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Crystal had always been looked down upon for being the daughter of a minor goddess. Her mother, Khione, was, to put it simply, an ice-cold bitch. The woman had a thing for freezing demigods as statues that serve her orders, forever entombing those she liked the look of in ice. She hadn’t done it to any demigods from Camp Half-blood recently, at least none that word reached Camp. Still, that reputation for being a cruel and sadistic goddess was slightly false…at least when it came to her children. There was a reason some countries called winter ‘mother.’ The snow embraced and covered much. Frost was also her domain, and that protected plants from the cold, like a blanket. Khione lived up in Quebec, with the spirit of the North Wind. How her grandfather was called a spirit when he was literally a force of nature. The North Wind, of course, gave birth to Winter, or at least the Goddess of such.
In Ancient Greece, there wasn’t much snow, if any, even in the winter, unless in the mountains. So, of course, the snow goddess Khione was a goddess of relatively low influence further south. However, Manhattan was in New York, a state that got very cold in the winter, and even outside of it for much of the year. Therefore, Crystal’s power in her home range was actually quite powerful. The cold water nearby made it even easier to call up winter storms. Being a demigod, Crystal couldn’t make the whole state into an icy tundra, but she could very easily create a blizzard around her, much like Percy’s hurricane, with hurricane-force winds. Crystal could also form ice daggers and weapons by simply manipulating the ice and snow she wielded.
Camp Halfblood, being in the North and on the water, would greatly benefit its chances of survival. Between her, Percy, and hopefully Nico and Thalia, there were a few powerhouses within their army.
Crystal had been approached by agents of Kronos when visiting Manhattan. They hadn’t found her father’s home, thankfully, because she had refused. Luke had been very charismatic and good at swaying demigods to his side, but he forgot the basic fact that the Titans, Kronos especially, viewed mortals as cockroaches to crush, not amusing things to perhaps interbreed with or bless as the gods viewed them. Of course, both the gods and the Titans did not hesitate to use demigods, but the Gods at least had some connection to the mortal world, having sired their demigod children there. Kronos had no such emotional connection.
Crystal probably had better luck with contacting her mother. Her mother was absent from New York, but Khione had visited Crystal to teach her to snow travel. It was similar to shadow-travel, but a lot less exhausting and limited. She could pop up in any place with water vapor, using a little bit of energy to cool the air at her destination as she approached, and reforming in the cold.
Between the ‘minor’ goddess of snow not being closely watched and termed unimportant to keep tabs on, and with Crystal’s ability to snow travel, which was basically teleporting, Crystal was able to visit her mother often enough to learn a few tricks and gain enough favor for a few gifts.
One of the gifts she had been given was a book on all the things Khione had discovered to do with snow. Khione didn’t have many demigod children, but she was decently good at estimating if an ability was too power-intensive for a demigod to perform.
Crystal was not close to Percy, nor was she the favorite of maniacs like Tantulus, as Clarrise was in the year of the quest for the Golden Fleece. Therefore, Crystal did not go on any of the quests that had been leading up to the battle against Kronos.
Crystal wasn’t stupid. To take down the gods, one needed to tear down their seats of power, at Olympus. Crystal was certain that between Zeus, Lord of the Sky, and Hephaestus, God of inventors and the forge, the Olympians would be able to protect Olympus from skyward attacks. That left the Empire State Building as the likely target of attack. Crystal also knew that the gods, aside from Lady Artemis, didn’t get involved with much on Earth besides sleeping around. Therefore, an attack on the Empire State Building would likely be pawned off on the demigods, assuming the Gods were held up elsewhere.
Crystal also knew that ever since Percy Jackson had blown up Mt. St. Helens, the door to the prison of Typhon had likely blown open, with only time telling how long he would continue to slumber. She had told Chiron, who had ‘assured’ her that the Gods would take care of the problem. Whether that meant they would recreate the prison around the slumbering Father of all Monsters, or they would fight him as he crossed the United States on the side of the Titans, or at least the side for the downfall of Olympus.
The gods would have the perfect excuse to avoid some of their number’s grandfather. Typhoon was definitely a godly problem. Puny Titans? That took decades of war by the gods to put down the first time? Demigods could take care of them.
Unfortunately, Percy Jackson’s birthday was in the middle of August, meaning the eldest demigod child of the big three would turn 16 and have a choice to make to ‘preserve or raze’ Olympus. It was a small leap from there to think the final battle with the Titans would be approaching Percy’s birthday, smack dab in the middle of summer. In Manhattan, the average temperature was a high of 85 and a low of 68, with the water being about 72 degrees Fahrenheight. That was a good deal above freezing.
She had learned that the warmer the air, up to about 92 degrees, the easier it was for her to freeze water. Sort of counterintuitive, however, the act of freezing was taking energy from the water, in turn, powering Crystal and refilling her energy reserves. Forming ice was slower for her, but the energy boost meant she could last far longer. 68 to 85 was the perfect range for her, not so hot that it took an age to freeze the water vapor or water around the island, but not so cold that she gained no energy by leeching it from the air. Percy got more energy from water and, therefore, hadn’t experimented with leeching the released energy when he turned vapor to liquid. Crystal would have taught him, but, despite being an overall friendly guy, he was a bit of a distrustful loner, only being true friends with Annabeth and Grover. Before the betrayal, Luke had been among that number. Percy also was only at camp in the summer, and usually had only a few days to a week within the camp borders, with all the quest issues he had then being occupied with celebrations and his friends the rest of the summer. She had tried to approach him, but as she said, there was little opportunity. This most recent summer, the one of the likely Titan invasion and rising tensions, Percy had been out of camp hanging out with his mortal friend Rachel Dare, giving Crystal even less opportunity.
Crystal could navigate the mortal world, but she had no idea where Percy would go beyond the beach as a prominent location. She didn’t know his mother’s address either, and he frankly didn’t visit her nearly as much as he should have, so it could be weeks before he actually visited her. He didn’t have a phone, as those were beacons for monsters when used by demigods.
So, yeah. Percy hadn’t learned how to further power himself with the energy his actions were releasing. He instead used his own energy to fuel the winds of his hurricanes. He was such a powerhouse; he could do pretty well just off of his own energy, but he would have been able to last so much longer if she could have just reached him. She was getting desperate enough to try an Iris call, despite not knowing if he was in the middle of a class, monster fight, or in front of mortals, and hope the mist covered him talking to the air.
Screw it! She was going to try to Iris call him.
Finding a copse of trees where she could get some semblance of privacy - living in the Hermes cabin because there was no cabin for minor gods meant privacy was near impossible indoors - she formed a temporary ice cabin.
Crystal refined one of the windows into a prism to create a rainbow and pulled out a drachma.
“Iris, Goddess of Rainbows, accept my offering.” Crystal threw the drachma where it disappeared into the rainbow.
“Percy Jackson, location unknown.”
There was a shimmer of light, and Percy’s image faded into view, looking confused at seeing my face instead of someone he was, well, friends with.
“Percy. We need to talk. I am Crystal, from Camp Halfblood. I’ve been trying to approach you since your third summer.”
“What? Why?”
“I’m getting to that. We have similar abilities. I can create blizzards, which often come with strong winds that I can turn into hurricane force. That also means I manipulate water, just mainly in its solid phase. I discovered a way to basically force the storm to power itself after it is created. You should be able to do the same thing with practice.”
His face was serious. “How?”
“When changing something from gas to liquid or water vapor to water to ice, energy is released as the bonds form and the molecules slow their movement. That energy is usually dissipated or wasted in the form of slightly warmer air, but people such as us can actually capture that energy and turn it towards powering the storm further, by creating wind or even refreshing our own energy reserves. It’s similar to how water revitalizes you, but much more efficient.
I’d be able to teach you, but you’d need to come to camp for at least three weeks to learn how to do it.”
“There are only four weeks until my birthday, when I might die. How much of an advantage would this energy absorbing give me?”
“Before I learned how to do this, I could power a blizzard maybe two hours. With the trick, I can power it for a week straight, without sleeping.”
His eyes widened. “So, can you get back to camp for three weeks?” I prodded.
“I’d have to make my excuses with Rachel and let my mom know I won’t be spending perhaps the non-fighting days of my life with her.”
“But if you master the trick, then you would be able to fight longer, able to protect more people, and be able to sustain your energy much longer in the coming war, maybe even survive.”
“But the prophecy says-”
“The prophecy says a child of the eldest gods will make the choice, but then it mentions a Hero’s soul will be reaped, on a new line. That does not mean the child of the eldest gods would be the hero who dies. Prophecies are not linear narratives, but disguised pieces of a changing story.”
Slowly, light seemed to seep into his sea-green eyes. Poor guy. He had been convinced he was doomed to die at the end of it all, not necessarily even saving all his friends.
“How do you understand those riddles?” he asked, his eyes laughing.
“I’m good at the English language. I’m also planning on majoring in Creative Writing if I make it to college and through this war against the Titans, and whoever’s funding them.”
“Okay. Okay..Wait! Funding them?! Wouldn’t the Titans be funding themselves?”
“No. They’ve been imprisoned, asleep, or in pieces. They haven’t had the ability to build up the kind of money it would take to fund a war. That leaves the question of who is funding their movement, what their motivations are, and how they’ve remained hidden. Don’t you recall that Luke’s flagship was a high-quality cruise ship? Those things are darn expensive.”
He looked thoughtful, the cogs slowly turning in his brain. Then he sighed. “The Titans are only the tip of the iceberg, then. And here I’d hoped to retire from this shit at the age of 16 and live my life.”
“Yeah. Good luck with that. I’ll see you in three days at the latest?”
“Yeah.” He smirked. “I’ll see you in two days.”
“Let’s bury your dear old grandfather in ice and snow.”