Hi, we're back with this incredibly annoying and long fanfiction.

We just finished our first day back at school and let me tell you it was torturous. Almost as torturous as the fact that one of us has Drama tomorrow morning (me - AHermioneH). [Right, and it's not torturous at ALL that the other has TEXTILES (yup, StormSunfire). ]

I think StormSunfire wants to rant now, so I will let her take the stage.

No, no rant. Just me thinking that drama is no more torturous than textiles.

I meant the other thing you wanted to rant about...

Well, yeah, I guess that I'm pretty sad that nobody is giving us any idea as to what they think of the story, and it feels pretty thankless to be editing pages and pages (editing is so boring; how do any of you do it?) and nobody even drops a note to say 'Hi, I've actually read this'. So, yeah. Rant(ish) over.

Ellie POV

Camp Half-Blood was in a state of chaos.

A cloud of darkness was coming out of the forest, slowly but surely consuming the Arts and Crafts cabin that Annabeth had pointed out when showing us around the first time we came here. There was a sea of teenagers running around, screaming or holding bronze weapons.

That was just about the only part of the whole scene that didn't surprise me.

But I had to admit, the whole shadows-eating-the-camp thing was pretty creepy. Like, why? What did the strawberry fields do to it?

I felt a pang of sorrow as I saw what appeared to be a fiery orange cabin disappear into the darkness along with the Tyche cabin. That was probably my cabin. Eh. At least it wasn't finished.

Nico charged straight into the darkness. Idiot.

Will followed. Another idiot, but an idiot in love with the first idiot.

Then Leo followed. On fire. Because he is another one of the many idiots I surround myself with.

I figured, 'why not?' and followed them into the cloud of darkness ahead. Mistake.

Big mistake.

The darkness wasn't just a shadow. Flippin' heck, it was devouring the camp! What had I been thinking, going into it?

I was another one of the idiots.

Almost as quickly as I ran in, I was flung out of the darkness, landing on my back about thirty feet from the cloud. Smoke curled from my arms.

That was mildly worrying.

A flaming ball of Leo and Will landed with a crash nearby.

"Where's Nico?" I asked.

Will shrugged, a look of panic crossing his face. "I don't know? Maybe it just rejects light bringers? Maybe it's because Nico can become shadow, he can remain in the shadow? Blows me. And besides, if he gets himself killed, I will personally storm all the way down to Hades' palace to give him a piece of my mind! Dying is so inconsiderate!"

Leo sniggered next to him at the phrase 'blows me'. Immature. At least he was in one piece, which was probably fortunate. Probably.

I sat up. "What now?"

A black furry truck materialised, narrowly avoiding trampling us. I screamed in shock, surprise and terror. I did not want to die at the jaws of a black dog the size of a truck.

Percy jumped down from the dog's back, along with the others, who looked a little travel sick. "What's the status on camp? Has anyone disappeared into the darkness?"

Will nodded. "We all tried. We were kicked out, but Nico wasn't. We're sort of just hoping he's still alive in there."

Hazel had appeared by now with Frank and Piper. "Nico's gone?"

Percy looked downwards at himself. "Not gone. Just missing."

Hazel's face crumpled with relief.

Percy pulled out his sword from his pocket and fiddled with it. "What do we do now? We can't just wait for Nico to pop out and say 'Yeah, I'm alright', can we? We've gotta do something. Where are all of the campers?"

Hazel shrugged. "Check the Big House?"

Percy nodded. "Alright."

o0O0o

Mr D had vanished. Surprise.

Chiron was holding an emergency meeting around the ping-pong table with the head counsellors. Travis was holding a table tennis bat, flipping it in his hand. Clarisse was banging her fist on the table repeatedly, the other hand holding a bottle of Cheese Whiz. Miranda had her hands splayed nervously on the table. Some form of unidentifiable weed was sprouting from the corners and wrapping around the table legs. Nobody seemed to notice. Everyone was looking absolutely terrified. Except Clarisse, who just looked absolutely furious. Not that that was unusual or anything, though.

Chiron tapped his hand on the table. "Silence. Now," he said, "does anyone have an idea as to what this is?" I assumed the 'this' he was referring to was the darkness.

Percy looked slightly ill. "Yes, actually."

All heads turned in his direction. A couple of people looked surprised. Most just looked tired.

Percy swallowed. "I think it's something to do with the angry primordial who's already tried to kill us, not mentioning names. You know, power and all that. I assume you know who I'm talking about?"

Jason looked vaguely queasy. "Yes. Don't elaborate, please."

Percy smiled grimly. "No problem. I think this might be referring to the last line of that damn prophecy. Anyone agree with me?"

Clarisse mumbled an agreement from her corner of the room. Lou Ellen was frowning in distaste, clearly having the strongest understanding of Nyx's power, as a daughter of Hecate and all that.

Chiron nodded slowly. "So you're saying that this is a deadly threat, which we have noticed but is good to have confirmed. So what are we going to do about it?"

Percy shrugged. "She wants me and Annabeth. We could go out and see what she wants."

Chiron shook his head. "I don't think that's a good idea, Percy."

"I don't think we have a choice, Chiron."

Chiron braced his hands on the arms of his wheelchair. "Well, I was hoping you wouldn't say that."

Annabeth muttered next to Percy, "So did I."

Thanks for reading and hopefully reviewing. Um... updates should come pretty regularly, but not as frequently as they used to because of our new massive workload.

Please review. Then at least we'll know if you've read it.

AHermioneH and StormSunfire