The Winds Of Heaven (Annabeth Chase x Male Reader)

11. Chicago

Run when you have to, fight when you must, rest when you can—that's a good summary of a half-blood's life. Which is why Y/N decided to have a nap as Festus the bronze dragon took off toward Chicago.

Y/N dreamed he stood 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.

"Mother," Y/N said.

"Welcome to my prison, Y/N," Hera said. "You seem to be doing fine—for now."

"For now?" he asked.

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

"Why can't you just escape?" he asked.

She 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. Y/N figured 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?" Y/N asked. "How were you caught?"

The goddess sighed. "I could not stay idle. Zeus 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. And I would not submit at such a decisive moment for you. I could not sit by while my son was 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," Y/N guessed.

Hera nodded. "Only too late did I realize how quickly the earth was stirring. I was even more foolish than Zeus—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 the one whom the giants serve . . . she cannot be defeated at all—only kept asleep."

"I don't understand."

"Only because you blind yourself to the possibility," Hera said. "Soon you will see through."