[Same deal as last time. This is the unbetaed version. Betaed version will come soon]

Long AN at the bottom.

Enjoy.

Sorry for the shortness, my creativeness just went out the window. :(

Thanks as always to Reading Obsession. You rock. :)

Nico was having an excellent time.

Granted, most people would find riding around a forest on a hellhound to be a quite frightening thing, and not actually at all fun, but then, Nico wasn't just people.

He had awakened to find himself in a plain room, and it was a simple matter to call Mrs O'Leary. She'd apparently recovered from her mishap with whoever that guy was, and had romped into the room through the very large hole she'd made in the wall.

After totally drenching Nico with dog slobber, he'd instructed her to bite the ropes. After that, it was a simple matter to climb on her back and instructed her to run away from the cell-thing.

Now they were running through the woods, and Nico was preparing for shadow travel.

"Come on, Mrs O'Leary. We got to get back to camp," he said, patting her as she whined beneath him. "Enough."

Ten minutes later, when Mrs O'Leary was finally finished sniffing at the plants and trees, she was finally ready to shadow travel with Nico.

"Come on, girl," he said. "Let's go already."

She arroffed, and jumped into speedy, pressing, inky-black darkness. Nico actually enjoyed the ride, and was sorry to see it end.

Camp Half-Blood was never more dreary then it was the moment Nico materialized in its midst, the black darkness that cocooned him dissipating into the cold night air.

There were smoking ruins everywhere, with burnt and blackened trees, and cabins that slowly smoked. There were people, making rounds, some supporting others. There were lights scattered around the camp, with most of them concentrated around or on the dining pavilion.

He settled Mrs O'Leary, tying her leash to a tree that still had most of its leaves. He gave her a dog-bone, and set off down the hill, into the camp proper.

"Oh, Nico, you're here," said Jessica, a Hermes camper three years younger than him. "I'm glad you're still alive. I think Chiron would probably like to see you." She turned and pointed. "He's at the back of the dining pavilion," she said, before walking off.

Nico nodded to her back and walked forward, up the stairs of the pavilion. There were makeshift stairs all around, as many people walked to and fro from the pavilion.

The tables had been swept off in the attack, splinters off wood and scraps of purple and white cloth could be seen over the far edge of the pavilion. The support columns were destroyed, with great hunks of marble all around the pavilion and only the bases remained. The marble floor was cracked, with deep gouges in it, but had faired quite well, overall. The brazier where they burnt food had survived, and now crackled warmly with red and orange light. There were beds all around, in neat, orderly rows. Most of the beds were occupied, with some all too familiar faces of the people who helped defend camp.

"Nico, my son," Chiron said, looking warmly at him. "It's good to see you alive, and well. We shall need all the help we can get. I trust the others are with you?"

Nico frowned. "No, we were separated when he drugged us, I think."

Chiron frowned. "Perhaps you better tell me what happened, from the beginning," he said.

And so, Nico recounted his tale, pausing only to draw breath. It was properly dark by the time he finished, and Chiron's brow became more and more crinkled with concern.

"This is most worrying," he said. "I can only hope—"

"Chiron, sir!" yelled a camper from over the edge of the hill. "People approach. It's hard to see who it is!"

Chiron frowned deeper. "We must get the boundary back up," he said to Nico. "Come with me, please. I have a feeling I shall need back up on this."

He clip-clopped off the pavilion, and Nico followed, into the cold night.

Jakob was staring out the window of the car driven by Alice. It was driving rain, as usual, and every drop splattered on the windshield of the Toyota Camry sounded louder than a gunshot inside the silent, air conditioned space of the car.

Jakob was miles away from the present situation, still in the room where he'd seen his friend robbed of her essence in order to feed a power-hungry egomaniac bent on taking over the world.

Jakob sighed. It was like a B-grade movie. Pity it wasn't. Because in a B-grade movie, everything works out for the best. He wasn't sure it was going to happen here.

This only occupied a small part of his mind. The greater part was tackling the problem of, How was he going to tell Percy that he'd watched his girlfriend die and not done anything about it?

He was still no closer to an answer, and decided to put it out of his mind for a while. He straightened, and closed his eyes. Sleep came quickly, but it wasn't sound.

Giac and Lily, meanwhile, were tromping through the rain. They seemed totally and permanently wet, and sooner or later were going to have to resort to taking a car. Giac could drive, though he wasn't usually allowed to unless with an adult. Still, desperate times call for desperate measures.

"Right, Lily," Giac said, stopping in front of a nice looking, metallic dark-red Lexus. "You must never do this, unless absolutely necessary."

With that, he bashed the driver's side window with a wooden club that he'd grown out of the ground.

He reached in and unlocked the door, sweeping broken glass off the upholstery. He unlocked the passenger's side door, and slid in. Lily did the same next to him.

"Thank you, Grand Theft Auto," he said, reaching under the steering-wheel and doing something that Lily couldn't see.

The car purred to life, and Giac sighed in relief before a klaxon began to ring out, making both of them jump.

"Shit," Giac said, wrenching the car into gear. He reversed onto the road, pushed the gear into drive, and sped off down the highway.

Percy and Argus were having the easiest time of all of them. Argus had led them to a car dealership, which was surprisingly not far away. In fact, it was entirely too surprising to be a coincidence, which was why Percy was grateful that Riptide had regenerated in his pocket.

The owner was very smooth-looking, with slicked back hair and hazel-coloured eyes, but he reeked of monster, and Percy didn't trust him in the slightest. However, the presence of Argus seemed to prevent the monster from doing anything, and soon they were cruising down the road in a Hummer*.

Nico grabbed his Iron sword, which had magically appeared on one of the vacant beds, having the same regenerative powers as Riptide, and followed Chiron out of the warmth of the pavilion. Other campers followed them, suspicious and wary of what may be waiting outside of the camp's (now non-existent) borders.

The only sound apart from the soft patter of rain—that was making everything worse, as usual—was the clip-cloping of Chiron's hooves. And then, a sigh of relief as he realised who it was.

"Alice," Chiron said, "If I'm not mistaken. It's so nice to see you again."

The woman who had exited the driver's side door smiled at him, but it was tainted. Something was wrong.

"And Jakob!" Chiron said. "I'm glad to see you still alive and well."

He walked through the rain too, the water plastering his fringe to his forehead. His eyes were downcast.

Someone's died, Nico thought, suddenly. That's the only reason they wouldn't be hoping they all made it back. Someone died, and either Alice or Jakob or both of them saw it happen.

"Who was it?" he asked them, moving forward in front of Chiron.

It was Jakob that answered, staring at Nico with sad, grey eyes. "Annabeth," he said quietly. "He—he—"

The rest of his words were cut off by a huge shock-wave that blew us off our feet, followed by a large boom.

They were on the ground as the howling wind increased, and with it carried the tinge of maniacal laughter.

Dempsey was back.

*Hummer actually went bankrupt back in March, but I take poetic licence.

Right, first of all. Sorry to people who guessed last chapter, but as we're on the business end of the story, I am not saying anything on his heritage anymore. Thank you for the reviews, and we only need nine more for a total of 100. :OOO

On a rather more serious note, you won't be seeing anymore fanfiction from me. Why?

I'm leaving fanfiction.

No, I have not gone mad; there is a reason. Last week, something happened to a close personal friend. And it made me think. What was I doing with my life? Writing? Sure, it's creative, but it's time to face facts. I should be doing more with my life than writing stories on published books. So, I'm quitting.

Don't worry, I'll finish all of my stories first. You'll see the end of this, but then it really will be the end.

I don't know whether I'm leaving permanently at this stage; maybe, maybe not. You will not, however, see new material from me for at least ten months, at the very earliest. I am in my final year of school; I want to see what I can make of my life. So, add me to author alert, and hope I come back in 2011. :)

If you still wish to contact me, go ahead. My twitter is NovemberRising, as is my formspring. My respective messenger clients (AIM, MSN, and Y!IM), are

intorqueo15 (at) aim(.)com;

intorqueo15 (at) YIM(.)com and;

ism(.)ffn (at) hotmail(.)com respectively;

(Remove all spaces and brackets) Don't hesitate to add me, I'd love to hear from you. (That includes you, Rachel, if you're reading this.)

On a slightly happier note, I just finished reading the latest Artemis Fowl book (The Atlantis Complex). What'd you think of it? I liked it, but thought it was quite different from the rest of the series.