The Path Of Glory (Annabeth Chase x Male Reader)

54. The Dam Snack Bar

At the edge of the dump, they found a tow truck so old it might've been thrown away itself. But the engine started, and it had a full tank of gas, so they decided to borrow it.

As everybody else seemed too stunned to do it, Y/N drove.

Can't be that hard, he thought as he took the wheel. Wrong, but he would get that only later.

"The skeletons are still out there," he reminded the others. "We need to keep moving."

He navigated them through the desert, under clear blue skies that didn't reflect the mood. He would've liked to say he did pretty good, but he barely managed to go by without the car doing fits and starts. Whose idea was the clutch system? The sand was so bright it hurt to look at; he could barely see the road.

Up front next to him was Zoë. She seemed to be facing a terrible dilemma: mourn Bianca's death or stop him before he found a way to drive the truck out of control on a perfectly straight road. She chose the first option.

Back in the pickup bed sat Ethan, Percy, Grover and Thalia. They had a look on their face that could've saddened death. Percy had his hands closed around the little figurine that had cost Bianca's life. Only Nico would be able to tell them which god it represented.

Gods . . . what were they going to tell Nico?

With the window open, Y/N could feel the air. It was cool and dry, and it seemed an insult after the night they had.

"It should've been me," Percy said. "I should've gone into the giant."

"Don't say that!" Grover panicked. "It's bad enough Annabeth is gone, and now Bianca. Do you think I could stand if. . . ." He sniffled. "Do you think anybody else would be my best friend?"

"Ah, Grover. . . ." Percy said.

Grover wiped under his eyes with an oily cloth that left his face grimy, as if he had on war paint. "I'm—I'm okay."

One good thing about having friends who get freaked out more than you do is that you can't stay depressed. Y/N had to set aside thinking about Bianca, Nico, or anything else and keep them going forward. So he drove and even dared to turn the radio on—low; the look Zoë gave him forbade him to set it any higher.

At last what had to happen, happened. The tow truck ran out of gas at the edge of a river canyon—so, no; Y/N didn't send it flying down to the bottom. That was just as well, because the road dead-ended.

Thalia jumped out of the truck bed. Immediately, one of the tires blew. "Great. What now?"

There wasn't much to see. Desert in all directions, occasional clumps of barren mountains plopped here and there. The canyon was the only thing interesting. The river itself wasn't very big, maybe fifty yards across, green water with a few rapids, but it carved a huge scar out of the desert. The rock cliffs dropped away below them.

"There's a path," Ethan said. "We could get to the river."

Y/N tried to see what Ethan was talking about, and finally noticed a tiny ledge winding down the cliff face. "That's a goat path," he said.

"So?" Ethan asked.

"So, we're not all goats."

"We can make it," Ethan said. "I think."

Y/N thought about that—and saw how pale Thalia had gotten. With her problem with the heights, better to give up. Otherwise, she'd send them all to the bottom.

"No," he said. "We should go farther upstream."

Ethan started to say, "But—"

"Look," he said. "Maybe you and Grover can use that path easy, and maybe I can fly. But Percy, Thalia and Zoë have shoes on, not hooves, and are definitely human. Farther upstream. A walk won't hurt us."