I hope you enjoyed the first two chapters! From here on it will be one chapter per week, and I have plenty of content ready to go!
Thanks for reading!
It's been a year since Astraeus and Eos found me on the beach near their home. But I feel no closer to remembering anything than the moment after I woke up from experiencing that excruciating pain… They have helped me recover from all the wounds I had that I couldn't remember getting, like the nasty gash on the back of my head.
For this year I've mostly rested. Eos teaches me about the world a few times a week but the only things that feel familiar sometimes are some of the names I hear. Names of others like Astraeus and Eos, the Isu. Names like Jupiter, Minerva, and Poseidon… There are many others who are powerful and many of their names bring a feeling of disbelief. Like somewhere, deep inside of me, I don't believe there are really beings with those names.
Eos says that Isu were responsible for the creation of humans, but that the humans have begun to change in ways they did not foresee. Like with art, music, and other cultural developments. The Isu seem to have some spectacular abilities too. And they create some of the most amazing things.
Astraeus and Eos have many children and most of them are fairly pleasant. And they are all completely different from each other… Although, in some of their interactions something feels nostalgic, like I know how it is to have siblings… Could it be that I have brothers or sisters somewhere? Are they missing me?
For now… I guess I'll keep writing in this diary. With words my heart, mind, and hands know… Without remembering where or when I learnt them. Eos suggested it to keep track of things that might help me remember, the most I have are the memories I have in my hands of writing words unlike anything I've learnt from Eos…
Oh, I should put a year at least on this right? It is 2016 Isu Era.
It's been fifteen years now. I guess I didn't do a very good job of writing in this book…
Well… I have watched the humans of Astraeus and Eos' household grow and change. The newborns have grown into adolescents and the adults are beginning to show grey hairs on their heads. The parents of the adults have wilted into weary men and women who help as they can but seem to be knocking on death's door.
And yet… Despite my appearance being alike to theirs… I have not change at all. Astraeus and Eos have been keeping an eye on me. They haven't said anything, but I know they've noticed it too. I have also noticed that I seem to have gotten hardier than the humans. I don't get hurt as easily, and I seem to be able to grasp knowledge they cannot. They are beginning to revere me like how they do the Isu… I'm not sure I like it; I try to stop them whenever I can. And according to Eos and some of the female servants… I do not seem to have any kind of reproductive cycle; another thing that has set me apart from them.
Maybe I'm not a human after all?
I am certainly not an Isu, I lack in height and the glowing marks they all bear…
But if I'm not human and I'm not Isu, then what am I?
It seems that I'm really just not cut out for diary keeping. Especially seeing as my last entry was around fifty years ago; it is now 2085 Isu Era. I wonder if that is how I always was, or if whatever happened changed me… Maybe before all this, I kept the best journals ever, with jaw-dropping detail for whoever happened to be snooping.
I still use the letters my hands know in my writing, although I have now become adept at writing the Isu language and in the use of their system consoles. I find myself using turns of phrase that don't make sense in a literal fashion, but somehow I know the meaning they hold.
Well… A lot has changed since that last entry. And I mean a lot.
First, about five years after that entry, Astraeus and Eos offered me to join their family. I had been ready to say yes immediately, but they kept talking and telling me all the things they would be able to offer me if were I actually a part of their family. When they finished talking, we worked it all out. All in all it took about ten years to make it completely official. Then it was all those babies who had been born when I arrived who were well into their own families. Something about all that felt wrong then… But now, it doesn't bother me as much as it used to… Although, I'm not sure I can pinpoint when it stopped bothering me. Strange because Eos says my memory is sharper than that of humans.
It was another almost ten years later they felt comfortable bringing me 'out' to the rest of the Isu. I met so many. Some of them were so amazing! Welcoming, warm, and kind… Others simply looked down their nose at me. They treated me like the humans who served them. In those Isu I was exposed to how some humans have to live. And the cruelty they suffer at the hands of their Isu owners.
It was around this time that I first met Dike. She had been attending a sort of party where Eos had brought me to meet some of the other Isu, like Zeus, or Jupiter, and Athena, or Minerva… They told me that I could call them by Zeus and Athena. Dike had come to the corner I had found for myself, but she hadn't noticed me right away. I tried to go unnoticed but failed; much to my luck. We talked for the rest of the evening and have been near inseparable since. She is my greatest friend, and she is also supporting me in everything. It feels like I can never do enough in return for her.
I suppose it was also close to this time that Astraeus and Eos began to work on figuring me out. They never once went outside my comfort zone, even if it would have meant more solid results. They confessed that perhaps near the beginning they might have done those things anyway, but they had grown to love me and found they couldn't harm me willfully. I remember their faces when I replied to them by saying it felt as though they were truly my parents.
A few years later, I began to show signs of having powers similar to some of the Isu. Astraeus and Eos drew more blood then and discovered that I had changed on a physiological level. Even though my appearance hadn't changed at all, my body was changing completely. They told me then that the first sample of blood they had drawn, from immediately after they brought me home from the beach, resembled that of the humans. Continuing, they said that the new blood draw had shown a shift that placed me closer to Isu and yet different. Different in a way they couldn't figure out.
It was at that point that they enlisted the help of other Isu scientists to help puzzle out what I had become, and they enlisted others to help me learn to fight. They wanted me to be able to protect myself should an enemy try to take me away or worse; kill me. Athena and Dike took turns training me at first, then as time went on Hermes joined in. Hephaestus and his apprentice, Consus, had come to examine my developing powers and they got very excited with Hermes over it all. I had been very confused about why until they came with all kinds of weapons that would only work with my unique kind of power. Apparently, they had all been chomping at the bit to make artifacts for my power, and honestly, they all kind of treated me like their little sister; it felt comfortable.
Although, comfortable in a different way than I felt getting trained. There was something familiar about combat training, it tugged at my mind like a snagged thread in a tapestry where if you were to pull the right thread at the edge everything would be clear. Besides these feelings, my memories are no closer to returning. I can't remember any people, places, or things from my old life. I wonder if it isn't better that way… Because at least then I can't miss any of those things, even if I miss the idea of all of them.
Astraeus and Eos have now gone to some other Isu to look for answers about me. Maybe I'll be able to answer that ending question from my last entry… Maybe once I know what I am, I'll know where I came from…
I can dream, can't I?
Okay, so no matter how much I promise myself, maybe I will never be good at this whole journaling thing… But whatever.
Big news today! I finally bested Dike in a completely fair, all out sparring match!
I may have been immediately shot down by Athena next, but I have never beat either of them before!
Oh, the year is 2136. Yeah… It took me sixty years to defeat one of them. But hey!
Looking back through to the first entry, I now realize it's been more than one hundred years since I came to Astraeus and Eos.
In that time, I have grown close to many of the other Isu who feel similarly to the way Astraeus and Eos do. They believe that humans are changing in ways that the Isu had not intended, but that it should not be deterred. With Astraeus and Eos, I traveled the world to various groups of Isu. We had been looking for answers about me but turned up absolutely nothing. I have even kept in decently close contact with a few of them, like Idun, Parvati, Uzume, and Coyolxauhqui.
With that trip though… It became apparent that the humans view me the same way they view the Isu… Even though I bear an appearance closer to them, they can tell that I am more like the Isu…
I don't want to worry Astraeus and Eos, but I'm beginning to feel as though there are no answers to be had. And I'm finding more and more often that I just don't care to know. Similarly, I am caring less and less about my missing memories. It doesn't matter who I was, where I was, or who I was with. I'm here now. And this is where I should give my energy. Not some hazy mirage of a life I don't know anymore.
I think this will be my last entry. On purpose.
Originally, this was supposed to be a way to regain my memories… That maybe writing in these letters, with the phrases only I know would bring something to my mind… But there is nothing.
After I finish writing this entry, I'm going to put this away for a while and maybe the next time I find it, I won't have any more questions.
I close the old looking journal after reading the last entry. I never did get those answers. But… I think that it's mostly because I stopped looking. Astraeus and Eos still try to find some of the answers, but after we confounded most of the smartest Isu on the planet, they dialed back the trying…
It's hard to believe that that last actual entry was one hundred years ago. I copied out each entry after the last in Isu writing to prove to myself that I had learnt enough of it to translate the journal entries. I have now been able to best each of my sparring partners at least once, but I have never been in actual combat yet where lives would be hanging in the balance.
"Hey, are you ready?" Dike comes through the open doorway to my room. Her deep chestnut hair in a long braid cascading over her shoulder with a few of the wavy strands loose on the opposite side. Her amber eyes warm as she walks into my room.
"Yeah," I slide the journal into my pack, "Why are we going to Atlantis again?"
"Hephaestus said he has something he wants you to try." Dike reminds me.
"Right. I wonder what it is this time…" I follow Dike out into the main area of the house. A few of the servants bowing as we go by.
"Also, I believe that Poseidon wants to have us over for dinner as well, he probably wants to show off Atlantis again… His cycle there did start again just last year, and it went well from what I hear."
"That's good… Especially since, tensions between Isu and humans have been steadily getting worse over the last while." I comment,
"Yes, its has been an alarming trend. Especially for some of the more… Traditional Isu. Like those who belong to the Illuminat caste…"
"Yes… I've been hearing about that too."
We come around the corner to see Astraeus, Eos, and a couple of my adoptive siblings, Eurus, Zephyrus, Boreas, and Notus, discussing something. They all stop when they see Dike and I approaching. Eos comes and places a hand on my cheek gently looking down to my eyes.
"Off to Atlantis?" Eos asks us.
"Yeah, Hephaestus has something he wanted me to try."
"I swear he enjoys finding ways to have you incorporate your power into things…" Astraeus says as he steps over to us.
"I do enjoy trying them out, so…" I shrug and they all chuckle lightly.
"You be careful, Poseidon may be the ruler of Atlantis, but he can't completely control everything…" Notus says placing a hand on his sword, "You may have been adopted, but that doesn't make you any less my little sister."
"We all feel that way…" Eurus say as they wrap an arm around my shoulder.
"Even those of us not currently present, I'm sure." Zephyrus says as they smile largely at me.
"And even if we don't agree on much besides this…" Boreas adds as she nods her head.
"So, for that sake of all of Eden please take care of yourself, you may be more than human but that doesn't mean you're invulnerable." Astraeus adds forcefully.
"Thank you… I think that these years have been easier with all of you… But I don't want to be late to Atlantis, so Dike and I should probably leave."
"I suppose we'll let you leave this time…" Eurus jokes as they release their hold on my shoulder.
"I thank you graciously…" I play bow as I back up from them a little bit, "I'll probably only be a couple of days."
"Alright, have fun, but be careful!" Eos says one last time as I leave out the front door.
"Love you all!" I shout behind us as Dike and leave for a short trip to Atlantis.
"It is wonderful to have you here in my city again!" Poseidon holds his arms open as we walk into the grand hall where he is hosting his feast, "Please, I would like to introduce you to a new pair of newcomers to my city. They're visiting for now, but like with you, I hope they will choose to live here." A couple of Isu come over to us. They are both wearing pretty typical Isu garb, the woman wearing a sort of crown that has a veil off the back, "This is Juno," she gives a very slight head tilt, "and this is her husband, Aita." The man gives a more abrupt partial bow, "And this, my friends, is Astraea. And the ever-present Dike. This pair is nearly as inseparable as Persephone and Hecate." Poseidon laughs heavily at his joke with Juno and Aita chuckling along. Then Poseidon gets called away for something and Juno watches him leave before looking back to me.
"So, you are the one I've heard so many rumors about in Feyan, the one taken in by Astraeus and Eos? I'm sure that at least half the things I hear about you cannot be even close to true. Surely, someone of your… Stature…" She gets a step closer and pointedly looks down her nose at me, "Can't have possibly bested Minerva, Hermes, and Aletheia in sparring matches."
"I'm afraid that would be, as you suspect, only partially true. I have not faced Aletheia in a sparring bout yet. I have only briefly met her." Juno's eyes narrow a moment before she steps back and gives an empty smile.
"I wonder then what else I hear about you is simply hearsay." She says gently before walking away with Aita following after her. Something is off about her…
"You probably want to stay out of her attention… She's with the Illuminat caste and is getting a reputation for being pretty nasty to humans…" Dike whispers to me once they are far enough away.
"Noted…" We both watch her walk away, Aita trailing along as she cuts through the crowds. Pretty obvious who wears the pants in that relationship…
"Ah, if it isn't the lovely Astraea!" I turn to face the person coming towards us.
"Hermes! I'm surprised to see you… Haven't you practically glued yourself to Elysium lately?" Hermes grins.
"Well, Hephaestus sounded so excited about this latest thing that I couldn't help myself. But I shall return to the realm of my lovely Persephone soon." He dips his head before moving on and Dike and I also move away from the majority of the activity.
We chat for a while before another friend comes by.
"Astraea, Dike. It's good to see you again." He says to us as he sits on the bench next to ours looking out over the city.
"Ilios, I wasn't expecting to see you here. I thought you were staying in Feyan for the time being." Dike says to Ilios. She is usually wary of him, but over the last seven or so years she has had a gradual easing of her judgment.
"Well, I'd heard a rumor that Juno would be visiting Atlantis and had to see it for myself… Poseidon has been steadily increasing the rights for humans in the city and I wondered how Juno would react to it… It was pretty satisfying to watch her see humans getting treated almost well. And then when you spoke to her, Astraea. That was deeply amusing to see… I'm pretty sure she sees you as a human before all else… Even if you've been around longer than her." A wicked amusement passes through his eyes.
"I imagine she doesn't believe that fact." I quip, earning a laugh from Dike and a mischievous grin from Ilios.
I had met Ilios the last time I had visited Atlantis about fifteen years ago. We hadn't hit it off as friends right away, but we have certainly grown closer over last ten years. It was just last year that he left Eden to live in Feyan.
The three of us chatted until the evening's festivities were coming to an end and Poseidon had a servant lead us to a room with two beds that we would be able to sleep in for a couple of nights.
Well… This trip has certainly lasted longer than intended…
So long, in fact, that Boreas felt the need to come and check on us…
I had been under the impression that Hephaestus had finished something he wanted me to try out… When in reality he had only designed a few and wanted me to pick one to be made. I told him that it wasn't really necessary before coming, but he had insisted… So in the end I chose a short-sword design that would complement the long-sword he made for me some time ago. After I chose it, he revealed that the design could be morphed into a glaive styled weapon, a polearm with the sword blade on one end and the pommel on the other. Which… I admit I got incredibly excited about.
Hopefully, Hephaestus will be done his creation tomorrow, and Dike and I will return to Eden. Admittedly… This is the longest I've ever been away from home without at least one person from my adoptive family. They have always been pretty protective of me. Dike says they're overprotective, but that maybe they should be. Especially since I am considered unique and there could be any number of schemers who would love to get theirs hands on me for wicked and twisted experiments. I am scared of the idea that there could be those who would do that to me… But at the same time, I have grown a fairly large net of close friends within the circles of more powerful Isu and that makes me feel secure.
"You're looking lost in thought… Could it be that your memories are surfacing?" I look over to see Ilios approaching me from the other side of the boardwalk that circles the city.
"Nah, I'm just getting lost in the view of the water."
"Well… If you're interested I could take you to see something pretty incredible…" He offers a hand to me, smiling warmly. "Unless you wanted to wait for Dike…"
"Dike is with Jupiter right now; they're talking about something private so it's just me today. And you know what? That sounds like fun. Let's go." I take his hand and he takes me to the place he's been staying first.
"I just need to pick something up quickly… I'll just be a moment."
"Okay, I'll wait at the door here like a creeper." He scoffs.
"You sometimes have the strangest turns of phrase. Where do you think of all of them?"
"Honestly, it just kind of pops into my head… I'm pretty sure I didn't think of them myself."
"Interesting… Do you think it could be words from your memories and you just can't pinpoint it? Or maybe they were so ingrained by use before you lost your memories that the meaning and use of them is in your mind like muscle memory?" Ilios spits out a few more thoughts in a string, "Hey, do you mind coming here for a moment, I think you'll find this interesting…"
"Okay," I step into his temporary home and walk towards where he was talking from.
"Here look…" He steps back from a large chest and gestures for me to look inside.
As I near it I realize there's nothing inside and then I feel a prick on the skin of my neck. I grab my neck and turn to face Ilios, who is now wearing a sinister smile.
"I thought I would never get you alone… This has certainly been the long game." He's holding a device of some, kind in his hand, "It was always someone… Dike most of all but if it wasn't her it was one from your 'adoptive' family." He sneers at me as the world begins to blur, "But now I've shown them… You should be feeling the effects by now. Don't worry, before long you'll just be asleep…"
"But… W… Why…?" I manage to say before I fall backwards into the large chest.
"Well, shouldn't that be obvious? You are a unique specimen." He tucks both of my legs into the chest before closing the lid.
Then, just as Ilios promised, a sticky black feeling pulled me into darkness.
"Raea…" A familiar voice, it makes me sad… "Wake up, sweetie… It's time for school."
I open my eyes to find myself on a noisy sea vessel… A ferry. The word floated to me like the waves below I'm looking out over a beautiful landscape, but it seems shrouded in haze… Smog. Again the word just comes to my mind.
A sudden flash and the world is engulfed in a maelstrom. Gargantuan waves, crashing thunder, and piercing lightning. The ferry is being rocked all over the place. Then I'm tipped into the swirling waters. When I surface, I'm sitting a rectangular table with six people all around it.
I know their faces… But it's almost as if there is an invisible wall between me and them…
They're all chattering and laughing together, two of them who look almost the same laugh wickedly as the younger girl shrieks and punches the closer one. They remind me of Astraeus and Eos' children… The two at the end of the table who I assume must be the parents look at the table with all-encompassing love. It's a look that I've seen on Astraeus and Eos' faces as they look at their children. And it's a look I recognize on these people. I feel so happy, but at the same time I want to dissolve into tears at this sight…
My eyes fly open to reveal unfamiliar surroundings and a pounding headache. I try to raise my hand to my head to find that my hand is restrained. Testing movement reveals that I am restrained at my wrists and ankles. What happened? The last thing I remember is staring out over the waters surrounding Atlantis.
I regret not taking Eos' warnings a little more seriously…
"Ah, you've woken up. Did you have a pleasant sleep?" I turn my head to the right to find Ilios leaving a console to come over to me.
"Ilios? What happened? Where am I?" He places a hand gently on my arm.
"You don't need to worry about anything… I'm here to help you. You want answers about what you are, don't you?" He smiles in an eerie way, "Oh, how silly of me, of course you do." He says before I can answer.
"But… Then you did this?" I shake my arms, and he nods unnervingly at me, "Why?"
"Well, because you had to go and flaunt yourself in front of Juno like a preening songbird." He crosses his arms, "I have been in this for the long game, you see. And I saw it in her eyes. She wanted you to use you for her experiments. I simply couldn't allow that. Not after all this effort I've made to earn your trust." He places his hand back on my arm, "I just couldn't let all my effort go to waste and let her just have you. No. I had to act. Then by sheer luck, your guardian was called away by her father." He holds his open hands up to the ceiling almost in praise, "I could not believe my luck when I saw you standing there all alone. No Dike in sight. I even waited almost an hour to see if she would appear. But she never did! It was like the everything had aligned itself to my needs. It took a little improvisation on how to get you secure, let alone out of the city. But even that all worked out! You see, the guards and other citizens of the city had seen us together often enough that they immediately cleared me of any suspicion at all! Then I left the city, and no one even thought to search me at all! I couldn't have asked for it to go any smoother."
He looks down at me and caresses my cheek. I try to shirk it away, but I can't move enough to do it, "Oh, and you asked where we are… It's a secret you see… I built all of this just for you as soon as I heard about you for the first time." He gestures widely to everything, "First I built this, and then I busied myself with plotting ways to get you here. I was never really sure what kind of things that Astraeus would try on you, but you confirmed my suspicions that he had gone soft for you. He became unwilling to make the necessary sacrifice in order for progress to be made." He strokes the cover of my journal. His words keep sending chills through me…
"I know that Astraeus and Eos didn't do everything to find out what had happened to me. But they said they didn't want to do it because it would cause too much pain to me and they couldn't bear to do it…" I say to him, in an attempt to reason with him.
"Yes. They decided to not make the sacrifice that could have gained them answers. And maybe even power."
"But I had agreed with them. I don't care about getting answers enough to go through that. So please… Let me go…"
"Tsk…" He glares down at me with stone cold eyes, "They've infected you with this belief that you have a choice over this. What fallacy. You could hold the key to an everlasting Isu rule for this world. A world where the Isu never age and have power beyond even our knowledge. We Isu scientists have an obligation to do whatever we can to advance ourselves." He leans in closely, "You will be here until you breathe your dying breath. You will be my research subjected until then, and if it turns out you do have true immortality… I suppose that would mean you will never be free again."
He stands back up and leaves the room having the lights turned off behind him.
Leaving me in cold darkness. A pit of dread in my stomach growing with each second.