The summary doesn't say too much about this story, so I'll say it now: this fanfic takes place after the events of both the Percy Jackson and the Heroes of Olympus series. Mainly it centers around one of my all-time favourite characters, Nico di Angelo, and another new demigod, but Percy and Annabeth, and everyone else from the original series appear quite a lot. Remember to review!

I stared out through the trees, towards the edge of the forest where we'd decided to camp for the night. The flaps of one of our silver tents flew open, and a dark head poked out from the opening. It was Phoebe, one of our best healers.

"Thalia?" she asked sleepily, rubbing her eyes. "What are you doing up? It's got to be past two in the morning."

She barely even needed to look up at the sky to determine the time anymore. Like all us Hunters, knowledge of the stars had become instinctive after a while.

"I couldn't sleep."

She nodded knowingly and came out to stand beside me. "Bad dreams?"

Phoebe, as a daughter of Ares, understood my problem. Every demigod has dreams, most of the time really bad ones, and mine were some of the worst. I don't know why Zeus felt the need to plague his children with nightmares.

"Is everyone else asleep?" I asked her.

"Except for you and me, yeah," she told me. "It's been a long day."

Truer words had never been spoken. We'd spent the entire week hunting down a group of dracanae that had gone after a couple of unclaimed demigods in Virginia. We'd found the kids and sent for some satyrs to take them to Camp Half-Blood, but hunting the giant scaly jerks had taken a considerably longer time. We'd only managed to finish them off completely that afternoon.

"At least they're finally back where they belong," I said firmly. "In Tartarus."

"Maybe, but I'll be feeling the sting of their claws for weeks." She winced and rubbed her bandaged leg, where one of the dracanae had slashed her. "You should go rest that," I told her. "You look dead on your feet."

Phoebe looked at me in concern. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"I'll come back inside in a few minutes. Go on."

She nodded, then trudged back inside the tent. A few moments later, I heard a muffled whump as she flopped down onto her sleeping mat. Knowing Phoebe, she'd be asleep in seconds.

I was a different story. It wasn't the adrenaline or the injuries that kept me awake - I'd been serving Artemis for almost six years now, and I'd had plenty of time to get used to that stuff. It was the dream that kept me awake - and how much stranger it had been than any of the others.

She had looked young, about fifteen or sixteen, and was wearing a gaunt and hungry expression. Her eyes were enormous and wild, and her surroundings were dark and creepy-looking. A deep voice had thundered through my mind when I saw her - and I knew that it was my dad Zeus speaking.

Prepare yourself, Thalia. Turmoil awaits you.

That had been about when I woke up. After trying and failing to get back to sleep, I came outside to try and calm down. But even now, my head was buzzing, and I was no closer to getting some rest than I was to finding a camel somewhere in these woods. There had been loads of other dreams a lot more disturbing than this one, so why couldn't I forget it and go to sleep? And why did I get the feeling that the Lord of the Sky hadn't only been talking to me?

Then it came to me. Jason. Of course. If Zeus had sent the dream to me, it made sense that he would have sent it to my younger brother as well. It seemed logical that the only two children of the Lord of the Universe would have the same dream.

Setting down my bow and quiver, I turned and sprinted into the heart of the forest. The Hunters didn't choose their camping spots at random; there were a few criteria that had to be followed. Chief among them: we had to be near water. Not only because we'd die of thirst without it - that was kind of a no-brainer - but so we could talk easily to our families and friends.

A fine layer of mist lay over the small pond, sending tiny rainbows rippling off the surface of the water. "Oh Goddess, accept my offering." I told the pond. No, I wasn't crazy, though it probably looked that way.

I dug into my pocket, brought out one golden drachma, and tossed it into the pool. "Show me Jason Grace at Portus Aquilae."

The mist shimmered, and an image appeared on its surface. My little brother was standing in the middle of a coliseum, hacking at a straw dummy with his gladius. It felt strange to call him my little brother when he looked older than I was - I'd stopped aging when I joined the Hunters the day before I turned sixteen. Jason was seventeen now, what Chiron would call a "young man". But I still thought of him as the two-year-old who'd tried to eat a stapler once.

He looked up from his work on the decapitated dummy and saw me. His eyes widened and his mouth split into a big smile. "Hey, Thalia! What's up?"

"Hey, little bro." It was impossible not to return his smile. "Not too much. We finally killed those dracanae."

"Yeah, the three demigods you found made it back to Camp Half-Blood okay. I was there when they got claimed."

I perked up instantly. Rose and I had a bet going on whose kids the three boys were. "Who were their parents?"

He counted on his fingers. "Casey was Hecate's son, Rex was Mercury - er, Hermes', and Allan was Athena's."

Dang it, I'd assumed Casey was a Morpheus boy. I guess I owed Rose twenty bucks. "Glad they're all safe. When did you get back to San Francisco?"

"We left Camp Half-Blood this morning. Piper, Leo, Percy and Annabeth are coming out in three weeks." His smile got wider when he said Piper's name.

Portus Aquilae was the Roman equivalent of Camp Half-Blood, and where Jason had learned all his demigod skills. Since the whole incident two years ago when the second Great Prophecy had been fulfilled, the ties between the two camps had grown much stronger. Jason traveled back and forth between them regularly - same with the rest of them who'd gone on the journey to Greece.

"I guess that means Leo and Hazel are still going strong, then?" I asked, grinning. Leo Valdez had met the daughter of a wind god in Portus Aquilae before going to Greece, and the two of them had fallen head over heels for each other on the trip. I was glad, because it meant that he would stop hitting on me.

Jason nodded. "God, you have no idea. They were stuck to each other like glue."

I stuck out my tongue. "Okay, thanks for putting that mental image in my head."

He laughed. Then, "So, what's up? You can't be calling just to chat at this time of night."

I took a deep breath, stalling my answer. Jason noticed my reluctance and stared at me concernedly from behind golden blonde locks - he needed a haircut.

"Dad sent me a dream," I exhaled. Jason jerked his head up sharply. "I can't get it out of my head. It's really simple - just a girl, running from someone - or something." I cocked my head to the side. "You Romans haven't had any new campers, have you?"

Jason shook his head. "Well, there was that Mars kid who arrived about a week ago, but he's a boy. And the dream was sent to you, so the girl's probably fated to be a Hunter."

I thought that over. We took in lost girls all the time - the one I'd seen could easily become one of us. But I wasn't only a Hunter, I was also a demigod. And that meant only one thing.

"Dad said to prepare myself for turmoil," I told Jason. "Something big's going down with the demigods. And the Hunters need to be a part of it."

He nodded gravely. "Iris me when you know what's happening. I'll bring everyone over."

I put my hand on the surface of the water. He did the same from the other side, and the image rippled. "See you soon, hopefully."

"Take care of yourself, Thalia."

I waved my hand over the mist, and the Iris-message dissolved.

Trudging back to the camp, I made a decision. Finally figuring out something to do eased my mind, and I slept easily back on my bedroll for a couple hours, and there were no dreams this time.

The next morning, I woke up later than usual. The girls were all outside, probably waiting for me to come talk to them. After sliding my silver lieutenant's circlet over my forehead and packing up my bedroll, I pulled on my combat boots and breezed through the flaps of the tent.

The Hunters, stocking up their quivers and sharpening their daggers, looked up when I emerged. A slow smile spread over my face when I saw their eager expressions. "So, where to now?" one of them asked.

Grinning, I took my dagger out of the weapons pile and shoved it into my sheath. "Something big's going on in the world of heroes. We're heading east." I settled my quiver more securely on my back. "Onward to Camp Half-Blood."