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“There’s no way this is going to work.”
Nyssa wipes her brow and turns, shooting her brother a look. “So says the non-believer. It worked for Odysseus, didn’t it?”
“That is exactly why it’s not going to work,” Jake insists. “Everyone knows it worked for Odysseus. They’re gonna see right through it, Nyssa, they’ll probably just set it on fire right there and then!”
“That would be quite a bad idea on their part,” Nyssa says, “given the failsafes.”
“…What failsafes?”
Nyssa turns back to her work, picking up the soldering iron to begin fusing the seams of the metal together.
“ What failsafes, Nyssa?”
“You’ll see.”
“Nyssa!”
“Oh, is this where you went?” Interrupts Lou Ellen, nudging Jake out of the way to crouch down beside Nyssa. Thankfully, she’s good at staying out of the way while Nyssa works, so there’s no need for her to be removed. “Miranda said she had that wood you needed. You want me to have it brought over here, or do you want us to leave it at the Demeter Cabin for now?”
“Leave it. Harley and Malcolm will be over to handle that bit — I’m busy with the metal right now.”
Lou Ellen nods. “Kay. When did you want me to start the spellwork?”
“Whenever. Stick to the finished bits, though, I might be swapping materials around and I’m not risking an enchantment ending up in the wrong spot.”
“You got it, chief.”
Lou Ellen heads off, presumably back to the Demeter Cabin, and Jake lets out an echoing sigh that Nyssa staunchly ignores. No matter how stupid he thinks this plan is, he’s not going to be stopping them. The Romans have been getting closer by the day, and while Camp Half-Blood has a pretty good track record with winning battles, each of those victories has also come with a heavy cost. If they can win without losing any people…
Needless to say, the cabin heads had been coming up empty regarding strategies, and so a few of the campers had decided it was time to take matters into their own hands. Nyssa hadn’t meant to form a secret coalition for the protection of their camp, but, well. Needs must, and all that.
See, Leo Valdez had left behind some very interesting blueprints. They wouldn’t be following them exactly, of course, but if anyone’s notes could give them an idea of how to make this work, it would be his.
Now, Nyssa Barrera is no mastermind, but she knows how to follow a blueprint, and she certainly knows how to adapt on the fly. Every child of Hephaestus can twist an old plan into a whole new creation — all she needs is some help from her fellow demigods, and they can make this work.
They’ll win this war without a single friend lost – of that much, at least, she is utterly certain.
In all honestly, this just might be the worst plan that Camp Half-Blood has ever come up with. Unfortunately for them, though, there isn’t really a better plan, and so the worst will simply have to do. At least this time, they’re not fighting divine beings older than gods, or turncoat friends who had defected to the side of the enemy.
Nyssa, more than anything, wants everyone to survive this war, and he knows that the only way that will happen is if they fight smarter. An all-out attack won’t work — the Roman demigods outnumber them ten to one, and the camp already lost too many people during the Titan War. Besides that, they don’t even have their strongest fighters and strategists, not while the Quest of the Seven is still on the other side of the world.
If they had Percy Jackson– hell, if they had Annabeth Chase, they wouldn’t be in this situation at all right now. The Romans would already be gone, and Camp Half-Blood would once again be safe for the foreseeable future until the next disaster decided to pop out of the woodwork and fuck up their lives.
But Percy and Annabeth are on their own quest, and the camp is on its own. They’re going to have to handle the incoming besiegement all by themselves, and as much as Nyssa hates it, she’s really hoping this dumbass plan actually works. The chances of that happening are so, so low, but never zero. There is still, in that miniscule margin of error, the smallest chance that this just might save their lives.
Nyssa and the few siblings she’s managed to conscript have been working on the biggest part, the actual frame, while the other cabins all do their best to chip in wherever they can. The thing’s going to be enchanted within an inch of its life by the time Lou Ellen is done with it, and honestly, they’re probably going to need every last ounce of magic she can possibly pour into it.
She would pray to the gods, but at this point, Nyssa wouldn’t be surprised if Olympus had abandoned them entirely. Even their camp director is nowhere to be found – Chiron is the closest thing any of them have to adult supervision, and they’re sure as hell not telling him what they’re planning to do.
It had taken Nyssa and Malcolm two sleepless days to alter Leo Valdez’s leftover blueprints enough to make this idiocy possible, and at this point, Nyssa can barely remember the last time she slept a full eight hours. The mechanisms of her project are slowly beginning to take shape, enormous chunks of metal machinery scattered all over the Hephaestus Cabin’s workshop to be assembled once she has every piece. Nyssa has no idea how Chiron hasn’t figured out yet what she’s up to, but she’s not one to look a gift horse in the mouth – and hopefully, the Romans won’t think to do so, either.
It’s a terrible, stupid plan, but at this point, it’s the only plan they’ve got.
oOoOo
Michael doesn’t really know what to think when he sees the horse at the front of their encampment.
He can’t help but wonder how they got the horse there without anyone noticing, but… well, the Greeks are known to be sneaky and tricksy, aren’t they? He wouldn’t be surprised if they just happened to be capable of such feats of stealth.
As usual since Reyna had gone away and Octavian had practically crowned himself Emperor, Michael is flanking his sponsor as he goes about his daily business. Today, that business apparently begins with sorting out the matter of the surprise horse statue that had been left for them to find. It’s enormous, about the size of a two-story house – something in the back of his mind twinges at the sight of it, like the memory of an old childhood story, but he dismisses it offhand. No need to dwell on irrelevant nostalgia right now.
“What is this meant to be?” Octavian scoffs, disgusted. “Some sort of mockery? A cheap ploy to get us to lower our guards?”
“...Well, it looks like a horse, sir,” Michael points out.
Octavian sniffs. “I can see that, Kahale. This is clearly an attempt to replicate the classic Grecian trick of the Trojan Horse! How could they possibly think we would be foolish enough to fall for such an obvious trap?”
The Trojan Horse… actually, come to think of it, Michael does remember that old story. The burning of Troy, brought about because the Trojans had brought into their midst an enormous wooden horse that secretly contained leagues of enemy soldiers. Is the opposing camp… actually trying to get the legion to fall for that?
“No, no, surely they would know that we’re too clever to fall for such a scheme,” Octavian mutters to himself, oblivious to Michael’s inner musings as usual. “Which means… they must be expecting us to leave the horse outside of the gates! Yes, that must be it – they’re counting on us to do exactly what they wouldn’t expect us to do!”
Michael frowns, ready to refute this, but Octavian just keeps going.
“But then, if they expect us to leave the horse outside, then they must know we’ll be clever enough to know that they’re expecting us to do just that – meaning, they’ll expect us to bring the horse inside!”
He stares up at the unmoving metal horse for a long, long moment, mouth moving silently as he parses out some invisible equation. Michael waits for a few minutes to see if he’s going to say anything else, but when there’s only silence, he decides that now is probably a good time to speak. “So… should we be bringing it inside or not, sir?”
Octavian stares at him with wide, almost manic eyes for a moment before he shakes himself out, nodding vigorously. “Yes. Yes! Bring the horse inside the gates!”
Michael eyes both Octavian and the horse before sighing and complying with his orders. The horse is thankfully on some sort of wheeled wooden platform for easy transport, and it only takes a few more legionnaires to grab onto the rope attached and roll it into the center of their encampment. Octavian had disappeared to some other place while they had moved the horse, and now, he’s reappeared with another group of soldiers, this time dragging behind them a loaded trebuchet.
“You see, the original Trojan Horse was filled with Greek soldiers, just waiting to pop out and slaughter the Trojans!” Octavian says animatedly, waving his arms toward the metal horse. “Of course, that horse was also made of wood, but I’m sure we can destroy metal just as easily with the right amount of firepower.”
He pats the trebuchet, and a few of the closest soldiers flinch back, eyeing his hand warily.
Michael frowns. “Are you sure that’s… wise, sir?”
“Wise?” Octavian scoffs. “What do you take me for? A child of Minerva, like that stupid little Greek girl? I deal in victory, not wisdom. The Greeks have just made the mistake of delivering a squadron of their soldiers right into our waiting hands, and they’ve even come gift-wrapped! How could this possibly be any more in our favour? The gods are smiling down upon us!”
“Sir!” A shout from behind catches Octavian’s attention and he whips around, toga flying up to snag on the lever of the trebuchet. He doesn’t even seem to have noticed. “We caught these Greek spies lurking around the perimeter!”
A handful of legionnaires come forward, dragging two blond boys between them – one looks similar to Annabeth Chase, the daughter of Minerva that had been on that ship before, but the other… the other almost looks like Octavian. It’s not an exact resemblance, but… well, it feels almost blasphemous to say, but the smaller boy looks like a better version of Octavian. Less stringy, less sickly, more alive. Like this strange boy has a piece that Octavian has always been missing.
Octavian gestures to the Greeks with a flourish. “Ha! You see? They incriminate themselves right before my very eyes!”
“You know, the last time I checked, we’re allowed to wander around our own camp,” says the Octavian lookalike, giving the augur a snide look. “Isn’t this considered trespassing?”
“Will!” The other blond hisses, and the smaller boy – Will, apparently – rolls his eyes.
“It’s true, isn’t it?”
“You are Will, and you must be… hm. A relative of that annoying girl, perhaps?” Octavian muses.
The other blond sighs. “Malcolm, if you’re that desperate to know. Can we go now? I really don’t want to be near… whatever it is you think you’re doing with that thing.”
Octavian laughs, a manic, almost unnerving thing. “Prepare to watch history in the making, filthy Greeks! Your little plot has been discovered, and you–”
Malcolm snorts.
A beat of silence passes as Octavian stares at him. “...Excuse me?”
“You’re excused.”
“You– you insolent Greek!” He spits. “What gives you the right to show such disrespect! Do you truly think the gods are on your side?!”
“Well, obviously,” Malcolm says primly. “Our endeavours are blessed by Athena, you bitch.”
Octavian opens and closes his mouth a few times as he slowly turns a violent shade of purple. Michael is sure that can’t be healthy.
But a moment later, Octavian’s bruised pride is entirely forgotten as a familiar figure melts out of the shadows, grabbing Will and Malcolm and vanishing in a pool of darkness in less than a handful of seconds. If Michael didn’t know any better, he’d say that was Nico di Angelo – but wasn’t Nico a son of Pluto? Wasn’t Nico on their side?
“What the fuck–” Michael starts to say, only to be cut off by the grinding screech of metal on metal as the horse–
As the horse
begins
to move.
oOoOo
The second she sees Nico shadow-travel away with Will and Malcolm through the visuals she had built into the horse’s eyes, Nyssa is ready to move.
Odysseus’s horse had been a hollow wooden structure, stuffed to the brim with leagues of Ithacan soldiers ready to jump out and massacre the people of Troy in the night. Unfortunately, that strategy wouldn’t really work for the current Greco-Roman conflict – not only do they lack the manpower for it, but they’re already playing on their own home turf. The Romans are the invading force here, not them. Victory isn’t a matter of getting inside the walls and slaughtering their people, but a matter of getting them to fuck off and go home already.
Nyssa is the only Greek inside of this horse, and that’s purely because it needs a pilot. They’re not counting on their superior military might to win this, but they are counting on the fact that they have a huge fucking horse with metal hooves that can trample their enemies in moments.
The control levers are warm beneath her hands as she moves them in the right directions to manipulate the horse’s limbs, commanding it to step off of the wheeled platform and down into the Roman camp. The legionnaires are scattering like ants, and Nyssa ignores their scrambling in favour of locating the nearest trebuchet, moving forward to crush it beneath her horse’s hooves as soon as she spots it. The wood splinters into smithereens, and she lets out a victorious sound that no one hears before turning her mech around to search for the next one.
As she moves, though, the Romans are already beginning to assemble, locking shields in a flimsy attempt at a barrier to block her from moving forwards. Nyssa raises one foreleg and knocks them askew, grinning as they topple like tenpins, struggling to get up from beneath their dented shields as she moves to trample the next trebuchet.
Gods, they should have tried this ages ago. Why didn’t they think of this sooner? This is way easier than trying to battle things out with swords.
Down below, Octavian is shrieking something that probably makes no sense, spitting mad as he gestures wildly to her horse before whipping around to demand something from his entourage. Moments later, Nyssa spots one of them fetching him a lit torch, and in that moment she knows exactly what he plans to do.
He’s going to try and set the horse ablaze.
It isn’t wood, so it won’t burn like the original Trojan Horse would have, but every metal still has its melting point – and even if the horse itself stays intact, its insides will still heat up like a cooking pot, the temperature rising until nothing, not even Nyssa, can survive inside of it any longer.
Or it would, at least, if not for the failsafes she’d requested that Lou Ellen put in. She had layered the horse with so much magic, Nyssa’s surprised it wasn’t outright glowing.
See, Nyssa knows a good amount about old technological advances, and as such, she’s obviously learned about a few torture methods in her time at Camp Half-Blood. She knows about the execution method of the brazen bull, how the metal itself wouldn’t burn but the condemned man inside would still suffer and die all the same. She had no desire to go out the same way, and she’d had a sneaking suspicion that Octavian might try and pull something like this.
That’s why Nyssa isn’t surprised in the least when Octavian throws the torch at the horse’s leg, and is met with only an explosion of sparks spitting right back at him. Whatever he tries to do to Nyssa’s creation, its enchanted shields will return to him in full.
They really can’t do a thing to her, and it’s exhilarating. Nyssa is safe in the control room, free to trample their weapons and kick down their troops to her heart’s delight.
She really should have thought of this sooner.
oOoOo
Annabeth’s first thought upon seeing Camp Half-Blood again isn’t, as she was initially expecting, one regarding how glad she is to be home.
No, her first thought has a lot more to do with what seems to be a colossal mechanised horse engaged in a battle with a battalion of Roman soldiers.
“Hey, you see that too, right?” Percy asks, tugging on her sleeve as he points to the horse. “Like, I’m not seeing things? The horse is real?”
“No, I can see it too,” Annabeth confirms slowly.
“...Hm. Well, that’s new, then.”
They set down on the ground a moment later, and while this would normally be the point where Percy and Annabeth charge into battle alongside their comrades, she can’t help but take a moment to try and process what she’s seeing in front of her. She doesn’t even see any other campers in the mix, only the mysterious horse that she still has absolutely no context for.
“Percy! Annabeth! You guys are okay!”
The sound of a familiar voice grabs her attention, and Annabeth tears her eyes away from the horse for a moment to see Lou Ellen running up to greet them, followed closely by Connor Stoll. Travis must be around here somewhere as well, but Annabeth has no idea where.
“Good to see you again,” Percy greets them with a grin, and Annabeth nods in agreement. “We were kind of expecting a fight, uh… what’s with the horse? I don’t remember that being here last time, but I mean, I guess it’s been a while?”
But Annabeth shakes her head, denying this assumption before he even finishes saying it. “No, the horse absolutely wasn’t here when our group left for the quest. What even is that thing?”
A beat passes as Lou Ellen and Connor exchange a heavy glance.
“First of all,” Connor begins, “I would just like you both to know that this is what happens when we’re all left unsupervised for too long.”
Annabeth’s eyes go wide. “What did you– oh my gods, what did you do?”
“So… y’know the story of the Iliad? Specifically, the siege of Troy?” Lou Ellen asks, and now Percy’s eyes have widened too, staring at the handful of campers in disbelief.
“Yes, I know about the Iliad, but what does that have to do with anything?”
Lou Ellen grins, sharp and unnerving. “We Trojan Horse’d ‘em.”
“You what?!”
“Well, it worked, didn’t it?” She points accusingly towards the mechanical steed still rampaging down in the valley, currently crushing a wooden trebuchet to splinters under its massive metal hooves. “They’re the ones who let it in! We didn’t think it would work, either!”
“Then why did you do it?!” Annabeth asks desperately, and after a pause, Lou Ellen shrugs with a grimace.
“...I mean. What else were we gonna do?”
oOoOo
The horse, obviously, wins the fight.
Roman soldiers, as threatening as they can be, aren’t in any way equipped to fight enormous mechanical horses. They also aren’t equipped to fight Nyssa Barrera, whose battle strategy is somewhere between the manic flailing of a furious cat, and the brutal strikes of a Japanese female wrestler.
Needless to say, the horse tramples them in less than an hour. It’s difficult to use the preferred tactic of making a shield wall, after all, when one is going up against a house-sized horse that can simply kick said wall and knock down every soldier holding it up. Nyssa had initially been worried that she wouldn’t have time to get used to the controls due to the tight time limit, but honestly? She’s in her element. She can really understand, now, why Leo Valdez had gotten so attached to Festus so quickly. Granted, Festus was also a sentient creature and the horse is more of an equine mecha that Nyssa has to pilot in order for it to move, but still.
…Actually, how hard would it be to make the horse sentient?
Maybe she should see if Leo would be willing to let her take a look at his dragon’s hardware. She could probably replicate it, given enough time and the right materials. That’s a problem for another day, though, because right now, Nyssa still needs to focus on decimating the last of the trebuchets before Octavian manages to actually blow someone up.
But it seems she wasn’t fast enough, for when she turns to the final trebuchet, it’s already loaded and ready to go. Octavian is standing beside it with a manic grin, and even from this distance, Nyssa can see the sheen of madness in his eyes.
He’s completely fucking lost it. She’d be terrified under any other circumstances, with a trebuchet manned by a madman pointed right at her, but… well, Nyssa’s still in the horse.
And Octavian’s robes are snagged on the trigger.
oOoOo
Nyssa slides down the ladder in the horse’s tail and shoves open the access panel, tumbling out onto the ground as she wipes the sweat from her brow. For a moment, she simply lays there and stares up at the hazy sky before slowly hauling herself upright again, pointedly not resting her gaze for too long on the ashen smudge that now mars the once-shiny side of her beautiful creation.
“ Miss Barrera!”
Nyssa goes still at the sound of Chiron’s irate yell, slowly turning around to face the centaur as he gallops up the hill to stand before her.
“ What is the meaning of this?” He shouts, gesturing towards Nyssa’s equine automaton. “What could have possibly possessed you to do something like this?”
Nyssa looks at the horse, then at the Roman demigods still awkwardly surrounding its still form, before her gaze returns to Chiron with a flat disbelief. “...Is that some kind of joke?”
“Miss Barrera.”
“Well, you weren’t doing anything about the incoming siege!”
“That is beside the point! How could you have possibly thought that a repeat of the Iliad–”
“It worked, didn’t it?” Lou Ellen interrupts, nodding toward the horse. “Like, I can see why you’re exasperated, because it absolutely shouldn’t have worked, but… it did. We did very much pull an Odysseus, and it worked.”
Chiron stares at her for a long, long moment, long-suffering gaze occasionally flicking back to the horse again, before he lets out a weighty sigh and closes his eyes. “Fine. Very well. Far be it from me to critique your childlike foolishness if these are the decisions you insist upon making.”
“Can it really be called foolishness if it worked? ” Will points out.
Chiron, tellingly, does not answer.