Hera has lived a long, long, long time.
She can recall the so-called "Ice Age" quite clearly, and while it might have been a bit more chilly than she would have preferred, it was not that cold. Knowing what she knows now, Poseidon could have easily done worse. It was really quite an enjoyable time, full of experimentation and growth. Hera created her first animal then, though her sloths had taken some time for her to get just right.
Empires rose and fell. Pantheons born and eradicated. Billions lived and died.
Being present for these moments is useless without a memory sufficient enough to contextualize them. If gods have a limit for the amount of years they can hold in their brains, then it has not yet been reached. Hera remembers everything. What mortals call eidetic, Hera calls normal. It's why she can recount the battles from the Titan war to Percy as easily as she could have the day they occurred.
Unfortunately, mortals did not have such infallible recollection. Even more unfortunate, they all died before life really got interesting, around five-hundred years or so. These deficiencies led to many misconceptions in mortal history, even an exhaustive amount that fell under Hera's own purview.
So, let her finally set the record straight on the legendary and elusive Apples of Immortality, and after that, Ladon.
First and foremost, the tree was no gift from Gaea, and it boggles Hera's mind how the mortals attempt to paint it as such. How could anyone believe that a surefire and irreversible ascension to immortality, able to be used by anyone and everyone, contained in a small, inoffensive and mundane fruit would ever be a good thing?
Were mortals even less capable of critical thinking than she thought? Had they any idea how many apples had been stolen before she'd obtained Ladon? How many souls had to be sentenced to eternity in Tartarus for their transgressions?
This offering was a curse, and more than that, a damn good one. A curse that was Hera's and Hera's alone to bear.
"It wasn't my gift." Zeus had said after it had arisen from the ground, sixty feet-tall and wider than a California Redwood. "What are you going to do about it?"
That was, rather prophetically in hindsight, how Hera's marriage to Zeus began. With a chain and a responsibility that she had never asked for.
It didn't matter where she put it, in the middle of the Arabian Desert, Death Valley, the Amazon or the Skeleton Coast, someone always found it. And whoever did so made themselves noticed.
Mortals are simply not, for lack of a better term, built for immortality. Most of the time, it turns their brains to mush after a couple of days. It's the little things that do them in, in the end. It's having to suddenly rationale that you don't have to eat, sleep or do anything to survive anymore, or the lack of being able to rationale. Humans, whether a megaannum or a millenia ago, are hard-wired to constantly strive for survival. The brain does not take it very well when you suddenly tell it to stop doing its main function.
The small number of outliers are mildly amazing specimens, Hera can admit. They are also the hardest to deal with. It can be argued that by merely being able to string a sentence together after consuming an Apple, the newly christened immortal has already earned their freedom. Hera would not say it is a very good argument, but an argument nonetheless.
But demigods? Well, demigods are already halfway to immortality. They were the main reason she had needed something like Ladon. It wasn't enough to place the tree at the Pillar of the West, out of mortal reach, because the demigods could surely find their way there. And worst of all, not only did they retain their sanity, their abilities became amplified.
The first had been a son of Hermes who had attempted to turn back time by running around the earth so fast it rotated backwards. Of course it didn't work, but it did cause numerous global climate catastrophes.
It became an endless cycle of events like that. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and while it wasn't quite as dramatic as that, it was more than bad enough.
And then she had found Ladon, only days after hatching on the coast of Rhodes. It was not clear to her then what a boon he would be to her, but it did not matter because he was adorable. Each head was a tiny bundle of preciousness that just begged Hera to take him home with her.
Zeus did not care for him. It seems that only he was allowed to have pets. And more than that, he called Ladon ugly.
It was then that Hera decided she was keeping him.
There were some growing pains in the beginning, citizens eaten and whatnot, but no one could argue with the results. Only Herakles had ever gotten past him and he had cheated. It was hardly Ladon's fault, the dragon had almost managed to tear the demigod in two before he had one of his rare strokes of cleverness that ruined everything for Hera.
Like father, like son, she supposes.
Ladon had still taken that event particularly hard, and she feared he would never get past it. She had told him repeatedly that it wasn't his fault, but he remained stubborn, just like his mother. She wishes that he had taken on some of her other qualities rather than that particular one.
Now, she would attempt to ask of him something that she had never even dreamed she would.
She will ask him not only to let Percy pass, but to actually give him an Apple.
She can only hope to convince him before he throws a tantrum.
Mount Othrys is dark and tainted, ruins of an empire eternally shattered and preserved. She's not quite sure why they keep it like this instead of wiping it off the face of the Earth, no doubt to "remember to be better" or some tripe like that.
There always remained an inane, inert energy to this place. It wasn't enough to truly notice, but it was unsettling and suffocating, its hellish memories permeating throughout every inch of your being.
It is no longer like that. Now, it is hungry and angry and relentless, because this place is no longer dead. It is undeniably alive, breathing destruction and bad omens, promising its rulers return.
It is no empty threat, because she can feel Artemis' energy pinned down under the sky, where Atlas should be. She hopes the girl's senses are too dulled to notice her own aura, or this plan will fall to pieces before it even begins.
Willing away her nerves, Hera steadies herself and clears her throat, an ancient magic bubbling inside her.
"Ελα."
He sounds like a thousand freight-trains driving downhill on tracks far too small for them. He sounds like a heaviness that you have never thought could exist, like the single most massive thing that you could possibly conceptualize. He looks like nightmares unrealized, one-hundred heads of pure, agonizing and petrifying dread. He looks like the Leviathan that was promised, a world-ender that no one could ever hope to escape from.
But he only appears as such, and only to those who are blinded. Truthfully, she cannot see anything but the hatchling he was five-thousand years ago, and while his fangs have sharpened and his scales have hardened, his yellow eyes have always remained full of devotion to her.
"Με τιμάς με την παρουσία σου, μάνα." He says, twenty-five odd heads bowing down to meet her. His is the voice of dragons, his pitch lower than low and his cadence like great boulders clashing against each other. Each head speaks in unison, forming a choir of unearthly noise.
Hera raises an eyebrow. "Have I taught you English for nothing, my dear?"
Laron snorts in indignation, five feet of black flame trailing from each of his nostrils. "You honor me with your presence, mother."
"I wish that were true." She replies dolefully. "I fear I am about to ask you to cast aside your honor for a moment."
Ladon shifts uncomfortably, tremors rising uncontrollably. "I do not understand."
"A party of demigods will arrive here soon." Hera says. "They seek the goddess that Atlas has imprisoned."
"You wish for me to let them pass?" And he actually sounds almost amenable to that, such is his love for her. She wishes she did not have to betray his loyalty.
"Only one, the others are of no consequence. And then I must ask even more of you." She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. "I ask that you make sure an Apple falls into his possession."
"Have I angered you, mother?" Ladon says, unnaturally calm. "Have I earned your wrath?"
"Darling, it has nothing to do with you." She tries to placate him, though she's unsure how far words will get her. "I would not ask if it was not of the utmost importance."
"You kill me with this, mother." Ladon murmurs, but even that is akin to low decibel sirens blaring. "You know I could never refuse you, and you kill me anyway."
"Ladon, I-"
"Three thousand, five-hundred and forty-eight years, one-hundred and nine days and twenty-two hours." Ladon interrupts.
Hera simply sighs and remains silent. Ladon's claws have extended and dug five foot-deep trenches into the earth, and it's all she needs to know that he's in one of those moods again.
Too much like his damn mother.
"Three thousand, five-hundred and forty-eight years, one-hundred and nine days and twenty-two hours have passed since an Apple has been relinquished in my presence. I begged for my death then, and you denied me." Ladon snarls. "And now you ask me to simply give one away."
"I ask you to help me, my love." Hera pleads. "This demigod, he is… special to me, and insistently decides on throwing his life away at every opportunity."
"Then let him die." Ladon barks. "And let me keep my pride."
"I only wish I could." And gods above, she does. She wishes more than anything that this task did not fall to herself. She wishes that she had not let herself get this close this fast, and she wishes that this ant with piercing green eyes did not pull her strings so magnificently. "Just the one, Ladon. Just him." She tries to compromise. "Kill the others. Bathe in their blood, use their bones as ornaments, do whatever you must, but his survival must be assured." Hera lets out a deep breath. "Even if it must be for eternity."
"Why?" Ladon literally snarls. "What is so special about this hero? What about him demands such nonsensical protection?"
"I promise to return to you once I know the answer to that." Hera says, rather pathetically she thinks.
She used to know herself. She used to be somebody. And even if that somebody was hated, feared and reviled, it was still her. Now, she's entirely transient and unstable, and every word that leaves her mouth both shocks and terrifies her. Every action is unplanned and chaotic, and worst of all, it makes her feel good. Playing this new role, this copy that looks and sounds like her but does things that she would never do, makes her feel more alive then she has in millennia.
"I would see this demigod for myself." Ladon says finally. "If I find something of worth in him, I will do what you ask. If he is found wanting…" Her dragon does have a flair for the dramatic. She wonders who he could have possibly picked that up from. "Then he will share the same fate as his companions."
"I suppose that's all I can ask of you, my dear." Hera murmurs in appreciation.
"I'm sure you will manage to ask more. And then I will further besmirch myself in your name. " Ladon says. "Perhaps you will have the decency to kill me after I do."
"We've talked about this errant nihilism, darling." Hera rolls her eyes. Honestly, teenagers. "Now, let mommy give you a kiss and then I'll be off."
Ladon bends one head down, and Hera presses her lips to the scales between his eyes.
And then she is gone, vanishing as if she was never there. She can only hope that Ladon sees the same thing in Percy Jackson as she does.
If only she could figure out what that was.
The ceiling is white and the floor is black, and the room is simultaneously endless and suffocatingly cramped. It's hot and cold and humid and dry and she can't help but feel positively exuberant and monumentally miserable.
This is a place she has never been before, and she can't even say that for certain, because if you have no body, are you really present?
Hera doesn't remember how she came to be here, nor can she make sense of all the clashing and brawling features of this room. It feels like a place that should not exist, a place that cannot exist, as if every oxymoron had taken shape and form and trapped her inside its dark corridor.
"What is so different about you?" Something murmurs, like a gust of wind blowing just past her ear. And it is something as no man, woman or god could ever sound the way this voice does. Its words are like cancer and its tone like morphine. Soothing and thrashing, small and powerful speaking in a cadence that sounds not of this world, nay, this universe.
"Who are you? What have you done to me?" Hera demands, and she finds that she can look and move around freely, despite having no legs to stand and no eyes to see through. Whites and blacks cover the formless walls, and the murky surface she glides upon seems to cling to her, desperately trying to reach out.
Nothing. There is nothing here. She is not even here. What-
Ah.
A speck, a single speck of purple that is twelve feet above her and forty-eight degrees from her line of sight. She knows, she just knows, that this thing is the master of this place, that it is the reason she is here.
"I didn't change anything with you," It murmurs again, and she can see the Speck flex and shift with every syllable, as if it somehow contained lips. "And still, look how special you are."
"You." She thinks to point, but she has no fingers to do so with. "Why have you brought me here?"
"Why else?" The Speck says. "To study. To analyze. To monitor. To understand."
Hera does not like those words or how they make her feel as nothing but a lab rat, to be poked and prodded and experimented on. "What would you understand about me?" She asks, hoping that cooperating would have her leave this hellish paradise all the sooner.
"How you have become what you have." It says. "How I could deem your species a failure, and yet it could produce perfection such as yourself."
"I- I do not understand." She stutters, feeling so far out of her depth she feels as if she'll be totally consumed. "What are you?"
But she knows already. Gods, she knows what this thing is and she only asks in the stupid hope that she might be wrong. She prays to things she doesn't believe in. She prays to beings that collapsed in on themselves a million years ago. She prays to anything and anyone that she is wrong.
The Speck is silent for a moment, and she fears as though she might have displeased it before it speaks again. "I am nothing and I am everything. I am entropy and negentropy. I am the builder and the pillager." It says, its words like cancer and its tone like morphine. "But, to you? To you, I am nothing but an observer."
"Then observe me no longer." She begs, oh, how she begs. "Let me go, please. Please, let me go."
"Your siblings are not like you, nor are any that can trace their relation to you." The Speck says, no longer listening to her, and she feels her heart begin to burst. "It's not in the blood, not in your parents. Where is it? Where is the piece of your rebellion born from?"
"Please." She cries again. "Please."
"Where is the impetus?" It says unheeded. "Where is your rubicon? Did I place it in you or- No, no that can't be it."
"Please!"
"Surely the rest of your species would have followed your lead if it was my doing. No, this is you. You changed something, and now you've changed everything." The Speck rambles. "Plans must be changed, entire lifetimes edited. You must be studied, I must know."
"PLEASE!"
"You will continue on, of course." It says. "Nothing can bring you back from what you are now. It's a part of you, it lives and breathes and-" The Speck falls uncharacteristically silent.
"CHAOS!" She dares call this thing by its name, hoping beyond hope it might acknowledge her. "Free me from this place!"
"Loves." It whispers, frighteningly excited. "Of course."
"Please." She openly sobs now, her mind unraveling from standing in this living nightmare. "Please, let me go."
"Yes, yes." The Speck murmurs. "I need to see more. I need to see how far you'll go. But I'm afraid I can't let you remember any of this."
"No!" She screams hysterically as the speck crawls through the air toward her, ripping and rending the oxygen atoms in its path. She cannot move now, control slowly bled out of her. "I don't like this! Please, just let me go, I swear I won't tell anyone! I don't like this! I don't like this!"
"No." The speck hovers right above her eyes. "You like pain and burning light and wanting things you cannot have. I find that beautiful, I find you beautiful. But nothing can interfere with the experiment, so this memory must go."
"NO!"
"Harken, Hera Parthénos, Hera Nymphē, Hera Chēra, Hera Limanìa." He invokes names she has not heard in five-thousand years as his sickness touches her. "Show me just how far you'll stray from your path. Show me just how much you'll change."
"Now, WAKE UP!"
She awakens screaming, tears stuck to her cheeks and tornados slamming across her chambers. Hera wonders which nightmare it was this time, which specter of her past had invaded and violated her peace.
It matters not, because something feels wrong. More than usual. Something's out of place, something's gone dark in her mind, something-
A rustle in the back of her mind breaks her from her thoughts, the sound of a bell chiming, summoning her.
Ah.
The winter solstice had arrived.
haha, u guys thought that chaos line from a couple of chapters ago was just a throwaway.
also, "I like pain and burning light and wanting things I can't have." is from Disco Elysium. go play it now.