kaleidoscope gold ● jason grace

every

Nine days.

As he fell, Jason thought about the three weeks they had spent learning about Tartarus when he was eight. They never spoke much about Greek myths and legends, but Jason had always had an affinity for knowledge. He remembered Daria telling him about the Greek poet, Hesiod, who had speculated that it took nine days to fall from earth to Tartarus.

He hoped Hesiod was wrong, though Jason had lost track of how long they had been falling. An hour? A day? Eternity? He held Daria a little closer as the wind whistled in his ears. Bitterly, he wondered if they would even survive the impact.

This had to be the icing on the cake to Daria and Jason's unfair life. Even though they had found a home in New Rome, they had started out orphans, training with wolves while most children would be starting pre-school. For their entire lives up to this moment, they hadn't had a break. Jason knew that if he didn't have Daria at his side, he would have gone insane a long time ago.

Still, he couldn't help but curse the gods, his father, the fates. Whoever had orchestrated this must have known that Daria would follow, must have known that she was number one on every immortal's hit list. He wished, pressing his lips to Daria's forehead, sometimes he wished he had told Daria not to have so much faith in him.

It wasn't that Jason was a bad person (even then, no demigod was horrible enough to deserve this Hell) but he didn't deserve Daria; he never had. Jason didn't like to be self-deprecating, and he wasn't, most people that knew him would describe him as stubborn with a shade of arrogance, but Daria had saved his life time and time again, and now she had gone and stupidly joined him on this one-way trip to the afterlife.

He was crazy about this girl, to the point where it ached; over the last few days, he hadn't been able to say it enough. But if they died soon, in the next few moments, he wanted her to know. "I love you," he whispered close to her ear so that his words drowned out all her fears. "So much."

Daria's eyes were hazy, dull with a coat of dust and the red light that seemed to surround them, and Jason's heart thudded in his chest as they met his. She smiled back fearlessly, integritous courage that he had never possessed, and when he looked again green, the color of jade, was softening as it gazed at him.

"I love you more," she said back. "Now, can you soften our impact or not, Air Head?"

The chute they'd been falling down suddenly transformed into a vast cavern. Maybe half a mile below them, Jason could see the bottom. The whistling in his ear turned into something like a roar, and he knew enough about the physics of sound to realize that if he was going to act he needed to do it fast.

Gaea's pull was powerful enough so that he couldn't stop their fall entirely, he could feel that. The air around him was waiting for him to do something, but it was also dense, sluggish. He figured, at best they would flatten like pieces of toast instead of tortillas.

Then he made out the glittering black liquid below them. He was already slowing their fall as much as he could and had just enough time to think, river!, before he was submerged.

The first thing he noticed when he came to his senses was how frighteningly cold it was. Freezing water shocked the air right out of his lungs. The second thing was that he had lost his grip on Daria, making that his first priority.

The third...were the voices.

What's the point of struggling? they told him.. You're dead anyway. You'll never leave this place.

Then Daria grabbed his hand. He couldn't see her, but suddenly, he didn't want to die. Together, they kicked upwards and broke the surface.

Jason searched back and forth, though he couldn't make out his surroundings, this was a river. And rivers had shores.