Hey guys! I'm back with a little something for you! I know, this is shorter than you're used to, but I wanted to give you something to remember me by :) I promise I'll be back with more! Okay, I'll let you read the chapter now.

Annabeth's POV

I had assumed the boat trip to the island to be unnerving, but that was an understatement. Unless it has been unclear to you, Poseidon kinda has it for me, too. The moment we left the dock, the waves started getting bigger and bigger.

"Are you sure this is the only way, Percy?" asked Thalia. "We could still turn back..."

"No way, Thalia. We'll manage," Percy said confidently. I just wished I was confident enough. This certainly didn't convince me.

In half an hour, the calm sea had turned grey and the huge waves were rocking our poor little boat. I saw Rachel's face turn all green.

"Are you okay, Rachel?" Percy asked. Rachel didn't say a thing. She just shook her head. We stuck her inside the cabin.

I really didn't care about Rachel's well-being; it was Percy whom I was worried about. I could see the horror on his face, when the waves got so big, that the water started to splash over the edges. Thalia was handling her own, steering the boat as well as she could. Percy and I were holding on the ropes, reefing when needed. In times like these, I really missed Percy's ability to know your exact coordinates at sea, never to mention the water-control thing. In his normal state he could've easily calmed the ocean for us and make the tides guide us to our destination.

"Do you have any idea of how long we need to hang on, Percy?" I yelled over the roar of the ocean.

"No, I don't," Percy yelled back and one angry wave splashed all over him, leaving him spluttering.

My lips were all chapped of the salty water, that came pouring down on us from the furious sea. I was also freezing. I couldn't feel my toes, my fingers, anything. All I could do was to make sure I held on the rope tightly.

"Are you coping there, guys?" Thalia yelled through the storm. "We could always swap places!"

"I'm okay!" Percy and I yelled back.

"Are you sure you're okay, Annabeth?" Percy asked.

"I'm positive," I answered him and tried to flash a confident smile.

Silly, caring thing. I would manage. Lately he had become almost too careful with me. It was sweet, I'll give him that, but I didn't need protection. I could handle my own. Although, I was so cold I would give anything for a warm fire and dry clothes...

The sky grew dark, the night fell. I couldn't see a thing. I only felt our little boat rock in the waves. That was the point, when I started panicking. We couldn't possibly get to the island before our boat would sink. Steering the boat was a real lottery. There was no way Thalia could know where to go. We were starting to get real tired, but we had to move on, because anchoring in this kind of weather would be even more suicidal.

Suddenly Rachel dashed out of the cabin. I only could see her silhouette in the dark. A flashlight lit in the darkness.

"Guys! I know this isn't the best moment for this, but you have to see something!" she yelled and rushed to me.

"What is it, Rachel?" I asked. Even though she was right next to me, I had to yell to make my voice audible. The roaring of the storm was very noisy.

I saw something in Rachel's hand. A piece of paper?

"I was resting in the cabin and suddenly I felt the urge to draw something and... well... this was what came out of it," she said and pointed the flashlight at the paper in her hand.

The boat was rocking and Rachel's hand shook so badly, that at first I couldn't make out what there was on the paper, but after a while of looking, I saw, that Rachel had drawn another vision of hers. I didn't recognize the place in the drawing, probably because the place was packed with monsters; dracaenae, telchines, leucrocotae (skeletal animals, that could imitate human voices to lure their prey), huge centaurs, etc. etc., and as the cherry on the top: Echidna, the mother of monsters.

"Rachel, did you see anything else than this?" I asked.

I couldn't help my voice shaking. This didn't look good. I had learned to trust Rachel's visions the hard way; before she'd realized what she could see, she had drawn pictures of Kronos' army in front of the Empire State building – the place the campers were guarding. We all had been there when the vision had come true. Believe me, that was something you don't want to see.

"No, only this," Rachel said. Her face looked pale in the pallid light of her flashlight.

"Girls? What is it?" Percy asked.

Rachel went to show the picture to him. Thalia wanted to see it, too. I watched Percy across the boat. I could see his brain work and I knew he was thinking exactly the same as I was: when? In order to defeat all those monsters, we needed to get some backup. Thalia couldn't beat them all on her own and Percy and I would be no help to her, never to mention Rachel.

Percy spoke his mind first.

"Do you have any idea of when we're going to meet those nasties?" he asked.

Rachel shook her head.

"No. I don't have anything else. I just know we're going to come across all of them."

"What should we do now?" Thalia asked.

"Don't ask me. I'm not able to think," I said. I was really frustrated, but I tried hard not to put it on my friends. My brain was all fuzzy, thanks to the curse of Athena.

I looked at Percy. His eyes caught mine.

"We need help," I said. Percy nodded.

"Let's try to find a place to land. We need to think of the situation somewhere, where we don't have to yell to each other all the time," he said.

Sometimes I got amazed how smart Percy was. Now that I couldn't think at all, his abilities to use his mind took me by surprise.

Finding a place to land was a real task in the dark and even if there was light, the weather would've made landing difficult and risky. Even though, we never stopped trying. After a while, Rachel took the rudder and Percy and Thalia all but forced me to go warm up. Of course I was glad to get inside, throw on some dry clothes and eat something, but I was anxious. What if something happened while I was away? If the boat crashed, we all would drown. Poseidon would pull us down one by one and I wouldn't get a chance to say my friends goodbye. I wouldn't be able to tell Percy how much I loved him...

Although I was quite panicky, the waves rocked me to sleep on the cabin's little sofa.

'CRASH!' the boat shook and I fell off the couch.

I woke up with a start. What had happened?

"Percy?" I yelled and stood up.

'CREEEEEK!' the said the boat. Bad thoughts started to gather in my brain. Had we crashed? Was the boat sinking? Then, thank the gods, a voice numbed my horror for a second.

"Annabeth!" I heard Percy yell and soon I saw a light coming from the cabin door.

Percy dashed in and started searching for something in the cupboards. Soon he found what he'd been looking for – life jackets.

"Percy, what's going on?" I asked. I hated the way my voice sounded. It was so full of terror and uncertainty.

"Rachel couldn't have seen it coming," Percy said. I got the feeling, that he was trying to protect Rachel, which made me jealous as hades. Besides, what ever it was, how could Rachel have not seen it coming? She was the new oracle, for crying out loud! Still, I wanted to know more, so I decided not to accuse anyone at the moment.

"See what coming?" I asked.

Percy looked at me and handed me a life jacket.

"The boat crashed. There were some underwater rocks. We're sinking."

The moment he'd said the word 'sinking' I jumped at Percy, pulling his face to mine. If we were going to die, I wanted to make the last moments with him the best ones of my life. This kiss was different from the others Percy and I had ever shared. This was more urgent. Everything expressed, that we only had that much time left. Who knew when the whole boat would sink and I never could touch Percy's face again? Better do it a thousand times now.

"Annabeth," Percy mumbled in my mouth. "We're sinking. We need to get away, to the life boat."

"No. If I'm going to die, I'm going to die kissing you," I insisted and pulled him tighter against me.

"We aren't going to die, Annabeth," Percy said, pulling away from the kiss. He made it sound like the case was closed.

Percy looked at the life jacket he had given me. I had dropped it on the flood when I'd started kissing him.

"Put that on," he said and took another one for himself.

I pulled the life jacket over my head and fastened the straps. Then Percy took two backpacks on his shoulders and pulled me out of the cabin, onto the deck. On the deck, Hades had broken loose. The storm was still at its full rage, but the boat had stopped moving. We must have hit the rocks pretty hard. Since the hole in the boat was underwater, I couldn't see the destruction, but I could see, that we had sunk deeper in the ocean. There was water everywhere. Thalia and Rachel were working on the life boat.

"Are you ready?" Percy asked them, when we reached them.

"We just need to let the boat into the water," Thalia said.

"Alright, let's do it, then!" Percy rushed. "We need to stay above the water level. If we don't, we'll die of hypothermia."

He was right. We'd freeze to death.

Without hesitation we let the boat into the water, threw the backpacks in and jumped after them. Percy took the oars and started rowing as well as he could between the huge waves.

Percy's POV

In the end, the precautions against getting wet were useless. The waves hit the boat's sides so hard, that we were wet in no time. Rowing was useless too; even though I rowed as hard as I could, the boat went along with the waves. We were totally at the mercy of Poseidon. Annabeth shuffled closer to me and curled up against my side. Her body radiated some warmth on mine, but it didn't help much. The sea water was freezing and the wind didn't help at all. I knew I had been completely right – we would most certainly die of hypothermia. In fact, I didn't think we had more than a few hours left. Soon Annabeth started to shiver from the cold. I tried to rub her arms gently to bring some warmth into them, but it was pretty useless and soon I started to tremble, too. My body temperature was dropping inevitably.

I didn't believe the waves could get any bigger before they did. In about half an hour, the waves no longer crashed on the boat's sides, but rather fell into the boat. For the first time of my life, I felt the salty water burn my eyes. If I hadn't been so uncomfortably cold right then, I would've given more thought to the feeling of it, but by that time, I had many bigger things in mind – for example another 'I'm soon going to die' -experience.

In the dim light of the fluttering flashlight, I could see, that Thalia and Rachel were copying mine and Annabeth's example of survival one-oh-one: sitting really close to each other, using each other's body warmth. Right then, I couldn't have told any difference if I had sat two meters away from Annabeth. Her body warmth didn't warm me. Hades, she didn't have any warmth left!

'KER-SPLOOSH!'

A huge wave, it must've been about six feet high, splashed against our boat and turned it over. When the tides pulled me underwater, I almost lost hope. There was a second, when I thought: 'Percy, let Poseidon have you. Give up. There's no use to fight back.' But then I realized, that I had something to do before letting go of the last bits of strength I had, so I swam to the surface and tried desperately to look for my friends. It was pretty hard, because the night was pitch-dark. The flashlights were no use, since they were in the bottom of the sea by then. Then I remembered Grover. We would probably never get to him. We couldn't help him. He'd be as lost as we were.

"Annabeth!" I yelled as loud as I could. My throat was frozen, but I managed to make some audible noise.

I prayed to any god who would listen, that I would find her and possibly Thalia and Rachel, too. I needed to find them and say goodbye before it would be too late. Not ten seconds after I'd called for Annabeth, I heard her yell my name from about ten meters away.

"Percy! Where are you?" she called from the darkness.

"I'm here! Don't move, I'm coming over there," I told her and swam like mad, calling for Thalia and Rachel at the same time.

I got no answers from them.

Thank gods, Annabeth wasn't hard to find. She had been pretty close to me and soon I almost bumped into her. I pulled her in my arms. She trembled, but I wasn't sure if it was because of the cold or because she was crying. Or both.

We just stayed there, our arms around each other. The water was freezing and tremors came down my spine. The cold made me forget about the things I had to say to Annabeth, before it would be too late.

"Annabeth," I croaked. Yelling had been too hard for my throat.

"Y-yeah?" she stuttered.

Two minutes ago, I had known just what to say at this moment, but now it all felt stupid. What could you say to the love of your life just before you both would die? How could you ever say anything, that would comfort her? There wasn't a way to make it right. Promises would be broken tonight, I knew it. Yet again, I had promised something, that wasn't in my power. I remembered what my old friend (well, I don't think you could refer to her as a friend, but it's a long story, so a friend will do) Calypso had said, when she had nursed me on her island, Ogygia: "The Fates are cruel." Heck yeah, they were.

I didn't have anything to say, that would make things right, so I just settled for saying:

"I love you."

Her arms tightened around me.

"I l-love you t-too, Percy," she said. "But d-don't worry, this isn't th-the last g-goodbye."

"How so?" I asked.

"We'll m-meet in Elysium," she said and rested her head on my shoulder.

That was true. Although I had thought of resurrection and going for the Isles of the Blest, eternal happiness with Annabeth didn't sound bad at all. That was definitely something I'd have to think about, but the time to think was not now.

"Annabeth, I'm so, so sorry for everything," I said and reached to kiss her forehead in the darkness.

"There's no-nothing to be s-sorry about, P-percy," she whispered. "I w-wouldn't have w-wanted it any o-other way, than b-being with you, t-till the e-end."

"Well I guess I left one promise unbroken," I said.

"What's that?"

"I promised to love you until my dying day," I noted.

"Don't t-talk about d-dying, Percy. We're j-just falling asleep and w-waking up in the Underworld," Annabeth whispered and locked her lips to mine.

Pretty soon my brain went cloudy. I didn't know if I was awake or not. Right then, I didn't even notice, that Annabeth had fallen limp in my arms. I drifted slowly and peacefully deep into unconsciousness.

What will possibly happen to them? :o Don't worry, I've got a plan. See you in a few!

Until then,

Peace, love, PJO!

Luv,

AC