~ { Shadow and Beauty } ~

Hera Is Locked Up In A Cage But We Don't Really Care

   "Nice shot, though," Leo said.

   Thalia ignored him as usual. She hugged Jason and nodded to Piper and Kiara. "Just in time. My Hunters are holding a perimeter around the mansion, but we'll be overrun any minute."

   "By Earthborn?" Jason asked.

   "And wolves—Lycaon's minions." Thalia blew a fleck of ice off her nose. "Also storm spirits—"

   "But we gave them to Aeolus!" Piper protested.

   "Who tried to kill us," Leo reminded her. "Maybe he's helping Gaea again."

   "I don't know," Thalia said. "But the monsters keep re-forming almost as fast as we can kill them. We took the Wolf House with no problem: surprised the guards and sent them straight to Tartarus. But then this freak snow storm blew in. Wave after wave of monsters started attacking. Now we're surrounded. I don't know who or what is leading the assault, but I think they planned this. It was a trap to kill anyone who tried to rescue Hera."

   "Where is she?" Jason asked.

   "Inside," Thalia said. "We tried to free her, but we can't figure out how to break the cage. It's only a few minutes until the sun goes down. Hera thinks that's the moment when Porphyrion will be reborn. Plus, most monsters are stronger at night. If we don't free Hera soon—" She didn't need to finish the thought.

   Leo, Jason, Kiara and Piper followed her into the ruined mansion.

   Jason stepped over the threshold and immediately collapsed.

   "Hey!" Leo caught him. "None of that, man. What's wrong?"

   "This place..." Jason shook his head. "Sorry... It came rushing back to me."

   "So you have been here," Piper said.

   "We both have," Thalia said. Her expression was grim, like she was reliving someone's death. "This is where my mom took us when Jason was a child. She left him here, told me he was dead. He just disappeared."

   Jason glanced at Kiara. He looked paler than usual, which seemed to have become the new usual for her during this quest. "You remember something too?"

   Kiara nodded and looked at him. "Lupa, right?"

   Jason nodded.

   "She gave me to the wolves," Jason murmured. "At Hera's insistence. She gave me to Lupa."

   "That part I didn't know." Thalia frowned. "Who is Lupa?"

   An explosion shook the building. Just outside, a blue mushroom cloud billowed up, raining snowflakes and ice like a nuclear blast made of cold instead of heat.

   "Maybe this isn't the time for questions," Leo suggested. "Show us the goddess."

   Once inside, Jason seemed to get his bearings. The house was built in a giant U, and Jason led them between the two wings to an outside courtyard with an empty reflecting pool. At the bottom of the pool, just as Jason had described from his dream, two spires of rock and root tendrils had cracked through the foundation.

   One of the spires was much bigger—a solid dark mass about twenty feet high, and to Leo it looked like a stone body bag. Underneath the mass of fused tendrils he could make out the shape of a head, wide shoulders, a massive chest and arms, like the creature was stuck waist deep in the earth. No, not stuck—rising.

   On the opposite end of the pool, the other spire was smaller and more loosely woven. Each tendril was as thick as a telephone pole, with so little space between them that Jason doubted he could've gotten his arm through. Still, he could see inside. And in the center of the cage stood Hera.