Race to Half-Blood Hill

This is a short story that describes how Thalia Grace became a pine tree and formed the barrier around Half-Blood Hill.

Story
The trees lashed out at them like multiple tiny, razor-sharp arms on all sides. The boy at the front could barely see in the dark as it was, but them clawing at his face once every three seconds made it nearly impossible to see ahead even three metres. It was as if the earth itself had persuaded the trees to stand in their way. He turned and stopped to push the others ahead of him, ripping out his sword as another monster came their way. The monster was a large serpent, the size of a playground slide and the length of a train carriage, with indigo scales and bright green eyes like searchlights. It bared vicious, white teeth and a forked tongue and, shrieking, lunged, only for the boy to expertly swipe out with his sword and decapitated the beast seconds before it could chew into him.

"Come on!" he called to the three companions as they barrelled ahead of him. The boy himself was very tall and strong-looking, with long sandy hair and cold blue eyes, in a green jacket and horribly muddied shorts, with a look of utter belligerence on his face. The young boy ahead of him had tiny horns, shaggy brown hair, and wore baggy jeans and a red T-shirt. His jeans were battered here and there every time he moved his hoofed, furry legs. The two girls ahead of him were starkly different - one of them wielding a huge, thin spear that crackled with blue energy and Aegis, the circular shield with a horrible womanlike face with serpents for hair emblazoned upon it, and she had a firework of black hair and gothic-style clothes, along with electric-blue eyes, whereas the other wore a pink jacket and blue trousers with plaited blonde hair and stormy grey eyes, and there was a bright golden dagger clutched in her violently shaking hands.

The ground rocked beneath them and a tree to the boy's right collapsed on top of him, and the spear-wielding girl screamed 'Luke! ', but the satyr threw him out of the way before it could crush him. Retrieving his sword, the boy scrambled to his feet as the headless stump of the giant snake's neck oozed a swarm of tiny, cucumber-sized snakes of varying colours from its corpse, before it dissolved into golden dust and the swarm, in a symphony of violent hisses, advanced. Suddenly, as if by a trick of the light, they weren't snakes at all but spiders. The blonde girl shrieked and froze, her eyes wide and horrified.

"Up the hill! Come on, Thalia!" roared the satyr, shoving the blonde boy ahead of him. Thalia, the spear-wielding girl tried to pull the other girl along, but she was rooted to the spot, unable to move. Angry, the spear-wielding girl jabbed her spear up into the sky and thunder boomed, a streak of lightning arced down to the tip of her spear, lighting it up like a firebrand in the blackened woodlands. Thalia struck the ground with her spear and the lightning pulsed towards the spiders, frying them to smithereens. Thalia grabbed her friend, muttering her name 'Annabeth ' encouragingly several times to get her to look away from the disintegrated shower of spider-legs. The satyr raced ahead, slamming the girls ahead of him, as the boy stampeded after them.

The sky continued to writhe and pulsate furiously with thunderclouds and lightning arcs lashing out over the hill. In the light of the lightning, the boy, Luke, could see the outline of a series of small buildings high up the hill. His heart leapt at the sight of sanctuary, after such a long time running and hiding. Something inside him told him that it was safe, that they would be protected from the hordes of monsters that were probably surging up the hill after them.

Something dropped from the trees, something huge and wolf-like with black fur. Thalia brandished Aegis, causing the beast to arch its head back and shriek at the sight of it, and then she plunged the tip of her spear into its chest and slammed it into the ground before it could shred her with its claws. Annabeth frantically jumped at its corpse and started stabbing hysterically, but Thalia pulled her away and Luke helped carry her away from the dead hound. The satyr leapt over their heads and gestured up towards the assortment of buildings.

Suddenly the ground rocked again and, to the satyr's horror, skeletons ploughed through the soil into the forest, skeletons in military armour of so many different eras wielding bayonets, spears, swords, crossbows, muskets, even the odd bull whip. Thalia screamed, but Luke didn't cry out at all. He gripped his sword with both hands, confidently, and started hacking at them with brutal blows that battered past their weapons and severed their limbs and spines, but they kept moving, kept swiping at him cumbersomely, as if they were horribly drunk. Shots were fired and arrows flew, but the boy cut a swathe through the skeletons and Thalia hacked at them with him, lightning pulsating from the tip of her spear with every blow she dealt. The satyr picked Annabeth up on his shoulders and piggybacked her through the skirmish.

Once most of the skeletons had been dispersed, Luke seized Thalia by the arm and dragged her along with him as they barrelled up the hill. A trio of skeletons rounded a corner towards them but Thalia swiped her free hand in front of her like she was throwing a dart, and the air rippled brutally in front of them, hurling the skeletons through the air and out of sight.

"How much further..." wheezed Annabeth.

"No idea." Grover gasped, struggling to catch his breath despite keeping the better pace of the group. He didn't dare look back, even to check if the others were catching up, because one wrong move to see if more monsters were following he would run into a tree. He'd only just thought this when the ground ruptured a third time and a tree collapsed over them with a sickening crack and Grover shrieked, his legs collapsing under the plummeting trunk. Annabeth yelled out and dropped the dagger. Luke rushed over and tried to pull them out, and Thalia scooped Annabeth up out of the wreckage, plucking shards of bark from her hair and wiping off the dirt and leaves. Annabeth snatched up her dagger and Thalia threw her ahead whilst Luke dragged Grover's disoriented body free of the trunk.

''Why did the set of huts and houses seem so far away? ''Thalia asked herself. ''They'd been climbing the hill for what seemed like hours. Maybe it was magical. Maybe it was enchanted so that, for some people, it looked close but was really hundreds of thousands of miles away...'' She expelled such thoughts from her mind, knowing that pessimism would get her nowhere. She knew, though, she couldn't run for much longer - none of them could. Luke was a great fighter, but he had been so desperate to keep them alive and to overtake the monsters that were powering up the hill after them that he had thrown a load of power behind his sword strikes, sapping his strength. Grover was injured so he couldn't run as fast as he could as an athletic satyr like they had seen before. And Annabeth...she was so spooked by what she had already been through, it was becoming too much. She wouldn't make it on her own. She couldn't.

She turned around and immediately wished she hadn't. She could see the monsters now - hounds the size of bulls with thick black fur and yellow eyes, giant scorpions, Scythian Dracanae, she even saw a sphinx. Since when did sphinxes attack without asking a bunch of pointless riddles first. There was only one logical reason for this...and that reason was her. She was a daughter of Zeus, a daughter of one of the Big Three. She was powerful. She was dangerous. And she was mortal. But there was something else, too. Something that went beyond a simple monster-versus-demigod grudge. There were too many of them for a reasonable explanation...this wasn't just a bunch of Echidna's pets being sent to rip them apart. This was Hades! The ground shaking....the Hellhounds...the skeletons, for crying out loud. This was the Lord of the Dead hunting after them. Thalia had heard, time and again, how much Hades hated his brother Zeus, how he always had something or other against the King of the Sky. But, surely, Hades wouldn't go this far. What could possibly have provoked him into sending so many monsters after them, what could persuade him to not just leave them in peace?

Somehow, knowing Hades, Thalia knew full well that was a question she absolutely, unequivocally did not want the answer to. She looked around, at her friends. She looked at Annabeth staggering about, trying to support Grover, whose head was lolling about lazily as he tried to stay upright and carry on running. She saw Luke, with that sword out, dancing between the blows of the snake women who were slithering around him, stabbing at him with their tridents and swords, cutting through them elegantly and violently and desperately, roaring battle-cries at them. They were getting closer...

Then she heard it. She heard it, so distinctly, so faintly, but so unmistakeably. Her ADHD, her omnipotent senses packed inside a tiny human brain, brought the sound to her attention. A faint sound, a gentle sound, an almost indiscriminate sound from the crackle of the leaves and the snap of the branches.

It was the sound of flapping, leathery wings.

"Run!" she screamed. Luke heard her distress, just after kebabbing three snake women simultaneously on his sword as they dissolved into golden dust. Annabeth turned and saw the terror on Thalia's face, and was immediately compelled, simply by someone like Thalia, whom she had seen take on so many extraordinary things in their short time together, have such a terrified look on her face, more fear than Annabeth had ever seen in her life in one face, "RUN!"

They sprinted over the logs and fallen trees and under branches and brambles. The monsters screeched and hissed behind them, as the mercilessly endless stampede of hooves and paws and huge feet charged after them. Thalia kept her spear close and Aegis strapped painfully hard to her elbow. It was getting closer! Closer...and closer...and closer...

Flap...flap...flap...flap... she kept on running, so fast and so hard she swore she could hear her heartbeat in her own ears. Luke was running right next to her and sporadically tugging Annabeth and Grover along with her. Thalia didn't dare look back. She couldn't compel herself to. Her only thought was to get the hell out of there, away from the monsters, away from the woods, away from those flapping, leathery wings. She didn't dare overtake her friends, for fear she'd lose sight of them and they'd be torn apart by the monsters that were gaining on them slowly but inevitably. Thalia then saw a path open ahead. A path to an archway, less than half a mile ahead, where there were words cut into the wooden arch, so distinctly:

Camp Half-Blood, it read. She almost laughed, at the thought of sanctuary. They were saved. Then she saw three huge shadows pass over them, three winged beasts high above them, gaining down on them, and she stopped dead in her tracks. She was the reason that the monsters were all there, she was the reason that Hades wanted them dead. She was the one who had to do the one, terrible thing. She did the one thing she'd been compelling herself not to do all night.

She stopped running.

Thalia turned and looked up and saw them. There were three of them. Three of the most terrifying things that Thalia had seen all night. Their bodies were skeletal, silhouetted and very compact, and they had huge batlike wings. They wielded fiery whips and their womanlike faces, with wild black hair, were both lit up by horrifying yellow eyes.

"Thalia, come on!" shouted Luke, and Annabeth cried for her as well, all three of them calling to go with them, when one of the monsters lashed out with her whip and Thalia shrieked as pain worse than anything she had ever felt in her life blasted into her stomach, as if it were on fire. She fell back and hit the ground so hard she nearly broke her spine. She got to her feet and the three Furies circled her. Annabeth kept on calling, "Thalia, we must go..."

"Then, go!" howled Thalia, feeling tears flooding in her eyes at the sight of Annabeth's despair-twisted face, at the horror that pulsated in Luke's blue eyes. She found herself sobbing. Then one of the Furies shrieked like a vulture and swooped down and Thalia raised Aegis above her head to intercept its charge. The Fury's whip struck the shield and caused a brutal shockwave that rattled the leaves around her. Then, all of the Furies were upon her. They were coming from all sides, attacking with their yellow teeth and claws and whips and shrieking with those horrible, high-pitched voices. Thalia could barely keep up with one before two others blindsided her. She was fighting for her life, and she knew that soon the other monsters would reach her point on the hill.

She hoped the others weren't watching. She didn't want them to see her die. She didn't want them to see her lose after all this time winning against all odds. She was a daughter of Zeus. She wanted to die with her own dignity. She just wanted it to be over, and over the right way...

But she knew they were watching. She could imagine Luke's calm face being ruptured by the terror in his eyes, and the tearful, peachy face of Annabeth, and the open stare of shock that would envelop Grover when it happened. It would happen. She just had to keep going - she had to keep going to keep them busy for a little while longer, so that her friends would go and get safety. Or go and get help. Or go and get the hell away from this terrible, terrible place.

Then she felt it. A set of curved, monstrous claws plunged through the back of her jacket and she arched her back, spread-eagled, her mouth open in a silent scream of agony. She could see the claws protruding from her chest, their curved points purple with her blood. One of the Furies shrieked with triumph, as the other two, one of them punctured in the shoulder and several other places from her spear. Thalia could feel Aegis slither from her arm, and her spear slip from her nerveless fingers. Her vision blurred horribly, blindingly, and she couldn't see anything but green and black swirls of colour. She felt her back hit the ground and the breath be knocked out of her.

"NOOOO!" screamed Luke. Annabeth shrieked, oceans of tears rushing down her pinking face. Grover's cries pitched nearly as high as the laughter of the Furies.

Thalia slackened and lay back. She had done her job. She had protected her friends. They were safe...they were safe....they were safe...

Thalia didn't stay awake long enough to hear the thunder explode above the trees, the blackening clouds converge atop the hill, and the Furies turned, looked up at the sky, started muttering frantically with one another, before bursting into the sky at full speed, fleeing from the wrath of Zeus. Lightning boomed and sliced the clouds above them. Rain flooded from the heavens.

Then something very, very strange happened. As Thalia's body finally softened and her eyes began to close, her skin turned grey, then white, then brown. Then it hardened. The shallow breaths that made her breasts swell and fall stopped and her body turned hard as stone. Her fingers lengthened and latched into the earth like roots. Then a huge pine tree squeezed from between her breasts, rising higher and higher, the leaves spreading and turning greener and healthier. Her body vanished into the earth, becoming a mess of roots and thick legs and latches for the tree. Her electric blue eyes, on the verge of closing forever only to reopen in the clutches of Hades himself, flashed blue one last time before freezing, along with the rest of Thalia Grace, daughter of Zeus, as the tree finished growing at full height, protecting the girl who had become the tree from the monsters that were now turning and powering back down the hill to escape the wrath of the King of Olympus.

Luke, Grover and Annabeth watched this whole process with utter horror and incredulity. Then Luke grabbed them, and they turned and ran under the arch of Camp Half-Blood. That is where they have stayed, for a long time. That is where the story of the Second Olympian War begins. That is where one extraordinary sacrifice changed the lives of so many people.

Thalia's tree stood there all this time, standing sentinel and resolute. The girl who had been so brave in facing the Furies was still there, still alive, still caught in that moment where the monster's talons were plunging through her chest. But still alive. Her sacrifice was not even slightly in vain - the tree protected the borders of Camp Half-Blood, shielding so many people like Thalia Grace from the monsters that ran rampant in the dangerous world out there.