More of Annabeth's journey. Lots of fluff in my opinion, and not really story-based, but hey, it needs to be in there.
Giant's Bane Stands (Covered in Webs)
Third Person:
Annabeth thought she knew pain. She had fallen off the lava wall at Camp Half-Blood. She'd been stabbed in the arm with a poison blade on the Williamsburg Bridge. She had even held the weight of the sky on her shoulders. But that was nothing compared to landing hard on her ankle. She immediately knew she'd broken it. Pain like a hot steel wire jabbed its way up her leg and into her hip. The world narrowed to just her, her ankle, and the agony. She almost blacked out. Her head spun. Her breath became short and rapid.
"Annabeth Chase?" Curse asked. "Concentrate on my words. Do not go into shock. Take deep breaths. Can you hear me? Do not move if you can avoid it." Annabeth tried to breathe more slowly. She lay as still as possible until the pain subsided from absolute torture to just horrible throbbing. "Can you see me?" Curse asked.
"Yes," Annabeth said, though slightly strained. Part of her wanted to howl at the world for being so unfair. All this way, just to be stopped by something as common as a broken ankle. She forced her emotions down. At camp, she'd been trained to survive in all sorts of bad situations, including injuries like this. She looked around. Her dagger had skittered a few feet away. In the green light created by Curse, she could make out the features of the room. She was lying on a cold floor of sandstone blocks, the ceiling was two stories tall, the doorway through which she'd fallen was ten feet off the ground, now completely blocked with debris that had cascaded into the room, making a rockslide. Scattered around her were old pieces of lumber - some cracked and desiccated, others broken into kindling.
Annabeth scolded herself for having lunged through the doorway, assuming there would be a level corridor or another room. It had never occurred to her that she'd be tumbling into space. The lumber had probably once been a staircase, long ago collapsed. Had she known that there wasn't a level floor on the other side of the wall, and that it was only a ten foot drop, she most likely could've braced herself properly or rolled when she hit the ground and this wouldn't have happened. Annabeth had been properly trained, and there were a million things that she could've done differently that now flowed through her head.
"It's useless to blame yourself," Curse said. "I should've inspected the area beyond the wall and warned you before you barreled through. Can you feel your toes?"
"Yes."
"Your foot does not appear to be strangely bent, and I cannot see any trace of blood." Annabeth reached out for a piece of lumber, but even that small bit of movement made her yelp. "What did I say about not moving? If you require something, ask me to retrieve it first. You are lucky that your ankle is in as good a condition as it is, and we do not need to make it any worse." The board crumbled in Annabeth's hand, the wood probably centuries old, if not millennia. She had no way of knowing if this room was older than the shrine of Mithras, or if - like the labyrinth - the rooms were a hodgepodge from many eras randomly thrown together.
"Okay," She muttered. "Think, Annabeth. Prioritize." She remembered the wilderness survival course Grover had taught her back at camp. "First step: Scan your surroundings for immediate threats."
"This room does not seem to be in danger of collapse, and the rockslide has stopped," Curse reported. "The walls are solid blocks of stone with no major cracks that I can detect. The ceiling isn't sagging either, so it does not appear to be in danger of collapse either." The only exit was on the far wall - an arched doorway that led into darkness. Between them and the doorway, a small brickwork trench cut across the floor, letting water flow through the room from left to right. Maybe plumbing from the Roman days. If the water was drinkable, that was good. Piled in one corner were some broken ceramic vases, spilling out shriveled brown clumps that might have once been fruit. Yuck. In another corner were some wooden crates that looked more intact, and some wicker boxes bound with leather straps.
"So, no immediate danger?" She asked. "Unless something comes barreling out of that dark tunnel."
"Always be skeptical, but do not scare yourself unnecessarily," Curse advised. "I have looked, and there appears to be no immediate threat within sight."
"Okay," She breathed. "Next step: Take inventory." She had her water bottle, and more water in that trench if she could reach it. She had her knife. Her backpack was full of colorful string (whee), her laptop, the bronze map, some matches, and some ambrosia for emergencies. Uh, yeah. This might qualify as an emergency. She dug the godly food out of her pack and wolfed it down. As usual, it tasted like comforting memories. This time it was buttered popcorn - move night with her dad at his place in San Francisco, no stepmom, no stepbrothers, just Annabeth and her father curled up on the sofa and watch sappy old romantic comedies. The ambrosia warmed her whole body, and the pain in her leg became a dull throb, but she knew even ambrosia couldn't heal broken bones right away. It might speed up the process, but best-case scenario, she wouldn't be able to put any weight on her foot for a day or more.
"My knife," She requested. "Can you get it for me?" Curse floated over to it, grabbed it, and passed it to Annabeth. She felt better holding it - not just for light and protection, but also because it was familiar. What next? Grover's survival class had mentioned something about staying put and waiting for rescue, but that wasn't going to happen. Even if Percy or the others somehow managed to trace her steps, the cavern of Mithras had collapsed. She could try contacting someone with Daedalus's laptop, but she doubted she could get a signal down here. Besides, who would she call? She couldn't text anyone who was close enough to help. Demigods never carried cell phones, because their signals attracted too much monstrous attention, and none of her friends would be sitting around checking their e-mail. She had water for an Iris-message, but she doubted she had the proper lighting for a rainbow, and her only coin was her silver Athenian drachma, which didn't make a great tribute.
At best, Veon might be able to shadow travel down here if he knew where he was going, but this was still Annabeth's quest, and he was off searching for his brother right now. If Annabeth did get rescued, she'd be admitting defeat. Something told her that the Mark of Athena would no longer guide her. She could wander down here forever, and she'd never find the Athena Parthenos. So no good staying put for help, which meant she had to find a way to keep going on her own. Or, at least, with Curse. She didn't seem to be much of a fighter, but she did seem to be able to point out where the next Mark of Athena would be, and was out to help Annabeth, not harm. She could still pick up and touch things despite being a ghost, and she could properly communicate.
Annabeth opened her water bottle and drank. She hadn't realized how thirsty she was. When the bottle was empty, Curse went to the gutter to refill it. The water was cold and moving swiftly - good signs that it might be safe to drink. She filled the bottle, and Annabeth crawled her way over to the gutter, cupping some water in her hands and splashing her face. Immediately, she felt more alert. With Curse's help, she washed off and cleaned her scrapes as best she could. Annabeth sat up and glared at her ankle.
"You had to break," She scolded it. The ankle did not reply. She'd have to immobilize it in some sort of cast. That was the only way she'd be able to move. Annabeth inspected the room again. Now that she was closer to the open doorway, she liked it even less. It led into a dark silent corridor, the air wafting out that smelled sickly sweet and somehow evil. Unfortunately, Annabeth didn't see any other way she could go.
Curse wasn't solid enough to lift something as heavy as Annabeth, and despite her protests, Annabeth crawled over to the wreckage of the stairs with a lot of gasping and blinking back tears. Curse looked around as fast as she could to avoid Annabeth making her ankle worse or hurting herself so much, finding two planks that were in fairly good shape and long enough for a splint. She passed them to Annabeth before going over to the wicker boxes and putting her hands to the leather straps. The straps glowed green in the place she touched them before she pulled and they snapped off with ease. Annabeth scooted over slowly to avoid Curse's scolding, and as she psyched herself up to immobilize her ankle, she noticed some faded words on one of the wooden crates: HERMES EXPRESS.
"Hey, Curse, look!" She scooted excitedly toward the box. She had no idea what it was going here, but Hermes delivered all sorts of useful stuff to gods, spirits, and even demigods. Maybe he'd dropped this care package here years ago to help demigods like her with this quest. The two of them pried it open and pulled out several sheets of Bubble Wrap, but whatever had been inside was gone.
"Hermes!" She protested. Curse looked to the Bubble Wrap thoughtfully. Annabeth looked to it as well, and then her mind kicked into gear and she realized the wrapping was a gift. "Oh…that's perfect!" Annabeth and Curse worked together to cover her broken ankle in a Bubble Wrap cast. Annabeth held the lumber splints in place while Curse tied everything together with the leather straps. Once before, in first aid practice, Annabeth had splinted a fake broken leg for another camper, but she never imagined she'd have to make a splint for herself. It was hard, painful work, but finally it was done. She searched the wreckage of the stairs until she found part of the railing - a narrow board about four feet long that could serve as a crutch. She put her back against the wall, got her good leg ready, and hauled herself up.
"Whoa…" She muttered, and Curse helped steady her as black spots danced in her eyes. "Next time, just let me fight a monster. Much easier." Curse pointed.
"The path continues." Above the open doorway, the Mark of Athena blazed to life against the arch. The fiery owl seemed to be watching her expectantly, as if to say, "About time. Oh, you want monsters? Right this way!" Annabeth wondered if that burning mark was based on a real sacred owl. If so, when she survived, she was going to find that owl and punch it in the face. If that wasn't encouragement to survive this ordeal, then nothing was. The thought lifted her spirits, and with Curse by her side, she made it across the trench and hobbled slowly into the corridor.
The tunnel ran straight and smooth, but after her fall, Annabeth decided to take no chances. She used the wall for support and tapped the floor in front of her with her crutch to make sure there were no traps. As she walked, the sickly sweet smell got stronger and set her nerves on edge. The sound of running water faded behind her. In its place came a dry chorus of whispers like a million tiny voices. They seemed to be coming from inside the walls, and they were getting louder. Annabeth considered talking to Curse, but she figured that she'd rather not alert her enemies of her when she didn't know where they were. Curse wasn't in as much danger as she was, but she was gracious enough to catch on and be silent as well.
Annabeth tried to speed up, but she couldn't go much faster without losing her balance or jarring her broken ankle. She hobbled onward, convinced that something was following her. The small voices were massing together, getting closer. She touched the wall, and her hand came back covered in cobwebs. She yelped, then cursed herself for making a sound. She tried to calm herself, but that didn't stop the roaring in her ears.
She expected spiders. She knew who the weaver was, she knew what to expect up ahead, and the webs made her realize how close she was. Her hand trembled as she wiped it on the stones, nearly panicking at the realization that she shouldn't have come here alone. She shook herself out of those thoughts. There was nothing she could do about it now, and she did have Curse with her. She made her way down the corridor one painful step at a time. The whispering sounds got louder behind her until they sounded like millions of dried leaves swirling in the wind. The cobwebs became thicker, filling the tunnel. Soon, both she and Curse were pushing them out of their path, ripping through the gauzy curtains that covered her like Silly String.
Annabeth's heart was pounding like it wanted to break out of her chest and run. She stumbled ahead more recklessly, trying to ignore the pain in her ankle. Finally the corridor ended in a doorway filled waist-high with old lumber. It looked as if someone had tried to barricade the opening, which didn't bode well. Annabeth used her crutch to push away the boards as best she could, with Curse moving to help her with the rest. She crawled over the remaining pile, getting a few dozen splinters in her free hand.
On the other side of the barricade was a chamber the size of a basketball court. The floor was done in Roman mosaics, the remains of tapestries hung from the walls, and two unlit torches sat in wall sconces on either side of the doorway, both covered in cobwebs. At the far end of the room, the Mark of Athena burned over another doorway. Unfortunately, between Annabeth and that exit, the floor was bisected by a chasm fifty feet across. Spanning the pit were two parallel wooden beams, too far apart for both feet, but each too narrow to walk on unless Annabeth was an acrobat (which she wasn't) and didn't have a broken ankle (which she did).
The corridor she'd come from was filled with hissing noises. Cobwebs trembled and danced as the first of the spiders appeared: no larger than gumdrops, but plump and black, skittering over the walls and the floor. Annabeth didn't know what kind of spiders they were, but she did know that they were coming for her, and she only had a few seconds to figure out a plan. Annabeth wished Leo were here with his fire, or Jason with his lightning, or Hazel to collapse the tunnel. Most of all, she wanted Percy. She always felt braver when Percy was with her.
Curse hurried over to one of the wall sconces and grabbed a torch, putting her finger to it as it light with a green flame. She passed it to Annabeth before hurrying to the other and setting it ablaze as well. The first spiders were almost to the door. Behind them came the bulk of the army - a black sea of creepy-crawlies. Curse aimed her torch at the doorway before a blast of fire shot out like a green flame-thrower. Turns out, this fire wasn't just a mist like what she was made of, it was actual fire - maybe Greek fire at that. The old dry wood caught immediately, flames leaping to the cobwebs and roaring down the corridor in a flash fire, roasting spiders by the thousands. Yet Curse began to flicker, her form shrinking and becoming more transparent. She wouldn't be able to hold them indefinitely.
"String!" She shouted. "You must weave!" Annabeth stepped to the edge of the chasm. She shined her light into the pit, but she couldn't see the bottom. Jumping would be suicide. She could try to cross one of the bars hand over hand, but she didn't trust her arm strength, and she didn't see how she would be able to haul herself up with a full backpack and a broken ankle once she reached the other side.
String, curse had said. You must weave. She crouched and studied the beams. Each had a set of iron eye hooks along the inside, set at one-foot intervals. Maybe the rails had been the sides of a bridge and the middle planks had been removed or destroyed. But eye hooks? Those weren't for supporting planks. More like…You must weave. Of course! She glanced at the walls. The same kind of hooks had been used to hang the shredded tapestries. She realized the planks weren't meant as a bridge. They were some kind of loom.
Annabeth threw her flaming green torch to the other side of the chasm. She had no faith her plan would work, but she pulled all the string out of her backpack and began weaving between the beams, stringing a cat's cradle pattern back and forth from eye hook to eye hook, doubling and tripling the line. Her hands moved with blazing speed. She stopped thinking about the task and just did it, looping and tying off lines, slowly extending her woven net over the pit. She forgot the pain in her leg and Curse's fiery blaze as it guttered out behind her. She inched over the chasm, and the weaving held her weight. Before she knew it, she was halfway across.
She realized that her mother's skill with useful crafts was doing this. She hadn't thought that weaving seemed particularly useful to her - at least until now. She glanced behind her to see the barricade of fire that Curse had left behind was dying. Curse herself was nowhere to be seen, the torch she had been holding completely burnt away. A few spiders crawled in around the edges of the doorway. Desperately, she continued weaving, and finally she made it across. She snatched up the torch and thrust it into her woven bridge. Flames raced along the string, and even the beams caught fire as if they'd been pre-soaked in oil. For a moment, Curse's flames burned in a clear pattern - a fiery row of identical owls. Had Annabeth really woven them into the string, or was it some kind of magic Curse - or possibly Athena - had conjured? She didn't know, but as the spiders began to cross, the beams crumbled and collapsed into the pit.
Annabeth held her breath. She didn't see any reason why the spiders couldn't reach her by climbing the walls or the ceiling. If they started to do that, she'd have to run for it, and she was pretty sure she couldn't move fast enough. For some reason, the spiders didn't follow. They massed at the edge of the pit - a seething black carpet of creepiness. Then they dispersed, flooding back into the burned corridor, almost as if Annabeth was no longer interesting.
"You have passed the test," A small voice said. As Annabeth's torch sputtered out, she saw the small green figure that was Curse. She was barely an inch tall and just a little flame, no longer in the form of a person, most likely drained from burning the spiders and setting that fire like she had. "You are close. The Mark of Athena is here." Annabeth realized that she had left her makeshift crutch on the other side of the chasm. She felt exhausted and out of tricks, but her mind was clear. Her panic seemed to have burned up along with that woven bridge.
She made her way down the next corridor, hopping to keep the weight off her bad foot with little Curse floating by her side. She didn't have far to go. After twenty feet, the tunnel opened into a cavern as large as a cathedral, so majestic that Annabeth had trouble processing everything she saw. This had to be the room from Percy's dream, but it wasn't dark. Bronze braziers of magical light, like the gods used on Mount Olympus, glowed around the circumference of the room, interspersed with gorgeous tapestries. The stone floor was webbed with fissures like a sheet of ice, and the ceiling was so high, it was lost in the gloom and layers upon layers of spider webs.
Strands of silk as thick as pillars ran from the ceiling all over the room, anchoring the walls and the floor like the cables of a suspension bridge. Web also surrounded the centerpiece of the shrine, which was so intimidating that Annabeth had trouble raising her eyes to look at it. Looming over her was a forty-foot-tall statue of Athena, with luminous ivory skin and a dress of gold. In her outstretched hand, Athena held a statue of Nike, the winged victory goddess - a statue that looked tiny from here, but was probably as tall as the real person. Athena's other hand rested on a shield as big as a billboard, with a sculpted snake peeking out from behind, as if Athena was protecting it.
The goddess's face was serene and kindly…and it looked like Athena. Annabeth had seen many statues that didn't resemble her mom at all, but this giant version, made thousands of years ago, made her think that the artist must have met Athena in person. He had captured her perfectly.
"Athena Parthenos," Annabeth murmured. "It's really here." All her life, she had wanted to visit the Parthenon. Now she was seeing the main attraction that used to be there - and she was the first child of Athena to do so in millennia. Strands of web covered it like a gauze pavilion. Annabeth suspected that without those webs, the statue would have fallen through the weakened floor long ago. As she stepped into the room, she could see that the cracks below were so wide, she could have lost her foot in them.
"Giants' bane stands gold and pale," Curse's whisper of a voice recited, her little flame hovering next to Annabeth's shoulder. "Won through pain from a woven jail. You have found the Athena Parthenos, but now you must fight the guardian that has watched over it for eons." A chill washed over her. Where was the guardian? How could Annabeth free the statue without collapsing the floor? She couldn't very well shove the Athena Parthenos down the corridor that she'd come from.
"Help shall arrive to gather the statue later," Curse assured her. "For now, do not focus on means of transporting the statue. You must concentrate on the main concern." She scanned the chamber, hoping to see something that might help. Her eyes wandered over the tapestries, which were heart-wrenchingly beautiful. One showed a pastoral scene so three-dimensional, it could've been a window. Another showed the gods battling the giants. There was one with the landscape of the Underworld, one with a group of maybe a dozen children all with their backs to the viewer, their hair all cut short so that some black marks could be seen on the backs of their necks, one showing the skyline of modern Rome, one of a two figures, one pure white and another pure black, though definitely humanoid, facing each other as though they were getting married or something. It was hard to tell their genders, impossible, really.
Annabeth caught her breath at the sight of one in particular. It was a portrait of two demigods kissing underwater: Annabeth and Percy, the day their friends had thrown them into the canoe lake at camp. It was so lifelike that she wondered if the weaver had been there, lurking in the lake with a waterproof camera.
"How is that possible?" Annabeth murmured.
"For ages I have known that you would come, my sweet," A voice said from the gloom above. Annabeth shuddered, feeling like a seven year old girl again, hiding under her covers, waiting for the spiders to attack her in the night. The voice sounded just as Percy had described: an angry buzz in multiple tones, female, but not human. In the webs above the statue, something moved - something dark and large.
"I have seen you in my dreams," The voice said, sickly sweet and evil, like the smell in the corridors. "I had to make sure you were worthy, the only child of Athena clever enough to pass my test and reach this place alive. Indeed, you are her most talented child. This will make your death so much more painful to my old enemy when you fail utterly." The pain in Annabeth's ankle was nothing compared to the icy acid now filling her veins. She wanted to run. She wanted to plead for mercy.
"You cannot show weakness," Curse whispered into her ear. "Not now. The weaver wishes you to be afraid. This is the final challenge for the Athena Parthenos. Succeed here, Annabeth Chase, and the war between the Romans and Greeks can be stopped and the earth goddess can be defeated."
"You're Arachne," She called out. "The weaver who was turned into a spider." The figure descended, becoming clearer and more horrible.
"Cursed by your mother," She said. "Scorned by all and made into a hideous thing…because I was the better weaver."
"But you lost the contest," Annabeth said.
"That's the story written by the winner!" Arachne cried. "Look on my work! See for yourself!" Annabeth didn't have to. The tapestries were the best she'd ever seen - better than the witch Circe's work, and yes, even better than some weavings she'd seen on Mount Olympus. She wondered if her mother truly had lost - if she'd hidden Arachne away and rewritten the truth. But right now, it didn't matter.
"You've been guarding this statue since the ancient times," Annabeth guessed. "But it doesn't belong here. I'm taking it back."
"Ha," Arachne said. Even Annabeth had to admit her threat sounded ridiculous. How could one girl in a Bubble Wrap ankle cast remove this huge statue from its underground chamber? Even Curse was now unable to assist her, all of her energy depleted. "I'm afraid you would have to defeat me first, my sweet," Arachne said. "And alas, that is impossible." The creature appeared from the curtains of webbing, and Annabeth realized that her quest was hopeless. She was about to die.
Arachne had the body of a giant black widow, with a hairy red hourglass mark on the underside of her abdomen and a pair of oozing spinnerets. Her eight spindly legs were lined with curved barbs as big as Annabeth's dagger. If the spider came any closer, her sweet stench alone would have been enough to make Annabeth faint. But the most horrible part was her misshapen face. She might once have been a beautiful woman. Now, black mandibles protruded from her mouth like tusks, her other teeth had grown into thin white needles, fine dark whiskers dotted her cheeks, and her eyes were large, lidless, and pure black, with two smaller eyes sticking out of her temples. The creature made a violent rip-rip-rip sound that might have been laughter.
"Now I will feast on you, my sweat," Arachne said. "But do not fear. I will make a beautiful tapestry depicting your death."
