Chapter Text
The second Friday of October, I packed an overnight bag and climbed into a strawberry van with my best friends. We made it less than a mile before we had to dispose of some monsters from the depths of Tartarus hanging out at the local park.
You might think I sound a bit desensitized, but as you’ll come to find, hanging around Thalia Grace was an excellent way to practice monster-fighting.
Take those gryphons. Even a few weeks earlier I would have found the thought of fighting a single gryphon daunting, let alone an entire flock (herd?). Instead I unslung my bow and drew an arrow with a beleaguered sigh. Power-leveling, it turned out, wasn’t very flashy. It involved a lot of practice, and a lot of monster dust.
Thalia bent down, ripped out a chunk of grass, and threw it into the air. “Coming from the west.”
“There.” We followed Annabeth’s finger to a gazebo sitting atop a gentle knoll and set off without another word.
I managed to pick off three of them before they overwhelmed me, and I had to roll out of the way of sharp claws. As I came up on one knee a spear point burst through the gryphon’s chest. I shot an arrow at another closing in on Thalia, who casually pulled her spear out of the first and swung it in a wide arc to take out yet another stupid flying panther. A little ways from us Annabeth fought like a robot, precise and deadly strikes flowing into one another with an ease I could only dream of replicating. For a girl who claimed to hate fighting with swords, she was more than competent with one. I’d bet only Percy, Thalia, and Clarisse could beat her in a duel.
Ten minutes later we were stuck in traffic on the Long Island ‘Expressway,’ listening to Hillary Duff like nothing had happened.
This was neither the first nor the last time we found ourselves fighting monsters on our way to camp. Annabeth and Grover had mentioned that Thalia attracted an insane amount of monsters. Only now I knew they had somehow been underselling things. Without some magic courtesy of Chiron (as well as Zeus and Athena, not that they would ever admit it) we never could have been safe on campus.
Campus? I hear you say. Camp? Fighting monsters with Thalia and Annabeth? Whaaaaaat?
Yeah, so remember canon? Throw that stupid shit out the window, because I was fucking shit up left and right, chat.
In my memories of the future Annabeth and Thalia went to a boarding school in Brooklyn. Now we went to a school so preppy, Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way would have called Thalia—yeah, Thalia fucking Grace—a poser. We had to wear those cute little uniforms with blazers and skirts, everyone had to participate in the arts… The school was ninety four acres of greenery (both natural and capitalistic) on the banks of Long Island Sound. Picture The Holdovers or Dead Poets Society, and you’ve got a good idea of what it was like.
Chiron had a few reasons to send us there. For one, we were much closer to Camp Half-Blood, which meant we could train more often than we would if we had to deal with the Long Island ‘Expressway’ (yes I have feelings about it!). It also had several demigods on as staff, including the principal, a daughter of Dionysus who was just as dry as her father (that one was good chat), but far more kind than her lecherous curmudgeon of a father.
I wondered why the Greeks never considered building a school for demigods at Camp Half-Blood, but my thoughts quickly fell into a logistical nightmare full of interesting moral quandaries. Unless they built it right next to the cabins, they’d need to chop down a lot of trees to make enough room. Was deforestation a murder? I didn’t know, and decided I didn’t care to ponder the question further. Chat, I had far more concerning issues. Like the hormones turning my adorable little brother into a moody gremlin child.
I really should have seen it coming. While me, Thalia, and Annabeth were having our cozy fall northeast boarding school movie era, Percy was stuck at the middle school a few blocks from our apartment. At first he was relieved I was going away. Do keep in mind my brother was fourteen; he may have loved me, but he was an icky boy—and icky boys at fourteen do not want to be best friends with their sisters. Even when their sisters are girlbosses who save their ass on quests.
I alternated weekends between camp and home, so tracking Percy’s emotions was fairly straightforward. My first weekend home went great. We skateboarded at the local park, ate pizza and listened to a street performance for a while, then went home and watched a movie with Mom.
My second weekend sucked ass. I made the mistake of regaling the dinner table with the story of how me and the Stoll twins put shaving cream in Thalia and Annabeth’s pillows. It was only when I finished that I remembered I hadn't told Percy I was going to camp. He glowered at his plate like his meatloaf told him he was destined to marry a Young Republican.
I knew better than to embarrass him in front of Mom, so I let him stew until he stomped up to his loft to play video games. I knocked on his door to make sure he was decent (fourteen year old boy!) and slipped inside. I had to work hard not to wrinkle my nose, though I couldn’t help but look pointedly at the dirty underwear sitting by the door. He didn’t dignify my attempt with a response.
I sat with my back to his bed and watched as he decimated the Patriots—a miracle the Jets could only achieve in a video game. “I’m sure Argus would pick you up,” I said eventually.
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
I let out a long breath. “I’m sorry. I should have asked you sooner.”
“Nothing to be sorry for,” Percy replied gruffly, buttons mashing.
I shook my head. I’m sure he could have stomached the situation if only Annabeth went to my school. She was a daughter of Athena, and Percy (though he would never admit it aloud) loved that Annabeth was so much smarter than him.
But me? His sister? That was an entirely different situation. Then to find out that Thalia was secretly quite gifted, and well… He had every right to be pissed off. Knowing we were training at camp and he wasn’t just added insult to injury, like George R.R. Martin announcing yet another project that isn’t named The Winds of Winter.
I knew what Percy was thinking: Thalia was older and more experienced, the daughter of the King of the Gods. Now she was going to one of the nicest schools in the entire country and getting additional lessons with Chiron. How could Percy not think he was being passed over? Replaced?
I had done what I could, though. I offered an invitation and apologized. If he wanted to be a fourteen year old boy about it, that was his choice.
And… Well… I found myself conflicted.
Because chat? Thalia was really fucking cool.
I’d be lying if I said she wasn’t the de facto leader of our little trio. It wasn’t anything obvious; Annabeth spent most of her time studying, I was playing Puck in our school’s rendition of Midsummer’s Night Dream (hell yeah, fuckers, I was good enough to warrant a gender swap!), and Thalia had somehow formed a punk band with the preps, and was often sneaking to the band room to practice with them.
But there were moments where it was impossible to ignore. When Thalia decided to confront one of the popular girls in our grade for bullying an adorable little geek named Lily, Annabeth and I stood on either side of her with our arms crossed. We snuck out to buy junk food during midterms when she asked us to. And when she realized her roommate was a (and I quote) ‘racist little pig-tailed bitch,’ she became our third roommate.
Which was an illuminating experience, to say the least.
See, having Annabeth as a roommate was an ordeal in itself. Somewhere along the way I had forgotten that she was also ADHD, too. Her side of our dorm room was a warzone of writing utensils, paper mâché buildings, and granola bar wrappers. I joked once that I would send a photo of the mess to Percy, and she gave me the cold shoulder for a week. After that, I just moved her chaos to her side of the room when it got to be too much.
Our decorations said all you needed to know about the room’s occupants. While Annabeth’s side was covered in framed photographs of architectural and historical wonders and a whole bunch of other nerdy shit, my walls were plastered in the artwork of my half-siblings and posters of Nirvana, Mazzy Star, and most recently, Paramore. While her bedding was grey and white, mine was pink, illuminated by the fairy lights I had strung up along my wall.
What we did have in common were the polaroids. Over the summer Connor and Travis ‘borrowed’ some cameras on one of our trips to the city, so all July and August we ran around like white girls on vacation. Our walls were subsequently covered in poorly shot photographs of our friends at camp.
Adding Thalia to the mix was like dropping a shot of whisky into a bitter mug of coffee—bold and dangerous. Within a day of her decision her clothes were spread out across both of our dressers, the bottom of my bed had been monopolized by her guitar and her spear, and the cramped little bathroom we shared with the girls next door grew so crowded Thalia’s toiletries had to be placed on top of the mirror.
None of us even thought of complaining, though. Thalia was just that cool. She procured a beanbag chair from gods-knows-where, and somehow managed to convince our RA, a junior in high school who was very stressed about her college applications, from snitching on us. She also ‘knew a guy’ at a Blockbuster in the Bronx who was constantly shipping us movies to watch.
More than that, though, Thalia was there for us. When Annabeth gave a presentation on her independent architecture project, Thalia whooped so loudly a tiny boy screamed in fear. Though she claimed to hate the sport, she cheered me and Annabeth on during my soccer tryouts, and weeks before our first game made a gigantic sign with our faces on it.
In other words–Thalia was that bitch. A goth had become queen of the preps, and nobody saw fit to question it.
The same was true at camp. The moment Thalia stepped across the boundary the energy of the entire valley seemed to shift. She made Connor and Travis actually look forward to training; even Beckendorf, who could spend every single day for the rest of his life in the forge, joined her in the arena for a few rounds. When they were done, he inspected her spear and promised to make some adjustments to accommodate for her recent growth spurt, one Chiron attributed to her ‘tree time.’
(Nobody besides me called it that. Thalia thought it was funny. Nobody else did.)
Training with Thalia was grueling and rewarding. Or at least it looked like it was; because I was the only child of Apollo at camp, it wasn’t safe for me to be in the thick of all the slicing and dicing. I kept up with archery practice and joined Annabeth every morning for a lap around the boundary of camp, but otherwise I practiced my healing. Yet even from the sidelines Thalia made leadership look effortless. She knew Connor and Travis needed motivation, so she alternated between the carrot and the stick. They only overslept one of her sessions once before they learned their lesson, hair sticking straight in the air and skin still occasionally sparking.
Clarisse, meanwhile, needed someone to vent her anger at, either taking the brunt of it directly or re-directing her to the real enemy: Luke. Every time she said his name Annabeth winced, but Thalia was stalwart in her belief that Luke was a traitor who did not deserve our sympathy.
So much for understanding Thalia better than Annabeth. Gods, that fucking incel could never understand how a woman thinks, could he? If he hadn’t let Kronos take over his body (Lukronos? Kronuke? Oh gods there was a Starkid bit somewhere in there) he for sure would have jerked off to Andrew Tate.
So all in all, pretty much everything sounds fucking lit, right? Well, yes, but also—not at all!
Once we got settled into our bi-week(end)ly routines, Chiron requested our presence at the Big House following dinner. Thalia and Annabeth were all, ‘sure, whatever you want, boss!’
I was… Hesitant, to say the least.
See, I hadn’t spoken much to Chiron following our delightful little conversation over the summer. I came out of it kind of feeling like my father had just told me that I was gay, and that I needed to knock it off. Chiron was all, You are tainted by something I do not understand, and for that, you must repress yourself! Now begone, thot!
Which was really fucking lame, obviously. Especially when he was being such a little hypocrite about it! I could barely hide my annoyance when he said he was going to teach us to manipulate the Mist. Fortunately, Thalia and Annabeth were distracted enough by the concept to not notice me fuming silently.
“You want us to learn magic?” Thalia asked incredulously.
Annabeth set down her mug of tea. If I ignored what we were talking about, it was a pretty cute scene: Chiron, in wheelchair mode, sat near the crackling hearth, his lower-half covered by a plaid green blanket. Thalia leaned against the windowsill, while Annabeth and I took up the leather couch.
“Learning to manipulate the Mist is a skill I’ve heard of demigods mastering,” Annabeth mused quietly, her mind no doubt conjuring every single diary and journal left behind by demigods over the centuries. “But after Circe…”
I realized belatedly that she was referencing a conversation I wasn’t privy to before this moment. Chiron steepled his hands over his lap. “The sorceress did not lie when she said you were capable of learning magic, Annabeth. That does not mean you are a witch.”
“Glad that clears things up,” I coughed under my breath.
Chiron sighed. “All demigods, on account of your godly half-nature, are capable of minor feats of magic outside of your parent’s domain. Manipulating the Mist is a common spell to master for demigods in the modern world.”
What a fucking hypocritical bitch. I wanted to call him out, but Annabeth and Thalia were nodding along like it made total sense. “I don’t know, Annabeth,” Thalia teased. “Next thing you know, you might turn Percy back into a guinea pig.”
Annabeth flushed. “I would never! Magic like that—it’s evil.”
She said the words with such a tone of finality I flinched. Worse, Thalia just chuckled and nodded along, like Annabeth’s comment wasn’t strange at all. “Yeah, yeah, Wise Girl—”
“Thalia!” Annabeth exclaimed, cheeks darkening a shade.
“Joking.” Thalia put her hands up in surrender. “So what do we have to do, Chiron?”
While he launched into an explanation that was far more complicated than ‘focus and believe in yourself, queen!’, I stared into the flames. Annabeth and Thalia agreed magic was bad news. Fine in small, manageable bursts, but something that should be handled with a twenty foot pole.
Gods, it really was a gay metaphor! I was furious! Why couldn’t anyone else see that Circe slayed! It felt like being a Slayyter fan. Or, dare I say it, a Hannah Diamond fan. I knew I was right to stan her and magic, I knew I was going to use my very cunty magic powers for good, and yet here were Annabeth and Thalia, listening intently to Chiron as he described magic like a Fox News talking head talks about trans people. It was addictive, turning the children evil, and blah blah blah.
I practiced trying to snap with my left finger instead of taking it seriously. Fortunately it was quite on brand for me to waste time on something so stupid, so Annabeth and Thalia didn’t bat an eye when I was the ‘last’ to successfully cast the spell. I pretended to get distracted by a book on the shelf so Annabeth and Thalia would leave Chiron and I alone.
I needn’t have bothered with the subterfuge, though. With a single look Chiron informed me I would not be learning any other spells from him.
I snapped the book shut, sighed, and hurried after my friends.
☼
In a moment of total genius, Percy decided to pick a fight with me the night before we left on our mission to Westover.
“If they can magically protect your school, then why can’t Chiron Manipulate the Mist so I can go there, too?” he asked me as we played Battlefront II together.
It was an insightful question. One of the first I asked when Chiron told me, Thalia, and Annabeth where we would be going to school. I didn’t like his answer then. It was much worse forcing the words out of my own lips.
“The enchantments wouldn’t hold if there were two children of the Big Three,” I said softly. Zeus and Athena wouldn’t enchant it to begin with if you were there, went unsaid.
Percy’s jaw clenched. On the screen, Anakin Skywalker massacred Clone CT 49-0925. You haven’t heard of him? Well, you’d need to read thirty comics from the Extended Universe as well as two novels and watch Star Wars: The Clone Wars—
“That doesn’t explain why you three get to go to camp and I don’t.”
I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. “I invited you! I asked if you wanted to come, and you said no!”
Percy, as you might have suspected, was not happy to be reminded. “After you had already gone! I should have been included right away!”
I exhaled, but nothing came out. He was right. I hadn’t thought to ask him if he wanted to come with that very first weekend. I was too excited about the prospect of going back to camp, of seeing Travis, Connor, Beckendorf, and yes, even Clarisse. I knew Percy didn’t go to camp in the books and so didn’t think much more of it.
Percy must have seen the realization in my eyes, because he scoffed and looked away from me. He didn’t even bother to offer a final biting remark. He just ran his hand through his hair and focused on our game. As soon as the round was over I unplugged my controller and left him to it. Downstairs, my mother was sitting on the couch revising her second novel.
I collapsed beside her and let out a low groan. She didn’t look up, although I did see her lips purse. “You’ve done all you can, dear.”
“I know. It’s just…”
Her pen scratched out a phrase. I stared at it, chewing on my words before I exclaimed, “He was the one who told me to go! He helped you bake me blue cookies for the road this year!” I leaned my head back so it was resting on the top of the cushion, face tilted towards the ceiling and eyes closed. “I don’t get why he’s being so lame.”
“Phoebe,” my mother said softly, “wouldn’t you be upset if you were in his shoes?”
“Yeah,” I sighed. “I would.”
Mom hummed. “You know, your brother and I spoke about it after we dropped you.”
I hesitantly opened one eye. My mother still hadn’t looked up from her revisions. Her pen wasn’t moving anymore, though.
“Yeah?”
“You know he only wants what’s best for you. Which is why he thought… Well…” She clicked her pen and set it on the page so she could turn to face me. “He mentioned that on your last quest—”
I gulped. Mom either cried when she brought up our quests, or seethed with righteous fury for her innocent babies. Really cute, I know.
“—something happened. And… He just said he was happy you would be with Annabeth.”
I won’t lie: I was pretty surprised Percy had brought it up with our Mom. It always feels like a bit of a betrayal when a sibling says something personal about you to your parents. The sibling code is clear: siblings over parents. Always. So for Percy to break it… He must have noticed more than he let on.
My mother, I realized, was now looking at me intently. No, not intently–expectantly. I frowned in confusion.
“Oh,” I finally said, face clearing.
"Oh’ is right, young lady.” My mother set her pen down and turned to face me, legs crossing. “You met the daughter of Helios.”
“Circe?”
Thunder rumbled faintly outside. My mother looked at me pointedly.
“Ugh, stupid canon inconsistencies,” I muttered.
Mom only raised her eyebrow.
“Yes, I met her.”
“And you spoke to Chiron.”
“Bitch.”
“Phoebe.
“Sorry.”
Our mouths twitched in unison. It should have made me feel better. Instead, I just felt a dull pang that had become increasingly common over the last few months. The older I got, the less like my mom and brother I looked. They had the same narrow face, the same sharp jaw, the same almond shaped, dancing eyes, and, as I was reminded of now, the same smile. I had yet to meet Poseidon, but I was confident the only thing Percy got from his father was his sea green eyes.
My features were far softer, my doe eyes a rich brown… While Percy now looked every bit a troublemaker, I still had the same guileless look that stared back at me in the nurse’s office at Yancy. My hair was still in the Katniss Everdeen braid I had favored all these years, a shade darker than Mom’s caramel brown. There was something about it that rubbed me the wrong way.
She leaned forward and took her hands in mine. “What happened to those girls wasn’t your fault, Phoebe. You did the best you could.”
Tears sprang to my eyes. Here I was, analyzing the ways I was different from my mother, while the only thing she was concerned with was my well-being. I buried my head in her shoulder and pretended like I wasn’t sobbing.
“But I knew—I should have taken her—”
“Would you let someone else take Percy if he were hurt?”
“Annabeth said the same thing!” The reminder only made me cry harder.
Mom ran a hand through my hair. “Yes, our Annabeth is a smart girl,” she murmured.
The waterworks started in earnest. “Our Annabeth,” I whimpered.
“Oh, baby.” Mom held me more tightly and kissed the top of my head. “I’m so sorry. I knew Percy would be upset once you left, but I knew how much you needed it.”
I nodded and pulled away from her with a hiccup. I wiped the tears from my eyes and ran the back of my hand over my snotty nose. Mom pursed her lips and reached for a kleenex, which I took gratefully.
Mom waited until I blew my nose before she took my hands again. “Chiron also told me about your oath.”
My heart skipped a beat. “I forgot to tell you,” I realized.
She tweaked the end of my nose. “You know, most parents would assume their children were lying baldly to their face in this situation.”
“I—”
“Although, most parents wouldn’t be talking to their children about sacred oaths,” Mom continued, returning her hands to mine. “Do you regret it?”
“What? No!” I gasped, aghast. “Why would I?”
Mom smiled, her eyes dancing with mirth and tears. “Oh,” I said dumbly, finally understanding what she had been trying to get at from the beginning. “Damn, Mom, you’re cunning.”
“Yes, dear, I know I’d be a Slytherin.”
I squirmed. In an effort to forestall any strange questions, I had made a point to highlight that I was reading the Harry Potter books. The reason was…
Well, chat, it was really fucking embarrassing. Tread with caution: we’re approaching levels of cringe more lethal than Chernobyl and Homestuck kids at cons (I say this with so much love in my heart, the passion was… indescribable).
I snuggled with my mother for a little longer on the couch before I trudged to my room. I locked the door behind me, and with practiced ease I slid onto my stomach and tugged out a small box from beneath my bed. Then—and don’t you fucking judge me chat, it was 2007—I raised my hand over it and whispered, “Alohomora.”
The metal lock briefly flashed with black light before it opened with a gentle click. Like always, I read the book out on the fire escape. From up here, the Manhattan skyline was laid out before me, a sea of metal spires illuminated with light (like ten million fireflies). I doubt anyone who wasn’t raised in a metropolitan area as hectic as New York could find it peaceful, what with the constant blaring of horns, occasional shouts, and bursts of music that permeated the night air. But out here, I felt completely and utterly free.
A state of mind, it turned out, which was rather important when training oneself in magic.
Soooo… I haven’t been completely honest with you, chat. Some of you might be following along already, but for those of you who aren’t: remember way back in Miami, when I was digging through my softball bag? The deodorant bit? The two latest rules to my Demigod Survival Guide?
Right. You mightttt remember I mentioned being surprised by something. That ‘something’ was now sitting in my lap. At first glance it didn’t seem like anything important; maybe a journal of some kind, with its matte black and unadorned cover. It was so unassuming I didn’t even remember it until I cleaned out my softball bag a few weeks after the quest ended.
Don’t judge me–how often do you clean out the bottom of your bags? I was fortunately alone when I dumped its contents onto my bed and noticed it. I approached it carefully; because I wasn’t mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted like I was in Miami, I recognized there was something very off about it.
With no better options, I opened the cover. A small slip of parchment fell out, that I unfurled and read by the gentle light of the old-fashioned chandelier that hung overhead. It said only the following:
Did you seriously believe I would leave you on your own?
It wasn’t signed. With trembling fingers I opened the book. At first its pages were entirely blank, but I wasn’t surprised in the slightest when it briefly pulsed with the same black, ghostly, flames I had conjured when I was trying to heal Annabeth. When the light faded, the entire book was covered in a tiny script made up of runes I didn’t understand.
At first I thought Circe would have left me some kind of cypher to figure out her notes. I spent days pouring over the thing when I was alone, desperate to find some kind of clue that might help me translate it. When that failed, I resigned myself to asking Annabeth about ancient languages. One hour-long lecture later that left my head pounding in pain, I had a book of translations in hand, ready to crack the code.
No dice. It wasn’t Ancient Egyptian, Sumerian, Akkadian, or even Aramaic. I was about ready to throw the thing out in a huff when I realized how foolish I’d been. Circe wouldn’t risk anyone decrypting her notes—which meant that this was written in a script only those she trusted would be able to understand it.
“Manifest your desire onto reality and it will comply.”
With that thought in mind, I concentrated not on translating the script, but simply understanding it. I imagined myself reading from Circe’s notes, learning all there was to know about magic. I needed them. If I was truly blessed by Hecate, some kind of super rare witch (catch me as the next villain of the week on VPD next week!), I needed to figure out exactly what I was capable of.
Being a daughter of Apollo was one thing. I knew that my ability to heal was going to be critical later on, but everything else was largely irrelevant. Lee, Frank, and literally all of the Hunters were better archers than I was, and so far I hadn't inherited any ability to cause disease, or put rhyming curses on people I didn't like (trust me: I tried)... For as much as I loved healing, I knew it wasn’t the most proactive skill to possess for someone who went on as many quests as I did.
But magic? That was something I could use to really start fucking shit up.
It was with that thought in mind that I finally deciphered Circe’s notes. And let me tell you, chat: they were dense. It was the culmination of Circe’s life, centuries worth of knowledge distilled into one unassuming journal now in my possession. If Annabeth knew I had such a priceless artifact, she would steal it from me and hide it away in her mother’s cabin for the rest of our lives.
I had no intention of giving it up, though. Not when I knew it would prove useful. After weeks of wanting to bash my head against the wall I finally succeeded in figuring out most of it. I’ll spare you all of the little details; we’re not here to discuss some incredible magic system like Brandon Sanderson or some shit.
Circe described the Mist as a canvas and a witch as a brush. With proper focus and willpower, a witch is capable of almost anything they set their mind to. I remembered a bit of what Hazel was capable of in House of Hades—altering the perception of that weird foot guy not named Quentin Tarantino so he would kick Jason onto the ground and not off a cliff, convincing Pasiphaë that the Labyrinth was working against her…
I thought it was all illusions, but I was dead wrong. By manipulating the Mist, a witch could manipulate the very fabric of the world. Magic flowed through the universe like oxygen in a bloodstream. Witches were capable of controlling that flow, altering it to their whims. While there were more niche branches of magic, like the magical herbs I used to heal Percy, or the kind of magic Grover and the other satyrs practiced, I mostly focused on manipulating the Mist. Not only because it was the most powerful, but because it was the most natural for a witch to utilize.
So when I was confident I was alone—at home, alone in Cabin Seven after everyone left camp for school, in my dorm when Annabeth and Thalia were out—I practiced. After some trial and error I learned that, much to my consternation, using Harry Potter spells really did help. It gave me a clear visual of what I wanted to do, a word to focus my thoughts, and, well… It worked, okay? And it was 2007! Joanne wasn’t a terf yet! The fandom was still bickering over Hinny and Harmony. Gods above, Dramione hadn’t blown up yet!
In other words, I spent several months pointing my finger at things and shouting wizard spells to see if they would work. Illusions were the easiest; I only needed to concentrate a moment to make my lamp look like a shoebox, or my shirt to become a cat. If I wasn’t so nervous about the ramifications of creating illusioned life, I might have tried to keep it around awhile.
The night before we departed for Westover, however, I had a much different goal in mind: to manifest my magic in its rawest form.
Ordinarily, a witch’s best power is preparation. Circe had years worth of potions stored at her resort that helped her transform any wandering man into a fluffy and cute guinea pig. Pasiphaë presumably spent months laying out all of the traps at the House of Hades.
A witch should never seek a direct confrontation, Circe wrote in her neat, yet very cramped handwriting. Even the most powerful of witches can be exhausted by a powerful and persistent foe. Your intellect is just as valuable as your magic.
Yet she was not foolish enough to pretend like preparation would be enough to spare a witch from occasional combat. It was here that Circe wrote extensively about ‘raw magic.’ It was the most potent, and therefore most draining, spell in a witch’s arsenal. If regular spells were polite knocks at the door, raw magic was knocking that door down with a sledgehammer.
Remember how Circe said that magic was pretty much just determination and creativity? Raw magic was the two-step process of that. Rather than focus on manipulating the Mist, the idea was to focus on expelling magic directly from ‘somewhere’ within me. Circe had a lot of academic words to use, but you can imagine it as my magical stamina, a pool of mana, I don’t really care. In practice it was just another kind of exhaustion.
At first I wasted some time running around my fire escape screaming “Firebolt!” and “Eldritch Blast!” I tried thrusting out my hand with my palm facing my target, Iron Man style, then pretended like I was throwing magic, and even attempted a Roy Mustang snap! to see if that would work.
Science, bitch! I was a lesbian experimenting in Bushwick!
After around an hour I slumped against the brick exterior of our building, defeated. Not even “Stupefy!” had succeeded in casting a spell. Maybe I just needed to pull a Daniel Radcliffe and swap out my magic for akimbo guns taped my hands. Maybe then I could… I could…
I sat up straight, a manic smile stretching across my face. My fingers formed into a hand gun as I slowly pointed at the street light. I started giggling as I lined up my shot, middle and index finger pointed straight ahead. I imagined the magic inside of me flowing down my arm into my fingers. I imagined trying to release it like I did when I healed Annabeth on Polyphemus’s island.
Mostly, though, I imagined how fucking sick this would be if it worked.
“Bang!” I shouted, flicking my wrist up like I was shooting a heavy revolver.
A bolt of fiery black energy shot out of my finger. When it reached the street lamp it exploded in a burst of magical fire and sparks, glass falling to the ground below and tinkling against the asphalt like a windchime in an all natural lifestyle store.
My jaw dropped. I stared at my hand, then the streetlight, then my hand again.
Oh, yeah. I was that fucking bitch.