I awaken with a gasp.
"Good, you're awake." My blurry eyes focused on a familiar figure.
"Nyx? B-but I thought I was dead. Apollo didn't kill me." She makes a noise of agreement.
"You are right you drowned, how was that by the way? I'm afraid I can't really relate." Flashes of the moments prior to my death jolt across my mind and I screw my eyes shut to clear them.
"Not great." I say humourlessly. Echoes of the pure panic I felt are stamped into my mind like burns, scarring forever. I wish never to repeat that feeling ever again.
"You see, I've been with you for most of your life." She must see the question on my face because her smirk grows wider.
"Did you ever notice the lovely black eyes on your friend Lara?" My eyebrows furrow as my brain struggles to connect the dots. Black eyes. Wait-
"You-you're-were Lara?" My face goes slack. She looks pleased at my discovery.
"Yes! It's so satisfying not having to explain myself fifty million times like with some of the other gods."
"Stop, please, just give me a second. What, so you impersonated a human being to become friends with me, then have an affair with my fiancé, I'm so confused why on earth would you even...?"
"Well to keep it short, I had to find a way to make sure you got through your Classics education and with Zeus' rule that you can't mess with fate and blah blah blah," Her impression of Zeus is extremely insulting, and I am surprised the High King doesn't do something, where are the other gods? "Thus, I thought, why not go down there and take a little hands-on approach?"
"So," I took a deep breath, mind reeling - this was all weirdly confusing, "You came down to earth to help me get through college? What for?" My mind starts to pick up traction.
"The artefact! You needed me to access the artefact!" Her eyebrows rise a millimetre.
"I'm impressed, you're not as dumb as you look."
"And the artefact sent me back in time, which you wanted? Why." Her eyes darken with...anger?
"Now you're asking the right questions."
"Firstly, before we get into the juicy stuff, how in Hades did you think you'd been communicating? I installed a translator into your mind. You've been speaking Latin and Ancient Greek." Damn, that hadn't really even crossed my mind.
"Why did you need to send me back in time?" Out of all the possibilities, I was probably the least right for the job. As I had evidenced a thousand times over in my experiences.
"Also, aren't gods not supposed to mess with fate, isn't the idea of me going back in time literally changing fate."
"No you idiot, ugh I take back what I said before. You are as dumb as you look." Hey! Wait do I look dumb?
She continues before I can protest, "I sent you back in time to complete fate."
"You've always been part of history, you're the reason the things you've studied happens. Haven't you wondered why what you instinctively said to Hektor is in the Iliad today? Or how Alexander the Great found about the goat pass? Need I continue or do you understand now?"
Wow, my mind is officially broken.
"But...what was the box for?" I had never figured it out or managed to open it.
"What box? Oh! Yes, that was empty."
"Empty," I repeated.
"Yes, empty. It was something of a placebo effect, I think you call it. If you thought you had something that would save you, you would save yourself."
"But I died."
"Well, no one's perfect, you completed your role though as I've stated before." I blink.
"So, I have been on a time travelled quest to make history?" What in the Percy Jackson shi-
"Yes! But don't worry, the narrative's not over yet. We've still got centuries to go through."
"Centuries?" Darkness starts to swirl around her.
You've got to be kidding me.
THE END.
YOU ARE READING
Kairos
Historical Fiction*For fans of Percy Jackson, Greek/Roman mythology and epic historical battles* "In hindsight, knocking someone out with a thousand year old artefact was probably not a good idea." After a run in with her ex sends her catapulting into the past, Adela...
