Chapter Text
Alright, since I’m doing this I might as well do it properly. My name is Jason Grace and I’m a half-blood. If you’re reading this you definitely already know what that means, so I’ll skip the explanation.
I’m not the kind of guy to waste time, so I’ll get to the point: I’m dead.
You heard that right, at the end of this story I end up dead while on a quest with Lester Papadopoulos, more commonly known as Apollo. If you’re the kind of person to like stories with happy endings, then I’m afraid this isn’t the story for you, although if you don’t mind a bad ending then stick around, cause things get wild.
Now, this whole journal thing isn’t exactly my idea. When I died I ended up in Elysium, the eternal paradise given to the heroes of the gods. However, it’s a little hard to go from fighting for your life every day to being told, “Here, have a nice cold glass of nectar and put your feet up, welcome to the afterlife,” so it was just ever so slightly a rough transition. Eventually the staff here managed to calm me down enough to get me processed through the system (I should’ve guessed that dying would be like going through TSA) and get me a therapist with a specialty in transitioning souls into the afterlife.
Anyway, my therapist–his name is Blake by the way, really nice guy–told me to write a journal about my life in order to help me process, and that journal just so happens to be this one.
Now that most of the exposition is out of the way, I can get started. Where, you might ask? Well, where else than at the beginning, when I woke up in the wolf house with Lupa at two years old.
Some context here. I’m the product of a washed up actress I can’t even remember and Jupiter, the Roman god of lightning and king of the heavens. Sounds great right, being the son of a king? Wrong, it’s made my life a living hell. See, I’m not exactly supposed to exist for two reasons.
The first reason is that the three most powerful gods, Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, all made an oath together not to have any more children after WWII, since somehow that got caused by a conflict between their children. So just me being born is a slap in the face against two of the most powerful beings in existence, yay.
The second reason is that Jupiter is married, and definitely not to my mom. See, he’s married to Juno, the goddess of marriage and faithfulness, which is obviously ironic. She also happens to be his sister which, yuck. Moving on, she wasn't exactly happy that Jupiter cheated on her twice with the same woman. Yeah that's right, I have an older sister named Thalia who was born the first time Jupiter couldn’t keep it in his pants long enough to think, “maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”
So in a nutshell, I wasn’t even old enough to understand peekaboo and I immediately had three incredibly powerful, and incredibly petty, beings screaming for my blood. I don’t know details, but Jupiter somehow managed to keep the three of them from turning me into a puddle of toddler meat long enough for me to make it to the age of two.
I don’t know exactly what happened when I became two, but apparently Jupiter’s influence had expended itself and he had to execute plan B: throw me at his wife and run. You might think I’m joking but that’s basically what happened.
My name, Jason, was specifically chosen because Jason was Juno’s favorite hero back in the day, when the gods were still in Greece, and when I turned two years old Jupiter convinced my mother to hand me over to Juno and then he certified me as her champion, which is important for reasons I’ll explain much later.
Alright, exposition dump almost over. Like I said, I woke up in a place called the wolf house at the age of two, which is the place where the wolf goddess Lupa gives training to any would-be legionnaires until they’re ready to be sent off to join the legion. So there I was, two years old, incapable of so much as standing, much less joining the Roman army, inside a house full of sentient wolves.
It’s in this place where Lupa taught me how to fend for myself as a member of the pack. She taught me things like how to hunt, how to fight, and the most important skill, the wolf stare. A friend of mine, his name is Percy, you’ll meet him later in the story, told me how much the wolf stare helped him and I cannot stress how much I agree. The wolf stare is so incredibly useful because it does one thing and it does it very well: it tells people to screw off. The amount of fights I’ve been able to avoid by intimidating people is huge, and every fight is an opportunity to get injured or killed.
But I digress. I spent three years in the wolf house learning from Lupa, and when I turned five, Juno showed herself to me for the first time I can remember.
“I’ve come to take you, my champion,” she told me, “to a place filled with others like you, where you will be able to learn and grow to prepare for calamity.”
Of course, I had no idea who this lady that showed up out of nowhere was, but even as a child I could feel the same power radiating off of her as I could Lupa.
“Are you like Lupa,” I asked her.
“Only in the fact that we are both gods, boy,” she laughed, “in every other way you’ll find we are quite different”
She said it in a way such that no ordinary person would detect anything wrong, but with the intuition gained from my time with Lupa, I could sense the haughty superiority laced into her words.
“He is not ready yet,” Lupa growled at Juno while using her paw to pull me beside her, “if you take him from here he will be incapable of fending for himself.”
“He will have to be ready,” Juno snapped at Lupa, “for if he is not then we all may not survive.”
“I will not endanger a member of my pack for your schemes, you twice scorned goddess,” Lupa spat at her.
Juno’s eyes flashed at Lupa, before she replied tersely, “He is my champion before he is a member of your pack, Lupa. You will know your place, dog ,” and Juno began glowing faintly.
Lupa seemed torn for a few moments, wrestling between keeping her pack safe, and the consequences of quarreling with the queen of heaven itself. Eventually, she seemed to deflate slightly before nudging me forward and leaning her snout in front of my face.
“I am sorry, little one, but you must go with her,” Lupa told me with a regretful tone to her voice, before licking my forehead and making my hair stand up, “but know that you will always and forever be one of my pack. No matter where you are or who you talk to, you can take pride in the fact that you are a wolf , and not even Jupiter himself can say otherwise.”
At her last statement the sky rumbled, and the clouds that were in the sky turned gray, only long enough to make me think that I had imagined it.
Lupa growled after looking briefly at the sky and pushed me towards Juno, telling me, “Now you must go, little wolf. It would not do to keep a goddess waiting too long,” and she walked away with the rest of the pack.
“Well, now that that is out of the way, come here Jason, we must be on our way,” Juno said.
I walked to her before saying, “Excuse me, my lady, may I ask where we are going exactly?” I could tell, perhaps instinctually, that I had to be very careful with my words and actions, and that this woman named Juno would not be as forgiving as Lupa.
“It is a place known as Camp Jupiter, a refuge for you and your kind from the monsters that lurk among everyday society. You will be going there to learn how to fight as the Romans do, and to claim your birthright as their leader. Now, take my hand,” Juno told me.
I swallowed my fear and uncertainty as I did as I was told, now was not the time for disobedience, for she could end my existence with nothing more than a flick of her finger. As I grasped her hand, immediately the world devolved into nothing more than a swirling mess of colors and sensations. The bluish-gray of the sky mixed with the dark green of the damp grass, and the scent of pine and rain blended together to create something that to this day nothing has been able to replicate. In an instant, as fast as it started it ended and I lost my balance before heaving my breakfast onto the new ground I was standing on.
Juno stood in place and waited for me impatiently, her arms crossed. Once I managed to compose myself I took a look at my surroundings, and what I saw left me almost as breathless as the vomiting I had just finished.
In a valley that stretched nearly as far as my eyes could see was a modern day ancient Rome. I could see aqueducts leading into what looked like a city with brick roads full of pedestrians in ancient garb and carriages transporting goods from place to place. I could also see a separate area full of low, identical buildings and areas for different training. There was an archery range, a race track, an outdoor gym, and other things that would be seen in a place used for training.
“Are you finished yet?” Juno asked me in an impatient voice, her arms crossed and foot tapping, “welcome to your new home. Come, we have much to get done before the day is finished.”