A/N: So last week's chapter was one of, like, three climaxes (don't ask, it makes sense to me!) and now we continue on! I'm so freakin' busy right now though with grade eleven and the fact I'm volunteering at an animal hospital . . . there goes all my free time. The only empty day I have is Sunday (day of rest . . . mine, all MINE!). Anyways. Enough of my tale of woe. Enjoy your chapter!

Percy: We Learn of an Unreal Enemy

I was grateful for the sudden woods. It covered us, and we could keep going. We ran for possibly hours. Cora kept insisting we go on. She refused to stop and rest – at all. I think that encounter really freaked her. Every time I suggested we stop she'd protest and wouldn't stop.

Eventually I had to make her stop. She was barely keeping up with us and she was fully leaning on Hunter now. I didn't even think she was really conscience, because knowing my sister she hated help from anyone. She was stumbling along with her eyes half closed. When I saw that I didn't let us go any further. We had gone far enough that night and I was worried about Cora's health.

Once she did stop, she sank gratefully down to her knees. Her eyes were squeezed shut and she swayed slightly. I wondered again how long she had been in there for . . . about three, four days maybe. And with no food or water . . . I knew the human body can survive for five days without water, and a week without food. It was a surprise she was still conscience. I knew she had to be in pain.

Me and Annabeth sat down, tired. Annabeth had a couple slashes, but other than that she looked okay. Hunter had a black eye and his left arm was bloody. He sat down next to Cora and helped steady her with his good arm.

As soon as he did, she just collapsed. Her body slumped, all the strength knocked out of it. She sagged against him, her eyes closed and her breathing faint and erratic. I knew she was doing badly then.

Once at Camp, I accidentally gave her a few nasty cuts, and even then she hadn't complained nor accepted my offer for help as we went to get Ambrosia and Nectar. Cora never once accepted help when it came to a matter of her strength.

She probably wanted to sleep right then. Her body was so drained and weak her mind would be shutting down. And that was what I was afraid of. If she fell asleep in that state, she might never wake up. Immediately I slung my bag off and rummaged through it. I pulled out a canteen of water, and a not-so-fresh bag of apple slices.

Crawling over to her I said, "Cora, Cora, please don't fall asleep yet. You need to eat and drink this first." Her sea green eyes fluttered open and she looked at me annoyed.

"Later . . ." she mumbled. "I'm too tired . . ."

"Well whose fault is that?" I rolled my eyes then sighed. "Cora, you're weak and your body needs nutrition, come on. Just take it and then you can sleep or whatever."

Reluctantly, she sat up; the look in her eyes was disoriented. She clearly couldn't think straight. She took the canteen and baggie slowly. I left her to eat on those while I looked once again into my bag. I pulled out all the remaining food and canteen's and divided them up between me, Annabeth, and Hunter as equally as I could.

I thought I did pretty well, but Annabeth muttered something about math skills and rearranged it slightly. We ate slowly, not wanting to make ourselves sick.

Once finished, I started a fire (a small one, we were in a forest after all) and we gradually warmed ourselves up. Me and Annabeth stayed up, while the younger ones went into an exhausted sleep. I couldn't blame them. They were beat up, and Cora had probably used up a ton of energy creating her force field thingys.

I sat there staring into the flames, my arm around Annabeth's waist as she leaned against me. Her eyes had that faraway look and I knew the events of today were running through her mind as she tried to make sense of it.

"I'm worried about them," she said eventually. "None of it makes sense and they're caught in the middle of this." Her words sent a shiver down my spine.

"I'm worried too," I said quietly. "For all of us. Who were those people?"

Next to me Annabeth sighed. "I don't know. I can't think of anything like them. Nothing Greek that is."

"Roman, maybe?" I asked, immediately knowing that it was a vain hope.

"I don't know, I don't know," she said. "But I intend to find out. Tomorrow, when Cora's feeling better we'll talk to her. Maybe then I can figure something out . . . oh I'm too tired, I'm going to sleep." She stretched out on her back and closed her eyes.

"Thank for asking if I could do watch," I muttered under my breath. I threw more wood on to the fire and settle back for the night.

The next morning, Cora was looking a lot better. The colour had returned to her face and her eyes showed she was lucid. We gave her the bulk of the little food left in Annabeth's bag (I really want to know how she fits that all in). We had just enough for tonight, then we'd need more. We had to find someplace to buy food by then.

We didn't talk much that day. We travelled through the woods, attempting to get out. According to Annabeth's maps we headed in a somewhat north-westerly direction to get back to Phoenix. I was slightly dreading heading back, but that was the only clue we had to this.

Plus Annabeth mentioned she could find out what she wanted faster with Internet so . . . Phoenix was our best bet.

That night we were all tired. We had completely forgotten about Hunter's cut. He didn't say anything about it, so we figured it wasn't a big deal. That is until we stopped for the night. Then we realized what a big deal it was. He had just cleaned it, and I saw it was in a peculiar pattern. It was somewhat shaped like \l/. Aside from the odd shape, according to my translator of a sister, he said something felt like it was lodged inside. Annabeth took a closer look at it.

"There's a sliver of metal deep inside. It'll need to come out," she said. "But I'm not sure how to do it."

"A dagger," Cora suggested. "You could use a dagger tip to pry it out. If you have steady hands." She certainly sounded a lot better. After a pause she added, "Why do I even know that?"

"I don't know," I said shrugging. "But as long as it works, hey, we're good. Could we use yours? Since we don't really have another . . ." With a slight roll of her eyes, she pulled her Tempest Silver dagger out of its sheath and offered it to us hilt first. Annabeth took it and held it ready.

"Que fait-elle? Pourquoi me le montre-t-elle?" Hunter yelped pushing himself backwards away from Annabeth. His eyes were wide and nervous.

"Hunter, calmez-vous s'il vous plaît," Cora said gently, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Elle va essayer et sortir l'éclat de métal. Tenez juste toujours." Hunter looked at Cora, then at Annabeth, then he glanced back at Cora and nodded.

"Parfait," he managed dryly. Cora gave a faint, tiny smile and turned to us.

"Alright," she said.

I wish I could say things went smoothly. To tell the truth, it was not an easy task. Annabeth was talented with knives and dagger, she could designed any building, and understand just about any math equation, but she is not – I repeat not meant for doing surgical stuff.

She tried her hardest, but it reminded me of when she worked on the bronze dragon (you probably remember him as Festus). She only vaguely knew what she was doing. Cora tried to give her advice, but she was mostly just blurting out whatever came to her.

Hunter did his best to remain still, but it was pretty obvious he was in a lot of pain. He was stiff and tense, his hands clenched until his knuckles turned white. His arm was completely covered in blood, and the piece of metal didn't seem to be coming out. Annabeth carefully poked at his wound, trying to get the metal out, but as painful as it seemed, he didn't cry out.

Annabeth's face was beaded in sweat with concentration when she pulled out a long, thin sliver covered in blood. Annabeth's fingers were coated in wet and dry blood. She dropped the sliver next to her, and I saw it glinted a little like Celestial bronze. Annabeth wiped her forehead with her arm and took a shaky breath.

"There's still a piece in there, but it's too deep for me to get out," she said. "It's all I can do now. He'll need a trained medic eventually, until then the wound won't close up properly. Sorry I can't do anymore." She wiped the blood off of Cora's dagger and handed it back to her. Cora slipped it into her sheath and quietly relayed things to Hunter. He looked pained, but didn't complain.

I looked up at the sky and saw that the sky was setting, creating a sky of vibrant orange. I sighed and noticed the others were looking at me expectantly. I know I'm supposed to be a leader and all, but sometimes I just get so stressed and wired that I couldn't think properly. I thought for a minute, then let out a deep breath.

"We should set up camp for the night," I said. "We can't continue safely until morning." Annabeth nodded and together we took out what was left of our food supplies. We divided it as evenly as we could and ate fast. We were ravenous; we had barely eaten all day. After we finished, Hunter layed down to sleep. I felt sorry for the kid; he was having a rotten day.

For a while we just sat there in silence. Me and Annabeth wanted to talk to Cora about everything, but she just sat there hugging her knees and staring into the fire. After a long time Annabeth caught my eye and gave a small nod. I took a deep breath, but before I could say anything . . .

"I know what you're going to ask, and I don't want to talk about," Cora said. I looked at her sadly.

"Cora, we know it's not very easy for you to talk about it but . . ." I trailed off.

"But what?"

"We need to know who those people were and what they want with you," Annabeth finished. Cora looked at us for a second, then closed her eyes, shaking slightly.

"Please, don't make me do it," she whispered. "I don't want to think about it for a while."

"Cora, just tell us what you learned. We want to know what happened. After that, we won't mention it again, okay?" I said. She swallowed nervously and nodded once.

"I – I think I might know who those men were," she murmured. "But you're not going to like it." She shuddered and took a deep breath.

"I think we can handle it," Annabeth assured her.

Closing her eyes, she wrapped her arms tighter around her legs. "Do . . . do you guys remember that web page we looked at on the train in Quebec?"

I thought for a minute, "Yeah, the one that had the only info on the Mormo." Cora nodded and squeezed her legs tighter.

"Do you also remember that picture? The one with the snakes and bugs," she paused and drew a shaky breath. "I – I saw that image carved in that place. It – it was constantly used with . . . other symbols. But . . . what I don't get is . . . wouldn't that mean . . . ?" she couldn't finished a sentence, she was literally shaking.

"But . . . aren't they . . . a legend?" I said confused.

"I thought they were . . ." Annabeth said quietly. "But apparently they're not." Annabeth looked worried. I looked at Cora, her eyes were squeezed shut and she was clearly terrified. Those men, they had done this.

"What were they called again? Dark Day or something?" I said.

"Darkest Dawn," Annabeth supplied. "But Cora, what did they want with you?" Cora opened her eyes and looked scared.

"I don't want to talk about this anymore," she said. I scooted over to her and gave her a hug. She didn't really want it, but I refused to let up and eventually she stopped struggling. "You are an annoying brother," she whispered.

"And you're an annoying sister, so we're even," I shot back, earning a glimmer of a smile from her. "But you still need to tell us what the Darkest Dawn wanted with you." I sat back and folded my arms, she looked at me sadly, then stared into the fire.

"I . . . I think they wanted . . . me," she said. "I know it sounds weird but . . . the things that man told me . . ."

"What did they tell you?" Annabeth asked, suddenly alert.

"They – they said I was one of them," Cora muttered. "That I had been injured and you guys were my enemies and lying to me. I didn't believe them." We were silent, hearing this.

"That's probably what they were going to do," I murmured thinking.

"What?"

"You didn't believe them. The reason they were all gathered there, they were probably going to do some voodoo magic and manipulate you. Do something to make you think they were telling the truth. At least, that's what I think," I said. Cora bit her lip and shuddered.

"I don't want to admit you're probably right," she said under her breath.

"But you just did," I said confused.

"Did what?"

"You . . . oh forget it," I gave up. My sister, even when in this state, still does this to me.

"Does this mean we can drop the subject, please?" she asked. I held her eyes for a second, and saw she was doing all she could to hold herself together (she'd kill me for saying that). I nodded.

"Yeah, go ahead and sleep," I said.

She released a grateful breath and lay down, curling up into a little ball. Within a minute, I heard her breathing even out and I knew she was asleep.

Annabeth sighed and looked up at the stars. I poked at the fire for a moment before adding more fuel. I felt ready to snap, I was fed up with this. These riddles, these impossible quests, but mostly I was fed up with how my sister was tied up in all of this.

Next to me Annabeth took a deep breath. "Percy?"

"Yes?"

"If it really is the Darkest Dawn as our enemy . . ."

"Yes?"

"Then I don't know what we're supposed to do. I don't know much about these people. I don't know how we can win."

"Hey, calm down," I reassured her. "Like I've said many times before, we never know what we're doing. It always turns out okay, we'll be fine. Just relax a little."

"I suppose you're right," she sighed.

"I'm always right." At that she laughed. She leaned against me and I wrapped my arm around her. We sat there in silence, staring up at the stars or into the fire. It was a beautiful night. With Annabeth here beside me, the moonlight, the stars, it was perfect. It helped me forget about the quest and everything. At least for a little while.

A/N: *grins* Dun-dun-duuunnnn. So as you can see, the whole experience kinda freaked out Cora. Then again I'm not surprised, seeing as I know her past. Anyone'd be freaked out. Oh, and on my deviantART account, I put up my sketch of Cora . . . y'all can see what she looks like now! Minus my limited drawing skills . . . so let me know you thoughts through either review or fav or alert! See you in a week!