The Heir of a Thousand Lifetimes (A PJO Universe Story)

You have his eyes. And his rage.

I'm not even allowed to change before I'm being paraded in front of the entire camp. Somehow, the storm didn't touch the inside of camp because of some sort of weird magic, but they all heard the commotion outside, so I have plenty of stares and whispers as Josie leads me to the center of the campfire. I'm shivering as I try to pull the blanket Chiron was nice enough to give me closer.

"You caused that storm?" some guys asks, his jaw dropped. I stay silent. Where is everyone getting the idea from that I caused the storm?

"Yeah! Nice one!" another guy exclaims, patting me on the back as I pass by. A girl offers me a sympathetic smile, but most people don't make any direct interaction of any kind with me.

"Can we get back to the songs now?" someone calls from the back of the rings of campers, and Josie whistles loudly.

"Shut it, Keaton!" she yells.

Before anyone else can say anything, there's a sharp sound that seems to surround me. It's almost like a whip being cracked through the air. It rings in my ears for a few seconds. Josie quickly backs away, as does everyone else.

Great, I think, exhausted. What's going on now?

Without much thought, my spear materializes in one hand, while my dagger shifts into my other. Various reactions reverberate throughout the crowd, but the vast majority are a variety of gasps. I vaguely recognize that I am suddenly dry, and the pelt of the Teumessian Fox rests over my shoulders.

"My daughter," a deep, undeniably authoritative voice declares. I look up over my head when I catch a glimpse of something holographic hovering there: a lightning bolt.

What the actual hell?

"I'm so screwed," I breathe out, a million thoughts running through my head. But only a few one really sticks out.

Zeus: the god famed for having his way with women then abandoning them. No wonder he never cared about me after my mother died. No wonder he never tried to find me. No wonder he never visited.

He stands before me, and the crowd of a hundred demigods is pin-drop silent. My expression hardens as my green-and-gold eyes meet his gray ones. My jaw sets as my fury is clear in my eyes.

"This is a special occasion," he boasts. "I have never claimed a child in person since the times of the heroes of old. But this bears an exception."

"Why?" I ask coldly. I am very much fighting the urge to jab my spear into his gut. Josie is jaw-dropped. Probably at my audacity.

Let's just ignore the fact that I'm speaking to the king of the gods.

"You are the heir of an extraordinary bloodline."

"So they all say. You want something from me."

I can't help it. I laugh coldly. Josie looks like she's about to have a heart attack, and Chiron doesn't seem like he'll be too far behind her. I think a few girls faint. Zeus' face gets red.

"How dare-!"

"No! How dare you! You've ignored me all my life, then you suddenly think showing up here and saying 'my daughter' will make me feel indebted to you? You have done nothing for me. My aunt's magic from her mother is the only reason I'm still alive today. So if there will be any god I choose to acknowledge while we're talking family, it will be Hecate. Otherwise, don't act like I should be grateful for any of this, when my birth killed my mother!" I rant furiously, fearlessly.

The camp is almost uncomfortably quiet, aside from a few horrified gasps. Zeus stares me down for several moments, suddenly calming for who knows why. So he's a mentally unstable god too. Wonderful.

"You have his eyes," he realizes. Then he adds in a mutter, "And his rage. A fury that could defy fate itself." The last sentence is more of a murmur to himself, but I catch it all the same.

This reaction was not what I was expecting. At all. Zeus seems almost...shaken? He looks like he has seen a ghost. It's a horrifying sight to see on the king of the gods. I love it.

I look down just in time to see an emerald green emit from my hands. Chiron suddenly clears his throat and Zeus looks away.

"All hail, Audra Aleksa, daughter of Zeus, legacy of Hecate."

I smirk. Well, well, well. It isn't every day you prove a point to the king of the gods.

Zeus and I make brief eye contact. He says, "We will meet again soon. Next time, you will remember your manners."

Not likely.

When he disappears in a flash of light, my weapons are once again rings. I run a nervous hand through my hair.

"That was quite the show, wasn't it?" I laugh uncomfortably. Nobody says anything. "So...does anybody want to tell me about the prophecy? I killed the Teumessian Fox. That has to be part of it, right?"

Chiron shakes his head. Josie frowns.

"No. That was just...an omen," she says, offering what is supposed to be a reassuring smile. My expression drops.

I turn to face the rest of the circle of campers, all of whom are staring at me like I'm some sort of exhibit in a zoo. But when I make a complete 180 and face the person directly behind me, a man with honey-blond hair and piercing amber eyes, my sight begins to flicker between realities.

The man before me is at the same time a man with chestnut hair, a strong build, and warm whiskey eyes. The campfire flickers between the current time and a meadow, whispers become a lyre and a lyre becomes whispers and back again.

I stumble back in shock. The longing I have felt all my life, the overwhelming sense of being incomplete...suddenly, a part of it makes sense. Somehow, I know I am seeing a shard of my fractured past standing in front of me.

When the glitches of my vision flick between lifetimes past and present, it makes no difference. All the same, while the features change between the men, I see somebody I know in my bones. I know him like I know myself. I know him as if he was part of my very soul. I know him as if his ashes were once one with my own, a thousand lifetimes ago.

He smiles an all-too-familiar smile, and it pierces my heart like a dagger. I welcome the warmth of the pain, because it makes me feel more alive than I ever have before. My head is too heavy and too light all at the same time. It is too much, too much, too much.

Just before their eyes meld together and I collapse in his arms, a voice that is not mine chokes out a name I know in the depths of my heart: "Patroclus?"