I'm here, Fan Fiction! I have returned! With a chapter under 4,000 words! Whaaaaat?!

So yeah, school has be stressed as F and I can't concentrate on my stories very well when that's happening. So sorry 'bout that.

Enjoy!

:)

Nightlock: Thank you so much! (Although, let's be honest, there are grammar errors that pop out here and there that I find every time I go back and read these things and they bug the hell out of me) I do try to make sure that I have the best grammar I can for the readers.

Yo: Audrey's surname, Mavepo, comes from the Greek word for water - Vepo (with a Ma there for reasons), Emily's last name, Hezesto, comes from the Greek word for warm - Zesto (with the He coming from Hestia; and Hezesto sounds like the male version of Hestia). Lucy's last name, Chikara, comes from the Japanese word for Power - which is still Chikara. Zytaveon's last name comes from the Greek word Zoi, and Kana, the system of syllabic writing used for Japanese.

Clearly, there is a pattern, but my friend who inspired me to get into the HoO series (at least write this fic for it, since I was into this fandom long before we'd gotten here) came up with Audrey and Emily's last names, while I did Lucy and Veon's.

qwwerty: Did you make it through the entirety of all of the stories?! Pat on the back to you, friend. How did you even find the first story before any of the others, though? That is honestly amazing, indeed.

First Person: Audrey

Leo had designed the mess hall's walls to show real-time scenes from Camp Half-Blood. At first, it seemed like a pretty awesome idea, but now I wasn't so sure. The scenes from back home - the campfire sing-alongs, dinners at the pavilion, volleyball games outside the Big House - just seemed to make everyone sad. The farther we got from Long Island, the worse it got. The time zones kept changing, making us feel the distance every time he looked at the walls. Here in Italy the sun had just come up, but back at Camp Half-Blood it was the middle of the night. Torches sputtered at the cabin doorways, moonlight glittered on the waves of Long Island Sound, and the beach was covered in footprints, as if a big crowd had just left.

I realized that yesterday - last night, whatever - had been the Fourth of July, and we'd missed Camp Half-Blood's annual party at the beach with the awesome fireworks that Leo's siblings had prepared at Cabin Nine. I hoped that they'd had a good celebration. With war on the horizon, I knew they needed something to keep their spirits up too.

I sat down at the table, waiting for the others to come into the room one by one. As Emily came in, things seemed to get a little lighter. This morning, Kaze came in and finally started eating, but he seemed to be struggling, as though the food tasted disgusting. Veon sat beside him, Nico across from him, and Emily beside him. Leo was next to Emily, I was across from Leo, with Hazel and Frank across from each other at the end of the table. The only absent demigod was Piper, who was taking her turn at the helm with Coach Hedge. We decided it was probably a good idea to have a chaperone for our chaperone. Now that we were in the Ancient Lands, we had to be constantly on guard, and no one really wanted to let Coach Hedge fly solo. The satyr was a little trigger-happy, and the helm had plenty of bright, dangerous buttons that could cause the picturesque Italian villages below us to go BOOM!

Jason was sitting at the head of the table - Veon and Nico at either side - kind of by default. Since we'd lost Lu/Order (still wrapping my head around that), we'd lost a lot of confidence and leadership. Jason had done his best to act as the group's leader, with Veon as the new leader of our team. Having been praetor back at Camp Jupiter, Jason was probably used to being in charge, but I could tell he was stressed. His eyes were more sunken than usual; his blond hair was uncharacteristically messy, like he'd forgotten to comb it. Veon was trying to do his role as best he could, but considering that he was trying to make the decisions that a goddess was supposed to, he was understandably doubting his ability to live up to her title. She had known what to do, and Veon was left with no real path. He looked tired, but it seemed that he looked a lot better than he had been before. I couldn't place my finger on it, but I knew he was looking different, in a good way.

Hazel was bleary-eyed too, but of course, she'd been up all night guiding the ship through the mountains with Veon. It seemed as though Ve had submitted to his sleeping needs about three-quarters of the way through, but Hazel had powered through the entire time. Her curly, cinnamon-colored hair was tied back in a bandana, which gave her a commando look that looked pretty cool. Frank was dressed in black workout pants and a Roman tourist T-shirt that said CIAO! (Pronounced 'chow'). Frank's old centurion badge was pinned to his shirt, despite the fact that the demigods of the Argo II were now Public Enemies Numbers 1 through 11 (12 if you included Coach Hedge; 13 if you included Kaze). His grim expression just reinforced his unfortunate resemblance to a sumo wrestler.

Then there was Nico, sitting back in his leather aviator jacket, his black T-shirt and jeans, his silver skull ring on his finger, and the Stygian sword at his side. His tufts of black hair stuck up in curls like baby bat wings, his eyes sad and kind of empty, as if he'd stared into the depths of Tartarus - which he had.

"So," Jason began. "Now that we're all here, I hope we're all caught up on the plan. Hecate has helped up with the passage across the Apennines. Next stop is Bologna, and then to Venice. From there, we sail the Adriatic to Epirus. Bologna was where we were supposed to find the dwarfs, right? Audrey found out that they were thieves, so we should make precautions for that. But first, Nico and Veon said that they have some new information about the House of Hades. Guys?"

Nico sat forward. "We communed with the dead last night."

Funny how he just tosses that line out there, like he was saying he got a text from a buddy.

"We were able to learn more about what we'll face."

"In ancient times, the House of Hades was a major site for Greek pilgrims," Veon continued. "They would come to speak with the dead and honor their ancestors."

Leo frowned. "Sounds like Día de Los Muertos. My Aunt Rosa took that stuff seriously."

I remembered the stuff about Día de Los Muertos that we'd learned about in Spanish class, making offerings of food and items like salt and soap that were all symbolic of something.

Frank grunted. "Chinese have that too - ancestor worship, sweeping the graves in the springtime." He glanced at Leo. "Your Aunt Rosa would've gotten along with my grandmother."

Leo seemed to get a look that implied he was imagining something exaggerated, like an image of his Aunt Rosa and Frank's grandmother in wrestlers' outfits, whaling on each other with spiked clubs (A.N.: That was not me that came up with that. The book actually said that).

"Yeah," Leo said. "I'm sure they would've been best buds."

Nico cleared his throat. "A lot of cultures have seasonal traditions to honor the dead, but the house of Hades was open year-round. Pilgrims could actually speak to the ghosts. In Greek, the place was called the Necromanteion, the Oracle of Death. You'd work your way through different levels of tunnels, leaving offerings and drinking special potions-"

"Special potions," Leo muttered. "Yum."

Jason flashed him a look like, 'Dude, enough.' "Go on."

"The pilgrims believed that each level of the temple brought you closer to the Underworld, until the dead would appear before you," Veon continued. "Sort of like the Farplane, but with trials to get you there and the ghosts actually talk. Anyway, if they were pleased with your offerings, they would answer your questions, maybe even tell you the future."

Frank tapped his mug of hot chocolate. "And if the spirits weren't pleased?"

"Some pilgrims found nothing," Nico said. "Some went insane, or died after leaving the temple. Others lost their way in the tunnels and were never seen again."

"The point is," Jason said quickly. "They found some information that might help us."

"Yeah," Veon said, though with little enthusiasm. "The ghost we spoke to last night…he was a former priest of Hecate. He confirmed what the goddess told me and Hazel yesterday at the crossroads. In the first war with the giants, Hecate fought for the gods. She slew one of the giants - one who'd been designed as the anti-Hecate. A guy named Clytius."

"Dark dude," Leo guessed. "Wrapped in shadows."

Hazel turned towards him, her gold eyes narrowing. "Leo, how did you know that?"

"Kinda had a dream."

No one looked surprised. Most demigods had vivid nightmares about what was going on in the world, especially in an impending end of the world situation like this. Leo explained his dream of the ruined Camp Half-Blood, notably trying to avoid looking at the image of the camp on the walls. He told us about the dark giant and the strange woman on Half-Blood Hill, offering him a multiple-choice death.

"So you mean that was your dream too?" Emily asked.

"Yeah. You mean you were there too? I mean, really there. Like, that wasn't just my imagination looking for company?"

"I guess that shouldn't be too surprising," I said. "Interacting with others in dreams isn't impossible."

"There was also something else that I saw after I saved Leo," Emily said.

She explained some imaginary world, maybe the future, where we were living happily in New Rome, no impending end of the world anymore, but also with Tsuchi and Kandai. Kaze looked up at Tsuchi's name, and Veon explained the situation to him.

He said something in response, and Veon translated. "'Does that mean we can save her?'"

"I don't know," Emily said. "It could've been just a dream, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was some kind of prediction for the future."

"What about that other guy that woke you up?" Frank asked.

"It was a white-haired guy that I think was a god, but he was named after one of the angels from the Shadowhunters thing. It started with an 'I'?"

"Ithuriel?" Veon and I asked.

"Yeah, that was it."

"Well there isn't a god named Ithuriel," Veon said. "At least to my knowledge, let alone a Greek or Roman one."

"He seemed…self-aware. When he walked into the coffee shop, it was almost as though he realized that I wasn't just another dream, but actually a real person. But the funny thing was, he also looked to Lu in the same way, although, with a little more shock."

"Does that mean you might have a way of contacting Lu in her dreams?" I realized. "If you could do that, we could keep in touch with the others."

"I don't know. It could've just been a fluke. I didn't do anything consciously."

"Still, that might be immense help," Veon said. "We could keep tabs on their conditions and their plan, and maybe we can do that whole Kingdom Keepers thing and have you bring supplies to them when you go to sleep."

"Don't start piling stuff into Emily's room and hope that it all comes with her, though," I said. "We should do a test first. Give Emily something small to keep in her pocket at all times, and hopefully she'll try to pass it on if she's able to get back to the dream place. If it's no longer there when she wakes up, we'll try again each night to give them what we can, but we can't exactly load her up while she goes to sleep. Besides, we don't even know if that'll work in the first place."

"Well, way to try and pop that bubble."

Jason pushed away his plate of pancakes. "Back to the subject at hand. We'll deal with Emily's…dreamwalking, I guess, later. So the giant is Clytius. I suppose he'll be waiting for us, guarding the Doors of Death."

"That's what Hecate said," Veon confirmed.

Frank rolled up one of the pancakes and started munching - not a guy to let impending death stand in the way of a healthy breakfast. If only that attitude spread to more of us. "And the woman in their dream?"

"She's our problem," Hazel said, passing a diamond between her fingers in a sleight of hand. "Hecate mentioned a formidable enemy in the House of Hades - a witch who couldn't be defeated except by me and Veon, using magic."

"Do you know magic?" Leo asked.

"Not yet. But Veon does."

"A little," He admitted. "The Mist is a simple concept. You have to enforce your will upon it and other people in a convincing way, find a middle-ground that will convince your target what their seeing is true. Like a perception filter from Doctor Who. If you see a large animal, it makes more sense to your brain that it's an elephant or a rhino rather than something like a Cyclops, at least for mortals. You need to have a creative mind, be able to predict what someone expects to see and make them see it. Although I admit that I'm not a master at the skill, I'm just about as good as any other Mist-bending demigod. Beating a witch who seems to be pretty formidable…I am worried about her resistance and/or control over the Mist overpowering mine."

"Any idea who she is?" Leo asked.

Hazel shook her head. "Only that…"

She glanced at Nico, and the two of them had a silent argument that Veon seemed to join in on through Nico and his soul bond. It didn't take a genius to realize that they knew something about the House of Hades, and they weren't sharing all the details. I worried about why they wouldn't be telling us. Perhaps it was for troop morale, or perhaps it was because they didn't have all the details themselves.

"Only that she won't be easy to defeat," Hazel finished.

"But there is some good news," I said. "I read up on how Hecate defeated Clytius in the first war. She used her torches to set his hair on fire. He burned to death. In other words, fire is his weakness."

Everybody looked to Leo.

"Oh," He said. "Okay."

Jason nodded encouragingly, like this was great news - like he expected Leo to walk up to a towering mass of darkness, shoot a few fireballs, and solve all our problems. If Clytius consumed all magic, I worried what the definition of 'magic' was. Did all demigod powers count as magic? If so, Leo's fire wouldn't be much use on its own. Heck, in some cultures, life itself was considered to be from magic. If we got close to that guy, would his aura start sucking the life out of us?

"I have a feeling that Clytius isn't going to make it easy," Veon said. "I mean, it took a Titan's torches to set the guy on fire, and no offense, Leo, but you're not a Titan. Perhaps I could use the Mist to expand Leo's fire. He could be the ultimate fire-bender if I played my cards right."

I mentally pointed out that the giant was still the anti-Hecate, the magic goddess that made the very Mist he was talking about. Still, there was a chance it could work, if we made sure to keep our distance and hope that once we lit Leo's ultimate match that we could keep it lit with enough power to set the giant on fire.

"It's a good lead," Jason insisted. "At least we know how to kill the giant. And this sorceress…well, if Hecate believes you two can defeat her, then so do I."

Hazel dropped her eyes. "Now we just have to reach the House of Hades, battle our way through Gaea's forces-"

"Plus a bunch of ghosts," Nico added grimly. "The spirits in that temple may not be friendly."

"-and find the Doors of Death," Hazel continued. Assuming we can somehow arrive at the same time as Percy, Annabeth, and Lu and rescue them."

Frank swallowed a bite of pancake. "We can do it. We have to."

I admired the big guy's optimism. He seemed to be the one in the best mood on the ship - holding it together the best, at least.

"So, with this detour," Leo said. "I'm estimating four or five days to arrive at Epirus, assuming no delays for, you know, monster attacks and stuff."

Jason smiled sourly. "Yeah. Those never happen."

Leo looked to Hazel and Veon. "Hecate told you that Gaea was planning her big Wake Up party on August first, right? The Feast of Whatever?"

"Spes," Veon corrected. "The goddess of hope."

Jason turned his fork. "Theoretically, that leaves us enough time. It's only July fifth. We should be able to close the Doors of Death, then find the giants' HQ and stop them from waking Gaea before August first."

"Theoretically," Hazel agreed. "But I'd still like to know how we make our way through the House of Hades without going insane or dying."

"Same way we survive everything," I said. "Charge in head first and BS our way through."

Frank set down his pancake roll like it suddenly didn't taste so good. "It's July fifth. Oh, jeez, I hadn't even thought of that…"

"Hey, man, it's cool," Leo said. "You're Canadian, right? I didn't expect you to get me an Independence Day present or anything…unless you wanted to."

"It's not that. My grandmother…she always told me that seven was an unlucky number. It was a ghost number. She didn't like it when I told her there would be seven demigods on our quest. And July is the seventh month."

"Well, that explains why I've had such rotten luck throughout my life," Veon said. "Who knew it was because I was born in July?"

"Yeah, but…" Leo began, tapping his fingers nervously on the table.

I didn't know Morse code by heart, but I knew a few simple combinations of letters. He was doing a one letter word first, possibly "A" or "I" just from basic logic, and since "A" was the first letter of the alphabet, I knew that it was a dot and a dash. I didn't know what "I" was, but considering that the two beats he was doing for the first letter were different in length, I could only assume that was it. Then the next word was a four-letter word with the second letter being "O" and the last one being "E," as I knew "O" from the classic SOS Morse thing that practically everyone knew since it was so easy, and "E" was literally just one dot, so that wasn't hard to remember either. The third word was three letters with an "O" being the second as well. The first thing that came to mind was the phrase "I love you," and I remembered that Emily had mentioned Leo learning Morse code from his mother and tapped that phrase in particular when he was nervous or concentrating. I felt accomplished for figuring it out all on my own.

"But that's just a coincidence, right?" Leo continued.

Frank's expression wasn't reassuring. "Back in China, in the old days, people called the seventh month the ghost month. That's when the spirit world and the human world were closest. The living and the dead could go back and forth. Tell me it's a coincidence we're searching for the Doors of Death during the ghost month."

"I'd say that it was practically meant to be that way," Veon said. "Whoever decided when the Feast of Spes was, and Gaea's plan to make a grand entrance on that day made things this way. Besides, it's not like Chinese and Greek/Roman mythology people got together back in the day and decided on the best way to give us demigods rotten luck while trying to save the world. And if Supernatural has taught me anything, it's that not only one religion is ever in play across the world. Every other belief system out there is probably at play, just like the Greco-Roman demigods exist with us. Honestly, it's surprising that the world is even still standing at this point."

I wanted to believe that Chinese belief couldn't have anything to do with the Romans and the Greeks, that the seventh month was just a coincidence (fortune cookies have told me that 7 has been my lucky number on numerous occasions), but Frank's existence itself was proof that the cultures were tied together. The Zhang family went all the way back to Ancient Greece. They'd found their way through Rome, and China, and finally to Canada. Not to mention Nemesis had apparently been opposed to fortune cookies when she'd met Lu, Em, Hazel, and Leo.

That reminded me that Nemesis had apparently said something about Leo being the seventh wheel, the odd man out on the quest, back at the Great Salt Lake. She couldn't have meant seventh as in ghost, right?

Jason pressed his hands against the arms of his chain. "Let's focus on the things we can deal with. We're getting close to Bologna. Maybe we'll get more answers once we find these dwarfs that Hecate-"

The ship lurched as if it had hit an iceberg. Breakfast plates slid across the table, Nico fell backwards out of his chair and banged his head against the sideboard, collapsing on the floor with a dozen magic goblets and platters crashing down on top of him.

"Nico!" Hazel shouted, running to help him.

"What-?"

Frank tried to stand, but the ship pitched in the other direction. I held onto the table to try and keep my balance, but Frank stumbled into the table an went face-first into Leo's plate of scrambled eggs. The universe must have it out for Frank, seriously.

"Look!" Jason shouted, pointing to the walls.

The images of Camp Half-Blood were flickering and changing.

"Not possible," Leo murmured.

It shouldn't have been possible for those enchantments could show anything other than scenes from camp, but suddenly a huge, distorted face filled the entire port-side wall: crooked yellow teeth, a scraggly red beard, a warty nose, and two mismatched eyes - one much larger and higher than the other. The face seemed to be trying to eat its way into the room.

The other walls flickered, showing scenes from above deck. Piper stood at the helm, but something was wrong. From the shoulders down she was wrapped in duct tape, her mouth gagged and her legs bound to the control console. At the mainmast, Coach Hedge was similarly bound and gagged, while a bizarre-looking creature - a sort of gnome/chimpanzee combo with poor fashion sense - danced around him, doing the coach's hair in tiny pigtails with pink rubber bands.

On the port-side wall, the huge ugly face receded so that we could see the entire creature - another gnome chimp, in even crazier clothes. This one began leaping around the deck, stuffing things in a burlap bag - Piper's dagger, Leo's Wii controls, and then he pried the Archimedes sphere out of the command console.

"No!" Leo yelled.

"Ugh," Nico groaned from the floor.

"Piper!" Jason cried.

"Monkey!" Frank yelled.

"Not monkeys," I realized. "Those are dwarfs!"

"Stealing my stuff!" Leo yelled, and he ran for the stairs.

Veon shouted something to Kaze, which I assumed was along the lines of "Kaze, get them! The only person allowed to steal from this ship is you!" or possibly "Go try and out-steal them!"

He bolted up the stairs past the others, while Emily and Veon went to Nico. I went to the bottom of the stairwell, but I couldn't help but pause and wait for the others to see if Nico was okay.

Emily put her hand on his forehead. "No pain that's too bad. He should recover."

"Come on!" I called. "We need to help!"

"Go!" Hazel shouted. "I'll take care of Nico!"

Veon and Emily nodded, before joining me at the stairs as we hurried up to face the dwarfs.