Hi guys! Starting from this chapter onwards, I'm going to start writing in first person since I think it will make it easier to understand! Let me know if you don't like first person and I can go back to third person though!

Amalthea's POV

Finally, it was time for capture the flag. The whole camp was filled with excitement and determination to be the winning team. The conch horn sounded and everyone stood.

Campers yelled and cheered as Annabeth and two of her siblings ran into the pavilion carrying a silk banner. It was about ten feet long, glistening gray, with a painting of a barn owl above an olive tree. From the opposite side of the pavilion, Clarisse and her buddies ran in with another banner, of identical size, but gaudy red, painted with a bloody spear and a boar's head.

"Those are the flags?" Percy asked.

"Clarisse sure knows style," I drawled sarcastically.

Luke grinned at me.

"So whose side are we on?" Percy asked.

"We've made a temporary alliance with Athena. Tonight, we get the flag from Ares. And you guys are going to help."

I turned to look at Luke. For a moment, he looked sly, like he was hiding something from them. I raised my eyebrows inquisitively but Luke just smiled at me softly. I decided to leave it. I trusted Luke and it was probably nothing.

The teams were announced. Athena had made an alliance with Apollo and Hermes, the two biggest cabins. Apparently, privileges had been traded—shower times, chore schedules, the best slots for activities—in order to win support.

Ares had allied themselves with everybody else: Dionysus, Demeter, Aphrodite, and Hephaestus. Dionysus's kids were actually good athletes, but there were only two of them. Demeter's kids had the edge with nature skills and outdoor stuff but they weren't very aggressive. Aphrodite's sons and daughters weren't a big threat. They mostly sat out every activity and checked their reflections in the lake and did their hair and gossiped. Hephaestus's kids weren't pretty, and there were only four of them, but they were big and burly from working in the metal shop all day. They might be a problem. That, of course, left Ares's cabin: a dozen of the biggest, ugliest, meanest kids on Long Island, or anywhere else on the planet.

Chiron hammered his hoof on the marble.

"Heroes!" he announced. "You know the rules. The creek is the boundary line. The entire forest is fair game. All magic items are allowed. The banner must be prominently displayed, and have no more than two guards. Prisoners may be disarmed, but may not be bound or gagged. No killing or maiming is allowed. I will serve as referee and battlefield medic. Arm yourselves!"

He spread his hands, and the tables were suddenly covered with equipment: helmets, bronze swords, spears and shields coated in metal.

"Here, Chiron thought these would fit you guys," Luke said, handing a sword and shield to each of them, before helping me with my helmet.

Annabeth yelled, "Blue team, forward!"

Blue team cheered and shook our swords and followed her down the path to the south woods. The red team yelled taunts as they headed off toward the north.

Percy and I caught up to Annabeth. She had mentioned about wanting us on team before, so we figured she had something important for us to do.

"So what's the plan?" Percy asked.

"Any people we should stay away from?" I piped up.

"Just watch Clarisse's spear," she said. "You don't want that thing touching you. Otherwise, don't worry. We'll take the banner from Ares. Has Luke given you two a job?"

"Border patrol, whatever that means."

"It's easy. Stand by the creek, keep the reds away. Swing your sword around or whatever. Leave the rest to me. Athena always has a plan."

Before we could reply, Annabeth walked off. I rolled my eyes slightly. What was her problem?

It was a warm, sticky night. The woods were dark, with fireflies popping in and out of view. Annabeth stationed us next to a little creek that gurgled over some rocks, then she and the rest of the team scattered into the trees.

I was pretty mad. Annabeth had said all that about wanting us on her team just to leave us in the middle of nowhere, away from the game. One thing I always hated was being underestimated.

Percy and I sat on the edge of the creek, chatting away and expressing our shared frustration at being isolated here. Nobody could even be heard from here, to the point where we had thrown our shields and swords to the side.

On the other side of the creek, the underbrush exploded. Five Ares warriors came yelling and screaming out of the dark.

"Cream the punks!" Clarisse screamed.

I yelped and grabbed my weapons hurriedly. At the corner of my eye I saw Percy doing the same whilst cursing under his breath. As if we had done this many times, Percy and I stood back to back to protect each other.

The Ares cabin charged across the stream. There was no help in sight. All we could do was attempt to defend ourselves until someone came to save us.

I had been shocked when I managed to disarm Luke. There was no way that Percy and I could fight half the Ares cabin. They were quickly surrounding us. Any chances of running away were gone now.

One kid swung at me but I managed to dodge in time. I heard Percy shuffling behind me, and I knew he was also being attacked.

"Woah! All love you guys..." I said pathetically.

Clarisse sneered and thrusted at Percy with her spear. It was a lazy and slow thrust that could be dodged pretty easily. Almost as if she was trying to get him to fight back...

"Percy, move!" I yelled, but I was too late.

Percy had lifted his shield to deflect the spear. I heard a sizzling sound and the air smelt like smoke. Luckily, Percy seemed to be fine, other than some messy hair and temporary pain. He fell backwards, dazed.

"Electricity," Percy muttered shakily, "Her stupid spear is electric."

I started forwards to help him, only to be held back by a stupid Ares camper, who threw my weapon away. Another Ares guy slammed Percy in the chest with the butt of his sword and he hit the dirt. For a second, all of their attention was on making fun of Percy, giving me time to think about a way to get help.

"Give him a haircut," Clarisse said. "Grab his hair."

Percy managed to get to his feet. He raised his sword, but Clarisse slammed it aside with her spear as sparks flew.

"Oh, wow," Clarisse said. "I'm scared of this guy. Really scared."

"The flag is that way," Percy said, nodding his head in a direction.

"Yeah," one of her siblings said. "But see, we don't care about the flag. We care about a guy who made our cabin look stupid and his cocky little girlfriend."

"You do that without my help," Percy told them. In another time, I would've burst into laughter at this, but now was definitely not the time to mock them.

Two of them came at Percy. He backed up toward the creek, tried to raise his shield, but Clarisse was too fast. Her spear stuck him straight in the ribs. I watched helplessly, trying to move from the Ares guy's grip. One of her cabinmates slashed his sword across Percy's arm, leaving a good-size cut.

"No maiming!" I said.

"Oops," the guy said. "Guess I lost my dessert privilege."

He pushed Percy into the creek. Anger filled me and I kicked wildly behind me (bye bye children). I heard a bellow of pain and the hands released me. I ran over to Percy, lifting up my hands in defence, since my sword had been thrown into a bush.

I concentrated on the anger I felt. The energy I had used to fight the Minotaur. The skill I had when I fought Luke.

Mom, I thought as I closed my eyes, if it is true, if the gods are true, please help me. Please.

I opened my eyes. I didn't feel any more powerful, so I focused on all the anger and confusion that had been building up the past couple of days. Percy stood up, gods knew how, and raised his sword confidently.

Half of the group charged at Percy and the other half at me. One camper swung his sword at me and I rolled to the side. I stared at his sword so hard I was surprising I hadn't burned a hole through it, and imagined it falling to the floor: hoping that what had happened in the arena wasn't a coincidence. Sure enough, the sword fell straight to the floor immediately.

The rest of the fight went pretty much the same. I imagined each weapon falling to the floor, or flying into the creek, and even managed to send my sword back into my hands again. I had no idea how I was doing it. It seemed to come naturally to me, although some weapons were harder to move than others.

After a while, most of the Ares cabin had caught on to me somehow being able to move their weapons, and gripped their swords tighter with both hands. I was already losing energy and whatever it was that had made me be able to do what I had done, so I gripped my sword and started using combat.

From what I could see, Percy was doing amazing. He was hitting away every single person, slamming them with the butt of his sword and dodging their strikes. He looked like a professional.

Eventually it was only me, Percy and Clarisse left. Clarisse ran forward, lifting her spear menacingly. Percy and I must have had the same idea, because we both lifted our swords and caught her spear on either side, snapping it into two immediately. She let out an anguished scream that almost made me feel bad for her.

"Ah!" Clarisse howled, "You idiots! You..."

Percy rolled his eyes and slammed Clarisse onto the ground, before grinning at me. Then I heard yelling, elated screams, and I saw Luke racing toward the boundary line with the red team's banner lifted high. He was flanked by a couple of Hermes guys covering his retreat, and a few Apollos behind them, fighting off the Hephaestus kids. The Ares folks got up, and Clarisse muttered a dazed curse.

"A trick!" she shouted. "It was a trick."

Everybody converged on the creek as Luke ran across into friendly territory. Our side exploded into cheers. The red banner shimmered and turned to silver. The boar and spear were replaced with a huge caduceus, the symbol of cabin eleven. Everybody on the blue team picked up Luke and started carrying him around on their shoulders. Chiron cantered out from the woods and blew the conch horn. The game was over. We'd won.

We were about to join the celebration when Annabeth's voice, right next to us in the creek, said, "Not bad for newbies."

I looked, but she wasn't there. Percy swatted at his ears, mumbling about hearing things.

"Where the heck did you two learn to fight like that?" she asked. The air shimmered, and she materialized, holding a Yankees baseball cap as if she'd just taken it off her head.

"You set us up!" I realised, "That's why you wanted us on your team when we made enemies with Clarisse!"

Annabeth shrugged. "I told you. Athena always, always has a plan. I came as soon as I could though. It's just you two didn't need help."

Percy and I looked at each other in a mixture of pride for ourselves, anger towards Annabeth and frustration from everything.

"Luke told me that you two were good in the arena," Annabeth said slowly, as if trying to put together a riddle, "That explains how Percy fought so well. But Amalthea... it almost seemed like whenever someone came near you, they would drop their swords immediately. Luke said something about you still having your sword after being disarmed too. How did you do that?"

I stared at her. After the adrenaline of trying not to die from Clarisse's electric spear, I had finally realised how abnormal it was to be able to do that.

"I don't know," I admitted, "I just kind of... imagined them dropping their swords, I guess. And then they just did."

Everyone stayed silent for a bit. I knew what they were thinking: I'm a freak.

"Who cares how she did it? It was awesome!" Percy grinned.

I smiled back. It had been pretty cool to control weapons like that. I looked over at Annabeth, whose usual calm composure was swept away by a look of shock and confusion.

"How did you do that?" Annabeth said, pointing to Percy's arm. I looked to see what the problem was, but there wasn't so much as a bruise on it.

"Sword cut," Percy said. "What do you think?"

"No. It was a sword cut. Look at it."

I gasped slightly as I recalled the cut that one of the Ares campers had left on Percy's arm. There was no way it could have healed that fast.

"I—I don't get it," Percy said, looking at his arm.

Annabeth was thinking hard. She looked down at Percy's feet, then at Clarisse's broken spear, and said, "Step out of the water, Percy."

"What?" Percy said.

"Just do it."

Percy moved out the water. Almost immediately, his eyes fluttered slightly and he fell forwards. Annabeth and I caught him on each side in panic.

"Oh, Styx," she cursed. "This is not good. I didn't want... I assumed it would be Zeus..."

I looked at her in confusion, and then I heard a canine growl. A howl ripped through the forest, leaving goosebumps on my arms.

The campers' cheering died instantly. Chiron shouted something in Ancient Greek, which I would realize, only later, I had understood perfectly: "Stand ready! My bow!"

Annabeth drew her sword.

There on the rocks just above us was a black hound the size of a rhino, with lava-red eyes and fangs like daggers.

It was looking straight at Percy.

Nobody moved except Annabeth, who yelled, "Percy, run!"

Annabeth stepped in front of Percy, her stance ready for a fight, but the hound ignored her and leapt straight onto Percy. I tried with all my power to move the hellhound away like I did with the sword, but it must have been too powerful.

"STOP!" I screamed, looking around for help.

Suddenly, the growling died down. I looked over to see the hellhound right at my feet. I knew I should run away, but a stupid part of me knew I was safe. I put a shaky hand on the hellhound and stroked it slightly.

"Thank you," I said tentatively, "Erm, you may go now."

The hellhound bowed his head down and then began to trot away, before melting into the shadows. I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding and helped Percy up.

Chiron trotted up next to us, a bow in his hand, his face grim.

"Di immortales!" Annabeth said. "That's a hellhound from the Fields of Punishment. They don't... they're not supposed to..."

"Someone summoned it," Chiron said. "Someone inside the camp."

Luke came over, the banner in his hand forgotten, his moment of glory gone. He looked around the scene in worry. His eyes landed on mine, trying to shoot a million questions at me all at once.

Clarisse yelled, "It's all Percy's fault! Percy summoned it!"

"Be quiet, child," Chiron told her.

"You're wounded," Annabeth said, "Quick, Percy, get in the water."

"I'm okay."

"No, you're not," she said. "Chiron, watch this."

Percy slowly got back into the water. I gasped as his cuts immediately began to heal and disappear completely.

"Look, I—I don't know why," Percy said. "I'm sorry..."

My eyes drifted away from his cuts and I looked up. A huge glowing symbol of a trident was floating above Percy, the light radiating onto the creek.

"Percy," Annabeth said, pointing. "Um..."

Percy looked up just in time to see the symbol before it began to disappear.

"Your father," Annabeth murmured. "This is really not good."

"It is determined," Chiron announced.

Everyone began to kneel and I joined in, completely confused.

"My father?" Percy asked.

"Poseidon," said Chiron. "Earthshaker, Stormbringer, Father of Horses. Hail, Perseus Jackson, Son of the Sea God."