Disclaimer:

I do not own Percy Jackson and Keeper of the lost cities.

Percy's Pov:

Percy stood in a vast hallway. He wasn't expecting a glittering room with posh decorations. Perhaps he was somewhere on mount Olympus. But then, three people came walking in the room. Two of them looked around eleven or twelve years in age.

The girl was dressed in brown and yellow top and jeans. Her blond hairs were tied in a ponytail and she looked super nervous- like she was just about to get tested. The boy was dressed in a wonder woman T-shirt with pants that mismatched terribly. But still he looked good. 

The other man was dressed in a jerkin and... was that cape? He was dressed in cape and jerkin embroided with gems. And he looked similar to the boy i.e. he looked super handsome.

They entered another room where three people were sitting. All three of them worn similar silver dresses and pins that looked like golden keys. They too wore capes. The man and the boy bowed and the girl looked around bewildered. 

The man said, "Sophie meet Councillor Kenric, Oralie and Bronte."

Kenric was a redhead, with a kindly twinkle in his eyes. Oralie had blonde hairs and ringlets that had escaped her bun. Kenric was staring at Oralie. Bronte had a hard edge to his expression, a grim face, that said, if you are going to be tested, you shall not pass. Oh boy, was percy familiar with that expression. 

"Ah! Hello Alden. Hello Sophie." Kenric said.

The girl, Sophie, the boy and Alden sat down at the table. She was staring at Bronte with slight confusion on her face. She suddenly exclaimed, "You have pointy ears."

Percy remembered the time he had met Dionysus and had a hard time believing that he was a god. 

"Well, yes. It is a sign of an ancient." Kenric said, after he had finished laughing.

"An ancient?"

"Elves have indefinite lifespan. Councilor Bronte has lived about more than four thousand years and so his ears turn pointy over time."

Percy wondered if that meant that the elves were immortal.

"So... you mean that the elves are immortal?" 

"No. Not exactly. Elves can die, if they are harmed in any ways. But elves don't die of old age. Once they reach adulthood, they remain the same." 

'So like hunters of Artemis.' Percy thought. 

"So... you don't have, wrinkles?" Alden laughed, and Percy saw the smile crinkles around his eyes form.

"No, we have a drink called..."

"Do we have to start the test, or are you going to keep talking?" Bronte snapped. He definitely wasn't an easy guy to pass the test with.

"Oh. Yeah!" Alden said, "Fitz says she is a telepath. She could even infiltrate Fitz' mind. That's quite a feat."

"Your golden boy is overrated. It's no big thing to read a kids' mind. Read my mind." Bronte snapped.

"But you are an..." Alden started.

"Is this a test or not?" Bronte wasn't going to make this easy for Sophie, Percy thought.

Sophie looked towards Fitz, and he said, "He gave you his permission."

Maybe it was not allowed to read minds of people without permission. That was good. Percy wasn't intent to have his mind read.

Sophie screwed her eyes. after a while she announced, "Bronte is thinking that he is the only person at this table with any common sense. and he is tired of seeing Kenric stare at Oralie."

Kenric and Oralie blushed but they all looked amazed that she could read her mind.

"That was amazing Sophie, it was like..." Fitz began but he was cut off by Bronte.

"Is it true that you held a pole ten times your weight in the forbidden cities?"

"The which city? It was not forbidden."

But no one listened to her. Alden looked impressed and nodded to Bronte. 

"Then show me." Bronte said. 

"I didn't know how I did it." Sophie stammered.

"It's just a mind over matter thing. Try." Alden said.

Sophie looked at her bowl with concentration. Suddenly it floated over the table. 

"Just a bowl?" Bronte asked, clearly unimpressed.

Alden said, "Sophie try more bowls. Your body has limits, your mind doesn't." Sophie scrunched her eyebrows and suddenly all the bowls on the table flew. The others looked impressed but Bronte said, "That's it? I thought she was supposed to carry ten times her weight."

"Come on, Bronte, the girl's..." Kenric started.

This time Sophie didn't even need encouragement from Alden. Her face flushed from determination. She concentrated and the two chairs beside Bronte and the one he was sitting on floated. Sophie clung her stomach and all the things fell, including Bronte.

Good. 

Percy was liking him less and less. Percy thought that Bronte was the Dionysus of the elf-ish world. There was a stunned silence for a moment and then everyone aside from Sophie burst into laughter.

Percy thought that dropping your examiner on his butt wasn't a good sign to pass. Bronte growled, "Pick me up." Kenric helped him up. 

"That's it. I vote against. She is not going to foxfire. You can't convince me otherwise." Bronte said angrily.

Why and how would someone go in a fungus, Percy didn't know.

"Fine. I vote in favor. What she did was amazing. You can't convince me otherwise." Kenric said.

Apparently, only two votes were required for Sophie. All eyes turned to Oralie. She was sitting silently all through the time. She held out her hand to Sophie. 

Alden explained, "Oralie is an Empath. She can feel your emotions by touch."Sophie muttered an oh! and gave her hand to Oralie. She moved her fingers over her hand and said, "Anticipation. Understandable. Hmm. Quite a lot of determination. Good. She has got a lot of bravery. I vote in favor." She said.

Alden looked relatively relieved. Food magically appeared on the table and they started eating. The food was weird, black slimy blobs, bright blue stew ( Percy liked that) , etc.

Sophie took a bite from slimy thing. And she said, "Wow, this tastes like chicken."

Fitz gagged, "You eat animals?"

"I take it, all elves are vegetarians."

Alden nodded. Percy thought that their lives must suck; having never ate cheese burgers, but then there must be a cheeseburger flavored fruit, if there is a chicken flavored fruit.

After that, Sophie tucked her food at surprising speed.

Frank's POV: 

Frank was in a tent. It was torn and battered. Its colors were faded. In short, it had definitely seen better days. Inside, he saw the weirdest scene ever. Three people, who looked like coaches, stood in the tent. The whole tent was otherwise filled with kids, boys or girls or both. It was hard to tell with the uniform. 

All of them had same black clothes- their head was covered with hoods and face was covered with masks. Only their eyes were visible, and that too were some or the other shade of blue, as far as Frank could see. Only thing that was different was their sleeves. They all had handprints of different colors on their sleeves according to their respective coaches. And they all had these weird badges on their clothes. They showed different things, like fire or darkness, but Frank couldn't decipher most.

Only one kid was an exception. They had four badges. They were all floating, or trying to float. The kid that Frank had seen earlier, with four badges, and four other kids in the other section, were not being able to float. 

The kid with four badges, for instance, was flailing their arms in flying motion and falling on their tummy. They looked like they were swimming in air. For a moment her hood fell, and Frank saw her blonde hair.

She quickly pulled up her and she floated up again and tried swimming motion, but fell again. Frank could relate. He had experienced this when he first transformed into an eagle. 

Then she froze. She stood still and then bolted towards the cliff end and jumped. Another kid who saw her, followed. Suicidal. 

The kid's batch was similar to one of the batch the girl had. Frank also moved with them. Midway through the fall, the girl stopped falling and started floating perfectly towards the woods downwards. 

Weird. 

Was she faking not being able to float? Perhaps not. Heading to death crash would definitely give the adrenalin for learning.

Frank knew that firsthand. The kid who had followed caught up and said, "Where are you going?" From his voice, it seemed he was a boy.

The girl lost her concentration and stumbled.

"Sorry, didn't mean to scare you. When I saw you jump, I jumped. Biana tried to come too, but our coach grabbed her. What's wrong?" He said all at once.

"Someone needs help. I can hear them calling me, but I don't know where they are. I am trying to track them now."

Funny, Frank couldn't hear anything. Perhaps, it was special elf power. The boy took her hand. Frank wasn't a love expert but he suspected that it wasn't because he needed support in floating. He asked, "How can I help?"

"Can you boost my concentration? It might clear my mind."

The boy immediately said 'done'. 

"He's that way." The girl pointed towards a part of the woods. 

Frank stared fascinatedly at the green grass. He floated towards it and started eating it. It tasted delicious. 

Wait, why was he eating grass? 

'I should probably stop.' He thought, continuing to munch.

Suddenly his mind cleared.

'Ugh, I transformed in my sleep again.' He thought. He dismissed the grassy taste in his mouth and focused on the boy and the girl.

The two kids were sitting on the floor in the forest. In the boys hands was a creature. It was about a baby's size. It was thin and had green skin. He looked sick and his eyes looked blankly towards nowhere. 

The girl said, "Well... I guess, we'll do the same thing again." Then they both rose and flew to the cliff. Once they reached the top, the girl said, "We need the physician."

The purple coach backed up and said, "You are exposing us all." The girl looked impatient, rightly so. "The plague only affects the plants and gnomes." But the other kids ran away panicked from them, nevertheless. 

"Please, this gnome needs help. It's not going to hurt anyone." She pleaded.

Then a man came, who must be the physician. "Stay right there." He helped put the gnome down on the floor and did his doctor-ly things.

"I am not familiar with gnomish medicine. Even if I had a full apothecary, I wouldn't know where to start." He said. Frank got the feeling that these people were not the best of their lot.

The girl turned to the boy, "Then we need to get him to Lumenaria quickly. Lumenaria? Frank had never heard of that, and he read every travel guides he could get his hand on.

"The red coach said, "That's impossible. All of us are banished from the lost cities."

"Who cares?"

"Do you seriously think the council would arrest us for delivering a dead gnome?" The boy and girl said together. 

"Even if the council would spare you, you're forgetting that none of us have crystals." Frank wondered why they would need crystals to go to someplace. Was it their currency?

But the they were already lifting the gnome and going towards the edge of the cliff. Was lumenaria close enough to fly?

The purple coach answered him, "Lumenaria is on the other side of the world. You can't levitate there."

The girl looked impatient. "No, but we can teleport." And they jumped. The girl concentrated on the ground and with lighting and thunder the girl split open the earth and they fell into dark nothingness. Frank woke up but he had lots of questions. 

'Who were they?

Was she a daughter of Jupiter? 

Could Jason do that?'