be a traitor," Castor answered, looking just as furious even though his tone remained level. "Chiron, who's been training heroes since almost before heroes were even a thing. The gods know that if they can't trust him, they can't trust anyone else to run a camp full of impressionable demigods in his stead. So they went with the next best thing - a literal living corpse who they can control, command and dismiss at will without worrying about the enemy subverting him. A foolproof plan, except for the part where he's the scum of the underworld and should have been tossed head-first into Tartarus from the get-go instead of the Field of Punishment."

"Look, it's not a problem, alright? Just avoid him like Dad asked, and we'll all be golden." Pollux gave a valiant attempt at a smile and hefted up his cards. "So are we playing or what?"

Unsurprisingly, no one wanted to play anymore.

...​

Word about their new living arrangements spread like wildfire because by the time the four of them stepped foot outside Cabin 12, it seemed like they were the only thing anyone was ready to talk about.

Dai was just about to turn back around and march right back in, and he could tell that Nico would have been hot on his heels because solitude would have been a thousand times better than being gawked at like they had been the night before. (Fire didn't hurt him, but those stares sure as anything burned.)

They didn't make it one step before Bianca seized them both by the back of their shirts and dragged them down the steps, Castor and Pollux laughing as they followed.

"Bianca, let go!"

"No. I don't like it any more than you do, but we aren't going to be hiding inside while everyone else talks about us like we don't exist. That's bullshit. We might as well not have come to camp at all, then. Now I'm going to go grab my spear and Clarisse and I'm going to throw myself at her until I can't lift my arms anymore, and you two had better do something productive or so help me!"

"Tyrant." Nico hissed, and then his yelp rose an octave when she let go of his shirt and twisted his ear savagely.

"Brat." She smacked him upside the head one final time for good measure before she took off, marching towards the dining pavilion in search of the daughter of Ares. "Go do something useful or I'll get you!"

That was how Dai found himself walking up the steps of Cabin 3 after Nico took off to find Travis and Castor and Pollux headed down to the strawberry fields.

It seemed like such a good idea, too. Every camper he knew was giving Dai an odd look, so why not go to two of the new campers who he not only didn't know but also happened to be the subject of just as much gossip as he and the Di Angelo siblings?

It was Percy Jackson who opened the door - Dai hadn't known what he was expecting when he'd heard the stories of the kid his age who'd retrieved the lightning bolt and fought an avatar of Ares while he was at it, but it was almost bewildering how normal he looked.

An inch or two taller than him, with tousled black hair and sea-green eyes. That was everything of note.

There was nothing else that screamed 'obscenely powerful demigod, apparently' but that didn't stop Dai from smiling and greeting him

"Hi! I'm Dai-"

He hesitated for a fraction of a second, before quickly adding on

"-son of Hestia!"

It was strange to admit it aloud after so long hiding it, but far from unpleasant.

"Oh, um." He held out his hand. "Percy. Jackson. Son of Poseidon, but you probably already knew that."

"Yeah, I did. I just wanted to get to know my two new cousins."

Between Percy, Nico, and Bianca all he needed was another child of Zeus and they'd have a full set, more or less!

"Cousins?" Percy's eyes rose in bemused surprise before his features flickered. "Wait, two?"

"Yes," Dai's smile got a little dimmer at the obvious confusion. "You and your brother."

All he got was a blank look. "Brother?"

Was he talking too fast or something?

"Your brother." Dai enunciated slowly, frowning. Where was the confusion coming from? Did Percy have another sibling, maybe? "Tyson. He got claimed yesterday?"

And then Percy did the oddest thing - his features dawned in realization, and he suddenly grimaced.

"He's not my-"

Percy cut himself off, mouth closing as he pressed his lips tightly together.

Dai was still confused, but now he was growing weary - why, he didn't know, but something of Percy's standing had just shifted, and the way he hesitated-

"He's your brother." He crossed his arms "Poseidon says so, after all."

Percy couldn't have missed that - he literally couldn't, he was at dinner the last night too. But the way he was acting… Dai didn't get it. If Hestia had claimed another child (which according to his mom's own words was categorically never going to happen, ever) he'd have been bouncing off the walls in glee - A new brother or a sister sounded awesome.

"He's…he's a cyclops."

The way he said it was so defensive, so final as if he'd just laid down an argument worthy of a king.

As if it explained anything.

"So? What's that got to do with it? Lots of Poseidon's kids are Cyclops or water spirits. "

Dai didn't mean for his words to sound so accusing, but they must have been regardless because Percy suddenly tensed. He didn't say anything in response, but his eyes flashed with something the son of Hestia couldn't quite decipher but didn't like either way.

"You know that doesn't mean he isn't your brother, right?" Dai pressed, and he probably shouldn't have been getting upset about it, but he'd had a really bad day and a half and something about Percy Jackson's whole stance was rubbing him the wrong way.

"Alright. I guess you don't know." He said at last when it became clear that Percy wasn't going to help out, and he spun on the spot and stalked away. Whatever was going on here, he'd just have to find out on his-

"I don't feel like heading out, but Tyson should be down by the Hephestus Cabin. Beckendrof came by to pick him up this morning." Dai stilled and rounded on him, but Percy was already slamming the door shut behind him without another word.

Well. That had been strange.

...
​

So, for a Cyclops, Tyson was awesome.

Dai'd been expecting it, of course, otherwise he never would have helped defend the camp and wouldn't have ever been allowed to set foot in it, but there was a difference between being tolerable and being wonderful, and Tyson was the latter in spades.

That was why Dai didn't feel even a little bad about not stopping Nico from glaring bloody murder at every camper who stared at the big softie with disgust or dropped a cruel comment or three without ever considering how cruel they were being.

Turns out, when the son of Hades glares at you like he was imagining your corpse, you suddenly find yourself wanting to be anywhere else. Handy, that.

Eventually, they chose to take a walk around the edge of the forest, Tyson seemingly delighted to have made even more friends beyond Beckendrof (Tyson swore eternal friendship the second after the son of Hephestus handed the cyclops a glob of molten celestial bronze and told him to go at it like it was a handful of play-dough). Seriously, he was just so nice, and almost helplessly naive about it. He'd have had half the camp wrapped around his finger if people weren't such idiots who couldn't look past his eye.

It was all going perfectly... and that's when the Tantalus Clusterfuck TM began as the man himself stepped into their path from where he'd slinking behind the tree line.

"Well, well. What have we here?"

Immediately, Dai and Nico stilled and fell silent. Tyson stepped back at the look Tantalus gave him and shifted to the side, almost as though he was trying to hide behind Nico. Given he was almost two heads taller than him, he didn't have much lick.

"The son of Hestia, slacking off." He gave Dai a disdainful glare, before shifting a far fiercer expression onto Nico. "And the son of Hades, conspiring with the monster. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Like calls to like, after all."

Tyson made a low, wounded sound, and Nico snarled in mounting fury.

"The only monster here is you."

Dark eyes flashed. "Watch yourself, boy. There are no gods to coddle you should you incur my wrath."

"Oh, I'm terrified. What are you going to do, chase after me like the breakfast bagel you were slobbering over this morning? And fail again while you're at it?"

Tantalus did neither.

Instead, he pulled a spear out of thin air and lobbed it straight at Nico's head. It whistled through the air, crossing half the distance between them before Dai's horrified incredulity kicked his senses into overdrive and he shoved Nico aside, hard.

Instead of passing just past his head and skimming skin on the way, it soared well clear of him as he toppled to the side. Unfortunately, it tore past Tyson's shoulder as he moved to help and lodged into the tree behind him.

The poor cyclops howled in pain as rivulets of blood erupted from the fresh wound, and Nico leaped towards him, utterly horrified.

Dai, on the other hand... well, he kind of lost it.

He only registered what he was doing through the haze of blinding rage when Tantalus leaped aside, avoiding the arc of red-hot flames that exploded out of his palm and lashed at him with furious abandon.

"Attacking me!" Tantalus crowed victoriously as the wave dispersed and left him unharmed, something positively deranged in his eyes. "I'll see you banished from for that, you little shit!"

"Yiu attacked us first!" Dai roared, fire still racing in his veins and manifesting in wisps of red-hot flame over his fingertips.

"I did no such thing - I was demonstrating a point. The son of Hades would have been unharmed, and so would the beast." He smiled cruelly. "Though nothing of value would have been lost had that filth been cast into Tartarus as well."

Dai was so angry he imagined his vision was starting to get a little blurry at the edges. "Like you should have been, you mean!?"

The smile fell off, replaced with a savage bearing of his teeth as he held out his hand. The spear rematerialized in his grip, gnarled ginger nails scrabbling at the wood.

"You'd do well to hold your tongue-"

"Or what, you'll kill us like you killed your own son?!"

...

It took him a second to realize that he'd been the one to spit that out in a frothing rage, and it almost snapped him out of it.

but the Nico piped up from behind him.

"No, there wouldn't be any point. He still can't eat a thing, so there's no point making food he can't have. Isn't that right, you cannibal freak?"

...

Slowly, Tantalus' gaze snapped to Nico, furious and smug and unrepentant.

"You little bastard"

And then his face colored in sheer fury, his eyes going mad with rage, and thunder boomed overhead. Dai became aware of the real danger the second the celestial bronze tip of Tantalus's spear began to visibly crackle with electricity.

Oh, right. Son of Zeus.

His eyes widened.

Oh shit, Son of Zeus

"I will flay you alive!"

And somehow, despite everything, Nico still had the gall to smirk. "Was it something I said?"

Tantalus twitched - blue sparks spreading over his skin, and Dai resisted the urge to brain his moron of a friend.

"DIE!"

"Scatter!"

They lept side to side, Dai to the right and Nico and Tyson to the left, and not a second too soon. Where they'd been standing, a savage arc of blue-white fury thundered down and scorched the earth, the sheer screech of it ringing in his ears deafeningly loud.

Dai rolled to the side again to gain some distance then leapt for Tantalus. Warmth flooded his bones as a veritable bonfire of flames roared into existence with him as a center point, and the rogue activities director howled in rage and leaped back. He jabbed his spear in Dai's direction and what felt like a wall of wind slammed into him hard enough to swat him out of the sky and knock the breath off of him.

A second later, Tantalus was on him, the tip of his spear driven down towards his side and missing him only by an inch.

Ignoring the screaming 'what-the-hell even' panic be pushed to the back of his mind, Dai gritted his teeth and grabbed onto the spear with both hands, preventing The son of Zeus from pulling back

"Fool!"

That was a mistake, and his mind almost blanked out from the searing bone-locking agony that tore up his arms and through to his everything - He'd missed the blue-white sparks that surged down the weapon and into him.

Push past it - you were born to fight gods. Compared to that, this is nothing.

Whatever Tantalus was expecting, it wasn't for Dai to pull backward, using the spear shaft like a lever to kick him in the chest with full force. He went flying and slammed into a tree trunk horizontally with enough force that, had he been mortal, he would have been crippled for life.

As it was, he was on his feet and snarling in a second, ready to leap back over to him-

"Don't hurt my friends!"

-When Tyson's fist straight up rammed into the side of his head and sent him careening face-first into the ground, the motion so brutal just looking at it hurt his neck. The suddenly furious Cyclops followed it up with a heaving kick to the side that sent his foe rolling in the dirt and making a sound more

"You dare touch me you filthy beast! Even Tartarus won't be enough to out your hideous being back together by the time I'm done with you!"

He stretched out his hand in a motion the three of them had already recognized to mean he was recalling his spear.

Too bad Dai already had his number there.

CRACK!

The look on his face when he whipped his head around just in time to catch the tail end of Dai snapping his weapon over his knee was one he'd treasure for the rest of his life.

"You heard him." Dai spat coldly, tossing aside the broken halves and meeting his fury with his own. "Don't hurt my friends."

"You-!"

The ground trembled, and that was their only warning before a genuine fissure cracked into being beneath Tantalus's feet. He leaped over it immediately, but a cold blast of screaming wind pulled seemed to pull at his back, as if the earth was inhaling and trying to cuk him back.

"WHAT IS THIS?!" He bellowed wrathfully, struggling to charge forward even as an invisible force continued to drag him back. "WHAT IS - YOU!"

"Me!" Nico screamed back, skin pale and sweat streaming down his brow as he did something that had Tantalus slowly but inexorably being dragged back towards the open earth!"

"Release me! I'm already dead, you fool! You can't kill me even if you tried!"

"No, I can't. I've hated you since before I knew who you were and what you did and that's why. You're already dead" The son of Hades snarled, and there was something terrifyingly final about it. "You shouldn't be here!"

The cold winds doubled in fury, and now Tantalus was about a foot away from the very edge of the pit, the sheer force of his heels digging into the earth the only thing preventing him from toppling over and into the darkness.

Was it just him, or did Dai spot a flicker of fear overtaking the mindless rage on his face?

"Stop this!"

"I can't kill what's already dead-!"

"STOP-"

"-but I can send you back!"

"-THIS!"

"-NOW LEAVE!"

Tantalus lost his grip with a vengeful scream, the howling winds deafened Dai, and-


""̷̡̧̺̻̻̜̙̗̹̓͝Ẻ̴̠̼̺̟̜́͑̔͋̐̔͜͜ͅN̵̝̗̫͍͕̩̫̰͂̾͆̀̒̓͘Ö̶̧͕͓̠̤̗̟̔́̉́U̸̝̠͚̣̭̲͙̭̞̓̄̈́̂̓̆̔͐͝ͅG̸̨͈̲̖̰̠̣̳̎̏̂̽͜͠H̵̢͎̯̳̿̽̀̈́̕͠͝!̴͕͈̞͙̺͍̬̏̎̐̎̎"̶̞̻̝͔̦̌̓̔͐ "


-boom.

There was a flash of purple, and it was all suddenly over. When Dai's ear stopped ringing and the spots were blinked out of his eyes, he realized that he couldn't move. His arms and legs were trapped by green, twitching grape veins, and a band of them was wrapped around his mouth, preventing him from even speaking.

To his left and right, Nico and Tyson were in just the same state, hogtied by greenery and suspended in mid-air.

And just ahead, past a writhing and disturbingly still-present Tantalus, stood Mr.D

The god regarded them all with a fiery gaze, power, and madness all but wafting off of him in equal measure before he sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Six hours. Six lousy, fucking hours. I don't get paid enough for this shit."

...​

Long story short?

Dai and Nico got off scot-free, but so did Tantalus. Mr. D arrived just in time to avoid, in his words, an unfortunate incident (and made it very clear to all parties involved that the survivors of said incident would have been turned into grapefruit and squeezed into juice for the headache, regardless of who they were or what their meddling parents wanted.)

The injustice of that monster getting away with attacking them was galling, but on the bright side, news of their impromptu fight got out very quickly - the dryads probably spread the word - and within a night Nico was being hailed as a hero.

Everyone hated Tantalus, and apparently, that hate triumphed over their fear of Nico's dad. Not entirely, but just enough to make a difference.

Course, it didn't last.

Three nights. They got three nights of relative piece.

Mr. D didn't leave camp again, Tantalus kept to his own all the while, the whispers and the looks from the campers had faded into the background, and Dai and the Di Angelo's finally rejoined dinner meals without feeling like a trio of circus freaks there for everybody to gawk at.

Which, naturally, was when the gods-damned oracle decided to stroll into the dinner pavilion in all her skeletal glory and horrify everyone bar the one god present into stupified silence.

"Well," Dionysus took a sip of his Diet Coke. "I'll admit, this is a new one."

Irreverant of the god's commentary, the vessel of Apollo's oracle continued its slow march, past tables full of campers who recoiled from the proximity.

At last, she stopped by table five

A voice voice hissed to life inside Dai's head. Apparently, everyone could hear it, because several clutched their hands over their ears.

I am the spirit of Delphi, the voice said. Speaker of the prophecies of Phoebus Apollo, slayer of the mighty Python.

He suspected it was only Clarisse La Rue's sheer habit that prevented her from flinching when that skull snapped up and locked onto her.

Approach, Seeker, and ask.

The daughter of Ares swallowed, before standing up and firming her back. "What do I have to do to save camp?"

The Oracle's mouth opened, and green mist poured out. Whatever the girl saw reflected in it had her paling three shades in under a second.

You shall sail the iron ship with warriors of bone,
You shall find what you seek and make it your own,
But despair for your life entombed within stone,
And give your light for bloodied hearthstone​

There was a stretch of silence once the words were spoken, and that should have been it.

A prophecy had been issued, end of the line.

But where would be the fun in that?

Before everyone's stunned eyes, The Oracle's mouth shut and she turned to resume her walk. But not in the direction she came from.

Instead, she headed straight towards Table 12.

Looking back, a part of Dai knew it was coming the moment the Oracle began moving.

That still didn't stop him from freezing up as it came to a stop before him and locked misty green pits on him with unerring, chilling accuracy.

I am the spirit of Delphi, the voice said. Speaker of the prophecies of Phoebus Apollo, slayer of the mighty Python. Approach, Seeker, and ask.

Ask what, he had the urge to yell. He didn't even understand what was going on and it still had his instincts screaming in dread. But as if by fate, the fatal words came to him the very instant he stood up to answer, bursting past his lips as though they had a mind of their own.

"How can I protect the camp?"

When the green mist poured out of the Oracle's mouth, there was an instant where he glimpsed nothing but scales and teeth and fire not his own.

And then she began to speak, and all of those things were forgotten.

Travel towards the monstrous sea
Conquer the summit from which war shall flee.
Hearth and madness, sea and death
The lustful fool snuff out three's breath
Face the truth of the vengeful thief
Draw out salvation from beneath golden leaf
Follow the tear to the mother's home
Find what you seek where the deadliest roam
Reclaim what was forgotten, the soul-bound blade
Lest nine will fall, in darkness unmade.​

And just like that, the die was cast.

...​

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