CATHARSIS, jason grace¹

𝟬𝟭𝟴. what are you, if not a monster?

JASON WANTED TO ERASE AERA from his dreams. While his friends were forced to fend for themselves against the Cyclops, he had been transported back into into yet another memory after he got knocked out. This time, he was on a foggy mountaintop. The surrounding hills were topped with snowcaps. The snow on the ground came up to his ankles. Several feet away, there was a site of black granite block and marble as big as houses. Broken columns. Statues of bronze that looked as though they'd been half melted. He was standing right outside the toppled throne of Kronos.

Jason wasn't alone. There were others with him—five other kids around his age all dressed in the same purple t-shirt, winter jackets, and scabbards attached to their belts for their swords. These were his friends, other demigods, his comrades. Even in his dream, their faces were fuzzy like a swipe of sweat on a camera lens. Their backs were to him, whispering about the prisoner they had tied to the tree.

"She's been like that since Jason snuck up on her..."

"Took four of us to hold her down..."

"If Poppy can't get her to crack, who will?"

"Think she has a boyfriend?"

"Dude—"

"What? Wanted criminals have love lives, too."

"Alright!" the girl at the front of the group barked. "Pipe down, guys!"

She—Poppy—was about 17, with tanned skin and muscular biceps. She was facing the other way, so Jason couldn't get a good look at her face, but her voice was deep and gruff like a pitbull's. She looked like she was half a foot shorter than Jason, but the way she stood at the head of the group proved she was powerful and respected. It was also hard to miss the massive garden hoe strapped to her back. One swing from that thing and it was over.

"What's your problem?" Poppy was interrogating their prisoner. "You stand accused of murder, abduction, conspiracy, destruction of property, and thievery. You're also pissing me off. Staying silent will only hurt you, so think carefully and answer me clearly. What are you doing on Mount Othrys?"

Silence.

Jason drew closer.

"—she won't say anything—" the others were murmuring.

"—we should just fall back and go home for now—"

"—man, I'm hungry—"

"—well, I'm not setting foot in the principalis until I have her number—"

"—bro, you don't even have a phone—"

Jason shuffled past them toward the front.

His vision tunneled. Aera's face was the one he could see the clearest. Only he didn't even know her name back then. This was the first time they had ever met.

What gripped Jason's attention first wasn't that she was sitting in the freezing snow or that her beauty would send all the lonely guys in the Fifth Cohort on a lovesick chase, what captured his conscious was the saltwater pearl laced in her black hair. A small white drop resting in the bed of a black flower—a small white drop that would determine his fate. Or more so an indication that its owner would.

"This new generation of demigods doesn't feel Roman enough," Vitellius, one of the guardians of the Fifth Cohort, had complained to Jason the day he became praetor. "Take pain and suffering as a lesson. Honor ancient tradition. And most importantly, eliminate all graecus, our enemies. Remind them of their roots, won't you, boy?"

Vitellius was one of the oldest Lares at camp. He was an old man with a medicine-ball belly and a toga so long he always tripped over it. When he got mad, his purple aura would flicker. The others usually laughed at his eccentric ideals, but Jason was used to him. He'd been around when Jason first came to camp. If you ignored the long history lectures and random pop quizzes about Julius Caesar, he actually gave pretty solid advice from time to time.