Mark hated war meetings.

Yes, he was a son of Ares. Yes, that basically meant that war was his specialty. But he liked fighting. That was kind of his thing. Sitting around and talking about war? Not so much. Leave the planning to the nerds in the Athena cabin and just let him and his brothers and sisters hit something already.

When Clarisse had left Camp Half-Blood to join the Marines a few years ago, Mark had been pretty excited to be named to her spot as head counselor. That pretty much meant he was the head honcho of cabin five. Who wouldn't want that? Nobody ever mentioned the war meetings though.

This isn't even a proper war meeting, he thought as he used his pocket knife to clean out from under his nails. Chiron was droning on (something about strawberry sales being down) and even Malcolm, the head counselor from Athena and usually centaur's pet, looked bored.

He wasn't the only one. Mark glanced around the table and saw that, with the exception of Pollux from cabin twelve (strawberries were sort of his domain), not a single counselor was paying attention to what the old centaur had to say. Miranda from Demeter was absently rubbing a finger over the ping-pong table's rough edge and pointedly ignoring Mark, who never really stopped trying to get the pretty brunette's attention. On her left, Clovis snored peacefully while Travis Stoll and Butch Walker painted his face with Cheeto dust. Kayla, from Apollo, was drumming out the beat from some pop song that Mark didn't recognize and apparently annoying Piper McLean to no end. Lou Ellen, from Hecate, was levitating two Pringles containers while Laura from Nike and Tammy from Hebe played an interesting game of keep-away that seemed to involve keeping both cans on their opponent's side of the table. From what Mark could see, Ruth from Nemesis was alternating between keeping score and glaring at Maya from Tyche who was occasionally helping both sides by nudging the cans with her hands.

The match was just getting fascinating when Chiron cleared his throat. Everyone at the table (except Mr. D) jumped and the Pringles cans fell to the table with a surprisingly loud CLANG. Mark almost fell out of his chair, but managed to regain his balance at the last second. Clovis was not so lucky.

Chiron sighed. "Malcolm, would you mind helping Clovis to his feet?"

Malcolm nodded mutely and hauled the dazed counselor from cabin fifteen back into his chair. Travis and Butch snickered at his smudged dusty warpaint, earning them a glare from Chiron.

"I had hoped that insisting on one counselor per cabin would limit these disruptions," the centaur said. Butch looked a little sheepish but Travis just grinned and wiggled his eyebrows. He used to share his post with his brother, Connor, but after several fires Chiron had instated the "one counselor per cabin" rule just to make war meetings go smoother. Unfortunately, he hadn't counted on Travis finding a new partner-in-crime in Butch.

"Now that we're all alert," Chiron continued, "a matter of some importance came to my attention this morning from New Rome."

"Is Annabeth okay?" Malcolm blurted. Piper leaned forward in her seat, her fists clenched on the table. Even Mark was more than a little curious. Annabeth, daughter of Athena, had left Camp Half-Blood a few years earlier to go to college in New Rome. Everyone missed her and her boyfriend, Percy, who'd been staples of the camp for almost as long as Mark had been there.

Chiron hesitated. "Annabeth is fine," he said, but Mark couldn't help but notice he looked worried. "So is Percy. This is about Rachel."

Mark resisted the urge to role his eyes. Of course it was about the Oracle. When was it not? Still, he couldn't help but be a little bit intrigued. The last time Rachel Elizabeth Dare had said anything remotely interesting, the camp had been attacked by angry Romans and a vengeful earth goddess (no connection). Considering how boring life had been since then, Mark figured they were about due for a good old fashioned threat.

Piper twirled the feather braided in her choppy brown hair. "Did she manage to translate the Sibylline books?" she asked.

"She and Ella have finally made some progress," Chiron replied. "They managed to recover one prophecy. Unfortunately, it's cryptic."

Mark snorted. "What a shock," he said. "Because gods forbid Apollo throw us a bone once in awhile."

The look Kayla leveled at him was pure venom. "Would you kindly shut up?" she snapped. "You know exactly why he can't."

An uncomfortable silence settled around the table. Around the time of the Giant War, Apollo's legendary nemesis the Great Python had resettled in the ruins of the Oracle of Delphi, effectively blocking the god's prophetic powers and leaving both the Greek and Roman camps floundering without their respective Oracles and augurs. The head of the Apollo cabin at the time, Will Solace, had set out on a quest with Nico di Angelo to kill the python and bring back their forewarnings. Neither had been seen since.

"So," Laura said after a moment, finally breaking the silence. "What did it say, Chiron?"

They all looked at Chiron expectantly. "It seems to be another Great Prophecy," he said. There was a collective groan, but he plowed forward like he just wanted to get it over with. "Something at least as powerful as Kronos or possibly even Gaea is gaining strength."

Mark grinned. "Now that's what I'm talking about," he said. This time, Piper and Miranda joined Kayla in glaring at him.

This is why he was still single.

"That doesn't answer my question," said Laura. "What does it say exactly?"

"Yeah," said Lou Ellen. "This doesn't seem like something you should be keeping from us."

Chiron sighed again (probably beating his former record for most sighs in a single meeting). "You're right, of course," he said. And then he recited the lines.

To Mark, it sounded like a whole lot of nothing. Then again, prophecies never really meant much to him. It was always Clarisse who insisted they were important. He always just hit whatever she told him too. Maybe not the most effective strategy for a leader, but it had worked for him so far.

Malcolm, on the other hand, had copied the entire thing into the notebook he always brought to meetings like the nerd he was. Kayla looked troubled.

"That sounds pretty sinister," she said. "How does Rachel know it's coming to pass?"

She sounded almost hopeful, even though everyone already knew what Chiron was going to say.

"She has a feeling," the centaur said. "And we can trust her feelings."

Kayla groaned and buried her face in her hands. "Why couldn't my dad just be a bum or something?" she muttered to no one in particular.

"Well, if Rachel's so sure," said Malcolm, "We might still have a little time. Grover hasn't reported any unusual activity since the end of the last war and it took a few months for the last Great Prophecy to start, right?"

Chiron blinked. "What are you suggesting, Malcolm?"

"That we do research. Annabeth sort of guessed that we were going to have to deal with the giants after we beat Kronos since that's what happened last time. If we'd followed up on that, we might have been able to get ahead of things and keep Gaea from rising in the first place."

"But there's nothing in Greek mythology about what happens after the giants," Miranda pointed out. "So we don't have anything to go on."

"That's not entirely true," Malcolm argued. He circled something on his notepad and held it up for everyone to see. "It says 'to seek revenge on sea and wit.' I'll bet you a million drachma that line's about Percy and Annabeth. Clearly they upset whatever we're up against enough for them to want to punish them, personally. That gives us a place to start."

"It doesn't exactly narrow things down, though," Laura pointed out. "Off the top of my head, I can name probably a dozen individual monsters that would have it out for them."

"Oh, way more than that," Ruth chimed in helpfully. "Try four or five dozen."

"The point is," said Laura with a dismissive wave of her hand, "even if we know this thing has a personal vendetta against the two of them, that does absolutely nothing to help us."

There was a gleam in Malcolm's eye that Mark didn't like, one that told him that he would be spending the next week and a half in Chiron's office sifting through every book of Greek mythology ever written.

"That's not entirely true," the son of Athena said. "Let me show you."

Since Chiron was a centaur and all, Mark figured Chiron's office would be pretty spacious, or at least have high enough ceilings that he could get his work done without being cramped in that magical wheelchair of his. Of course, he was wrong. The room itself was pretty small as it was. With fifteen counselors and a centaur crammed in there, it was borderline oppressive.

At least he was pressed up next to Miranda.

"As you all know," said Malcolm from somewhere near Chiron's desk, "everyone who completes a quest is required to fill out a field report when they get back to camp."

"I didn't know that," said Mark. Someone shushed him. It was probably Kayla. Apparently she found the sound of his voice annoying.

"Well, that's because you don't pay attention, Mark," said Malcolm without missing a beat. "Most field reports are pretty sloppy. Clarisse's, for instance, basically says 'got the Fleece; Percy, Annabeth, Grover, and the freaking cyclops helped.' Not very helpful, I'm afraid. However, Annabeth was always more thorough in her reports. Everyone please take one..."

Mark got elbowed at least four times before he found himself holding what looked like an essay entitled "The Quest to Find Daedalus" neatly handwritten on white-lined notebook paper. Even without her name on the top line, Mark could have guessed it was Annabeth's. No one else could have handwritten what looked like a novel on the search for one old man in a maze. From the looks of things, she didn't even cover the battle that happened afterwards. As far as Mark was concerned, that was the interesting part.

Since Annabeth had been on an exceptional number of quests over the years (some with Percy, some without him), there were enough reports for everyone to have their own. Each was at least as thick as the one Mark was holding.

"This should help narrow things down a little," Malcolm was saying. Mark wondered when he was going to get to the point. "If we all take the time to carefully read each of these reports, we should be able to come up with a list of powerful entities that have it in for our favorite couple. After that, we can cross reference the list with what we know from Greek mythology and compare it to the prophecy. I mean, it's not perfect, but it's a start."

There was a moment of silence broken only by the occasionally creak of Chiron's wheelchair as he rocked thoughtfully back and forth. "I like it," the centaur said. "We'll have another meeting next week to discuss our findings. Until then, I guess this one is adjourned."

Mark didn't wait to be told twice. He turned on his heel and began pushing his way towards the door, making sure to step on Kayla's toe as he did so. She let out an indignant squawk but didn't seem to realize it was him. Success!

His cabin was probably in the arena. That's where they usually were whenever they had free time. Glancing at the orange sun setting over Half-Blood Hill, Mark estimated they had about twenty minutes for dinner. Plenty of time to get down there and throw out a few pointers to his less experienced siblings before they ate.

"So what'd you get?" a voice from behind him suddenly asked. He whirled around, instinctively reaching for his sword, only to find himself face to face with Laura, the head of the Nike cabin and the oldest camper there.

"Your field report," she amended, seeing the look of confusion on his face. "Which do you have to read?"

"The Labyrinth," Mark replied. "Pretty boring stuff."

Laura snorted. "Oh, I don't know, I had to do some scouting down there before the battle," she said. "'Boring' isn't exactly the word I would use to describe it."

"Oh yeah? And what would you use?"

"'Eerie,' maybe. 'Unsettling.' Clarisse refused to go back down there, you know?"

Mark rolled his eyes. "Yeah, well, Clarisse was smitten with that Rodriguez guy," he said. "There's no way an underground tunnel freaked her out that much. She probably just didn't want to leave him alone."

"Whatever," said Laura. "Either way, your reading is probably a whole lot less depressing than mine." She held up her report, but Mark couldn't make out the title.

"What is it?" he asked.

"A full report of her and Percy's time in Tartarus," Laura replied. "You know, I thought I was done with homework when I dropped out of college. Guess I should have known better, huh?"

"Probably," Mark agreed. "Well, not that this hasn't been fun, but I have to grab my cabin before dinner."

"They in the arena?"

"Probably."

"I'll come with. I told my guys I'd meet them there after the meeting."

Of course she did, Mark thought. The Nike cabin was the only group that spent as much time in the arena as his cabin, and that drove him crazy. It wasn't that he didn't like the Nike cabin. In fact, he tried to get them on his Capture the Flag team any chance he got. And Laura could be pretty cool, even if she was five or six years older than him. The problem was, whenever cabins five and seventeen ended up sharing the arena, things got ugly.

Sure enough, when he and Laura got there, six campers in ripped orange t-shirts were engaged in what looked like all-out war. The field was pretty uneven, with four Ares campers to Nike's two, but Mark knew from experience that the two groups were more than evenly matched. His campers may have been the children of the war god, but Nike was the goddess of victory and her kids were nothing if not competitive.

"Do you want to break them up, or should I?" Laura asked wearily. Mark watched as one of the Nike guys clotheslined Sherman and Felicity with Sherman's own spear.

"I got this," he said, before drawing his own sword and charging into the fray. It took longer than it should have to separate them, and much to his embarrassment, Laura had to step in to get her guys under control. When the dust had settled, the two of them did a quick injury count. Determining that no one required immediate medical attention, they herded their respective siblings back to their cabins to get ready for dinner. Before they parted ways, though, Laura through a wink in Mark's general direction.

"Don't forget," she said. "It's Trivia Night. This should be fun."