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Keith had seen some strange things before, but he’d never seen it rain cars.
As the roof of the cavern collapsed, sunlight blinded him. He got the briefest glimpse of Voltron hovering above. It must have used its ballistae to blast a hole straight through the ground.
Chunks of asphalt as big as garage doors tumbled down, along with six or seven Italian cars. One would’ve crushed the Athena Parthenos, but the statue’s glowing aura acted like a force field, and the car bounced off. Unfortunately, it fell straight toward Keith.
He jumped to one side, twisting his bad foot. A wave of agony almost made him pass out, but he flipped on his back in time to see a bright red Fiat 500 slam into Arachne’s silk trap, punching through the cavern floor and disappearing with the Chinese Spidercuffs.
As Arachne fell, she screamed like a freight train on a collision course; but her wailing rapidly faded. All around Keith, more chunks of debris slammed through the floor, riddling it with holes.
The Athena Parthenos remained undamaged, though the marble under its pedestal was a starburst of fractures. Keith was covered in cobwebs. He trailed strands of leftover spider silk from his arms and legs like the strings of a marionette, but somehow, amazingly, none of the debris had hit him. He wanted to believe that the statue had protected him, though he suspected it might’ve been nothing but luck.
The army of spiders had disappeared. Either they had fled back into the darkness, or they’d fallen into the chasm. As daylight flooded the cavern, Arachne’s tapestries along the walls crumbled to dust, which Keith could hardly bear to watch—especially the tapestry depicting him and Lance.
But none of that mattered when he heard Lance’s voice from above: “Keith!”
“Here!” He sobbed.
All the terror seemed to leave him in one massive yelp. As Voltron descended, he saw Lance leaning over the rail. His smile was better than any tapestry he’d ever seen.
The room kept shaking, but Keith managed to stand. The floor at his feet seemed stable for the moment. His backpack was missing, along with Daedalus’s laptop. His luxite blade, which he’d had since he was a baby, was also gone—probably fallen into the pit. But Keith didn’t care. He was alive.
He edged closer to the gaping hole made by the Fiat 500. Jagged rock walls plunged into the darkness as far as he could see. A few small ledges jutted out here and there, but Keith saw nothing on them—just strands of spider silk dripping over the sides like Christmas tinsel.
Keith wondered if Arachne had told the truth about the chasm. Had the spider fallen all the way to Tartarus? He tried to feel satisfied with that idea, but it made him sad. Arachne had made some beautiful things. She’d already suffered for eons. Now her last tapestries had crumbled. After all that, falling into Tartarus seemed like too harsh an end.
Keith was dimly aware of Voltron hovering to a stop about forty feet from the floor. It lowered a rope ladder, but Keith stood in a daze, staring into the darkness. Then suddenly Lance was next to him, lacing his fingers in Keith’s.
He turned Keith gently away from the pit and wrapped his arms around him. Keith buried his face in his chest and broke down in tears.
“It’s okay,” he said. “We’re together.”
He didn’t say you’re okay, or we’re alive. After all they’d been through over the last year, he knew the most important thing was that they were together. Keith loved him for saying that.
Their friends gathered around them. Nico di Angelo was there, but Keith’s thoughts were so fuzzy, this didn’t seem surprising to him. It seemed only right that he would be with them.
“Your leg.” Adam knelt next to him and examined the Bubble Wrap cast. “Oh, Keith, what happened?”
He started to explain. Talking was difficult, but as he went along, his words came more easily. Lance didn’t let go of his hand, which also made him feel more confident. When he finished, his friends’ faces were slack with amazement.
“Gods of Olympus,” Shiro said. “You did all that alone. With a broken ankle.”
“Well…some of it with a broken ankle.”
Lance grinned. “You made Arachne weave her own trap? I knew you were good, but Holy Hera—Keith, you did it. Generations of Athena kids tried and failed. You found the Athena Parthenos!”
Everyone gazed at the statue.
“What do we do with her?” Hunk asked. “She’s huge.”
“We’ll have to take her with us to Greece,” Keith said. “The statue is powerful. Something about it will help us stop the giants.”
“The giants’ bane stands gold and pale,” Shay quoted. “Won with pain from a woven jail.” She looked at Keith with admiration. “It was Arachne’s jail. You tricked her into weaving it.”
With a lot of pain, Keith thought.
Pidge raised her hands. She made a finger picture frame around the Athena Parthenos like she was taking measurements. “Well, it might take some rearranging, but I think we can fit her through the bay doors in the stable. If she sticks out the end, I might have to wrap a flag around her feet or something.”
Keith shuddered. He imagined the Athena Parthenos jutting from their trireme with a sign across her pedestal that read: WIDE LOAD.
Then he thought about the other lines of the prophecy: The twins snuff out the angel’s breath, who holds the keys to endless death.
“What about you guys?” He asked. “What happened with the giants?”
Lance told him about rescuing Nico, the appearance of Bacchus, and the fight with the twins in the Colosseum. Nico didn’t say much. The poor guy looked like he’d been wandering through a wasteland for six weeks. Lance explained what Nico had found out about the Doors of Death, and how they had to be closed on both sides. Even with sunlight streaming in from above, Lance’s news made the cavern seem dark again.
“So the mortal side is in Epirus,” He said. “At least that’s somewhere we can reach.”
Nico grimaced. “But the other side is the problem. Tartarus.”
The word seemed to echo through the chamber. The pit behind them exhaled a cold blast of air. That’s when Keith knew with certainty. The chasm did go straight to the Underworld.
Lance must have felt it too. He guided him a little farther from the edge. Keith’s arms and legs trailed spider silk like a bridal train. He wished he had his blade to cut that junk off. He almost asked Lance to do the honors with Riptide, but before he could, Lance said, “Bacchus mentioned something about my voyage being harder than I expected. Not sure why—”
The chamber groaned. The Athena Parthenos tilted to one side. Its head caught on one of Arachne’s support cables, but the marble foundation under the pedestal was crumbling.
Nausea swelled in Keith’s chest. If the statue fell into the chasm, all his work would be for nothing. Their quest would fail.
“Secure it!” Keith cried.
His friends understood immediately.
“Hunk!” Pidge cried. “Get me to the helm, quick! Coran is up there alone.”
Hunk transformed into a giant eagle, and the two of them soared toward the ship.
Shiro wrapped his arm around Adam. He turned to Lance. “Back for you guys in a sec.” He summoned the wind and shot into the air.
“This floor won’t last!” Shay warned. “The rest of us should get to the ladder.”
Plumes of dust and cobwebs blasted from holes in the floor. The spider’s silk support cables trembled like massive guitar strings and began to snap. Shay lunged for the bottom of the rope ladder and gestured for Nico to follow, but Nico was in no condition to sprint.
Lance gripped Keith’s hand tighter. “It’ll be fine,” He muttered.
Looking up, he saw grappling lines shoot from Voltron and wrap around the statue. One lassoed Athena’s neck like a noose. Pidge shouted orders from the helm as Shiro and Hunk flew frantically from line to line, trying to secure them.
Nico had just reached the ladder when a sharp pain shot up Keith’s bad leg. He gasped and stumbled.
“What is it?” Lance asked.
He tried to stagger toward the ladder. Why was he moving backward instead? His legs swept out from under him and he fell on his face.
“His ankle!” Shay shouted from the ladder. “Cut it! Cut it!”
Keith’s mind was woolly from the pain. Cut his ankle?
Apparently Lance didn’t realize what Shay meant either. Then something yanked Keith backward and dragged him toward the pit.
Lance lunged.
He grabbed his arm, but the momentum carried him along as well.
“Help them!” Shay yelled.
Keith glimpsed Nico hobbling in their direction, Shay trying to disentangle her cavalry sword from the rope ladder. Their other friends were still focused on the statue, and Shay’s cry was lost in the general shouting and the rumbling of the cavern.
Keith sobbed as he hit the edge of the pit. His legs went over the side. Too late, he realized what was happening: he was tangled in the spider silk. He should have cut it away immediately. He had thought it was just loose line, but with the entire floor covered in cobwebs, he hadn’t noticed that one of the strands was wrapped around his foot—and the other end went straight into the pit. It was attached to something heavy down in the darkness, something that was pulling him in.
“No,” Lance muttered, light dawning in his eyes. “My sword…”
But he couldn’t reach Riptide without letting go of Keith’s arm, and Keith’s strength was gone. He slipped over the edge. Lance fell with him.
His body slammed into something. Keith must have blacked out briefly from the pain. When he could see again, he realized that he’d fallen partway into the pit and was dangling over the void. Lance had managed to grab a ledge about fifteen feet below the top of the chasm. He was holding on with one hand, gripping Keith’s wrist with the other, but the pull on Keith’s leg was much too strong.
No escape, said a voice in the darkness below. I go to Tartarus, and you will come too.
Keith wasn’t sure if he actually heard Arachne’s voice or if it was just in his mind.
The pit shook. Lance was the only thing keeping him from falling. He was barely holding on to a ledge the size of a bookshelf.
Nico leaned over the edge of the chasm, thrusting out his hand, but he was much too far away to help. Shay was yelling for the others, but even if they heard her over all the chaos, they’d never make it in time.
Keith’s leg felt like it was pulling free of his body. Pain washed everything in red. The force of the Underworld tugged at him like dark gravity. He didn’t have the strength to fight. He knew he was too far down to be saved.
“Lance, let me go,” He croaked. “You can’t pull me up.”
Lance’s face was pale with effort. Keith could see in his eyes that he knew it was hopeless.
“Never,” He said. He looked up at Nico, fifteen feet above. “The other side, Nico! We’ll see you there. Understand?”
Nico’s eyes widened. “But—”
“Lead them there!” Lance shouted. “Promise me!”
“I—I will.”
Below them, the voice laughed in the darkness. Sacrifices. Beautiful sacrifices to wake the goddess.
Lance tightened his grip on Keith’s wrist. His face was gaunt, scraped and bloody, his hair dusted with cobwebs, but when he locked eyes with him, Keith thought he had never looked more handsome.
“We’re staying together,” He promised. “You’re not getting away from me. Never again.”
Only then did Keith understand what would happen. A one-way trip. A very hard fall.
“As long as we’re together,” He said.
He heard Nico and Shay still screaming for help. He saw the sunlight far, far above—maybe the last sunlight he would ever see.
Then Lance let go of his tiny ledge, and together, holding hands, he and Keith fell into the endless darkness.