AN: Thank you guys so much! :) And OHMYGODS! I got the Mark of Athena! But I still haven't read it yet… :D

Disclaimer: I don't own PJO or HoO

I looked at Nico. He sighed and said, "How much do you know about Greek mythology?"

Shane huffed. "Enough, I suppose. We all take Greek in school as our language."

"It's the only class that I don't want to fall asleep in…" John muttered.

Nico bit his lip. "Well… um… the thing is…"

We stared at him expectantly as he tried to form words. I didn't know about the rest of them, but I sure as hell wanted to know what was going on!

He muttered, "Oh gods, how do I explain this? Percy and Annabeth are much better at this than I am…" Then in a louder voice, he said, "Ok, so I'm not that good at explaining this stuff, but here goes. The Greek gods that you've been learning about, the ones you thought were just myths, well, they're real. They live on the 600th floor of the Empire State building, and a lot of the times, the come to earth and hook up… I mean, have children with mortals, aka your parents. So, long story short, one of your parents is a regular mortal, and the other is an Olympian god or goddess. Get it?"

I scanned his face, debating whether he was lying or not.

"Who's your parent?" I asked with a small voice.

His eyes darkened, like this was a forbidden subject. "Hades, lord of the dead." Something about his tone made it clear not to ask about his mortal parent.

"Oh yea? Prove it, big shot." John challenged stupidly.

Nico glared at him. In the blink of an eye, Nico appeared right behind John, holding a knife to his neck. "For future reference, don't mess with the Ghost King."

John gulped nervously. "Got it." He squeaked.

Amanda looked at Derrick. "Wait, what about you?"

Derrick and Nico glanced at each other before he kicked off his shoe, revealing his… feet? No, he had hooves.

We stumbled backwards. "What the…" I said.

Derrick shrugged. "I'm a satyr." He said nonchalantly.

"Oh. Ok. Totally normal…" I squeaked.

Suddenly, there was a deep growl. I looked over to see a huge black dog running towards us, about to leap.

Nico's eyes widened. "Hit the floor!"

The dog, if you could even call it that, jumped at us.

Before it could crash into us and tear us apart, Nico grabbed my hand.

"Everyone, hold on!" he yelled.

He shut his eyes and the world went dark.

For a moment, I thought I was dead. Chilling touches and splintering screams followed me.

We appeared in a battlefield. Teenagers our age were fighting with swords and knives. The things they were fighting were straight out of a horror movie.

There were there weird snake women, ugly humanoids made out of dirt, and others.

"Come on." Derrick ushered Amanda, John, Shane, and Paradise along urgently. "We have to go. Don't worry, Nico's got Avalon."

When they were almost over the top of the hill, Nico looked back, as if just noticing that they were gone. "Avalon, go with them. Hurry. Be careful." He said, swaying slightly. He looked dizzy and weak.

I didn't want to leave him like that, since he could pass out and get eaten at any moment, but the battle cry of a Cyclops made me nod and sprinted up the hill.

Just when I was about to reach the top, I felt a chill pass through me. I looked back for a second to see a giant earth creature twice my size lunging at me.

"Avalon!" Nico yelled. He thrust his hand towards me, and the ground began to shake. At least 10 skeletons appeared out of the fissure in front of me.

They attacked the monster in front of me, and it was a pile of dust within seconds.

I looked over to Nico to thank him, but he was on the ground lying still. I ran over to him. "Please Nico, oh please no." I took his pulse like my dad had taught me to do when I was young. I couldn't feel one. I tried his wrist, neck, and chest. There was nothing.

Tears started falling out of my eyes. I barely knew Nico, but he had still died for me.

I sat with his head on my lap, tears streaming down my face. "Oh Nico, what did you do?"

A boy with blonde hair was making lightning strike with the snap of his wrist. Rain was also pouring down, soaking everything in sight down to the core.

A bunch of other kids were slashing around with swords and slicing the monsters up. They turned into dust as soon as the metal made contact with its skin.

One boy was throwing a flaming hammer around. The weird thing, his skin didn't seem to be affected by it and the hammer always flew back to him like a boomerang.

Between the teenagers and the skeletons, the monsters managed to disappear within the matter of a few minutes.

Everyone cheered, even though they looked tired. Then the attention turned to me and Nico. The smiles quickly turned into frowns and worried expressions. One of the boys near me whispered something in a girl's ear.

She nodded and yelled, "Everybody back to your cabins! Dinner's at six!"

They all nodded and left, with the exception of a few. They crowded around me and Nico. The lightning boy and the boy with the hammer were two of them. There was a girl with blonde curly hair and stormy gray eyes that were analyzing me. Another girl had choppy blown hair and rainbow eyes. There was the boy who'd whispered in the girl's ear before with blonde hair and blue eyes. And there was the girl who'd done the yelling with dirty blonde brown hair and blue eyes.

"Looks like he's returned." Said the blonde girl, thinking hard.

"Where the Hades does he go?" said the dirty blonde girl, even though she was looking over me as she spoke. Did she just say Hades?

"Maybe he actually does go to Hades…" the hammer boy said.

The one with chopped hair rolled her eyes.

As they continued to argue, I stared at his face. It was expressionless and cold. I felt another tear trickle down my face. He'd been so quick to save me. I would've been a goner for sure.

I looked up at the six of them again and my eyes widened. Behind them was a giant the size of Texas, rising out of the ground with a diabolical look on his face. It raised its hand like it was about to slam it down onto us. I screamed, and the other spun around and looked at it in shock.

Before they could take out their weapons, it brought down its fist.

I raised my hand above me as somewhat of a shield, and I heard a deafening shattering noise, like when dad and I went to visit the glaciers in South America and they broke off and crashed.

When I looked up, the giant was gone, and I was left with a dead boy, six shocked teenagers, and a thousand shards of ice everywhere around me.

I did the normal thing any 13 year girl would do after having all of that happen to her. I rolled my eyes to the back of my head and passed out.

AN: Sorry it's so short! In my mind, it was much longer… Anyways, thanks for the reviews! Love ya!

~Nessa