The Path Of Glory (Annabeth Chase x Male Reader)

53. The Junkyard Of The Gods

"That's the second time you've agreed with Zoë," Y/N said, but Thalia ignored him.

They started picking their way through the hills and valleys of junk. The stuff seemed to go on forever, and if it hadn't been for Ursa Major, they would've gotten lost. All the hills pretty much looked the same.

There was too much cool junk not to check out some of it. Percy found an electric guitar shaped like Apollo's lyre; Grover found a broken tree made out of metal; Ethan picked up a jeweled breastplate; Y/N took up a golden shield so well polished it seemed a mirror.

Each time they found something, either Thalia or Zoë slapped their wrist and ordered them to put it back where they'd found it.

Finally, they saw the edge of the junkyard about half a mile 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 the 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. It was only Ethan. 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.

Ethan shrugged. "I don't know. I, uh, don't like fake feet?"

"Come on," Thalia said. "Around."

Nobody argued. The toes were starting to freak Y/N out, too. Who sculpts ten-foot-tall metal toes and sticks them in a junkyard?

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

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

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

He whirled around. Behind them, the scrap mountain was boiling, rising up. The ten toes tilted over, and he realized why they looked like toes. 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 legs and arms. He gleamed wickedly in the moonlight. He looked down at them, and his face was deformed. The left side was partially melted off. 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—who's Talos?" Percy stuttered.

"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 like the word defective.

He moved one and 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 that didn't matter at this stage. Getting hit with that thing would be like getting hit with a battleship.