We were pretty miserable that night. We camped out in a clearing but we dared not light a fire for fear of attracting more monsters. We'd dealt with some pretty crazy stuff over the past few months but all three Kindly Ones and Medusa were enough for one day. Annabeth was so exhausted by the time we found camp that she was leaning on me for support. I suggested we should take turns in keeping watch and that Annabeth should get some sleep but she insisted that she finish with my back first. I told Grover I'd take first watch and he flew up into a tree. Instead of sleeping though he just stared up into the night sky.

"Go to sleep," I told him as Annabeth began pulling more shards out of my back. I winced as she did so. "We'll wake you if there's trouble."

He nodded his head but still didn't close his eyes. "It makes me sad Percy."

"What does? The fact that you chose to sign up for this quest? The fact that you've spent the last few months running from monsters? The fact that you chose to save me in the first place? Trust me, Grover, I wouldn't blame you." Annabeth clipped me round the back of the head at that last bit.

"No Percy, this." He gestured round the clearing at the junk scattered around. "And the night sky; you can't even see the stars. The light pollution, the river pollution, the plastic pollution. All of it. This is a horrible time to be a satyr."

I nodded. "I guess it is," I mumbled. I felt a sharp pain as Annabeth pulled out a particularly large shard and hissed in pain.

"Humans are choking out the world so bad. At this rate, I'll never find Pan."

I remembered him telling me about Pan. The lost god of the wild. "Come on Grover, I believe in you. You'll get that Searcher's License and find Pan, no problem."

"I guess. But in two thousand years, not one searcher has come back alive. My dad was a searcher, so was my uncle Ferdinand." He choked up a bit as he mentioned the statue he'd found. "I have to believe that I'll be the first but it's so difficult sometimes."

"Grover, sometimes it's difficult believing that I'll survive to the next day, but I don't let that stop me. If it ever starts to feel overwhelming, and it does far too often, I just stop thinking about the future. I focus on what is happening now. What was it that Dory said? 'Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.'" Grover laughed at that and Annabeth muttered something about me being a seaweed brain through and through. "It doesn't matter no ones come back yet, it doesn't matter that you might not make it back because you're still here and you've still got a chance. You are going to become a searcher and you are going to find Pan."

Grover smiled down at me. "Thanks, Percy."

"No problem G-man." I smiled to myself as I felt Annabeth's hands dance across my back, pulling out more shards of glass.

There was a moment of silence before Grover said, "Listen, I'm… I'm sorry about your mother. She was a good woman."

I nodded as tears began to well again before quickly changing the subject again. "How are we going to get into the Underworld?"

Grover sensed that I didn't want to talk about it. "I'm not sure but, in Aunty Em's lair, when you left, Annabeth and I were talking-"

"So Annabeth's got a plan then?" I interrupted.

"No," Annabeth said, "but we thought something weird was going on. On the bus, why did the Kindly Ones take so long to attack us? And when they did they seemed to be holding back."

I realised she was right. They had been.

"And when they spoke, they said, 'where is it?'" Grover put in.

"Well, they were talking about me weren't they?"

"I'm not sure. They said, 'where is it?' Like an object."

"What are you saying?"

"It's just- if we've missed something with this quest, we've only got nine days before the solstice."

I groaned. "This is a disaster! We barely got out of New York and we're stuck here with no money, no food and no way west. I should have never dragged you on this quest. I'm sorry Grover."

Grover blew a couple of notes on his pipes. "You've got nothing to be sorry for Percy. You've done amazingly so far. You helped us fight off all three Kindly Ones, you helped us defeat Medusa."

"Grover's right, Percy. Sometimes quests go wrong and there's nothing you can do to stop it. All you can do is, as you so wisely put it, 'just keep swimming'." I smiled at that.

"You two go to sleep. I'll take first watch," Grover said as Annabeth finished up working.

We started to protest but he began to play Mozart, soft and sweet and I turned away, my eyes stinging. After a few bars of Piano Concerto no. 12, I collapsed backwards onto what felt like a soft pillow and I was asleep.

In my dreams, I stood in a dark cavern before a gaping pit. Grey mist creatures churned all around me, whispering rags of smoke that I somehow knew were the spirits of the dead.

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 me dizzy.

The pit yawned 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. 'They have misled you, boy,' it said. 'Barter with me. I will give you what you want.'

A shimmering image hovered over the void: my mother, frozen at the moment she'd dissolved in a shower of gold. Her face was distorted with pain as if the fury's talons were still digging into her side. 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, boy.' 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 realised it wasn't interested in pulling me in. It was using me to pull itself out.

Suddenly, a horse-shaped wisp of smoke with a man riding on it galloped up to me and pulled me out of the monster's grasp.

"No! Curse you!" The voice screeched.

The man carried me away and I entered another dream. The ghost morphed into a real man and horse and I realised that they were one creature. Where the horse's head should be, a man's upper torso was fused seamlessly. The horse body I was sat on was pure white. His face was aged but had a warm smile and twinkling eyes as if I was the one person in the whole Universe he wanted to see.

I looked around me. We were in a large field with a grove of trees at the far end. There was a herd of wild horses and some birds that looked a bit like chickens. It looked very peaceful. "Where are we?" I asked, mostly to myself.

The centaur didn't reply, just gestured for me to continue watching. I looked back and saw some people running towards us. Behind them, a huge being came from over the hill. He had gold eyes and a smile so cold it could freeze a desert. He pointed his finger at one of the people, a child, and they instantly began to age. One step and they were 20. Another and they reached 50. Two more and they collapsed onto the floor, their weak legs giving up on them and their long grey hair falling around their gaunt, wrinkled face and sunken eyes. Seconds later, their bones had crumbled to dust. The being grinned with glee as the rest of the people scattered. He crushed one of them under his foot as they ran too close in panic. He pointed towards the grove as another ran towards it for cover and all the trees rotted away.

I watched in horror as over the next two minutes all the people either crumbled to dust or were crushed under the being's feet, each shriek seemed to make him smile wider. It's laugh was very familiar.

I turned back to the centaur and asked, "Why did you bring me here? And who are you? Is that what was in the pit?"

"You may call me Mr Brunner, young hero. And as to why I am here, I came to guide you, though that is all I can say. The rest you must figure yourself." And with that, the dream instantly started to fade. I tried to call out but I was already awake.

"So," said a familiar voice. "The zombie awakes."

I looked up and found Annabeth smiling down at me.

I was still reeling from the dream but I smiled back. "How long was I asleep?" I realised I had my head on her lap and sat up quickly.

"Long enough for me to cook breakfast." She tossed me a bag of nacho-flavoured corn chips from Aunty Em's snack bar.

I gave her a mock disapproving glare. "So I fried you bacon yesterday and you give me this in return?"

"You try making breakfast with literally nothing to cook with."

I laughed and then she joined in. After a second she said, "Anyway, Grover went exploring. Look, he found a friend."

It was then that I noticed a bright pink ball of fluff on Grover's lap. No, not fluff, a poodle.

The poodle yapped suspiciously and Grover said, "No he isn't."

"Who's this?" I asked.

"Percy, meet Gladiola. Gladiola, Percy."

It wasn't the weirdest animal I'd seen Grover talk to (that prize goes to the beetle who was apparently potty-mouthed. Don't ask). It also wasn't the weirdest name I'd heard for a dog (that prize goes to a pug named Mrs Piggy); I said hello to the poodle.

Grover explained that he'd come across Gladiola in the woods and they'd struck up a conversation. The poodle had run away from a rich local family, who'd posted a $200 reward for his return. Gladiola didn't really want to go back to his family, but he was willing to if it meant helping Grover.

"How does Gladiola know about the reward?" I asked.

"He read the signs," Grover said. "Duh."

"Of course, silly me. So what's the plan? We turn him in and use the money to buy tickets to Los Angeles?"

"Pretty much, yeah. There's an Amtrack station half a mile that way. According to Gladiola, a train leaves West at around noon.