The Mark of Athena

Arachne screamed and flailed. A strand of silk shot from the monster’s spinnerets and attached itself to a tapestry on the far wall. Arachne contracted her abdomen and blindly ripped away the weaving. She continued to roll, shooting silk randomly, pulling over braziers of magic fire and ripping tiles out of the floor. The chamber shook. Tapestries began to burn.

“Stop that!” Annabeth tried to hobble out of the way of the spider’s silk. “You’ll bring down the whole cavern and kill us both!”

“Better than seeing you win!” Arachne cried. “My children! Help me!”

Oh, great. Annabeth had hoped the statue’s magic aura would keep away the little spiders, but Arachne continued shrieking, imploring them to help. Annabeth considered killing the spider woman to shut her up. It would be easy to use her knife now. But she hesitated to kill any monster when it was so helpless, even Arachne. Besides, if she stabbed through the braided silk, the trap might unravel. It was possible Arachne could break free before Annabeth could finish her off.

All these thoughts came too late. Spiders began swarming into the chamber. The statue of Athena glowed brighter. The spiders clearly didn’t want to approach, but they edged forward as if gathering their courage. Their mother was screaming for help. Eventually they would pour in, overwhelming Annabeth.

“Arachne, stop it!” she yelled. “I’ll—”

Somehow Arachne twisted in her prison, pointing her abdomen toward the sound of Annabeth’s voice. A strand of silk hit her in the chest like a heavyweight’s glove.

Annabeth fell, her leg flaring with pain. She slashed wildly at the webbing with her dagger as Arachne pulled her toward her snapping spinnerets.

Annabeth managed to cut the strand and crawl away, but the little spiders were closing around her.

She realized her best efforts had not been enough. She wouldn’t make it out of here. Arachne’s children would kill her at the feet of her mother’s statue.

Percy, she thought, I’m sorry.

At that moment, the chamber groaned, and the cavern ceiling exploded in a blast of fiery light.

ANNABETH HAD SEEN SOME STRANGE THINGS BEFORE, but she’d never seen it rain cars.

As the roof of the cavern collapsed, sunlight blinded her. She got the briefest glimpse of the Argo II hovering above. It must have used its ballistae to blast a hole straight through the ground.

Chunks of asphalt as big as garage doors tumbled down, along with six or seven Italian cars. One would’ve crushed the Athena Parthenos, but the statue’s glowing aura acted like a force field, and the car bounced off. Unfortunately, it fell straight toward Annabeth.

She jumped to one side, twisting her bad foot. A wave of agony almost made her pass out, but she flipped on her back in time to see a bright red Fiat 500 slam into Arachne’s silk trap, punching through the cavern floor and disappearing with the Chinese Spidercuffs.

As Arachne fell, she screamed like a freight train on a collision course; but her wailing rapidly faded. All around Annabeth, more chunks of debris slammed through the floor, riddling it with holes.

The Athena Parthenos remained undamaged, though the marble under its pedestal was a starburst of fractures. Annabeth was covered in cobwebs. She trailed strands of leftover spider silk from her arms and legs like the strings of a marionette, but somehow, amazingly, none of the debris had hit her. She wanted to believe that the statue had protected her, though she suspected it might’ve been nothing but luck.

The army of spiders had disappeared. Either they had fled back into the darkness, or they’d fallen into the chasm. As daylight flooded the cavern, Arachne’s tapestries along the walls crumbled to dust, which Annabeth could hardly bear to watch—especially the tapestry depicting her and Percy.

But none of that mattered when she heard Percy’s voice from above: “Annabeth!”

“Here!” she sobbed.

All the terror seemed to leave her in one massive yelp. As the Argo II descended, she saw Percy leaning over the rail. His smile was better than any tapestry she’d ever seen.

The room kept shaking, but Annabeth managed to stand. The floor at her feet seemed stable for the moment. Her backpack was missing, along with Daedalus’s laptop. Her bronze knife, which she’d had since she was seven, was also gone—probably fallen into the pit. But Annabeth didn’t care. She was alive.

She edged closer to the gaping hole made by the Fiat 500. Jagged rock walls plunged into the darkness as far as Annabeth could see. A few small ledges jutted out here and there, but Annabeth saw nothing on them—just strands of spider silk dripping over the sides like Christmas tinsel.

Annabeth wondered if Arachne had told the truth about the chasm. Had the spider fallen all the way to Tartarus? She tried to feel satisfied with that idea, but it made her sad. Arachne had made some beautiful things. She’d already suffered for eons. Now her last tapestries had crumbled. After all that, falling into Tartarus seemed like too harsh an end.

Annabeth was dimly aware of the Argo II hovering to a stop about forty feet from the floor. It lowered a rope ladder, but Annabeth stood in a daze, staring into the darkness. Then suddenly Percy was next to her, lacing his fingers in hers.

He turned her gently away from the pit and wrapped his arms around her. She buried her face in his chest and broke down in tears.

“It’s okay,” he said. “We’re together.”

He didn’t say you’re okay, or we’re alive. After all they’d been through over the last year, he knew the most important thing was that they were together. She loved him for saying that.

Their friends gathered around them. Nico di Angelo was there, but Annabeth’s thoughts were so fuzzy, this