Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Rick Riordan, Greco-Roman mythology, and/or their otherwise respective owners.

Author's Notes: Short chapter today but a lot happens in it! We'll be back to a larger chapter next week, don't worry. :P

As always, I hope you enjoy. Until the next chapter,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis

~The Finding Home Saga~

~Finding Home~

~Chapter 65: There Are No Words For This~

"He is one of Hephaestus' creations," Iphigenia said grimly. "But this one cannot be the original. It is too small. A prototype, perhaps. A defective model."

The metal giant didn't 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 had to be a hundred feet long easy. It looked rusty and dull, but I didn't figure that mattered. Getting hit with that thing would be like getting hit with a rusty battleship.

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

She stared accusingly at me.

I shook my head. "I'm a lot of things, but I'm not a thief." In this particular circumstance, my previous ones notwithstanding. And despite the fact that I'm dating one.

Thalia didn't say anything, and the only reason why I noticed this was because her face was pale. But I didn't have much time to think about that, because the giant defective Talos took one step towards us, closing half of the distance and making the ground shake.

"Run!" Katie exclaimed.

We didn't need to be told that twice, though the advice was hopeless. At a leisurely stroll, this thing could outdistance us easily.

We split up, the way we'd done it with the Nemean Lion. Thalia drew her shield and held it up as she ran down the highway. The giant swung his sword and took out a row of power lines, which exploded in sparks and scattered across Thalia's path.

Zoë's and Iphigenia's arrows whistled towards the creature's face but shattered harmlessly against the metal. Katie went running up a mountain of metal, presumably to get to a higher access point so that she could use her vines better, but I doubted that they would be able to topple a giant automaton based off of the ancient one.

I didn't know what to do. But, thinking back on what had just happened, I had an idea.

I ran towards Thalia, avoiding sparks and praying to my patron and a few other gods that I wasn't going to get electrocuted. Thankfully, I didn't.

Thalia barely gave me a passing glance. Her face was still pale. "How are we going to defeat this thing?" she asked me. But there was an edge to her voice. "We don't have that shit you gave the Nemean Lion!"

I didn't let her distract me. "You took something," I said.

She spluttered in a way that was way too out of character for her. "What? No!"

"What did you take?" I demanded, before I shook my head again. "Never mind that! Whatever it is, give it back! Throw it down!"

To my surprise, she shook her head, too. "It's too late."

I couldn't believe this. "Thalia!"

Before we could continue this conversation on any further, I heard a massive creaking noise, and a shadow blotted out the sky.

"Move!" I exclaimed, running down the stretch of land. Thalia was right behind me as the giant smashed a crater into the ground just where we had been hiding.

"Hey, Talos!" Katie yelled, but the monster raised his sword, looking down at Thalia and me.

We kept on running. Just as he was about to swing his sword down at us, I abruptly turned around – and Thalia did, too, although from the way she shouted my name I could tell she was wondering just what the hell I was doing – and ran in between the automaton's legs. He was smart, but he wasn't that smart. It took him a moment to figure out what was going on, and another several moments still for him to turn around, his joints apparently too rusty to do that kind of action well.

That gave us crucial time that we needed. Thalia used her powers, bringing down an arc of lightning from the sky that hit his back leg once he got somewhat of a good enough distance away from him. Because of the electricity coursing through him, the lightning arced up his leg and backside. It wasn't enough to bring him down entirely, he had too much energy for that, but if he'd been able to make verbal sounds and had the receptors for it, I knew he would've been screaming from pain.

We ran for a new hiding place, this one behind one of the junk hills. When we got there, scowling, I turned around and grabbed Thalia roughly by the shoulder. "What did you take?" I repeated.

She must've realized that I wasn't going to take "no" for an answer, because with a glare of her own, she pulled something out of her black leather jacket. "I took this, okay?" she snapped.

It was a small, celestial bronze locket, the kind that you put photos in, with detailing on it that looked like arcs of lightning. I blinked; I'd never taken her to be obsessed with this kind of jewelry before. It wasn't exactly in her style.

Seeing the look on my face, she huffed. "It looks exactly like the one that Luke gave to me so I could have something to put the picture of my brother before he died in," she explained without any patience. "I was wearing it when I died on Half-Blood hill, but for some reason it wasn't spat out with me when the Fleece did its magic."

...Wait.

"You had a brother?"

"Now's not the time, Seaweed Brain," she hissed at me.

I didn't appreciate her once again using the nickname, but I pushed aside my feelings about that for now.

"Look, I get what that looking like your original locket means to you," I said. "But you've got to throw it down. Maybe Talos will leave us alone."

Thalia knew that I was right. Though I thought that there might've been tears in her eyes, she threw the locket down on the ground.

But nothing happened.

The giant had moved on from us, setting his sights on Katie now for whatever reason, since I didn't think she'd managed to actually do anything besides shout at him. He stabbed his sword into a junk hill, missing her by a few feet, but scrap metal made an avalanche over her, and then I couldn't see her anymore.

Fear seized my heart. "No!" I yelled.

Thalia was quicker than me. She pointed her spear, and this time the arc of lightning came out of that, hitting the monster in knee of the same leg which she'd struck before, which now buckled. The giant collapsed, but I couldn't even begin to get my hopes up over that because he was rising again.

He raised his foot to stomp, and I saw that his sole was treaded like the bottom of a sneaker. There was a hole in his heel, like a large manhole, and there were red words painted around it, which I deciphered only after the foot came down: FOR MAINTENANCE ONLY.

"Crazy idea time," I said.

Thalia turned around and stared at me, but seemingly decided that a batshit idea was better than no idea at all. "What?"

I told her about the maintenance hatch. "There may be a way to control the thing. Switches or something. I'm going inside."

"How? You'll have to stand under its foot! You'll be crushed!"

"Distract it," I said. "I'll just have to time it right."

Thalia's jaw tightened. "No. I'll go."

"No, I'm the one that came up with this plan," I insisted. "I'll do it."

"And I'm the one who got this monster to come after us," she shot back. "It's my responsibility. Plus, you have that saber-toothed kitten to worry about, and rescuing Silena. Just...tell Luke..." She looked me directly in the eyes for a moment, before she shook her head again. "You know what, never mind."

"Thalia, no!" I shouted.

But she was already running away, her back turned towards me. She charged at the monster's left foot.

Zoë and Iphigenia had managed to get Talos' attention with their arrows and the fact he'd already "defeated" Katie, though I could see her already struggling out of the avalanche of junk. The Hunters were close to the giant but not too close so that they wouldn't get smashed from either his sword or his feet, having learned that he was big but slow. It was working for them so far.

Thalia got right next to the giant's foot, trying to balance herself on the metal scraps that swayed and shifted with his weight.

Zoë yelled, "What are you doing?"

"Get him to raise his foot!" Thalia shouted back.

Zoë and Iphigenia shot arrows at the monster's face, but it was one of Zoë's that went straight into his nostril. He straightened and shook his head. I guess he did have some sort of receptors that acted like nerves after all.

"Hey, Junk Boy!" I yelled, deciding that I might as well give Thalia as much of a fighting chance that I could. "Down here!"

I ran up to his big toe as fast as I could and stabbed him there with Riptide. The magic blade cut a gash into the bronze.

Unfortunately, my plan worked. Talos looked down at me and raised his foot to squash me like a bug. I didn't see what Thalia was doing. I had to turn and run. The foot came down about two inches behind me and I was knocked into the air. I hit something hard and sat up, dazed as I heard Bob mewl into my ear, having once again decided that this apparently was too much for her. I'd – we had been thrown into an Olympus-Air refrigerator.

The monster was about to finish me off, but Katie had gotten herself out of the junk. She sent several vines woven together into a giant braid at him, slapping them across his thigh. It was kind of a minuscule threat in compared to his size, but the monster nevertheless turned. Katie should've run, but she had to have been too worn out from how much of her powers she'd been using over the past day and climbing her way out of the garbage. She took two steps, swayed and fell, and didn't get back up.

"Katie!" I ran towards her, but I knew I'd be too late.

The giant raised his sword to smash her. Then he froze.

Talos cocked his head to one side, like he was hearing a strange new music. He started moving his arms and legs in weird ways, doing the Funky Chicken. Then he made a fist and punched himself in the face.

I couldn't help myself. I screamed, "Go, Thalia!"

Despite the distance separating me and the Hunters, I could see their horrified faces. "She is in there?" Zoë exclaimed.

The monster staggered around, and I realized we were still in danger. Iphigenia ran over to Katie along with me, with the result that we both reached the daughter of Demeter at the same time and were able to run with her towards the highway. Zoë was already ahead of us. She shouted, "How will Thalia get out?"

The giant hit himself in the head again and dropped his sword. A shudder ran through his whole body and he staggered towards the power lines.

"Look out!" I shouted, but it was too late.

The giant's ankle snared the lines, and blue flickers of electricity shot up his body. I hoped the inside was insulated, though I didn't think that the electricity would necessarily harm Thalia, since she was a daughter of Zeus. But I had no idea of what was going on in there. The giant careened back into the junkyard, and his right hand fell off, landing in the scrap metal with a horrible CLANG!

His left arm came loose, too. He was falling apart at the joints.

Talos began to run.

"Wait!" Zoë screamed. We ran after him, but there was no way that we could keep up. Pieces of the robot kept on falling off, getting in our way.

The giant crumbled from the top down: his head, his chest, and finally, his legs collapsed. It was almost like something out of a horror movie, or what I could remember of the attack of 9/11, since I'd been going to a school not too far from the Towers at the time.

And in the aftermath, there was a long, terrible silence.

When we reached the wreckage we searched frantically, yelling Thalia's name. We crawled around in the vast hollow pieces and the legs and the head. We searched for hours, long enough that Katie was able to really help out after regaining consciousness and eating some ambrosia, long enough that the sun started to beat down on us despite it being late December, but had no luck.

I wasn't aware that the others had stopped looking until I felt a hand on my shoulder. I flinched from it, as it reminded me of how I had done the same action with Thalia just hours prior. When I turned around, I saw that the owner of the hand was Zoë, her face somber. "Percy," she said. "It is time to stop."

Behind her, Katie and Iphigenia were both standing still. Katie wasn't looking at me, her eyes firmly on the ground, but Iphigenia was just as sympathetic as Zoë. It was a strange change of pace.

I didn't like what it meant.

"We have to keep searching!" I argued. "We need to find her!" I need to find her.

"We will not find her," Iphigenia said softly. "It happened just as it was supposed to."

My vision was blurry. I blinked the water away. "What – what are you talking about?"

"The prophecy," she told me. "'One shall be lost in the land without rain.'"

Of course. Why hadn't I seen it before? I shouldn't have let her go instead of me.

And now she was dead.

For the second time, Thalia was –

No.

No.

Just as soon as I had thought the words, a resolve settled into my mind. Thalia was not dead. I refused to believe it. I didn't even care if that meant she was the child of the Great Prophecy after all.

It seemed too cruel of fate, too cruel of Ananke herself, to let Thalia be resurrected by the magic of the Golden Fleece, just to be killed again barely even six months later. I know that the gods, the Olympian generation and the three that came before them, alike can be cruel, but they couldn't be this cruel. Damn what the prophecy for this quest said; I couldn't care less about what that fucking prophecy said. Everybody else thought that it meant one of us would have died "in the land without rain?" I'd show them.

...Well, not me.

But I knew someone who would.

"Zoë, Iphigenia," I said after spending only a few seconds gritting my teeth from the outrageousness of it all. "One of you. Get out a bottle of water and a drachma."

They both stared at me, mystified. Even Katie lifted her head.

"What?" Zoë asked. I'd confused the lieutenant of the Hunt.

I didn't care about that right now, though. "Just do it!"

Iphigenia responded to my request first. From her magic pack, she pulled out a water bottle and a drachma, handing both to me.

I unscrewed the lid on the water bottle before I set it down on the ground. I took a deep breath before I used my powers; I'd never done anything like this before, even when I'd been practicing them.

But, if – no, since Thalia was alive right now and we couldn't find her, she needed me to do this.

The tug behind my navel returning once more, I lifted all of the water out of the bottle before I telekinetically spread it out thin, like a sheet. Thinner and thinner, like a piece of dough being rolled underneath a rolling pin, I spread it. It took up every bit of my concentration, leading me to ignore the questions that the others were asking me, even Bob, though she of course wasn't using words but rather meows and light scratches at the back of my neck with her claws, not bad enough this time to draw blood.

Finally, the sheet was so thin that I got the effect that I wanted: through it, a rainbow formed, leading the others to gasp.

I held the drachma in my hands, but I knew that in order to maintain the water like this, I couldn't be the one to place the IM myself. I looked over at Katie, holding it up to her. "Call...Bianca," I grunted. "Tell her..."

My best friend did as I instructed, taking the coin of godly currency away from me slowly. I knew that the Iris Message worked, because after Katie threw the drachma into the rainbow, a picture of Bianca at Camp Half-Blood appeared. It looked like breakfast had just finished, as she was walking away from the dining pavilion when she caught sight of us, talking with Iskander. Her eyes widened. "Katie?" she asked.

Katie kept it simple and to the point. "Bianca," she said. "We need your help."

The conversation didn't take long. I didn't listen to most of it, too busy concentrating. When I saw Bianca come through the shadows, using her own powers as a child of Hades, I let out a gasp, my concentration ending. The sheet of water fell down onto the ground, making the desert floor wet. "Bianca," I breathed. "Thank the gods."

"Don't thank me yet," she said in response.

She got to work quickly, closing her eyes so that she could concentrate herself, searching the landscape for living souls, which was in her purview as a daughter of Hades. Finally, just when I thought all hope was lost, she let out a gasp, opening her eyes. "I found her," she spoke. "She's alive. Barely."

We all breathed sighs of relief.

"We must go," Zoë said then.

That didn't sit right with me. "But we need to – "

"No, she's right," Bianca cut over me sharply. "'One will be lost in the land without rain' means that Thalia's time on the quest is done. Frankly, I'm surprised she isn't dead. I should be able to get her out in time with the help of Lee and some others from camp, but you guys need to go. You need to save Silena and Lady Artemis."

"The quest cannot be interfered with directly except by certain deities," Iphigenia concurred. "Thalia is no longer part of the quest. But as for the rest of us..."

I couldn't find a fault with that logic.

"Fine," I huffed. "Let's get out of here."

But inside, I was nothing but relieved and happy at the fact that I had been right.

Thalia was alive.

Her death wasn't on my hands.

Word Count: 3,176

Next Chapter Title: I Have A Dam Problem