Khione! Eirene struggled to look up, her chest still heaving. The goddess of snow; She squinted at her; having a hard time seeing the goddess with the influx of snow that was pouring in.
But what was she doing here?
The temperature dropped more as the snow increased, along with the sky becoming increasingly clouded. Andrew rose up and started to approach the goddess, yelling over the roar of the snow. "What do you want?"
The goddess smiled, though the icy glare in her eyes remained. "Repeating myself is tedious. I want the girl, now."
"You can't have her!" Connor yelled.
"I never said you had a choice in it." Khione raised her slender hand, flicking one finger to the side. Connor followed suit, his body flying through the snow and landed with a thud, several feet away. Khione locked eyes with Andrew, who refused to cower under her stare. "Shall I kill you too?"
Connor! Eirene tried to look for where he'd landed, though the snow storm had become so severe it was impossible.
Andrew raised his sword, prepared to fight. He knew it was futile to do so against a goddess of her caliber, but he refused to be stricken down on his knees. "If you want her, you'll have to go through me first."
Khione just stared, her brows rising. "You're a courageous one, fool." Andrew braced himself as she started to raise her hands, but the goddess stopped when she saw Eirene lunging forward. With much struggle, Eirene was able to slightly rise from the ground, gaining enough strength to jolt forward, covering Andrew.
"Eirene!" He rushed to hold her upright as she started to collapse. Her face was starting to turn blue, and he could hear her gagged breaths. "Stop it!" Andrew screamed, fear rising in him as her watched Eirene's eyes flutter closed. "You're killing her, she can't breathe!" He saw no way he could escape this. No possible plan or strategy could get them out of this alive, not with Eirene so weak. Both he and Connor were demigods whose powers weren't physical, but mental. And Connor was unconscious somewhere in the snow, if he hadn't been killed by the impact or frozen to death by the snow.
He knew how Khione had been defeated before, but that was due to Leo's fire abilities. The only power Andrew had was the power of wisdom; the power of words. So he prayed to his mother, and began to speak.
"Why do you want Eirene?" His teeth chattered, but he spoke through it. "What good is she to you?"
"She holds the key to something I want," Khione spat. "If I capture her, my wish will be fulfilled."
Why? Why were all these people coming after Eirene? First the gorgon sisters, now Khione…
He had no time to think about that. First, he had to worry about Eirene's lungs and how he was going to get Khione to release them. "Captured alive, or dead? Because she'll be gone soon if you don't stop choking her!"
The goddess contemplated this, but was still hesitant. She was told that Eirene possessed powerful abilities, and she feared that if she gave the girl back her breath, she would use those abilities to defeat her. But… Khione raised her hand; the boy was right. If she died, the three sisters would very upset with her.
She loosened her grip on Eirene's lungs and nose, allowing her enough breath to clear her head, while also lessening the snow storm. Eirene slowly started to stand; color slightly returning to her face.
In the distance, because of the thinning snow, Connor slowly woke up. The cold still shocked him, but he quickly remembered what was happening and stood up. He tried to scope the area around him, but had no idea where Khione had smacked him to. He heaved a sigh, wondering what the hell he was going to do, when the image of Eirene popped into his mind; Eirene on the ground, clutching her chest and trying to breathe.
He didn't know what to do, but he knew he couldn't just stand here. He started walking, yelling out hers and Andrew's name, hoping they could hear him. He spotted a tiny in front of him, and started running. His limbs felt heavy and his head throbbed with signs of a headache, but he did not stop.
Andrew, in the distance, was still trying to coerce Khione into telling him why she wanted Eirene. "Who sent you?"
"People in higher power than you and I,"
What? What did that mean? "Why, what do they want with her?" He gulped and tried a different approach. "Whatever they've promised you, it isn't worth it."
Khione's smile returns, but this time sadder. "I assure you it is. It's the first thing I've been promised that's worth it…"
Andrew didn't want to dwell on what she really meant by that, but instead tried to guess. "Do you mean trying to raise Gaea? Don't you realize it's pointless? She'll be defeated, and in the end, you'll be left alone."
"I don't care about Gaea!" She spat. "I don't care about that miserable old shrew, I've put my alliance with her twice and both times she's let me down! No…this time, I've been promised something that will assure that I will never be left alone. Ever."
Andrew wracked his brain for what she might mean, something that would help him out of this situation. He went through the knowledge he had of her, anything that could possibly help him. He could feel Eirene's hands getting colder, griping onto him less tightly, so he thought quickly. Always overshadowed by her brothers…her father never gives her time of day…she enjoys turning people into ice sculptures for fun…What else was there? Think, Andrew, think… And just then, Eirene looked as if she was about to fall and leaned onto Andrew for support. Her eyes cracked open slightly, and she whispered to him weakly: "A child…"
A child? Yes, a child! He remembered now, the gears in his mind started to move back in place. They studied the stories of the gods in Camp Half-blood, the true stories and the stories they speculated about, because they had no evidence for them to be true. There was one story, he remembered, about Khione. Chiron had described it as a rumor, but he himself wasn't sure whether or not it was true:
Khione, in her younger years, had had an affair with a younger man who has been forbidden to her. The reason why were fuzzy, but nevertheless she ended up having a child for the man, a daughter named Sais. Being born out of a forbidden relationship, she was immediately killed by the fates and sent to Hades, where her soul resides forever.
He looked at her again, her sad smile and eyes hiding a different story. Her voice was laced with more than revenge, it was heartache. It was laced with tireless wanting; the longing of a mother for her daughter. Andrew didn't know whose command Khione was acting through, but if she believed them powerful enough to bring her daughter back from the dead, they must be powerful indeed.
Andrew understood what it felt like for a parent to lose their child. He began to sympathized, ever so slightly, with Khione. "I'm sorry."
Khione's face changed, confused. "Sorry?"
"The fates are cruel, they always have been, and always will be. They were cruel when they cursed us demigods to a short life of endless pursuit, and they were cruel when they took away your daughter all those years ago."
The snow stopped, and Eirene felt the pressure on her body gone.
Farther off in the distance, an idea struck Connor. He stopped running towards the figure when he realized it was the silhouette of the person who'd attacked them earlier: Khione. He knew that neither he nor Andrew could defeat with their current powers, and Eirene was void of a sword and took weak. Connor knew that the only thing known to defeat cold was heat; ergo fire. And conveniently enough, he'd brought a lighter with him. Connor knew that trying to light it in the middle of the storm would be futile, so he searched for something flammable until he saw it—a tree not too far from where he was. Connor began to run again, a new sense of adrenaline helping warm him up in the storm. When he reached the tree, her cupped his hands around the lighter, trying to protect it from as much wind as possible—and lit it.
It struck a small flame, and Connor slowly started to ease it towards the tree branch. It refused to catch on fire.
Connor tried again, but got the same results. He started to fear that they would all perish in Khione's endless storm if he couldn't find a way to defeat her soon, when suddenly the snow stopped. Stopped! Connor couldn't believe it, but he couldn't let his momentarily disbelief delay him. He drew the lighter closer to the tree and watched the spark grow from branch to branch, engulfing the whole tree while melting the snow at its feet, and eventually engulfing another tree in its path. The storm started to pick up again, regaining its previous ferocity. But Connor didn't mind, the fire had grown big enough. In Khione's momentary lost of focus, he watched the fire he'd created grow…and move towards her.
Khione's focus was snapped back into place. The storm returned and Eirene once again felt compressed. The child of Athena had momentarily surprised her, breaking her focus. She couldn't allow that to happen again, less Eirene regain enough power to strike. "You know nothing of the fates and their cruelty."
"What was her name?"
Khione hand started to shake. She hadn't spoken of her, even thought of her name until recently. "Who?"
"Your daughter; the one who was stolen from you," Andrew noticed her face change, become less sinister, and her hand started to shake. The storm was slowly becoming less deadly as she thought more about her daughter.
"Her name was…her name was…" Sais, her name was Sais. Khione allowed herself the memory of her birth… of the first time she held her in her arms and named her. She'd practically fallen at the Three Sister's feet when they approached her with the promise of bringing her daughter back. Khione hadn't thought of her daughter in centuries, locking the memory of Sais deep within her heart. But once the sister's had opened it, Khione could think of nothing more. She looked at Andrew's pitiful stare, his comforting stance, and almost wanted to tell him everything. But she didn't.
Instead, she felt a fury rising deep within at the thought of his petty demigod child trying to compare his suffering to hers. Her focus snapped back into place, and she doubled the strength of the storm and constricted Eirene's airways even more. Her voice rose, and she closed her eyes and started screaming, screaming in pain of the memory.
The cold was too much. Eirene had already passed out next to him, and Andrew felt his body grow numb and eyes heavy. He turned and took one last look at Khione's enraged face, behind her, saw what looked like an alit figure, burning bright orange and red.
And then Andrew passed out.
[Authors Note/: I didn't make up Khione's daughter, I know Sais isn't mentioned in Heroes of Olympus but in Khione's real greek myth there are rumors of a daughter]