Heroes of Olympus Series. Annabeth Chase X Male Reader Story

Visiting the Sewer Store

Jason's POV

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. "My attendant's champion will help you from here on. I had hoped for the other, but as they say, beggars can't be choosers."

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.

"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 the other gods. Only you can find me, and I grow weaker by the day." "Then why did you come here?" Jason asked. "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 since we 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," she said.

"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. But that was not the only catalyst."

"I fear the threat of stronger enemies falling upon him, what the curse of Olympus brought upon us, has caused him to act rashly, as a show of strength in trying times." "Curse of Olympus. What curse?" Jason asked.

She sighed, "You know of whom I speak my hero. Though you do not remember, and the conflict did not involve you. You know what came to pass the night the stars fell dark upon the world. You know war was declared."

Jason was overcome with a feeling, no, a memory, from years ago, of looking up at the night sky, all the voices around him dying in an instant, no merriment, no joy, only darkness, as they all watched in fear, as the sky turned black, and the stars burned out.