Before me yawned a gaping pit. Around me, a cavern of inky darkness fell home to grey mist-like creatures. Churning around to a mindless rhythm, they seemed like nothing more than whispering rags of smoke, but I knew better. These were the spirits of the dead, and they were in my dreams.

They tugged at my clothes, trying to pull me back, but I felt compelled to walk forward to the very edge of the chasm.

Looking down made my stomach drop.

The pit stretched so wide and was so completely black, I knew it must be bottomless. Yet I had a feeling that something was trying to rise from the abyss, something huge and evil.

'The little hero,' an amused voice echoed far down in the darkness. 'Too weak, too young, but perhaps you will do.'

The voice felt ancient- cold and heavy. It wrapped around me like sheets of lead. Drowning- oh gods I'm drowning!

'They have misled you, girl,' it crooned. 'Barter with me. I will give you what you want.'

A shimmering image hovered over the void: my Mãe, frozen at the moment she'd dissolved in a shower of gold. Her face was distorted with pain, as if the Minotaur were still squeezing her neck. Her eyes looked directly at me, pleading: Go!

I tried to cry out, but my voice wouldn't work.

Cold laughter echoed from the chasm.

An invisible force pulled me forward. It would drag me into the pit unless I stood firm.

'Help me rise, girl.' The voice became hungrier. 'Bring me the bolt. Strike a blow against the treacherous gods! '

The spirits of the dead whispered around me, 'No! Wake!'

The image of my mother began to fade. The thing in the pit tightened its unseen grip around me.

I realized it wasn't interested in pulling me in. It was using me to pull itself out.

'Good,' it murmured. 'Good.'

' Wake!' the dead whispered. 'Wake!'

oOo

Someone was shaking me.

My eyes opened, and it was daylight.

"Well," Annabeth said, "the zombie lives."

I was trembling from the dream. I could still feel the grip of the chasm monster- Kronos around my chest. Gods damn the guy was scary. If I had my way, I would be screaming and heading straight to the nearest large body of water. I couldn't- not in the face of Annabeth's annoyance and Luke's concern. "How long was I asleep?" I stifled a yawn instead, forcing my tremors to stop.

"Long enough for me to cook breakfast." Annabeth tossed me a bag of nacho-flavoured corn chips from her bag.

"Annabeth," Luke warned. "Please, I'm not awake enough to be pulling you two apart from a fight. Stop it with the sass."

The looks both of us gave him were identical looks of offence. "I'm not being sassy!" Annabeth cried.

"Bold of you to assume I can fight," I snipped.

Annabeth was the one rounding on me for that. "You can't fight? You single-handedly took down Medusa last night, or have you forgotten?" She raised an eyebrow.

I raised an eyebrow right back. "I'd like to forget about it, thanks. Besides, I was joking." Her scowl deepened to truly impressive levels while her mouth opened to no doubt lavish me in knives of her choosing.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm bad at sarcasm," I preemptively interrupted and waved her off.

Luke rolled his eyes and grabbed my arm to pull me to my feet. I groaned as I stretched. I think my back must've popped in twenty different places.

Annabeth wrinkled her nose, "Gross."

"It's just my spine," I said, picking up my bag. "It's not like yours doesn't pop too."

"Is that a threat?"

"No." I smiled innocently. "I will pop your spine like it's popping candy. That is a threat."

"You are so weird," Annabeth griped out, looking at me like I'm a particularly insane dolphin that somehow managed to get into a forest.

Fair enough.

Luke stepped in. "Please, I have a headache. Ophelia, eat your chips. And Annabeth, just because she's weird, doesn't mean you should call her that to her face."

"You just agreed with me," she pointed out to Luke. He ignored her.

oOo

Fully awake with my bag on my back, I stumbled along with my fellow demi-gods through the woods.

I'm no better at navigating the wilderness in the daytime than I am at nighttime, and I can only go every few feet before I start loudly cursing because I almost rolled my ankle again. Annabeth must've learnt many new curse words in the past three hours.

"Fucking whore-son of a puta!" I snarl, yanking my sleeve away from the offending branch it had gotten stuck on.

"Do you ever stop swearing?" Annabeth asked, breaking away from the silence she had adopted. "Also, what's a 'puta'?"

"I don't swear in front of children," I defended myself. "And I don't always swear, but these trees are getting on my fucking nerves." I duck to avoid another tangle with a low hanging branch. "Puta translates to 'whore' in English, but I can also mean many different swear words or even, 'child'." I shrugged. "Depends on the context."

She eyed me. "How many languages do you speak?"

"I'm Brazilian so I speak Portuguese, and I know Spanish since I have cousins who speak it." I hop over a log. Fucking logs man… "English, obviously, and then Greek and Latin. I can vaguely understand Italian, but don't ask me to speak it."

"Huh," she hummed. "No French? You've already got most of the Latin-based languages, but not French?"

"French is a mutant tongue of beasts!" I spat, gesturing wildly with my hands. "Why the fuck do they need so many vowels?!"

Annabeth laughed at me. "Enfin, quelque chose que je sais que vous n'avez pas!" (Finally, something I know that you don't!)

I narrowed my eyes at her. "I know you said something about me, but I don't care enough to understand it." Then I realised, "Wait, why do you know French?"

"The Aphrodite Cabin are all fluent and some of the best architecture in the world is in France," she summarised.

"Ah. You like architecture?" I prodded.

She flushed. "I love it!"

Oooh! This, I gotta expand on. "What're your thoughts on Modern Minimalism vs Antique Gothic?" I posed innocently.

And lo, she lights up. "I'm so glad you asked!"

We spent the next hour trading ideas on architecture and interior design. I argued vehemently that Cottage Core aesthetics and Vintage Gothic architecture were far superior, while she insisted that Modern has its benefits and that Roman and Greek aesthetics should make a comeback. I almost wanted to out my future knowledge just to tell her about the disgusting future Minimalism in Design that becomes popular in the future; it felt like she would have agreed with me.

Luke butted in after we nearly started screaming at each other about the aesthetics of the color brown on exterior walls. "How can you know so much about building design and not know a single thing about sports?" he asked me incredulously.

I looked at him like he was speaking Parseltongue. "Building design is important while sports are weird and I cannot see any appeal in it."

Annabeth backed me up. "Baseball is great, but architecture is clearly superior."

Luke watched us with amusement as we high-fived each other. He's probably glad we're finally getting along.

"I see now, of course, I was just being silly." His sarcasm was obvious.

Annabeth and I laughed so hard that we started crying, but that's okay cause I think I've finally found the secret to getting along with her. Go on about architecture, and voila! Friends!

Then I tripped.

"Merda!" I shout, falling on my face.

"Looks like we found our ticket west," Luke pointed out.

I looked over to see what had tripped me up. There were train tracks right through the middle of the clearing, half-covered by leaves.

"Well, guess that's one way to do it," I muttered, brushing myself off with all my non-existent dignity. "So we which direction do we pick? Also, why the fuck is there a train track in the middle of an ass-backwards forest?"

Annabeth pointed, and we walked.

I never did get an answer to my last question.

oOo

When we got to the Amtrak station, the only train going west was at noon, so we had to chill at the station for another three hours.

After Luke had brought us our tickets using most of the money we brought from Camp, he wandered off to go pickpocket strangers for more cash so we could buy an actual lunch. Annabeth just nodded at this and quickly pointed out some areas she had noticed where pickpocketing could be easier for Luke. They discussed some other things that were definitely illegal before waving each other off.

They acted like they had done stuff like this enough times for it to become a habit.

Thing is, they have, and I couldn't even begrudge them for it.

"Sit on the bench, don't wander, and definitely don't cause any property damage!" Luke shot over his shoulder before disappearing into the masses.

"Oi!" I yelped before quieting down with a mumble as Annabeth shot me a pointed look. Just because that does sound like what an unsupervised small demi-god may do if they got bored doesn't mean he can't have a bit more faith in us! Or, well, at least iacted/i like he has more faith in us.

Annabeth busied herself by pouring over a map, trying to figure out our quickest route to LA with a highlighter that she got from inside her bag. The Daughter of Athena carries highlighters on a quest to prevent World War 3, go figure.

I peered over her shoulder. She had highlighted a route that would take us straight through the country but ends up in San Francisco. I winced; we should stay as far away as possible from the Romans right now.

"Maybe instead of that route we could go until Denver, transfer to a Greyhound up to Vagas, then grab a Taxi to LA?" I suggested.

She gave me a look. "Why would we switch from a train to a Greyhound in Denver? That may be the last stop but there's another company that can get us all the way to San Fran. And what would we be stopping in Vegas for?"

"A Greyhound would be cheaper than another train ticket," I insisted. "And we can stop in Vegas for a night in a hotel! I don't know about you, but I could use a bed after travelling for so long, and we'll still have plenty of time to spare too!"

Annabeth just looked at me flatly. "You are such a Seaweed brain. This is a quest; we have no time for luxuries or saving money. We're taking the train to San Francisco."

I sighed in defeat. Well, Ares messed up the route once, he'll probably do it again. If not, I can totally hijack the trip. It was just a matter of when, how many monsters are around, and how much distraction would it take for us to miss that train…

We were silent for a few minutes as I ideally swung my feet and Annabeth focused on her map before she suddenly spoke up.

"Luke says you're family," Annabeth said, not looking up from her map.

I blinked. "Truly?"

"Yeah." She looked up. "I haven't had to share him before, only Thalia was also family."

A warm feeling bubbled up in my chest before I squashed it down. I'm only included because I've been manipulating him - I forced him to become my soulmate without him knowing. He doesn't actually like me. No way someone would consider a stranger family after only two weeks.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. "I know I don't belong. I'm just intruding."

Annabeth grabbed my arm and I flinched.

"No," she spoke firmly, "You belong." She took a deep breath, blinked twice, then rushed out, "I was the one forcing you away. I'm sorry." Her grey eyes bored into mine.

"I… " I was speechless. Was she only doing this because Luke told her to? "Annabeth, I don't- "

She cut me off. "You're family," she reinforced. "I may not like sharing, but I'm glad to have a new little sister."

"I'm not little!" I indignantly replied. "I'm more mature than you!"

She grinned. "But I'm older than you by a month!"

I gaped at her for a second before reaching out to grab her in a hug. She stiffened up before relaxing, cautiously running her hands down my back.

"I've never had a sibling," I murmured into her shoulder. "You're going to have to guide me on that one."

By the time she pulled back, she was beaming. "Duh! First rule: We get to make fun of Luke when he's not here because little siblings are annoying that way."

I burst into giggles and she joined in. We were giggling so hard that when I fell off the bench, we didn't even pause, only laughing harder. A few people gave us looks as they passed, but they moved off, hurrying to catch their own trains.

Luke found us like that, holding our ribs in pain as we laughed too hard.

"I see that someone has made up," he snarked. "I guess since you're so busy laughing, I get to eat all this delicious McDonalds by myself." Waving around a big bag of warm cheeseburgers, he wafted the smell in our faces before casually strolling off.

"No!" Annabeth shrieked, lunging at him.

"Not my fries!" I proclaimed dramatically. "Not my innocent fries!"

He turned back only to give us a stern glare. It lasted all of ten seconds before he started sniggering.

That got us all laughing again.

You know, when I look back on it, that's one of my favourite memories of the whole quest; the first time I felt like we're a family. Together.

A/N

Izzy: Bruh, I'm not American so I physically have to stop myself from writing meters, cm, and kilometres for distances; it drives me insane. Also we don't have a plan for this chapter and beyond (other than a few important scenes), so I'm just winging it. This is basically a filler chapter.

Raven: The in-between parts of questing (a.k.a. The journey in general) is… surprisingly hard to write. I reckon it's the lack of action. A lack of action when there are only three concrete characters to write with is more boring than I thought it would be.

Izzy: Speak for yourself; I love writing 'lack of action' because I can focus on character development and their arcs! I'm just annoyed because I had no plan and had to come up with an outline this morning.

Raven: Welcome to the life of self-imposed update times; the readers love it, the writers love-hate it.