A/N: The next update. I have no excuses. Only content. Which I hope you will like. And also review. Because reviews motivate me to work faster. Way faster. Review and tell me what changed you'd like to see, and if they do not go against my original planning, they might even make it in the story.
Disclaimer: Percy Jackson and the Olympiads is the property of Rick Riordan and Disney. I make no claims of ownership or suggest otherwise. This work of fiction is written purely for fun. Please don't sue me. I am broke.
EDIT: 07/04/2020: 18:36: Corrected a few spelling errors and formatting errors. As always, feel free to inform me if you find any more issues.
That was your irregularly scheduled Author's Note. Now back to your fanfiction!
Beans and Bins – A Spilling Story
Hundreds of nautical miles away from the base of the Order of the Waves, in New York City, in a classroom of 10th graders, a group of boys talk.
"Did you read last night's update of the fanfic?"
"Nah!" another replied. "Mom shut the wifi off before I could check it out...I'll check it out today.."
"It's a nice update! The four of us were correct after all!" the first replied.
"Four?" Third said. "Who's the fourth? We are only three..."
The eyes of the first glazed over, and he shook his head to clear it off the mist that filled his head. "Yeah... three of us," he corrected. "I had a weird feeling that there should be another one of us here... Too little sleep last night I guess..."
"That's probably it. You should get more sleep," Second said, although he too had a weakness in his answer. It cleared up quickly as his eyes glazed over similarly and the mist took away all instances of a fourth friend. "Schizophrenia would make for an interesting origin story, but we have already read enough of those... Try something classier next time. Maybe dead parents."
One and Three laughed with Two. "Speaking of parents," began One, "have you heard about the commotion in my neighbourhood? The one about the Wonder Girl?"
"That girl that has the most beautiful eyes and the darkest hair that you have ever seen? The one with a deer's grace and a peacock's pride? The one you have a crush on?" Second asked, eyes rolling in disbelief at his friend's crush on his neighbour's daughter.
"She got even sexier," One replied, a smug smile lighting his face daring them to ask him 'How'. Both knew that they shouldn't, but the Geek Code required them to make sure that they properly, theatrically, and dramatically, responded to all prompts by any fellow Geek. Woe was them.
"How did that happen?" Third inquired, carving out his gamer id on his desk with a compass, looking not the least bit interested in finding out more about the girl his friend was never going to get.
"She got sent to a hospital in the morning. Restrained by three nurses. Kept screaming about someone that her parents had somehow killed or gotten rid of."
"What!?" exclaimed Two, earning a glare from the Trigonometry teacher at the head of the class.
"Yeah... Kept screaming something about her brother not being home. Nothing makes a girl hotter than a tragic backstory. Lost brothers are a classic. Some imaginary boy named Tushar..."
"Even after all this happened, our Order still retained enough strength to hold the favour of most of the gods. All the Olympians were still on our side after all. We were still feared. Those who'd gone up against us had been dealt with brutally. Our reputation still held high and the Order still had some room for regaining its previous high. It all changed, however, when something bad happened. Something that neither I nor my Sentinels could prevent. Something so unthinkable and unexpected, that it caught us all off-guard and delivered the blow that turned out to be the downfall of this organisation."
"What was it?" asked a fixated Misty. 'I would brace myself if I were you,' warned Mystery.
"I died," Selene said.
"Riiiight!" Misty droned, throwing an orange seed lying on the table, at Selene, who moved her hand so it collided with the glass instead. "Try to fool someone else, this mind is not so easy to fool. You are sitting right in front of me! I have touched your hand on more than one occasions and last I checked, I did not take drugs that would have me see illusions of beautiful Greek Goddesses. You are not a mental image, not a hologram and definitely not an illusion cast by hallucinogens that I might have intaken."
'She's not joking,' Mystery spoke. 'She is dead. Perished. Scattered.'
'Are you trying to play some elaborate prank? Cause I think nobody has told you about modern pranking methods?' Misty thought back. 'Fart Cushions are a better idea than this.'
"I am not joking, Misty," said Selene softly, "and neither is Mystery. She speaks the truth."
"First of all, explain how you are sitting in front of me. I may not know much about magic, but there are some checks that you have to make in order to go for the Ghost-Story angle. And you have passed none of them. Second of all, how do you keep guessing what Mystery is doing!" Misty tapped her knuckles on the table in front of her, playing a rhythm-less tune on it. "For all that you know, we could have been comparing dick sizes!"
'She knows me better than you do, Misty,' Mystery said. 'She knows I wouldn't joke at a time like this.'
"The door to the ritual room broke during the ritual. Why did I not stop you from summoning the Sentience by calming you?" Selene asked, legs crossing over each other and leaning back in her seat.
"Maybe the ritual had you in a body bind of sorts?" Misty answered. "How am I supposed to know?"
"I wasn't. What you see before yourself is a recording of sorts... A memory of my original self. All the rituals that I know are a type of algorithm designed so that I could perform them. Those algorithms allow no room for improvisation. How would the algorithm know what to react with when faced with an unknown variable." Selene took a deep breath. "I am no longer a being. As I said, I have been dead for a long time. But even when alive, I was never foolish. Which is why I had left behind a reflection of myself." She drank deeply from her glass and offered it to Misty after refilling it. "Try and drink this," she said.
The girl took the glass and put it against her lips, only for the wine to not pass down her throat. It kept emptying from the glass, but never into her mouth.
Selene smirked and took her glass back from the young Sentinel, "As I said, dead. I am just a program meant to help train the Sentinels." She stood from her seat, walking towards the door. She raised her hand and waved it, beckoning Misty to follow her. They went through the same maze of corridors again. The walls switched between wood, rock, marble and what looked like strawberry-flavoured Jell-O. They walked on through the path Selene chose for them. Misty started counting her breaths to see how long it took them. She was on 210 when they came back into the cavern that Misty, Tushar, arrived in. A distant memory.
"Why didn't you tell me this earlier?" Misty finally asked, the silence getting on her nerves. Her own voice sounded much more different in this empty cavern without the roar of the hearth fire in the background. They were heading towards the door that took them to the ritual room last time. Misty hoped that it wasn't back to a boy again or something worse like a werewolf or a wolf... She couldn't tell what would be more painful; growing a longer snout or a longer... organ.
"It is not common knowledge. Only some of the Olympians and pledged Sentinels know. Some other Ancients are aware of this fact, but they have grown too indifferent to the celestial realm to do anything about it. The ones who do care, are bound in chains and inside Tartarus." Selene said. She was in the intricate process of opening and closing the door, which was frankly weird if the ritual room was used more often... Someone had to get tired of all this eventually. The door finally closed shut for the 13th time, and with her new ears, or maybe her new magical channels, Misty could hear or feel a click. From the door or the room, she did not know. But she felt it. Selene finally opened the door to the staircase. Selene let out a slow breath. "At least they were inside till recently."
"I made the Sentiences. Did you not find it weird that I could not reprogram them to break their bond with you? Or rather simply turn you into a girl myself?" Selene asked. Misty nodded weakly, all those gaps in logic becoming clear to her now. Selene never tried to change the Sentinel. Only change her when she was Tushar. She never even tried to tell him during the ritual that she was not doing a possession ritual. It all made sense to her now. The silver fire in her eyes, her indifference to her pain, the obvious absence of more Sentinels or Sentiences despite the fact that she could've made more any time she desired. Her night had been one hell of a roller-coaster ride, and when compared to that, this fact seemed oddly appropriate. She might have made a pretty large logic leap when she first came here. But now that Selene had pointed those problems out, she couldn't help but realize that 'Yes, all of them were much more practical solutions.' But the reason behind all that trouble being a dead mentor seemed oddly weird and frustrating. She could have gotten some fresher trope. Undead Mentors weren't exactly all that they were showed up to be.
A sad twist about her Wise Old Wizard. After all, every hero needed a Wise Old Wizard with a terrible secret that would haunt the Wizard for life and motivate him/her to train and prepare the hero for the great evil that was about to strike the land.
Yes. It did make sense to Misty. She might have had her brain grown back, but her memories of her fascination with fantasy stayed the same. And she could see very clearly where this ride was going to take her. She was going to be the epic protagonist of her own book now! That much had become apparent to her since she had woken up and found herself with boobs. But now, her story had become much more interesting. Much more interesting indeed.
She could not tell Selene about that, however. No reason to make her think that her latest recruit had a penchant for the cinematic. From what she had heard, the Sentinels were supposed to be precise and brutal in their work. Telling her that she enjoyed the theatricality and flair of this new twist in her origin story might cause Selene, or Ghost Selene now if that is what she preferred, to alter her training plan to break it out of her.
If she already did not know about it. The woman was scary sometimes with the kind of insight she showed in her thoughts. Too scary if she might say so herself.
"How did you die?" Misty asked curiously.
"I honestly have no idea."
"WHAT!" Misty shouted, completely sidetracked by the answer.
"There are many ways in which a celestial can be killed. Take Ouranos for example."
"Cut up by his sons and scattered into so many pieces that he might never return. They broke his essence. His very conscience was cut into and because of that, he ceased to be. He still exists up there, but never to wake up and be sentient. Then there are the ones who are replaced."
"Helios," Misty replied almost immediately. Her Brother. They had finally reached the bottom of the stairs and were looking out over the destruction that had happened last night. The door to the Ritual Room was broken down after the Sentience's powers were put to test by the ritual. There was no quick recovery for that room. Selene was going to have to contribute a lot of time and effort into making sure that the Ritual Room worked again. Without it's magically insulated door, it wouldn't be possible to use it. And even if she could rebuild the room with the door back on its hinges, she would still have to wait for it accumulate dormant energy from the resident Sentinel and her magic. She could try and divert some power from the base to the room, but it would have to be very slow to ensure that a surprise attack wouldn't catch them off-guard. The only rituals that would happen in this room for a long time were going to be the simpler ones that Misty and her successors could individually power; the ritual room was too weak to help them. All because one of her creations was stronger than her other creation.
"Right you are," Selene said, smiling sadly at the memory. "When Apollo was born to Zeus, he was given the seat of Helios. It was a wise decision no doubt. Our kind, me and Helios, were getting old. Unfit for field duty. I did not have many besides me driving the moon chariot. And my Sentinels could do that for me sometimes while I looked after the Order. But he had no one. The Sun Chariot is much more draining the Moon chariot, for reasons that should be obvious to you. And he had no one to help him in this task. The one time he did take someone's help, he almost destroyed half of Earth. Regardless of stupid sons, he was growing weaker. He needed a break. And so did I, to be honest."
"Which was why you readily gave up your domains to Apollo and Artemis," Misty said. They were walking past the Ritual Room, and towards the various shelves that lined the walls. Selene would occasionally stop to check whether a particular book was what she thought it was, and would occasionally pull a book out to carry with her.
"Yes," Selene said. "It was not an unwise decision. We still had some more domains to look after, and we were given a break from something that was getting too much for us. None of us anticipated his death."
"I, on the other hand, was not as feeble. I might have lost purpose and believers, but I still had my Sentinels binding me to this plane. They would not let me fade. Neither would the apparent faith the gods had in me for the protection of the Divide. I was smart, much smarter than my brother gave me credit for. I held my seat when others could not. Rome had brought about a change in civilization and in ideals. Many like Athena and Hestia had fallen. But not me. I survived. I thrived in the darkness and came out of it stronger." Lady Selene turned back and looked at Misty. Her arms full of books, her shoulders loose and her neck held high; she looked very much like an empress that moment. A very beautiful empress. Misty almost blushed, but held back the blood that wanted to flow into her cheeks, and instead focused on their environment. The Observatory, they were inside it.
"How did you die then?" Misty asked, disbelief covering her voice.
"I don't know. As I said before, I honestly have no idea."
"I told you about my existence. How I am a spell taken form. A memory of the original Selene. I am made for the sole reason of looking after the continuation of our order. I am made out of a memory of Selene, through an intricate ritual that gave me, a mere thought, a vessel to move about in. Every year, Selene would take all that she had learned and transfer it into my vessel. I would come a step closer to her every year at that night. I had not been released yet, so I could only lie around in my container, a womb if you can call it that, waiting for my maker to return and gift onto me her memories and personality. To make me more alive."
"I was her contingency plan. If anything ever happened to her, or me I suppose, one of the Sentinels would release me. That would ensure that the Order would always have someone to train it."
"What went wrong then?" Misty said. They had taken a seat on the tables that lined the room around the big watching crystal or 'telescope' that was in the centre of the room. She could tell that the tables were not actually made to study since the bottom of the chairs was too hard, and the lighting in the room was a performance disaster. Why couldn't the gods get LED lights instead of using roof crystals... some eyes might be spared. And maybe some butts too.
Selene took a deep breath. She was opening the books and placingseveral red ribbons in different places as bookmarks. Misty did not know why she did that but paid attention to what she said anyway, "I was not the first contingency plan. In fact, if my memories have not been tampered with, I was the last. The worst-case scenario so to speak. I was never supposed to happen. I was simply supposed to stay in my container, content to experience life through the eyes of my maker every year."
"But, in between the time that I got my yearly memory transplant, and I was awakened, something happened. Nobody knows what. I was released fifteen fortnights after I got my latest set of memories. And those had no indication of anything going wrong or any hidden enemy lurking in the shadows. But when I was brought out of sleep so soon, and that too by a half-dead Sentinel, I knew something was wrong."
"I woke up to find the entire Order wiped out. No survivors. No bodies. Just the totems lying on the floor in a pool of blood. The one that brought me out had already traveled to Hades before I could ask her anything. I was left alone in the Order, with no more than four devices, trying to recreate an Order that was fabled to be undefeatable."
"I take it that the undefeatable fable was false?" Misty asked slowly. The books laid forgotten between the two.
"I think so too. But my life after I woke up went downhill pretty quick. When the other gods found out that their champions had died, all of them at the same time and without any evidence of what killed them, they were enraged, furious would be too small a word. They summoned me and asked me about what happened. I was not as strong as my original celestial self. Not even close to her in fact. So when the gods saw a much weaker Selene walk into Olympus, one that could not even resist speaking the truth in front of Apollo, they grew suspicious. They sent the younger ones away and the Elder Olympians questioned me themselves. They found the truth about me. They lost their faith in my Order."
"How could they not!" spat Selene. "They trusted the Celestial Selene. I was a mere reflection of hers. A nobody. Nothing beyond an impressive bit of magic. And despite my reasoning that I was made from her very memories, they refused to believe me. I had very little magic, very little when compared to a normal celestial. They took that as a sign of weakness. There was nothing that I could have done that might have changed their minds. A few, like Poseidon, Hestia, Hera and Aphrodite were on the fence. They were too cautious, smart, or cunning to lose faith in anyone with half of my skills, or at least the memory of using those skills, like that. But the Council ended up voting against me. Even losing by a single vote is losing. Hera had to follow Zeus in his steps and was forced to vote against me. Hestia no longer had any seat to speak of in the Elder Council, and the Olympians were too drunk on their own pride to heed her wisdom. Without Athena and Artemis to temper their fits of anger, the rest voted against me too. I was banished from Olympus, to live my life in the Sanctuary. They took back their totems for safekeeping. Objects of such immense powers were not safe to be kept by someone so unworthy as me, they told me and I had no way of reversing the enchantments on them that attuned them to specific Olympians. I lacked the energy to do it. As they said, I was too weak," snorted out Selene. "And even if I could somehow reverse them, I had no Order to speak of. The Sentinels were all dead. I had no one to back me up against a full-blown war against the Olympians if it came to it. I, alone, could not fight against all of the Olympians. At least not without forming a proper Order first."
"Did you do it then? Form a proper army of Sentinels and revolt against the Olympians?" asked Misty.
"I won't lie to you... I did think of it twice. I think that down there in the main library next to the Ritual Room, one of the alcoves will even have a plan for overthrowing them," Selene said, pointing her finger in the general direction of the door as if Misty could find a single book among the hundreds of others that rested there. "But I could never follow through with it." She took a deep sip from her wine ('When did she call her glass back', Misty asked. 'When you were looking at the bookshelves,' Mystery replied), her breath hitched and her lip curved into a frown. "I had nothing. No troops. Very few powers. Out of the four Sentiences that were left with me in the cavern, two were retrieved by their respective Elder Council members; Hera and Aphrodite. Their champions were still learning in the Sanctuary at that time, and their totems were still with me. Taking away the Sentiences was well within their rights according to the agreement that was first drawn up. The rest of the Olympians and the other deities summoned theirs from wherever they were; all thoughts about finding out what had slain the entire Order Of Waves forgotten. Even after collecting all of my totems from around the world, I was still left with a meager eight. Not exactly the optimal task force when thinking of fighting against an Empire. So I bid my time, hoping that once I got them back on track, the Olympians would somehow see the fault in their judgement, see how wrong they were to not trust me."
"But it would seem, very obviously, that the Fates, in their infinite, invincible, and irrefutably supreme wisdom, were not done with me this soon." Selene mused, with that heavy tone of hers that would drown people and flood carpeted hallways in raw sarcasm.
"I had been cursed," Selene began again in her melodious horror story voice, "banished to my Sanctuary. I had no way of breaking past these walls and gathering new recruits for my cause. No way of finding any other totems that might still be buried with their last owner, unable to fulfil their function of finding a new recruit without the body of their previous host. I was lost. I did not have all the powers that Lady Selene had. If I had, then I would have somehow powered a counter-curse to break the barrier around the Sanctuary and gone off to the outside world to do my job."
"But you can go outside..." Misty reasoned, "You went out to check on Marina, and you also took me out while trying to get the Sentience to separate from me. What was that about?"
"That was about me finding a solution," Selene smirked at the glass she was holding, a proud and boastful smirk, aimed at spiting all the Olympians who had sought to bind her in the first place. "I was not a simple memory; a reflection of someone's thoughts and powers. They were foolish to think I was. I did have a concrete body and even independent thoughts that would make me sentient. Not just a pre-recorded computer program. Most of my actions were independent —except for certain actions which I can't do my way cause of reasons, like rituals and more complex magicks. Hence, I had the only thing I needed to escape. My mind and its craftiness."
"So I assimilated myself with the Sanctuary. Made the consciousness and energy that was put inside me go into the very walls that were housing me, binding me. I joined the two of us, made us both, together and apart at the same time."
All that Misty could do at this point, was nod along regardless of however much of Selene's passion talk got through her brain. Mystery advised her to not disturb her when she is in the middle of 'Another one of those Drunken Rants'.
"With my soul tied to the Sanctuary, all methods of tracking me would result in tracking the Sanctuary. Meaning, I could stay out of the barrier for as long as I wanted, have as much fun as I wanted, and nobody, not even Artemis herself, could discover me." Selene, celestial Moon goddess that she was, looked at Misty, expecting her to shower her with praises. Misty, however, had different plans...
"You just told me that you could not gather enough energy to power a spell that could break the barrier... But the Ritual Room was full of dormant energy... Enough of it to keep me from rolling down the Styx this very moment... Why did you not use it? You would have only needed some of it, and it would have gathered back eventually once you found new recruits and/or extra medallion thingamajigs."
Selene sighed and reminded herself that a curious recruit who could think for herself was better than an idiot who only followed orders. Once she had ensured herself that she could condition Misty into acting dramatic at moments, she spoke, "I could not. Breaking the curse would mean announcing to the others that I was rebelling. But I couldn't do that. Not this early in the game. Not without the complete energy levels that the original Selene had. And to answer your other question, I did use the energy of the ritual room. I used it to bypass the barrier. Just think what would happen to me if I would leave all of my energy and my soul behind... how would I travel out of this place without any magic to speak of?"
" That's where I got crafty. The barrier around this place was built to make sure that I could not get out. To do that, they tied the wardstones to my energy signal. So the barrier would come up every time the wards recognized my energy coming closer. So I put all of my energy into the Room, where it would remain awaiting my return, while my body was filled with the energy from the Ritual Room, something which the barrier was not made to stop. Similar to wearing a fake face to get past a guard. I fooled the barrier into thinking that I was not who I was. Hence, I could move around freely while using the energy from the ritual room, while the Olympians would find that all their tracking spells pointed at the Base. Because tracking spells, unlike barriers were based on finding one's soul. So bonding my soul to the Sanctuary ensured that I did not get caught in the act by Artemis or someone else."
"Okayyy... I think I am understanding what you are trying to say..." Misty began, " But why didn't the gods create a barrier anchored to your body or your soul... And you keep using that word soul... Do you really have one? Do I have one?" she questioned.
"Souls are... they are something which is normally hard to comprehend for mortals. Everyone has one. But not all of us can control them. Your soul is basically the receipt of your existence. All your actions, all your memories, all your skills. Everything compressed into one idea. Immortals such as me and other Olympians can split, or more accurately project, our souls at different locations at the same time into another body. This allows us to exist in many places at the same time, which gave birth to the theory of omnipotence. So yes, we all have souls and it is not what the scams think it is. It is simply the collection of all of your memories and abilities. And people who have a lot of memories and energies can send them on long-distance milk runs."
"My Stats page in the video game of my life," Misty added, quite astutely.
"I think so... except much more complicated than whatever these video games are... Manipulating your souls is not an easy action. And definitely not a safe one. Immortals take a century just to project theirs a few hundred kilometres away. Doing it inside an unwilling or unfamiliar vessel is even harder," Selene said. "But we practise it day and night and do it regardless, mostly because it is cool to spook random mortals by possessing their wives or sons."
"Regardless of that, getting back to your question, creating a barrier for a soul is not easy. That would require making sure that all fragments of my soul are in one place. If you make a barrier for a soul that is currently split, it might break when the user simply calls back all his consciousness." Selene had by now finished setting those bookmarks in place in almost all books but she hadn't told Misty what it was about. She put in another long ribbon and continued as if she hadn't just said that all gods were making phylacteries, "Hence, making soul-based barriers were impractical in some cases since gathering all the soul fragments is not easy. And all soul fragments in any body anywhere on the Earth share the knowledge that they currently hold. So it would be easy to have yourself outside the barrier working on getting yourself out. If that makes any sense..."
"It does," Misty said. "What about you? You are also a soul fragment, albeit one that isn't reliant on Original Selene to survive. Do changes register in your soul fragment? Is that why you can't modify rituals? If you couldn't soul project, then why didn't they make a soul-based anchor?"
"The spell used by my original version was ingenious because it somehow made me a different being from her. Gave me the power to modify the soul knowledge that she placed into me, without changing the original. Made me a separate being, no matter the weakness of my magical channels. And regardless of my pseudo-birth, I still had almost all of the memories of the original so I would have no problems in learning the basics like all the others had to. Learning Astral Projection was easy. It took some energy from me, but it was easy after all the work that Celestial Selene had already done for me. So yes, the stuff I do today does register as changes in my body."
"And the reason behind me not being able to modify rituals is more magical than spiritual. Maybe you'll learn the subject someday. As for the soul-anchor, attaching a soul-based ward scheme to the barrier would mean creating a ward which could record the constant change happening. A mechanical combination lock that would update itself every time the object inside fancied a change in the combination. A barrier that could somehow record every single minute change in my soul. Does that not seem pretty difficult to you?" Selene asked Misty.
"I think it does... the barrier would have to account for each and every minor change in your soul... Which does sound pretty tough to me... The rules for the wards would have to be pretty specific..."
"Exactly! And the gods were not taking my case into account. Normal immortals can easily bypass a soul barrier by projecting a copy of their soul outside the barrier while performing an action that would forever change it. That would cause the barrier to note two different types of souls, one mid-flight, where it cannot be changed or register any change that was happening, and one mid-change. The ward would register two different souls and get confused between them. This would cause it to overload and self destruct. Back then, my soul had not matured enough to learn the art. And if the Olympians had had the insight to lock me in without the correct materials, I would have never learned. Which was why making soul-based anchors was not a good idea when it came to immortals who are well-versed in the art of Astral Projection," Selene said.
"We instead tie the ward stone to the energy signal of the captive, to make sure that the barrier would not let them in. When trying to keep someone out, the ward stones are configured to allow only the person with a particular energy. That is how the Sentience brought you in here. It would cloak you in its energy to make sure the Sanctuary's wards would not affect you—had it been a normal demigod as I earlier assumed you were, he would've been fried by my wards long before he made it in here."
"Getting back to the topic though," Selene said, nodding at Misty, "My trick worked. The soul being tied to the Sanctuary made sure that I could not be tracked by simple tracking spells and with my body playing host to foreign energy, I could easily walk past the barrier. I could roam outside as much as I wanted so long as I kept in mind that I reserve some energy to get me back to the Sanctuary... lest I have to walk back here bare-footed... and be blocked by the barrier... and be detected by the Olympians..." Selene shook her head at the liberties she took with her crazy scheme.
"I think I understand now..." Misty slowly said. "Can I try this Soul Projection thingy?"
"Not this soon, Misty. Your soul is too small now. Too small entirely. You don't have enough memories and experience to make it large enough to split it like us. Maybe if you combine it with Mystery's and get a couple of other Sentinels to join in, it could be possible. But until then you risk getting scattered if you try doing it," Selene explained. "And it is called Astral Projection, not Soul Projection. Celestial Projection if you want to be a snot-nosed brat who believes that only celestials could do it."
"We strayed a bit off-topic, didn't we?" Misty said clearing her throat a bit, scratching the back of her head while sprouting a silly grin that showed exactly how sorry, (read Un-Sorry) she was about the whole thing.
"Don't worry, I like curious souls," Selene answered, chuckling at the antics of her newest recruit. The books were almost all done now, and Selene was gathering them and organizing into three neat piles. Misty wondered what it would be about but dared not ask in favour of knowing more about the past. So she instead picked up a different tangent and went on towards the past.
"I get it all now I guess... but what happened next? And why tell me now that you were dead? Why not keep it a secret from everyone?"
"Once I was free of the barrier, I moved to the outside world. Spending a few months at a time in locations where the Sentinels could have been. Sometimes I would find the artefacts, sometimes I would just find dried up blood. I never forgot to return to the base of course. I needed to maintain a certain level of energy if I wanted to wander outside without my soul." The books were done, but Selene did not take her eyes off of them. She looked as if she was half-tempted to lean back into the chair, but wouldn't because Misty was sitting there. Her voice picked up the same tone she used when talking of her banishment.
"I would occasionally hear rumours of girls in the wilderness or in some remote village who would do great things. I would hand them my spare Sentiences and perform the binding ritual on them manually to set the Sentience's functions back on and recruit new members. I would spend my time between training these recruits and finding out about what laid devastation to the Order and the original Selene. Sadly, I never found more."
"The new recruits I found, did not know of the fact that I was not the original Selene but a clever memory of her existence created to help the Order in her absence. They would take the tales they read in the books of my prowess quite literally. Why wouldn't they?!" explained Selene, eyes staring down at the floor, every word being spoken heavily with sorrow tainting every syllable. "Which was what led to their downfall..."
"The fools started a ritual. One which would remove the attunement charms over the Olympian totems. Unfortunately, that ritual needed me to be completed. They did not know that I was not as strong as my parent celestial. That I was a mere replica and not the real deity. They ended up exploding, taking away the mystick energy from their Sentiences along with their life forces."
"They died," Lady Moon said, looking up at Misty, "and took more Sentiences with them."
The next few minutes were spent in relative peace as Misty tried to look anywhere except for Selene's slightly, completely sad and disappointed face. She could understand her plight in a way. She could have either told all of the earlier recruits that she was just a memory and risk the word spreading and a decrease in morale and an increase in the number of potential enemies. Or she could have kept the truth to herself as she did and made sure that they received the same level of education and training that the others before them did. Make sure that they became the fearsome warriors that every member of the Order was supposed to be. The lies about her supposed strength might even have boosted their spirits a bit too. After all, who would not want to be remembered by a legendary Moon goddess as one of her favourites. She too would have tried to impress Gandalf had he been her mentor. She could only imagine what the others were thinking. It was not wrong of the seven to try and perform a ritual that would boost their strength. They were, before everything else, Sentinels. And a Sentinel was supposed to be perfect in whatever field that specialised in. Any of the seven could have been a ritual master and could have performed her duties fantastically. There was no doubt about that.
But assuming that Lady Selene would get happy when she would find that the ritual was half-way done and provide them with the last component to finish it was a bit too... well weird after finding out that she was not at full power all along. A completely unfortunate incident that ended up being catastrophic for everyone concerned; all because people assumed a lot of stuff. Which was why Misty understood why Selene decided to tell everyone else the truth from then on. It made sense when knowing that a simple speech could prevent future Ritual Masters from trying stuff out without asking her permission first.
"Since then, I have informed all new recruits about my condition, if you could call it that. I haven't found any more devices since then to help me recruit new ones, nor have I been able to make new ones. Things have been pretty much normal since then— if you can call stopping schemes of conquering Olympus every month normal. The ritual to improve your body was the first out of schedule thing I have done since a long time, even the uprising of Titans that I sent Marina to discover was less weird when compared to that. Uprisings happen a lot. The X'etessi Ritual is not something I perform every decade. It was probably performed for the first time after 489 BC."
"Does that make me special?" Misty asked.
"Sort of. Just an oddity from the daily drag" answered Selene. "What is special about you is that you get the chance to host the spirit of a Sentinel of Past. You had the misfortune to be... I wouldn't say recruited, but at least get caught up in this drama at the wrong stage."
"But you just said that uprisings were a monthly thing. Should I be concerned?"
"The answer to that is not as simple as it seems. We deal with uprisings a lot. But most of them are stopped before they have a chance to truly progress. Weeding the trouble makers before any permanent damage is done is a very effective policy. Unfortunately, the troublemakers this time are the experienced kind."
"What was the last thing that Marina told your sister? A message for me, correct?" Misty nodded and Selene continued, "Could you repeat those words? I am sure you remember them."
Take it! Take the Sentience! You must be the Sentinel. Warn the others... the old one is stirring. Tell Lady Moon to awaken the council. You must save them.
The words entered her mind almost automatically, unwillingly even, echoing in the mind as if in a cavern. She relayed them to Selene as she had done last night, a night that seemed centuries away. Only this time she knew what they meant. An uprising from the Titans. The Old One, Kronos, rising after what must have been the first time in forever.
"I am assuming that you already know what that means, don't you?" Lady Moon said, her eyes flashing either with challenge or warning, Misty had trouble discerning which. "You have at your disposal the skills and memories of one of my best assassins. I don't know how useful that will be to you, as only you are going to be going out in the field to fight the rebellion, but know this: The Order of Waves did not exist openly during the pre-Olympian ages. Kronos would destroy all civilization rather than hide from it. He knows nothing about the importance of the Divide. He grew up without it and is going to prefer his empire to be in a world without the Divide present. This is against what the Order of the Waves stands for. Everything we ever fought for will be reduced to ashes. There is no other alternative. We either stop Kronos, or we die."
"The uprising has already begun. If you had not been chosen in place of your sister, I would not have thought of going as far as sending for Mystery from the Moon Realm. IF that had happened, your sister would have had to train for over 10 years for mastering the skills which you are supposed to master in one. Without you, the victory of the Titans would have all but assured. Nothing sort of a miracle worker could have stopped the Titans. The gods are too stupid to train champions in this day and age. They rely on Camp Half-Blood for demigod reinforcements. It is their own little charity project. Something that they think makes up for years of neglect and foolishness. But I guess that is what you can expect from inbreds."
"What is Camp HalfBlood?" questioned Misty.
"A training camp or residence for the children of the gods. For demigods. They are like us. Except less trained and more wild," explained Selene. "Sometimes the camp finds a gem who is worth one of my Sentinels when it comes to skill. But it is nothing on my 100% success rating. Some of the older ones are smart enough to keep their nose down and survive long enough after going on their one obligatory quest. The young ones have delusions of grandeur and often die before the age of 15. A bad public school if you ask me."
"And that summer camp is the only reinforcement I will have against a Titan Lord older than the king of Olympus... Isn't that just swell!?" Misty intoned, sarcasm colouring her tone. "What about the other gods? The Romans and the Egyptians? Maybe the Indian ones will help..."
"The Roman gods are just another part of the essence of the Greek ones. A rare incidence of Astral Projection misfiring and creating separate identities in the same person. It isn't like me, the Roman gods don't get new bodies and independence, but they hold a separate set of ideals from their Greek opposites and will probably act in a completely different way. And as such, their solution to the rising security threats in a world lacking in Sentinels was another Camp Half-Blood, although a bit better equipped," Selene explained. "They call it Camp Jupiter and run it tight as a military camp. The city where it is, New Rome, holds better prospects for demigods than Camp Half-Blood. A great retirement home if I ever decide to retire."
"If that four-footed bitch would let me go in," Selene added silently. Misty pretended as if she did not hear what she said, but she was going to ask Mystery a lot of questions when they were free.
'I hope I get some favours in return,' Mystery seductively whispered in her ear. Misty suppressed a smile. She was going to have to do something about this she-devil.
"So a bunch of hormonal teenagers with no organisation and a bunch of brainwashed teenage soldiers. The world will depend on them to survive if I don't manage to stop the Titan Lord from rising," Misty summarised.
"Yes. No pressure or anything," Selene said. The voice that flooded carpeted hallways in sarcasm was back. Misty wished it wasn't.
Her left eye twitched at this, but she chose not to comment on that since she did not want to offend the woman who was going to train her for the coming month. Her new brain would probably help her catch up to any insanity that she might think up, but she did not want to be the one to give her a reason to think up more insane bullshit for her to defeat. No one knew what an alcoholic loner Moon goddess who had authority issues might cook up in her spare time.
"What are these books for?"
"Your crash course in Being A Sentinel 101 starts tomorrow morning. These books are your assigned reading material. Read the marked chapters every day after training. You have very little time and a lot of work. The world isn't going to save itself," Selene said. "But for now, you can go to sleep. You haven't fully recovered yet, and it has been a long talk. You can rest for the day. The books will be in your room later. Sleep. Read. Do whatever you want. Maybe try out your new clothing. It will be quite different from what you wore as a boy."
"And I am sure Mystery has been whispering lots of temptations in your mind about stuff she wants to teach you, so you can go and learn something extra-curricular as well," Selene said coyly. "But no going outside the main building. And ask Mystery to help you reach the bedrooms; understanding the Sanctuary's room planning will take some time."
With all that drama over, and most of the Sanctuary's layout clear to Mystery, Misty headed towards her bedroom. With her belly full of fruits and her body full of sleep, she wanted nothing more than to slip into something a bit better than those hospital garbs and then sleep for some more hours. Stronger physique or not, she was still not ready to take those godly levels of torture. The fact that the need to explore her body was urging her to walk faster, aided by a sultry Mystery giving her tips on what to do, was absolutely unappealable and irrevocably false regardless of what anyone might say. She was going to deny those claims no matter what anyone said. And she was going to ensure that Mystery learned to keep her mouth closed when under the gaze of a mindreader.
The fact that Selene had known what she was thinking was pushed to the side by her mind before she could question it. Teenage horniness came first.
Admiring one's own body in the mirror for the first time is a weird concept. When that body looks like you, but from the opposite sex, things start getting a bit weird. But Misty had bigger problems in her hands at the moment.
"What the fuck am I supposed to do with these!" she said, her hands trying to adjust her new breasts inside a bra.
'Don't squeeze it so much,' Mystery contributed, 'that's a job for another time of the day.'
"You aren't helping!" Misty screamed out loud, desperately trying to reach back and close the strap.
"Bloody hell I am going to die this way! Somebody get me a smaller rack! I'll ogle myself in another life!"
'I told you to close it before putting it on.'
"NOT HELPING!"
And as Misty and Mystery stared into the mirror, watching their newly acquired body, with an unstrapped bra hanging off of their left shoulder, they realized that it was going to be a long two months. Two very long months. 'Insert long-drawn-out sigh.'
'Stop 3rd person-ing my life, Mystery!', Misty mind-shouted at her menant(mind tenant).
A/U: And we are done with another chapter. Hopefully, the next one will be here faster. If only I had reviews that told me to write... Shame. Regardless, the people who were hoping for some bedroom action will have to go elsewhere. I won't be writing smut unless I am really desperate and/or in the mood. And I am in neither of those conditions now.
(PLEASE REVIEW!)