Chapter 3

Thalia (2 weeks later)

I was sitting by the fire in the middle of camp with Phoebe and Atlanta drinking hot coco. We had just finished up a mission in texas and despite it being on the tail end of summer there it was a cold night. Everyone else had gone to bed already the only reason we were up was because we were waiting for Percy and his group to arrive. Apparently they had just finished up a mission of their own nearby and Zeus wanted Artemis to flash them to Wyoming before moving on.

As I sat there shivering I noticed a big black wolf that everyone called Wuk. Unlike all the other wolves we kept I hardly ever saw him move. He usually just sat there and would growl whenever someone came close. The only thing that kept him in shape was the fact that he went to catch his own food every once in a while. "Why is he like that?" I finally asked turning to Phoebe.

She gave a small smile and looked around "He was Silvers pet, he found him wounded on a hunt and begged Artemis to let him keep it. Me, him, and Atlanta were only five at the time." she said. I remembered the story I heard about Phoebe and Atlanta being orphaned newborns when the joined the hunt, more like adopted but still. "And she couldn't say no to his puppy dog eyes. You see aside from the hunt Silver didn't really have any friends. Yes he had his uncles Apollo and Triton and grandfather Poseidon but that was it." Phoebe said.

"Artemis made Wuk immortal so he would never die from old age. When Silver vanished Wuk all but lost the will to live without his closest friend. Now he just sits here, he only lets me, Atlanta and Artemis get close because we were here before he died.".

I nodded "Just wondering what was Silver like, I mean I've always wondered what her kids would be like if she had any." Atlanta nodded like she she had been expecting the question.

"Well I guess I should be the one to answer the question." Artemis said sitting next to me "Lets see when Silver was born he was just a tiny little thing only four pounds. He hardly ever cried especially at night it actually seemed to calm him more than anything. When he got older he was just a ball energy always running around with the wolves. He was tiny for his age but that all changed when he turned ten. In 4 or 5 months he went from the size of a 7 year old to around 13 making him a foot taller than everybody else his age but he didn't grow much more than an inch after that."

"That was also when he first started exhibiting his demigod powers. He seemingly got nothing from me but had inherited his father's in full. He could control water, ice, even storms to a small extent. He loved to train with his father and got pretty good. Admittedly I got a little jealous that he spent so much time with his father but he would always give me a big hug when he came home." she said with a fond look in her eyes.

"I had to teach him archery because his dad had no skill with a bow whatsoever. I may have made the lessons take longer so I got more time with him but in truth he was a natural. At the time a lot of people including some gods thought women were weaker. Some still do but Silver would never stand for it and neither would his father. Ares at one point called me weak for that very reason and Silver gave him that scar above his right eye." Artemis said with a proud smile on her face.

"Seriously?" I asked.

She nodded smiling "At first I thought Ares was going to get mad but instead he just laughed and ruffled Silver's hair. Ares said he had guts and walking away laughing. Perseus had a talk with him about controlling his anger but both him and Apollo gave him a high 5."

"You had those back then?" I asked.

"Well...no but I thought it would help if I changed it to modern day terms."

"Oh ok." I said chuckling

"We ran into a few problems when Poseidon and Triton would come to camp. They were obsessed with trying to find out who Silver's mother was, but they never did. Triton and Perseus were surprisingly close despite Perseus being the product of an affair. To this day Triton holds all of Poseidon's demigod children to the same standard if their not as good as Perseus was he won't treat them as an equal. Then when Silver turned thirteen I noticed something was going on between him and Phoebe." Artemis said giving Phoebe a sly look.

"Would you stop that!" Phoebe said blushing "Yes we dated but could you stop teasing me."

"Nope." Atlanta said with a loud pop at the p.

"Wouldn't you have been a little young to be dating?" I asked "And what about your oath?"

"The original hunt only had to swear to serve Artemis. We didn't have to swear to be eternal maidens technically me and Phoebe still haven't, we've just chosen to remain one." Atlanta explained "And at the time mortal lives were shorter 13 to 16 were the dating ages. If you were 16 and older you were getting married." we stopped talking when the wolves began to growl announcing that Percy's group had arrived at camp.

Piper POV (2 more weeks later)

We had been chasing this guy for over a month and we hadn't even gotten close to him. The one thing we had learned was that he could cover a massive distinct on foot faster than we could in a car. If Mr D. hadn't given us a way to track him we would have lost him a long time ago.

Flashback

The 8 of us gathered on half blood hill to say goodbye to our friends which was Clarisse, Grover, and the Stolls who had figured out what Mike was doing. Just as we were about to leave Mr D. flashed in "Ah good now I don't have to track you down." he said causing most of us to bite back a groan.

"Shut up I've bearing gifts. For the Search party I have a compass from Athena, it's been keyed to his energy so as long as it remains flared it will always point to the boy. And for the hunting party I have this." Mr D. said holding out compass and business card. I grabbed the compass and Percy grabbed the card "The card is enchanted so we can send you messages instantly and quite incase you are...indisposed shall we say."

As if a cue the card glowed and words appeared and a set of GPS coordinates. Percy looked at it "Well looks like we're going to Canada." He said we separated at the Greyhound train station where my group took it into Manhattan following the compass and Percy's went to grab a boat to get up to Canada faster.

Flashback end

Since then we've zig zagged all across North America first we went straight up to Canada then we back down to Alabama, DC, Texas then up to Wyoming. We had a little bit of good news a few hours ago when Hazel spotted the guy just before dark.

Jason debated on flying a head to catch him but we decided against it because we still didn't know if he was friend or foe. Something we thought was strange though was the surprising lack of monsters. Don't get me wrong I'm more than happy about it but with four demigods running around you would expect to see at least one.

We were currently in the northern california rainforest which wasn't that bad. I was on watch duty while the others slept so I had time to think. I wondered what happened to Annabeth. When I first met her she seemed so broken hearted over Percy's disappearance but the second he wasn't famous any more she dumps him.

Looking back on it and the stories I've heard from other campers it was all too obvious she was just in it for the fame. First she's in love with Luke the star of camp half blood then she starts dating Percy right after he becomes hero of Olympus. He disappears giving her the situation of the heart broken girlfriend and milks it for all it's worth. He loses his fame and she dumps him. I was disgusted that we even used to be friends.

A noise to my left brought me out of my inner musings "Jason wake up." I whispered.

"Hmm what is it?" I put a hand over his mouth and motion for him to wake Frank and Hazel. He nodded and started walking over to them but a rock shot out of the trees and braining him. He crumpled to the ground but landed on Frank waking up both him and Hazel. Before either of them could move Telkhines poured out of the woods.

Frank managed to kill one but was knocked out from behind quickly followed by Hazel. I was so surprised that I couldn't find my voice to use my charm speak I raise my knife preparing to fight but was hit over the head by something the last thing I heard and saw was one of them laughing about eating how they were going to be eating good tonight before I briefly saw a silver flash and blacked out.

I woke up in a cave with my head pounding, and what was with that awful smell it was like a mix between cough syrup and manure. I sat up and found Jason, Frank, and Hazel sitting next to me "Are you alright?" someone asked. I snapped my head towards the noise which only worsened my headache.

Standing at the mouth of the cave which had vines hanging over the entrance was a boy who looked to be about 14 with black hair and sunglass. Despite his young appearance he had an air around him that many of the warriors from the last two wars had. Like he'd seen too many battles and to be honest it frightened me.

Noticing my reaction he walked over a knelt down a few feet away from me "Don't worry I'm a friend." he said in a tone that surprised me with how gentle it was "I just want to help, now are you ok?". Getting over my apprehension I nodded "Good, do you think you can stand" I nodded again and stood up leaning on the wall for support.

I heard Jason groan "Well now that your friends are waking I need to go." he said "Rest here till you're ready to travel the vines will cover up you're demigod scent."

"Why don't you stay with us?" I asked worried about him being on his own.

"Because there's someone I need to find, the only reason I even came back to help was because your lives were in danger. Now that you're fine I need to go.". As he walked away I noticed the hilt of a sword at his left hip and one on his right, one of silver one of emerald 'its him' I thought but he was gone before I could call after him.

Jason and the others woke a few minutes later and I explained to them what happen "We need to go after him." Frank said as he tried to stand but fell over instantly.

"I think we need to rest a bit more." Hazel said "We can head out in the morning.".

Silver POV

I was a little upset with falling farther behind my father but I was still glad that I had went back to help them. I wouldn't have been able to live with myself if I just let them die. 'Plus I now have this.' I thought looking at my hand or more specifically the aura that now surrounded my hand and the rest of my body.

It was my favorite color which I had learned was now called silver. I thought it was odd that I had the same name as it but was happy nonetheless. It had just shown up when I went back to save them one minute I'm going head to head with a Telkhine then everything seemed to slow down.

It wasn't until I killed the last one that I noticed the aura. I figured out how to turn off after getting the demigods back to the cave I had used to make camp for the night. The aura did nothing to increase my strength which I found out when I carried them to the cave. That chinese kid was heavy, but it did increase my speed and my senses which I loved.

'Guess I finally got my demigod powers from mom' I thought. My water powers had come with my first growth spurt and now that I was going through my second one I got this thing which I was thinking of calling the hunters arua.

It was very tiring but seriously boosted my speed so I was using it to make up the distance and practice with it at the same time. When I first got my water powers they would drain my energy just as fast but it would get easier over time.

My dad told me my abilities were like any other muscle if you don't use them they weaken but the more their used the easier it gets to use them. An hour or so before nightfall I stopped near a river and dipped my feet into to soak which felt great and helped to replenish my energy.

In the past my overall energy output was far too high for a child of a demigod so Pan taught me to contain it so I wouldn't draw to much attention. Now however attention was exactly what I needed so I was burning off all the extra energy as fast as I could. It also had the added bonus of keeping most of the weaker monsters away. And with this new aura my energy output had been significantly raised so I doubted I would be seeing them much.

I leaned back on a rock to rest with my right arm propped up on my knee with the intent of going to sleep but I felt something powerful coming. I silently curse myself both for using so much energy and for not noticing it earlier, there wasn't any time to run and I was too tired to fight. I thought about shutting down my flow of energy but decided against it because it would help to deter anything that might attack.

About 50 feet away a titan that I recognized as Prometheus walked out of the tree line wearing a black suit and white shirt. I gripped the hilt of the sword on my left hip, Prometheus may have been neutral in my time but things have obviously change and his allegiance could have as well.

"Hello my good sir." he said I didn't move. I found it a little strange that he was being so nice because he wasn't known to be friendly with mortals all that much despite giving us fire.

Prometheus seemed a little uneasy about my response or absence of but pressed forward. "My name is Prometheus." he said

"I know who you are." I replied calmly.

"Well it appears I'm at a disadvantage then. What might your name be?" he asked and I noticed odd. He was nervous and how despite him trying to act casual he was preparing to run if needed. I got an idea and decided to test it "My name is none of your business now why are you here." I said in an annoyed tone. Just like I expected he brushed it off instead of trying to kill me for my insolence, he views me as a threat.

Prometheus POV

I was a little wary of the figure sitting in front of me. His energy felt exactly the same as it did when I first felt it two months ago. But his looks differed a bit from what some of my scouts had described. According to them he was about 12 maybe 13 and 4 ½ feet tall. Enceladus thought he might be a demigod at first because they had been known to have powerful outburst of energy from time to time then they would die down. But his energy never once wavered or weakened in the whole 2 months.

He was obviously 14 or 15 now which only affirmed my belief he was immortal because because no human has ever been known to grow even close to that fast. Also the way he spoke to me it was clear he held little fear of me and if he did he hid it well. Plus his casual position suggested he thought being comfortable was more important than being ready to fight me which either meant he was really stupid or really strong.

And lastly he sat there watching me emerge from the trees. He clearly knew I was coming but made no attempt to run. He could have tried to conceal his power or try to kill me with a surprise attack but he just didn't seem to care that I was coming. What bothered me the most was the fact the I had been sent here to negotiate with him but we knew nothing about him. Not his name, not his parentage, or even his age. What did we have to bargain with that he would want yes we could offer him power and lands to rule over like usual but what if that held no interest for him.

"I'm here on behalf of Oceanus titan of the sea, his royal highness would like to extend you an invitation to join him. Oceanus plans to dethrone the Olympians and bring this world to order under his rule. We have already secured the aid of Boreas, Hyperion, Atlas, Krios, Enceladus, Gration, and Leon as generals in his army along with myself." I said this wasn't really dangerous information to give since we had already gathered our army and it was on the march. The only groups left were small ones that were meant to make the Olympians think it was over.

Third Person POV

"If that's all he asks why not send an underling instead of a general?" Silver asked.

"I was sent because his highness Oceanus wanted to show his respect for your power." Prometheus said which was true but more due to the fact that as of that morning Silver had been putting out similar energy to that of a minor god in a bad mood. Not at full power of course but still unsettling to Prometheus. Prometheus being the titan of forethought got several impressions as to what it was that Silver wanted most and who he was. This sort of thing was not uncommon and often could be a little misleading but Prometheus was grasping at straws.

"We would be more than happy to help you find who you are looking for and Oceanus would be more than willing to allow you passage of the entire hemisphere for you to hunt as you please. You wouldn't have to hide in the shadows anymore like you have for the past three thousand years." Prometheus said letting the slight threat of taking away his freedom hang in the air.

Silver laughed throwing Prometheus off a bit "I applaud your silver tongue but there is much you do not know. I have never had to hide who I am, I prefer to go unnoticed. I also have no need for Oceanus to allow me to go anywhere I am already free to go where I wish. Whether it be land or sea." Silver said raising his power output significantly as he did.

"Do not threaten me titan." Silver said switching to a deathly calm voice "You have were a coward 3000 years ago and you still are. 3000 years ago you hide behind the title of neutrality seconds after Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades gave their little display of power during Hyperion's attack on Sparta and now you hide behind the name of Oceanus." Silver let his power drop back down to its original level.

Prometheus was surprised by his knowledge of the first titan war because he knew full well that the Olympians never even spoke of it. Neither did the Titans wish to speak of how they were embarrassed in that battle. Silver had to have been an eyewitness which made him just as old as the gods themselves.

"Forgive me sir." Prometheus said swallowing his pride and bowing "I meant no disrespect towards you I just meant that we could ensure that no one would even dare trouble in these lands if they were yours. If you decide to join us you will find us here in one months time Prometheus said handing him a card and flashing out. Hermes who had witnessed the whole thing flashed out to seconds before Silver slipped into the river drifting into unconsciousness due to his lack of energy. He was still putting out the same level of energy as before but had none left to stay conscious.

(back on Olympus)

Hermes flashed into the throne room and called for a meeting. Once everyone had arrived Hermes explained everything he had heard of Silver and Prometheus' conversation. "So it seems Athena's suspicions were right even the Titans respect his power, but thankfully his allegiance seems to be undecided at the moment." Zeus said.

"Now that we've found him keep an eye him I want to see what he does. The sheer fact that he has gone virtually unnoticed by us for over 3000 years troubles me. Also I want to know who this person is he's searching for, we could use them as a bargaining chip later if things go south on us. And finally now that we know Oceanus is preparing for war combined with the prophecy we received earlier today I want Athena and Apollo to contact our few allies and try to find more. Dionysus prepare the camps for war. Also contact Jason's group, I want the to go to mount Tam and find out if and how Atlas escaped. Any questions?"

"Just wondering what was the prophecy?" Aphrodite asked and Zeus motioned for Apollo to recite it.

An oath made to a father by son

Means a war lost or won

The hero searches to make things right

Rome preserved or razed through silver's might

The silver star shall lead the way

To where the lost guardian now lays