𝙄𝙉𝙁𝙇𝘼𝙈𝙀𝘿; heroes of olympus

volcano parade

JASPER ELIANO
JASPER DID ENJOY DESCRIBING HIMSELF AS "HOT." Now was not one of those times.

This was primarily because he was currently falling straight into a volcano. His first view of southern Italy was from five thousand feet in the air. To the west, along the crescent of the Gulf of Naples, the lights of sleeping cities glittered in the predawn gloom. A thousand feet below him, a half-mile-wide caldera yawned at the top of a mountain, white steam pluming from the center.

Listen. Jasper liked Italy. Really, he did. Italian food rocked. He was part Italian himself, thanks to his lovely father who was dead.

He did not, however, like burning to a crisp. He wanted to date some girls before he died. Maybe take another bath in New Rome. Man, he liked New Rome baths.

"Nico!" Reyna yelled, gripping Jasper's shirt tightly. He clung onto her arm.

He was also a little more explicit than his friend. "Fuck!"

"Whaaaaa!" Nico flailed, slipping out of Reyna's grip, and Jasper had to let go of the girl to grab onto the son of Hades by the back of his shirt. They were like one little parade. Unfortunately for Jasper, they were going to be the first parade that dove headfirst into a volcano, at least as far as he had ever seen.

They plummeted toward the steaming void as their largest piece of luggage―the forty-foot-tall Athena Parthenos―trailed after them, leashed to a harness on Nico's back like a very ineffective parachute.

"That's Vesuvius below us!" Reyna shouted over the wind. "Nico, teleport us out of here!"

His eyes were wild and unfocused. His dark feathery hair whipped around his face like a raven shot out of the sky. "I―I can't! No strength!"

Strength.

Jasper locked eyes with Reyna. Her hair was in a braid, and it currently pointed straight up, like a comet attached to her head. Her eyes were dark and intense.

Jasper knew she wasn't afraid to die. He wasn't either. But they were Romans, and they both had a sense of duty: this quest would make or break everything. Jasper didn't know everyone on the Argo II enough to actually care about most of them―Jason and he had been tentative friends, more like allies, before he had disappeared. Percy Jackson was funny and vicious, Frank was a sweetheart, and Hazel deserved better than her past. And Erith deserved to live through all of this hell.

"Reyna, do it!" Jasper shouted over the wind. He thought she nodded, but he couldn't really tell.

"Nico, shadow-travel," she ordered. "I'll lend you my strength."

He stared at her blankly. "How―"

"Trust her," Jasper said, closing his eyes as the heat of the volcano became too much for a person to bare. 

He heard Nico gasp. His eyes opened. Just before they hit the volcano's steam plume, they slipped into the shadows.

The air turned frigid. The sound of the wind was replaced by a cacophony of voices whispering in a thousand languages. Jasper's insides felt like cold syrup and crushed ice.

As much as Jasper liked Erith's sun, he hated Nico's darkness. But Jasper was no fool. He knew, maybe better than anyone, that power didn't equal person.