MAIN TITLE: The Keeper of Fate

GENRE: Mainly Romance, Adventure, and Humour (YMMV on whether or not my writing is actually funny at all), but also Friendship, Family, Angst, etc.

SETTING: Takes place 'behind the scenes' of the PJO books, meaning little interaction with Percy and absolutely no OCs stealing his glory. Canon for now, will eventually be AU.

CHARACTERS: OFC named Dess (main protagonist and narrator of the entire story), Luke, and Apollo. Other fairly major characters include an OMC named Kyle, a certain canon Hunter, Clarisse, several children of Hephaestus, and another OFC named Cheryl.

PAIRINGS: Mainly Luke/OFC (Dess). Background pairings include canon pairings and pairings involving minor demigods and/or OCs. There are NO major love triangles.

RATING: T for minor coarse language (the F word is only used once in the entire story, but other swear words are used probably more often than they should be), mild violence (nothing that much more graphic than the actual series), and minor suggestive adult themes (there will be two scenes that do not progress beyond kissing and light groping, neither of which will be described in detail; everything else is implied and happens off-screen).

WARNINGS: Rated T for reasons stated above. Also, contains mentions of bulimia and child abuse (no actual violence, but I'd still consider it physical abuse and it's definitely psychological abuse) in later chapters. SPOILERS for the PJO series. NO major spoilers from the HoO series (Drew and Clovis from The Lost Hero appear though). Very infrequent updates. Contains OCs.

NOTES: Thanks to everyone for reading this story, and to those who favourite it and/or put it on alert.

Thanks to Son of none, GreyBlur, PurpleandBlackPandas and Callie C for reviewing this chapter!

To JessMusicNote and GoddessofHeroes (not that they're likely to ever see this): I realized a while ago that you both have added this story to your communities, and I really wanted to thank you for that. It means a lot to me that you consider my story good enough to be in your communities.

This is the only time the author's note will be this long.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own the PJO series. Rick Riordan does.

Chapter One: I Am Summoned to the House of Doom

It's amazing, really, how the little things can sometimes get to me. Like when I'm lying in my bed, snoring away, and some absolute idiot decides it's a good idea to poke me in the stomach with his finger. Not that I actually, you know, snore or anything. I'm just being figurative. Anyways, anyone who knows me at all and has even a shred of self-preservation knows that it's a terrible idea to disturb me when I'm in Hypnos' realm.

My right hand already balled up into a fist, I open my eyes to find a preteen boy standing over me, his curly brown hair almost obscuring the tiny horns that protrude out of his head. Now I know you're probably thinking, 'Horns? That's impossible! Humans don't have horns coming out of their heads!' and blah, blah, blah. You're right, of course. Most humans only have hair growing out of their heads. Which brings me to my next point–Grover's not human. He's a satyr: half boy (I refuse to refer to him as a man in any way, shape, or form), half goat. So the fact that he has shaggy hindquarters and cloven hooves? Yeah, that's completely normal and doesn't bother me at all.

What does bother me is that he's interrupting my much needed beauty sleep.

"Underwood," I say through clenched teeth, "you have ten seconds to vacate this cabin of your own free will before I make you."

"But Chiron told me to bring you to the Big House!" Grover protests, at the same time backing away from my bed.

"I don't care if Zeus himself gave the order. I'm really–damn–tired and I'm going back to sleep. And if you insist on pestering me you will find yourself suddenly lacking several necessary limbs."

Grover opens his mouth again, probably to squeak out something along the lines of, 'But Chiron told me to!' and I'm two seconds away from throwing my extremely heavy Ancient Greek to English dictionary at him when someone else intervenes.

"Put a cork in it, you two. The rest of us are trying to sleep," Gareth Vires' deep voice rang out, his 'I'm-a-camp-counsellor-and-am-therefore-superior-to-you-all-obey-me-minions' tone very much present in his every word. Nah, I'm just kidding, he doesn't really sound like that. He's a decent guy; he just takes himself too seriously sometimes, that's all.

"I'm trying to sleep," I complain, "but Underwood won't let me!"

There are grumbles throughout the cabin. Evidently our argument has disturbed the rest of my loving half-siblings, who don't seem to mind if I've been rudely awakened as long as they get to rest. They have no right to be annoyed; it's their fault that I was up so late last night and thus need a few extra Z's to function properly today. I don't know why they insisted we have that initiation ceremony thing yesterday even though I've already been here for a month. I mean, honestly, they forced me to take part in their stupid hamburger eating contest and then they sulked and whined until three in the morning because I won. I'm not really angry with them, though. I'm not quite that petty, and to be truthful, despite the massive stomach ache I got while shoving my sixth burger into my mouth, yesterday was a blast.

"Blaa-ha-ha," which is apparently the sound Grover makes when he's ticked. "I'm sorry I woke you up so early, but Chiron said this is really, really important."

All right, I'm still pissed at him, but there's something in his voice that tells me this is urgent. I hesitate. To go back to sleep and ignore Grover or not to back to sleep and ignore Grover? And no, I don't normally read Shakespeare; it's just that I made an exception for Hamlet, that's all. It was a real pain to decipher, though. The constant shifting of letters and the odd dialect from the Elizabethan era made me want pour bleach on my dyslexic eyes.

Beckendorf's not-as-deep-as-Gareth's-no-matter-how-hard-he-tries (and he does try) voice brings me back to reality. "For the love of Hephaestus, Dess, just go see Chiron. I promise we'll let you get some shuteye during archery class."

I glare at my third favourite half-brother suspiciously. "You promise you'll let me skip target practice?"

"Considering the fact that I usually end up being the target, yes, I would be more than happy to let you doze through it."

Finally I concede defeat. I stumble out of my bed, feeling very grateful that I was so exhausted from eating so much food last night that I passed out before I got the chance to change out of my regular clothes and put on my pyjamas, which consist of sweat pants and a moderately revealing tank top, and make my way over to the satyr who is now standing by the door. As I reach him, Grover gives me an aggravated look that tells me I've made this much more difficult than it needs to be. That's nothing new, though, so I'm sure he'll forgive me soon.

Right before I close the cabin door behind me, I glance back and see my four black-haired half-brothers raising imaginary glasses in a mock toast. "To sleep!" they chorus as one. Beckendorf and the others grin at me. I give them all the finger and ignore their laughter, which seems to follow me all the way to the Big House.

Now by this point I've mentioned Greek gods and mythological creatures with goat legs, and I'm sure that those of you who picked up on the fact that I'm at some sort of camp probably think it's a camp for the mentally challenged. And while I'm more than willing to admit that a select few at Camp Half-Blood aren't exactly right in the head, I also feel obligated to inform you that the majority of the campers here are mentally sound.

I'm still not sure which category the camp director, Mr. D, falls into. He wears a tiger-pattern Hawaiian shirt, looks and sounds like a whiny, fat cherub and has little to no restraint when it comes to women and alcohol. You've probably already guessed this, but in case you haven't, the man I'm referring to is Dionysus, the god of wine.

You might have noticed that my description of one of the many sons of Zeus isn't at all complimentary, and that's because I'm not even remotely fond of him. Mr. D's not exactly good with kids. The only reason he's stuck at this camp is because he went crazy for this off-limits wood nymph–like I said, no restraint. But anyways, Zeus found out and blew his top. So now Mr. D can't drink alcohol and has to spend the next century or so babysitting bratty, snooty little half-mortals.

Yes, I did just say half-mortals. Gods are real, satyrs are real, and demigods–half human, half god–are real. I know this because my siblings and I–along with the rest of the campers–are demigods.

Maybe you think that's cool. Maybe you think it would be fun, to live in a world where myths and legends are real. And sometimes it is. But trust me, it really sucks when you have monsters after you who would like nothing more than to rip out your intestines. And the only place we're safe from these demons is right here, at Camp Half-Blood.

"…Not entirely sure why, but maybe you have some idea–Dess, are you listening to me?" Grover's words pull me out of my musings. I look around and realize that no one else is outside yet, probably because it's insanely early.

"Nope," I reply cheerfully. "I was daydreaming about this wonderful place where sixteen year old girls can sleep all they want without being rudely awakened by scrawny little goat boys."

The brown-haired satyr throws me an exasperated glance. "I said I was sorry. Would you please just let it go?"

I consider this for a moment.

"Alright," I decide. "You're forgiven. You don't have to beg."

"I didn't beg," he mutters under his breath, and in a louder voice says, "Anyways, seeing as you weren't paying attention to what I was saying before, I'll say it again: I don't know why Chiron wants to talk to you."

"I did realize that, oddly enough. It comes as no surprise to me that you're entirely clueless," I inform him and, ignoring his glare, press on. "I'll find out what the old horse man wants when I get there." Which should be soon, provided that Grover stops sputtering indignantly over my disrespectful nickname for the trainer of Hercules and picks up the pace a little.

We're still passing through the area with the twelve cabins, one per Olympian god, arranged in a U. Eight of these cabins house that Olympian's demigod offspring. The other four are empty, although Zeus' cabin shouldn't be.

Stupid gods and their constant, 'I'm pissed at your father because he broke an oath that he made like seventy years ago, so I'm going to send my minions to torment you so that your father will have no choice but to turn you into a pine tree after you get yourself killed while trying to protect your friends.'

Well, all right, the gods don't do this constantly; it really only happened once. I've never even met Thalia, but I've heard her story and I've seen her pine tree and I've watched Annabeth–daughter of Athena–bawl her eyes out because she misses the girl who's like her older sister so badly. And whenever I hear about how the gods take their anger out on innocent people–mortals or demigods or whoever–, it makes me so mad that I see red.

Like right now, for instance. Wait, never mind, that's just the Ares cabin's ugly red paint job. I actually get along pretty well with the some of the spawn of Ares, but there really is no denying that the outside of cabin five is hideous, especially since Sherman and Mark put that creepy stuffed boar head over the doorway.

The Hephaestus cabin, on the other hand, is so spectacular that simply looking at it will blow your mind. And I'm not just saying that because Hephaestus is my father so his cabin is the one I live in when I'm at camp–which is all the time now.

But seriously, cabin nine is awesome. I know that most of the campers think it looks like a lame RV, but that's obviously because they have no appreciation for amazing art. The smokestacks that some of the others scoff at actually have depictions of interesting events carved into the sides. For instance, there's a more recent (and by recent I mean about twenty years old) picture that shows three sons of Hephaestus (triplets, in fact) forging the bronze dragon. It's such a shame it went missing. Maybe it could have helped Thalia and the others fight off all those monsters…

Anyways, back to a less depressing topic, the building that houses the children of Hephaestus also has these wicked metal-slated windows and a door that looks like the entrance to a bank vault and–oh, hey, how come I can't see my cabin anymore?

I glance down at my arm and am surprised to see a hand wrapped around my elbow. I realize that Grover has been dragging me toward the Big House the whole time I've been pondering the awesomeness that is the Hephaestus cabin.

"Dude, didn't anyone ever teach you manners?" I ask him, pulling my arm free.

"I guess we both missed that lesson," Grover shoots back, and I can't help but grin at him.

We take the most direct route, going straight across the creek–not Zephyros Creek, the other one that no one knows the name of–that separates the cabin area from the huge blue farmhouse. Grover, who is clearly annoyed with me for making his day-to-day life a living hell (his words, not mine), tries to push me into the water and instead falls in himself.

Honestly, it's stunts like that that make me forget he's actually in his twenties.

Finally we arrive at the door to the Big House. How long did that take us? Ten, twenty minutes? Definitely longer than necessary. It's all Grover's fault, of course. I had nothing to do with it. No, really.

Anyways, Grover decides he's had enough of me and my irksome attitude. He opens the door with one hand and pushes me through with the other. "See ya!" he says hastily, and then takes off as quickly as his little goat legs will let him. I watch him trot away, probably going to the forest to see that tree nymph, Juniper, that he is so obviously crushing on.

I turn around to face Chiron and the person standing beside him, who is thankfully not Dionysus. This fact relieves me so much that it takes me a full thirty seconds to identify the gorgeous teen with blond hair, blue eyes and a cocky smirk who is most definitely the reason I've been called here.

Author's Note: Reviews, especially those containing constructive criticism, are appreciated. I don't have a problem with flames, though I would prefer if, instead of simply telling me this entire story sucks, you would tell me why it sucks and what I can do to improve it.

Edit as of 01/12/12: I've shortened all the Author's Notes, except for this chapter's, which I made longer so that you guys have a better idea of whether or not you actually want to spend time reading this story. I didn't change any of the actual story-except for the flashback in chapter 18, because I swear to God before it was like a commercial for Aussie shampoo-but I will eventually finish going through everything and correcting spelling and grammar and getting rid of unnecessary parts (of which there are a lot).