A/N: I've finally come back with an official update! This book is almost done, so enjoy!

CHAPTER TEN

"What are you guys doing here?" I asked.

"Just know," responded Skylar through the Hermessage, "I am completely against this."

"Nobody cares!" screeched Ashlynn.

"Amanda wants to talk to you for some reason," said Jeff.

"Yeah," Amanda said, "now if I could please have some privacy?"

"No! We want to know, too!"

Amanda rolled her eyes. "Why do you need to know?"

"Why do you not want us knowing?"

"I asked you first,"

Steven and Maddie groaned. "Please?"

Amanda opened the door to the Zeus Dormitory and shoved everyone out. "Go smoke pot or something!"

Amanda looked back at me. "You do realize what's going on, right?"

"What?" I asked.

"You're so clueless. Gwendolyn, Spencer and Christian want to see the sunset eclipse. All its doing is leading you, Ellie and everyone else into more trouble. You guys need to come back to the Institute of Demigods. Your quest is over with."

"B-But Headmaster Perseus said—"

"Don't listen to him! If you guys just come back to the Institute now, you won't have to worry about getting into more trouble, or dying! It's a much better deal than going to some stupid eclipse."
I was silent for a while.

"Just remember I said that," Amanda told me. "You can tell Ellie. It's your choice; I just think it'd be better if you came back to the Institute. That way you don't have to battle or worry about dying. Talk about it with everyone. Just don't tell Gwen, Christian and Spencer. If you sail in the direction of the Institute, they won't know. They'll just have to deal with not seeing it."

I nodded. "I'll talk to Ellie."

Amanda smiled and her image vanished.

I walked down to the lower deck. Ellie was already sleeping, so I couldn't tell her about Amanda's plan. I decided to ask her this morning.

Tucking myself into bed, I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

Rays of sunlight seeped through the stained glass windows. I wasn't sure why the boat had windows, but it was fancy. I looked in the bed to my right to notice that Ellie wasn't sleeping there. I quickly got out from underneath the covers of my bed and walked into the bathroom, changed, then went to the upper deck, expecting Ellie to be there. After all, I would probably be there, and the fact that Ellie and I are twins makes us think alike.

Sure enough, as I opened the door to the upper deck, I noticed Ellie standing over the edge of the ship, while next to her stood Hunter Rivera. He seemed to be telling her something about the seas as he pointed about.

I walked over to the couple.

"Ellie, I need to talk to you for a second."

Ellie looked at me, and then at Hunter. He said, "You can go."

Ellie smiled then walked to the opposite end of the deck.

"What?" she asked.

"Before I went to bed last night, six images appeared before me. It was Maddie, Skylar, Jeff, Ashlynn, Amanda and Steven."

"What did they want?" Ellie inquired.

"Well, Amanda told them to leave, but she wanted to speak to us in particular. She doesn't want us…she doesn't want us dying. She came up with this theory to somehow make the boat sail in the direction of the Institute of Demigods. She thinks that the Sunset Eclipse is stupid, that Gwen, Christian and Spencer don't need to see it."

"But you heard what Perseus said! He said it was okay for them to see the Sunset Eclipse!"

"Doesn't mean we have to," I told her. "Besides, who knows what other things could happen as we sail? Lots of stuff."

"But they want to see their parents. I know that if we hadn't met Zeus last year I'd be dying to see him. I'm sure they want to see Helios, Nyx and Hecate just as badly as I did."

"But…"

"But what?" she demanded.

I sighed. "Forget it. Let's just go to the stupid Sunset Eclipse. Make them happy. But if something bad happens, I'm blaming you."

"What is with your attitude? You didn't seem to have this problem with seeing the Sunset Eclipse before," she noticed.

"I'm just…I'm just stressed. I don't want to die. When Amanda told me her plan, it sounded amazing. I just don't want to die."

"You are always going to be knocking on the door of Death when you are a demigod," she told me.

"Fine," I grumbled. Ellie rolled her eyes, then walked back over and stood next to Hunter. I walked into the ship's kitchen—yes, the ship had a kitchen—and grabbed some breakfast. I noticed Dmitri, Rosa, and Ben were having breakfast as well. I sat down with them and began to eat. We talked for a little bit and after finishing eating, Dmitri offered to put all of our plates away. Ben, Rosa and I thanked him and walked back out to the deck.

Slowly everyone else began to awake. Strangely, it was Melanie and Gwen who woke up last even though they are generally early risers considering their fathers are gods of the sun. And then I realized another strange thing: Ben, who usually slept in very late, was up in the morning.

I brushed it off with a sigh, but then Melanie called me over to talk to me in private.

"Yes?" I asked.

"…I had a dream," she said.

"What happened?"

"Something bad is about to happen. It wasn't just a dream, or me seeing the future. It was both. It was like…a vision."

"What did you see?"

"I saw our ship," she explained. "It was heading towards some…some island. But the island had black fog surrounding it and lightning flashing in it. When our ship actually reached the island, it had…it had skulls on the shore."

I silently gasped. When children of Apollo had visions, it was never a good sign, especially because they tend to be accurate.

"We have to get back to the Institute!" I told her.

"It could just be a chain effect," warned Melanie. "How do you know that if we go off our current course we still won't end up at the island?"

"Ugh. I hate it when you're right."

Melanie shrugged and the conversation ended.

"Uh, guys!" I heard Christian yell.

"Yeah, Christian?"

"There's a Hades of a lot of fog coming our way," he said.

I looked at where he was looking and almost screamed in relief when I noticed it was just gray fog. We had dealt with fog several times during the trip, just not this much. Spencer easily waved his hand and the fog parted before our eyes. I still wondered how he could've learned so much magic so quickly.

Everything seemed fine from that point on. We had eaten lunch and all hung out together, playing random party games like truth or dare despite the dangers of our journey. Eventually the sun began to set, casting a glow of oranges, reds and pinks along the sky, like a painting. I don't know where she got the camera from or why she even brought it, but Ellie quickly took a picture of it before it disappeared below the horizon.

"Where'd you get the camera?" I asked her with a laugh.

She looked at me. "My artistic interests come from mom."

Our mother, Piper St. Cloud, had always been interested in art. I'm surprised she didn't attract Apollo. She illustrated pictures for children's books, but wasn't ever necessarily classified as famous like Rosa's dad and Melanie's mom. Miguel, Rosa's father, and Jacqueline, Melanie's mother, had enough fame to be on Wikipedia and Google pages, and listed under the sections of "Personal Life" and "Children" were Rosa and Melanie, though also listed is that the other parent is unknown, which is quite humorous to read knowing that their parents are Greek gods.

I was just about to call Hunter and Brianna in for dinner, because they seemed to enjoy watching the ocean at night, but as I opened the door, they flung themselves into the kitchen.

Hunter said with a gasp, "Island—"

"Danger," Brianna breathed. "Black fog—"

Melanie and I exchanged a quick glance before running out to the upper deck.

I looked over the edge of the boat to see that Hunter and Brianna were right. The ship was quickly approaching an island with foggy mist nearly cloaking it.

"That's exactly what it looked like in my vision," Melanie explained.

I looked in the water to see something splashing. It seemed to be…singing?

Then I looked over the edge of the boat, and as I looked closer, I realized that it was both ugly and beautiful. It was enchanting. I wanted to swim after it.

The next thing I knew, the mermaid-like creature was spouting blood. It swam away, and had two things that could be its sisters following it.

Olivia, with cotton in her ears, her black hair in a messy pony tail and her gray eyes flashing stood next to me with a quiver of arrows slung across her back and carrying a wooden bow she owned. Hunter, Brianna and Melanie didn't seem to be on the deck anymore.

"You almost jumped in after them," she told me, like I was an idiot, which I probably was. "They were the Sirens."

Suddenly the mermaid creatures didn't sound so appealing anymore. Then, I noticed that they had wings and beaks. I had been distracted.

"How did you know to save me?"

"I think you'd have more common sense than to jump off the side of a boat. Besides, I could hear faint singing. I knew we would stumble upon the Sirens eventually." Olivia's face became distant as she looked over the boat.

"What?" I asked.

She pointed. "Why didn't anyone tell me? We're approaching the Isles of Phobos!"

"The what?"

"I'm a daughter of Athena," she reminded me. "I do my research. The Isles of Phobos is supposed to be a nearly inescapable island controlled by Phobos, the god of fear. It is said that if you think of your fears while inside of the island, they will come alive, and not just mentally to the person thinking about their fear."

I called Hunter and Brianna over before they started eating, because I knew them well enough to know they didn't like to stop eating once they started. Once they came to the deck, somehow calmly, though we were somewhat close to the island, I said,

"We have to avoid the island. Manipulate the water. Will the boat off our current path."

Hunter and Brianna closed their eyes and began gesturing their hands. They seemed like it was a struggle.

"It's too powerful," Brianna said.

"It's like the water's pulling us towards the island," Hunter added.

"Pray to your father! Do something!"

Hunter and Brianna closed their eyes once more, but we still were sailing towards the island.

Suddenly nobody seemed interesting in dinner anymore. Everyone was at the upper deck, praying to every god they could think of just trying to get our path of the Isles of Phobos. And then I felt it. I was afraid. Phobos was the god of fear, and fear was what attracted one to the island. We had to stop being afraid to get away.

"Everyone!" I screeched, breaking off their silent prayers. I told them about how not being afraid was the only way to evade the island, but it was far too late. All of us were generating fear—Olivia and Rosa's fear of spiders, Ben's fear of heights, my fear of losing friends, and the plain fear of the island itself—and Phobos was enjoying it.

"What are we going to do?" screamed Gwen.

"I don't know!" responded Ellie with a screech.

"Hold on!" I shouted. "We're going in!"

As the island got closer, I noticed skulls on the shore—exactly how Melanie described.

My friends started screaming.

I started screaming, too, as we were pulled into the island.

A/N: -Dramatic Music- What will happen? Well, I guess the only way to find out is to review! And considering I'm deleting the previous chapter after I post this due to the fact I don't like authors notes in the middle of my stories (I'm a perfectionist; can't help it :P), then you might not be able to review, and if you can't, do it anonymously, or PM me! But if you do it anonymously, please use your actual fanfiction name so I can get back to you. And I'm too lazy to think of questions today xD