"You! You idiot!", Jason yelled after a moment of tense silence.

Nico smirked and dropped to a knee by Piper's side to help heal her. Watching the rest of them beat him up would be satisfaction enough for him.

"H-Hey, guys", Leo's eyes widened and his palms lost their fire. "What's up?".

"What's up? What's up?!", Jason yelled incredulously. He flew forward and punched him right in the nose before wrapping him up in a tight hug not even a second later. "Don't you ever do that again!".

The yelling continued, but Nico tuned out, turning his attention, instead, to Annabeth and Hazel who were struggling to help an injured Frank hobble towards them. He jumped up to help, and soon they had both Piper and Frank laying side by side.

"Annabeth, get out the nectar. And Hazel, break off some small bits of ambrosia and give it to them. Not too much, though, okay?". They both nodded, and he turned to dig through his pack for supplies. "Here. Pour the nectar in this tin", he said, gesturing to the small tin plate he had brought with him for emergencies. He ripped off a few lengths of bandages with his teeth and hurriedly put them in the dish of nectar to soak.

Annabeth raised an eyebrow at his methods, and he blushed.

"Will taught me a few things".

"Oh my gods. You two are literally so adorable", Piper said with a chuckle that soon turned into a grimace of pain. Her hand went to her wounded side and she hissed and turned away. "How's Frank?".

"I'm fine. It was a stupid mistake. I should have seen it behind me. It's just a little cut on my leg. It's not even that deep". Piper gave him a skeptical look but didn't comment.

Nico set to work, squeezing out any excess nectar back into the dish and beginning to wrap Piper's wound with the soaked bandages. Piper turned towards her newly living friend and boyfriend to distract herself from the pain.

"You two, get over here! And Jason, stopping hitting him before he decides to go and die again. And you", she said, narrowing her eyes dangerously at her friend, "We will be talking about this later, Repair Boy".

Leo gulped comically, but even despite her threat the two of them made their way over to her side.

"Piper and Frank won't be walking again anytime soon. We might as well camp here for the night. Or whatever counts as night here", Nico said, finishing up with Piper and shuffling over a few feet to help Frank.

"Agreed. Plus, we still don't know where Xavier and Percy went or when they'll be back". Leaving Nico to helping Frank, Annabeth stood up and then crouched over where they had all dumped their bags. "We need to set up camp, we have Leo to set the fire, but we don't have anything to burn. Stupid, should have brought some wood or something. Maybe we could go to the Cursed Wood? No, that's a horrible idea, what are you thinking?", she mumbled to herself as she rummaged through the packs.

"Um, guys? Guys, you might want to look at this", Hazel said nervously from where she stood at the edge of their camp area.

Annabeth huffed at being interrupted from her train of thought, but turned to look anyway, immediately wishing she hadn't.

At the moment, their campsite was situated just on the other side of the top of a large dune that Hazel was currently standing at the top of. At first, after Annabeth had trudged up to the top to stand next to Hazel and look at the valley below, she didn't see anything out of the ordinary. But then she saw movement out of the corner of her eye. She whipped around only to see a singular hellhound that appeared to be stuck in the sand. Or more accurately, the sand was trapping it. As she watched, small specks began climbing up the body of the entire hellhound, seemingly defying the laws of gravity. The specks left nothing behind but bones that soon dissolved into the usual yellow monster dust.

They had assumed the desert was made of sand. They were wrong.

The sands shifted beneath their feet.

"We have to get out of here", Annabeth said, her voice deathly quiet in the silence that had suddenly taken over the valley. "We have to get out of here!".

The two girls turned tail and ran, even as the dune they had just been standing on exploded behind them.

"Go! Run!", Annabeth screamed at her friends who had looked towards them at the sudden noise. She grabbed the hand of the younger girl beside her, sprinting to catch up to the rest of their group who were packing up their things as fast as they possibly could.

A shadow grew over the group, blocking out the already minimal light and continuing to grow as the dune behind them slowly extended into a large tendril of… something.

Jason and Leo, who had been newly energised by his contact with the fire water, hurried to help Piper to stand while Nico and Hazel did the same for Frank who's injury was less severe.

"Don't stay in one place for too long!", Annabeth told the group as she felt the insects or monsters or whatever they were begin to crawl up her shoe.

"This way!", Jason yelled to get their attention, pulling Piper and Leo with him to the left and around the dune-come-to-life.

The rest of the group soon spotted what Jason had and began sprinting, as fast as they were able to with two injured members, towards the distant line of black that marked the change in terrain.

Shockwaves travelled out through the ground beneath them as they ran, marking the pursuit of the living sand as it dove in and out of the ground after them. The flashes of colour in the clouds and angered and pained screeches from the battle above them reached a new height, and fire began to rain down from the clouds all around them. The dead bodies of some sort of creature rained down from the sky, hitting the ground around them in explosions that threw the living sand into the air and making it twice as hard for the group of demigods to avoid it touching them.

They had almost made it to the rough stone ground of the terrain beyond when the tendril that had been in hot pursuit of them the entire time lashed out, just barely managing to wrap around Annabeth's left ankle and dragging her to the ground.

"Annabeth!", Hazel screamed in alarm, drawing the rest of the group's attention.

She rolled around on the ground, trying to get the coil to release her while simultaneously avoiding being completely engulfed by the living sand around her. But its grip was tight, and nothing she was doing seemed to be affecting it.

"Go! Get off the sand!", she yelled desperately over her shoulder, still thrashing.

Small cuts began to appear all over her body from when she hadn't moved fast enough, and just when she was beginning to accept that she probably wasn't going to get out of this one, she felt two hands grab her under her armpits and pull with such force that she was ripped from the monster's grip and deposited at her friends' side.

She didn't even need to look to know who had saved her, the frosty temperature of his skin and scent of the sea that always accompanied him being more than enough of a clue. Xavier followed in their wake, flying on golden wings with his twin swords out and dripping with fire

The group collapsed just at the edge of the next terrain, exhausted from their sudden and unexpected sprint. The creature made of living sand reared up at the edge of its territory and screeched, angry at losing its prey.

Jason, along with the rest of the group, covered their ears to try and block out the noise. "If we don't get that thing to shut up, it'll attract every monster in Tartarus", he yelled over the noise.

"That's a nice idea and all, but in case you haven't noticed, it's made of sand! How do you kill sand?!", Nico yelled back, frustrated at the entire situation so far.

Xavier stepped forward, flames still roaring in his eyes from the heat of the battle that had just taken place. "Close your eyes", he commanded, his voice more serious than anybody had ever heard him.

They all immediately did what he said, even Percy, who turned away and covered the group as best he could with his outstretched wings.

Xavier's own wings disappeared as he stepped forward. His skin tingled with suppressed energy and power, and the visible veins in his arms and wrists began to turn golden. He had always been one to keep his powers and his aura tightly under control. Fire and heat was uncontrollable and destructive. Simply because of the nature of his powers, he couldn't afford to allow them to get out of his control. But the mikró fónoi were old and resilient. It would require a lot of power to kill a nest of them.

Annabeth waited in tense anticipation with her eyes closed for Xavier to somehow destroy the living sand for approximately 20 seconds before she felt it. A light: hot, burning, scorching, destructive. It seared the back of her eyelids and made her want to scream out in pain.

The screeching of the monster grew anguished and somehow impossibly louder until, all of a sudden, it stopped. A soft sound, like the cactus needles falling to the other end of a rain stick, rang out in the new silence and then nothing.

—

"What was that thing?", Leo asked later that night as they all sat around the meagre campfire they had built for themselves.

The flickering light from the flames threw shadows over Xavier's face as he looked into the fire, making him look older than he really was.

"Mikró fónoi", he said simply, "Little devourers. They used to be found in deserts all over the world, but their nests have become few and far in between on the surface world. They are very old monsters. Old enough to be forgotten".

The fire crackling was the only sound as the group all pondered over this new information.

"You are lucky to have escaped as easily as you did. In small quantities, they are practically harmless. But a big nest like that?". He left the question hanging, but they all got the message.

They were lucky to be alive.

Looking around at the grim faces of her friends around her, Piper decided that a change in topic was in order. "So how far away are we from the Unruled?". The group immediately perked up and looked towards Percy for the answer.

He looked to the left, beyond the mountain they had decided to stop and camp for the night on and into the hazy distance. "It shouldn't be much farther now. If we cut across the Delta of Despair we should half our time, but that area is dangerous. There's a lot of monsters since the Delta is the only source of drinkable water that isn't made of fire. We should make a stop there too. Phlegethon water will keep us alive, but real water is still better. From there, we'll have to go through the curtain and walk sideways until we reach the Night. Her garden is one of the entrances to the Unruled".

His friends just stared at him, and Nico nodded. "Great! What does all that mean exactly?".

Percy rolled his eyes, but the corner of his mouth twitched slightly. "We should reach there by tomorrow. But we should rest again before we enter the Unruled. Sleeping there would not be a good idea".

"Agreed". Annabeth looked up at him and gave him an appreciative smile. "Everybody grab some food and get to sleep. You'll need your energy".

They all nodded and turned to go their separate ways on the small ledge they had made their camp on.

"I'm going to go up top. I'll keep first watch", Xavier said with a troubled look on his face. He didn't give Percy or anybody else a chance to reply before his wings opened and he disappeared.

Percy frowned after him worriedly and was about to go after him, but a hand on his shoulder held him back.

"Just give him some space. He needs to think through some things", Annabeth said, gently pulling him back. "Come on, you need your rest too".

Percy sighed and ran a hand through his hair but still did what she asked and laid down on the rough ground next to her.

They simply lay there for a moment, comfortable and soothed by just the other's presence, before Annabeth spoke, breaking it.

"We're going to get through this. Aren't we?". She turned over to face Percy so that their noses were only a few inches apart and stared into his eyes intently. They were still just as beautiful and complex as she remembered them being.

"I don't know", he replied just as quietly. "I don't know". He tucked her close to his chest, savouring the smell of her strawberry and lemon scented shampoo. "You should get some rest. You were almost eaten by sand today".

Annabeth chuckled at that, but it was half-hearted at best. "I love you, you know that?", she whispered against his chest, comforted by the sound of his heart beating beneath her head.

"I know. I love you too. Now get some sleep". She was too exhausted to try and argue and soon drifted off into a hopefully dreamless oblivion.

Meanwhile, Leo, Jason, and Piper were all still awake and sitting together by the fire.

"So… That was an interesting first day", Leo said rather dryly.

Piper snorted. "Yeah. You could say that".

"Overall, though. It wasn't too bad. You know, considering we're in hell and everything", he continued, a cheeriness to his tone that definitely shouldn't have been there considering their current location.

"Speak for yourself", Jason muttered, poking the dying flames with a stick. His blue eyes seemed haunted with memories from both their current quest and the previous wars. Screams played in his ears, and his poking got angrier.

"It wasn't that bad—", Leo started, but he was interrupted by Jason throwing his stick angrily into the fire and scattering the embers.

"You weren't there! I had to watch you die, Leo. I had to watch you die, and I couldn't do a damn thing about it. Again!". Unshed tears burned at the backs of his eyes, but he blinked them away.

"Alright! Jeez, I get it. Didn't know you cared so much". He muttered the last part under his breath, but his two best friends still heard it.

"Don't say that. Don't ever say that", Piper said in a hoarse whisper, "Of course we care! You're our best friend, Leo. If we lost you—". The tears that had been gathering in her eyes fell rapidly down her cheeks, forcing her to stop, but he got the message.

"Hey, hey, hey. Don't cry, Beauty Queen, don't cry. It's alright, okay? Look, I'm not going anywhere", he said pulling her into a hug.

"Leo, you don't know that. None of us knows that. And that's alright, danger comes with the job, but please just promise us that you won't be too reckless. Please?".

He was shocked speechless, something that almost never ever happened to him. But even still he managed to stammer out an, "I promise". His friend's nodded gratefully, and Piper pecked him on the cheek before Jason helped her over to their small area of floor that they had chosen to sleep on.

Leo only moved to lay on the ground right beside the dying fire, but even with how tired he was, he still didn't fall asleep for a rather long time after that. One thought continued to plague his mind. One thought that he could hardly bring himself to believe even as he succumbed to the darkness of Hypnos' realm.

He was wanted.

A/N:

Alright! What's happening, guys?! It's been a while!

I know, I know, I promised that I wouldn't turn into one of those author's, but it seems the world is against me right now. Pulling this chapter out of my brain was actually borderline painful. I'm glad that I write fanfiction and not anything original, because I am running on empty right now on ways to make the Unruled different from the rest of Tartarus. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to share them. I'm desperate.

So… in other news. As the dreaded GCSE exams grow closer, I'm afraid my updating schedule will become somehow even more erratic (if you can believe that's possible). I only have time to write and update now today because it's Half-Term break and I have the whole week to study.

I just really want to thank you guys for sticking with this story, especially those of you who have been here since the beginning. It really means a lot to me every time I can check my inbox and see that I've gotten another follower or even a coveted review.

Alright, mushy stuff/author's rant/apology over. I've got to go to sleep now considering it's almost midnight here and I want to get an early start tomorrow. Stay awesome, you guys! :3