A Gift from the Goddess

“Seven times?!" I gasped. “H-how...? How is this possible? And why can't I..."

I could see the faintest traces of memories, but they were all nonsensical, just painful flashes of random images rather than providing any sort of insight. Yet the more I tried to dive deeper to look, the more it pushed back at me.

“Come on, Rheyna! Look!” Clarissa demanded, pointing at my marks. “Doesn“t this look familiar? Don't you remember?!”

“II... 1 don't know... I don't think so. I just..."

"GODDAMMIT!" she yelled, a fury in her eyes that made me flinch. Though it only flashed for merely a second. Just a second before her gaze then slowly fell to the floor, a look of defeat washing over her. “...God-fucking-dammit. Why now?”

It was the first time I'd seen her look so upset. Not angry anymore, just... sadness. An emptiness as she accepted that I wasn't able to tell her what she needed to hear. A change from her normal bratty attitude.

“Clarissa... There's no point in wasting time if this really is all true,” I said awkwardly, doing a bad job of trying to navigate her mood. “You'll just... need to explain to me what's happened. Does this mark thing have something to do with why you're sick?”

Her little body sighed and was quiet for a moment, assumedly trying to pull herself together. The news of my amnesia had hit her incredibly hard.

*...I'm not sick, per se,” she started after a minute had passed. “Sick implies you can get better. The truth is that I'm just... slowly dying. Again. The first time being when I was just a small child with my parents. The war was soon ending and we were ambushed. There was nowhere we could go, nowhere we could hide. I remember being scared... and then there were enemy wolves surrounding us. But we'd drunk that spiked suppressor water. Everyone had for months. And inevitably we were all cut down.”

“But if you were brought back, doesn't that also make you a Saintess then?” I asked.

"Well... not quite,” she said. “No, I'm... I'm a bit different.”

I went to ask what she meant but, before I could, she pulled aside the top of her pyjama shirt so I could see her skin better. And though the small campfire light wasn't great, I could still make out what I needed to. I could still see her inflamed red skin, her veins spreading in an incredibly painful- looking manner.

“Clarissa...” I whispered, having too many questions.

“I contain the immense power of a God, yet it's trapped within the frail body of a mortal. Not just a tiny piece to help revive such as you, but enough so that it burns away at me from the inside.” “But... why?"

“Selene,” she answered as if it should have been obvious.

“The... Moon Goddess? The one that apparently created werewolves?”

“The one who broke her natural laws to create us, yes,” she corrected. “My great-great grandmother, Aria, had been the one to originally discover her dirty laundry. Turns out that making a sub-species of humans breaks whatever contract she had with the new Gods for neutrality. It's how Aria bargained for Myra to be brought back to life. Blackmail, if you can believe it.” Sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ Findɴovel.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

“This is a lot...,” I said, struggling to follow.

“Look, long story short, Selene needed a way to hide. From what I've been able to piece together, the Gods were on her back and wanted to start digging into what she’s been up to. And she knew what they would find. So when the war inevitably killed off the ranked Silver Mist members capable of being a vessel, she chose me of all people to be the guinea pig. Shoved a large portion of her power into me so she could pass herself as a mortal to hide. Got the idea from what she did to her dead mummy-dearest, Thea.”

“So... you're a Goddess now?” I asked.

“No. As I said, I'm a mortal. I don't have any omnipotent higher understanding and the things that I do know, I only know because we've both been figuring the puzzle out slowly with every timeline. But I did pick up her ability for rebirth, assumedly since foresight at its core foundation is just a type of time manipulation. Though it's not as strong as Selene’s, of course. Not to mention that every time I use it, I burn up my insides more and more. Which is why we can't fail this time, Rheyna. I-I can't... I can't do this again. One way or another, this is my final battle.”

“So then how does it end? What do we need to do?”

And her expression slowly became dark, a cloud of hatred forming around her. A seriousness to her that took me off guard.

“More than anything... at whatever cost... we need to stop Allison.”

If I'd been surprised by her quick change in manner before, I was far more surprised by this revelation now. To think the young girl could do anything that warranted this kind of reaction was hard to comprehend.

"Allison... Lycroft?" I asked confused. "Kieran's sister? What? How is she involved in all of this?” “Because no matter what we do, no matter how many wars we win, something always happens... and the little psycho brings forth doomsday.”

..It must have been the reason why I'd hated her from the beginning, an explanation for why I'd always had the urge to rip her to shreds. I must have retained some sort of recollection. Deep down, I must have known that I needed to stop her. But in my ignorance and forgotten memories, I hadn't gone through with it.

I'd played nice with her for Kieran's sake.

..But something still seemed strange.

"How could she even manage to start doomsday, anyway?” I asked slowly. “From what I can tell, she’s just a kid... a bit religious crazy, sure, but that's not entirely her fault, I guess. I don't see how she could be some diabolical mastermind, thwarting our plans in all the past timelines.”

Clarissa scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Well, I'm certain that 'kid" is the key to stopping all of this.” “But how?" I pressed.

“Because something always happens..."

"What happens?”

I was getting agitated at this point, but it was her next words that made me freeze up, a fear chilling its way through my body.

*...To Kieran. Something always happens to Kieran.”

I stared at her, too scared to ask for details, yet also wanting so badly to know. A confliction that brought a sharp stinging pain to my head, making me wince.

She took a second to allow her words sink in but, after a moment had passed, slowly proceeded. "Whether he goes missing, is killed, gets captured... it's always enough for Allison. She wastes no time in praying to Selene for vengeance,” Clarissa said. “She prays for the demise of all us “devils’. Only... Selene isn't taking calls right now as she’s living her best mortal life. And so, instead of Selene hearing the prayer... another receives it instead. A Goddess by the name of Nemesis, one who presides over balance, law and retribution. Of course, it doesn’t take her long before she discovers what Selene has been trying so hard to hide. No, worse than that, it doesn't take her long to discover *us*, two creatures worse than simply mutated wolf people, but mortals who hold pieces of Gods. 'Abominations’ as she kindly put it.”

"You spoke to her?” I asked, surprised. “To this Goddess, Nemesis?”

"Of course,” she answered. “She is doomsday. The end. It's not the wolves who kill us, they're not nearly powerful enough to stop us, but there is nothing we can do against a fully powered-up Goddess with the ultimate authority to bring balance to the world. And she wins. She always wins. And at that point, I'm forced to burn myself up inside more and more just to bring you back in time a few months to try again. Or, at least, that was the case before. No... as I already mentioned, this is it, Rheyna. No do-overs. I can barely even stand up anymore.”

I stared her up and down. It was true, she looked in terrible shape. I could only assume then that the dramatic overnight change in her health, the one Myra had spoken of, was therefore because of me. Because of the day we must have come back in time to. Though... this did tell me something else as well.

“You didn't tell Myra,” I stated as a fact. “You didn't tell her what was happening. Why would you keep this from her? She could have helped—."

“You think I hadn't tried that?” she snapped, pain filling her eyes. “You think I'd keep it from her without a good reason? Simply knowing what will happen doesn’t make things always end perfectly, Rheyna. If so, we would have already fixed our mistakes the second time. No, at best, we'd only figured out how to prolong her life for a month before the universe finds some way to claim her.” She maintained eye contact, staring at me intensely for a moment, before finally breaking.

“So, you tell me. Should I have let her die thinking she had unfinished business in stopping doomsday? That she was leaving us to fend off more danger?” And she turned around to seat herself by the fire, clearly exhausted from the duration of standing. “...Or should I have let her die in peace, allowing her to reunite with her Cai without worrying about us? Because I know that's all she had truly wanted.”

It was something I couldn't answer, which she already knew. To make such a decision on Myra's behalf was one I was sure she didn't want to have to make. But... if she was right, and there really was no way to guarantee she lived every time, then... then maybe it was the kinder thing to do. Though, I couldn't help but feel a pang of emptiness. Because if we really had managed to prolong her life even for a few weeks, then that was time I'd spent getting to know Myra. Time that I now couldn't remember. It was no wonder I had felt such a connection to her.

"...We have a lot of work to do, Rheyna,” Clarissa then said, breaking me from my thoughts. “So much to catch up on and organise. I won't be able to do this alone... but your missing memories are going to make this so much harder. Especially since that now means you can't fill me in on the small details of how the last timeline ended.”

“I'm... I'm sorry,” I said feebly. I wasn't sure what else I could say. “I'll just do my best to make up for it. No more questioning anything you say, no more fighting. Just... tell me what I need to do, and I'll do it.”

So much had changed in just a few weeks. From simply living as a weapon for my father, to then learning of my real past and purpose... to now planning to stop the end of a whole species. This seemed more like the sort of thing a great hero in a story would be qualified for, not... someone like me. But if it meant I could save Kieran... save lives... then maybe this was my redemption. Maybe in the past I'd been fighting to redeem myself.

..S0 just who was I back then? A version of me who had lived through six timelines of pain.

“We need to start from the beginning,” Clarissa said. “If you have no memories, then I can only assume that this timeline aligns closest with the original one; the timeline in which we were living through the events for the very first time.”

I nodded. “That makes sense. If we can pinpoint the issues in that one then we can apply it here and build a plan around it.”

“Right... then I assume Allison personally knows who you are? You would have met her after following Kieran to Ashwood for answers.”

“That's right,” I confirmed. “...But does that make a difference?”

She looked grim at my reply. “Yes... yes, it makes her more emotional. Fragile. She feels betrayed that you lied to her about who you were, not to mention angry from seeing how you treated Kieran. We'll need to be careful to plan around that.”

“How I treated Kieran’? What did she mean by that? Like how I was reluctant to involve myself? From what I could recall during my time at Ashwood, Allison had never given off any vibe that she disapproved of our relationship. No, in fact, it was quite the opposite, or, at least, that was the case up until she learned who I really was. Though I guess Clarissa would know best.

"Okay... so then how did the first timeline end?" I asked, now curious. “If all this is following true to what you know, then how does she get triggered? ..What happens to Kieran?”

And my heart started to beat loudly, asking the question I'd been dreading since hearing Clarissa explain all of this. To think that anything would happen to him hurt enough, let alone thinking that I might not be able to do anything to stop it. Six times I'd apparently failed to do just that.

But Clarissa simply stared at me a little strangely, looking up and down as if analysing me. Almost as if she was trying to figure out who I was and how to answer.

“Clarissa?” I pressed when she didn't speak. “...What happens to Kieran?"

And then she stopped, looking me dead in the eye as her head tilted slightly. Seeming as if she were conflicted by my question.

“To Kieran?” she started. “Well, in the first timeline... you killed him.”