The darkness of the cavernous room was profound, and the silence of it seemed to seep even into the pores of the rocks, a heavy, unbroken, suffocating blanket of malice. Nothing stirred here, far removed from the petty passage of time and the eternal decay of the earth above; even the cries of the dead below did not reach this impassable chamber, and so the murmuring that stirred through the atmosphere, seeming almost akin to the silence, a part of its weighty oppression, was not the sound of a human voice, but the echoes of breath against the walls.

There was a clang, the dragging of chains, and the smothered stillness seemed shattered, bursting at at the seams as a voice came low, gravely, darker than the ponderous depths of the cavern, the words cold and calculated, without the shade of greeting they might have had in the higher realms that burned with an endless light.

"The catalyst has arrived."

There was the shifting movement of heavy chains that must have weighed the tonnage of mountains, so thunderous was their noise. A moment later, and the cacophony fell back to silence, a deep sighing silence, dreadful in its renewed weight.

A pondering voice spoke, older and rougher than its fellow, rising from deep within the throat. "Good," it said. "Good."

"This is the end."

"The beginning of the end," the second voice corrected. "Now we may begin our assault. I have not yet revealed my full strength to that blithering idiot yet. The time has come for his arrogance to be remedied."

"You mean Hades?"

"I mean Hades. And you, brother?"

"They lose ground hourly against me. I will crush them to the earth they stole."

"Good. They will despair their own weaknesses before the end."

"And the catalyst?"

"He does not know his own power. They set off into the wilds, and he will face no hardship there to draw it from him."

"Good. The stage is set."

There was a low, thunderous laugh, malicious, biting, slithering through the earth. "Let us begin."

- - -

Cassian's and Rowan's eyes adjusted slowly to the light, or rather the lack thereof, of the small mechanic's shop that Leo had built into a hidden, yet untouched closet in the walls of the Labyrinth. As he had led them along the passageway, both of them sharing confused but hopeful glances, he had constantly referred to it as his palace. They filed into it when they reached it, Rowan already having doubts as to the palace-like nature of the place, and ducking low after hearing a grunt of pain from Cassian, who had knocked his head against the threshold. She bit back laughter and placed a comforting hand on the man's arm as he nursed the bruise that he could already feel forming.

Before them, as they moved tentatively into the dark, Leo seemed to be fumbling for something, and only when light poured painfully into their eyes did Rowan realized he had been looking for a light-switch. With a splutter and a concerning crack, a massive fluorescent bulb hanging above them burst to life, and Rowan winced, ducking behind Cassian, hissing in pain. He himself cringed back from it, raising a hand above his face to shield his eyes.

"Well hello to you to."

The voice, modulated and sarcastic, rang out in the still stuffiness of the room, clear and sharp and filled with that oh-so-familiar brimming laughter, and Rowan and Cassian forgot all their hurts and worries in a moment, straightening as one and leaping past the tables piled high with spare parts and worn paperwork, into the light of the single bulb, and face to face with none other than K.

The droid was reclining upon a bench, his head and other various parts of him hooked up to wires that dangled, sparking dangerously but characteristically for Leo, from the ceiling, arching their way across the room to K, who fixed his once-lifeless eyes upon his old friends.

"K!" Cassian's voice rang out, echoing laughter against the walls as he stumbled to a stop, and Rowan found herself fighting back the tears that stung in her eyes. She glanced up into Cassian's face, read the ecstasy in his expression, dancing in his words, and found her heart swelling for him. As he moved forward to the droid, she glanced back to Leo, still positioned by the light-switch beside the door, watching it all with a glimmer of joy in his eyes. Calypso appeared beside him then, hands on her hips, caramel-golden hair thrown back over her shoulders, a satisfied smile in her eyes.

"Thank you," Rowan said then, barely able to speak through the smile that split her cheeks.

"Absolutely no problem," Leo laughed in return, slipping an arm about Calypso's waist. She leaned into him, and Rowan read the happiness there between them, like a brilliant golden flower they had cultivated together. The age that had suffused Leo's face seemed gone, and Rowan was grateful for this respite for him. He certainly deserved it. Grinning, Rowan turned back, eyes dancing in the light of the bulb, watching Cassian and K with a bloom of relief building in her chest.

"He'll need to finish his reconfigurations for the next hour or so," Leo said then, his words directed to Cassian. "But then he'll be good to go. Awesome piece of technology there," he added, in awe of the droid, and remembering the spaceship. "Where'd you come from?" His eyes fell to Rowan's when she turned back from Cassian and K. She opened her mouth to answer then, pondering the best answer for the question. "Outer space" just didn't seem to cut it.

"A galaxy far from here," Cassian said then, and she looked back to see that he was facing Leo.

Leo seemed to be faltering for a response, but his eyebrows were raised in amusement. "Like Star Trek?" he asked, and Calypso elbowed him in the side, drawing a grunt from him, a look of exasperation on her face.

Rowan grinned, shrugged. "Something like that."

"Where are we off to next?"

Rowan and Cassian turned to K, who was eyeing them with those shifting mechanical eyes. Rowan remembered they'd somewhat unsettled her when she had first come across a droid like him, but the sight of these were a more beautiful sight to her than Paris, even, and she took a moment to register the question.

"We're hiking to a camp where we'll have a better idea of what's going on," Cassian said, then frowned. In the endless flow of information that they had been receiving ever since their arrival on Earth, he'd forgotten that the droid hadn't been present for most of it. He fumbled for a restart, but Rowan spoke up then, a bitter twist to her lips.

"There was another prophecy."

K stiffened on the bench.

- - -

"And so we're going to try to find this 'sky's tomb'?" The droid's voice could not have been more incredulous for all its mechanical monotone. Rowan grinned for a moment at the remembrance of K's sarcasm, thankful to have it by their side once more. With some of the scathing remarks he'd had for the both of them and their risky actions when they'd informed him of their travels, Rowan could imagine that all the forces of Tartarus and Ouranos would quail beneath his biting words. But they'd been spoken in love and care, and so Cassian and Rowan were able to shrug off the tone, meet each other's eyes with a flash of laughter and relief, and move on.

It had taken them the whole hour of K's reconfiguration to explain the situation he had found himself in, and even they weren't so sure of the particulars, as everything had happened in a blur, and Rowan had been down for the count throughout most of it. Calypso and Leo had piped up occasionally to clarify the truth, and through them, they'd learned far more about the position that the demigods were in, far more than what they had heard at the meeting.

The whole of the Seven that Rowan had spent the war against Gaea with were split apart. The camp to which they were journeying was commanded by Frank, but Hazel was lost somewhere in the depths of the Labyrinth, exploring it, taming it, saving the humans that might have gotten lost in it. Piper was far, far away from them all, working to gather up allies to their cause, traveling in all manners of ways to reach all manners of gods and titans in some desperate attempt to recruit a force strong enough to hold out a resistance against Ouranos and Tartarus. Calypso was able to provide specifics when it came to Annabeth, and Leo had grown silent then, remembering the haggard look on Percy's face. The two of them had been working their way through the cities and the country, searching for survivors, gathering intel.

Calypso's eyes darkened as she described what the surface had become, something fitting for a blockbuster Apocalypse movie. Beside Cassian, Rowan had stiffened, clenching her fists at the image of her destroyed home. He'd placed a soft hand on her forearm beneath the table, and she had glanced up to him, a sad smile of thanks on her lips, and then the conversation had been over. With the journey before them looming on the horizon, they split up to pack their things. They would set off in the morning, and Leo was to lead them, something that had triggered an anxious look deep in Calypso's eyes. K-2 had followed Cassian and Rowan to the bedchambers of the night before, and watched as they packed, Cassian moving his stuff to Rowan's room.

"That's basically it," Rowan glanced over her shoulder to the droid at his question.

"The prophecy specifically says that 'all shall fail' there. Chance of failure is literally 100%. Why would we pursue that course?" K protested. Rowan averted her eyes, chose not to meet Cassian's, hiding the foreboding in hers.

"Horrible things happen to people who avoid prophecies," she said. "Anyway, it's the only landmark the prophecy gives us to go by. Strange as it sounds, failing is our only hope right now," she shrugged off the despair creeping into her heart. "Let's just hope that Frank has some idea of where it might be. The legend of that tomb was buried for centuries. No one really knew about it except in the form of old wives' tales until the fourteenth century or so. Any clues to its location have probably been lost," there was an ironic hopelessness in her voice.

"What about 'With hope will the sun rise again'?" Cassian asked then, his expression lost in thought. Rowan looked up from wrestling a blaster she'd kept "for sentimental reasons" into her backpack. "That could refer to Elpis," he elaborated. "She's a protogenoi, too."

"She is, yeah," Rowan nodded. "But only in title. In truth, no one's ever seen her. She could just be a really powerful symbol or something. Anyway," she added, and her voice slipped into helplessness again. "Hemera disappeared years ago. If the sun refers to anything like that in the case of this war, it'll be the protogenoi of the sun, not Apollo."

"How do you know?"

Rowan shrugged again, and Cassian noticed she seemed to be reverting to it a lot. He peered into her eyes, read the tumult there, and understood why. In the face of such profound hopelessness, what else could she do.

"He's also the god of prophecy. If he had been referred to in one, then I have a feeling he would recognize it when it happened. But he didn't seem to," she answered. "'Course I might be wrong." Another shrug.

Satisfied, Cassian nodded, and resumed packing. K watched them as they worked side by side, the occasional muttered "you'll probably need that" and "maybe not so much" running between them, low laughter accompanying some of the comments, and he cocked his head a little to the side. If a droid could show interest, he did, and he said nothing more for the remainder of the time that they spent packing, only observing them closely, the slight nuances of movement, the subtle indications of intent as they worked around and with each other and finished with a flourish, finally straightening, stretching.

"Do you think we'll find what we need at the camp?" K finally asked when they glanced over their work.

Rowan looked back to the droid, then to Cassian, her brow furrowed. In a moment, there was an agreement between them, a shared intention, a shared hope, and she nodded. "I have a good feeling about it."

"Cassian?" the droid looked to his companion, and he looked back, meeting the mechanical eyes. Cassian smiled at the remembrance of their adventures together, too many to be counted, and the trust that had always bound them together, and nodded, mirroring Rowan.

"I do, too," he said.

Rowan smiled, the heaviness of despair lifting from the room for a moment as they basked in the warm peace of hope, three travelers brought together by the tides of fate and breathing now before the next great plunge. Something had changed in her, she realized. No longer did that lonely, tearing desperation drive her, the sleepless, unhinged desire to find her brother having dissipated in the course of the past week or so. The bloodshot, caged animal look had fallen from her eyes, replaced with a cherished laughter that sprung forth as violently as vengeance had beforehand. She met Cassian's eyes, and he hers, and they grinned, forgetful of the world around them for a moment till it came crashing back with a pounding at the door.

Cassian and Rowan started, muscles tense, till Rowan recognized the form glimpsed through the grates. It was another satyr, this one much, much more muscular than Clover or Grover, a tattered orange shirt pulled over his torso, eyes tired but alight with a blaze of fire, a blood red cap pulled over his head and curly hair, and a massive baseball bat swinging from his hand.

"Coach Hedge!" Rowan laughed and leapt to the door, pulling it open, and then falling into the sudden embrace of the satyr, though he barely came up to her shoulder.

"Didn't think you could go on a quest without saying 'hi' now, did you?" he laughed gruffly when he pulled away and she backed up a step, taking him in.

"Of course not," she laughed, but it fell silent then. "I just didn't know where you were, is all."

They all understood the connotation of the phrase. With the widespread destruction, there was no way to anticipate that anyone might be alive.

"Don't worry, Castellan," the satyr said, courageously bypassing the uncertainty in her voice. "It would take more than a pesky wind spirit to take me down."

Rowan laughed in turn, but her eyes still shifted anxiously. Despite all the jokes and the renowned reckless bravery of the satyr, she had a feeling that he, along with everyone else there, had come close to tasting death far too often for their liking. The scent of it had hung heavy in all the places she'd found herself in, and though it was a haunting one, it could not help but remind her of her father. She longed to be with him, and the longing tore at her. She struggled against the images that clouded her vision, fought her way to the surface, and met Coach Hedge's eyes.

"I'm sure it would," she joked, and the satyr smiled, the wrinkles at the edges of his eyes reaching back into his hair line, aging his features more than they already were.

"Well," he said, patting his stomach. "I suppose y'all are hungry, and as it's probably the last good meal you'll get for a while, I think it's time for a nice lunch."