Yesterday I noticed some mistakes in this chapter, so that's the reason some of you may have gotten an alert for a new chapter. Ha, I wish i could get another one up that fast.

Disclaimer: I own nothing associated with the PJO series. All rights go to Rick.

"Annabeth, do you feel that?"

Annabeth shifted so that she was no longer staring out at the blue ocean, and gave her boyfriend a quizzical look. "Feel what?"

He looked away, shrugging dismissively. "I don't know . . . I just feel like something bad is going to happen. Something big."

And something did.

. . . .

"Rachel? Rachel! Rachel, what do you see?"

The distraught daughter of Poseidon was panicking as a certain redhead stared of into the distance with a glassy look in her eyes. She know Rachel was having a visor, but it still freaked her out to see her friend go as unresponsive and still as she was now.

Stephanie tightly gripped Rachel's shoulders and began steering her towards the Poseidon cabin. Rachel had had plenty of visions before this one, and none of them - so far -had caused an apocalypse, though some had come close, Stephanie though with a shiver. No need to worry Chiron over nothing.

Little did she know, she wouldn't be seeing Chiron, or anyone else at camp, for a long, long time.

. . . .

"I need to find Steph," Percy decided. She's his little sister. He had to make sure she was alright - not in some comatose state brought on by one of the Hypnos or Morpheus kids. She just loves messing with them, he sighed. His awful feeling kept nagging at him to do something.

Annabeth peered at her boyfriend for a moment before giving him a slight nod of agreement. The duo trudged up a sand dune and headed towards camp. The sun was still in the middle of setting on the horizon.

Jeez, Apollo, stop being so dang lazy, Percy thought to himself as the giant glowing orb continued its agonizingly slow descent in the sky. Thunder rumbled overhead and Annabeth tossed Percy an exasperated look.

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "What?" he asked innocently.

"You know what, moron."

He rolled his eyes. By now the daughter of Athena was far too used to his knack for pissing of the gods to provoke him any farther. She chose not to pursue the matter of what he said or thought; considering she was worried about the 'omen' Percy seemed to be so distracted by. Annabeth was starting to feel queasy, and it wasn't the taco from dinner talking.

"What? No retaliation today, Seaweed Brain?" taunted the blonde, trying to lighten the mood. "Getting tired, are we?"

"I just . . . I just know something really, really bad is going to happen really soon, Annabeth. And the feeling won't go away." Percy furrowed his brow at his own words, like he wasn't expected it to come out that way.

Annabeth's lips pressed together. "Let's find Stephanie and Rachel—maybe she had a vision."

They checked everywhere; the lake, Steph's usual hang-out, then moved on to the Oracle's cave when they didn't find her there—no luck in the caves, either. Without even so much as a word both started for Cabin 3. That was the next place Steph would lounge around at. The girl was pretty predictable in that way.

Annabeth, with Percy at her heels, burst into the cabin without bothering to knock. As usual, the salty scent reminded her of so much. Now is not the time, Annabeth, she silently chastised herself.

"Steph, thank gods we found you. We—Rachel!" The daughter of Athena stopped short as soon as she caught sight of Rachel Elizabeth Dare, sitting on Steph's bunk with her head in her hands. The host of the Oracle, in all of her glorified wisdom, just groaned in response. As she looked up at her friends, they each stepped back in shock.

Steph hissed at what she saw.

The Oracle's spirit had never had this effect on its host, as far as they knew. Rachel's eyes were a shade of red so bright it rivaled her hair; her lips were the color of blood. She looked like a ghoul made flesh and blood with her gray skin and red features. "I had an awful vision, and now my head hurts like hell. Can someone please get me some water?"

The sound of her voice was scratchy and shallow. It sounded like it had taken all of her effort not to fall over after they scraped out of her throat. The son of Poseidon quickly made his way down the hall to the bathroom to get some water as his girlfriend took control of the situation—naturally.

"Rachel, what did you see? Was there some sort of prophecy?"

The voice that spoke up didn't belong to the girl addressed. Rather, it came from the unusually pale girl standing next to Rachel.

"Annabeth, I – we were just hanging out in the arena when all of a sudden she went into a trance," Steph explained. "I brought her back here, but only recently she got this bad. I've . . . I've never seen her like this before."

The blonde had a troubled look on her face. She had never heard of this happening to any of the Oracles before—no glowing serpent eyes, no awful, doomsday prophecy. For once in her life, Annabeth Chase didn't know the answer. Not yet, that is. She was just as clueless as the rest of them for now. Thankfully she was spared from responding to the daughter of Poseidon, because Percy chose then to return with a tall glass of cool water in one hand and a wet washcloth in the other.

Unfortunately, that was also when Rachel's moaning started up again.

"Uh . . . Horrible vision . . . Danger . . . Goddess . . . Have to . . . . "

Annabeth's eyebrows scrunched together as she questioned Rachel frantically, "Rachel, can you hear me? What goddess do you see?"

"I couldn't see! She was a goddess of darkness—"

The blonde put her hands on Rachel's shoulders in an attempt to calm her. "I need you to remember."

"I can't remember!" The hysterical girl exploded at Annabeth. "Too painful. . . . It hurts so much. . . ."

"Rachel, I'm not trying to hurt you, I just need you to tell me everything you saw, heard, or know. Please," she prompted softly.

"Percy stepped in, saying, "Here—drink some water and put the washcloth on your forehead, Rach. It'll help."

Rachel accepted them form Percy gratefully and closed her blood-tinted eyes. "I . . . all I saw was dark nothingness at first. It was so strange. And then I heard . . . a . . . a voice out of nowhere. It talked about a war . . . I can't remember which goddess, but the voice was totally giving of the goddess vibe, y'know?"

She paused. "And . . . I saw me . . . in a jail cell, and Annabeth—you were wearing a Greek chiton at the top of an ancient-looking wall, looking down. And Steph . . . You were—were begging him for something, begging him not to do it. But Percy, oh, Percy—"

She broke off and started sobbing uncontrollably on the bunk she was sitting on. The other two girls glanced from the over-emotional Oracle to the sickly pale Son of Poseidon standing rigid as a stone wall.

"Annabeth, that feeling I had this morning, it was an omen or something, wasn't it? Something horrible is about to happen to all of us soon," Percy stressed.

Annabeth just looked at him with a grim expression.

"I know, Percy."

By know Stephanie was completely silent, her silence second only to the Fields of Asphodel, barely daring to breathe, let alone speak out loud. But know she spoke, albeit quietly.

"Why does everything bad always happen to you guys? And why have I been dragged into all of it lately?"

Before anyone else could say anything, a different, silky voice spoke out of nowhere and everywhere at the same time.

"Now, darling, don't think like that. You'll wrinkle prematurely, and dear old Aphrodite wouldn't want that, now would she?"

Suddenly the shadows around them seemed to grow and become more distinct and inky than before. The room they were standing in slowly gave into the darkness, disappearing completely. Soon the four of them were suspended in the blackness, just as Rachel's vision had suggested. Except this time, a figure emerged from the gloom.

"It means you're special, darling. Fun. Entertaining."

A tall, shapely woman appeared, her long dark hair writhing around her as if suspended underwater. Her cold golden eyes drew the attention away from her pale olive complexion and made it seem even more sun-deprived.

"Oh, no," Annabeth murmured. "This cannot end well."

"Dear, why ever would you think that?" The woman taunted sarcastically.

"You're—"

"Who are you?" Percy cut in. That earned him a disapproving glare from Annabeth and a weary look from Rachel. His sister merely pulled her eyebrows together and pressed her pink lips together, knowing his girlfriend was just about to answer what they were all wanting to ask.

The woman quirked one dark, elegant eyebrow at the young man.

"You see, young Perseus, that's just it."

"Uh. . . . What?"

Steph wasn't the only with a befuddled look on her face for the moment.

"No one knows who I am anymore. They have forgotten me. Mortals and demigods alike no longer fear me, when they used to cower in terror at my very presence. Only the gods lounging about on Olympus remember Chaos, though they do not welcome me as their own."

Her eyes flashed. "I am shunned; exiled. Do you see a cabin at this wretched camp devoted to me, when even that powerless goddess of law has one of her own? And do you know why?"

The goddess's eyes were sparking with her fury; the air surrounding her was thick with her unseen power waiting to be unleashed on some poor innocent soul.

"Percy, she's Eris, goddess of chaos and discord. She's evil, the cause of the Trojan War," Annabeth explained.

"Well, kudos to you, daughter of Athena. I can always count on your kind to recognize me for who I am and what I am capable of."

Annabeth hesitated. Your kind?

Eris smirked at the trembling Oracle. "You recognize me, Oracle of Delphi. Always have, always will."

Percy shook his head. "Wait a minute—I thought Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena caused the war," he said. "Well, mostly Aphrodite with the whole Paris/Helen thing, y'know?" The Son of Poseidon amended quickly after seeing the look on Annabeth's face referring to his remark about her mother.

Eris growled at his statement, and then replaced it with a smug look, like she knew something she didn't. "Yes, well, you would think that, wouldn't you? And that's my point exactly, but it depends on your view of the whole escapade. Who didn't invite me—but did every other god and goddess—to their child's celebration? The royal family. Who rolled the apple into the three goddess' midst? Yours truly. Who offered Helen as a reward to Paris for choosing her? Aphrodite.

She paused, suddenly having a cruel, yet mischievous glint in her golden eyes as she locked her gaze on the Son of Poseidon. "But, then again, who accepted Helen as his wife and named Aphrodite the fairest?" chuckled.

"You would know, Perseus."

Rachel responded, "But how would Percy know? Why not Annabeth? She knows everything—she's basically a walking encyclopedia."

Annabeth scoffed and rolled her eyes. Obviously she didn't know everything if she didn't know why a powerful goddess such as Eris was here in Percy's cabin picking on a bunch of demigods.

"How could one so knowledgeable at the same time be so naïve?"

Rachel pursed her lips at the goddess's words. She was not naïve! She was the Oracle of Delphi, speaker of the prophecies of Phoebus Apollo. She was not some little girl people could mess with.

Chaos just smiled and simply said, "Deep down, you all know what I'm talking about."

The darkness surrounding the five silhouettes began to coil around the goddess as she slowly dissipated. Her disembodied voiced tinkled with dark laughter and crooned, "But, just so you can all remember, we're going to play a game. Don't worry; it will be fun—for me."

The dark shadows engulfed the four, cutting of their weak protests.