A/N: I AM DONE EXAMS! YESYESYESYESYESYES! So. Damn. Happy. I hate exams. And this Sunday, to celebrate, me and my friends are going to see Brave – the movie starring my twin! Yeah, the main character is my twin so me and my friends are all convinced the world is cloning me since so many new characters have an odd number of things in common with me . . . Anyways. The chapter!

Percy: The Start Up North

We all ran around the outskirts of the town looking for a place to spend the night. After the long day and the fight, I was tired. Having an invincible body just meant I tire faster. And Hyperborean's were not that easy to fight. Especially because they were like little kids and in some ways peaceful.

As we looked for cover, I had to admit, I was impressed by Cora. She had been separated from us, beat a monster, jumped an eight foot gap, rejoined in the fight; and hadn't lost her head. If I had been her in that position I would have been panicking and blowing something up.

In the end, we were so tired; we sought shelter in an abandoned warehouse. Before getting too comfortable, I foraged around and came up with a decent amount of useable wood. Returning to the others I used half and created a small fire. I didn't want to attract too much attention.

Each one of us looked terrible. Annabeth was shivering and I pulled her closer. Her eyes flitting around, like she could sense something was here. Cora stared into the flames, lost in thought. Hunter lay down, and it wasn't long before he was asleep. After a while Annabeth fell asleep too. I managed to stay awake, somehow.

"I'm so sorry," Cora whispered suddenly. I looked at her confused.

"What are you talking about?" I asked her.

"You know," she replied. "For leading the monsters to us. It's my fault they broke in." I shook my head at her.

"Yes it is," she protested. "I opened the door to look. I practically screamed letting them know where we were. I led them right to us."

"Don't beat yourself up about it," I assured her. "It's not your fault. Together we all are attracting monsters. It's not just you." I could tell from her expression she didn't believe me.

"You're just saying that. Grover told me before we left. He said I had the strongest scent he knew. It's my fault," she told me. Mentally I slapped myself. Of course she would think this if Grover said that. Well, he had been trying to warn her. Only now she was accusing herself.

"I'm not just saying that. It is not your fault. It's probably more my fault then yours. I am the guy who was in a bunch of prophecies," I told her. Cora sighed and gave me a small grateful smile. "You should sleep." She gave a slight nod and lay down.

The rest of the night passed smoothly. I sat there for most of it; listening to the crackle of flames and the creaks of the old warehouse. Part way through Annabeth woke up allowing me to go to sleep. I was out in a manner of seconds. In the morning I was the last to wake up. It was actually Annabeth who woke me. Otherwise we would have missed our train.

We ran back to the station five minutes before the train departed. Collapsing into our seats the train began to screech forward. Yeah, I just almost blew our chances to go north. But being invincible tired me out so no one got mad at me (which was a relief).

We all ended up snoozing after a while. I woke up every once in a while. Mostly to eat, or use the bathroom. Basically, I was only awake for necessities. Same with everyone else, so we never talked. It was like that until the second day. Which was our last day on the train.

Annabeth had pulled out her laptop and was searching something. She wouldn't let me look, so it might have been one of Daedalus's inventions. I doubted the train got Wi-Fi, even though routers popped up everywhere. We sat there in silence until Annabeth gasped and showed me her screen.

"Percy, look at this!" she exclaimed shoving the laptop in front of me. Oh, so she did get Wi-Fi after all.

"What's the big . . . Oh no . . ." I trailed off seeing what the screen had.

It was a Wikipedia page titled 'The Darkest Dawn; Cult of Hecate'. It had a bunch on tiny writing I could hardly make out. On the right hand side by side bar it showed an image of some sort of crest carved in stone. It was of two snakes that had heads at either end. They were intertwined complexly and bees of some sort were flying around them. The caption said the snakes were called an Amphisbaena.

Directly below the first paragraph was the image of an old painting depicting that fiery bloke from yesterday.

I stared at the screen, trying to read the print. It was really hard to read on a backlit screen with Dyslexia in a moving train. I had only gotten through a couple of lines before I was interrupted.

"Um, Percy, what's the big deal?" Cora asked me. I stopped reading and turned the laptop so she could see.

"This is. Only problem is I can't read it to well," I told her. She looked panic-stricken for a moment. Then she squinted at the screen for a few minutes before sighing.

"I can't read this," she admitted. "It looks like gibberish. None of it makes sense." I took the laptop back and handed it to Annabeth. She scrolled through the rest scanning it. After a while she started reading it out loud.

"The Darkest Dawn is an ancient Greek cult of learned sorcerers and necromancers. They worshipped the goddess Hecate, believing she would give them immortal life after death; although she was worshipped for many reasons. In several cities they had branches and often lead the rituals for Hecate. This is the only good thing they have been found to have done in their worshipping of Hecate.

"There is very little proof of their existence. Their cult never expanded outside of one city-state; but paintings and stone tablets and scrolls dug up in the ruins Mycenae indicate that if they expanded beyond, the Greeks would have been in danger. They were brutal, mutilated looking men who enjoyed torturing in hopes to find out about the crossroads their goddess watched over. As worshippers to Hecate they had great magical skill; their magic was often dark magic used in raising the dead or malevolent spirits. These spirits were often ones cursed by the Greek gods or ones that had been banished in Tartarus."

Annabeth paused and scrolled down. "Some useless information . . . ah, here we go: Hecate's cult like using either fire or death in their magic. The Darkest Dawn enjoyed dangerous, large creatures of destruction and more stealthy ones sacred to Hecate; such as the Mormo and Empousa. Both were vampiric spirits; one said to bite bad children and the other said to feed on blood, though very little is actually know." Annabeth finished with a slightly disappointed and worried smile, but for the most part she seemed satisfied in the information

"What does that all mean? The only thing I understood was the last little bit," I told her. Annabeth rolled her eyes at me.

"Gods Seaweed Brain, you are so hopeless," she muttered.

"Hey!"

"It's basically telling us where that monster on the train came from. But I've never heard of the Darkest Dawn," Annabeth explained first rolling her eyes then furrowing her brow.

"Maybe they don't actually exist; it's a cult to Hecate, who's reclusive, and they said it was never fully proven. The tales were probably started by some crazy peasant who ticked off the goddess or something," Cora put in. I nodded thoughtfully.

"That'd have to be it . . . I know everything that exists from Greek Mythology," Annabeth muttered. "Anyways, my point is, the Giants must have released that monster."

That basically ended our conversation. Well, it was the dining cart that ended it really. Dinner was being served. It was just some semi-warm chicken and other basic things. It was served fairly late, so we went to sleep straight away. That night I had yet another dream.

I was once again underwater. I was in the doorway to a tower room. Standing before me was a table with a map on it. A small patch of mist hung around the ceiling directly above the table. My stepfamily was on either side of the table. They were both scowling and staring intently at something.

"Time for another intervention?" Triton asked his mother, his double fish tails swishing wildly.

"Yes, it is time for another. But remember, his Lordship must not know," Amphitrite agreed.

"Shall we do the same?" Triton queried. Amphitrite nodded and her crab claw horns snapped twice. They both looked up at the mist. Faintly, an image I couldn't quite see started to appear. They both chanted something under their breath.

My dream was cut off by the feeling of something shaking me, and my name being repeated over and over again. The dream faded away and I found myself looking into Annabeth's beautiful stormy grey eyes. I blinked hard and sat up straight.

"About time Seaweed Brain. The train is about to stop. We've reached the end of our ride," she told me.

"Aw man, what time is it? How long was I asleep for?" I asked quietly.

"It's nearly noon," Cora informed me. "And why were you muttering 'what are you doing'?" I stared at Cora blankly.

"You were talking in your sleep again," Annabeth said.

"Oh . . ." I felt my face go red. I still did that to my much annoyance. Before I could tell them about my dream Hunter cleared his throat and pointed out the window. The station was approaching, and approaching fast. I wondered why weren't slowing down.

It wasn't very pleasant waiting to see if the train was going to crash into the station or not. It didn't actually crash in the end. But there was a loud screeching sound and a sudden jolt as it seemed to hit something. The doors of the train screeched open.

We were gathering our bags to leave when Cora looked out the window, her face morphing into an expression of worry. Quickly she grabbed me and Hunter forcing us out of the train then did the same to Annabeth. Once we were all on the platform she herded us out of the station, rushing us through security. We almost made it too.

We were just getting to the gate when there was the sound of an explosion. I looked back and saw thick smoke rising. By its location, it looked like it was coming from our train. There was the faint crackle of flames. By the looks of the fire, it was mostly smoke.

Hurrying through the station, we received no issues because everyone was worrying about the train explosion. Once outside we all sat on a large park bench some ways away. We watched as the bright red fire trucks passed by with their sirens wailing. As we sat there, a thought struck me.

"Hang on; you knew that was going to happen. Didn't you?" I asked turning to face my sister.

"Yeah, wasn't too hard to figure out. The front end was already smoking," she said shrugging with a small smile.

"So you just said nothing and forced us out? Thanks . . . you could have said something," I muttered in reply.

"I could have," she mused. "But I didn't." I glared at her and she returned it with an innocent look. Annabeth muttered something in Ancient Greek about siblings and pulled out her many maps. She unfolded the one of Canada and looked over it.

According to the map we were at the southern tip of James' Bay. There were two ways to get to our destination (it was a military outpost called Alert). One way was overland – with lots of boat passages to get between the many islands. The other way was to go entirely by water. Going by water was shorter. The only problem was I doubted we could hire a boat to take us.

In the end we agreed that going by water was our best bet. After all, we had two children of the Sea God on our team. Deciding to peruse the pier; we headed off following Cora and Hunter's directions based on the road signs.

The pier was in top condition. Mainly fishing boats were tied up. Along with a couple ones that looked like military vessels. But not too many were there – probably out being used since it was the day. There were one or two pleasure vessels. Several people were milling about. Boats coming in and out, people moving shipments. It was clearly a fishing community.

We check out a couple jetties. But nothing seemed to be for rent or anything. I thought about my dream, but the details of the mist were sketchy. I knew that if I could just remember that would make everything so much easier.

It wasn't until I spotted something that we had any luck. There was a heavy mist at the end of one of the wharfs. I pointed it out and we headed over. As we approached the mist started to recede and clear. It was another boat. But this one was not just anyone's boat. You could tell by the Ancient Greek writing on the prow and the scroll attached to the railing.

Cora unrolled it and read it silently. She was the best to read it; especially since the last time we had one of these notes I couldn't read parts of it (yeah, I still wasn't too great at reading Greek). When she finished she muttered something under her breath and folded up the scroll.

"The boat's from Triton and Amphitrite – again," she explained. "They said sorry for last time – which I don't really believe - and it's to use as we please in our quest." I clenched my fists. Now, I knew what my dream meant. My stepfamily was behind this – trying to help. But I didn't properly trust them either.

"How do we know the same thing won't happen again?" I asked. "We might wake up one morning and be Zeus knows where!" They all looked at me a little confused by that. "What? I just don't trust my stepfamily." I added mumbling. The girls went off in thought. Hunter was still looking completely lost by what we were saying.

"I think I know what we can do . . ." Cora said with a glint in her eye. "Since it'll be me and Percy steering and whatnot; we do it in shifts. So one of us is always awake."

"And how long are the shifts?" I asked a little nervous.

"I was thinking about six hours each," she replied.

"That's a good idea," Annabeth agreed. I looked back and forth between them. They were both looking at me expectantly.

"You two are working against me; aren't you?" I muttered. Annabeth raised her eyebrows with a bit of a hard look in her eyes. "Alright, alright, I agree. We'll do that." I relented.

"Great," Cora said smiling. "I'll even be nice and take the first shift." I glared at her and went onto the boat. The others followed me.

Me and Annabeth went below. It was basically the same as before. A small kitchen stocked with food, four bunks, and a bathroom. A bathroom with a shower. We had gone five days without a shower and been in two fights; and I was pretty sure it showed. The first thing we all did was clean ourselves. It felt so good to be clean. And everyone else felt the same – their faces made it obvious.

Since Cora was taking the first shift I stayed down below with Annabeth. As long as the boat didn't go a-drift again – we'd reach our destination in no time. I got ready for a comfortable leg of our journey.

A/N: I, er, took some liberties with the Darkest Dawn since no one seems to know the names of any human servants (they had them, you know, to work on earth but without scaring mortals and stuff). So I made up the name. Just saying; and be glad I'm not doing anything with the maggots – saving your stomachs here. So let me know your thoughts through wither review or alert or fav! See you next week – AND ENJOY SUMMER!