Wow, my first update of the New Year . . . Chapter 7, comin' at ya! Coming up next: we have our first monster fight and Amber has a Coach Hedge moment.

Disclaimer: Do I own the Statue of Liberty? *checks* Nope. Do I own Percy Jackson? *checks again* Still nope.

Chapter7: When monsters attack

I woke up the next morning in the Nemesis cabin. It took me a minute to remember why I wasn't on the floor. Oh yeah, I thought I've been claimed. I was still vaguely shell-shocked that my mom wasn't a school principal, but the goddess of revenge herself. Amber, of course, had been ecstatic to find out Hades was her father.

"My dad's not really my dad?" she had exclaimed "Yes!" As I lay back down on the pillow, I felt something poking into my scalp. Curious, I pulled a bronze clip out of my hair. It was nothing special, with a simple design and no ornamentation. But I like simplicity. Sometimes there's a fine line between decorating something and making it look ridiculous. I snapped the clip shut again, and it grew into a sleek, Celestial bronze dagger. It had a shining bronze blade and little grooves in the handle as a grip. Naturally I was surprised. Not only did my hair clip turn into a weapon, but I was certain that last night, I hadn't been wearing a hair clip. So how did I get it? Oh, duh.

"Thank you mother." I whispered. By now all my half-siblings were getting up and starting to get ready for the day. I turned my new dagger back into a hair ornament, dressed, and left the cabin. Amazingly enough, it was still pretty early. Apparently, being a demigod (unless you were a child of Hypnos or Morpheus) meant you got up when the sun was still rising. Amber was not going to be happy about her new "early riser" status. Speaking of Amber, she ran up to me in a panic while I was watching the sun. She was talking so fast it sounded like gibberish and gesturing wildly at her neck. "Amber, Amber," I soothed. "Calm down. Now tell me what you're upset about- slowly." It took her a minute, but Amber finally got herself to speak at an understandable speed.

"Look at this!" she shouted, pointing at her neck again. Looking at it, I saw that there was a necklace on it. A black ribbon choker with a charm that looked like a pointed cross. On closer inspection, I saw that it wasn't a pointed cross, but a sword.

"The necklace?" I asked. Amber nodded like a bobble head. "It's . . . nice?" I tried. Wrong answer.

"Nice? Nice? A random piece of jewelry appears on my neck and all you can say is that it's nice?"

"I'm . . . sorry?" I replied "Wait, what exactly are you upset about?" Amber huffed at me, and answered as though it should have been obvious.

"This necklace," she said, gesturing at it again, "Was not on me when I went to bed last night. Then I wake up and it's there on my neck! How the fudge did it get there?" I shrugged. Then inspiration hit me.

"Maybe it's a gift from Hades! Like my hair clip!" I exclaimed, pulling said clip out of my hair as I did so. Amber looked confused.

"Your hair clip is a gift from Hades?" she asked.

"No, it's a gift from Nemesis. I woke up with it this morning."

"What makes you think it's a gift from Nemesis?" I grinned and brought out the dagger. Amber's eyes were the size of golf balls.

"Cool! I wonder what mine does!" she cried, pulling on what was sure to be a weapon in hiding. To my surprise, the charm, which appeared to be firmly attached, came off. Then the mini iron sword grew into a full size iron sword. It was pretty cool, sharp black blade and a curved hilt. The handle was wrapped in leather and topped with a skull. Amber was on the verge of geeking out, bouncing on the balls of her feet and making little squee noises. Then of course she had to run into the woods to try it out.

"Oh, crap." I said, suddenly realizing the gravity of the situation. For all you mathematically challenged folks, Amber + sword = absolute chaos. "Amber! Amber come back here!" I yelled, taking off into the woods. It wasn't long before I got lost. Apparently reading about the woods didn't give me magical knowledge of how to navigate them. Just when I was on the verge of giving up, I heard someone yelling.

"Holy bejezzus! What the Hades are you doing here? This isn't supposed to happen! Holy shnizzit!" Then Amber barreled into me, looking as terrified as I'd ever seen her. Before I could ask why, however, she began towing me by the arm through all the shrubbery. When we were safely hidden in a bush, Amber started rapid-fire babbling again. Most of it was intelligible but I managed to catch the words 'practice', 'monsters', and 'scared'. Once again I tried to ask what was going on, but Amber shushed me.

"Here they come." She whispered.

"Here who come?" I asked, but she shushed me again. "You know what, this is ridiculous. I'm going back to camp. You're free to join me when your mystery monsters are vanquished." I stood up . . . and came face-to-face with an enormous black muzzle. Then I got the most vigorous face-licking I have ever received. Then the hellhound gave a happy woof, and I recognized her as Mrs. O'Leary. "Really, Amber?" I giggled, "This is your terrifying monster?" I gestured behind me at the world's friendliest hellhound. Said hound decided she wanted to see who I was talking to up close and personal. So she sank her teeth into Amber's shirt collar and dragged her out of the foliage. Amber glared at me when I laughed at this stunt, but I couldn't help it. From my angle, it looked pretty funny. When she untangled herself from Mrs. O'Leary, (who was sniffing curiously at her jeans), Amber stood up, trying to maintain at least some of her dignity.

"Of course I wasn't talking about Mrs. O'Leary. I said 'here they come', not 'here she comes'. And weren't you listening when I was talking earlier? I was talking about monsters. As in plural, more than one."

"Well then, what exactly were you talking about?" I asked. Amber was spared from having to answer me, however, when I heard a hissing voice I had read about all too many times. (Let me tell you, it's a lot scarier in person)

"Godlingssssss, sssssssurrender now and we may sssssspare your livesssss."

"Amber?" I asked in a voice I was sure I would deny ever using.

"Yeah?" Ditto for Amber.

"There's something bad behind me, isn't there?"

"Uh huh." I slowly turned around and came face to face with a dracanae. She hissed in my face and out of sheer idiocy I said the first thing that popped into my head.

"Ugh, do you guys ever brush your teeth? I mean, seriously, what have you been eating?" Because seriously, her breath stank. Really bad. So of course she had to take out her sword and try to slice me like sandwich bread. I'd been frantically dodging for like, five minutes before I remembered I had my own weapon. Amber had been quicker to arm herself than I, and was currently charging at more monsters (now there were about twenty – where did they all come from?), swinging her sword and screaming "DIE!" I fought the dracanae. You can imagine how that went. She slashed, and I ducked. I stabbed, and she blocked. Then I tripped over a tree root (curse my suddenly-presenting-itself lack of coordination)and the dracanae had the opening she was looking for. She swung her sword in a deadly arc that would have split my skull in two if my ADHD battle reflexes had been any slower. Instead of coming down on my head, the dracanae's sword came down on the flat of my dagger blade, supported by my palms, but the sheer force of the blow forced me down to one knee. My idea formed when I caught sight of my adversary's legs. They were snake trunks, like with all dracanae, more lithe and flexible than human legs, but slicker, without as much traction. Okay, I thought, time to play dirty. I abandoned my guard, causing the monster to pitch forward, and dove at her legs. I sat on her back to keep her from getting up and striking again. Then I stabbed my dagger through a chink in her armor and she disintegrated.

Mrs. O'Leary was making short work of the other invaders, tossing them into the air like rag dolls. Amber wasn't doing too bad herself. Then a horrible thought occurred to me as I stood there in the forest that had become a battlefield.

"Amber!" I yelled to my friend.

"What?" she shouted back while blocking a hellhound.

"We have to get back to camp!"

"Uh, I don't know if you've noticed, Hope, but I'm a little busy here!" Annoyed, I dispatched the demon dog and turned back to my bud,

"Amber, if monsters are attacking here, then what do you think that means?"

"That the camp borders are on the fritz?"

"No! Well, that too, but that's not what I'm talking about. What I meant was if there are monsters here, then that means there are probably more attacking the camp! We have to go help!"

"I thought we were helping!" Amber shouted.

"Yeah, but we'll help more at camp! Now let's go!" I started running in what I thought was the general direction of camp until Amber's voice stopped me.

"Wait! Why don't we just take Mrs. O'Leary?" I did a mental facepalm.

"Right," I said, and hopped onto Mrs. O'Leary's back. Amber sat in front. I didn't argue. Being a daughter of Hades, hellhounds were kind of Amber's thing.

"Alright girl," Amber commanded "take us to camp."

And with that, we were off.

And there is Chapter 7. Looking at how long this was when I typed it, I'm kinda scared how long it's gonna be when I get to Chapter 10 . . . See on paper, I am several chapters ahead of myself in this story. I was gonna post this chapter during the weekend, but then I got caught up watching Storm Hawks. Anyway, what will we find when our heroes get to camp? Well, you'll just have to wait and find out! Remember, review! (Amber was right- that does drive me to write more!)