Annabeth's POV

The world was dark. Everything was silent. I was standing in the dark. I was scared, more scared than I'd ever been before. My heart was pounding in my chest. My feet were glued to the ground with fear. I heard footsteps. It was so dark, that I couldn't make out a figure. The footsteps grew louder and stopped in front of me. I could hear the source of the footsteps heavy breathing. They were so close to me. If I moved even an inch, I would touch them. My stomach filled with dread. I looked up slowly, and found myself staring straight into the cold, black eyes of…

I woke up in a cold sweat. I was breathing heavily. "Annabeth," I told myself. "It was only a dream." I took a deep breath. "Only a dream," I repeated.

I quietly unzipped my sleeping bag and slipped out of bed. I tip-toed to the door of the tent and unzipped it a little. I peered out the hole. It was still dark, but I could see a faint tint of pink on the horizon. I pulled my boots on, grabbed a book and slipped outside. I sat down on a tree stump and began to read.

Around five minutes later, or what I thought was five minutes later, I heard the door of the tent unzipping. I looked up from my book and saw it was Hermione. It was now light. How long had I been reading?

"Could you not sleep either?" I asked her.

"Annabeth, it's eight O'clock. That's when I normally wake up. Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." Had I been reading for three or four hours? I had read a good bit of my book, but it only felt like five or ten minutes, weird.

Hermione started on breakfast. I heard the tent unzipping again, and saw it was Grover.

"Morning, Grover," I said brightly.

"Morning…," he said sleepily.

I looked back down at my book, and waited for breakfast.

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We had been walking for a while, maybe around an hour. Nothing had been that hard on the way. It was easy, and no monsters had attacked us, yet. It was a lovely day, warm and breezy. There were no clouds in the sky to block out the sun's rays. Zeus was obviously in a very good mood. Hermione ploughed on ahead, holding a compass in front of her.

She turned sharply into some dense woods. We hurried after her. It was dark and damp in the woods. There was a musty smell in the air, not the usual, fresh tree-ish smell you normally get in woods. We walked though it for a while, it seemed never-ending. Hermione stopped and looked at the compass closely.

"Was it ten miles East or West from Riverside?" Hermione asked.

"West," I replied.

"Whoops, we've been going the wrong way, silly me. Well, back we go," Hermione said.

"How long exactly have we been going the wrong way?" Harry asked.

"Uh, since we turned into these woods…" Hermione said, but was cut short by the sound of branches breaking. "Run…" she whispered. "RUN!"

We all ran as fast as we could, leaping over branches and dead trees. I could hear footsteps pounding against the ground behind us.

We broke free of the forest and stopped running (which was a very bad mistake) to catch our breath back. The thing that had been following us came out as well.

We all turned to face it.

"Oh, gods it's-" I started but Hermione cut me off.

"A chimera," she finished. "The Ministry classifies them as XXXXX and that means very dangerous. Only one wizard has ever killed one before."

"Then I'll be that second wizard," Harry said.

"Chimeras?" Annabeth questioned. "There's only one Chimera."

"I've battled Chimera before, and I almost died. I didn't kill it either," Percy said.

"Its mouth is glowing red! What does that mean?" Grover exclaimed.

"It means it's going to blow," Percy replied. "Everyone get down!"

We all flattened ourselves against the ground. Fire blew above us, singeing the tips of my hair.

I took out my knife, and once the fire stopped, leapt onto Chimera's back. That was a completely idiotically stupid thing to do, yet I did it. I stabbed my knife into its back and screamed in pain, spewing fire everywhere, setting Hermione's jacket alight.

Percy, Grover and Harry had now engaged in the fight, while Hermione was still trying to put the fire out. I pulled my knife out and stabbed it in again, deeper this time. It yelped ever louder and fell to the ground. I was still on its back, holding on to my knife. It got back up again. Hermione had managed to get her jacket off, but the fire had moved onto her hair. She was panicking, looking around for water.

"Hermione!" I screamed, "There's a stream behind you!"

She turned around quickly and immersed herself in the water. I stabbed Chimera again, and it fell over for good, almost flattening me. Harry ran up and speared his sword into the monster. It crumbled to dust and he retrieved his sword from the mess. Hermione climbed out of the stream. We ran over to her.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"Yes I'm fine," she said. "It's my hair and jacket that aren't," she laughed.

I headed over to her jacket. It was still smouldering, but the grass had just about put it out.

"You won't be wearing that again," I remarked.

"No! Defiantly not!" she laughed.

We were all okay, after that attack. We needed to get to the cave, and fast!

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I was sure that the cave was around here; we had been walking for hours on end. We were in a grassy patch now, beside some woods and with a cliff on the other side.

"I was defiantly here on the school trip… the cave was in these cliffs. Where is it?" I said.

"Maybe it's over grown?" Hermione suggested.

"Good idea!" I exclaimed. "I'll have a look."

There was a patch of under growth to the side. It was very over grown. I jogged over to it and had a look. I felt around a bit and noticed that there was a slight hole in the back, big enough for me to crawl into. I crawled into it a couple of metres when Percy called my name.

"Annabeth, have you found anything interesting?" He asked.

"Yeah, I've found this hole in the back of the under growth," I said. "Wait…"

"What?" Percy asked.

I crawled further in. I thought I'd seen something move. It had probably been my imagination.

"No, it's nothing," I said. I sat down, but as I did so, I fell backwards, doing a somersault in the process. "Aagh!" I screamed.

"Annabeth!" Percy shouted. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine, but I've found the cave though," I replied.

"Great!" Percy replied.

I stood up and tried to get push the vines covering the entrance to one side and I slipped out.

"Turns out it's overgrown since I was here," I said.

"How long ago was it?" Hermione asked.

"Three or four years," I replied.

"Ah," said Hermione.

"Come on, let's go in! We need to find Ron and Aphrodite and find out if this is actually the right cave!"

"Yes, let's go," said Hermione.

We all trailed into the cave. I really hoped it was the right one, because if it wasn't Ron and Aphrodite would be doomed.

A/N Finally! I've finished this chapter; I've been working on it for ages. I mean, how long does it take to write one? Thanks for the reviews as well, the more I get, the more I update! Please say if I made any mistakes and I will sort them. The story's almost finished. And plus, the first reviewer of this chapter will get a sneak peak… go get reviewing! (It will be review 43 btw)

Bye!