War & Victory

Chapter 1: The Night She Saw the Minotaur

A/N: WHOOO!! We've got landing for the prologue and first chapter! I'm hoping to get these out to you at least once a week! The other thing you should be aware of is that this will heavily follow the tv show AND take from the books as well. I'm trying to get the best of both worlds haha! That being said, I hope you enjoy and that you just adore my baby Rin! Thanks so much and as always, let me know what you think!

In all seriousness, Rin shouldn't have been outside of the camp boundaries. It wasn't her smartest move—certainly not one that required a lot of premeditation. The simple fact of the matter though was that she loved storms.

There was something inherently cathartic about sitting under Thalia's pine and letting rain soak her from head to toe, and right through her to bones. Rin didn't much mind the chill—she had survived harsher storms than this and she was certain that she would continue to do that.

One thing about her mother that she remembered is that her mother loved weather. Snowstorms, sunshine, clouds, rain, no matter what was going on, she found a way to connect with nature and find peace in it.

And peace was something that Rin lacked. It wasn't that Camp Half-Blood was bad in any way—but crowded and chaotic tended to come to mind. And there was also the fact that her many siblings got aggressive so easily and while sometimes it was fun to mess around and wrestle with them, she wasn't in the mood today.

Clarisse called the behavior "Rin's Moods." It happened every now and then, where she just wanted space from everyone. Sometimes she could get Luke to take her on a roadtrip to the nearest gas station for some space. They'd usually have a vent session if that happened, or sometimes they'd just sit in silence. Sometimes she would just hole up in the woods and hide in a tree—

But either way, sometimes she just felt so stifled. She was angry all of the time. It just so happened that she was much better at self-control than most other people. It was hard to make friends when you were an Ares kid, after all. They had reputations for a reason.

"So Thalia," Rin leaned against the trunk of the tree, patting it gently. "You like the storms, too?"

Thalia—for obvious reasons—never responded to that. She was a tree, after all. But that didn't mean that she wasn't a great listener. No, Thalia's Pine was the best listener in the entire camp.

Hearing a chirp from above her, Rin glanced up, eyes zeroing in on a falcon sitting in the tree. Its beady eyes locked in on her and she just stared at it for a moment. Rin gave a slight shrug, mind racking for any falcon symbolism from what she had learned in her classes here at camp.

Nothing immediately came to mind, so she just sat there and hoped that the falcon wasn't some awful monster in disguise.

Just then, there was a flash of lightning that shook the earth and Rin scrambled to her feet, eyes wide at the sight of fire down the hill.

"What the hell?" Rin mused aloud, head tilting as she tried to see what was going on. There was a mighty roar and Rin nearly shook in place as she realized what was at the bottom of the hill: The Minotaur.

She'd never seen a Minotaur before—except for in the Mythomagic cards—but that was beside the point. Suddenly, the desire to help, the desire to fight seemed to surge up in her. It wasn't that Rin wasn't a warrior, she most certainly was. It was the fact that sometimes her dad's rage just seemed to have a mind of its own.

Rin wasn't one to turn tail and run. She rarely got scared, rarely got shaken up by anything. So she just slapped a hand on Thalia's Pine, a grin crossing her features. "Wish me luck!"