Invisible ― Jason Grace

xxi. a whirlwind

Percy shook his head. "Fat chance, Golden Boy. You're going down."

"Wait." Hazel spurred her horse toward the giant. "I raised this monster from the earth. I'm the daughter of Pluto. It's my place to kill him."

"Ah, little Hazel." Alcyoneus planted his staff on the ice. His hair glittered with millions of dollars' worth of gems. "Are you sure you will not join us of your own free will? You could be quite... precious to us. Why die again?" 

Hazel's eyes flashed with anger. She looked down at Frank and pulled something out of her coat—the piece of firewood that was tied to Frank's lifeline. "Are you sure?" 

"Yeah," he said. 

She pursed her lips. "You're my best friend, too, Frank. I should have told you that." She tossed him the stick. "Do what you have to. And Percy, Camilla... can you protect him?" 

Percy gazed at the ranks of ghostly Romans. "Against a small army? Sure, no problem." 

"Then I've got Golden Boy," Hazel said. 

She charged the giant.

Frank knelt at Thanatos's feet, and Percy and Camilla stood guard over him. Every time a ghost came too close, either Riptide or Hurricane ripped through them. In the near distance, Alcyoneus bellowed and Arion whinnied angrily. 

"Think you can help me shake things up?" Percy asked her, swinging his sword to cut through a ghost advancing on him. 

"Can't hurt to try," Camilla answered. 

It wasn't easy, dividing her focus between fighting with her sword and fighting with her powers. But it wasn't impossible, and as it turned out—Camilla was a quick study. 

She channeled every ounce of her strength into forming a whirlwind, a miniature hurricane of water and ice vapor. She poured every emotion she had into the storm, and it boiled out of her with ease. 

Her anger came as easily as her breath. Red-hot anger at her parents for abandoning her and only acknowledging her sixteen years later; suppressed anger at the legion for treating her like she didn't exist, like she didn't matter because her godly parent had been silent her entire life; bone-deep anger at the Earth goddess who thought she could threaten the people she cared about, the world she lived in, without consequence.

Her worry came next. Worry for her best friends—for Frank, kneeling before the god of Death with his life burning away to melt the god's chains; for Hazel, charging at a giant she died seventy years ago to stop; for Jason, taken from their camp, their home, fighting to return. Worry for her brother, who fought next to her only because he'd been stolen from his old life, from the people he loved. 

Everything added to the whirlwind. Anger, worry, hatred, sadness, abandonment. But there were others, too. Her excitement at discovering she had a brother, that there was at least one person related to her that actually stuck around. Her love for Frank and Hazel, two of the bravest demigods she'd ever known, two of the only people at the legion who hadn't treated her like she was invisible. Her anticipation to prove herself, to make her parents regret not acknowledging her sooner. 

She and Percy waded through the enemy, knocking Roman ghosts away, deflecting arrows and spears. They moved through the enemy lines, forcing the ghosts to focus on them and not Frank. 

Camilla spotted something in the distance—the ghost of a standard-bearer, holding a pole with a golden eagle, icicles frozen to its wings. The legion's standard. 

"The eagle!" Percy yelled. "Milla, get the eagle!" 

With Percy fighting like a tornado next to her, with their combined whirlwind swirling around them, it was easier than Camilla could have hoped to knock the standard bearer down and snatch the eagle from its grasp.