I was lucky. I was a child who had been orphaned at birth, left in a hospital with my future uncertain. Until the church rescued me from the life that awaited me and brought me here to be a part of something more, something better than the mundane life I had been assured of. I was lucky.
According to father Valper that is.
Gods I hated his lectures, almost as much as I hated meditating. But they each had a similar factor in that I couldn't avoid both. They also had a difference, in that one I could tune out and one I had to tune in.
Which brings us to your first question.
Since when did Percy Jackson start meditating?
And the answer to that is the night I was locked in the dungeons for the first time. Like I said, my very brilliant brain had brewed an idea that took the best Percy awards of the year. Legacies in my previous life, while they had pretty diluted bloodlines from the deity they originated from, could also manipulate an edict of their domain, case in point, Octavian, a Roman legionnaire and a legacy of Apollo who had the gift of prophecy...or at least some version of it.
Here, I was not a demigod. I was a human. The interesting thing about being a human who knows that different pantheons exist is that...I can belong in either of them. So here, while I was not a demigod, I was a descendant of one, a legacy. And the deity who I originated from, according to this pantheon, was the creator of the universe who could manipulate Holy power.
Which brings us to why I started meditating. It wasn't enough that I could feel Holy power, which unlike the other kids was something only I could do. There was a reason I could perceive it the way I did, and both father Valper and I knew it. Which was why I threw that tantrum eight months ago. My seventh birthday passed two months ago by the way, just in case you didn't know. Anyway, everything around us was a product of Holy power, but Holy swords had this power in exaggerating amounts so much so that I couldn't concentrate when being around them. They weren't just made using Holy power, they were sustained by it, unlike everything else that withered away, Holy power coalesced around them to keep them in their prime condition.
I needed to be in an isolated environment, far from the Holy swords where I could study Holy power on my own, hence the need to be placed in the dungeons, the farthest place I could have gone from them. There were several holy swords in existence but a worthy wielder could appear once in like fifty to a hundred years. In order to wield a holy sword, one needed to have an enormous amount of holy factor or as Father Valper called it, Light attribute, within them. According to father Valper, the reason why we were rescued from wherever each and very kid came from was because each of us held a sacred gear within him or her, meaning apart from the Holy factor everyone is born with, we had an additional amount since we wielded the subject of miracles within us. My guess was, the more you used a sacred gear, the more powerful it became, like training a muscle. And with that thought, it was easy to figure out just why we were here. Father Valper and his saintly minions wanted to somehow produce artificial holy sword wielders.
Hence the name, The Holy sword project.
Did I mention he began to personally tutor me? I did, right? My goodness the guy was a bore. I was lucky I didn't have ADHD or dyslexia like I did in the past but that just made it easier to focus on him, and I couldn't decide what was worse, being unable to pay attention or being able to. I think he took it upon himself to punishing me with the long hours of lectures because of my mistake of being 'defective'.
While most of the children there had managed to unlock their sacred gears with the rigorous training we were put through, I continued taking the odd one out trophy.
Turned out, my sacred gear was a little bit different from the others' sacred gears, in that it was artificial, as in not made by God. And that's not even the best part. Not only was it artificial, oh you're gonna love this... it was also incomplete .
Yep,my existence was messed up in two lifetimes.
Valper had an even worse reaction than me. The moment he realized my... issue, he had clicked, his brow furrowed, punched the wall repeatedly and proceeded mutter a long string of profanities which I couldn't make out, but I was able to make out a " dammit, he's a victim of Azazel's tinkering, damn that governor to the lowest pits of hell!" I didn't know who Azazel was, but I recognized the rage that bubbled within me the moment I heard his name was not my own. I remembered what Sister Pricilla had said to father Valper back when I was just three weeks old. She'd said something about me having a sentient sacred gear within me. That wasn't an abnormal occurrence. Some of the top tier sacred gears ( turns out they have a ranking for these things) having divine beings such as dragons sealed within them.
That episode back then should have put me down in the dumps because, the moment they had explained what sacred gears were, I had been hoping to use mine to get out of here But I found out that not only was mine artificial, a poor copy of the original but also incomplete. Instead of feeling disappointed, I felt rejuvenated, because now I had a targeted goal.
At first, I just wanted to, somehow, manipulate Holy energy, but now I had been given another harder but much more rewarding alternative.
Which was why I was meditating. Father Valper theorized that the Holy factor was located in the Penial gland, which is some...organ within the brain. It's the subject of good will, good, happy, joyful thoughts, hence it's location in the brain. Meaning, as much as the body needed to be strong enough to harness this light attribute, ones mental capacity needed to be able to harness it in the first place in order to 'channel' it.
This was totally different to my previous life where the divine power within me made up half of my DNA helix, so I had to adapt to this new form, and if there's one thing I was good at was adapting to situations. I had to be careful with what I was doing, because, just as the holy factor was a product of good thoughts, the opposite was true. The moment I was able discern the Holy power within the air, I recognized the presence of its darker side, demonic power. I couldn't feel it, but i knew all I needed was a shift in thought and voila, there it was. I didn't want that, because if there was one thing I had in abundance was terrible thoughts. Kind of a given when I've literally been through hell.
So there I sat, inside a cold dark dungeon, with my eyes closed and hands on my lap, replaying every happy thought from my previous life. Trip's to Montauk, my birthdays, whenever I finished a school year without getting into trouble ( rarer than a blue moon) the day Poseidon first hugged me, the night I kissed Annabeth underwater, just to name a few. A smile made it's way to my face when I felt the familiar jolly feeling warming my body, originating from the center of my head and traveling through my nervous system, making my cells thrum. All my senses shifted, my skin becoming sensitive to the subtle changes in the atmosphere, my nose able to pick up different particles better, my ears distinguishing the sounds and when I opened my eyes, I could see it. Holy power, like an ocean of colorless particles just floating within space.
I focused my vision, peering deeper as I observed them. It wasn't just shifting aimlessly. It was doing what it did from the beginning, creating. Each particle had atom, a chemical of life within it, oxygen, hydrogen , carbon and others had a proton within it, like a nucleus ( don't ask when I got so smart. There's only so much one can endure before the onslaught of Valper's lectures actually start sinking into your head). From time to time, the shell of Holy particle would burst and give out a chemical or a proton. I took a deep breath, willing the light attribute within me to flow faster through my nerves, then focused on the Holy power at the farthest end of the dungeon and willed it to come to me.
Just like how cold water in a glass draws moisture from the atmosphere, the same principle applied here, only this time, the glass was alive and it was doing the attraction through sheer force of will.
Seconds ticked by without any change, which then shifted to minutes then to a complete hour. Please, round of applause to me for my increased levels of patience, thank you, thank you.
One and a half hour later, something finally happened. A teeny tiny particle finally started making its way towards me, slowly, very slowly. I pushed down the annoyance brewing within me, steeling my facial features and continued concentrating. With my increased visual perception, I could see it finally reach the center of my palm and settle there. The sense of accomplishment made a wider smile grow on my face and took to continuing with what I was doing with renewed vigour.
Two more hours had me staring at a colorless sphere the size of a marble that held a nucleus of light, half it's size within it, floating at the center of my palm. By this time, despite the cold temperatures of the dungeon I was in, my whole body was drenched in sweat.
With a deep breath, I willed the condensed holy Power to sleep into my skin watching as the light dispersed, diffusing into the air once the shall that held it was removed. I couldn't describe what it felt to have pure divine power absorbed into my body, but I was familiar with the rush of energy I felt. Just like being in the ocean. My cells thrummed vigorously and I let myself get used to the figurative swell of my body with the sacred energy.
After a minute of effectively channeling the power to the center of my light attribute, I sunk into myself. How does one sink into himself, you ask?
Oh, that's pretty simple. As a demigod, like all the rest of my half divine comrades, I possessed the ability to leave my body, usually when I was asleep. In a dreamlike state, my consciousness would float around my body and fly around witnessing things that would later rattle me to my core. I applied the opposite here. Instead of my consciousness seeping out, I willed it, basically myself, to sink into my subconscious.
After eight months of constant work, the first step of my modified plan was finally complete. I could draw in Holy power. And now, I was immediately moving onto phase two.
When I opened my eyes, I was in a vast space of nothingness, which unlike the implied imagery, was not empty. In what I could describe as the center of the space, was an orb of glowing blue light surrounded by rings of holy Power, but unlike the sacred energy I'd just pulled from outside, this one just floated around aimlessly.
I recognized the orb of royal blue light at first glance. The way the energy shimmered, the way fragments of it broke off just to flow back to another point in the sphere, like coronal loops. I recognized the beastly aura that it radiated.
This was my sacred gear.
I could largely deduce why it was incomplete. Sacred gears were made by God, but unlike the Holy power in the atmosphere, the one surrounding the sphere lacked purpose. Azazel, even though I didn't know who he was, for some reason, I could tell he was an asshole. He made the blue prints for a sacred gear, (because I could tell just how the Holy power was supposed to shape the mass of sentient energy just by looking at it), but left it there either because he lacked the motivation to continue or because he was just that lazy...or maybe the mass of power I was looking at resisted him.
It was sentient after all.
Testing out this theory, I willed the Holy power I had absorbed to guide the aimless one surrounding the sphere. As the combined Holy power approached, I was met with a stout form of resistance, and the familiar rage I felt once before washed over me, making a drop of perspiration fall from my brow.
Whatever this was within me, it didn't want to be messed with. I got the feeling that it wasn't a willing participant when being sealed within the sacred gear, hence the rage. But that in itself gave me something to work with. Since it didn't want to be held here, it was constantly trying to break free, which I could tell was the reason for the spontaneous loops. I realized that even though the Holy power around the sphere wasn't doing anything to finish the form it was intended to take, it also kept it from breaking out. Whatever was within the sphere kept sending it's power out, looking for a weakness within the circumference of Holy power.
It didn't want to be influenced by the Holy power, but it wanted to escape it. I smiled as an idea formed. I pulled Holy energy from my mind and together with the one I'd absorbed, I let it all coalesce around the sphere. Frustration flowed out towards me when I did that, making my smile grow wider.
When all my preparations were complete, I waited. For an inconceivable amount of time, the being within the sacred gear and I had a stare down. My patience eventually bore fruit. An arc of energy, wider than the ones that were fired previously, broke of from the sphere headed to a section of the Holy circumference I had left less concentrated on purpose. Immediately, I amassed Holy power from the circumference to that point, and just before the energy could loop back, I willed the Holy power to lash out. The two energies fought each other, one wanting to go back ,one wanting to pull in.
A frantic tug of war ensued, the two powers battling for dominance. I could feel mental fatigue catch quickly up with me but I held on, smiling all the while. I was fighting a losing battle, but I stubbornly held on.
Eventually, the being within won and I let go, letting the loop flow back into the sphere but with the strand of holy Power still attached.
As expected, a second later, the sphere radiated confusion , then barely conceivable rage as the strand of holy Power pulled the rest of it's brethren along with it. The being within tried to loosen the hold but couldn't. Like in a tug of war, when one side suddenly gives out, the opponent too easily pulls him to his side with no way of stopping the pull until both fall down. Same here.
The Holy power flooded within the sphere, since it was not longer being repelled and immediately began following the paths left behind by the blue print now that it was finally allowed to do it's work.
Though a little part of me did feel bad about manipulating whatever was within the sphere, the larger part of me allowed the victorious laugh that I had been holding back to escape since phase two of my plan was on its way to being complete.
My incomplete sacred gear was on its way to being complete. Though I couldn't tell what It was supposed to be once it was done, and while it wasn't my main goal to finish making it in the first place, I couldn't help but cackle at the added bonus.
Before I could loose myself to the giddiness, I immediately got to working on what I had originally intended. I blocked some of the pathways which the holy Power was taking, pulling at the mixture of royal energy and holy power to form a separate path from the one it was supposed to take. While the original view wasn't changed, the focus was shifted a little bit. With that idea, I tried to get the Holy power to shape the energy to what I intended it to look like ...only for it to revert back to floating aimlessly. The giddiness was immediately erased and frustration and impatience took hold.
I tried visualizing as clear as possible how Riptide used to look like, it's weight in my hand, it's arcs as it sliced monsters apart, but nothing changed. The power continued shifting without purpose. Smugness washed over me, originating from within the now changing sphere. Though I couldn't hear it, I knew the being within was laughing at me. It was infuriating, especially when I realized this was what it must have felt back when I was laughing at it few minutes ago.
I tried to purge the thoughts of just how easy it was for me to slice that thing, whatever it was, with a sword in my hand. Mitchell's footwork technique came to mind, and I could almost see the imaginary blade sinking within the core of the sphere...
That thought process made me pause. I was good at using a sword back in my previous life because the sword I had suited the kind of fighting style I was taught. Riptide's form was made for unorthodox swordsmanship, in that it was more suitable for hacking than stabbing. It's leaf shaped structure aided in the fact that more weight was concentrated at the front than in the middle to facilitate it's function.
And with that, I realized the problem here. My past and current experiences were clashing with each other. In this life, I was introduced to a more detailed way for a swordsman. Mitchell thoroughly and painfully walked me through the many different techniques and footworks that were available, opening my eyes to an entirely new world of swordsmanship. I realized that in my past life I was good at only one style of fighting. It was Like being taught only a single subject in school and expecting the pass all of the exams.
Closing my eyes, I replayed the many techniques Mitchell had taught me, the footwork, the swings and the stabs I had been introduced to and every battle I had fought in my previous life, the movement of my muscles, the strength and speed exerted whenever I held and swung the blade ,letting the two experiences guide the Holy power in the way it should go. I was better at swinging than I was at stabbing since I had more experience with it, but at the end of the day, I had a vivid idea of both. Trying to forge a new blade using only experiences from my previous life wasn't enough. The Holy power didn't have a clear picture on what to work on. But now, it did since it immediately started moving in a designated path, shaping and curving the sphere of royal blue energy in accordance with the blue prints.
And with that, the smile returned with full force before I opened my eyes to the outside world. Without even meaning to, I started laughing. Despite the exhaustion I felt, I laughed till my lungs wheezed for air.
Today, I made a huge step in getting the answers that had been plaguing me since my rebirth. I was closer to finding out what happened to everyone, to my friends after I died.
I didn't know when I fell asleep, but I knew I still had that smile on my face when Mitchell came to bang to door. Pretty sure it made him extra pissed that I was in a good mood, but what did I care?
Everything was going according to plan.