Preface

This fic has been in gestation for some time now. After much delay and alteration of schedule, it is finally here. I'd temporarily abandoned it, and there are several reasons why I took it up again, one of which is, quite simply, my readers. Those of you who have read (and, in particular, reviewed) my writing help me remember one of the reasons for fanfiction, which is to tell a story. For this, I thank anyone who has ever, and will ever, read my work.

This is the first story of a five-book series, a series which is entitled "Piece of Darkness". This entire fic is fully written and edited, and I intend to update every week, most likely every Friday.

This fic takes place in the same universe as my first multi-chapter fic, Rise of the Forgotten. This series will be written in such a way that you won't have to read Rise of the Forgotten to understand the series, but you will have a deeper appreciation of the series if you read that fic, which is kind of like a prequel to Piece of Darkness.

Also, Piece of Darkness takes place in an alternate timeline where Heroes of Olympus never happened. The Roman camp does not exist, and the new characters introduced in HoO do not exist either. The war with Gaia did still happen, but it took place over the course of a year or so, and was not as (hopelessly) dramatic as HoO is shaping up to be. In this timeline, the war with Gaia happened the year after The Last Olympian, and then this story takes place about three years after that.

If you have any questions about the series, don't hesitate to mention them in a review or a PM. I will answer some, but I will not be giving away any spoilers.

Well done if you made it through that prohibitively long preface. Now, enjoy the fic, and please review!

Disclaimer: I don't own Percy Jackson. All my fanfic writings are non-profit. 'Tis all for fun.

Piece of Darkness I - A Knight or a Pawn

Chapter One

In the beginning the Universe was created.

This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

–Douglas Adams, 'The Restaurant at the End of the Universe'

He handed me the bronze-plated tape recorder, gazing at me steadily as I took it.

"This needs to be done," he said quietly. "If we don't survive this, if our return to the battle fails, we need to leave a record, so anyone who takes up the task knows the truth, instead of the history that they've made."

I sighed, turning the recording device over and over in my hand. I really didn't want to re-live all the experiences of the last couple of years, but it seemed like I had no choice. I knew more about the war than anyone, and if I died - which, by all modes of logic, clearly should have happened by now - what I knew would be lost.

The white light of the lamp at the centre of the chamber was reflected by the mirrors that lined the walls. It created an almost eerie effect - not a single crevice in the room had a shadow. We sat in a solid, light-filled box.

Even here, hundreds and hundreds of miles from the stronghold of our enemies, we couldn't be too careful. Things had gotten so bad since the fall, we could trust no-one - even ourselves. Every single demigod at the camp said, "They'll never get me," but after what had happened to some of our best half-bloods, it became impossible to be certain of anything.

That's why this chamber was our only truly safe harbour. No celestial being, no monster, and no half-blood could enter it undetected, and nothing could monitor us when we were in there.

I glared around the room angrily. How disordered and screwed-up had my life become that the only place I felt completely safe was inside something that looked like a low-budget fun-fair attraction? I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt relaxed, the last time everything had been orderly and calm. I didn't have a life, none of us did - we barely had an existence.

Perhaps reliving the events that had brought things to such a dark place would help me find some form of understanding, some kind of refuge from the chaos. Maybe it would make me see some solution, some brilliant scheme that would end this accursed war.

"All right," I said resignedly, taking a sip from my flask. "Where do I start?"

He grinned at me, his glasses catching the white light, making him look even crazier than he really was. "Where else?" he said. "The beginning, of course."

I nodded, and clicked the recorder on.

My name is Cyrus Wright. I am one of the leaders of a beleaguered resistance movement, a movement which is the last hope for the salvation of Western Civilisation.

That sounds hopelessly melodramatic, but it's the truth.

What follows is an account of the events that took place before and during the war which reduced us to hiding in huts and running from shadows. It is as accurate and clear as possible, barring minor details.

This is a long story: one of war, death, pain, and betrayal.

The ending to the story is still being written, but I fear that it is an ending which will be written in the blood of my friends. We have found a safe haven, but none of us know if we will wake up one morning to find ourselves being overrun by the enemy.

It all began upon the night before the last day of eighth grade.

I woke with a start.

Immediately, I felt the beginnings of a headache start to throb at the back of my skull. Groaning softly, I rubbed my eyes, before checking the time. It was barely six in the morning.

I burrowed back under the covers, hoping to coax myself back to sleep, but it was no use. My mind had started to race, thinking about tomorrow, thinking about the summer, and thinking about my inability to have a normal dream.

I lay there stubbornly for half an hour or more, refusing to accept the inevitable. It wasn't until my muscles started to get stiff from being in one position for too long that I gave in, and threw back the bedclothes. I half-fell, half-rolled out of bed and over to the chair by the window. I slumped onto it, and sat leaning to one side like the Tower of Pisa.

This was the third night in a row that I couldn't sleep. I wished I could pretend it was nerves because of exam results, or excitement for the onset of the holidays, but both were lies.

The truth was, I was dreading the summer. I was dreading the three long months of almost pure loneliness. Three months with next to no friends. It wasn't that I was a social outcast, or some kind of pariah. I got on well enough with people - it was just that I never seemed to get on well enough with anyone to actually make a friend. Maybe it was down to my compulsive way of always saying what I saw, even if it meant being hopelessly tactless.

My parents were great, sure, but who wants to spend the summer helping their father run the grocery store?

I sighed, and glared at the chessboard.

It had been a birthday present two years ago. It was a proper set - hand-carved wooden pieces, a folding wooden board, and a carry case - and it sat atop a small fold-up table in front of my chair. The two pieces of furniture were by my window, which looked out onto the street. I spent many hours here, studying the mechanics of chess, watching the people of New York go by outside. Often, I imagined that I was watching a vast game of chess unfold, with more pieces and moves than anyone could ever grasp.

I picked up the white king, inspecting it. Why couldn't life be as simple as chess? No complicated relationships to negotiate, no unexpected surprises or challenges, no mysterious rules and regulations. Only patterns, logic, and order.

My grip tightened on the piece as I scowled. That was a stupid question. I knew why life was disorderly and endlessly frustrating. The real question was, how the hell was I supposed to deal with it? How could anyone? I closed my eyes as a veritable army of emotions rolled up and laid siege to my mind.

Then I shook myself. No wonder I was practically friendless. Sitting around angsting all day wasn't going to get me anywhere. I had to at least try to think positive.

I knew I wouldn't be getting back to sleep any time soon, so I stood up and put on my bedside lamp. Then I took down a beefy book on the technicalities of chess from a shelf, and sat back down.

I couldn't make life orderly and pragmatic, but I sure could make a chessboard orderly for a couple of hours.

And if for those hours I was alone and nothing else mattered, I guess that meant life was orderly for a while, too.

The sunlight woke me up about two hours later. At some point during my reconstruction of a classic old chess maneuver, I'd fallen asleep.

I didn't waste any time in getting up and dressed. As my dad always said, it didn't do to mope, and the only way not to mope is to move.

When I'd finished dressing, I made my way over to the kitchen.

We lived over my dad's grocery shop. My parents owned the building - it wasn't a huge place, but there was room enough downstairs for the shop, and upstairs was big enough to live in. It was only me and my parents, so we had plenty of space.

The kitchen was empty and silent. I could hear the usual quiet activity downstairs, as my dad finished setting up for the day and the first customers started milling in and out.

I poured myself a cup of tea from the pot. Most people had coffee in the morning - I always had tea. Ever since I'd visited England the previous year, I'd been convinced that I was a British soul trapped in an American body.

My mom trudged into the kitchen. We exchanged brief, muttered good mornings, before falling silent again. She slumped into a chair and poured herself some coffee. We ate our breakfast in a familiar silence. Neither of us were morning people, and we both had our ways of dealing with the trauma of having to get out of bed.

Finally, as I finished my toast, my mom said, "How are you feeling? Looking forward to the end of school?"

I shrugged noncommittally. As you may've gathered from my earlier angsting, I felt pretty gloomy about it, but I have this thing where I won't come out and say how I feel right away. It usually takes a bit of pushing to get me to open up, particularly when it comes to something personal.

(I get that from my dad.)

"What does that shrug mean?" my mom asked playfully. "Happy? Sad? Severely depressed? Psychologically injured?"

I smiled slightly, and rolled my eyes. My mom, the writer. She never failed to find a way to use words to, if not cheer me up, steer me away from actual misery.

I looked at her carefully as she took a sip of coffee. She even looked like a writer. Brown hair, airy blue eyes that seemed to detect and examine almost everything. She didn't have an imposing figure, no big physical presence, but there was something about the way she held herself that made her stand out.

"Mixed emotions," I finally answered. "I'll be glad to be on holiday, obviously, but the summer is going to be a bit quiet."

She nodded sympathetically. "I know it's hard. But, you know, when I was your age, I wasn't exactly the centre of a thriving social circle, either."

"Really?"

"Yes. It's hard for someone to make friends when they can't stop seeing the true depth of the world around them."

I frowned. Did I mention that my mother had a penchant for the cryptic? She almost always found a way to say things in the most convoluted way possible. Sometimes it was funny, but sometimes it got on my nerves.

(Then again, people keep telling me that I'm pretty damn cryptic too, so perhaps it takes one to know one.)

Mom was looking at me owlishly through her glasses, waiting for me to either work out what she meant or ask what she meant. Not being in the mood for puzzles this early in the day, I said, "What do you mean?"

"Look at it this way," she said. "Imagine that dealing with other people is a kind of complex game."

"Yeah?" I said slowly.

"And that game has rules, pitfalls, and shortcuts," Mom went on. "Now imagine that how you play that game depends on how well you understand the mechanics of the game."

I nodded.

"Cyrus, someone like you sees how things really work a lot more clearly than most," she said.

"How do you know that?" I asked.

Mom smiled. "Because I'm the same."

I opened my mouth to reply, but I heard my dad coming down the hall.

"Louise?" he called, pushing open the kitchen door.

"Yes, Pip?" Mom said, getting up.

My dad's full name was Philip Wright, but my mom had a fascination with Charles Dickens, and so she called Dad "Pip," after Pip in "Great Expectations."

"Would you mind doing the last few baskets?" he said. "I'll have a cup of tea."

That was a very sophisticated and coded way of saying, "I'll have a chat with Cyrus and try to cheer him up if you give us a few minutes."

It never ceased to amaze me how parents, no matter how clever they are usually, always thought that their children couldn't understand them. It's as if, when they have kids, a switch gets flipped in their mind, and they assume that anyone younger than them gets everything wrong by default.

Mom closed the door behind her, and Dad sat down. I gathered myself, trying to look a little less miserable.

My dad wasn't as noticeable as my mother, despite being several inches taller. His hair was brown, like his eyes, and he usually had a slightly disgruntled expression, as though he was mildly disappointed with humanity in general. On the other hand, he had a great sense of calmness and immovability, like a weather-worn boulder, which was unlike anything I saw in most adults.

Dad poured himself a cup of tea. He didn't actually drink tea in the mornings, which made his code all the more transparent. It occurred to me that perhaps the reason for not saying things outright was not to conceal them from me, but to make sure I didn't feel too awkward.

I got ready for the opening small talk.

"The weather's pretty good," he said cheerily.

"Yeah," I murmured. "Best day in a while."

"Hopefully it'll be like this for most of the summer," he went on, demonstrating his wonderful talent for subtlety.

I rubbed my eyes, and yawned.

"I know it's hard for you," Dad said suddenly, changing tack rapidly and characteristically. "Being able to see things in a different way, seeing things that most people don't. I know it's caused you a lot of problems."

"That's for sure," I muttered darkly.

"Your mother has the same thing. I'm not going to patronise you by saying that it's like that for a reason or some such nonsense," he said. "Life isn't some sort of poetic story with fate and destiny determining how we live our lives. I'm not trying to be a curmudgeon, but the reality is that the world sucks."

Dad paused. I watched him carefully.

"The fact is, some people are born with the ability to run really well, or write well, or design well," he continued. "It doesn't mean that's what they're destined to do, and it doesn't determine who they are. Sure, it affects them, but it's just there.

"That's the way you should look at how you are. It's simply something you have. And as for your social life, you have to stop looking at it as something miserable that happens to you. Instead, look at it as a challenge."

He came to an abrupt stop, as he usually did. It was as if he hopped onto a speeding train of thought at a random point, and then suddenly leaped off it at another random point five miles down the track.

Still, I saw that what he was saying made sense. It was brutally pragmatic - my dad's views usually were - but it cut through the emotion and presented a brighter prospect.

Dad picked up his cup of tea, peered at it, then put it down again, and stood up. "That's my philosophical lesson for the day," he said, cheery again.

"Are you teaching economics 101 next?" I asked drily. "Or maybe the dynamics of politics?"

"Nah," Dad said, shaking his head. "I'll stick to teaching the vegetables how to stack into a pyramid properly."

With a quick smile, he left the kitchen. I sat back in my chair, feeling a little less angsty and a little wiser for the conversation.

I jumped as the kitchen door creaked open again and my dad stuck his head back in.

"And don't forget," he said. "For God's sake, you're only thirteen! Don't start getting so glum so soon, or you'll be worse than a ghost in a Russian graveyard by the time you're seventeen!"

I laughed. My dad also had a love for writing, though he wasn't hopelessly cryptic like my mom (thank God), but tended to be lightly humorous. My parents together were like some kind of Dickensian double act.

With a nod, he disappeared, and I set about getting ready for school.

A few minutes later, I finished up breakfast and got ready to leave. I said a hurried goodbye to my mom, who was already at her computer working on whatever bizarre but clever novel idea she had. Then I made my way down the back stairs, to the door into the store.

I opened the door, looked into the shop, and nearly collapsed from fright.