New chapter and for anybody that tries to find whatever the town and region that Alex is in, it's completely made up. I'm not from the region.

Also, I'm starting to think there's, unironically, some type of malevolent force fucking with me at this point. The moment I get my groove back to an extent on writing, I'm back to being sick as a dog. If any of you fly on an airplane while having the flu, you're an asshole.

Either that or the PJO TV show was so bad that it induced an illness in me.

With that said, enjoy the chapter.

P.S. You have the TV show to thank for this getting released earlier. As a personal opinion shared by every single one of the people helping me with this story and all my other content, the PJO TV show is a worse adaptation than the Last Airbender and the Eragon movie.

Update to this A/N: I ended up spite writing the last part because of how dogshit the TV show is. Not even arguably a worse adaptation than the movies, it is worse than the movies.

Like a fool, I forgot to link my Discord in the previous chapter. This is the link, just remove the space: discord /2XN2rzuFpM

(LINE BREAK)

A beautiful woman with eyes the colour of the Aegean sea set her hand gently on my face, smiling up at me as I towered over her. Her ebony hair, as black as the night sky, was elaborately braided and was interwoven with all sorts of breathtakingly beautiful flowers that formed a kaleidoscope of colours that contrasted with her simple blue chiton. "You have grown into a fine man, far better than your father. Do you remember the plan?"

"Aye, I do." A deep voice left my lips, rumbling like the low rolling of a thunderstorm. "I will be better than my… father." The last word was laced with a palpable hatred and contempt that spoke to the non-existent bond between my father and I.

"You already are." She said softly, getting on the tips of her toes and kissing my cheek, her palm resting on my cheek. "My brothers and sisters suspect nothing, and I know that many hate my husband, nearly as much as they fear him. You will not be alone when the time comes."

I shook my head, wrapping my much larger hand around hers as I held my gaze on her.

"Even if I was alone, I would save them." I said resolutely. "They were taken from you, and from me. Everything will be made right again, as it should have been."

I embraced her again, feeling her arms wrap around my much larger frame as I heard her sniffle quietly.

'Save them, Zeus.' My mother kissed my cheek one final time, holding me with a tenderness only a mother could. Her sea green eyes gazed upon me with a love I would always cherish. 'Promise me you will save them and protect them from your father.'

Promises meant everything. A broken oath was something only the truly lost ever committed, and a brother never rejects his siblings.

'I promise, mother.'

(Line break)

"Good luck, Alex."

I bolted awake as what felt like the world's most intense taser suddenly injected thousands of volts of electricity directly into my veins and a blood curdling scream echoed throughout whatever room I was in. My body was twitching and shaking, and I couldn't even jump off of what I was barely able to notice was a gymnasium floor.

It wasn't until the spasming subsided that I realized the screaming I was hearing was coming from me.

As soon as that realization occured, my surroundings started to coalesce into form and vague memories of what happened moments ago started to clear out the cobwebs in my head. I was… at school. Recess. Some annoying little shit of a kid threw a dodgeball at me and drilled me straight in the face. My anger flared, the gym lights on the ceiling flickered, then nothing.

About a half dozen kids that looked to be around kindergarten age were standing over me, whispering as I tried to get my limbs under control and I saw through the legs of one that the little fucker who threw the ball was barely stifling a laugh.

The vague and disjointed memories of the five, almost six, year child known as Alexander Adamas provided a name for the fourth grader, some recent transfer asshat that was a bit of a problem child in the fourth grade.

Dylan.

I could have my autistic rant and emotional lash out at dying and being resurrected in a fictional world in a moment. Right now, I was going to do something that would have landed me in prison just a day ago.

I was going to punch a child.

Slowly getting to my feet, I steadied myself and waved off one of my sort of friends, Dave, and stomped towards the shit. Not saying a word at all, I closed the distance until I was within talking distance, and the dark haired boy looked at me with a cocksure grin.

"You okay Alex? I thought you asked me to throw i- hrggh!" He was cut off by me delivering a swift kick to his shin and I threw the strongest punch I could muster in my now younger body at his face when he lurched forward.

Dylan staggered and clutched his face, before his eyes blazed over with anger and he glared at me hatefully.

"Try it again, malaka!" I shouted, diving forward and tackling him.

That was how one of the chaperone teachers that had gone to use the bathroom found us, wrestling on the floor as I drove several punches into his side and was calling him every insult in both English and Greek I could think of.

"Break it up!" Mr… Whitmire demanded as he pulled me off of the little bastard, who was nursing a black eye.

One of the teachers I didn't really like, Whitmire was a middle aged, balding, and pudgy man that looked like a weightlifter gone to seed.

I tried to break out of the man's grip, but damn was he strong. The scruff of my collar was in an ironclad grip and no amount of kicking and demanding I be let go helped, so I stopped and just glared at Dylan as I was dragged out of the gym while another teacher checked on him.

An annoying forced march to the principal's office later, Whitmire sat me down and looked down at me with a serious expression marring his weathered face.

"Sit here, Alex. I'll be calling your mother about you punching a student and your language."

A spike of pain streaked through my head and I winced, seeing another quick flash of memories related to my life after Whitmire said that. A comely young woman, looking no older than I was when I died, with auburn hair and a smile that could light up the room, appeared at the forefront of the memories.

I had a mother, and she loved me. Just like… my actual mom.

A mother I'd never see again after I witnessed her crying hysterically at the death of her youngest.

Everything was wrong. I wasn't slowly immersed in my memories like Chronus promised, I was completely unprepared and was dropped into here blindly. I was lied to, and for a reason I didn't know. Was Chronus really Chronus, or had he been something darker that got me… to agree to a deal?

'All they need is permission and they control you. Never invite them in.' That sentence I had heard years ago resurfaced and just like that, I shrunk in on myself and felt like I was suffocating. The realization of it all hit me now. I had been forsaken, tossed into this world. I… I said yes to being sent away. I said yes to it. I wouldn't be there, in Paradise with them. I'd never see my family again, because I said yes.

What had I done?

Whitmire stepped away from me, probably shocked as I started crying softly at what I did.

I didn't care about anything at the moment. I was alone in a world of myth and legend, and I had no idea what I even was. If Whitmire said anything else, I didn't know as I cried to myself from my inconsolable grief at dying. I didn't care that God or any other gods could hear me, that He did love me, and that I would never feel like I was screaming and praying into a potential void, but I couldn't hear Him now in my darkest moment.

Whitmire quietly told me he would be back in a moment, and he left the room, opening and closing the door with a click and groan.

My head kept pounding as I tried to suppress my sobs, memory after memory flicking across my mind at a rapid pace. Anything I tried to hold onto was quickly replaced with another one, and it was specific ones.

My brother harassing me into reading the PJO books when we went to Catholic school. Bible school and the summer camp I went to for years. Working construction, becoming a crane operator like my dad. All of that was overlapped by another set of memories, far more shallow in depth, but no less potent.

Alex Adamas. My mom's name is Anastasia. I have an older cousin named Asmund. My cousin is cool and just graduated from high school, and he loves heavy metal and martial arts.

I don't know how long it was, but I eventually pulled myself into a modicum of stability afterwards and I looked around, taking in my surroundings like something was watching me. I looked at the exits, the window behind me, and the glass window of the door that allowed me to see the hallway that led into the principal's office and where the assistant Mrs Gilbert was manning the desk.

Whatever I had done or agreed to, I would not give up. I'd fight to protect the innocent, to protect the children cast aside by the gods, I would… I… couldn't even muster up that inner fire. It was just so tiresome now. I felt like I had just run a marathon, and all the visceral despair I'd been in the clutch of just mere minutes ago was barely even background noise now. I was just… tired, and I wanted to go home.

Preparations for the future can wait until I have a better lid on my emotions, so I'd settle for waiting until I got sent home for fighting another student.

Sure enough, Mr Whitmire came back a few minutes after I got myself under control and peered down at me.

"I just finished making a phone call to your mother." He said, leaning against the doorway slightly as the attempt at guilting me began. "She said Asmund will pick you up in about 20 minutes. You're in serious trouble, young man."

Good old reliable Ozzy. He probably was going to be a little annoyed at first that he couldn't do his typical fight club adventures or hook up with one of the biker chicks because of me, but maybe me telling him that I beat someone older and taller than me would smooth things over.

"He deserved it." I muttered, furrowing my brow at the thought of the asshole throwing a ball at a 6 year old. Quite frankly, I wouldn't have minded him getting caned like 200 years ago, just him though.

Whitmire was not enthused by that, so the balding man didn't say anything at all and instead gave me a condescending look that did nothing at all to instill guilt.

Seeing that I wasn't going to wilt under his gaze, Whitmire just quietly stared at me for a moment or two longer before he grabbed a metal folding chair from the corner and opened it up, then sat down and crossed one leg over the other. The odd posture just made me roll my eyes and I started going over the current situation I was in, frowning when my head still itched when thinking about the new memories.

I live in Anchorage, Alaska. My mom's sister died a few years ago, and my cousin Asmund moved in with us when I was still a baby.

Much to my relief as well, I looked at least vaguely like I did in my previous life, except I was completely bereft of a tan, my hair was black instead of dark brown, and my eyes were, well, the least familiar. One, my right eye, was electric blue with a ring of misty blue in the center, and my left eye was bright green, instead of the original grayish blue I inherited from my mom.

My first mom.

This is going to be weird getting used to.

Another strange thought hit me, something that suddenly made a little more sense now that I knew the divine world was explicitly present in the world. One of the kids in my year; his grandfather was an elder in one of the Indian tribes, and he seriously despised my mom, cousin, and me. Like, genuine contempt for us. If what Chronus hinted at could be taken at face value, I was a Greek demigod and that shriveled old man that had the most painfully stereotypical Indian Shaman physiognomy had me tagged as an enemy because his spirits and gods told him.

I went through a few other parts of my memories, grunting and occasionally making other odd sounds when I figured out something annoying. For one, I was in a special Ed class because, guess what, God or the gods found it hilarious to have me be diagnosed as autistic in this life as well, combined with horrible dyslexia that made me dread a lot of things in the future. It wasn't that Alex was lower functioning than I was, it was that the dyslexia made it intolerable in a regular class. And I loved to read, and the thought of a spiritual inhibitor making English a jumbled mess to process pissed me off unbelievably so.

This was already an ill omen for what awaited me, so I tried to pass the time for now by humming to myself to get my mind off of the negativity.

Of course, the tune ended up being to an 800 year old song my cousin would have called the Skaldic tongue or whatever, but my primary memories made sense of what he meant by that, because I could speak and read some of it out of personal amusement and curiousity… Old Norse.

For whatever reason, I felt it put my mind at greater ease and I wasn't hurting as much.

I even started reciting parts of the lyrics I knew, scattered as they were. As I did that, Whitmire's dark brown eyes narrowed, his face showing a clear expression of exasperation.

"Va þher Heiddin, þat þik pinir." I managed to recite perfectly, going back to humming the tune between the lines.

I continued on for a bit, keeping my eyes trained on Whitmire and the clock in anticipation that Asmund would get here soon.

"That's an interesting song." Whitmire eventually said, tapping his fingers against his lap in boredom, but he also looked closer to being annoyed now. "What is it?" The last part sounded strange in tone, making me pause for a fraction of a second.

"A song my cousin taught me." I lied easily, easily switching back into a separate language and paying attention to Whitmire.

"Oh," He said, clearing his throat again like he was coming down with something, "It's a lovely song. Is it almost over?"

He was acting strange. It wasn't aggravation at me getting into a fight, or any of the bewildered pity when I'd get overly upset at something relatively minor and have to go to a bathroom to freak out. It was… almost like apprehension.

An errant thought went through my head the moment I thought that, an old memory of how Percy narrated the Lightning Thief, and how he said to not trust doctors that want to medicate you, or even school nurses; they might be them.

Could Whitmire be one?

There was a way I could test it. If He was here, He would be listening in with total certainty. Rebuking evil in His name tended to get results in the Bronze and Iron Ages, so this shouldn't be any different.

And I had lived praising His name. I prayed to him, proclaimed the victory His, sang with all my heart that I was loved and was a prodigal son who would return to His embrace.

It was foolish, beyond foolish. Maybe I was in such a terrible emotional state that I decided to do a stupid thing like testing for a monster, but I did it.

Visualizing with as much focus as I could that warmth and certitude that filled me whenever I clutched my crucifix gifted to me by my mother and father, I sang the next five words with a conviction not out of place when I recited the Apostles Creed.

"þadan til Helvitis reid sonr…"

It did something as it turns out, but never in a million years did I expect it to do what it did.

The hand in my mind's eye that I visualized was clutching my necklace suddenly flared in pain like somebody stabbed the middle of my palm with a needle, and my throat tightened like an angry god had silenced me for uttering a profane sentence.

I let out several coughs to rid myself of the sensation, but it was like trying to swallow ice. My throat burned and froze at the same time, and panic started to set in for a moment when I couldn't breathe.

But as soon as it appeared, it vanished like it hadn't even been there.

Mr Whitmire seemed to have stilled for a moment as the shadow of something inhuman passed across his face. Whatever mask he wore, I was able to glimpse beyond it for a split second, and it still wasn't clear what it was I saw.

But just as soon as the shadow passed over his visage, it vanished and he'd leaned all the way back in the chair, away from me without it looking obvious.

"S-sorry." I managed to stutter out, coughing again. "Dust in the air, sir."

My mind was in overdrive. My luck that a fucking demon or something Fallen was a school teacher- my schoolteacher, the one who watched the kids at recess.

This now sounded like a completely shitty idea to do, getting reborn in a world where gods actively screwed with the world and literally screwed the world. Should've passed Go and collected 200. The Celestial Kingdom I was offered looked as far off as possible, and now I had to think of how to not tip off the skin suit wearing creature that I didn't know its true nature. I'm pretty sure calling a demon by its true designation would piss it off and I'd be smeared all across the wall, because I didn't know the first thing about fighting a supernatural entity that St Michael failed to stomp into a shit smear millennia ago.

"It's a cool song." I eventually said, smiling as widely as I could and trying to hide the thoughts in my head that were of a fork tongue Whitmire, with red skin, getting beheaded by an armoured juggernaut with a flaming sword. "But Ozzy loves this super loud stuff too that he calls metal. They growl like dogs and sound weird though."

Whitmire calmed down and glanced at the clock, before looking back at me.

"Oh really?" He asked with a false tone of interest. "That does sound weird."

Either he knew I was lying and was playing along because I startled the Hell out of him, or he honestly believed it was a really bad coincidence.

For the next 15 minutes, I had to talk like the closest analog I could to a 6 year old kid and it was enough of an effort that I forgot that I was pissed at that Dylan jerk and that I was experiencing the worst nightmare of a conversation partner a Deacon's grandson could ever imagine.

But thankfully, the mindless rambling I managed to cook up was enough, when I heard a knock on the door, then it opened almost immediately in a very reminiscent fashion.

Peaking through the crack between the opened door and the frame was Asmund's head, his gray eyes finding mine and he pushed the door open the rest of the way for us to see him.

He looked just as he always did. Dark hair done up in a braid, six feet tall,with a Thor's hammer necklace hanging from his neck. He was also currently wearing some Swedish band t-shirt that I couldn't read because of the stupid rune writing, but he always found that funny.

He was also holding my backpack in his right hand.

"Hey, Mr Whitmire." Asmund greeted him with the necessary politeness, before looking at me with a frown. "Aunt Ana isn't happy, Alex, but we can talk when we get home."

With that, I stood up from the chair and didn't say a word to defend myself. I'd wait until I got outside in the car, because Asmund would surely be fine with me attacking another student when he found out the context and reason why.

In unison, Asmund and I walked down the corridor, leaving the principal's office behind. As we stepped into the open where the sunlight shown through the windows to the left of the hallway that linked to the exit, the ambient light painted contours on Asmund's stoic profile, and I couldn't help but wince. His dark hair, intricately braided, swayed with each step, and the Thor's hammer necklace around his neck seemed to resonate with an unseen energy.

Whether I was overthinking it or not, that damned piece of sterling silver that hung from his neck felt like there was an unseen weight behind it, seemingly more than even my own rings and necklace I once had.

His silence and stoic lack of looking at me or speaking to me hurt more than him being angry. The memories of young Alexander, which no longer felt like chips of ice burning in my head, made shame burn through me that I appeared to have disappointed him.

The car, a midnight blue trans am from 1981 awaiting us in the school parking lot, was parked in the nearest parking place that wasn't reserved for the handicapped.

Approaching the vehicle, Asmund unlocked the driver side door and reached and opened it. He then reached and unlocked the other doors by the electronic switch with a click, inviting me into the sort of sanctuary of the car.

I opened the passenger door and quietly sank into the comforting embrace of the white, leather car seat. Asmund tossed my backpack into the backseat and got into the driver's seat as I did that and shut the door, staring at me with that same unwavering look that made it impossible for me to lie.

"Alex," He said my name with a flat tone, "I just want to know. Did you start the fight?"

No, Ozzy." I said clearly.

"Are you telling the truth?"

"Yes."

After a moment's pause, he shrugged and looked away from me, putting the keys into the ignition and starting the car. The engine roared to life and he put it into drive, turning left and driving out of the parking lot and towards home.

"Go ahead and explain what happened." He said a few seconds later after he pulled out and we were now on the main road and we went east.

I complied with my older cousin's request and explained that Dylan was being a dickhead, minus the language, and I didn't omit too much for fear of my deceptively intelligent cousin noticing. All I pretty much kept out of my story was what happened before the dodgeball struck me and the short emotional breakdown I had in the office.

Asmund's gaze remained steady on the road as I explained, a tacit acknowledgment of what transpired at school.

Breaking the silence, Asmund's voice held a certain solidarity. "Alex," he began, his tone supportive, "I get it. Sometimes things push us to our limits, and we react. Now is when I ask that you figure out a way to handle it better next time, but I've got your back if your mom's mad."

The hum of the engine resonated with his words as he continued, "Aunt Ana might be upset, but we'll talk to her and explain. Sometimes, a punch is the only thing certain idiots understand. But I'll say this, and that's don't call someone a malaka."

Asmund's words put my mind at ease and I relaxed. As we approached what I figured was the way home, Asmund took a turn in a different direction. I shot him a puzzled look, silently asking what was going on.

"Where are we going?" I asked, sounding a bit surprised.

With a shrug, Asmund said, "It was supposed to be sword day for me, remember? It's Friday, I'm not messing up my groove because some little shi-, uh, punk got floored by my cousin. So you get to watch me fight some friends of mine." It clicked rather quickly to me that our plans had now shifted, and we headed to the sparring school instead.

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Driving through the small town that was our hometown, the streets had this old-school vibe that I couldn't tell was the case because it was in the periphery of American civilization that was Alaska or because it was… 1999. You could tell it had history—faded signs, people chatting on the sidewalks, and the usual town sounds. We passed by one of the diners Asmund used to work at and with the windows down, I could hear the bell ring faintly as a family with three kids walked in.

We took a few turns, passing scenes of everyday life, like a group of men outside of a bar who knew each other well. Eventually, the town faded away in the rearview mirror, replaced by the open roads and rolling hills that I recognized.

In the time that it took us to get there, my mind was working at full capacity as I thought of what to do. As soon as possible, I would need to determine what my situation was. Being a Greek demigod, my prayer probably hurt because there's some grinding involved when it comes to Christianity and the Olympians, which worried me greatly. Just because I accepted being thrown into a situation to help people, I didn't think I'd be branded as unworthy of at least being seen as a good pagan. But… was I even really a pagan? Sure, the reality of the situation was that there were many gods, but I still acknowledged Yahweh and acknowledged the divinity of Christ, so where the Hell did that leave me? I knew about this, but yet I was still in a bad position as the spawn of what the old church fathers would have called fallen angels or demons.

Fuck. Me.

If I had to guess, this world's version of Christianity, when talking about the word elohim in the First Commandment, was meaning literal other elohim. 'Thou shalt have no other gods before God(s)/the Trinity'.

Christ, this is complica-

I stopped that internal monologue and nervously looked up when I thought I heard a faint rumble in the sky.

I must've misheard.

If my little invocation had done nothing, then maybe I'd be able to wrap my mind around it. Either there was a rift between the pantheons or one just simply didn't exist, but it hurt me.

Either way, I wasn't going to make sacrifices to the Shame-king or any filth like that. If ever I speak to an angel, I'll try and argue my case that I descended for the sake of others; no way would comparing my predicament to everybody's favorite carpenter get me smited.

Moving on from my paranoid speculation over the possibly negative iteration of my previous/current faith, I thought of different details of my memories that may clue me into what my heritage could be.

I had black hair and mismatched eyes, one a bright green while the other was electric blue albeit internally ringed with a faint misty gray that resembled Asmund's solid gray. If I were a narcissistic guy, I'd probably make an initial guess that Zeus was my father from the single blue eye and my hair. But since this was after the Pact, I almost certainly am not. There would be a far greater chance that I am a son of Heracles, or I just quite simply inherited the blue eye trait from my maternal grandfather.

But try as I might, I could not think of anything outside of my capacity to occasionally punch things really hard and dent them without hurting myself that bounced around in some of my memories from a year ago. I remembered breaking a spoon too, but nothing like rapid heliotherapy, plants loving to be around me, or anything that would make it easy to figure out who I was.

Maybe I could fish around and allude to the fact that Whitmer seemed to feel wrong, that he was looking at me strangely and muttering in a guttural tongue.

It only took about 15 minutes for us to get to the larger town, bordering on city, where Asmund did his martial arts and weapons training, and I saw the sign. Sure enough, it was definitely a sparring dojo or something along that line; the sign had a Dane Axe interlocked with a gladius as a background, with the front of the sign being an Attic helmet.

It was confirmed that we arrived at our destination when the car slowed down and Asmund parked not far from the entrance.

"You might as well hop out and watch." Asmund said as he shut off the engine and got out of the car, closing the door and going to the back where the trunk was.

I took that moment to look at the other cars in the parking lot and inspected them, noticing that both were pick-ups and had gun racks on the back of them.

"Alex!" Asmund's voice pulled me from my investigation and I saw he was toting a large plastic crate that was almost the size of what his car's trunk could store. "Get out and let's get inside."

I nodded and got out of the car, looking up at Asmund and scowling internally at how short I was. To be fair, I was a 6 year old kindergartner and he was 6 feet tall and jacked for an 18 year old guy. But it still was grating that I was hardly waist height to him.

Asmund overtook my stride with no difficulty and reached the door, using his shoulder to shove open the door and he entered. I followed right after and got my first look at where my cousin trained to fight.

My first thought was that the interior of Asmund's sparring gym exuded a subdued ambiance, with the walls painted in shades of dark gray and black, casting the space in a muted light. Adorning the walls were an assortment of decorative armor and weapons.

The concrete floors, at least in the center of the room, were softened by a layer of padded surfacing, which is kind of a must when you're getting knocked to the ground, even in armour. The faint metallic scent that I couldn't place further painted the image of a dedicated space for rigorous training.

To the left of the doorway, seated in a metal folding chair, was a guy that looked like he was just out of highschool, Asmund's age, in a set of chainmail that if I remembered correctly was called a hauberk and the metal shirt went all the way down to his knees. Other quick details I noticed was that he had long hair and was completely engrossed in the book he was reading. Suddenly he jerked his right arm up and tapped his fingers against his forehead in a strangely idiosyncratic manner that was very familiar.

He didn't make any move to say hello or even look up, simply staying absorbed in his reading and fidgeting.

My silent gazing at the seemingly oblivious possible friend of Asmund's was interrupted when a plastic water bottle sailed through the air from behind me and nailed the guy square in the temple, causing him to nearly jump out of his seat and the book fell off his lap.

"The fuck?!"

"Look alive, dumbass!" Asmund called out, setting down his armour crate and dashing towards what I guessed was his friend, because petty assault wasn't something you did to anyone except family or friends.

The currently unnamed victim of my cousin's definitely not violent assault had closed his book and looked ready to hit him with it.

"You could've just waited a moment." The still unnamed guy scowled.

"I'm treating your disease via a corrective beating, Carl." Asmund stressed the name, before opening up the crate and pulling out a gambeson and his own mail shirt, along with a very padded set of pants. He then walked to the other side of the gym.

"It's Charles, you dick." Charles/Carl scowled, his hand once again fidgeting jerkily by his waist.

…

That's familiar. I thought once again. Inconsistent eye contact, unwillingness to disengage from a prior task, and random fidgeting in a specific pattern.

Had I not figured out what the 'disease' was anyway, Asmund's comment that came next would have clued me in.

"Charles is for when you behave, Sperg! Carl the Huscarl is you right now."

Carl responded by chucking the same bottle that nailed him in the head at the back of Asmund's, who didn't even look and tilted his head to the side to avoid it.

"Shame upon your bloodline, Saxon!" Asmund laughed, disappearing into what looked like a dressing room.

I just stood there, struggling to understand what the hell I had just gotten involved in. A sense of deja vu had struck me, and I didn't exactly like the reminder of my own brother doing that type of shit talking to 'teach me' how to respond in kind and not sound like a stilted imbecile.

Since Asmund was going to be a minute while he put his armour on, I decided to say hello to Carl.

"Um, hi, I'm Jare- Alex." I corrected myself just before I finished saying what my name had once been. Ironically, my middle name had been Alexander before. "I'm Ozzy's cousin."

Carl smiled and looked straight at me. "I'm Charlie."

After that laconic greeting, he averted his gaze and just stood awkwardly while Asmund got his armour on.

Right as he came within view with his hauberk and everything else on, the door opened behind me and I jumped slightly.

"Who's the kid, Oz?!" A burly voice shouted behind me. I turned and looked to see if the voice matched the man, and I was not disappointed.

He was a guy in his 40s with graying hair, a little shorter than Asmund, and with a bit of a gut. But, he was legit built like a square; all muscle in his shoulders and neck.

"My cousin." Asmund replied as he hurried back to the entrance and stopped right next to me. "He attacked a kid at school and now I'm his parole officer."

"Hey!" I protested, but all I got for my discontent was a comparatively giant palm from Asmund ruffling the entire top of my head.

"Oh, so just like you." The guy shrugged at my cousin, before looking at me with a scrutinizing look. "Did you at least win?"

"Yeah, he was a fourth grader." I added the last part so I could feel a little better about myself after getting treated like a child by Asmund.

Even though I kind of was.

"Well damn, give him a little longer and he'll be fighting you and winning, Oz." He laughed. "Kid can't be older than 6 years old."

I really tried to stop myself, but that inborn desire to be seen as more mature and not a little child overtook all my discipline and decorum.

"6 and a half."

Asmund just snickered along with the guy while Carl had also been listening in and laughed too. "Whatever you say, little man. Now, why don't you say hi to my teacher, Seth." Asmund enunciated that request by setting his hands on my shoulders and held me in place. "Say hi."

"Greetings and salutations." I said to Seth, before elbowing Asmund in the ribs to get him to let me go.

On further reflection, a six year old hitting an in shape guy wearing a steel shirt of armour meant to take full powered blows from swords was stupid of me. It probably hurt me more, but my cousin did let me go with a grunt of annoyance and I darted out of reach, turning around so I could see him.

Before I could smart off at him and tell him I wasn't in the mood, the door opened again to deposit another guy into the gym that looked to be in his 20s.

Shorter than Seth. Stocky. Shaved head. And had a beard that went past his sternum.

"Hey, Jacky." Came the triple greeting from Seth, Asmund, and Carl.

Jacky gave his own greeting, then muttered something about Sam, or maybe he said Stan, had just pulled into the parking lot too.

And again, "Who's the kid?" was repeated once again and I got to introduce myself, again. After that, I just sat down in a chair and just spaced out for a little while. I was reaching the end of my tether and needed to mentally disengage from everything for a moment.

Asmund mercifully understood that I didn't want to interact with anyone else right now and struck up a conversation with a couple of them while they got their gear and armour ready.

As the two other members of Asmund's training group trickled in, I found myself half-heartedly observing their preparations and conversations. My mind felt foggy, weighed down by the exhaustion from earlier in the day.

Even the music that got turned on that blared out from what looked like an absolute relic of a boombox in the corner, which sounded like a mixtape that I could identify as a combination of metal, hard rock, and especially Nordic chanting that sounded like James Earl Jones overseeing the sacrifice of a hapless Christian during a grand blót failed to rouse me.

Despite the clinking of armor and the sound of swords clashing mixed with the music, I struggled to muster much interest. The scene before me seemed distant and blurry, as if I were viewing it through a haze. Though I recognized the dedication and skill evident in their movements, my attention waned, unable to fully engage with the spectacle.

It wasn't until I recognized a maneuver Asmund made by name that I was pulled from my atopic thinking, and it actually worked to win him the round.

Carl had made a feint and stabbed at Oz's face, but didn't connect when my cousin made a master cut that knocked the stab away and he stepped into Carl's guard to deliver a hilt strike to his helmet that sent him staggering back.

After that, I started getting a little more interested, but not enough to actually immerse myself into it.

It was strange. One moment, I was feeling emotionally hungover after dying and agreeing to be sent into what was a nightmarish situation. But then without warning, I felt suddenly energized and I could instinctively tell what the best move was right as one of the fighters moved forward or back. I could see how Seth was the best technical fighter, that he was an absolute animal. But Asmund was the fastest, and he dominated against pretty much everyone else aside from his teacher.

I couldn't explain it, but I felt that there was something special about him. This wasn't me being biased as his cousin, it's a specialness that you can't really put into words because it's not exactly a feeling like touch or sight. There was something that I could now see either within or around Asmund that I had only seen before when I had been certain in my past life that a… entity… had draped itself over someone's shoulders in a figurative sense.

And just like that, that burst of hyper focused clarity abandoned me and my ability to judge and follow what was going on snapped back to something normal to me. I reacted like anyone else would and scowled, trying to make my attention span function like it wasn't a Dollar Tree solar light.

This was worse than anything I'd had as a kid before.

And that's how it went for about two hours. As the sparring session concluded, I remained seated, watching from the sidelines as the other fighters began the task of removing their armor and restoring the gym to its usual state.

Asmund approached me after they went about doing cleanup, carrying his crate, and I watched as he made his way through the gym. With a tired but contented smile, he reached my side. "Hey, Alex," he said, his voice carrying a hint of exhaustion. "We can head home now. Ready to call it a day?"

"Yeah." I muttered, clacking my teeth together lightly and I got up from the chair. I didn't say anything else and walked out to the car. Pushing the door open, I walked across the parking lot a couple of meters with an audible crunch of gravel under my feet. I then squinted as the sun had started to set and was right above the treeline about a mile away and across the road, right in line with my vision.

Instead of walking the rest of the way to the car to get in, I just stared right next to the sun, as close as I could without getting spots in my vision.

It was a funny thing. I knew what the sun was. It was definitely not a chariot pulled by the likes of Helios or Apollo, nor was it a boat navigated by Ra as he rode it straight into the jaws of Apophis to do battle throughout the night to bring light and splendor to the world. But yet it was.

The sun wasn't alive, but I felt seen. I could feel someone's eyes on me as I looked at the same light in the sky that had been prayed to in the past, and in whose name the hearts of the innocent had been torn out.

I knew I was seen.

No prayer was offered to Apollo. Until I knew why my sort of prayer to… Him… I would settle on that to describe the god of the Israelites at the moment, hurt me, I wasn't going to start giving anything to other gods. Using any true name felt unsettling to do right now. If bringing up just one aspect of the three had me almost choking, I didn't want to learn what the invocation of a true name would do.

At least until I got home, that is. Maybe an actual reciting of prayers to figure out which ones caused issues could help me understand what parts clashed with my still unknown Greek heritage.

"Alex?" Asmund said my name from behind me, setting his hand on my shoulder gently.

I briefly wondered how he did that unless he had his crate of armour and other stuff braced against his hip, but I didn't really care at the moment.

"I'm just looking at the sunset." I said quietly.

"Uh huh." Asmund replied. He then patted my shoulder and walked towards the car to put the crate in the trunk.

Asmund approached the car, and I was headed right behind him and got into it. I took my seat in the passenger side as Asmund stowed the crate in the trunk. Once settled in the driver's seat, Asmund started the engine, and we pulled out of the driveway, beginning our journey home.

It took only about 45 minutes to get back to the house, but it was long enough for me to bring something up to Asmund that I had cooked up silently for the first 15 minutes of the drive.

Wetting my lips while my hands rested on my thighs, I looked to my left and stared at my cousin.

"Ozzy?"

"Yeah, Alex?"

"I…" I started, pausing to make sure I worded this right. "I think monsters are real."

Asmund didn't say anything and he continued to keep his eyes on the road, but what he said next confirmed to me that he was almost certainly in the know about the mystical world.

"Did you see one?"

"I think so." I said truthfully. "Mr Whitmire looked, I dunno, different. It was like he was wearing a Halloween mask, but it was his face."

There was a palpable tension in the car as Asmund absorbed my words, his grip on the wheel tightening imperceptibly.

"Was it just Whitmire?" He asked calmly, flicking his turn signal as we slowed down at a stop sign.

There was, in fact, something other than Whitmire that I remembered seeing months ago at the beginning of the school year. It had been around the time a kid in the upper year had gone missing, attributed to being a runaway.

Recently turned 6 year old Alex didn't understand what the lanky looking deer thing that was on two legs was, but I did now. I hadn't realized it was this far north, or maybe it was in this world where it wasn't in my old one. All the details hadn't been spotted, but I know if they had, I would have smelled rot and decay, the skin would have been ashen gray and stretched across a terrible chest and set of limbs.

A wendigo had been stalking the school, a school full of vulnerable children.

"Um, I thought I saw something tall with antlers." I said, taking a deep breath at the realization that I genuinely was surrounded on all sides and that I was ill-prepared for it all. Sure, I'd been in my fair share of fights and was a very good killer when it came to shooting things, making explosives, and things related to modern combat between modern humans. But I was hardly above your typical nerd when it came to using a sword, lance, or axe. My Damascus steel gladius was a damned impulse buy when I went to buy guns, not a dedicated purchase.

My brief internal tangent ended when Asmund replied to me revealing what I'd seen to him. "I believe you, Alex. I'll look to see what's going on and I'll tell you what I find, okay?" The last sentence he said was very warm, bordering on affectionate as we reached the last stretch of road before we got home.

I basically sat on that response for the rest of the drive home and said nothing else as Asmund pulled into the parking lot. The gravel crunched under the tires as he straightened the wheel and he parked right next to my mom's red cavalier.

With a metallic click and the slight jangle of his keys hitting one another, the car shut off and went silent.

"Remember to get your bag." Asmund reminded me as he shifted and opened his door to get out. I also got out and grabbed my bag from the backseat, setting just one strap on my shoulder and walking up to the house.

The house was a modest structure, nestled amidst a sparsely populated area along the road. With only around ten houses scattered in the vicinity, it stood relatively isolated. The nearest neighbors were about 200 yards away on either side, giving the impression of solitude and the rural isolation I had been accustomed to. Despite its small size, the house was still home.

I walked up to the front door of my house and pushed it open, the hinges creaking slightly in protest. The familiar scent of home greeted me as I stepped inside. From the kitchen, I heard my mom's voice, her tone warm and inviting.

"Ozzy? Alex? You boys back?!"

"Yeah mom, we're back." I announced, taking off my shoes by the doorway and walking down the entrance hallway to the living room. I unceremoniously dropped my bag next to the couch and I just fell onto the green, cushioned furniture until Asmund got inside to break it to my mom that her little boy got into a fight at school.

I also noticed that it smelled like grilled cheese and macaroni was being fixed, so at least I had that going for me right now.

The door creaked once again as Asmund entered the house with the crate hoisted up in his grip and he made his way to the recliner reserved for him to set it there for a moment. After setting it down, he walked over to me and had his head just a foot away from mine.

"Don't tell her about seeing monsters just yet." He whispered.

Then, he straightened up and faced the kitchen. "Aunt Ana, need to talk for a second! Are you busy?"

"Just a moment." She replied. I heard a click like the heat was turned down on the stove and the sound of footsteps came closer as my mom rounded the corner and I got my first look at my mom since I 'woke up'.

She was very pretty, beyond what I could really describe without sounding like I was embellishing. Long red hair flowed down her back, complementing her bright green eyes that seemed to hold a universe of emotions. Her smile was infectious, lighting up her entire face.

It was also not lost on me that she looked younger than I was when I... died the first time. At her oldest, I'd say she was 25.

Assuming I'm a demigod and not a Legacy, that doesn't paint the best picture of my father; made my angel of a mother into a teen mom, and I say that with full knowledge that Poseidon pulled the exact same stunt with Sally Jackson.

"Hey, Aunt Anastasia," Asmund greeted as she entered the room. "Just so you know, Alex got into a bit of a scuffle at school today."

Oh, so just like that, you dick.

Anastasia's expression shifted to one of concern as she turned towards me, her eyes narrowing slightly. "Is that true, Alex?" she asked, her voice tinged with worry.

I nodded, feeling a pang of guilt at the faint disappointment in her eyes. "Yeah, Mom."

"And did you start the fight?"

"No." I then went on to explain the details of what happened. Admittedly, I brought up my use of profanity that she frowned at, as all mothers of 6 year olds would.

Since I wasn't really a deceitful person at heart and she was a decent judge of character, she believed my truthful explanation that I had only responded with violence to an older kid bullying me and not have just done it out of fun.

"Don't use that word again, but you're not in trouble for fighting." She sighed, pressing her fingers against her brow and shaking her head. "I'll need to talk with the principal later about keeping Dylan in line."

After she said that to herself, she straightened her posture and walked towards me. Sure enough, she gave a proper welcome back home and wrapped me up in a hug, kissing the top of my head.

"I'll worry about that later." She said, still hugging me tightly. "I have supper made and you can tell me how today was, okay?"

"Yeah." I mumbled from below her as she was significantly taller than me despite her being a little on the short side, I was just 6 after all. But I didn't say anything else because I couldn't trust myself to not choke up and start crying. Perhaps it was because I had a still developing brain and at 6 years old, my emotions were always just under the surface and it was a struggle right now.

After my mom released me from her embrace, she turned to Asmund with a warm smile. "Ozzy, would you mind helping me set the table? Supper's just about ready."

Asmund nodded in agreement, offering a reassuring pat on my shoulder as he walked by me before following my mom into the kitchen. Left alone for a moment, I took a deep breath, then exhaled. After that brief couple seconds to collect myself, I followed right after them and walked into the kitchen.

I promptly sat down at the table right as Asmund set the tablecloth and my mom already had two plates with what did indeed turned out to be mac and cheese and grilled cheese on them in her hands.

I was handed the one in her right hand, while the one for Asmund was set right in front of where he was about to sit across from me.

Asmund sat down and grinned at me, running his hand through his hair to get a couple stray strands out of his face.

My mom sat down with her own plate and they started to eat.

The abruptness had me blinking for just a fraction of a second. I had been in the motion of raising my hands to say grace, but then I realized that I had no recollection of attending church, hearing my mom talk about Christianity, anything pertaining to interacting with the very devout Christians in town, and it certainly wasn't a cross necklace that my cousin had hanging around his neck.

So… damn… strange.

My mom and Asmund talked about today and a couple random subjects, boring ones at that. I just ate my food in silence while they did that, wanting to head to my room and do some stuff. Maybe I'd cry, maybe I'd scream or laugh; I didn't know what to do because I felt like Chronus had explicitly lied to me so I would be put in a position where I got exactly what I wished for, but yet was lied to about the job resume. It should've been a gradual acclimation, but was abrupt instead and I was in the ass end of North America where it would be a colossal undertaking to get to Camp Halfblood.

I would need to plan ahead, find out who my father was, and above all else, not die.

After I finished eating my supper and listened for a sufficient time to Asmund and my mom talk about his plans to possibly join the town's police department and a few other things that a 6 year old usually wouldn't care about, I politely requested that I be excused because I was tired. My mom said it was okay and I got up, heading out of the kitchen and I walked down the hallway to my room.

I reached the door and opened it, sighing as I caught sight of the familiar interior and I promptly closed it behind me. There was no intention of going to sleep, just two very important things I needed to run through.

The first was that I needed to run through everything I remembered about the series. My memory was impeccable when it came to the first five books and could probably recite most of the content without issue. Heroes of Olympus? That's where it got a little dicey, but still on point. Everything else was an issue for me, because I hadn't gotten around to reading the series pertaining to the Asatru and the Kane Chronicles was very spotty on what parts I remembered.

And something told me that the Aesir were not myth accurate. The Greeks and Romans weren't, so I could trust that the Norse ones aren't either. Which, to put it mildly, was relieving as I concluded that.

That was my first step towards planning my strategy for survival and overall triumph in this new life of mine.

The second was rather simple and it simply required a sign of submission and making a devoted prayer to test what exactly was the source of the friction in my beliefs.

With that said, I walked to the opposite side of my bed to face the door, got on my knees, and started to pray in the first of many prayers I knew to test the waters.

"Alex saw the wendigo from a couple months back." Asmund said bluntly, feeling no need to beat around the bush with his aunt.

He'd waited until his cousin had gone to sleep and finished sketching a few notes in one of the copies of a bestiary he'd been working on before talking with his aunt Anastasia about this because he honestly didn't know how to go about explaining the mystical world to a kid. He himself took a little bit of time to understand when his own mom explained his heritage and what being a Legacy of Hecate meant back like 10 years ago.

His aunt predictably didn't react positively and her head jerked towards him sharply from where she was sitting in the recliner.

"Did he say it was from then or did he see one recently?" She asked directly, her eyes boring into his in a way that uncannily matched his mother's in intensity. "Are you sure he said it was a few months ago?!"

That wendigo in particular had been one that he and his aunt had killed together. Honestly, either one of them could have taken it on, but his mom's younger sister had always insisted that he continue to train under and be supervised by a demigod like her that had received 'actual' training from the illustrious Camp Halfblood.

But it wasn't like he couldn't have killed the damn thing himself, for Thor's sake! He was the one that thought to buy gasoline and set up an incendiary trap instead of a head-on assault with fire magic and impulsivity.

"Yes, he said it was months ago, but he didn't understand what it was and finally told me because it was bothering him." He replied, ignoring his internal monologue as his left hand fidgeted with his necklace absent-mindedly as he was thinking of what he was going to do tonight.

"I… I'm just confused why he didn't say anything for that long." She shook her head in confusion, her attention averting from him. "That was months ago. If he is actually seeing these things now…" The redhead trailed off and stared at the floor.

Asmund neglected to share the information about Whitmire at that moment.

"Do you think he should be told about everything?" Asmund asked, hoping she'd actually say yes. He'd wanted to train Alex ever since he discovered his, to put it bluntly, hazardous heritage. The kid was more of a little brother to him because he knew him ever since he was a baby and when he, Asmund, was taken in after his mother was murdered by… her. And because of that, he loved his aunt and cousin fiercely.

"Not about his father." Anastasia said immediately, her gaze jumping back to his. "It will make his aura even more visible. He can be told about me and how I am a demigod and you are a Legacy. But nothing about his father. I don't want her to possibly find us."

Asmund scowled at that. Alex needed to prepare for what his future entailed and that required knowing why he would be hunted.

But Anastasia was Alex's mom, and she was his surrogate mother. He would never go behind her back on telling Alex anything, even if he wanted to. So, he let it go.

"Okay, so I can tell him soon and teach him some stuff?" He asked, the last part in an admittedly hopeful tone.

Anastasia sighed and smiled in a faux sense of resignation. "Yes, Ozzy, you can train my son how to swing a sword properly."

"Great!" He grinned, sitting up from where he had been lounging on the couch and hugged his aunt, startling her in the process. "Love ya, Auntastasia!"

His much shooter aunt struggled to break free from his bear hug, but she did manage after a few seconds when he'd had his fun messing with her.

"Oh shoo." She pushed him away, laughing at his antics. "I curse the day your mom told you to call me that."

Asmund just laughed in return and walked towards the hallway. "I'm going to bed now though. I've got a training regimen to plan and I've got other training tomorrow."

He barely caught the "Oh, that's right." from her as she said that more to herself and he said a quick "Good night." before he went into his own room on the opposite side of the hallway where Alex's room was.

With that talk out of the way, Asmund's amused state he had just been in melted away and retracted, being replaced by a cold anger and focus at what Alex had said about the assistant principal of the school, Whitmire.

He'd heard Anastasia make reference to monsters that could disguise themselves well as humans liking to embed themselves into the school system or medical field to have as much easy prey as they wanted, but he actually hadn't really felt it personally. It was just the sad state of reality that the things he enjoyed fighting and killing were animals without a soul like him.

Now though? This was his family that had encountered one. And he didn't tell his aunt because she would try to immediately go to Whitmire's house and take a swing at his neck with a Celestial bronze blade to see if it killed him. And if not, she'd just manipulate the Mist to make the poor bastard think it was a dream.

But he, Asmund Sørensen, had a better idea to get something productive out of Whitmire being a monster, if he indeed was.

Though it would require a bit of help.

Asmund walked over to his nightstand, grabbed one of the many knives he had, both hidden and not, and poked the corner of his hand to draw just a single drop of blood without so much as wincing. He then held the minor wound over his Mjolnir necklace that was now resting in the palm of his right hand, and smeared the blood on the silver hammer.

" Ek em Ásmundr Haraldsson." Asmund muttered under his breath. The lines etched across the hammer began to glow a faint shade of blue. "Óðinn mun mér veita allvald. Emk sonr mikilla Dana." 1

At the end of his recital of that particular proclamation, the blue glow brightened and the hammer grew to be borderline hot to the touch. But he kept it resting in his palm.

"I need assistance." Asmund spoke to the glowing piece of silver, knowing the message would be heard loud and clear. "It's personal."

With that extremely brief message, he cut the connection and the necklace reverted back to its usual state as the temperature and colour faded.

Now all he had to do was wait, and hopefully correct a possible problem before training Alex like he had always wanted.

Valhalla's call could be ignored for a little longer.

END CHAPTER

I tried to get this out a little earlier, but I'd gotten sick once again. (Thanks, winter) It's noticeably longer than chapter 1 and there's a great deal of foreshadowing in it and hints towards other goodies that await.

(I know a few people will comment about Alexander's eye colour and how it doesn't match how it was described in the first chapter. This is where I gaslight you and tell you that you are incorrect and that I didn't make an error in remembering the typical eye color of a specific line of demigods)

The part marked with the 1 symbol where Asmund speaks in another language is in Old Norse. The translation is roughly as follows: "I am Asmund, Harald's son/son of Harald. Odin will grant me absolute power. I am a son of the mighty Danes."

With that said, I hope everyone has a wonderful Sunday. Raging.