Treskur stood, eyes closed, waiting amidst the rubble of what had been one of her greatest temples. She borrowed the senses of her four dozen remaining Ice Guard, looking through their eyes. They swam through the frozen walls like sharks through water, on the hunt for prey.
Their numbers had been reduced significantly in the initial assault, and many of those that did remain were wounded or missing limbs entirely. Still, they proved sufficient to extend Treskur’s perception over a significant portion of the crystalline labyrinth.
Despite the casualties, the initial assault had been more successful than expected, especially considering the suboptimal tactics employed. Of the hundreds of fallen deities who had entered, all but seven were dead. The only problem was that Treskur had no idea where they were.
She doubted any had escaped, nor was it likely that they were coordinating with each other since going undetected by Treskur necessitated going undetected by each other as well.
There was also the possibility that her quarry had preemptively set up some methods of communication before entering Rhyshagen, but if such a contingency existed, they would have used it earlier. Besides, the fallen gods had been much too individualistic and arrogant to employ such a measure.
All things considered, this all meant that Treskur didn’t need to worry about any united counterassaults, but only the resistance of individuals. So long as nothing unexpected happened, it was only a matter of time before all her enemies were dead.
A whisper of magic flitted by the edge of Treskur’s extended perception. It was nearly undetectable, but she managed to just barely catch it.
“Go,” she commanded. Four of her closest Ice Guard were there at the site of the magic within only a few moments, but it seemed ‘only a few moments’ were a few moments too late.
When they arrived, Treskur focused through their eyes and beheld sacrilege.
Before her Ice Guard laid the remains of Brelumn, the first of the fallen to die. When they’d killed him, they’d done so brutally, but efficiently. They’d destroyed his head and frozen him solid, but had otherwise left his corpse undesecrated.
Now, it was no longer correct to refer to him as a corpse.
Bits of him were everywhere. Viscera was splashed across the walls. The floor was slick with a thick, icy slush of red mutilation. Notably absent from the carnage, however, was any trace of the pugilist’s metallic limbs.
The Ice Guard sniffed the air, and they caught the rapidly fading but unmistakable scent of arcane magic tinged by the ineffable. There could only be one culprit
“Luna,” Treskur growled, opening her eyes.
Another flash of magic flared up and died just as quickly, too far away from the first for the same Ice Guard to pursue. Treskur again commanded those that were nearby to investigate, but this time they found nothing but an empty hall.
No sooner had the Ice Guard arrived at the unremarkable scene than a third flash of magic appeared. This time, by pure chance, a single Ice Guard happened to be close enough for Treskur to catch a fresher whiff of the magic.
“Transmutation? What are you preparing, Luna?”
A fourth and then a fifth flash of magic tickled Treskur’s perception, but they provided no more clues than the first three. Whatever Luna was up to, she was doing it in small bursts in semi-random locations so that Treskur’s Ice Guard couldn’t catch her.
Treskur considered her possible courses of action and saw three main paths forward.
First, she could concentrate her forces in a loose net around each new magical flash in hopes of catching the moonstone sorcerer before she could complete whatever it was she was doing. This option was high-risk, high-reward. It increased Treskur’s chances of having an Ice Guard close enough to catch Luna in the act, but it would also shrink the area of Treskur’s effective perception, increasing the likelihood that Luna escaped her pursuit altogether.
Second, Treskur could concentrate her forces around herself, within the heart of the labyrinth. Undoubtedly, Luna had already discerned the labyrinth’s greatest weakness — the vulnerable core that commanded the divinity within the walls. Rather than chase her around, Treskur could fortify her position and simply wait for Luna’s inevitable assault. This plan had the drawback of allowing the seven remaining fallen gods free reign of the outer labyrinth, which in turn meant that they could potentially run into each other and combine their powers for a greater assault than Treskur could handle. The chances of that happening was small, but Treskur preferred not to risk it.
Third, Treskur could continue with her current strategy. By spreading her forces and thus her perception throughout the entire labyrinth, she kept every fallen deity in hiding. So long as her Ice Guard travelled in small groups, she didn’t need to fear them being whittled away by individual assaults either. This plan left the labyrinth’s core relatively undefended compared to the second plan, but also decreased the maximum potential power of any direct assault.
Ultimately, Treskur went with the third option. Intuitively, it felt wrong not to alter her strategy in the face of her enemy’s unexpected actions, but Treskur knew better than to react quickly out of fear.
Besides, even if Luna did manage to destroy the labyrinth’s core, Treskur could still win.
An hour passed. The flashes of magic continued as Luna went about her preparations, but Treskur wasn’t lucky enough to catch her by chance. Nevertheless, it was only a matter of time before—
“There you are,” Treskur said, her eyes darting to a patch of empty space down a nearby hall.
“Here I am,” chimed Luna, suddenly appearing there, thirteen runic plates of metal in her hands. Her lips crooked up into a cruel smile. “I hope you enjoyed your mortality while it lasted, because it’s time for you to die.”
----------------------------------------
Even as she spoke, Luna took stock of the room. Just as she’d expected, Treskur was waiting for her there, at the center of the labyrinth.
Strewn with rubble, the room itself looked exactly how she’d predicted it would based off of the rest of the labyrinth’s layout. It was hexagonal with twelve corridors splitting off from it, two on each wall. At the room’s center was a pillar thick as an ancient tree, and in the center of that pillar was a heart-sized, pulsating crystal of opaque blue ice in the shape of a snowflake — the core of the labyrinth.
All Luna needed to do was destroy that snowflake, and she’d be free… but after what Treskur had put her through, mere freedom wouldn’t be enough. Luna wanted revenge.
Without wasting another second, she shot into the room.
Five of those damned ice creatures emerged from the wall immediately, but that didn’t matter.
“[Time Stop]!”
The icy creatures froze mid-strike, as did Treskur, holding her spear of ice in a ready position. Only the divinely-infused core of the labyrinth continued its motion, beating to maintain the structure of its home.
It was tempting to pause and catch her breath as the world around her stilled — maintaining so many up-casted non-detection spells for hours on end had been exhausting — but the [Tier S] [Time Stop] spell was draining her magical reserves with every passing breath.
Luna set to work right away. Since she couldn’t fly while her spell was in effect, she ran like a damned plebeian to the nearest interior wall of the inner chamber. After making some precise measurements, she aligned one of her thirteen runic plates against the wall and hammered it in with her fist, affixing it using the trio of small spikes on the back of the plate.
Once the first plate was in place, she placed a second one upon the same wall, again hammering it in with her fist in a precise position. She repeated this process ten more times until each of the room’s six walls held two of the equidistantly-spaced runic plates.
Before she placed the thirteenth and final runic plate — the only non-identical plate in the set, slightly smaller and only having a single, long spike on its backside — Luna took one last look around the room, mentally preparing herself for what was to come.
She still had enough magic left for a single cast of [Eldritch Annihilation], but she wouldn’t waste this opportunity on the spell. If she used it to attack Treskur directly, she had a fifty-fifty chance of killing the labyrinth-empowered barbarian, but then Luna herself would most certainly be slain by the remaining ice creatures.
If she instead used a weaker spell to attack the core of the labyrinth, she could destroy it and be left with enough mana to mount an escape. This was by far the safest and most logical course of action… but she just couldn’t do it.
Her pride demanded nothing less than total victory.
Luna tightened her grip on the thirteenth runic plate. She walked over to stand behind Treskur, directly between the traitor and the pillar of ice she guarded. Luna then removed her fur coat and tossed it aside. With one hand, she pulled down the neckline of her robe to reveal the cold, stone flesh of her bare chest.
Luna took in one last breath, and aimed the spike of the final runic plate directly at her own heart.
“This will work,” she declared, if only for her own benefit. “It has to.”
She slammed the plate against her chest, and the spike drove home.
----------------------------------------
Treskur watched as Luna disappeared. An instant later, something wet splashed across her back.
Treskur whipped around, already stabbing toward toward the unseen foe, but she was too slow. In fact, everything was too slow, yet moving exactly as fast as it should be.
It were as if she were moving through a dream… As if she were listening to a story about herself as it happened, simultaneously living through the action in real time while observing herself from outside of time.
The narrator of her dream spoke, communicating at the speed of thought.
“Are you curious how I brought about all this?” Luna asked, the timbre of her voice like an echo heard a thousand times.
Treskur continued to stab at the moonstone sorcerer, spear inching forward at the speed of a bullet, but Luna continued speaking without a hint of worry.
“It’s because I know what it means to be a god.”
Treskur had yet to see Luna’s altered form with her own eyes, but half of her already knew what had become of the sorceress. Like tears, silver slivers of argent blood trickled down her opalescent grey eyes. From a wound in her heart gushed more of that same shining ichor, its flow only partially stoppered by a runic plate of metal there embedded.
“Like the idiot that you are,” the former goddess of madness went on, her moonstone lips moving like a puppet’s, “you spent millennia hiding from your power. You hated the privilege any other mortal would’ve killed to attain, and so you never learned how to properly use it.
“I, on the other hand, embraced my power from the beginning. I recognized divinity for the tool that it is, and for that, you had the gall to look down on me!”
By now, Treskur’s blindingly-fast spear had nearly completed its journey to Luna’s ravaged chest. Rather than let herself become stabbed, however, Luna simply stepped out of the way.
She walked over to Treskur’s side and brushed a hand across her cheek. The texture of stone fingers pulled painfully against the hairs of her beard, but Treskur couldn’t react.
Despite the protests of her sleeping mind, her conscious mind could not listen. It was too busy lunging at a foe who’d already dodged.
“Do you know how easy it was for me to hijack your design?” Luna asked. “Once I… borrowed some divinity-steeped material from Brelumn’s corpse, it was child’s play to create the necessary runes. I didn’t even need to overwrite anything. The patterns of stagnant divinity were so crude that all I needed to do was amplify a single one of its function, and the whole thing fell apart.
“You wanted this place to reflect my image while hiding your own? Congratulations, because its working. My essence is being reflected so strongly that I suffuse the air.”
She leaned in closer to whisper directly into Treskur’s ear.
“You may have stolen my divinity, Treskur, but I will always be a goddess.”
Luna’s hand continued to idly toy with Treskur’s beard.
“I want you to know that I’m going to enjoy destroying you,” she said. “I heard you like dancing, so why don’t we dance?”
Suddenly, violently, Luna grabbed onto Treskur’s beard and yanked her through the floor.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The ground beneath their feet shattered like glass, and Treskur was cast into an endless, inky void. She didn’t know for how long she fell, but eventually, she landed with a crash, slamming into a floor invisible within the darkness.
Treskur felt some of her bones snap, but it would take more than a nasty fall to keep her down. She leapt to her feet, still holding onto her spear, and took a ready stance. She cast her gaze about, but could see nothing within the lightless space around her.
“I am the moon.”
Treskur spun to find a spotlight had appeared from nowhere, and within its light stood the fully illuminated figure of Luna in resplendent fencer’s attire. In her hands were a rapier and a dagger both forged from the finest moonlight.
“I am mystery.”
Treskur spun again, this time to find a second version of Luna shrouded completely in a black so deep that it blended into the surrounding darkness. In this Luna’s hand was a long, barbed whip of shadow.
“I am madness.”
A third Luna appeared. Her left half was completely lit while her right was dark as night, and she wielded a silver longsword and onyx shield.
“I am euphoria.”
“I am the haze.”
“I am ineffable.”
“I am the unknown.”
“I am forever.”
One by one, they appeared, eight versions of Luna, each dressed, armed, and lit to represent a different phase of the moon.
As one, they spoke.
“““Time to dance.”””
They attacked in unison. Surrounded and outnumbered, Treskur could only defend the worst of the blows. She batted away a rapier aimed at her heart, but an arrow found her shoulder as a barbed whip ripped away the flesh of her back. She deflected a broadsword slash that would have cleaved her brain in two, only to allow a spear to pierce her hamstring as a bullet destroyed her knee. She attempted to block a halberd’s downward strike aimed at the crook of her neck, but a trident stabbed her spear arm, and the halberd struck true.
“AAAAAUGH!”
The halberd rent halfway through Treskur’s chest, cutting from where her shoulder met her neck to the base of her breastbone.
The halberd wrenched itself free of her, and she began to drown in her own blood. She smelled naught but iron as a red, bubbling froth sprayed from her newest wound.
She found herself on her hands and knees, but through all the pain, Treskur had never let go of her spear. She began to stand, but a bright white boot stomped on her spear hand, pinning it to the blood-stained blackness of the ground.
She tried to scream, but all she managed was a pathetic wheeze.
“Oh shut up, won’t you?”
A different Luna yanked on Treskur’s hair, forcing her to look up at the fully-illuminated Luna whose boot kept her hand on the ground.
“None… None of this is real…” Treskur managed to say, voice barely above a whisper.
“Who’s to say what is real and what isn’t?” the full-moon Luna asked, casually twirling her moonlight dagger through her fingers. “Oh right. I am.”
From nowhere, a stab wound appeared right through Treskur’s heart, and she let loose another breathless wail.
“This… This isn’t real…”
“I hereby declare that there exists no sound more grating than the sound of your voice. Let it be silent.”
SPLATCH!
Treskur’s neck was torn open by nothing, and she couldn’t make a sound.
“No matter what you do, I’ll always be a goddess. Once I’m done with you, I’ll find a way to take back that power which is rightfully mine. I’m going to win, Treskur, and I’m always going to win, because that’s just who I am.”
BLURSCSH!
Treskur’s right eye exploded, but again, she didn’t make a sound.
“Enjoy dying, you filthy mortal.”
The full-moon Luna stabbed with her dagger toward Treskur’s lone remaining eye.
At the last possible moment, Treskur found her voice.
“BREAK!”
SQUELCH!
Despite Treskur’s concerted effort of will to break free of the spell, she couldn’t manage it, and Luna stabbed her right in the… arm? And her spear arm at that? Wasn’t that arm supposed to be pinned beneath the full-moon Luna’s boot?
Despite her torn hamstring and destroyed knee, Treskur rose to her feet, all the while locking Luna’s dagger in place by flexing her forearm.
All her injuries remained and she was still trapped within the dark illusion beneath reality, but she was no longer surrounded by eight versions of Luna. Only one stood before her, a single Luna who bled tears of silver blood, her dagger buried within Treskur’s raised arm.
“Impossible,” said Luna in her thousand echoing voices, and upon the moonstone sorcerer’s breath, Treskur spied the faintest wisps of condensation.
“We’re still within the core chamber,” Treskur realized.
“[DREAM]!” Luna commanded, and there were once again eight Lunas surrounding Treskur, and the air’s chill disappeared.
“I REFUSE!” The air shook, and the illusionary world stilled for only the briefest of moments, but that was all the time Treskur needed. With the last dregs of her strength, she took a single step, shifted her hips, and launched her spear forward with such force that the air BOOMED!
She threw her weapon not at any particular version of Luna, but at a nondescript patch of empty space.
“““No!””” the Lunas screamed. “““Don’t—!”””
CRACK!
Treskur’s spear of ice embedded itself into… something within the void, and from that ostensibly arbitrary point in space, a crack appeared.
Slowly, slowly… ever so slowly… the crack spread. First by a hairsbreadth, and then another, and then a handsbreadth, and then another, and then a yard, and then another.
Slowly, slowly… ever so slowly… it Crack-Crack-Cracked! along its way, radiating out until the entirety of the void was fractured into a million pieces.
For a moment, it seemed like it would all hold together.
Then the moment ended, and the dark world shattered.
The dream broke apart into a billion motes of glittering dust, and then disappeared altogether. Treskur was once more standing within the central chamber of her icy labyrinth, grievously wounded, but alive. Her spear was planted firmly into the room’s central pillar, pierced straight through the still heart of the labyrinth’s snowflake core.
Treskur vaguely sensed the six other remaining fallen deities brute force their way out of the labyrinth now that its divinity was gone, but she didn’t pay them too much mind. She kept her attention on the pathetic creature lying helpless on the floor before her.
“[E-Eldritch Anch—]!”
An Ice Guard slammed the butt of its spear into Luna’s head, breaking her concentration and fizzling the spell.
“Don’t try it. As you are, we both know it would kill you,” Treskur rasped, not that far from death herself.
“And you want—“ Luna’s words were cut short by a hacking cough. After some time had passed, she caught her breath and continued, but with a definite weakness in her voice. “You… You want the satisfaction of doing it yourself, don’t you?”
Before she answered, Treskur took the time to freeze shut the worst of her own injuries in hopes that her flesh would mend itself back together correctly. As for her eye, there wasn’t a healer in all the North who could regenerate such a complicated organ for someone as powerful as Treskur. She simply filled her hollow eye-socket with ice, for that was all she could do for now.
Overall, Treskur would likely remained scarred from this battle for the remainder of her life, but she would live. Luna, on the other hand…
“In all honesty, it seems Time will finish the job for me,” Treskur observed.
Luna was a husk of her previous self. It were as if she’d been burned alive from the inside-out — which might have been exactly what happened.
The moonstone sorcerer turned her soot-blackened eyes up at Treskur, a cragged crater where her heart had once been. “I’ve already t-told you, Treskur. I’m-m a goddess, and there’s n-nothing you can do t-to change that.”
“I could kill you.”
Luna chortled, briefly revealing a row of broken stone teeth. Treskur could tell the reaction was supposed to be perceived as confident, but the effect was lost due to the sorceress’ poorly concealed shivering.
“You’re no longer a goddess,” Treskur went on. “You’re not even immortal. You’re S-Tier, Luna. Your flesh and your soul are one and the same. When you die, you’re dead forever.”
“THEN FUCKING D-DO IT ALREADY!” she screamed. After her explosion, she took in a deep, shuddering breath, then deflated. She released all the tension in her muscles and sagged onto the floor completely, the fight in her all but gone. “Just f-fucking do it already,” she repeated through trembling lips.
Treskur smiled bitterly. “Do you remember what I asked you before we started this fight?” When Luna didn’t answer, she kept talking. “I asked if you’d ever heard the story of my ascension. You probably have, but I doubt you bothered to remember.”
“I know the tale,” Luna muttered, her eyes looking elsewhere. “Of c-course I remember. Don’t insult my intelligence.”
“Then you know that I once slew an invader, and with their soul, I forged my deific name, the name of Treskur, Goddess of the Frigid North.”
“And t-that’s what you’ll do to me? Ha! You can’t ascend. N-no one can.”
“My point exactly, but please, do not call me by that name any longer. ‘Treskur’ is a name fit for a goddess after all, and I… I am a goddess no more.”
She turned to her closest Ice Guard. With her middle finger, she wicked from its shoulder a dusting of ice. She then bent down and smeared the ice dust onto Luna’s shin.
The moonstone sorcerer recoiled at the touch, but was powerless to avoid it. “W-What are you doing?” she asked.
“I don’t want you dead, Luna. I want you to die. I want you to remain dying for the rest of eternity. I want you to taste what it means to be mortal forever, and from that everlasting death, I’ll forge myself a new name, a name fit for a mortal.”
----------------------------------------
Luna felt the shards of biting chill spread up her leg, slowly immobilizing her while draining what meager vitality she had left, just as she’d seen them do to Brelumn. Despite both the supernatural cold and the pain of her injuries, however, she kept up a face of defiance.
“You’re a madwoman,” she spat through clenched teeth, but the barbarian looming over her didn’t seem to mind the insult.
“From you, I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“What does forging a mortal name even mean? Just k-kill me and be done with this whole mess.” Again, Luna’s body betrayed her, a shiver stuttering her words.
“You’ve asked me to kill you a few times now. Have you changed you’re mind about still being a goddess?”
“I’ll be the first to admit I’m bad at losing. Never had any practice. I won’t give you the s-satisfaction of hearing me beg.”
“Proud as ever, I see. A fallen goddess, stubbornly clinging to her past glory. The perfect soul from which I’ll forge my name.” The barbarian broke off a chunk of the ice that’d been growing up Luna’s thigh. She held the chunk high over Luna’s chest and pulverized it with a single squeeze, sending a shower of the creeping icy dust all over Luna’s destroyed body.
“When I became a god, I took a life,” the barbarian said. “As a mortal, I shall steal a death.”
Luna tried to respond, but all she could manage was a strained, wheezing cough as the cold invaded the hole in her chest. She could do nothing but listen as the barbarian prattled on about pseudo-poetic bullshit.
“I shall be a mortal of the lost, for in this labyrinth I was reborn… A mortal of ice, for the ice that I wield... A mortal of the blind, for half-blind I am… A mortal of death, for it is the fate of all mortals to die…”
Luna’s body from the neck down was now entirely covered in the creeping ice, but she managed to once again finding the strength to speak. “I am going to kill you, Treskur. I swear it.”
The words themselves were firm, but the way her voice sounded when she said them…
Fragile, unsteady, unbecoming, ungodly…
Luna’s words were naught but the empty words of the mortal she had become.
“Again, you are wrong,” the barbarian said. “You cannot kill Treskur, for Treskur is already dead. That name died the moment I descended, or perhaps even earlier than that.
“No, do not swear your vengeance against Treskur…”
The barbarian took a pregnant pause. The ice had now spread to cover Luna up to her cheeks, her mind slowing as the chill threatened to snuff her out entirely.
“Swear your vengeance against Hjel.”
Her christening complete, the barbarian gazed deeply into Luna’s eyes, and then sighed. She made some sign with her hands, and the creatures of ice left Luna’s peripheral vision. Where they went, Luna could not know, for the creeping ice had now spread to her eyes, and she could no longer shift her gaze.
The mortal who had once been Treskur began to walk out of the chamber. Right before she disappeared from Luna’s sight, she turned and gave the moonstone sorcerer one last glance.
“Until we meet again, my one-time friend,” she said. Then with but a few more steps, Hjel was gone.
One-time friend? Luna mused blearily. What is she… talking… about…
Luna’s mind continued to slow, but her perception remained clear. She could feel the biting chill eating at her flesh, the pulsing agony of every one of her grievous wounds, the shame squirming within her destroyed heart… but with each passing moment, she became less and less able to understand what those sensations meant.
There was pain, but there was no reason.
She suffered, but she knew not why.
Who… am I? mused the frozen woman, at the very edge of losing herself entirely.
Right before the woman’s mind went still forever… Just as she was on the verge of eternal condemnation to a meaningless eternity at the precipice of death… A memory came to her, but she knew not what it meant.
It was… a face? Of another person? Someone she knew? Someone who always brought her… warmth? Not that the woman could remember what ‘warmth’ even was…
Slowly, slowly… ever so slowly… the last vestiges of Luna’s thinking mind were made inanimate, and all that was left was her capacity to suffer.
Her last thought was but three words, and she didn’t even know what they meant.
Brother… I’m cold.
----------------------------------------
Hjel spared one last glance at the pitiful frozen frozen form of the moonstone sorcerer. “Until we meet again, my one-time friend.”
She left, hobbling past a few of the remaining Ice Guard as she made her way to one of the labyrinth’s newly created exits. Because divinity no longer flowed within the walls, Hjel could no longer sense exactly how many of them were left alive to guard the halls, but their number would have to suffice.
As she slowly made her way out, Hjel considered the odds of Luna eventually being set free.
So long as the rites of a criminal’s honor were remembered among her people, more Ice Guard would always be made. One or two might make their way here every other decade as they wandered throughout the wilds, so it was unlikely this place would ever be completely undefended.
That coupled with the fact that few errant adventurers ever braved the elements to venture this far north, it could be hundreds or even thousands of years before Hjel had to worry about someone freeing Luna, and even then, there was every possibility the sorceress died immediately upon being unfrozen due to the severity of her wounds.
All in all, Hjel could expect at least a few hundred years before she had to worry about this particular threat to her life.
When she’d been a goddess, a few hundred years could pass in the blink of an eye, and so an existential danger that could manifest within that time would need to be dealt with immediately. This older, more ‘deific’ instinct screamed at Hjel that she needed kill Luna at once… but that just wouldn’t be right.
For a mortal, a few hundred years of living was more than most ever received. If Hjel had that much time left to live a full, meaningful life, who was she to complain?
She’d chosen to become mortal, and to be mortal meant to die. When her appointed time inevitably came, she would depart with grace. She would not claw cloyingly to those last dim rays of dusk, but venture bravely into the long, dark night, for when else could one see the stars?
Lost in thought, Hjel found herself emerging from the labyrinth through a hole blasted out of its side. She took in a deep breath and looked up to the night sky that shone with a million bands of brilliant starlight. How many opportunities did she have left to gaze upon such a wondrous sky?
She did not wish to die, but simply accepted the fact that she would, and somehow, even through her inferior mortal senses, the world seemed more vibrant than it ever had before.
“One-time friend, huh?” she mused aloud.
Why had she said those words? Had she and Luna ever been friends?
She took in another deep breath of cold, salty air, and pondered the question, trying to recall if there’d ever been a time she and Luna had been anything other than diametrically opposed.
The answer came easily — so easily, in fact, that Hjel wondered why she hadn’t remembered it sooner.
Six millennia ago, the decade they’d decided to murder Aolyn.
Hjel dusted off the memories like a shelf of long-neglected keepsakes, and she reminisced.
They’d hated each other even back then, but something about the shared work of uniting the other gods for an ambush — the stolen moments spent conspiring, the mutual respect of intellect, the commiseration over every other god’s lacking initiative — had transformed the rivals first into comrades, and then into something almost like friends.
Friends… Being friends with Luna… How had she forgotten so easily?
No, it wasn’t as if she’d forgotten. It was more like the memories had simply been lost in the background — there, but unacknowledged. Her life had thus far stretched on for nearly twenty thousand years, so it wasn’t that strange that a mere decade’s worth of memories had been left by the wayside.
But still, she’d had superior mental faculties as a goddess, so why was she only remembering now that she was a mortal? It made no sense.
“A mystery of millennia, and only centuries left to solve it,” Hjel mused. She let out a sigh, unsure if she’d ever find an answer to that question within her now-finite lifespan.
Then she remembered her borrowed visions of another world, a world bereft of both magic and corporeal gods, where mere mortals had uncovered secrets smaller than atoms and greater than galaxies. She also remembered that Terra was now inexorably set on a path to recreate and even exceed that world’s technology.
Hjel smiled. Ignoring the pain of her thousand different injuries, she picked a random point on the horizon, and began walking.
“Let us see what the future holds.”