Chapter 7

Percy's POV

I watched as the trees flew past in a blur. I looked down at the small creature on my lap. We stopped as we ran out of fuel. Zoe got out of the driver's seat. We had lost all of our money on the lion attack. Our backpacks were destroyed, we therefore had no money.

"Where are we?" Thalia asked.

"Well we need to go west so we should go through that which I believe is Hephaestus' junkyard." I said.

"Let's go then." Zoe said.

As we walked into the junk yard I put down Nemea. She followed right behind me. I looked around there was rubbish everywhere.

"Hey guys look at this," Thalia said. She showed us a automaton head that looked like a monkey. "It's Percy." Luke and Phoebe snorted and Zoe and me both realised what was wrong.

"Put that down now." Zoe yelled. Thalia looked at her as if she was mad. I heard a rumble behind me and saw Thalia's eyes widen.

I turned to see the largest automaton that I had ever seen. "Talos!" I heard Luke say.

"No, this is just a remake. This one is only 50ft. The real Talos is about twice the size."

"Oh that makes me feel so much better than." Thalia said sarcastically.

The automaton saw us and Phoebe yelled "split."

We all ran in different directions with Nemea following me. Phoebe and Zoe started to shoot it. Thalia tried to come up behind it while Luke and I tried to distract it.

The arrows just bounced off the metal skin of the Automaton. The two hunters were about to charge in when Thalia charged and stabbed it in the back of the knee. This did two things. The first was it made it angry. The second is that it made it swat it's hand down hitting Thalia into a pile of rubbish.

"Thalia no" Luke yelled.

I turned and looked at Zoe, "Take the others, I will handle it."

She looked at me and nodded. "I'll meet you outside the Garden of the Hesperidites.

"Yeah, I will see you there."

They ran over to Thalia. I summoned a wave to distract it. When they were out of the way I drew both my swords and charged. I ran right at it and was propelled up by a geyser of water. I landed on the body and stuck my swords in. I used them like climbing picks and I climbed up to the mouth of it. It tried to hit me and I jumped out of the way nearly losing my footing.

I ran up to the neck and I cut at it. It made a long slash but achieved nothing else. I looked down at Nemea who was trying to claw at a foot. I then climbed up the rest of the face and jumped into the mouth. As I fell I put out my two swords to cause as much damage as I could. I landed on the bottom of the chute painfully. I got up and looked around. There were a few tunnels ahead and I picked one and flooded the other two. As I walked down the tunnel I spotted what I wanted. A inner control room. I looked at the controls and instead of slashing at the controls I tried to work them out. I was a son of Athena after all.

Thalia's POV

I woke up looking into Luke's face. He smiled at me and I smiled back. "You are finally up that is great we were just about to leave without you."

I looked around to see that I was inside some kind of hostel. "What happened to the automaton?"

"Percy told us to go on." I looked at him in shock. We could not just abandon him. I shook it off. What is done is done. I thought to myself. "Where are we going to go?"

"We need to ask Nereus a question. To do that we need to capture him" Luke said grimly.

I followed him out of the room and to where Phoebe and Zoe were waiting. When they saw me they nodded. We set off. As we got supposedly closer I asked Zoe how we would find him.

"I know roughly where he is, the smell will lead us the rest of the way." When we got close enough the smell was almost unbearable. I smelt like a mixture of rotting sea weed and bad seafood. I saw a decrepit looking man sitting out next to the edge of the pier. When he saw us approaching he made to dive into the water. As his feet left the ground they were once again attached to it by arrows shot by two impatient huntresses. He looked at us and sighed.

"I suppose that you kids want to ask me a question. Zoe nodded in affirmation. "what was the beast that Lady Artemis was hunting?"

"It was the Ophiotaurus."

Zoe gasped in surprise. Nereus took this as his time to escape and dove into the sea.

"The Ophiotaurus was a creature that was said to have the power to overthrow Olympus. In the first titan war Kronos' allies were about to burn the remains of it and win the war when your father managed to get them back. If it is back then it is likely that many of the Titans will have returned and it may even lead the way for Kronos to start another war."

They all looked a little upset by the prospect of war. I saw this and said, "We need to meet Percy and the garden of the Hesparidites."

"Yeah," Zoe said breaking her train of thought, "it is not far from here. It will only take a few hours on foot.

Luke grunted, "Only a few hours?" he questioned.

"Yes, are you not strong enough boy," Phoebe said spitefully. Luke and I gave her a glare and Luke replied,

"I just don't like to go by foot if there is another alternative."

"We need to get going; we don't want to keep Percy waiting." Zoe said.