madness and ecstasy // leo valdez

-WEEEEEEeeeeeee......-

Coach Hedge yelled happily, and completely destroyed the entire parking lot.

Instead of cracks spreading in the asphalt like spiderwebs, they fell through the ground completely, the ground opening into a black abyss that was soon filled with colourful and very destroyed Italian cars.

The sound was overwhelming, and there was a loud screeching that faded slowly, like someone was dying slowly or falling from a great height. Or both.

Leo stopped the Argo II right where they were, hovering above the cavern that had crumbled. He flicked a few switches, and the repaired rope ladder fell from a hatch, ending just above the roof of a yellow car. Teqi was eternally grateful to whoever had stayed up to re-make the rope ladder after it had been burned and ripped apart by the Romans. 

No one got in Percy's way.

Teqi flicked her hand once, and vines grew from the pots on the side of the hull, wrapping around the rope and strengthening it as Hazel and Jason followed the son of Poseidon down to where Annabeth should be. Where she had to be.

The greenery curled around her hands and ankles, but snapped easily when her boots made a thudding sound on the bent metal. She helped Leo down, and he held the golden bracelets on her wrist instead of the sleeves she wasn't wearing. Teqi wandered into the opened cave, dust particles still wafting up and obscuring the view.

She chewed her lip, feeling the thin layers of skin pulse. Then she closed her eyes and frowned. Around a few chunks of concrete was a column of hard grey matter. It flickered like a flame, but the centre of the ancient laptops and blue baseball caps and camp beads and pistachio ice-cream with strawberry sauce was unmoving.

Teqi opened her eyes, their path lit up by a soft purple that cut its way through the rubble. She pointed to the right, "over there."

"Annabeth!" Percy yelled, and then he was gone in the shadows.

Teqi followed him, the sound of everyone's footsteps drowned out by creaking and groaning from the cavern. Annabeth was leaning on Percy, who was cautiously setting her down on the bonnet of a bright green car. She was scratched up and dirty, blood on her hand and cobwebs in her hair, larger webs clinging to her clothes.

"Your leg." Piper knelt next to her and examined the Bubble Wrap cast that was wrapped pretty badly around her ankle. "Oh, Annabeth, what happened?"

Annabeth explained what she had done, how she had faced the mother of all spiders and monkey barred across chasms. How she had taken the Athena Parthenos from Arachne through trickery, and now it was standing in front of them all. It looked down at them with cold ivory eyes. Teqi thought back to the giants she had faced. This statue had that same sort of magnetism and power that just radiated through the air. Unmovable.

"Gods of Olympus," Jason said, awe in his eyes and his voice. "You did all that alone. With a broken ankle."

"Well...some of it with a broken ankle."

Percy grinned. "You made Arachne weave her own trap? I knew you were good, but Holy Hera—Annabeth, you did it. Generations of Athena kids tried and failed. You found the Athena Parthenos!"

Everyone gazed at the statue. Teqi's eyes lit it up like spotlights, making everything feel a lot bigger than them. "What do we do with her?" Frank asked. "She's huge."

"We'll have to take her with us to Greece," Annabeth said. "The statue is powerful. Something about it will help us stop the giants."

"The giants' bane stands gold and pale," Hazel quoted. "Won with pain from a woven jail." She looked at Annabeth with admiration. It was hard not to. "It was Arachne's jail. You tricked her into weaving it."