The Winds Of Heaven (Annabeth Chase x Male Reader)

7. Talk With Jason

Y/N dreamed. For a change, he thought ironically.

He stood in a clearing in the middle of a redwood forest. In front of him rose the ruins of a stone mansion. Low gray clouds blended with the ground fog, and cold rain hung in the air. Slowly he walked toward the ruins.

The ground squelched under his shoes as he walked. Stone spires of chimneys, no longer attached to anything, rose up like totem poles. The house must've been enormous once, multi-storied with massive log walls and a soaring gabled roof; now nothing remained but its stone skeleton. Y/N passed under a crumbling doorway and found himself in a kind of courtyard.

Before him was a drained reflecting pool, long and rectangular. He couldn't tell how deep it was, because the bottom was filled with mist. A dirt path led all the way around, and the house's uneven walls rose on either side. Wolf-looking shapes seemed to pace under the archways of rough red volcanic stone.

A rumbling noise echoed, and the mist in the pool dissolved.

At first Y/N wasn't sure what he was seeing. At opposite ends of the pool, two dark spires had erupted from the cement floor like the drill bits of some massive tunneling machines boring through the surface. He couldn't tell if the spires were made of rock or petrified vines, but they were formed of thick tendrils that came together in a point at the top. Each spire was about five feet tall, but they weren't identical. The one closest to him was darker and seemed like a solid mass, its tendrils fused together. As he watched, it pushed a little farther out of the earth and expanded a little wider.

On the other end of the pool, the second spire's tendrils were more open, like the bars of a cage. Inside, Y/N could vaguely see a misty figure struggling, shifting within its confines.

"Mother!" Y/N whispered. He rushed to the cage and tried to move the tendrils, but to no avail.

Inside, Hera stopped straining. She turned and stared at him straight in the eye. She looked different than usual. Not that her physical appearance mattered—it always changed, with her looking like a young woman with brown hair, full lips and a straight nose one day, and an older woman with blond hair and green, almond-shaped eyes the other. But she looked exhausted. Y/N had never imagined his mother could look even just tired.

She said, "The enemy has chosen this place to awaken her most powerful son, the giant king. The house is burned. It is an abomination. You must stop her."

"Her?" He was confused. "Who are you talking about?"

"Use your senses. If I fall, our enemy wakes. And that will be the end for all of us. Find this place. Stop this before it is too late."

The dark spire grew slowly larger, like the bulb of some horrible flower. Y/N sensed that if it ever opened, it would release something he did not want to meet.

"Where are you?" he asked urgently. "Tell me!"

She didn't answer his question. All she said was: "Do not fail me, Y/N."

When he woke up, Y/N had only one thought in mind: No time to lose. He jumped out of bed, put some clothes on, took his quest stuff, some nectar and ambrosia, and got out of his cabin.

He went directly to Zeus's cabin and inside.

The domed ceiling was decorated with a blue-and-white mosaic like a cloudy sky. The cloud tiles shifted across the ceiling, changing from white to black. Thunder rumbled through the room, and gold tiles flashed like veins of lightning.

Except for the cot in the middle of the room, the cabin had no regular furniture—no chairs, tables, or dressers. As far as Y/N could tell, it didn't even have a bathroom. The walls were carved with alcoves, each holding a bronze brazier or a golden eagle statue on a marble pedestal. In the center of the room, a twenty-foot-tall, full-color statue of Zeus in classic Greek robes stood with a shield at his side and a lightning bolt raised, ready to smite somebody—likely Y/N.