Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
🍪 — 010. we all hate that one goddess.
JASON DREAMED HE WAS WRAPPED in chains, hanging upside down like a hunk of meat.
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, "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 it all seemed to be happening on another plane of existence ─ getting farther and farther 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 burned-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 said.
"Welcome to my prison," said the goddess. "You will not die today, Jason. Your friends will see you through ─ for now."
"For now?" he asked.
Hera gestured at the tendrils of her cage. "There are worse trials to come. The very earth stirs against us."
"You're a goddess," Jason said. "Why can't you just escape?"
Hera smiled sadly. Her form began to glow, until her brilliance filled the cage with painful light. The air hummed with power, molecules splitting apart like a nuclear explosion. Jason suspected if he were actually there in the flesh, he would've been vaporized. The cage should've been blasted to rubble. The ground should've split and the ruined house should've been leveled. But when the glow died, the cage hadn't budged. Nothing outside the bars had changed. Only Hera looked different ─ a little more stooped and tired.
