THE HEALER| Heroes of Olympus

7.

Jasper lunged for me and barely caught my arm as I slipped over.

The pit shook. Jasper was the only thing keeping me from falling. He was barely holding on to a ledge the size of a bookshelf.

The force of the Tartarus tugged at me like dark gravity. I didn't have the strength to fight. I knew I was too far down to be saved.

"Jasper, let me go," I croaked. "You can't pull me up."

His face was white with effort. I could see in his eyes that he knew it was hopeless. 

"Never," he said. "If you go then I'm going with you."  

I thought of what Annabeth had described. A one-way trip. A very hard fall.

Jasper tightened his grip on my wrist. His face was gaunt, scraped and bloody, his hair dusted with debris, but when he locked eyes with me, I thought he had never looked more handsome. Even with tired eyes and in my too small of a hoodie, he looked as beautiful as a Roman god.

"We're staying together," he promised. "You're not getting away from me." 

He cried out as he used all his strength only a son of the war god could've had to lift me up and sling me over his back. He panted heavily as I wrapped my legs around his waist and my arms loosely around his neck. He used both hands to hold the small ledge to keep us from falling into the depth of Tartarus. 

"Your dagger." He said, still breathing heavily. My silver ring had reappeared on my hand. I summoned the silver dagger and handed it to him. He took the dagger and stuck it into the wall of the pit. 

I looked up. I could tell it was at least fifteen feet till the top. Did he really plan to climb all the way back up? 

Jasper summoned his own dagger from his rings. I noticed he was missing a lot of them. Particularly his skull ring that transformed into his spear. He drove both daggers simultaneously into the wall of the pit over and over again as he struggled to climb the wall. 

I couldn't imagine the strain this was on him. He was carrying both of us up a wall while fighting the force of Tartarus with only his own strength to use. 

"Does this help?" I pressed one of the hands softly against his bicep and my hand glowed a soft green. I was pouring my own strength into him while simultaneously repairing any damaged tissue or tired muscle. 

He nodded. He was focusing all his energy on keeping us climbing that he couldn't waste it on talking. We began to climb faster and gain more ground. 

"Hemera, she's the primordial goddess of the day, right?" I said. He nodded again. 

"The Romans called her Dies." He said in a strained voice. "Tell me what you know about her." 

I thought for a moment. "She was a daughter of Erebos god of darkness and Nyx goddess of night and the sister and wife of Aether the god of Heavenly Light. In the stories every evening Hemera's mother Nyx would draw her dark veil across the sky, obscuring the shining blue of the heavenly Aether, and bringing night to earth. And each morning Hemera dispersed her mother's mists, bathing the earth again in the light of the Aether." 

I remembered reading about her in a book once. 

"She was normally close with Hera and Eos the goddess of the Dawn. She was largely irrelevant in mythology, with her role being entirely subsumed by the goddess Eos." I said. "I'm guessing that's one of the reasons she's mad." 

Jasper nodded. "Probably." He grunted as he continued climbing. 

"She was said to live in her Palace of the Sun and Sky during the day but Tartarus at night." I looked down below at the pit. We were getting closer to the top. Only a few more feet. "I'm guessing this pit opened because she'll be climbing out of it to bring Day to earth in a few hours."