━━ chapter fourteen
with the wolves
( jason )

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    ━━Jason dreamed he was swinging upside down, wrapped up in a cocoon of chains like a hunk of meat in an ice vault. Everything hurt━his arms, his legs, his chest, his head. (Especially his head. It felt like an overinflated water balloon). 

     "If I'm dead," he murmured to himself, "why does it hurt so much?"

    "You're not dead, my hero," said a woman's voice. "It is not your time. Come, speak with me."

     Jason's thoughts floated away from his body. He heard monsters yelling, his friends screaming, fiery explosions, but all of it seemed to be happening on another planet━getting further and futher away ...

     He found himself standing in an earthen cage. Tendrils of tree roots and stone whirled together, confining him. Outside the bars, he could see the floor of a dry reflecting pool, another earthen spire growing at the far end and, above them, the ruined red stones of a burnt-out house.

     Next to him in the cage, a woman sat cross-legged in black robes, her head covered by a shroud. She pushed aside her veil, revealing a face that was proud and beautiful━but also hardened with suffering. 

     "Hera," Jason recognised her immediately, and he wasn't exactly happy at this small reunion.

     "Welcome to my prison," said the goddess sarcastically (can goddesses be sarcastic?). "You will not die today, Jason. Your friends will see you through━for now."

     His stomach lurched. "For now?"

     (What was that suppposed to mean?).

     Hera gestured at the tendrils of her cage. "There are worse trials to come. The very earth stirs against us."

     "You're a goddess," frowned Jason. "Why can't you just escape?"

     Hera smiled sadly. Her form began to glow, until her brilliance filled the cage with a painful light. The air hummed with power, molecules splitting apart like a nuclear explosion. Jason suspected if he were actually here in the flesh, he would have been vaporised.

     The cage should've blasted to rubble. The ground should've split and the ruined house should've been levelled. But when the glow died, the cage hadn't budged. Nothing outside the bars had changed. Only Hera looked different━more drained and tired than she had been before, like she was actually starting to show her true age. 

     "Some powers are even greater than the gods," she said. "I am not easily contained. I can be in many places at once. But when the greater part of my essence is caught, it is like a foot in a bear trap, you might say. I can't escape, and I am concealed from the eyes of other gods. Only you can find me, and I grow weaker by the day."

     "Then why did you come here? How were you caught?"

     The goddess sighed. "I could not stay idle. Your father Jupiter believes he can withdraw from the world, and thus lull our enemies back to sleep. He believes we Olympians have become too involved in the affairs of mortals, in the fates of our demigod children, especially when it was one of the who helped defeat one of our greatest enemies, and now that we have all agreed to claim them all after the war. He believes this is what has caused our enemies to stir. That is why he closed Olympus."

     "But you don't agree."

     "No," said Hera. "Often I do not understand my husband's moods or his decisions, but even for Zeus this seemed paranoid. I cannot fathom why he was so insistent and so convinced. It was ... unlike him. As Hera, I might have been content to follow my lord's wishes. But I am also Juno," her image flickered and Jason saw armour under her simple black robes. "Juno Moneta they once called me━Juno, the One Who Warns. I was guardian of the state, patron of Eternal Rome. I could not sit by while the descendants of my people were attacked. I sensed danger at this sacred spot. A voice━" she hesitated. "A voice told me I should come here. Gods do not have what you might call a conscience, nor do we have dreams, but the voice was like that━soft and persistent, warning me to come here. And so the same day Zeus closed Olympus, I slipped away without telling him my plans, so he could not stop me. And I came here to investigate."

     "It was a trap," Jason guessed.

     Hera nodded. "Only too late did I realise how quickly the earth was stirring. I was even more foolish than Jupiter━a slave to my own impulses. This is exactly how it happened the first time. I was taken captive by the giants, and my imprisonment started a war. Now our enemies rise again. The gods can only defeat them with the help of the greatest living heroes. And considering our last blow of pride, this is going to be very improbable to achieve. And the one whom the giants serve ... she cannot be defeated at all━only kept asleep."

     "I don't understand."

     "You will soon."

     The cage began to constrict, the tendrils spiralling together. Hera's form shivered like a candle flame in the wind. Outside the cage, Jason could see shapes gathering at the edge of the pool━lumbering humanoids with hunched backs and bald heads. Unless Jason's eyes were tricking him, they had more than one set of arms. He heard wolves, too, but not the wolves he'd seen with Lupa. He could tell from their howls this was a different pack━hungrier, more aggressive, out for blood. 

     "Hurry, Jason," warned Hera. "My keepers approach, and you begin to wake. I will not be strong enough to appear to you again, even in dreams."

     "Wait," Jason had a lot of questions and felt his breathing grow rushed as he realised he won't be able to ask them all. "Boreas told us you'd made a dangerous gamble. What did he mean?"

      Hera's eyes looked wild and Jason wondered whether she really had done something crazy. "An exchange," she stated. "The only way to bring peace. The enemy counts on our division, and if we are divided we will be destroyed. You are my peace offering, Jason━a bridge to overcome millennia of hatred."

     "What? I don't━"

     "I cannot tell you more," said the goddess. "You have only lived this long because I have taken your memory. Find this place. Return to your starting point. Your sister will help."

     Jason went a little woozy. He had forgotten just about everything. His life, his home, everything he was sure made him who he was, all except two things. His name. And her. "Thalia?"

     The scene began to dissolve. "Goodbye, Jason. Beware Chicago. Your most dangerous mortal enemy waits there. If you are to die on this quest, it will be by her hand."

     Jason's mind was buzzing like he had been hit by that lightning bolt all over again. Thalia. Chicago. Mortal enemy. Death━Jason didn't know why he felt it. But there was this itching in the pit of his stomach, clawing up and aching in his back. The way Hera said it, it was as if that one day, Jason was going to die. And not by old age.

     He couldn't think about it. He couldn't let that hold him down. That fear would make him crawl up and freeze and fail everyone in this quest he had been thrown onto, expecting to lead. But his heart shuddered━he was scared. Gods, Jason Grace was terrified. 

     So, he swallowed back his bile and demanded the upmost question at this point in time, "Who?"

     But Hera's image faded away, and Jason woke. 

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     ━━His eyes snapped open, "Cyclops!"

     "Whoa, sleepyhead," Piper's voice, like honey and warm milk, settled him enough not to fall off. She sat behind him on the bronze dragon, holding his waist to keep him balanced. Warmth spread through her fingers from the biting cold, sending his skin on fire with blazing emotion. Slender fingers with chapped nails, and they were gorgeous just like the rest of her. 

     Stop it Grace, he grumbled to himself. You have worse things to worry about. 

     He focused on the others. Savreen sat in front of him, and as usual, in front of her was Leo, driving. They flew peacefully through the winter sky as if nothing had happened. 

     "D━Detroit," stammered Jason. "Didn't we crash-land? I thought━"

    "It's okay," said Leo. "We got away, but you got a nasty concussion. How you feeling?"

     Jason's head throbbed. He remembered the factory, then walking down the catwalk, then a creature looming over him━a creature with one eye━a massive fist, and then everything went black. 

     (Good job, Jason, he was bitter. You're supposed to be leading this quest and you spent an entire fight unconscious).

     "How did you━the Cyclopes━"

     "It was all Leo," said Savreen, beaming.

     The curly-haired boy went a little red. 

     "Yep!" agreed Piper. "Leo ripped them apart. He was amazing. He can summon fire━!"

     "It was nothing," said Leo quickly.

    Piper laughed. "Shut up, Valdez. I'm going to tell him. Get over it!"

     Sav chuckled, squeezing Leo's shoulders encouragingly. As she did, Piper began the story. Savreen piped in every now and then in her timid voice. And by the end, Jason was by far impressed. Taking out three Cyclopes with nothing but a tool kit? Not bad━in fact, it was crazy good. It didn't exactly scare him to hear how close he'd come to death, but it still made that bitterness rise up in him again. He had stepped right into an ambush and spent the entire fight knocked out while his friends fended for themselves. What kind of quest leader was he?

     When Piper told him about the other kid the Cyclopes claimed to have eaten, the one in the purple shirt who spoke Latin, Jason felt like his head was going to explode. A son of Mercury ... Jason felt like he should know that kid, but the name was missing from his mind. And yet he felt the ache in his chest━mourning over someone he didn't even remember. Hera said she took his memories to keep him alive, but it didn't change how much he wanted to strangle her. 

     "I'm not alone, then," he said. "There are others like me."

    "Jason," said Piper, "you were never alone. You've got us."

    "Yeah, I━I know ... but something Hera said. I was having a dream ..."

     He told them about what he had seen, and what the goddess had said inside her cage. Savreen's shoulders grew tense at his words. Her eyes flickered around as she thought, and without thinking, she held Leo's arm gently. 

     "An exchange ..." she murmured. "That's a two-way street. If she gave you to Camp Half-Blood, then there's also someone else out there with their memories gone ..." her words fell away and her shoulders slumped. There was a tense realisation that crossed the group of them. They didn't know for sure, but it seemed a pretty good estimated guess. Jason arrives, Percy Jackson goes missing. "Oh no," she sighed, suddenly looking very sad. "Claire ..."

     Jason pursed his lips. He looked out to the horizon, already feeling as though he understood this Percy Jackson. He was out there somewhere, going through what Jason was going through right now, or will be. But they couldn't sit and focus on him, or how Claire must feel, as Savreen was. He instead cleared his throat and went on.

    "Hera's gamble is me. Just by sending me to Camp Half-blood, I have a feeling she broke some kind of rule, something that could blow up in a big way━"

     "Or save us," said Piper hopefully. "That about the sleeping enemy━that sounds like the lady Leo told us about."

     Leo tensed up again. Savreen focused on him, her brows lifting up. Jason wondered whether they saw it. I mean, he could tell that he might be a bit oblivious ... but even he could tell there was something there. Even he knew the nicknames Leo gave her were tender and meant for someone more than a friend. "About that ... she kind of appeared to me back in Detroit, in a pool of Porta Potty sludge."

     Jason frowned. Did he hear that right? "Did you say ... Porta-Potty?"

    Leo told them his story about the big face in the factory yard. Jason caught Savreen looking down, as if ashamed. That caught him off guard, as well. Her hand went into her jacket pocket, and he felt a jab to his chest ... was she keeping something from them? "I Don't know if she's completely unkillable," said Leo, either not realising the fall of his best friend's gaze, or choosing to ignore it for the time being, "but she cannot be defeated by toilet seats. I can vouch for that. She wanted me to betray you guys, and I was like━ppft!" he made a incredulous face, "Right! Like I'm gonna listen to a face in the potty sludge, mujer de tierra."

      At their frowns, Leo sighed and rolled his eyes, like it was absolutely horrible they didn't understand Spanish. "Dirt woman," he translated. Then he muttered something else in Spanish, exasperated. Despite it all, Jason managed a swift, amused grin at him. 

     However, Savreen only looked worse. Inside her pocket, her fingers seemed to clench around whatever was inside. "She's trying to divide us..." she scowled at the horizon, one of the few times Jason has seen a glare on her face.

     "What's wrong?" he asked her. 

     Savreen locked his gaze, looking caught out━like she had tried to steal something from the candy jar. "Uh ... Nothing, just ... worried."

     She didn't say anything else and instead looked away, shamed. Jason watched her, very concerned. 

     There was a tense silence after that. Piper slipped her arms from Jason's waist. "Why are they toying with us?" she asked. "Who is this lady, and how is she connected to Enceladus?"

     "Enceladus?" Jason doesn't think he has heard that name before.

     "I mean..." Piper's voice quavered. "That's one of the giants. Just one of the names I could remember."

     Jason had a feeling that there was a lot more that was bothering her, but he didn't press. Yet it seemed that both Savreen and Piper were harbouring something━something that was making them both guilt-stricken. 

     Leo scratched his head, "Well, I dunno about Enchiladas━"

     "Enceladus."

     "Whatever. But Old Potty Face mentioned another name. Porpoise Fear, or something?"

     "Porphyrion?" asked Piper. "He was the giant king, I think."

      Jason envisioned that dark spite in the old reflecting pool━growing larger as Hera got weaker. "I'm going to take a wild guess," he said. "In the old stories, Porphyrion kidnapped Hera. That was the first shot in the war between the giants and the gods."

     "I think so," Piper agreed with a frown, searching her memory for the little information she held. Jason thought she was extraordinary for what she did know━it has been a serious help. He didn't know how he could have managed this quest without her ... without any of them, really. "But those myths are really garbled and conflicted. It's almost like nobody wanted that story to survive. I remember there was a war, and the giants were almost impossible to kill."

     "Heroes and gods had to work together," Jason remembered. "That's what Hera told me."

     "Kind of hard to do," grumbled Leo, "if the gods won't even talk to us."

     They flew West and Jason became lost in his thoughts━all of them bad. He wasn't sure how much time passed before the dragon dove through a break in the clouds and below them, glittering in the winter sun, was a city at the edge of a massive lake. A cresent of skyscrapers lined the shore. Behind them, stretching out to the western horizon, was a vast grid of snow covering neighbourhoods and roads.

    "Chicago," stated Jason.

      He thought about what Hera had said. His worst mortal enemy would be waiting here ... if he was going to die in this quest, it would be by her hand. He took a deep breath, wanting to push those thoughts down. 

     "One problem down," said Leo. "We got here alive. Now, how do we find the storm spirits?"

    Jason saw a flash of movement below them. At first, he thought it was a small plane, but it was too small, to dark and fast. The thing spiralled through the skyscrapers, weaving and changing shape━and just for a moment, it became the smokey figure of a horse.

     "How about we follow that one," suggested Jason, pointing towards it, "and see where it goes?"

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     a/n: haiiii!!!!!! hope you liked the chapter with our beloved cinnamon roll that is jason grace who can also completely fuk you up with his insane powers like dude deserves more credit.

     as always if the spanish is incorrect, let me know! i get the translations from a spanish dialect website, but i'm never too sure whether the grammar/wording is correct so thank you guys so much! 

     also i might've created a plothole making them recognise the connection between jason and percy so early on, but like, seriously, how did they not? it was literally screaming at them right in the faces ... anyway, see you all next chapter! 

    (i miss percy and claire--like way too much wtf). 

    (oh and jason and savreen are brotp obviously).