CursEd

Book 2 - the Life of the Chosen

For travelling on foot, they were making good time. It had been only three days and they were already crossing the midsection of the country into the West. Markus had tried to reach Annabeth a few times but Olympus was still shut down, his drachma falling limply to the ground every time he tried.

“What help would it do to contact your sister?” Kaybot asked, chewing numbly on a roll of bread. Her hair definitely had a sheen of silver to it now, her skin pale and her eyes a dark platinum.

“She may have gotten new information” Markus shrugged. “Heck, maybe they even found Percy.”

“They don’t have him” she reported. “I would know.”

“Then sometimes it’s nice just to check in” he hummed, spooning some of his oatmeal. “Y’know, when people care about people, they worry about their safety.”

“Isn’t that why I need to find Percy” she said it as a command but it was still a question.

“I don’t know” Markus looked her in the eyes. “Is it?”

The stone girl remained silent, her eyes falling from his to the ground.

“We need to keep moving” she whispered, throwing the end of her roll into her mouth and standing up. She had a way of ending the conversation whenever Markus tried to probe through her shell. While she was open about some details of her past life, things that would make her emotional seemed to be locked off.

Travel was boring. They didn’t really talk to each other, just walked or ran with short breaks in between. Every once in a while, Markus would try to arouse a conversation, but her answers were brief and blunt with a resounding end to them that he couldn’t continue off of. He was finally getting some alone time with Kaylee and it seemed like the last thing she wanted to do was talk to him. He did learn some things, like how she was eight when she’d discovered her ability to form crystal from water and had made her knives. It was only later she realized everything she made was predestined to be cursed if anyone other than her got their hands on it. It was a precaution the gods had placed on her so that no one else would be able to use the powerful rock to their advantage. Everything about her seemed to have been previously determined by the gods in preparation for her fulfillment.

When she had only just been born, the gods had gathered to decide what to do with the child of Poseidon. They knew of the prophecy that through their own fear, they would create a monster that would either destroy or save their kingdom and legacy forever. With Percy already out of the way for the first prophecy, they’d decided it was safe to enact the second.

Wisdom and strategy in battle for when the battle of the worlds arose; this scared Markus because it meant something worse than the Titan War was coming. The ability to manipulate machines had also been bestowed upon her, so she would be able to create weapons to be used against the enemy. Her crystal was a gift from Hades, yet another reason why it was cursed. Zeus had given her the ability to control the winds to a certain extent; she could formulate small gusts, nothing near as powerful as a real son or daughter of the sky but still useful. The list went on for gifts as well as precautions to counteract them should she ever step out of line. So much power and yet so limited, the gods had turned her rabid and then strapped on chains. Not only that, but they had made sure that the only other beings she had met in this world had been monsters. Some had been good but all harbored some form of anger towards her. Markus found she’d lived with her mother’s mermaidens for a while before trekking the ocean to spend a time with her father. Other than that, she hadn’t spent very long anywhere. Her provided earthen mother had been killed when she’d been very young; when he’d approached her on how, she had refused to answer, her eyes turning hard.

Markus felt slightly guilty for asking her all these things when she might not know what she was doing, but it was all so interesting. For the first time, he realized just how little he knew about this girl that he had developed such deep feelings for. Everything of her past had been hidden from him until now. And yet the more he learned, the more he seemed to fall in love with her. After all this horror in her past, the struggles she’d faced, she was still one of the most selfless people he knew. It would have been so easy, and almost justified, for her to simply shut down within her own bitterness. Yet the suffering had made her strong in more ways than one, her travels educating her on the worlds so she would know which one to save and which one to end. She’d chosen to face her prophecy head on instead of trying to turn away or cower around it. She was brave, intelligent, humble, and one of the most unbelievable warriors he had ever seen.

And she was withering away before his eyes.

How could the gods have allowed this to happen? How had her mother dared to even try this on her? After everything she’d done for them and after everything she would do, they were going to let this mortification process continue. It made Markus sick to his stomach, his lips tightening in anger every time he got a glimpse of her stoned eyes.

After everything that he’d learned, he knew there was still one major thing she was holding back. He’d seen it before, when her eyes gleamed red and all of her powers seemed to join together to create a powerful wave of unstoppable energy. His mother had mentioned it as a precaution but Markus had no idea what that meant. The only thing he could think of was that just in case the enemy proved too strong, she would have a last resort to defeat them. The problem was that the activity seemed to drain everything out of her leaving her helpless after the catastrophe was over. It just didn’t make sense.

Kaylee obviously resented whatever it was because she hated his mother for giving it to her. At least, that’s what he assumed the hatred had been borne out of; she hadn’t given him another time when the goddess and her had crossed paths before.

“How many gods have you met?” he asked her at a rest stop. Kaybot splashed water on her face before turning to give him a straight look.

“All of them” she said. “They made a point to meet me at some point during my travels.”

“And you like all of them?” Markus asked, thinking about all the different gods.

Kaybot shrugged. “To a degree.”

“Except my mom” he interjected, leaning forward to observe her better.

“You wouldn’t understand” she said, her voice sharp as she stood up, her unspoken sign that they were about to move.

“So something happened?” he asked, standing as well. There was silence for a moment, as if Kaylee was fighting Kaybot in an attempt to control herself. Markus felt a little guilty, this was her biggest secret and he was exploiting it simply to ease curiosity. He could argue with himself that he was a child of Athena and he wanted to know what his mother had done to fix it, but the truth was undeniable.

“She” Kaybot spat through gritted teeth. “Made me do something that I will never be able to forgive myself for.”

Vague, Markus thought, but he felt better with this answer than if she had gone into detail.

“The red eyes was her second gift” Kaybot said quieter, fiddling with her fingers. “She gave it to me as a safety precaution just in case. I go out of control and when I am most powerful, I am most vulnerable.”

Markus was stunned.

“She gave it to me so that if I don’t have the courage to end myself at the end of fulfillment, she can” she continued. “A demigod as powerful as I am isn’t supposed to exist. It’s dangerous.”

“So they’re just going to kill you?” Markus demanded. The worst part was that Kaylee must have known the whole time. She lived knowing she’d been bred for slaughter. The gods were going to use her and then just throw her away.

“She used the red eyes to destroy something I held very dear.” The girl shuddered and Markus was momentarily distracted by the express of emotion.

“Enough” she cut off, walking into the forest without any command to keep moving or a quip about his slow pace. Even with her emotions locked off, whatever his mother had done was still getting to her on a deep level. What could it possibly have been?