Chapter Text
Naira Jackson was an enigma.
She’d been thrust in to the life of a hero when her mother was kidnapped while fighting the Minotaur, and with only a few months of training, led a successful quest to retrieve the lightning bolt. After that, her adventures kept pilling up: Surviving the sea of monsters to retrieve the satyr and the Golden Fleece; Holding the sky and defeating Atlas while her soul and body connection had been damaged, the next winter; spending that summer on recruitment missions that added to her monster count; Traveling through the labyrinth and defeating the titan lord’s army; Fulfilling the great prophecy at sixteen.
She was the soul mate of Luke Castellan, Kornos’ Host, evident by her soul marking: A drawn-in-black sea green circle (the color of her eyes),housing a drawn-in-navy-blue triangle filled in icy-blue(the color of his eyes),and two black swords crossed in the centre, inked just at the end of her ribcage. Yet she’d sided against him from the start, due to which he had stabbed her with a knife laced with a paralysis drug and set a scorpion from the pit on her, claiming that she was better off dead.
The rejection or/and death of a soul mate didn’t break the bond, it caused seizures, but the bond would exist forever. This meant she would have seizures for as long as she lived. The seizures didn’t follow any pattern, happening randomly for a minute or so. She was a legacy of Apollo, due to which she’d gotten the soul mark. People got soul marks if both sides of their family had godly blood within 5 generations.
It seemed like the girl never acted like everyone else, no one would go against their soul mate nor allow them to commit suicide; most heroes weren’t self-sacrificing enough to bring themselves to the brink of death just to prove a point; they didn’t do things that may kill them, either and no demigod had ever demanded something of the gods and gotten it.
Even when she wasn’t present, she had a large influence. They all respected her, every single person in the Greek world, whether they were enemies or friends or neither. They respected her for her skills or for her deeds, and really, the Romans had no idea just who Juno had brought them, knowing only that she was an excellent warrior. There was nothing about the unofficial official leader of CHB, and it irked her, sometimes, after she got her memories back, because she’d worked hard for her achievements.
They also did not know anything about the Greek side’s contribution.
The gods defeated the titans because we toppled Kornos’ throne, the people of new Rome had told her, and she had scoffed even without memories. Such faith in gods who never went beyond claiming and ordering was foolish, she’d known, but the Greeks had always known the gods were careless, but everyone roman was claimed at 16. She couldn’t help but feel jealous, of how they knew they would be claimed, of how they had a city to themselves.
New Rome was beautiful and like any aspiring architect, she’d already sketched out her favorite parts on the Deadalus-made tablet (Designs for camp only, she remembered Annabeth saying.) that had appeared inside her bag the day she remembered fully, along with her most important belongs: her sketchpad, her stationary box, Backbiter in its charm form, her emergency nectar vial, a pouch of golden drachmas, and Luke’s jacket. The items had been inside her emergency bag.
When she’d turned down immortality, she asked for seven wishes in exchange, to be used as she wished. The gods granted it. She’d used three:
- Claim and listen to demigods.
- Give gods without thrones recognition.
- Allow demigods to use long island as they wanted.
And so they were building a city, name pending, for Camp half-blood, along with cabins. Annabeth, her best friend in the world, helped, but her main focus was Olympus, for which Naira had supplied a few designs, like Annabeth had done with camp.
Naira wanted to be a naval architect when she was able to but that didn’t mean she couldn’t design a city. She could make it more beautiful than New Rome, now.
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The Greeks were coming to Rome, and the Romans had decided they had done nothing.
Naira gritted her teeth at their obliviousness and waited for the Greeks to arrive, just so the Romans’ ego would be cured.
The Argo II hovered over Camp Jupiter, a beautiful sea-vessel literally out of her dreams, and Jason Grace stood at the deck, clad in purple. Next to him, Annabeth, the girl who was her best friend, a close confidant, a rival in their architect dreams, her sister, stood as ambassador of Camp Half-Blood. They were to land any moment, and she could introduce Anna to Frank and Hazel, and set her up with Reyna because the two of would get along and it would be beautiful.
Then, all her plans went sideways, because the world was spinning and glowing gold.