Disclaimer:

I do not own the PJO characters. Also I'm warning you now that a big part is about to happen (hehe).

After a few hours of painful hiking, we finally neared the cave.

"So, who's going in there first?" I joked.

Annabeth rolled her eyes. "Hopefully this is easier than it sounds, but it never is," she sighed.

I pulled out καλοσύνη out of pendant form and Nico pulled out his sword. "Ready to go?" I asked everyone while picking up Coral.

"Yep," Nico responded.

I looked over at Annabeth and she nodded. And with that, we walked into the dark cavern entrance.

Thankfully I was able to lighten the place up a bit, if not we would have definitely gotten lost.

"Why are there so many freaking tunnels!" I yelled out in frustration as we came across yet another three tunnels.

"Will you keep your voice down?" Annabeth said, "I think we might be close, it's getting warmer which means we're getting farther into the mountain."

"How do you know we aren't getting further away from where they're keeping Khione?" I said.

"We just have to keep going and hope we find it."

"Nico, what do you think?" I asked.

"We're definitely getting closer, I can feel it," he responded.

I took a deep breath. "Good," I said, "Let's keep walking then."

Ever so often we switched who carried Coral, she may have been two, but she wass still really heavy.

"Are we almost there?" Coral whispered in my ear.

"I'm not sure but I hope so," I whispered back. I decided to walk over to where Nico was walking. "Hey, do you know where we are?" I asked.

"The main cavern should be right up here." He said. I nodded.

"Shh," Annabeth said, which stopped us in our tracks. "I hear voices," she whispered.

Sure enough, you could hear deep, gruff voices coming from the end of the tunnel we had been walking down. "Trish, estinguish the light," Annabeth whispered. I quickly stopped glowing and you could see a faint blue light coming from the other end of the tunnel.

"She's in there," I whispered.

"How do you know?" Nico asked.

"It's colder here than it was back there," I explained. I handed Coral to Annabeth and walked closer to the entrance.

"Trish!" Annabeth whispered but I ignored her.

I peered around the corner of the tunnel into the cavern. The cavern was a lot different than the rest of the tunnels. It was covered in ice and had a throne in one corner, and what sat beside the throne surprised me. It was Khione bound up in chains. Khione might not be the nicest Immortal but no one deserves chains around their ankles and wrists.

On the other side of the large cavern was the largest human-looking thing I had ever seen. They were probably 13 feet tall and were blue. I'd never seen a giant before, but I assumed he was an ice giant.

Beside him were three more of his friends, one of them held a horn and the others held different sorts of weapons.

I backed away from the entrance and back to where the others were still waiting.

"Yup, she's in there all right," I said, "Bad news is there are four giants, three of them have weapons and they are blocking us from sneaking over to Khoine. Annabeth, you have a plan?"

"I always have a plan," she smiled. After she explained what the plan was, we once again took out our weapons and I watched as Annabeth and Nico charged into the cavern.

You see, the plan was for Annabeth and Nico to charge in and distract the giants while I snuck over to Khoine and break her chains. But unfortunately for us, the one giant knew how to use the horn. As soon as the giants saw the others, they blew the horn which probably signaled for more help.

I decided to rush in with Coral still in my arms, and I ran over to Khione.

She seemed annoyed as I ran over. "Khione, your father sent me, and I'm here to get you out," I said as I sat coral next to the throne and began pulling the chains off Khione.

"I don't need help," Khione snarled, "I had everything under control."

"Yeah, it sure does look like it," I said, rolling my eyes.

"Who brings a baby to a battle anyway?" She asked.

"Me. And she's not a baby, she's two."

"Whatever, are you almost done?"

"Do you want to stay here?" I threatened.

She just huffed and let me keep fiddling with the chains. Great thing was, because of my curse, all I had to do was focus on the chain and pull the molecules apart so they easily fell off.

"Ugh, you're that great one my father keeps talking about, of course you are."

I had finally gotten all the chains off of Khione, and just like I had predicted the sound of the horn had attracted more giants to the scene.

I rushed to help Annabeth and Nico with the giants while Khione stood in the back without a care in the world. "Aren't you going to help us!?" I screamed at Khione.

"Nope!" She yelled back. I rolled my eyes and continued to fight the many giants coming through the one tunnel.

"Trish! There's too many, we have to leave!" Annabeth yelled.

I went to say something but was cut off by the ear-piercing scream of Coral. I looked over to where I had left her to see a giant had gripped her in his hand.

"LET HER GO!" I screamed.

"No!" Said the deep voice of the giant. He threw his sword but it went soaring past my head.

I sneered at him before I heard another scream but this one didn't come from Coral. It was Annabeth. I turned around to see that the sword had pierced her in the calf.

"NO!" I turned back to the giant who had Coral in his hand, I didn't know what to do. I couldn't help both at once because I had used most of my energy getting up here. I stared back and forth between Coral and Annabeth. Annabeth had already pulled the sword out of her leg but the wound was bleeding badly.

"Nico!" I yelled, "Get Annabeth!" I watched him run over to Annabeth and prop her up.

I turned back to the giant who was still clutching my sister. "There is no way out of this," he said.

I ran towards him and stabbed him in the gut, distracting him long enough for me to use the rest of my energy to pin him up against the wall of the cavern and pull a crying Coral out of his hands.

I started to run towards Nico with Coral in my arms but I had just used all of my energy so it was like running through water. Khione was gone, and Nico was with Annabeth all the way on the other side of the cavern.

"ARRRHHHH!" I didn't look back because I knew that was not a friendly scream.

"NICO!" I yelled.

He propped Annabeth up against the wall and rushed over to me.

"ARRRRGHHH!" The giant screamed again. The other giants were thankfully occupied with something Nico had summoned so they thankfully weren't coming to help.

Nico reached me and I placed Coral in his arms. "What? W-what are you doing?" He asked.

"Saving your butts, now, you have to listen to me, take Annabeth and Coral and run. I can handle this guy just run." I knew I couldn't handle that guy, but hopefully, Nico believed me and would get them to safety. But of course, he didn't believe me.

"No Trish, I can't just leave you here," he argued.

"I don't care if you can't, but you will."

"ARRRRGGGHHHHHH!" I could now feel the giant running over to us.

"NICO! RU-," I wasn't able to finish the sentence for the giant had closed me in ice. I tried to move, I tried to use my curse to break my way out but I was too tired and without room to move I couldn't activate my curse. I was only able to stare straight ahead.

"Trish!" I heard Nico yell. He kept banging on the ice that surrounded me but it was no use. He then began plunging Stygian into the ice but it eventually got stuck. I wanted to tell him to run but I couldn't. I could only stand there, stuck in the prison that surrounded me.

Eventually, I watched Nico, with tears running down his face, walk out of the cavern with a wounded Annabeth in one arm and a crying Coral in the other.

It was getting dark and cold, so very cold…

Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed hehe, I should be posting the next chapter sometime today but we'll see.

-Lou Ellen and Sydney the Sydney