This Dark Night ― Percy Jackson & Annabeth Chase¹

―xiii. the land without rain

Naomi trailed behind the group, an unexplainable dread forming in her stomach, like an apple growing on the branch of a tree. She had a bad feeling something was going to happen—something awful.

After a while, they saw the edge of the junkyard about half a mild ahead of them, the lights of a highway stretching through the desert. But between them and the road...

"What is that?" Bianca gasped.

Ahead of them was a hill much bigger and longer than the others. It was like a metal mesa, the length of a football field and as tall as goalposts. At one end of the mesa was a row of ten thick metal columns, wedged tightly together.

Bianca frowned. "They look like—"

"Toes," Grover said.

Bianca nodded. "Really, really large toes."

Zoë and Thalia exchanged nervous looks.

"Let's go around," Thalia said. "Far around."

"But the road is right over there," Percy protested. "Quicker to climb over."

Ping.

Thalia hefted her spear and Zoë drew her bow, but then Naomi realized it was only Grover. He had thrown a piece of scrap metal at the toes and hit one, making a deep echo, as if the column were hollow.

"Why did you do that?" Zoë demanded.

Grover cringed. "I don't know. I, uh, don't like fake feet?"

"Come on." Thalia looked pointedly at Percy. "Around."

Percy didn't argue this time.

After several minutes of walking, they finally stepped onto the highway, an abandoned but well-lit stretch of black tarmac.

"We made it out," Zoë said. "Thank the gods."

But apparently the gods didn't want to be thanked. At that moment, Naomi heard a sound like a thousand trash compactors crushing metal.

They turned. Behind them, the scrap mountain was boiling, rising up. The ten toes tilted over, and Naomi realized why they looked like toes—it was because they were toes. The thing that rose up from the metal was a bronze giant in full Greek battle armor. He was impossibly tall—a skyscraper with limbs. He gleamed wickedly in the moonlight, looking down at them with a deformed face. His joints creaked with rust, and across his armored chest, written in thick dust by some giant finger, were the words WASH ME.

"Talos!" Zoë gasped.

"Who's Talos?" Naomi asked, staring up at the giant in horror.

"One of Hephaestus's creations," Thalia said. "But that can't be the original. It's too small. A prototype, maybe. A defective model."

The metal giant didn't seem to like the word defective.

He moved one hand to his sword belt and drew his weapon. The sound of it coming out of its sheath was horrible, metal screeching against metal. The blade was a hundred feet long, easy. It looked rusty and dull, but Naomi knew it would still do some serious damage.

"Someone took something," Zoë said. "Who took something?"

She stared accusingly at Percy.

He shook his head. "I'm a lot of things, but I'm not a thief."

The giant defective Talos took one step toward them, closing half the distance and making the ground shake.

"Run!" Grover yelped.