Disclaimer: I don't own anything by Rick Riordan.


Thalia

"Come on!" Grover cried. "We're almost there!"
I tried to run faster, but after hours of running, exhaustion was starting to overcome me. As I ran, I looked around for Annabeth and Luke. The kid seemed even worse than me, but Luke was helping her. We approached a hill that seemed completely ordinary, but I knew that in our world, nothing is as it seems.

"This is it," panted Grover, confirming my suspicions . "Half-Blood Hill."

Relief washed over me. We were almost there. We're not out of danger yet, I reminded myself. Almost as if to confirm that, I heard a roar behind me. When I chanced a glance behind me, I saw the horde of monsters that approached gaining on us. Quickly making calculations, I realised we would never even make it to the top of the hill. Unless...

"Luke!" I cried. He turned around and met my eyes. In that split second of eye contact, he realised my plan.

"No! Thalia you can't!" he pleaded.

"Can't what?" Annabeth asked.

"Annie, I'm going to hold them off while the rest of you run to the hill," I told her. She started to protest, but I cut her off. "Please Annie. Promise me that you'll go. This isn't your fight." She looked like she didn't want to, but with tears glistening in her eyes, she replied, "I promise." Then, I turned to Luke, who was going to be much harder to convince.

"Thalia I won't let you do this," he said the minute I turned to him.

"Luke, it's a choice between one of us or all of us dying," I tried to reason.

"Then, I'll do it. I can hold them off. Or I can at least help you. Please," he begged.

It broke my heart to leave him, but I knew that being a daughter of Zeus was like being a ticking time-bomb. And I was about to explode. "Luke, they're after me. If I do this, you two will be safe, but if you do, they'll keep coming. You have to go on Luke. If not for me, if not for yourself, then do it for the kid."

I knew that I'd used my most convincing argument. Ever since we found Annie, we felt that she was our responsibility. We did everything we could to take care of her: giving her the extra rations, making sure that she stayed behind us while we fought a monster or letting her get sleep while we stayed up to watch. Now, she was headed into a new environment and even though we were told that she would be taken care of, we still felt responsible for her. If it was just us, Luke would have never agreed to leave me, but he knew that we couldn't let Annabeth venture into the world alone.

"This isn't goodbye," he told me.

"This isn't goodbye," I affirmed, trying to believe it. As Annabeth, Luke and Grover continued to sprint up the hill, I turned around and brandished my weapons. If I was going to go down, I planned to take as many monsters as I could with me.