So! I used the version where she has part of the body of a dragon, but I went with a Komodo dragon. I gave her pincers and a scorpion tail, insect wings, as well as more insect-like features, and coyote heads!
Goetia/Royalty character based on Kampê from Ancient Greek Mythology.
Still designing lore, but this Queen is the jailer that keeps Fallen Angels and Nephilim in prison while tortures and enslaves them for their crimes.
I bet as a more conservative Goetic ruler, she would agree with Stolas losing his powers because of his relationship with Blitzo, but she would have preferred Stolas to be executed if it wasn't for the Wrath Ring's ruler saying that he be spared because he has some "value".
I also drew a little Carol on the side because I can.
Concept art as of right now. Can't think of a color scheme as of right now.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Excerpt:
Argus stood guard at the entrance, under Athena's banner. Inside, maps were spread over every table, the same ones we'd pored over at the start of summer, but also new ones that had been updated with the location of our defensive lines and each cabin's battle position. One was set up like a board game, with little chess pieces representing our forces.
I scanned the board quickly. 'There.' I pointed to the line of a natural ditch. 'It's a good defensive trap in theory, but Luke knows this area. He'll be prepared for it.' I moved several of the chess pieces around. 'We need to redeploy some of our forces to guard the natural landforms. We can't depend on them to trip Luke up, no matter how we've disguised them.'
Malcolm scratched his head sheepishly. 'I guess I missed that. Sorry.'
I shook my head. 'No, you've done a great job. It's just—'
I thought of the waves of monsters packing Antaeus's stadium, of the seemingly endless battalion that kept coming after us in the Labyrinth.
Kronos, with his evil blade and all of Luke's knowledge and skill at his disposal.
'You did a good job,' I repeated. 'I'm sorry I wasn't here.' I'm sorry I failed.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Excerpt:
'Percy, what did Hera mean when she said you knew the way to get through the maze?'
He looked like I'd just sprung a pop quiz on him that he'd failed. 'I don't know. Honestly.'
'You'd tell me if you did?'
'Sure.' He pursed his lips. 'Maybe …'
'Maybe what?'
He twisted his hands in his lap. 'Maybe if you told me the last line of the prophecy, it would help.'
My insides shrivelled. The tunnels were silent, anticipatory like the calm before a storm. The shadowy light turned Percy's face almost into a stranger's. I closed my eyes and looked away. I couldn't tell him. Not now.
Annabeth had thought trudging across the skin of Tartarus was the worst experience ever, but crawling through its interior definitely proved her wrong. Their journey just kept getting suckier.
The underground terrain was even less hospitable than the hostile upper surface. Stalactites and stalagmites crowded the passageway, the smaller ones stabbing them in the foot as they walked. The big ones closed in on them like jagged teeth in a narrow, dangerous mouth that threatened to snap shut and rip them to pieces at any moment.
The foul stench of soul vomit in the muggy air made Annabeth want to gag constantly. She pulled her shirt up to cover her mouth and nose, but it did little to block out the rancid odour. None of them spoke; they were all struggling to navigate the treacherous speleothems while breathing as shallowly as possible.
To take her mind off the torturous trek, she focused on Percy. The gaps between the spiky pillars were so narrow that they had to plod along in single file. Percy was just ahead of her and Annabeth kept putting her hand out to steady his back as he stumbled along. Well, actually, she was probably steadying herself as much as she was supporting him. But she savoured the way his shoulders relaxed at her touch, no longer shying away from the contact.
They had come this far. They would get to the Doors of Death and get out of here.
Just when they were ready to pass out from the stench, a whiff of fresh breeze entered the tunnel. The trickle of water echoed beyond the walls. The passage widened, giving them more room between the stalactites and stalagmites. Percy fell in step next to her. His hand found hers and she squeezed it gratefully.
'Sacred cattle of Apollo,' Will said, 'that smelled worse than a packed ER. Remind me never to complain about the smell of body fluids again.'
'Ouch!' Up ahead, Thalia hissed and stepped back. In the spot where she'd been, a drop of rust-coloured water squeezed out of a crevice in the cave ceiling and splashed to the ground, followed by another, and another. 'That burned!'
Annabeth and Nico reached the fortuitous conclusion at the same time: 'The Phlegethon!'
'The rivers must run underground as well,' Annabeth said.
Nico nodded. 'They flow throughout Tartarus. Under the surface, too, like--' His face took on a greenish tinge and he stopped talking. Annabeth thought of the pulsing vessels that ran below the heart of Tartarus and guessed why he wasn't keen to finish the sentence. When you thought about what Tartarus actually was...well, that kind of knowledge didn't really inspire sanity.
Will looked at the steady reddish drip. 'I hate to suggest this, but...'
'We need it,' Annabeth finished. 'You're right.'
No one argued, although Thalia winced and Percy made a face. They were all in terrible shape. Will had bandaged Annabeth's cuts from her fight with Bella the best he could, but she was bleeding through the strips of cloth. She stepped up and put her mouth under the steady drip.
The first drop burned worse than scalding coffee and hit her throat and stomach like a straight shot of vodka. Annabeth turned away, coughing uncontrollably. Her gag reflex had barely recovered from the nauseating stink of the tunnel and it kicked into overdrive now, emptying the contents of her stomach onto the ground.
When she stopped retching, Percy was squatting next to her, rubbing her back soothingly.
'I'm okay,' she said weakly. 'I think it's worse when your injuries are more severe.' She forced herself to get up and approach the Phlegethon drip again. Her second swallow was still excruciating, but she managed to keep it down. Percy kept his arm around her as she gulped down a steady trickle of fire water, until her skin knitted back together and her exhaustion lifted.
Once they'd all recharged, they continued on their way.
As they moved along, the flow of air through the cave increased. The stalactites and stalagmites shrunk in width until they were replaced by thin, black bristles. Annabeth couldn't figure out where the wind was coming from, but it howled through the tunnel at random intervals, so powerful that they had to hang on to the skinny bristles to keep from being swept off their feet. The bristles weren't that firm either. They bent easily, like flimsy reeds growing out of a swampy marsh.
In fact, the surface of the cave had become thick and gelatinous, an oozing glue that hampered their steps and slowed their pace.
'Like mucus,' Will said in disgust, lifting his foot to examine the sticky goo that covered it.
'It's on the walls, too,' Thalia observed.
'It's like walking down a giant's nose,' Will said. He waved at the pliable bristles. 'Complete with nose hairs.'
Annabeth, Percy, and Nico exchanged a glance, but didn't say anything. No need to confirm Will's suspicions. She shuddered, though, wishing she hadn't taken that biology elective last semester. It made it all too easy to imagine the exact region of Tartarus's body that they might be traversing.
Their passage branched off into two tunnels. A soft, white glow emanated from one of them; the other looked like a black hole.
'Which way?' Thalia asked Nico.
Annabeth found herself hoping Nico would pick the pitch-black path, though she couldn't put her finger on what it was about the eerie light from the other tunnel that troubled her.
Something tugged at her memory, a thought that had been germinating since Nico had mentioned travelling through caves, back at the shrine of Hermes. She pictured the way the mountain ranges cut across the Dark Lands.
Diagonally.
She wasn't surprised when Nico pointed to the lighter path.
'It's not going to be easy,' he warned. 'If I'm right, the stuff that's in there...'
'Right, because it's all been a walk in the park so far,' said Thalia with a roll of her eyes. But she put her hand on her bow as if to reassure herself of its presence.
Percy nudged Annabeth's shoulder. 'What are you thinking?'
'I don't know.' Annabeth had always thought Nico's experience in the pit had been similar to hers and Percy's. Now she wondered if he had seen worse horrors deep in the bowels of Tartarus.
Going through the cave system had seemed like a good idea compared to leaping across the chasm of Chaos, but maybe they should have taken their chances with the Mansion of Night after all.
'I don't like this,' she admitted. 'But I think it's the way we have to go. Just—let's all hold hands, okay?'
It wasn't that holding hands made it any easier to traverse the tunnel. In fact, it was quite awkward to manoeuvre. However, no one objected. The air here was hostile and sinister, almost producing a constant hiss of rejection.
You don't belong here, it snarled at them.
Not that they belonged in Tartarus in the first place. But down here, that feeling was multiplied tenfold.
'I feel like we're being watched,' Will said nervously.
Percy frowned. 'Do you think Tartarus himself—'
'Shhh,' Annabeth said. 'Don't say his name. Not here.'
The silvery mucous lining of the walls lit their way, but when it illuminated what was in their path, Annabeth almost wished they were wandering in darkness.
Here and there, fluid-filled cavities formed in the walls, each covered by a thin membrane stretching over the hole. Inside were the twisted forms of monsters growing straight out of the ground like hideous science experiments. It wasn't much different from the way monsters regenerated on the skin of Tartarus, but these were all incredibly ancient creatures—some of the deadliest, most terrifying monsters the Greek pantheon had to offer. An amphisbaena curled in a circle with poison spewing from each of its two heads—one on either end of its snake-like body—that turned the fluid in its cavity neon green. A pitted stretch of the cave housed a gaggle of half-grown telkhines, looking like grotesque seals with misshapen heads.
'I guess the worst monsters form down here,' Thalia said.
'The ones that take the longest to reform, I think,' Nico said. He closed his eyes. 'He told me this was a safe place for them.'
'He?' asked Will. Nico didn't explain.
Annabeth looked at the growing monsters, feeling more than ever like an intruder in the internal organs of Tartarus. Everything about this path shouted at her to get out.
The thought that had been struggling to form in her head put forth a little root.
Another way…only good for Titans.
Percy seemed to be thinking along the same lines. 'Do you think this was Bob's path? The one he took to meet up with us at the Doors?'
'I don't know. Maybe.'
'I thought about them when we were hanging over Chaos,' Percy said quietly. 'How he jumped into Tartarus when we called. I thought it was our turn to join them. I wonder what it'd be like down there. To be nothing.'
'I don't know if it'd actually be anything. I mean, that's what nothing is, isn't it? Just…emptiness.' Was it, though? She remembered thinking something similar about Tartarus before they'd realised it was an actual place. Then again, a lot of their experience of Tartarus was what their minds made it out to be. Who was to say Chaos wasn't the same? That there wasn’t an even higher power beyond the primordial deity?
Maybe it was possible to survive it—and anyway, hadn't they promised to keep Bob and Damasen's memories alive on the slim hope that eventually, their friends would regenerate, even from Chaos.
'We used to think it was impossible to come back from Tartarus,' she said finally. 'I guess…you never know.'
Percy nodded. 'I'm glad I have my memories back. I promised not to forget them.'
'We promised not to forget them, Seaweed Brain.'
The next cavity they came across was a massive crater. Inside was the most ancient monster of all: one with the long, scaly bottom half of a dragon, but a woman's upper body. Her skin was made of sleeping creatures—snakes curled around her legs and out of her scalp; beast heads circled her waist—and her tail was lined with wicked barbs.
'Kampê,' Annabeth whispered.
Percy drew his sword. He must have intended to run the monster through before she could fully regenerate and claw her way out. Unfortunately, these cavities weren't like the monster zits on the surface. Riptide tore the membrane, but space seemed to bend inside the cavity, curving the blade away from Kampê.
The dragon lady opened her eyes.
'You idiot!' Thalia yelled.
Kampê and her monster-covered skin came to life at once. The snakes hissed; her beast-head belt snarled.
'Demigods,' rasped Kampê. Her clawed hands found the rip in the membrane and tugged at it, widening the gap.
'RUN!' Percy bellowed.
Annabeth didn't need telling twice. As they barrelled down the tunnel, she was reminded vividly of the first time they'd encountered Kampê in Alcatraz. She'd chased them down with a pair of poisonous scimitars then, but with Tyson's help they'd escaped into the Labyrinth.
Tyson wasn't here now. And it was probably too much to hope that Kampê's scimitars weren't either. A loud ripping noise behind them meant Kampê had probably torn her way out of the cavity. Annabeth's blood was roaring in her ears, but through it, she could hear the unmistakable pounding of the dragon lady's legs on the rock.
'Faster!' gasped Annabeth, though she didn't think they had a chance of outrunning Kampê, even with their head start. They didn't even know what they were running to. For all she knew, they could be sprinting into the arms of something even worse.
'Annabeth!' Percy grabbed her arm, jerking her sideways such that she narrowly avoided running head-first into a jetstream of frigid water.
It burst like an icy cannon from a crack in the rock and plummeted in a perfect vertical. It took Annabeth a second to realise that the water was in fact cascading over the edge of a cliff.
A cliff they were about to charge straight off of.
Nico yanked Will back by his tattered shirt before the latter could topple over the edge. Annabeth, Percy, and Thalia skidded to a stop behind them.
They had emerged from the tunnel into a cavernous chamber. On their left, they were blocked by the water that gushed from the rock and thundered over the steep cliff. Ahead and right, their path simply ended in a sharp drop-off.
They were trapped.
The thunder of the waterfall as it plunged into the narrow gorge between their ledge and the opposite side mixed with the thumps and screeches emanating from the tunnel behind them.
It echoed confusingly about the chamber, making it impossible to tell how close Kampê was to catching up to them. Frantic, Annabeth peered into the ravine. A thin black line snaked along the bottom from the base of the waterfall.
Could they jump? The pain of the river was probably preferable to dealing with Kampê (unless, of course, this was the Lethe).
She was about to suggest they cliff dive when she spotted the weird curvature of the cliff below them. It was hard to tell, but a section of the cliff face seemed to bend inwards, away from the vertical rush of water. There was a dark patch a few feet down that looked like a hollow in the rock.
'Climb!' Annabeth ordered, pushing her friends to the cliff edge. Ignoring the stinging splashes from the falling water, she led the way down the cliff face. She barely stopped to look for hand- and footholds, trusting adrenaline to carry her diagonally downwards.
Her fingers found the spot where the cliff curved to form an underhang. Gratefully, she swung herself into the hollow space behind the waterfall and let herself fall to land on the hidden rock shelter.
'In here!' she called to the others.
They had all just made it in when the clang of swords rang out overhead. It was undoubtedly Kampê, and she must have found her scimitars.
Don't let her sense us, Annabeth prayed.
Through the mist of the thundering waterfall, she saw Kampê's massive shape soar across the canyon and disappear. Annabeth wasn't sure how long they waited, hardly daring to breathe.
Kampê didn't return.
'I think we're safe,' Thalia whispered at last. 'Should we climb back up?'
'Probably better to go down,' Annabeth said. 'We have to get past the gorge anyway.' She peered through the curtain of cascading water, thinking again about jumping. Now that the urgency had passed, the idea was less appealing. 'Do we know which river this is?'
Even as she asked, the answer came to her. The roar of the waterfall wasn't just from water hurtling over a cliff; it was a collective howl of agony. She didn't need Nico to confirm that they were hiding behind the River of Pain.
It was a good thing they hadn't taken the plunge.
They set off down the cliff face again, climbing sideways to get further from the Acheron Falls. The whole time, Annabeth could hear the souls of the damned crying out in anguish, pleading for absolution that would never come.
You'll never be forgiven! they shrieked at her. Behold your sins!
The faces of everyone she had ever failed swam before her eyes: Thalia, Luke, her cousin Magnus, Silena, Bob and Damasen…the list went on.
Percy.
Here they were in Tartarus again, and both times it had been her fault. He might have forgiven her, but she certainly hadn't forgiven herself for screwing up.
Her foot missed a foothold. She slid wildly down a foot before she managed to catch herself on a crevice in the rock. The jerk jarred her shoulder badly. She felt her nails crack when they dug in.
'Annabeth!' Percy grabbed her wrist. 'I've got you—'
A rockslide cut him off. The holds he had been using crumbled. With a sickening sense of déjà-vu, they plummeted through the air.
Several feet from the bottom, something soft and springy broke their fall. A bed of interconnected fibres stretched between the two cliff faces, bouncing up and down with them when they hit it. Annabeth had a split second to think, thank the gods, before her mind kicked in and set alarm bells ringing.
They weren't bouncing on the fibres. They were stuck to them, bobbing along with their vibrations. Her nose filled with the cloying, overly-sweet smell of scented rot—a smell that had haunted her nightmares for years.
Annabeth barely registered Thalia, Will, and Nico calling for them from above, asking if they were all right. Her attention was fixed on the big hulking shape crawling towards her and Percy, moving slowly but precisely across the woven strands of her massive web.
'Oh, this is sweet,' said Arachne, her mouth widening to show off her full set of pointed, needle-like teeth. 'I had not imagined that I would net such perfect prey.'
In one of Annabeth's earliest memories—she must have been about five or six—she had been climbing on the jungle gym at school and she'd put her hand straight through a spider web stretched across the metal bars. Even after she'd scrubbed herself raw in the bathtub, the ghostly caress of the web had clung to her skin for days, even though her exasperated stepmother had insisted that there was nothing touching her. It had baffled her father and stepmother when Annabeth had wept and pleaded not to be sent back to school, and no amount of logic—a strategy that had always worked with Annabeth, even as a child—would calm her fear.
Now, caught like a fly in Arachne's giant web, that same terror erupted in a sheen of cold sweat over Annabeth's body. Her skin crawled where the silken strands held her fast—so delicate and yet so unyielding, a fibre unlike anything else on (or beneath) the earth.
If her brain hadn't been paralysed by fright, she might have appreciated the unique structure of the silk and the exquisite engineering capabilities it offered. But rational thought fled in the face of being trapped in a spiderweb, facing the mother of arachnids herself.
It didn't matter that she'd survived many perilous encounters over the years. It didn't matter that she'd tackled bigger, more dangerous monsters with less trepidation. It didn't even matter that she'd faced Arachne before and won.
No matter how many times she'd risen above her fear in the past, Annabeth would never be able to face a spider without this overwhelming surge of terror.
'Hey, Spiderbitch!' Percy was making a valiant attempt to flail his arms. All he managed was to shake the entire web. Still, it got Arachne's attention. 'You're looking even uglier than I remember!'
'You,' Arachne snarled. 'I remember you. The insufferable son of Poseidon.'
'Shouldn't you still be a stinking pile of ashes?'
Distracted from Annabeth, Arachne picked her way over to Percy. Foam bubbled from her mouth in frothy anger.
'You talk too much,' Arachne hissed. Her mandibles clicked together every second word, tapping out a metronome beat of her annoyance. A strand of silk shot out from one of her bulging spinnerets and slapped across Percy's mouth. 'I will kill you first.'
Annabeth needed to pull herself together now. Before Arachne killed Percy.
Don't fight emotions with logic. Focus on one emotion that's bigger than the fear.
It was the same advice she'd used when facing Eris. Annabeth focused on how Arachne was about to murder Percy and protective anger flared to her aid. The sickening sweet stench of the spider became less nauseating and more irritating. Arachne's monstrous body, with its eight barbed legs and malevolent face, was just as hideous as ever, but instead of terrifying, it now registered as simply menacing. She was just another monster Annabeth had to fight to save Percy.
Anger wasn't precisely rational, but her mind knew how to work with it. Strategic thought returned to her.
Percy let out a muffled yell through his silken gag. Annabeth realised that he wasn't just trying to draw Arachne's attention away from her; he was also using his voice to help Thalia, Will, and Nico locate them.
His diversion might have worked if Arachne didn't have four eyes. Two of them were fixed murderously on Percy, but the two bugging out of her temples spotted the shower of arrows raining down from Thalia's bow. The spider might be slow moving across the web, but her spinnerets were fast. Filaments shot from them and knocked Thalia's arrows harmlessly aside. Arachne sent another jet of silk to wrap around Thalia, pulling her down to join Percy and Annabeth in the web.
Nico must have shadow-travelled, because he and Will appeared suddenly underneath them. Nico slashed his Stygian iron sword across Arachne's web in an attempt to cut them loose, but the sword only tangled in the web, which yanked it from Nico's hand. Arachne shot out a thick stream from her spinnerets that curled around Nico in a criss-cross pattern. Will ran to help and Arachne snared him with another filament, this one jerking him up by the ankle and slinging him upside down inches below the web.
Nico struggled from inside the cocoon Arachne had woven around him. It tightened as he writhed, forming a perfect, solid ellipse from the initially flexible prison. Arachne eyed it with satisfaction.
'Recognise your handiwork?' she said to Annabeth. 'The masterpiece you would have me make. Only I have perfected your original design. And here you are, giving me the chance to use it.' Her raucous laugh tore through the canyon. 'You thought you would trick me. Chinese Spidercuffs indeed. Now I weave Arachnacuffs—my ultimate trap. Oh, I shall have the last laugh now!'
Part of Annabeth's brain registered admiration at the way Arachne had adapted the Chinese handcuff design—a trap that tightened around its victim when they tried an intuitive escape. When Annabeth had tricked Arachne into ensnaring herself before, she'd only been concerned with making the trap functional. Arachne had converted it into a work of art.
Art. Annabeth picked up on that train of thought. 'I'm surprised you spent all your time on that,' she said. 'Not very impressive, is it?'
'Not very impressive?' Arachne's mandibles clicked in a furious staccato.
'Well, you said yourself it was nothing,' Annabeth said, reprising the conversation they had had in the bowels of Rome. 'Not even a tapestry.'
'Your arrogance is insufferable, daughter of Athena,' snapped Arachne. 'Just like your mother's. No appreciation for the elegance of my work. The beauty is in the versatility of each individual thread. Can you not feel its delicate caress? And yet it holds you tight. Do you know what skill it takes to craft silk like that? I toiled for ages to create the perfect combination. Every strand works together in synchronous artistry. It would hold fast even the most powerful god. I dare any of them to escape its pull!'
Annabeth hoped someone—even Tartarus himself—might appear to strike Arachne down for that statement. The spider had obviously not become any less boastful in the time she had spent here.
But no angry, avenging gods appeared.
'So you demand a tapestry?' Arachne continued. 'I am still perfectly capable of weaving.' Her black, lidless eyes glittered with malice. 'In fact, I think I shall enjoy giving you a demonstration.'
She began weaving as she spoke, coloured silk shooting out of her spinnerets and spraying over the cliff walls. Her weaving was as masterful as it had always been, creating the pattern of two demigods falling into a glittering web so life-like, Annabeth could almost imagine it was actual video footage of their tumble into Arachne's trap.
'My revenge has been long-await,' Arachne gloated. 'How many ways there are to kill you! I simply cannot decide. I must weave them all! Observe, my dear daughter of Athena—observe and despair.'
She moved on to another tapestry, this one portraying herself lowering Annabeth into her wide-open mouth. The real Arachne's mouth glistened with saliva at the picture.
Annabeth shuddered involuntarily. The motion made the silk strands gripping her cling tighter to her skin. Percy and Thalia had stopped moving completely; just as Arachne had said, the very silk functioned like the Chinese Spidercuffs. Any attempt to struggle increased its grip.
Nico's cocoon was completely still, too. Annabeth wasn't sure if he could even breathe in there. How solid was the silk? Had it suffocated him? Will had been swinging about madly at first, but that had gotten him impossibly tangled as well, restricting his movements.
Annabeth's mind started to tumble back into panic. Even if she could keep Arachne talking—and she'd never manage to divert her attention indefinitely—how would they get free?
Arachne started on her next tapestry: a depiction of Annabeth and her friends stung by the barbs on the spider's legs. She laughed, a gleeful rip-rip-rip that heightened Annabeth's despair. Arachne was clearly enjoying the mental torture she was concocting by showing exactly how she intended to kill them. In the background, the wailing souls in the Acheron played an agonising accompaniment to the tapestry of their demise.
Then, just as Arachne turned back, ready to enact her woven depictions, a war cry rang out.
A massive rake swept through the air—no, not a rake, a broom: exactly the right implement for sweeping cobwebs off ceilings. It dislodged Arachne's grip on the threads and knocked her right off. The spider's legs curled up and she bounced on the ground in a ball.
The web detached from the cliff walls and clung to the broom's bristles with Annabeth, Percy, and Thalia still wrapped up in it. They swung through the air as a silver-haired Titan brought the other end down in a jab at Arachne.
Arachne rolled away, shooting a silk strand at the handle. But a sabre-toothed tiger leapt out of nowhere and pounced on her. She shrieked and scuttled away.
'Oops,' said Bob the Titan, noticing the three demigods dangling off the bristles of his broom. He lowered them gently to the ground.
Annabeth watched in a daze as Small Bob the tiger chased Arachne down the ravine. She ran up against a lizard-tailed giant, who hit her in the head with a massive fist. She collapsed and Small Bob's mouth opened impossibly wide to swallow her. With a loud crunch, all that was left of Arachne were a few scattered legs. Annabeth didn't know if the spider would simply turn to ashes inside the cat's mouth or actually be ingested, and what that meant for Small Bob's digestive system.
She decided she probably didn't want to know.
'Nasty, sticky stuff,' said Bob. He tried to pull Annabeth, Percy, and Thalia from his broom, but his fingers just got stuck in the mess of cobwebs.
'Stop moving,' Damasen told him. He picked up one of Arachne's discarded limbs before tromping over to them. He reached up and gently plucked the strand of silk stringing Will up, swinging it from one finger. Using the spider's leg, he rubbed it along Will like he was de-linting him. The silk caught on the barbs and came off onto the leg. Damasen put Will down and carefully stroked the spider leg up his own finger, peeling off the silk thread as though it were a layer of dried glue.
Small Bob came bounding back in cat form and deposited the rest of the spider legs on the ground by Bob's feet. Damasen helped Bob brush off his broom's bristles, releasing them all from the tangled mess.
It took a while longer to unravel the cocoon holding Nico. He emerged deathly pale and shivering uncontrollably, but thankfully alive.
Annabeth hardly dared to believe what had just happened. While Damasen wound the unravelled spider silk into a ball and wrapped it carefully in a piece of cloth, she tried to find words.
It wasn't just that the Titan and the giant had saved them from Arachne. The very sight of them was a miracle in itself. The others were speechless as well. Percy's jaw hung open in complete shock.
Her voice came out at last in a tearful squeak. 'Bob—Damasen—you're here.'
'We are here,' Bob agreed, beaming. 'Bob and Damasen have come back to our friends!'
A/N: The amphisbaena is a mythological serpent that is apparently a spawn of Medusa; I figure if RR ever gets round to it, it might make an appearance. Greek mythology certainly has no end of magical creatures to draw from!
It seems that based on my polls on BOTH Reddit and Tumblr, there was a tie when I summed up the votes from both sites. There was a tie between the Garter snake and the Fire Salamander.
Given the tie between the two winning votes, I will be the one to break the tie with...
Briares is a character I have always struggled to visualize. Especially the 50 faces. I don't even know how that works. I can sort of understand the 100 hands, but the 50 faces is really confusing. That being said, him and Kampê are both really weird. Quite odd beings, clearly from a time long since past.
