Annabeth won, of course, claiming there was a simple algorithm that could be used in pretty much any card game.

She carefully packed away the cards, just as the door swung open and Mom and Paul walked in.

"Hey Mom," I said, standing up, "This is Magnus, Annabeth's cousin."

"Hi, Magnus," Mom said, smiling at him weakly, "where's Loki?"

"Loki's gone," Annabeth interrupted, "it seems that his kind of magic is incompatible with Percy's blood."

"I know," Mom said, "Percy is a fighter and would do well with my ex husband's kind of magic."

"You could've told us that earlier," I sighed.

Mom smiled. "You have to figure out your life by yourself. I can't always tell you what to do."

"Well, you could've told us we were wasting our time," I said in exasperation.

Mom laughed. "It was good for both you and Loki, to have time together."

"Anyway," Magnus interrupted, "Percy wants to go out to get tortured. Can he go?"

Annabeth rolled her eyes. "Honestly, you guys are going to drive me insane," she said.

"I thought we already did?" I said, and Annabeth scoffed.

"What Magnus meant to say," Annabeth continued, "is that in order for Percy to learn rune magic, he has to go through a suffering."

"You haven't told them?" Mom asked, with a stern expression on her face.

I shook my head as Chiron looked at me, his face set in pure terror.

"You killed them, Percy."

"Percy?"

I blinked out of my trance to Annabeth desperately shaking my shoulders.

She sighed in relief.

"Thank the gods," she said, "you just blanked out and you weren't responding."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"That's what I'm worried about," Mom whispered, "if he gets a vision in the middle of an attack or something..."

Hearthstone signed something and Mom nodded.

"Yes, he ran into some draugar," she replied, "Loki... Loki said he may know of a possible cure, but..."

"Can you all stop looking at me like I'm a sick kitten about to die," I interrupted, "I don't need your pitiful stares."

Mom took a deep breath and continued.

"You see, for Percy to get this cure, he has to have at least something that proved his Nordic heritage, and that something would be rune magic."

"Ah," Annabeth mused, thoughtfully, "so you're scared the rune magic would be too much as he would have to got through two more sufferings, plus the curse he already has, but you don't want him to just stay here and suffer."

Mom nodded, and Paul squeezed her shoulder and spoke up," I'm sure Percy can handle it with the help of these wonderful supportive friends he has."

"I feel like we're more like acquaintances, but yeah, sure we can protect Percy when we're not trying to get killed ourselves which is... Oh wait, never," Magnus said dryly, earning a poke from Annabeth.

Annabeth looked up at my mom, her gray eyes promising promises that could never be said out loud.

Mom gave us a single nod.

"You can go," she said, "but please don't do anything unnecessarily dangerous."

"Okay then," Magnus said, "looks like we got a well to drink from!"

"Excuse me?" a figure asked, bursting in through the door, "aren't you forgetting someone?"

Our impromptu visitor's face was split in a wide, mischievous grin that somehow seemed familiar. I realised with a start that I had seen this face before. On Loki.

"Is the 'Let's all stare at Alex' fest over yet?" he asked, his different colored eyes glinting with humor.

Magnus sighed.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

"I may have gotten a gift in the form of a dream from my darling mother," Alex said, as if it didn't matter at all, which we all knew it did.

Hearthstone signed something, and Alex nodded.

"I'm Alex," he said spinning around comedically and waving, "and my current pronouns are she and her, and will remain she and her unless I say otherwise."

"Ah," I said, "got it."

Alex looked like the kind of person you did not want to mess with.

"So–" Magnus interrupted, dragging out the 'o', "are we going to get going or what?"

"How are we going to get there?" Annabeth asked.

Alex's eyes glinted.

"Wanna show 'em your skills, Hearth?" she asked, facing him so he could read her lips easily.

Hearth gave a slight nod and took out a smooth, black rune from his bag, lifting it up so I could see the letter etched on it.

And somehow, like with Greek and Latin, I felt an itch at the back of my mind. Raidho.

Hearthstone's face grew serious, and cupping the rune in his hands, he muttered its name to it and threw it into the air. It exploded in a flash of golden light, its symbol drawn in the air for all to see.

The ground seemed to shake and fold up, smothering us in a never ending void of darkness and hopefully taking us to our destination.