I do not own PJO or A:TLA

Chapter 17

Percy coughed and waved the dust away from his eyes, blinking at the sudden light. Toph had burst through a wall into a large hallow cavern. There were intricate designs and man-made pillars scattered throughout the room as well as burning torches.

But the blanket of dust and dirt made it look like it had been empty for hundreds of years.

The fire burning on the walls set off warning signs in Percy's mind but Aang didn't seem worried. In fact, his eyes lit up with wonder and amazement.

"Oh wow... Eternal Flame... This must have been built by the Sun Warriors thousands of years ago." He said. "The Sun Warriors were the first fire benders." He explained to Percy. "They believed that fire bending was life and light, not the anger and hate that fire benders use now."

"Oh... cool." Percy said. "So fire benders haven't always been evil. That's encouraging."

Aang's grey eyes flickered down. "I used to be friends with the fire nation, you know. A hundred years ago before all this happened."

Percy felt uncomfortable whenever Aang talked like this. He was so old and so full of guilt but at the same time... He was just a kid.

But what kind of excuse is age, right?

"It wasn't your fault." He said, touching Aang's shoulder. "It'll work out."

"Yeah, after Aang kills the Fire Lord." Toph said.

Aang's eyes narrowed as he looked away again. "Yeah... right."

Percy looked around the room and observed what they had to work with, they had definitely found the wall.

It was huge and took up most of the room. From the floor to the roof of the cave it loomed up at them. It had a moat of lava around it that smoked and hissed and bubbled and burst. The wall it's self was worn and marked and blackened by fire in several places and had drawings and strange letters covering other places of it. Close to the bottom of, it looked grey and dead but as it went up, the colours bled into each other, red, orange and finally, dark purple at the top.

But all of that seemed less important than the strange red goop that was seeping out of a nicely sized crack across the whole of the wall.

"I can't believe you led us right here." Percy said, impressed. "Thank you, Toph. You're amazing."

She smiled smugly. "No problem for me. The thing is massive and... I don't know. It's humming or something."

"Do you think you should go back and get the rest of the group?" Percy asked.

Toph nodded. "I'll be fast now that I don't have you guys holding me back. I'll only be a few minutes. Don't do anything stupid until I get back."

Aang smiled and spun his staff in his hands. He opened the glider so fast that Percy jumped. He still wasn't used to the air bending.

"We'll go get a closer look and see if we can do anything." Aang said.

Toph nodded and disappeared through the hole in the wall and Percy eyed Aang's glider doubtfully. "You want me to climb on the back of your glider and... fly over to the wall?"

"It's perfectly safe!" Aang said. "I may be the Avatar, but I was an air bender first. It's my element."

"But it's not mine." Percy couldn't help thinking of Thalia and her fear of heights. At least she would have hated this more. "Fine. I'll do it. But if you drop me into the lava and I die, I swear I'll kill you."

A few horrifying seconds and they were on the wall, standing on one of the jutted ledges. It was louder up close with the hissing and cracking, not to mention the lava bubbling and steaming a few yards under them.

Percy scrambled off the glider and tried not to let Aang see how weak his knees felt.

He really hated flying. Especially. over a boiling lake of lava.

The stone, which Percy still had tucked under his arm like a football, was buzzing. He briefly thought it felt like a cat purring in his arms.

"YOU OKAY?" Aang yelled, he noticed Percy was looking a little green after the flight.

"I'M FINE... HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO FIX THIS?"

Aang looked around and pointed at the large crack where the red plasma goop was seeping out.

They made their way over there.

"MAYBE TRY TO BEND IT CLOSE?" Percy asked.

Aang was staring at the plasma, it look familiar. Like the light from his dream. His eyes glazed over and as Percy watched, he reached out and touched the plasma.

"No!" Percy yelled and reached out to stop him, but it was too late. There was a flash of blue light and suddenly the crazy dude with the glowing eyes from Percy's dream was standing over the two boys.

"Avatar Ruko." Aang gasped. He hadn't seen his mentor since Azula had blasted him in the back at Ba Sing Se.

Ruko didn't greet him, only stared down disapprovingly at the two of them. Percy fidgeted uncomfortably, his glare was so... sad.

Give it back.

Percy whipped his head around but nobody else was there.

"Did you hear that?" Aang asked. "Did it come from...?" He pointed to the crack.

Give it back.

Percy realized Aang was right. It was coming from the crack. But how...?

"Avatar Ruko, what should I do?" Aang asked desperately. "How do I fix it?"

Ruko didn't answer, he just slowly turned his eyes towards the crack.

"Should I bend it? Is that what you want me to do?" He asked. Then he picked up his staff and with a grunt of effort and and extremely forceful swing of his staff, he air bended some of the plasma back into the crack and closed it with earth bending.

Percy had seen some pretty cool stuff, being a child of Poseidon and all, but at that moment he was struck but just how much power this kid had in him.

The wall trembled slightly and the humming of the jewel under Percy's arm intensified. He didn't know why he was still holding it but it felt like a desperate hope that it would help.

Ruko shook his head sadly and then evaporated.

Percy glanced down and almost threw the jewel from him. "Woah!"

The purple dab in the middle was moving, bleeding it's colour into the rest of the stone.

"It's trying to get out."

"What?" Percy wasn't sure he heard Aang correctly.

"It's trying to get out!" Aang said louder. "Let it out!"

He wrenched the stone from Percy.

"Hey!" Percy tried to make a desperate grab for it back but Aang lightly air bended himself out of reach.

He landed lightly on a ledge above Percy and stared at the jewel. Even though the purple was spreading into the rest of the colours, it wasn't dissolving or becoming less.

All of the sudden, Percy and Aang looked up and saw Toph, Katara, Zuko and Sokka standing at the mouth of Toph's man-made tunnel.

They also saw a dark shape creeping behind them.

Percy squinted, unsure if he was seeing things right in the flickering shadows and firelight.

"LOOK OUT!" Aang yelled, he had seen first, the shadow take shape and become a humanoid-dog thing. A Telekhine.

The group on the other ride of the cave couldn't hear their warnings, so fixated on the wall.

Aang shot a blast of wind at them. It hit the monster in the snout and sent him reeling backwards, whining and snarling.

Four or five more slunk out of the shadows.

Percy desperately grabbed Riptide out of his pocket and uncapped it before he realized he was way too far away.

He shouted and threw Riptide as hard as he could towards Sokka.

The sword never would have reached him if a gust of wind from Aang hadn't helped it along.

Sokka grabbed the balde out of the air and swiped at the first monster while the rest of the group started attacking the best they could.

A handful more Telekhines burst through and joined their throngs but they all hesitated at the sight of Riptide. They remembered the sting of that sword from a little less than a year ago. During a war that they lost.

"Percy, we have to fix this wall so we can go help them." Aang shouted.

"Yeah... yeah." Percy looked around and his eyes narrowed. His ADHD was kicking in and he started to notice everything around him and how hopeless the situation seemed. The crack that Aang had bended shut was already reopening, the pressure of the plasma building up was too much. He didn't know how to stop it.

"Break the stone." He said.

"What?" Aang asked.

Percy wasn't exactly sure why he said it, but he didn't know what else to do. "Break it. You said the purple stuff was trying to get out. Do it now!"

Aang hardly hesitated before he placed the sparkling jewel in the ground and struck it once with his staff.

The sound of glass breaking pierced Percy's ears. Everyone else had heard it too, it had been a hundred times louder than it should have been.

Everything started happening at once.

The two sides of the stone broke apart and a blast of pure light shot out and lit up the tunnel. Out of the light emerged thousands of shiny, bronze butterflies. The tiny creatures alighted everywhere, on the Telekhines, on the wall, on the plasma on Percy's arms and head and shirt.

The second they touched Percy he left was a strange twinge. It wasn't painful but it was not very pleasant either.

The Telekhines screamed on pain and hatred though. The terrible high-pitched whine of a dog mixed with human voices. One by one they crumbled and disintegrated into dust.

Aang was looking at the mechanical creatures in wonder, one had landed on the tip of his fingers.

But they weren't done yet. Now that the Telekhines were dealt with they swarmed the wall, a special amount on the edges of the crack. They made tiny whirring and clicking sounds as they went and slowly, the crack started to close.

Suddenly Percy felt a sharp pain in his foot, when he looked he saw that one of the butterflies has exploded right by his feet. It had leaked a golden acid or something that was burning a hole right through the soft leather of his shoe.

It all clicked in Percy's mind.

"Aang! We have to get out of here!" He yelled.

Aang was still mesmerized by the mechanical butterfly on his finger, "What are they?"

"They're bad news and we have to get off this wall NOW."

Aang obeyed and grabbed his staff and the broken two pieces of the jewel. He expanded the wings of the glider and jumped down the ledge where Percy stood one one foot. He had ripped off his shoe but his foot still burned, growing in intensity.

"Get on!" Aang commanded.

Percy scrambled on and Aang flew them down to where the first butterfly had exploded near Sokka's hand. He was jumping up and down, waving his hand in pain.

"Ow ow OW!"

Percy tumbled off the glider, he was better at falling off a Pegasus at the moment, style wasn't on his mind.

"Are they trying to EAT us?" Katara asked, shaking one of the bugs out of her hair and freezing it in a small burst of water.

"No, but they'll all explode and burn us up pretty quick, look!" Aang pointed backwards. One by one the butterflies were lining up at the seem of the closed crack and exploded. The golden liquid was fusing the crack shut.

But some of the butterflies didn't make it to their position before they started smoking. They were exploding all over the place and raining their dangerous juices down.

"Let's get out of here!" Katara decided, "Lead the way, Toph!"

Toph took off running and everyone followed without arguing. Aang closed the wall behind them with earth bending and a resounding crack. The whole tunnel shuddered but remained steady.

They ran until Toph shouted. "Two more monsters, up ahead!"

Percy uncapped Riptide, that had reappeared in his pocket and jumped in front of Toph and cut one of the Telekhines down. Zuko burned the other one to a crisp.

Ashes was just as satisfying as the yellow monster dust when killing the monsters. Fire didn't seem to work half bad on them.

All at once they burst out of the dark tunnel and blinked in the sudden sunlight.

"Where's Appa?" Sokka asked, still nursing his hand and breathing heavily.

The huge bison appeared behind them and growled, Momo chattering on his head.

With a triumphant feeling they all scrambled and caught their breath as Appa carried them away.

/..././././././././././././..

"So, what's the deal with the jewel?" Sokka asked.

They were all back at camp and sitting on the grass, eating their supper in the twilight.

Sokka's hand was bandaged up still, Katara hadn't been able to completely heal the burn mark like Percy had done for his own foot. He had to remind them that he was the son of the sea god... water just worked with him.

"Well..." Percy hesitated. "I think it belongs to someone I know."

"Really?" Asked Aang. "Who? And how did it get here?"

"Think your friend would be mad if we sold he pieces?" Sokka asked. "We could always use the money."

"We can't sell it!" Percy said indignantly. "It's a sacred stone from Hephaestus, the god of blacksmiths, fire and sculptors."

"You gotta be kidding me." Zuko mumbled. "He had a sacred rock?"

"Well... I've never heard of it before." Percy shrugged and Katara face-palmed.

"Then how do you know it belongs to him?" She asked as patiently as she could.

"I just know."

"But how?"

"I just do! The mechanical butterflies back there, they were his. And the voice..." Percy felt exasperated. He looked at Aang. "You of all people should believe me. You heard him talk."

Aang nodded. "I believe you. But what are we supposed to do about it?"

Percy looked at the two halves of the jewel and thought. "I think we need to sacrifice them."

Toph rolled her eyes but Percy ignored her. "We're going to need a fire." He smiled at Zuko. "A big one."

"I'm gunnna challenge myself to have the next chapter up by Sunday" HA

Good one, past me.