I woke up on a stone floor, my body feeling curiously light. I blinked rapidly as I took in my surroundings. I was in what looked to be a greek pantheon. I blinked at the soft light and the soft clouds that floated by the large stone columns. A giant mountain jutted up from the soft pastel clouds, it had an almost golden hue. I swallowed and got to my feet as I stared in awe at the sight before me. I couldn't remember who I was or where I had come from but I knew I had never seen such splendour as what lay before me.
"Get away from the entrance. I didn't pull you back here to have someone catch sight of you." At the chiding voice I turned to look. The interior of the temple was dark and there was movement in the back. Something I couldn't see lingered in the shadows. "I said get away from the entrance." With the sharp words I was yanked forward by some invisible force. I stumbled as it stopped, cursing heavily as I whirled around, trying to find the culprit as my eyes immediately adjusted to the darkness.
My gaze found the person responsible and my mouth dropped open in awe. A tall woman sat in a throne carved with obsidian laced moonstone. It glittered and nearly glowed, just like the female who sat in it. I blinked at her rapidly, her skin was like pale moonlight but her eyes were dark, so dark it was like looking into the vastness of the universe. They reminded me so much of someone else. I narrowed my eyes and tilted my head, trying so hard to remember who had those eyes.
"Lace." The name struck me like a heavy blow from her lips. "They remind you of Lace. There are parts of me scattered through all my children." Her tone was smooth as the memories struck me hard and fast, a life I had lived racing through my brain so fast that the pain of it made me hit my knees. I clutched at my skull, giving a cry of pain as I remembered who I was, how I came to be where I was.
Bastian.
An echo of a name that tore through my chest. "What the fuck did you do?" I slowly looked up at the goddess and her mouth tilted down into a small frown. She took me away from him. Bastian, my male.
"Now that is no way to speak to a goddess." She tsked me softly, one bare foot swaying in the air as she held the arms of her throne, watching me with that fathomless gaze.
"I don't give two shits." I got to my feet, my hands curling into fists at the angry panic I felt. She took me away from Bastian. "What do you think you are doing?" She needed to send me back, my heart thumped hard and fast in my chest. I needed to go back home.
"Rectifying a mistake." She looked at her nails, flicking them in my direction in a very clear dismissal.
I sputtered as the anger rolled in my belly. "A mistake?" There was no mistake to be rectified. I was happy where I was. I worked all the time and I was tired when I got home but I got to go home to Bastian and that made me happy.
"I thought you would enjoy it." Her mouth curled upwards slightly as if she were amused and I shook in my spot.
"Enjoy being taken away from my life?" I didn't enjoy that. I resented it. I wanted to go back. I wanted to go back to my cabin, to the large bed Bastian and I shared. I wanted to go back to waking him up from his naps by tickling him and having him kiss me awake in the mornings. I didn't want to be here.
"As I recall you said Bastian took your life away already." She slowly stood up and shook her head, her nearly white hair cascading down her back.
"He did and then he fixed that." He had taken away everything I had known and in return he had given me a new life where I could be happy. He had helped me make the best of the situation and that was all that I wanted. I didn't want to trade him for anything. I loved him with my everything.
"I don't see why you are upset. You didn't like him." She gave me another flippant gesture as she glided down the stairs. She was tall, so very tall, nearly twice my height but for some reason I didn't feel intimidated by her. I felt fucking agitated by her.
"You know nothing!" It came out as a near screech, hysterical anger giving an added pitch to my voice. I needed to get back because I never got the chance to tell Bastian I loved him.
"You routinely called him an idiot." She looked down at me, her hands on her hips, her hair nearly glowing in the shadows of the temple as it fell over her shoulders, nearly brushing the ground if it hadn't almost floated in the air around her.
"He was my idiot!" Tears burned my eyes. He was everything to me. No matter what I said, what I called him, he was still mine. My love didn't disappear because I called him stupid or a lug or a dick. It just showed that no matter his flaws, I would be willing to stay with him and love him back just as much as he loved me. "Send me back!" I felt like hyperventilating. I wanted to go home, he was going to be in so much pain. I couldn't bear the thought of him feeling like that.
"No." It was said calmly and evenly and I reeled back like I had been slapped.
"No?" Anger rolled up and through me and I felt like my skin was too tight on my bones. "The hell you are telling me no!" That hot and burning feeling expanded from my core, demanding we hurt her for the refusal.
"I just did." She said it firmly and I shook my head rapidly, feeling like my skin was going to burst from the anger that soared through me. The hot energy rolled through my veins, demanding we fix the problem.
"I don't accept that. I won't!" I would fight everything to be with him. I would tear down the foundations of heaven and hell if it resulted in me being held in his arms again.
"It's not your choice. I gave you life the only way I could and because of that you are the reason you are here now." She moved closer to me, her size shrinking as her dark eyes met mine, held them captive. "Think very hard, priestess, why would I take you away?" Her tone was mesmerizing and the memories flashed through my mind, Bastian falling, red pouring, the smoke, all the smoke, the life, that I took in. Then the giving of life and the touch to save the innocent.
I jolted as she blinked, letting me go. "Is it because I saved them?" I blinked in confusion. That made no sense. "I thought that would be a good thing!" I had saved them, saved Lace from death and a repeat of her torment and saved Bastian from death. The thought of him dying sent a bolt of raw pain through my chest that made it hard to breathe.
"You were a witch. The only way I could save you was to connect the broken connection with my own power. To change your form to handle it running through your veins. You tapped into it to save Bastian and to save Lace and her child." Mene said it softly and shook her head as she looked at me.
"So?" There was nothing she said that made sense. I had saved two people with magic. It was nothing, it was inconsequential.
"I cannot have an accidental goddess running around on Terra!" Her voice boomed from her, shaking the pillars that held up the roof of the temple.
It took me a second to process what she said. "Accidental what?" I blinked up at her and she heaved out a breath, seeming to collect herself.
"You have gained access to my powers through the connection I made with you to keep you alive. You have access to all of my powers and as I have had to change your body to hold that power, you are no longer technically human." At the words my mouth dropped open. Holy fucking shit. Mene had turned me into a fucking goddess. "If anyone on Olympus knew what I had done, they would take everything away from me." She narrowed her eyes, setting her chin as she looked down at me. I tried my hardest to push everything away. I didn't have time to figure out what the consequences of what I was learning. All that mattered was getting back to Bastian.
"So you take away everything from Bastian?" She would take me away, rip me from my life so that she wouldn't have to lose everything. She would sacrifice Bastian and me for her own selfish ends.
"He will recover." Even as she said it I could hear the lie. I knew the lie. Bastian wouldn't recover from this, he wouldn't recover from my loss and that tore into me like nothing else.
"No he won't and you know it." My words were low and accusing and she looked away. "Some mother you are." I spat the words at her feet and she whirled around.
"His pain and life for the lives of hundreds of thousands I have created, little priestess! I would gladly sacrifice hundreds to save them all!" Her voice boomed around me, the power of it bouncing off of me and shaking her temple. As she spoke, glowing figures grew around me, thousands of them filled the temple. "That is what mothers do! We protect our children every way we can and you are the one thing that can destroy them all in an instant!" She waved her hands a blast of wind snuffed all the glowing figures in a single moment.
I wouldn't be cowed by that. Wouldn't be stopped by her words because I was born and raised human and we were selfish. I wanted Bastian and that was what I would get. No matter what. "And whose fault is that?" I glowered up at her and her face twisted with confusion.
"Pardon?" She blinked at me and I felt glad that I had thrown her off-balance.
"Who is the one who catered to the one child that asked for a favour? Who is the one who created the accidental goddess?" She was the one who had created the accidental ruin. She was the one who put herself into the position she was in. Now she was trying to blame me, trying to blame Bastian. I wasn't going to stand for that.
She blinked at me in confusion, nearly sputtering. "Bastian asked me-"
"An all-knowing mother would have said no." That was it. She could have told him no. She could have let me die and let him go. She didn't need to do as she had.
"I have never claimed to be all-knowing, little priestess. I make mistakes, this I know, but taking you away from Terra is not a mistake." Her voice was even and she crouched down, looking at me eye to eye. "To save them all, I will keep my mistake hidden away from where Olympus can see. If it ends with his death, so be it." The shadows darkened around us and I swallowed hard.
I could see Bastian's path from here and I refused to allow it to happen. "I would kill millions to be with him and you will kill him to save a paltry few." She gave no meaning to his life. She felt he had no significance but to me he was my everything.
"We all must make sacrifices in our lives. What is a lost few in the presence of the many that still live?" She said it softly as she stood up.
"He's my few." My chin trembled and my eyes burned. I would give up the world if it meant I could be with him. She didn't understand that while she placed no importance onto his life, I placed all of it.
"Your pain will end, as will his. That is why you need to let your body go." She said it gently and I jolted at her words.
"What?" She did not just say what I thought she did. She wasn't that oblivious. Humans were notorious for finding loopholes.
"You are still holding onto your mortal shell. You need to let it go." At her words I felt my eyes widen. She had said what I thought she said.
"You mean I am still technically alive down there?" Hope started its slow burn in my stomach as it slowly moved through my veins.
"Yes." At the word it took all my control to not cheer. That was a huge loophole because not only did it sound like I was still technically alive down on earth, I was the only one who could kill my own body.
"Oh I ain't doing that." I smiled innocently as I shook my head. My body was staying firmly alive because I was going to return to it. Nothing would keep me from Bastian. Not even a goddess.
"Excuse me." Her tone was sharp and I smirked.
"You heard me. My body is staying very much alive." I wasn't going to give it up. She could take me away from Bastian but she couldn't force me to kill myself. She was not going to force me to close my loophole. I was going to find a way to drag myself through it, regardless of what she wanted.
"We shall see about that." She raised her hand, pale streams of light filled her palm and my heart jolted in my chest as she slammed it down towards me. That familiar feeling of hot energy clawing my veins rolled through me and I shifted backwards, swiping my hand against the floor, feeling the boiling fire thrum through me. Her ball of light crashed down against the dark shadows I had pulled from the stone.
It shattered into glimmering stars, cascading all around us as the shadows seeped back into the stone and I grinned at her vicious look. "As you said, you created an accidental goddess." If I was connected to her power that meant I had access to it. That meant I would do everything in her power to keep my body alive. "Try me." I gave her a smug smirk as I crossed my arms over my chest.
"I have been alive for eons! You think you can defeat me?" She looked almost frantic and it amused me greatly. If she was going to fuck with my life, I was going to make her life fucking hell until she gave me what I wanted.
"The power I am now wielding is your own. You really think you can defeat yourself?" I wanted her to stew on that little conundrum. I wanted her to think long and hard on the problem because my guess was that she not only couldn't defeat herself, but wouldn't.
Her expression turned calculating and she slowly shook her head, tsking softly. "You would let him suffer with hope over your body that you will never return to?" There was a heavy dose of censure to her tone that had me confused.
I blinked rapidly. "Excuse me?"
"He is going to wither away at your bedside. He will die believing in the impossibility that you will come back." She waved her hand, opening a swirling portal that showed the pack infirmary and Bastian as he came into to the room, coming over to the bed and grabbing my hand. I inhaled sharply as I saw it. He was right there as if I could reach out and touch him but I knew I couldn't and it hurt. "He will lament and cry that he should have fallen instead of you. That it is his fault you are gone. He will suffer endlessly until they put him out of his misery." She showed me his fate, showed me every detail of how he grew weaker and weaker, pleading over my prone form. She showed me how Azrael came in and how easy it was for him to go. Just one sharp snap. I shook from it, shook from his suffering. I wanted to reach out and touch him, to comfort him but I knew I couldn't.
She waved the scene away, her mouth twitched upwards slightly as if she won. I felt the fleeting remnants of her power and called it into me, waving my hand as I tried to recreate what she did. It was almost hilariously easy how the energy surged through me to do as I wanted. It was so much different than my magic but it seemed so much more familiar. The image came in fuzzy but I focused harder and it came in clearer. The image caused a pang in my chest as it followed Bastian as he walked through the forest, wiping at his face, his jaw set in a position I knew all too well. He was set in doing something and I knew I had to watch what was going to happen.
I swallowed hard as he walked towards the Balancing stone and my heart jumped into my chest as he stood at the edge of the cliff, looking up at the sky. I couldn't bear to watch but I couldn't draw my eyes away as he took another step and fell without a sound. Tears filled my eyes and I waved the image away, feeling utterly heartbroken.
I glowered at the goddess. "I will never allow that to happen." There was no way, in any version of hell, that I would allow Bastian to reach that point.
She looked at me, narrowing her eyes. "You aren't going back." She gave a light sniff and crossed her arms over her chest. She reminded me of a petulant child when she did so.
"We shall see about that." I was going to make it back to Bastian whether she liked it or not. There was no option that I had that would allow Bastian to become hurt or die. I looked away from her and moved back towards the entrance. I looked out over what I now knew was Olympus. I hit a shield and narrowed my eyes as I smoothed my hands over it. It was smooth and cool to the touch but I couldn't see it. It reminded me of glass.
"You aren't leaving." She said it coldly and I pressed my hands to the glass shield, staring out over the heavens. None of that mattered to me, I would do whatever was necessary to make it back to Bastian. She didn't understand the lengths I would go to take Bastian's pain away. I smoothed my hand over the shield, an image flickered into existence. The heated energy in me reacting to my longing. Bastian came into view, he was sitting in the infirmary, clinging to my hand. I wanted to reach out and smooth my hand over his cheek and jaw, to pull him close.
I hadn't been gone for long but I already ached to have him close to me. "Get used to your new life. Learn the space, Lynn, you will not leave here." She smoothed her hand over the image, making it go away. I stared at the space where his face had occupied, the ache lingered within me. "Just give him up." She said it quietly and I shook my head.
"Never." I would fight for eternity, turning time back again and again to make it back to him. She didn't understand the depths I would go, what ends I would reach, to get back to my man.
"Why fight it?" There was a light curiosity to her tone and I wiped at my eyes. I didn't want to cry but I missed my stupid lug of a man. I missed him so badly it hurt.
"Love." That was my driving force forward. I loved Bastion and my love is what would have me forever hanging onto the slightest chance I had to make it back to him.
She gave a small sigh, reaching out and rested her hand on my shoulder. "Your love will kill him slowly."
"And yours will kill him quickly." I looked up at her, my mind filled with the image of him stepping off that cliff, his end coming brutal and fast. I hadn't been gone long in that path of time. An hour or less. With her image I knew it was months. I had months to find my way back to him in her foretelling of the future and less than an hour with mine. A few weeks suffering with hope was better than a bitter death for him.
"My love will save them all." She gave my shoulder a small squeeze as if she were trying to comfort me through the loss. "Humans are so selfish, unable to see the many for the few."
"We are. Its what makes us human." I looked up at her and she pulled her hands behind her back, her hair colour nearly blending into her skin.
"Not you, not any more." She said the words softly. She was a goddess but if what she said was true, I was now just an extension of her, a near clone of herself. She didn't know what she had done and what type of witch she had brought into her temple. I narrowed my eyes as I looked at the glowing mountain.
If she wasn't careful and didn't listen, I would make even Olympus crumble.