LEGEND OF THE GODDESSES
Twixt, 1,081 years ago
"Good morning, Kolassa."
Rhea Strait was cooking eggs, hay, and potatoes on a skillet over an open fire in the middle of their hut. Kolassa entered the room, now a gangly teenager, dragging two large items behind her.
"Morning, Mother."
"Did you sleep well?" Rhea asked.
"Not so much. I had a double event last night."
"A what?" Rhea said blankly. "What is a 'double event'…?" She turned to Kolassa and gasped.
The purple-pink filly was dragging the corpses of two strange creatures across the floor. One was a slimy purple creature with bulging white eyes and four tentacles where its mouth should have been, dressed in a red velvet robe and with a bipedal gait; the other, an enormous and bulky blue-green beetle with red eyes and hellish mandibles.
"Two monsters?" Rhea breathed.
Kolassa nodded fearfully. "It's never happened before. I'm a bit concerned."
"A bit…?" Rhea muttered.
"They just get bigger and tougher and more aggressive," said Kolassa. "And now there's two at once? And they both had weird powers that kind of fogged my mind. If I was just a brawler instead of a mentally disciplined fighter, that would have left me completely incapacitated, and they'd have slaughtered me. It's a scary thought."
She shrugged. "Don't worry, Mother. I'm fine now. Gonna move them out and burn them later, I'm in no mood for it right now…"
She rolled the dead monsters out into the backyard. She raised a hoof and brushed her ratty red mane with its orange stripe out of her eyes as she walked back into the kitchen area. She looked over her mother, with her gorgeous blue coat and braided blond mane, cooking breakfast, seemingly perfect in every way.
Kolassa approached Rhea slowly. "Mother?" she said. "Can I ask you a question? One that I've had on my mind for… a couple of years now."
Rhea turned and beamed, her pale yellow eyes meeting Kolassa's baby blue. "Of course, sweetheart. What's on your mind?"
Kolassa struggled to find the words. "Does Father… know?"
"Know what, honey?"
"That he's not really my father."
Rhea froze in place for a moment as if in shock. A second later, she immediately returned to cooking as if nothing had happened. "Yes, he does," she said simply. "He was away at war when I became pregnant with you. With the time-frame involved, there was no possible way you could have been his. This was plain to everypony. But he never acknowledged it. He raised you as his own and has treated you and I with nothing but kindness. And I love him for that. I'll love him forever for all he's done for us as a husband and a father. But… tell me… what do you know about that?" She turned to Kolassa expectantly.
She sighed. "Remember a few years back when Spyder took me to the pyramids? When I came home with my cutie mark?"
Rhea smiled. "Of course."
"I met Kane and Boll there."
"I see," Rhea said solemnly. She pulled the skillet away from the fire and set it on the table before bending down to look Kolassa straight in the eye. "The first thing you need to know is that those evil gods tricked me. They used magic to disguise themselves as your father—that is, the pony we know as your father—and came to me, trying to get me to believe they were my husband returned early from the war. And when I noticed the discrepancies, the inconsistencies, their failure to accurately portray him, they entered my mind and made me believe they were him. They revealed themselves… afterward."
She hung her head in shame. "Once you were born, I tried to forget. You seemed normal enough, you looked like you could be our legitimate daughter. I thought you could just live your life. But then… then came your dreams, and with your dreams, the monsters…" A tear dripped down her cheek and she looked away. "And I knew why. But I chose to keep it to myself. I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault, Mother," Kolassa said quickly.
"Perhaps not, but it's certainly my fault for not telling you until now," Rhea said sadly. "I truly am sorry."
Kolassa pulled her mother into a hug. "And it's truly okay," she said. "But now… that's not exactly what was troubling me. Do you know why Kane and Boll fathered me? What they were trying to accomplish?"
Rhea looked uneasy. "No," she whispered.
"I'm supposed to replace them," Kolassa confessed. "They want me to be a goddess and rule over their spheres of influence."
"Oh dear," Rhea breathed.
"Yeah," Kolassa agreed. "I'm… I'm scared, Mother. What if that's how I end up?"
Rhea ran a hoof through her daughter's hair. "Kolassa, do you really see yourself going in that direction? All you ever talk about is helping the poor and the repressed, and convincing all the creatures of the world to be the best they can be."
Kolassa nodded. "Yes, but they're Old Gods. What if they can change me? Their influence is all over me—monsters, bad dreams, even my cutie mark is their pyramids."
"Honey," Rhea said gently, "when you fell in love with the pyramids, was it because they were made to honor Kane and Boll?"
"Well, no. I didn't know that at the time, but…"
"Precisely," said Rhea. "Nopony knew that apart from me, but I wasn't scared. You told me then what you were thinking when you got your cutie mark. You told me then who you are. And you are not the new goddess of flame and terror. Who are you? Tell me again."
"I don't know," said Kolassa. "But I'm… trying to be optimistic. Hoping that whatever I put out into the world, it makes it a better place. And I'm your daughter and my father's daughter. Chronus Twister's daughter."
Rhea kissed the top of Kolassa's head. "That's my girl."
Fork watched this conversation from the windowsill on the other side of the hut, grinning from behind his mass of spiky silver hair and holding his sapphire charm bracelet aloft.
"Hey, you."
"WAUGH!" Fork cried out, holding the sapphire in front of his face and jumping back. The seven floating eyes of Spectatus were glaring disdainfully at Fork, his toothy mouth folded into a sneer. "You're so quiet," Fork muttered. "Hello."
"Hi," Spectatus retorted. "What do you think you're doing, smart guy? You think I don't know what you are?"
"Of course you know," Fork said casually. "I'm pretty open about the fact that I'm a pixie pony."
"That's not what I meant. You're a time-dancer. You think you're the only guy who walks back and forth through time? They're all over the place on my world. I can spot one from a mile away, and most of them are a lot more subtle than you."
Fork shrugged, grinning innocently.
"You know what else I can spot from a mile away?" Spectatus went on. "A guy on a power trip. Tell me what you're up to, Fork."
"What do you think I'm up to?" Fork countered sweetly.
"I think that at every halfway memorable event in Kolassa's life, you're there pulling the strings, making it happen. I'd like to know why."
Fork bowed his head grandly. "You're very astute. Truth is, I'm interfering in the lives of all the goddesses. And do you know why? Because someday, it's gonna make for really great dinner conversation." He winked and clicked his tongue. "And I mean… really great."
Spectatus blinked his red central eye. "That's it?"
"Yep."
He frowned deeply. "Kolassa's not a goddess."
"Pfft," Fork scoffed. "Maybe you're not as astute as I thought."
"She's not going through with Kane and Boll's plan," Spectatus snapped. "She's too good for that."
Fork threw his head back and guffawed. "BA-HA-HA-HA! Dude, you don't know nothin'!"
"Explain yourself," Spectatus growled. "Now."
"I couldn't possibly," said Fork. "If you want to know about the future, I'd suggest you ask that guy." He pointed.
Spectatus snorted. "You get that I can look where you're pointing while still—" He turned a single blue eye in the direction Fork was gesturing. "Okay, there really is a guy over there."
Both Fork and Spectatus stared at the tiny creature who was hovering over Rhea and Kolassa's heads on red and purple wings with blue eyespots, holding aloft a blue sapphire.
"That guy's you," Spectatus exclaimed.
"Yes, he is," Fork agreed. "You made me miss some of that conversation, so I'm going over there to catch it from the beginning."
His horn glowed pale blue, and he vanished in a huge spherical burst of energy that burned Spectatus' eye.
"Aaagh!" he cried out. He growled and began advancing on the other Fork.
"And… done," that Fork said, satisfied.
Spectatus opened his mouth wide and rushed toward Fork, who lit up his horn and vanished exactly as the first one had. Spectatus growled again, then turned around, finding himself face-to-face with Rhea, who looked mildly surprised and fascinated by him.
"Ma'am," he squeaked.
"Hello, Spectatus," Rhea said cordially. She walked past him.
Spectatus gazed after her in surprise, then turned to Kolassa. "Since when does your mother know I exist?"
Kolassa shrugged. "I figured, as long as we were telling each other everything…"
Spectatus nodded. "Well, good. How are you feeling?"
"Good," said Kolassa. "Better about myself. Confident."
Spectatus noticed Fork, peering in the window with his jewel held aloft. Kolassa took no notice, only beaming at the floating eye creature.
"Good," Spectatus said nervously. "That's… good."