Daughter of Pluto | Wattys2017

XVIII

"If I'm dead," Jason 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,Aimee yelling at him to wake up, 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 just as Aimee appeared next to him.

"Welcome to my prison," said the goddess. "You will not die today, Jason. Your friends will see you through—for now."

Jason looked at Aimee who nodded.

"For now?" he asked.

Hera gestured at the tendrils of her cage,Aimee stood setting her hand on one of the tendrils. "There are worse trials to come. The very earth stirs against us."

"You're a goddess," Aimee 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. 

Aimee suspected if they were actually there in the flesh, they 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 two can find me, and I grow weaker by the day."

"Then why did you come here?" Aimee asked sitting back down with an eyebrow raised. "How were you caught?"

The goddess sighed. "I could not stay idle. Your uncle 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. As Hera, I might have been content to follow my lord's wishes. But I am also Juno."

 Her image flickered, and Aimee saw armor under her simple black robes, a goatskin cloak—the symbol of a Roman warrior—across her bronze mantle. 

"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."