The Unknown Allegiance

| Chapter 1 || Life As Usual |

Chapter One

Life as Usual

*First Person Point of View ~ Percy Jackson*

"Percy!"

I winced at the loud voice but complied. Dropping down from the tree I had perched in, I made my way over to Artemis. She stood by the archery range, her hands on her hips, glaring at me.

"What seems to be the problem, milady?" I asked. It had been nearly a year since the war against Télionix, and Artemis seemed to have completely forgotten that she didn't hate me.

"You useless male! You've forgotten to sharpen the arrows!"

She continued her rant, pointing out different things that I'd forgotten to do. In my defense, she'd only just assigned me with the meaningless, time-consuming chores a few days ago, and I wasn't used to having to do them. I didn't see why her hunters couldn't do their own chores, but－quoting Artemis－doing the chores for them "helped protect them from the stress of doing so much work" so of course I felt compelled to do them.

I bowed deeply, knowing that I wouldn't be able to argue. "I'm terribly sorry milady. I will remember next time. For now, I will begin. Hopefully, I can finish at a time of your liking." I gave another deep bow and left to complete my tasks. It was safer to be the most polite I could possibly be while Artemis was going through this 'phase' of hers.

Once I was out of earshot, I sighed. What was wrong with her? I mean, I know that she swore to be an eternal maiden and everything, and she hates all men because of it, but we were at least friends after the war! Why was she all of a sudden hating me? She'd begun treating me like I killed her puppy ever since a few months ago, when she'd suddenly snapped at me, surprising myself and even some of her hunters. Since then, she'd been giving me the cold shoulder unless she was yelling at me or commanding me to do something.

Once I'd finished sharpening all five hundred arrows, I continued on to doing the laundry. Thankfully, the hunters hadn't refined back to their hateful ways towards me and avoided getting dirty as much as they could. I mean, we lived in the forest twenty-four-seven, so it wasn't perfect, but at least they weren't just rolling in the mud for the fun of it.

After the laundry, I went out into the forest to collect firewood for that night's campfire. The hunters were going out to kill us some dinner, so I guess collecting firewood wasn't the worst job I could have.

I sent up silent prayers of thanks every so often because I spotted the hunters all doing their part of help me with my newly assigned chores, even though they weren't supposed to. Because of this, I sent them grateful smiles every time I got the chance.

As soon as I'd gotten to a point that I couldn't possibly carry another twig, I returned to our campsite and dumped the large pile of wood rather ungracefully next to the circle of rocks where our previous campfire had been last night. Continuing on to neatly stack the twigs in a tipi position around a ball of dried grass, I left the campfire.

Scaling the tree, I resumed my position in the tree. It had been exactly two hours since Artemis had called me down. My eyes scanned over the camp, watching for anything that had changed. A few of the hunters had disappeared, but I knew that they'd gone off to hunt for dinner. The others remained in sight, which allowed me relief.

"Percy! Dinner!" Thalia called up to me about half an hour later.

"On my way!" I called down.

She gave me a thumbs up and walked over to the campfire. The rest of the hunters were already there, and the fire was growing, just bright enough to light up the semi-darkness. The sun was setting, and only a small sliver was peaking over the horizon as I slid down the tree to join them.