Written for Caesar's Palace's prompts (comrade), Challenges by the Dozen (post-canon), and the Pandora's Box challenge at the forum Caesar's Palace.

The demigods always had one nemesis that they could fight against, and when that ended, the routine shattered. When Gaea crumbled, the enemies went with her, falling like dirt after a dust storm. Some dirt, brown and brittle, dropped from the sky and rained on the cheering demigods, and some dirt collapsed back onto the ground.

In the end, they all returned to the soil.

At least, that's what Julia was always told. That's what she believed before the gods gave her a quest to find the lamia. Somehow it had escaped its death, and it was running around killing livestock and taking demigod children who still hadn't made it to camp. Recruitment had slowed over the course of the two works, but nobody had noticed the lamia until a satyr had gone to pick up his demigod and he was gone, the air stinking of monster.

Chiron had called the demigods at camp halfblood to the amphitheater. The turnout was very good, in terms of percentage, but there were only twenty or so in the audience. Most of the biggest heroes from the Giant war had gone to college or left camp to start a life. Only Percy remained, poised to take over as head counselor.

"The Gods have called for a quest," Chiron said, wearily. "Who wants to go?"

Nobody was really itching to go fight some new horror after seeing the battlefield.

The campers looked around at each other silently, searching each others faces.

"Why can't the Gods kill this one? Are they really so busy on Mount Olympus?" Clarisse muttered.

A ripple of murmurs spread across the small group of demigods. Yes, why couldn't the gods do it? They barely did anything else.

Chiron shook his head, stroking his beard.

"I'll do it." A boy stood, and as he did, Clarisse did too.

"Gods, I should stuff your head in the toilet," she said. "You just got here last week. What makes you think you could handle this?"

"Well, someone has to do it," he replied.

Clarisse threw up her hands in exasperation. The war had taken a lot out of her, and she was not in the mood to argue.

"I'll go too," a boy on the other side of the amphitheater interrupted.

"Another newbie," Clarisse breathed out heavily. She sat back down and put her fingers on the bridge of her nose.

"So be it," Chiron announced with a stomp of his foot.

The two boys walked side by side, each trying to seem like they weren't tired on their twenty first mile.

Camp half blood had one jeep, and that was used around camp, so they had the option to walk or to hitch a ride.

There were no rides to hitch in the middle of the forest, so they walked.

By nightfall, the instructions on how to build a tent had been discarded on the claim of, "chill, I was in boy scouts," and searched for after a discovery of, "You were in the boy scouts for a year when you were eight?!"

Monster hunting was harder than they had expected. The twentieth night of staying up to keep watch was taxing, and even more so on the morale of someone who had yet to see any treasure.

"Matt," one of the boys said, pointing at a tree. "I bet I can shoot the ant crawling up the trunk."

"Look, kiddo, you've shot an arrow twice in your life, probably," Matt said.

"Hey! That's not true. Fifty at least. And what have you got? Once?"

"I've actually been at camp for three months," Matt replied. "I'm obviously overqualified for this job."

"Right. Three months is definitely a long time."

"Better than three days, Jacob."

The two walked in silence for a few minutes.

"Hey, Matt," Jacob whispered. "Did you happen to learn anything about lamias at camp? Or anything about tracking them?"

Matt shrugged. "Nah. I just came for the glory."

"Same here," Jacob said. "We should be getting closer to the lamia, if I'm correct. She tends to shed snake skin everywhere and we're following a trail."

Matt made a disgruntled grunt, displeased at having been showed up. They followed the trail into a cave. "Are you sure we should go in?" Jacob asked.

"Hell yeah," Matt said. He puffed up his shoulders, trying to seem more muscular than he was.

"Comradessss," an alluring voice hissed.

Jacob jumped. "Was that the lamia?"

Before Matt could answer a girl clad only in a few strategically placed leaves came into the light of their flashlight. She laughed. "Did I scare you?"

Matt sighed in relief and let his arm go slack. "Jesus, I thought you were a lamia."

"No, just a nymph." She batted her eyelashes and clasped her hands together. "Are you heroes?"

"Well, pretty much," Jacob said, running the back of his neck uncomfortably. "Almost heroes."

"Are you here to kill the lamia, then?" the nymph asked.

Jacob nodded furiously. "Yeah! That's what we're here to do."

"Oh, good! She's been eating all of our sheep, lately, and we nymphs can't fight her off alone." She took a closer look at them. "On second thought, you don't look much like heroes. When I heard your voices I thought you might be and I was going to let you stay here, but it turns out you're nothing but a bunch of children."

She was swallowed again by the darkness.

"Weird," Jacob said, shrugging.

"Did you hear her?" Matt was turning red in the face. "She called us children."

Jacob sighed. "Come on. The lamia can't be far. Her skins have stayed around this area for the past few days."

For the next few days they tried to get a clue into were the lamia was. The tracks either all ran in a circle or they were just really bad at tracking.

When a familiar feminine voice chirped at their side, they were just lugging firewood around to begin cooking some of their provisions.

Jacob shot a glance over at Matt. "It's the nymph again."

"Have you gotten around to killing the lamia yet?" the nymph sang. There was a sort of metallic tone to her voice, and Matt twitched, entranced.

"Where are you?" he asked.

"Come find me! I might be willing to share my home with you."

Matt's head swam with memories of leaves and the cave and the voice kept pouring into his brain and washing everything in tsunami waves. He began to follow the voice.

"Matt!" Jacob hissed. "Get back here!"

Matt paid no attention and continued. Son of Ares, he could do this, he managed to think between the torrent of music filling his brain. Between the bushes he saw a sliver of the nymph, the familiar leaves and legs that had haunted his thoughts.

Then a blinding white light accompanied with pain flashed behind his eyeballs. He shrieked as he lurched backwards.

When the light subsided, he saw the mouth of a woman plunging teeth up his leg, a snake tail slowly strangling his neck.