Twilight of the Gods

Daeva looked at her mothers, her eyes darting from them to Nyx. Tristan anxiously smoked his pipe nearby, filling the room with a cloyingly sweet scent. She knew they were all waiting for her to make her decision, one that had equal chances of saving or dooming humanity.

“Time travel is nowhere as dangerous as Tristan says it is,” Nyx said. “While he’s right about altering the shape of the universe, he’s certainly exaggerating when he states that it will destroy the world.”

“My visions have never been wrong,” he protested. “I witnessed the void, the never-ending emptiness at the edge of time. Sending her back is no light matter.”

“Indeed, which is why I must let you know that this isn’t the first time that she’s gone back in time.”

Daeva blinks in surprise. “Excuse me?”

“You’re in safe hands,” Nyx reassured her. “We’ve done this a couple of times already.”

“Two times, to be exact,” Cordelia added. “It’s how we were able to narrow down the decision that doomed humanity.”

“I don’t remember any of it,” Daeva admitted. Not that it would make sense if she did since her past selves that went back in time were two people outside of her identity. But it was mind boggling to think that at some point, she probably crossed paths with one of her incarnations without knowing.

The whole thing was very perplexing. What happened to the other Daevas, or rather, the other Evelyns who were already sent back? Were they even alive? Could all three of them simultaneously exist in the timeline?

“You’ve sent her back already?” Tristan was pulling out his hair in frustration. “And you want to do it again? We’re certainly doomed. I thought there was a chance that even if you did send her back, there was still a small probability that the universe would remain intact. But the more you do it, the more that probability shrinks.”

He smokes his pipe furiously, simultaneously enraged and anxious. “You’ve really done it, Nyx. You really hammered in the last nail on the coffin of all life in this universe.”

Nyx looks at him impassively as a mother might to a child throwing a tantrum. “Your vision of the void doesn’t mean that all life will end. Maybe it’s just an end to your abilities. Magic runs dry without worshippers or mortal souls to fuel it.”

Tristan glared at her. “I can assure you that my magic has never run dry. These are abilities I’ve had before I ascended and became an Elysian. I don’t rely on influence over the masses, unlike some people.”

While the two continued to bicker, Daeva was starting to question if either of them had the right idea about time travel. The offer that Nyx and her mothers made was enticing, but it bothered her that she was the third iteration they were sending back. How had her other selves failed? Was there any guarantee that she was going to succeed?

You need to think carefully about this, Anhel advised. I sense that there are other motivations at play, ones more selfish than saving all of humanity. Ask yourself what the others may wish to gain out of this. Remember that Nyx despises humanity.

Although Anhel was right, Daeva knew that Nyx did not loathe humanity nearly as much as she let on. While she was wary of the Lady of the Night, she knew that the God wasn’t heartless. If she was, she wouldn’t have let her meet her mothers.

Speaking of which, the two women were whispering among themselves while bouncing the twins on their knees. They seemed worried, but when Daeva approached them, their expressions brightened.

“Evelyn,” Alexandra said. “Have you made your decision yet?”

“Her name is Daeva now,” Cordelia said, lightly scolding her. “Isn’t that right?”

She didn’t really care what they called her, but the name Daeva felt more right than Evelyn. It had been ages since she was that girl who was raised as a princess and cared for by both queens.

“Daeva is good,” she said. “And I haven’t made my decision yet. But I have a few questions that might help me do so.”

“Ask away.” Cordelia smooths a stray hair away from her face, directing the full attention of her gray eyes to Daeva.

“What happened during the last two times I was sent back in time? And why are you sending me back again?”

“Ah,” Alexandra said as if she were expecting the question. “You know we hope you will succeed this time.”

“Are you saying that I failed the other two times?”

“No, it’s nothing like that,” Cordelia chimed in. “If anything, we failed the other two times. Time travel is an endeavor that requires multiple parties to succeed. We made so many mistakes the first time we sent you back.”

“We were too ambitious. We thought that we could correct all of human history. Your stepmother and I combed through countless history books while we were in Paradise, making a list of events that we felt you could prevent to change the course of mankind for the better. We were more hopeful then,” Alexandra recounted.

“I don’t blame us. It was our first attempt. But you died trying to save humanity and damned yourself to Hell.” Cordelia lowered her eyes in shame.

“What did I do to deserve eternal punishment?”

Alexandra laughed humorlessly. “What didn’t you do? Somewhere along the way, when you attempted to correct all of humanity’s mistakes, you decided that mankind was irredeemable. From that philosophy, you decided to act accordingly.”

That sounds like something Nyx would do, she thought. It scared her to think that she was one bad time travel trip away from becoming just like the Lady of the Night.

“What about the second time I went back?”

Cordelia thinks about it for a moment. “We were more careful that time around. Restarting the timeline again made your life more chaotic. Predicting what you were going to do and what was going to happen to you was a lot harder so we took the precaution of teaching you about the art of chaos. We needed you to survive if you were going to complete your new mission which was preventing your own death at Haydn’s hands.”

“We thought that if you didn’t die, there was a chance that you’d return home and reclaim the throne,” Alexandra explained. “But you didn’t make it back alive. Somehow, Haydn had killed both the original Evelyn and the Evelyn that traveled back in time.”

“Is there a moment where I went back in time that Haydn didn’t kill me? Maybe during the first time–”

“No,” Cordelia cuts her off. “There hasn’t been a single timeline where he didn’t murder you.”

“Is there a chance that he could be persuaded not to butcher me?”

“It’s too risky,” Alexandra said. “It always ends with his knife at your throat. I don’t think I can bear to see you get slaughtered again, but I also don’t want you to put yourself in his path. He will destroy you. He has always destroyed you.”

None of this should have surprised Daeva. But for some reason, she had been holding out hope that Haydn was kinder than her mothers had told her. He was her soulmate, for crying out loud.

The vision of him stabbing her replays in her mind. Anger twists his face into that of a monster’s as he sinks the dagger into her chest. He hardly looked like the Haydn she knew from the past and present.

He was kindest to you. To the rest of the world, he was a brute. I’m sorry Odi chose him. I’m sorry that he was the one who became your soulmate. But, if we go back in time, we can change that. Pretend to go along with Nyx’s plan. Appease your mothers. We will fix our mistakes.

What makes you think that I won’t end up like the other Evelyns? There is no guarantee that I won’t die again. I may be harder to kill this time around, but that doesn’t make me invulnerable to other dangers. If we go back, we will be returning to the era of Gods, the height of the Pantheon. Our enemies could be numerous, she argued.

Not to mention that Tristan’s pleas to Nyx disturbed her. The pair were still bickering on the other side of the room on the merits of time travel. She didn’t want to accidentally cause the collapse of the universe.

You’re not a saint, Daeva, Anhel argued. You want to erase your suffering more than you want to save the world. I remember our conversation with Tristan just as well as you do. You even suggested that it was better that the world ended.

But that had been before she found out she had two mothers. It was easy to be cynical and wish for everyone’s doom when she didn’t have a stake in the world.

Her eyes drifted over to the twins, who were playing games with their ghostly grandmothers. She even had children, too. She could hardly say that she was alone in the world anymore.

They will still be there if you go back in time. We can reshape the past for a more hopeful future. Maybe this time, your kids will actually be your choice to have. We could even create a reality without Ezra.

That was more than enough to convince Daeva.

“I made my choice,” she announced to her mothers. “I’m going to go back in time, consequences be damned.”

She walks over to the Board, placing her hand on the wood for one last time. She thought about what Nyx said about Board wielders, how they needed to have a strategic mind and a strong intent to wield the weapon.

She was going to do what Nyx and her mothers wanted. They would be watching over her as whatever animal she got reincarnated as, trying to twist the strands of fate.

But she would do it her way. She was going to make sure that Evelyn never had to suffer the way she did. And she would do it with Anhel, the one person who had always been by her side.

As the magic of the Board engulfed her, she closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she was in a new reality, ready for everything that was to come.

The End