"All in favor?"
One by one, all of the gods raised their hands, and Percy felt a cool breeze rush through the chamber of the gods. His wish had been granted.
As he turned to walk out, his father called out for an honor guard, and the Cyclopes lined up on either side of his path, creating an aisle. He strode slowly toward them, taking in how different his treatment was now compared to two years prior. He had proven himself. But something was missing.
In a sudden flash of light, a man appeared, holding a girl by her wrists. Down the aisle burst Triton, Percy's godly brother, his captive kicking and screaming as they went. The blood in Percy's veins chilled, and his heart began to pound. He didn't know he still had any adrenaline left to spare.
Triton barged right past Percy and threw the girl onto the ground, then knelt before his father. The gods clutched their weapons amidst thunderous whispers. Behind him, Percy could hear the confused chatter of his friends.
The girl ran frantically to Percy. "Percy, Percy, please, you have to help me! Tell them not to kill me!"
Percy drew his sword and pointed it at her. She stopped in her tracks, just before Hestia's hearth.
"You're alive?" Percy croaked.
Zeus held out his hand, and his master bolt appeared within it. "What is the meaning of this?" he thundered, his voice shaking the already weakened foundation of the mountain.
"Son," Poseidon said, "what is going on?"
Triton rose to his feet. "I have found her," he boasted, his eyes glinting. "At long last. The Oceanid who for so long deceived us. The attempted weapon of the Sirens. I have delivered to you my greatest catch."
The gods shared furtive glances with one another. Percy resisted the urge to turn and look at Athena, instead keeping his gaze locked on the monster's eyes. She looked like a wild animal, cornered and desperate.
Zeus narrowed his eyes. "So, this is the titaness who is rumored to harbor the ability to topple Mount Olympus."
Triton nodded fervently. "I found her invading my father's palace the instant that he left to face Typhon."
"She sought to be reunited with her father after all," Poseidon surmised.
She looked around wildly at the faces of the Olympians glaring down at her, sizing her up. "No, no! I went to stop him! It's not true–none of it is true–"
"My brother, I will admit, sacrificed a great deal to help us achieve this victory today," Zeus announced, the authority of his voice vibrating through the marble and electrifying Percy's spine. "Now, it seems I have an opportunity to make us even and eliminate a threat to his kingdom."
"It's hardly making us even if neutralizing the threat serves your own interests as well," Poseidon remarked. "And my son delivered her to me to deal with."
"I have awaited this day for two years, brother."
"As have I."
"Wait," Percy blurted, his sword lowering, "you can't kill her!"
"SILENCE!" Zeus roared, shaking the chamber so forcefully that dust rose in the air. "You have done Olympus a great service today, Percy Jackson, but not even you can give me orders. I will not allow any threats to our civilization to remain."
"But–"
"You have already gotten your gift!"
"Remember what caused this conflict," Athena chided softly. "Perhaps taking a moment to reflect will serve us well, here."
"No more waiting," Zeus said, his eyes gleaming. "I will end this now."
Poseidon stood to his feet, conjuring his trident. "No, she is mine to deal with!"
Zeus rose, pointing his master bolt at the girl. "Stand down, brother!"
Helpless and trembling with her back against the fire, the girl turned around, locking eyes with Percy for an almost imperceptible fraction of a second before plunging into the flames and grasping for Luke's sword, Backbiter. Percy felt searing pain begin in his hands and rip throughout his whole body.
The world flashed white.
~.
Percy was at his favorite place in the world when it all turned upside down.
He was walking along a secluded stretch of beach in Great Neck with Callianassa, a nereid who had become an unexpected friend of his, talking about anything and everything. Calli, like all nereids, was ethereally beautiful in the type of way that would normally make Percy forget how to talk, but her beauty was tinged with sickness from the state of the water that she was connected to. Her crown of coral was littered with bottle caps, her flowing white dress was stained with oil, her smooth skin was pallid, and she perpetually suffered from a very concerning wet cough. As she walked along the beach in her human form, Percy couldn't help but think, like he always did, about how frail she looked–and how happy she seemed to get some air.
"Have you told Thalia about the dreams?" she asked, kicking a shell a few feet ahead of her as she trudged along.
"No," he admitted, "I haven't actually told anyone else."
"Not even Annabeth?" she said, stopping to face him. He rubbed the back of his neck and looked sheepishly at her. Behind her, over the Long Island Sound and the Bronx, obscuring the distant Manhattan skyline, the sky was turning orange, and he knew that the sun would soon be setting. He didn't have much longer to confide in her before his mom would want him home.
"I just don't want to tell anyone about it until I figure it out," he said. "I don't even know what to make of it."
She chewed on her lower lip. "But you tell me."
He shrugged, looking down at his feet. "It's just easy to talk to you." Plus, he wouldn't say it out loud, but Calli's world was so far removed from his own that he didn't worry about telling her personal things. Her essence was tied here to the beach. She would never meet the people in his life or witness the things he had to do. In a way, knowing that made him feel safe to confide in her, like she was a locked vault sealed away in a basement somewhere.
She smiled at him, and he felt a warmth flow through his body. That was the other thing–she had a gentleness about her that had a way of putting his mind at ease. It was as if he couldn't keep things in when he was around her.
"I did something insane a few days ago," he admitted, the words pouring out of his mouth before he could think about the consequences. She arched an eyebrow. "I went to see the Oracle."
Calli gasped. "About your dreams?"
"Yeah." Percy rubbed his arm, lost in thought. The second half of summer had been a whirlwind. Thalia had been resurrected from the tree she had been turned into, and their friendship had been tense, to say the least. Percy had gone from the guy from a mysterious prophecy with some significant, earth-shattering destiny to just some secondary, strong-willed kid. He was self-aware enough to know that he hadn't handled the transition with the most grace. But he felt that he could at least take solace in the fact that he wasn't handling the whole situation as poorly as Thalia.
She was slightly older than him, although her exact age was unclear, but she had to be younger than sixteen. Despite her youth, however, she had a proclivity to gin, and she often made Percy complicit in her rule-breaking indulgence. He wasn't a drinker; growing up with an alcoholic will give you strong feelings about drinking one way or the other, and he wasn't interested in heading down that road, but Thalia insisted that he drink with her at least a little bit every time she confided in him, and he usually felt like he had no choice.
That was around the same time he started having strange dreams. They felt almost surreal in nature: multiple voices inside his head, swirling emotions that overlapped and felt as if they came from inside and outside of him at the same time, rapidly changing scenery on land and under the sea. But most perplexing was the recurring character in these dreams: a girl, about his age, whose appearance was as transient as the waves. Sometimes she looked like a stranger with long, wavy black hair and piercing green eyes, almost as if they were related, but other times she took on the appearance of people he knew–Annabeth, Thalia, Tyson, even Calli–and also people he didn't know. They didn't speak much in his dreams–not for lack of trying, but it was so hard to communicate to her through all the noise in his head and the constantly changing surroundings. When he looked into her eyes, he felt as if she were having the same trouble.
He had chalked up these weird dreams to the alcohol. Of course, demigod dreams were often significant and gave important glimpses into events, past, present, or future, but these felt different. Too chaotic, too incomprehensible. He was trying his best to ignore them, but on the second to last day of camp's summer session, they became more intense. He saw the girl, now underwater, chained to the ocean floor. Her top half was still humanoid, but scaly, and her teeth were sharp and pointed. Her bottom half looked like a mermaid's tail. She looked so different, but he knew somehow that it was the same person. She was struggling against her shackles, pulling and biting at them to no avail. She threw her head back and wailed his name, the sound sending shards of ice down his spine. With a sizzle of energy, electric currents rippled up her chains and through her body, arcing from her to the room around her, bouncing off the walls and illuminating the whole horrific scene. Suddenly, the dream had shifted, and he was bound to the ocean floor himself, alone, surrounded by Greek fire, the green flames inching ever closer to him.
Behind him, an unfamiliar man's voice had sneered, "You can't escape punishment that easily, half-blood."
Having awoken in a sweat, shaking and confused, Percy felt that he could no longer pretend that these dreams didn't have meaning. But he was hopelessly at a loss as to what that meaning was. He decided that he would have to take matters into his own hands, so on the last day of camp, he had secretly snuck up to the attic of the Big House to seek the Oracle for some answers. And that cold-blooded ghost of a woman had delivered.
Standing here now, with Calli, it almost seemed far away–camp, his dreams, his demigod life. Part of him wished he could live in this feeling forever and just escape it all. Picking up a rock, he threw it at the water and watched it skip three times before sinking.
"A twin of fate you will timely meet," he began, staring at the horizon. "And tragedies suffer 'ere fate is complete. An admission of love is the curse and the cure. The reminder etched in your skin will endure. The secrets that bind you shall only dissolve by calamitous collapse and rival's resolve. Help 'til the end, and find a blessed path; refuse, and death cannot spare you from wrath."
He stared at the rhythmic push and pull of the water, glittering in the setting sun. Calli was silent for a long time, save for the occasional cough.
"A twin of fate," she mused softly. "An admission of love."
"I don't know what it means," he admitted. "I have to assume that maybe the girl from my dreams is this twin of fate, but I don't know when or how I'm supposed to meet her. Or what to do until then."
She walked to his side, arms crossed, deep in thought. "Maybe you've already met this twin," she said. "Prophecies can be tricky."
His brow furrowed. "Someone like Thalia, maybe? She and I have both been rumored to have the same fate, some tragic prophecy. It would kind of make sense."
Calli bit her lip again. "Maybe."
He looked out into the water, frustrated. He wished, just for once, things could be simple. He wished he could understand all the things that the Fates had planned for his life that he wasn't allowed to know.
Calli touched his arm lightly. "Put that out of your mind for now," she cooed. "There's no point in driving yourself crazy with what it could all mean. Today is supposed to be a happy day."
Percy scoffed. His birthday didn't feel very happy, even with the weight of dreading turning sixteen having been lifted.
"How old are you turning, again?"
He mustered a small grin and began walking along the beach again, her at his side. She was trying so hard to make him feel better; he felt he should at least pretend to be enjoying himself. "Fourteen."
"Almost adulthood, back in the old times."
He laughed, hoping it didn't sound as bitter as he felt. "I don't really feel like I'm almost an adult."
She laughed too. "Well, maybe that's why things have changed."
He smiled, genuinely this time, and let himself be calmed by her presence. He hadn't known Calli for very long, but she seemed like one of the most caring and understanding people he had ever met. As they walked, he listened to her talk about how the beach had changed over the years, her longing for the return of a clean environment, her hopes for the future. She kicked shells idly as she went. At one point, she found an aluminum can and went on a ten-minute rant about selfishness and how pollution was a failure of community. She ripped the can into strips as they continued walking, braiding those strips into a sharp tin bracelet, which she cheekily presented to Percy as a present.
Percy eventually looked up at the sky and sighed. It was getting dark, and he probably should have already left by now. Calli, as if reading his mind, pouted.
"Do you really have to go already?" she asked. He felt a pang of sadness for her. For him, the beach was a fun place to temporarily escape to, work out his problems, and then leave. For her, it was a place of sickness and loneliness, and in many ways, her prison. She couldn't leave, and he couldn't stay.
"Maybe a few more minutes. Then we should head back," he relented.
She slipped her hand in the crook of his arm and gave a slight squeeze. The two ambered along slowly in silence, Percy mulling over how he could possibly improve her life here, somehow. His musings were interrupted by quiet muttering.
He looked around him. There seemed to be no one else besides the two of them on the beach. Calli, puzzled, looked around too.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Do you hear that?" He paused to listen. The muttering was still there, although it seemed far off, but also as if it were coming from inside his own skull at the same time. Cautiously, he resumed walking, his hand fluttering down to his pocket where Riptide was kept. Calli followed, glancing around nervously.
"It's getting louder," he said, picking up the pace. The muttering increased in volume as he advanced, and he could hear individual words now, but none of it made sense. It was in some foreign language, but not an ancient one, as far as he could tell. His heart pounded as he followed the sound.
Yet on some level, he could not help but feel that he wasn't actually following a sound. The talking still seemed to come from within his own mind, even though it was getting louder. He glanced behind him at Calli, who was regarding him warily. His stomach turned as he realized that she couldn't hear what he was hearing.
He then felt a strange sensation he could barely describe–a heart begin to race, but it was not his own. He felt fear wash over skin, as if he were vividly imagining the feeling happening to someone else. A step further, and he was assailed with a vision he could not comprehend: sand dunes, from the point of view of one lying down between them, and dragging a tongue across cracked lips, and a gnawing hunger. He cried out and stumbled backward. The vision faded, but did not completely disappear from his mind's eye. But he could still see from his own point of view unimpeded.
He bent over and clutched his head. What is happening? he thought.
"Percy!" Calli cried, rushing to him and putting her arm around him. "Are you alright? What's wrong?"
"Someone…someone…" he muttered, bewildered. The person whose point of view he could see in his head sat up, and he could tell that they sensed him as well. What's more, he could tell that this person heard and understood him. He felt something powerful draw him toward the dunes, as if he needed to be reunited with something he had never known.
He staggered toward the dunes, feeling as if walking were suddenly alien to him because he could sense this other person's awareness of his movements. Whoever it was, they moved to crouch behind the sand and braced themself, preparing for a confrontation. He felt the fear and uncertainty they felt mixed with his own, compounding it, even. It reminded him of his empathy link with Grover, a little bit, but this was impossibly more intense.
He reached the dunes, hearing the words now as if they were in conversation. He glanced at Calli, following a few steps back, who seemed very worried. He raised an eyebrow at her. She shook her head. Why couldn't she hear it?
Slowly, he walked around the first dune, and he felt as if an electric current had run through his body. It was the girl from his dreams, crouched on the ground, looking up at him with hungry, calculating eyes.
"Hello," he said cautiously, then recoiled. He heard his voice echo through his own head, as if hearing it from someone else's point of view.
No, not just anyone's. Hers.
She recoiled as well, bringing her hands to her ears, then dropping them almost immediately. Slowly, shakily, she rose to her feet, and she looked him up and down as if she were having an epiphany.
"Hello," she said slowly, in a Russian accent. "I am Anastasia."