Fire and Ice (A Leo Valdez fanfic) [2017]

Chapter 12: Eira ❄

From now on I will most likely switch between the two most important characters, Eira and Leo. I'll try to add a few others in, but mostly them.

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EIRA DASHED AWAY FROM THE CLEARING and burst into tears. She'd never felt so much hatred directed at her before, not even at the orphanage. She couldn't believe Leo had turned on her. Leo Valdez, turning her away because of her mom? It seemed completely out of character.

Her legs were weak with fatigue and she couldn't run any farther with her stupid heavy armor. She slumped against a tree and sobbed. She'd never known Jason and Piper at a time where they weren't suspicious and on edge, so she could deal with them hating her. But Leo... he was such a nice boy, and they trusted each other. Eira didn't want Leo to hate her. But she'd seen Leo's face-- his horrified, angry, betrayed, even scared face. Plus, Eira had shot a jet of ice right at him. It had missed by about two inches. She hadn't been aiming for him-- she would never try to hurt Leo-- but she was terrified of what would have happened if she'd hit him.

Eira had known about her powers since before her dad left. One time when she was about six, Dad had sent her to her room, and he'd come to get her only to find the entire room coated with ice. Eira's hands were clenched into fists on the window, and the icy sheen had spread from there. Another time, she and her best friend had a snowball fight at Eira's house and Eira got bored with the regular snowballs and started pelting her friend with snowballs from her own hands. Her friend screamed and ran inside, where she called her mom and asked to be picked up. She never talked to Eira after that. Eira had vowed not to use her powers again. Now she'd broken her promise and the camp had turned on her and thrown her out like she was some kind of monster. Was her mom really that bad?

The grief in Eira's mind was replaced by anger. How dare they kick her out? All she did was use her powers-- didn't they all have powers? Didn't they all have strange parents? Why was she any different? And Leo! Leo of all people turned his back on her. Eira should have known the camp would be just like every other place she'd been to: full of suspicious and unfriendly people. She stared at her orange Camp Half Blood shirt with disgust. She would change out of it as soon as she got the chance.

She started to wonder... how powerful was she? If she could freeze a whole tree, how much more could she freeze? She decided not to hold her powers back any longer. She would use it as much as possible, and she didn't care who it affected.

Eira grinned to herself. She would show Leo and everyone else how powerful she really was...

She put her hand on a nearby tree and thought about covering it with ice. It happened quicker than before. Almost as soon as she could form the thought, the tree's trunk and branches were covered with ice. A girl with green hair melted out of the tree and yelled at Eira in a language she could not understand. Then she melted back into the frozen tree.

Eira turned and shot a jet of ice at another tree. The tree was coated in ice the instant she thought ice. She was getting faster and more accurate. She thought about making it snow, something she'd never tried before, and snow started to fall in thick flakes and piled in drifts on the ground. She could barely see anything but white. The funny thing was, here she stood in shorts and a t-shirt in the middle of a snowy forest, and she couldn't feel the temperature change at all. Maybe she was immune to cold the way Leo was immune to heat-- she could survive extremely cold temperatures without feeling cold at all. She realized that she recognized this part of the woods. It was near Bunker Nine. Wouldn't Leo be surprised if the rock door was mysteriously frozen shut?

Eira stopped herself just before putting her hand on the rock door. This would completely ruin any chances she still had with Leo. Did she really want to do this to him?

He's got fire powers. He can reverse it, she reminded herself. Then she imagined the rock face covered with ice and she immediately saw the magic take action. A loud noise behind her made her turn around. Festus the dragon was there, snorting steam angrily. His face seemed to say, What do you think you're doing?

"Festus!" Eira said. "What are you doing here?"

Festus blew flames at Eira. Eira jumped out of the way. "Stop it!" she snapped. Festus stomped his feet and charged at her. Eira closed her eyes and held out her hand in a stop gesture. She  heard the sound of ice hitting metal. 

Oh no. 

She opened her eyes and saw exactly what she expected to see, which was exactly what she didn't mean to do. Festus was frozen mid-run, his skin coated with a six-inch layer of ice. Eira gasped. She hadn't meant to activate her powers. Leo will kill me.

Standing in the center of the clearing, she watched ice coat the ground around her feet and spread across the forest floor, up the trees, and as far as she could see.

She was losing control. She couldn't continue like this-- Eira had to find a way to unfreeze something she'd frozen. But once Camp Half Blood found out what she was doing, they would come after her. What if it was people like Jason and Piper, people who thought she was a spy or a monster? She had to get out of here. How big were these woods? How far could she go before she collapsed with exhaustion? She was already tired from running, and she hadn't used her powers for years, much less this amount.

She had a small bag from Capture the Flag with a Ziploc bag of ambrosia and two water bottles, one of water and one of nectar. These were for emergencies, but she needed food that could not make her spontaneously combust if she ate too much. She had no money and she really didn't want to steal. She'd dug through garbage cans in Manhattan before, when she'd run away from the orphanage. There were thugs on the streets who beat kids up and stole their food, but Eira wondered how they'd react if their heads were encased in ice. She immediately chided herself for thinking about that. She'd done enough damage already.