Fun Fact: I wrote this entire chapter while holding an apple in my mouth. I paused, occasionally, to take a bite of the apple, but I had nowhere to set it down, so...yeah. I think that takes talent, to write a decent chapter while holding a large piece of fruit in one's mouth, especially when said fruit is dripping juice down your shirt and making your fingers stick to the keyboard.

Ten reviews this time, please, guys. I hate to ask, but I'm behind on writing anyway.

And I love getting lots of reviews. :) It's my favoritest thing ever.

Chapter XXXVI

Nico

Nico's mind is a mess.

His emotions are all over the place. They're tangled and confusing and completely overwhelming.

He doesn't know what to think about anything anymore.

He sneaks a peek at Reyna. She's staring up at the sky again, an unreadable look in her eyes. The hint of a smile is tugging at the corners of her mouth. Normally, he wouldn't have told anyone the things that he'd told her, but even if Reyna didn't go through Tartarus, she knows what it is to be completely alone. And it was kind of nice to be able to talk to someone about what had happened, since he can't exactly talk to the others about it. Not to Percy, for obvious reasons. Not to Thalia, since they aren't exactly friends and she's never around anyway. And not Grover, because Nico gets the feeling that the satyr doesn't exactly like him. Probably something to do with the fact that death follows Nico wherever he goes and Grover is in love with nature.

Nico looks away again, staring down at a little deformed acorn in the dirt between his feet. For some reason, it reminds him of Percy.

Which only serves to make his mind an even bigger chaotic mess.

He picks up the acorn and bounces it on his palm, wondering. What if...

But no. He can't torture himself with what ifs and could bes.

Still, sometimes he couldn't help but think...What if...

He sighs and shakes his head, placing the acorn back on the ground. As he straightens up, Coach Hedge snores loudly in his sleep and rolls over, muttering something. Mellie? He dismisses it. It's the satyr's business, not his. He glances to Reyna.

"Should we wake him up? I'm good for shadow-traveling." He says, keeping his voice calm, even. Neutral.

She looks over at Coach Hedge. Her eyes go soft, sympathetic. "Nah, let him sleep. He deserves it. And I doubt he got much while he was tied up in the middle of thousands of monsters who would have liked nothing better than to eat him." She glances up at him, and then gazes into the woods with an unsettled expression. "Still, I'd like to get out of this place soon. Something about it is...hostile." She shivers.

Nico suddenly gets the ridiculous urge to wrap an arm around her shoulders and comfort her. He pushes it away uncomfortably and mentally berates himself for thinking it in the first place. He doubts Reyna would appreciate it anyway.

"Has there been much monster activity?" He asks. Reyna continues gazing into the trees, her eyes slightly unfocused.

"There was a Cyclops soon after we arrived, but nothing since." Her voice is a little dreamy, like she isn't really paying attention to the conversation.

"Weird." Nico mutters. With the Athena Parthenos' aura of magic, they should be drawing all monsters within a hundred mile radius to their little camp.

Reyna doesn't respond. Her eyes are far away, still looking towards the woods to Nico's right.

Nico looks at Coach Hedge. The satyr's nose twitches in his sleep, and he pulls his baseball bat closer. But he doesn't wake up.

A sense of unease fills Nico. The hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Something is wrong.

"Reyna-" He starts, trying to get her attention, but before he has the chance to say anything, her eyes focus and fill with alarm.

"Nico, move!" She shouts at him. But she doesn't give him the oppurtunity to listen, which is good, since he had no intention whatsoever of doing so. Instead, she lunges towards him and tackles him to the ground, just in time for a hellhound to leap out of the trees and over their heads, teeth bared, red eyes gleaming.

Reyna, pinning him to the ground, scrambles to her feet, cursing. Nico would have used some choice words as well, but Reyna's tackle knocked the breath out of him. She grabs his hand and pulls him to his feet.

"Next time, listen." She hisses at him. But Nico can tell she's not really angry. There's relief filling her eyes, with no room for anything else.

"How did you know I wasn't going to?" He asks stubbornly, drawing his sword and scanning the trees for the hellhound. Reyna glares at him.

"I could see it in your eyes." She answers. The razor-sharp blade of her sword reflects the light of the sun as it peeks over the trees.

Nico, wisely, decides not to protest that.

"Can you sense the hellhound anywhere?" Reyna asks, finally looking away from him. Nico almost sighs out loud in relief at having that glare pointed away from him. But he forces himself to concentrate. He should be able to do it, since hellhounds are from the Underworld...

Something clicks, and his senses open up. He grins triumphantly and then pales suddenly, the grin sliding off his face as soon as it came.

He swears, a long string of increasingly creative curses falling from his tongue. Reyna looks at him with a mild expression on her face.

"Are you quite finished yet?" She asks when he pauses to take a breath.

"I'm pretty sure we both are." Nico answers, his voice grim. Reyna furrows her brow in confusion.

"What do you mean?"

Nico gestures to the woods. "There isn't just one hellhound."

Reyna pales slightly. She knows he wouldn't have cursed like that unless it was a lot more than just one. "How many?"

"I'm not sure. A lot. Too many to count."

Reyna, instead of cursing, starts thinking. Nico smiles a little, amused by the way she looks when she's concentrating intensely.

She tilts her head back slightly, looking up, as if trying to see into her own head. She taps the blade of her sword against her ankle and shuffles her feet a bit, moving from side to side, like she's trying to speed up her thought process. Her fingers tap a rythm against her hip.

"Okay, so obviously we just leave. Right? We can wake up Coach Hedge and shadow-travel the rest of the way to camp." She finally says.

Nico almost laughs at the blatant obviousness of the solution. And at his own stupidity. That should have been the first thing he thought of.

"Yeah, that makes sense. Let's just hope they don't attack before we have a chance to leave." He replies. Reyna strides quickly over to Coach Hedge, but stops a few yards away.

What is she doing? Nico wonders. Slowly, she kneels down and stretches out her arm, nudging Coach Hedge with the tip of her sword.

Coach Hedge jumps to his feet, wildly swinging his baseball bat. If Reyna had been standing, she would have been decapitated.

"DIE!" He screams, his eyes still half closed and bleary from sleep. He smashes his baseball bat into the ground. If Reyna had been any closer, she would have just gotten crushed.

"Calm down, Coach! It's just us! We had to wake you up because-WILL YOU STOP SWINGING THAT THING?!" Reyna yells at the satyr, after almost being bashed on the head, despite her carefully maintained distance away from him.

Coach Hedge finally stops swinging his bat, looking sheepishly-or is it goatishly?-over at Reyna, who's standing with her hands on her hips and a murderous look on her face.

She looks like Annabeth. Nico thinks. And she does, at least in her bearing.

"Sorry, cupcake." Even when apologizing, the Coach still manages to sound like a drill sergeant.

Reyna sighs. "Just be more careful next time, please." Her tone of voice is resigned, like she already knows it isn't going to happen. She's probably right.

But Nico is distracted when his senses start setting off alarm bells in his head.

A thrill of fear races down his spine as he realizes red eyes are glaring in at them from all directions. Light flashes off bared fangs.

"Um, guys..." They turn to look at him. "We really should be going." He tries to convey his urgency without provoking the circling hellhounds.

Reyna seems to catch on. She glances discreetly over at the trees. Her eyes widen a bit, but she covers her shock well. "Yes, we really should. Come on, Gleeson. Let's just go over to the statue and Nico and get out of here, okay?" Her tone pleads with him to understand.

"Whatever, kiddo." He shrugs noncommittedly, obviously not hearing the urgency in Reyna's voice. Then he catches a glimpse of the hellhounds. "Holy mother!" He yelps.

The hellhounds snarl in unison. It's so loud that Nico swears he can feel it. They circle closer, a few of them snapping their teeth in Nico's direction.

Nico just sighs. "Oh, come on. Can't I just have good luck for once?"

A hellhound that seems slightly bigger than the rest steps towards him, head lowered, fiery red eyes gleaming, saliva dripping from its bared jaws.

Apparently not.

"Reyna, Coach, get over here! Now!" He yells, giving up on trying not to provoke the hellhounds. Reyna and Coach are only maybe twenty yards away, across the clearing, but as they start to sprint towards him, it seems ridiculously far away.

Nico holds a rope attached to the Athena Parthenos in the hand with his sword, and reaches the other out to Reyna, who's pulling Coach Hedge by his wrist. As long as they're all linked in some way, Nico should be able to transport all of them.

As one, the hellhounds surge forward, lunging at them...

...And Reyna's hand slips into Nico's. They fall into darkness, with the sounds of the attacking hellhounds fading into silence.

Haha, cliffy. Sort of. :) I love cliffhangers.