-"Ugh..." I groaned, as I noticed the bandages on my left arm and around my head. "What happened?" I was seeing doubles, but I could notice she had waist-length black hair and a light-tanned skin, with bright brown eyes that gleamed like sunlight along with some bandages on her arms and legs.

-"Uh, well after you left me to fight legionnaires.." she began, reminding me of how I sold her just to get back with the flag. It was totally worth it, I thought. "They overwhelmed us, and eventually we got knocked out. Good thing you got the flag though." she smiled, which made me feel even guiltier.

-"Sorry..eh.." my head ached horribly. "Is it tomorrow already? I mean morning?" I asked.

-"No, actually it's an hour past bedtime. Since it's a special visit from Camp Jupiter, Chiron allowed us to stay up late until midnight, and everybody's partying outside!" she sounded pretty excited to go out.

-"Were you taking care of me?" I asked her. I could see her gleaming eyes were hiding something. Her troublemaker smile didn't help either.

-"Nothing Bryan, I just wanted to talk to you about..you know.."

-"Yeah, I sold you to the romans, I know." I interrupted her, already tired of listening her repeat herself. Then again, she was clearly holding something back. She laughed a little, then she grabbed my hand.

"What are you-" I got interrupted as she helped me get up. I was still wearing the same clothes, but someone had taken away my armor. I got up from my bunk, then she dragged me to the door. It ached horribly walking, even while being helped.

-"Come on Bryan, I've seen you around camp. You're always alone, and you don't talk much. I've never seen you in a campfire singalong! You have to come out and have fun!" she said excited. She clearly had a crush on me, but I decided not to bring that up. As soon as I had that thought, she let my hand go, and I gained balance on my own.

"Plus, I want to tell you something too.." she added with a kind of shady tone. We walked out of the cabin area, and a flash of red sparks illuminated the starry sky, along with a loud, BOOM! sound, coming from the beach.

-"The Hephaestus cabin is trying out new fireworks!" she exclaimed in surprise, gasping in amazement as the sparks changed color, from blue to green to red again. It was pretty impressive, but then again it hurt me so much to walk I couldn't even think straight. More fireworks boomed, this time making faces such as Chiron's and other famous campers. The Hephaestus cabin's fireworks were always amazing, they made the sparks animate in such way it looked like a movie in the sky, with some couples like Percabeth, Jasper and others kissing. Which also made it slightly awkward for those who had the faces on the sky kissing.

-"Oh yeah, the party is at the amphitheater. But we're going to the forest."

-"My arm.." I groaned. I noticed the bleeding wound had already healed up, but still hurt to even move my joints.

-"So, I wanted to tell you.." she started to say while walked by the road to the forest. This must be her confession of her love, I thought.

"During capture the flag, we were attacked by some legionnaires and..my best friend vanished. Then I got knocked out, but when I woke up he was still missing." her cheerful face had shifted to a grim expression. Woah..what the heck.

-"Who's your best friend?" I asked. I probably didn't know him, but it would give me an idea on where to look. Note, I'm only going to help her because she took care of me, not because we're friends or anything.

-"James, from the Hermes Cabin, do you know him?" she questioned me while more sparks boomed in the starry sky.

Of course I knew him. He was the only unclaimed Hermes camper other than I, and we arrived here on the same day. The only difference is that everybody else liked him.

-"Yeah, maybe we should ask Chiron or any of the nymphs if they have seen him." I suggested.

Erin nodded, and we both kept walking to the forest. Chiron was chaperoning the party, so the forest nymphs were our only option. Going back to the woods felt weird, specially when it was so late. At this time of the night, monsters were probably back. Some patchess of grass were charred, likely from the lightning Jason Grace had summoned to fight Nico. I wondered how the fight had gone while I ran back.

-"This is so dark.." she muttered under her breath, though I heard her.

-"Maybe because it's midnight?" I added, which for some reason made her laugh.

-"Haha, true."

No nymphs around there. The only light was coming from the stars and the fireworks which kept raging. I had brought my sword just in case, better safe than sorry, as my mom used to say.

-"James?" she called, but nothing remotely human seemed to hear. "James? Where are you?" she kept saying, though I couldn't see him anywhere. I was never scared of the darkness, but the tranquility in the woods was very unnerving. This was not the first time campers had disappeared in the woods, as my cabinmates used to say. These creepy stories weren't scary at all, nope. It was the calm and the fact that no wind seemed to blow in the forest.

-"I think he's not here, we should ask Chiron." I finally said.

-"Yeah, maybe you're right.." she sounded disappointed.

We turned around, and luckily no monsters saw us. And that's when I learned never to tempt the Fates. I saw two small yellow spheres in a bush, and then something I couldn't register lept out of it, making Erin scream.

-"What's that?!" she didn't have any weapons, but at least I had my sword.

-"I don't know, it's a.." I stuttered for a second, as my knees and arms started to tremble. The thing in front of us was an eight-feet tall, skeletal man with a policeman suit, yellow slits for eyes and a very disturbing fleshless grin. It had a jet-black gun, which seemed to be loaded because he was pointing straight at me. He seemed to laugh, which made a bone-chilling clattering sound.

"A spartus!" I blurted out, though I wasn't sure how I knew it. I never paid any attention to monster class, but I did know Chiron never told us about skeletons and the undead. I realized I could've sliced it in half by now, but I was stunned, my legs seemed to have frozen. Was this fear? I didn't know, since a bright flash of light blinded me for a second, coming from Erin's side. It couldn't have been a stray flare from the fireworks, it was pure light, which seemed to daze the spartus as much as it did to me. Then, I dashed to the spartus and swung my sword by his bony sternum, causing him to erupt into flames and leave a pile of ash behind.

-"Woah!" Erin gasped, as the light faded away.

-"It's here!" shouted a voice from behind us. Nico and Chiron arrived seconds after, which made Nico gasp in exasperation just like Erin, though Chiron kept his calm.

-"What are you doing here?" asked the latter calmly.

-"He-he just-" Erin stuttered. She was trembling. I realized I still had my sword drawn, so I quickly sheathed it away. Then Nico looked down at the pile of ash underneath my feet, his face completely surprised by it.

-"Did you..kill the spartus?" he asked. His sunken, dark eyes made him look like a zombie who just got out of bed. Then, came Will Solace who panted as soon as he arrived to us.

-"Chiron! It's Rachel, she.." he panted, "She's acting weird, her eyes turned bright green and.." he panted again.

-"Calm down.." said Nico. Will Solace put his arm around him as he got up.

-"Erin?" asked Will. Naturally, he would be worried about his sister being with a weird guy at this time of the night, in a dark forest. I explained to them how we were looking for James and then got attacked by the spartus, how it got blinded by a random flash of light and how I burned it up when I sliced it.

-"You what?!" Nico said, his usually calm expression shifted. He looked extremely worried, his mouth now open.

-"Wait." said Chiron now. "We'll attend this matter later, Nico. We should check what happened to Rachel first." and everyone agreed. Will was carrying Erin who had passed out from shock, while Nico and I walked by each other. He remained silent, though he turned to face me every few seconds, still with that worried expression. I also noticed the fireworks had ceased. We walked out of the forest, crossed the river and arrived to the amphitheater, which had a crowd of both roman and greek demigods, satyrs, some pegasi and even Mr D, the camp director, was serving the drinks. Couples were kissing, but Mr D didn't seem to mind at all, despite knowing Chiron would have a heart attack seeing this. The Apollo campers were doing a karaoke at the stage, while down there everybody was dancing, flirting or kissing.

-"Where is Rachel?" asked Chiron to Will, who was still carrying Erin like a princess.

-"She was-" he started, but he got interrupted by a red-haired girl with the Camp's usual uniform, who had bright green eyes and an open mouth. Her voice was followed by green smoke as she spoke with a ghastly, hissing deep voice.

-"You.." she said creepily. "Child of the Underworld." so, everybody turned to Nico naturally. The party kept going on normally, and no one seemed to turn around.

-"Rachel..? No.." he said, "That's the Oracle." Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that Rachel Elizabeth Dare was our camp's oracle. She was tasked with reciting prophecies and such, but she hasn't recited any at all since the fall of Gaea.

Her eyes were fixated on me, for some reason. She rubbed her temples, then her jaw dropped like a gaping hole, with the creepy green smoke. The music stopped, then everybody else turned towards Rachel who stood up straight as she spoke, her voice becoming deeper and tripled:

-"Greeks and roman shall slay the snake,

it's hissing and roaring the land will shake.

In the land below, the dragon's bane they'll find,

the spawn of death leads the way blind,

in the Ancient Lands his blood will wake,

a fate to both worse than death can make."

At the last word, Rachel collapsed to the floor, though Nico caught her.

-"A prophecy!" someone from the crowd yelled. The crowd broke into a bunch of yelling, screaming, muttering and whisper. And finally, the weirdest event of the night: everything turned pitch-black, just like it had happened to me in capture the flag, for like 2 seconds. Everybody else stared at me. I rolled my eyes to see if it was someone else, but it was clear that they were looking only at me.

-"Bryan..!" called Chiron.

The only light was coming from above me, as I looked up, what I saw made my heart sink.

It was a deep-black but bright, two-pronged pitchfork, a bident. Oh no, I thought. Then everybody else kneeled at my direction, except Rachel who was unconscious.

Then Chiron said,

-"All hail Bryan Rodriguez, son of Hades, Lord of the Dead."