𝐆𝐎𝐋𝐃 𝐑𝐔𝐒𝐇 [Jason Grace]

51

𝐃𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐞 𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞.

He could feel the ambrosia he'd eaten earlier starting to repair his rib, but it still hurt so badly that the pain throbbed right up to his neck and across the rest of his body. All along the walls, small spiders scuttled in the darkness, as if awaiting their mistress's orders. Thousands of them rustled behind the tapestries, making the woven scenes move like wind.

They sat on the crumbling floor and tried to preserve their strength. Dante didn't want to have a conversation Arachne could overhear, so they conversed in sign language. Just a few words— you okay? Yes, you? Water? No, thank you. Hungry? I have skittles.

While Arachne wasn't watching, Annabeth attempted to get some sort of signal on Daedalus' laptop to contact her friends, but of course she had no luck. That left them nothing to do but watch in amazement and horror as Arachne worked, her eight legs moving with hypnotic speed, slowly unraveling the silk strands around the statue.

With its golden clothes and its luminous ivory face, the Athena Parthenos was even scarier than Arachne. It gazed down sternly as if to say, Bring me tasty snacks or else. Dante could imagine being an Ancient Roman, walking into the Parthenon and seeing this massive goddess with her shield, spear, and python, her free hand holding out Nike, the winged spirit of victory. It would've been enough to put a kink in the chiton of any mortal. No wonder it was a symbol of power that the Romans had stolen from the Greeks.

More than that, the statue radiated power. As Athena was unwrapped, the air around her grew warmer. Her ivory skin glowed with life. All across the room, the smaller spiders became agitated and began retreating back into the hallway.

Dante guessed that Arachne's webs had somehow masked and dampened the statue's magic. Now that it was free, the Athena Parthenos filled the chamber with magical energy. Centuries of mortal prayers and burnt offerings had been made in its presence. It was infused with the power of Athena.

Arachne didn't seem to notice. She kept muttering to herself, counting out yards of silk and calculating the number of strands her project would require. Whenever she hesitated, Annabeth and Dante called out encouragement and reminded her how wonderful her tapestries would look on Mount Olympus.

The statue grew so warm and bright that Dante could see more details of the shrine—the Roman masonry that had probably once been gleaming white, the dark bones of Arachne's past victims and meals hanging in the web, and the massive cables of silk that connected the floor to the ceiling. Dante now saw just how fragile the marble tiles were under his feet. They were covered in a fine layer of webbing, like mesh holding together a shattered mirror. Whenever the Athena Parthenos shifted even slightly, more cracks spread and widened along the floor. In some places, there were holes as big as manhole covers. Dante didn't need to be into architecture to understand it was unstable.

Even if their plan succeeded and they defeated Arachne, he wasn't sure how they could make it out of this chamber alive.

"So much silk," Arachne muttered. "I could make twenty tapestries—"

"Keep going!" Dante called up. "You're doing a wonderful job. I'd give you a smiley sticker if I had one."

The spider kept working. After what seemed like forever, a mountain of glistening silk was piled at the feet of the statue. The walls of the chamber were still covered in webs. The support cables holding the room together hadn't been disturbed. But the Athena Parthenos was free.

Please wake up, Dante begged the statue. Whip out lasers or something!

Nothing happened, but the cracks seemed to be spreading across the floor more rapidly. According to Arachne, the malicious thoughts of monsters had eaten away at the shrine's foundations for centuries. If that was true, now that it was free the Athena Parthenos might be attracting even more attention from the monsters in Tartarus.