She was her Father's most beloved child. She was quite certain about it, as she saw how her Father treated others. Which of course was surprising, as she resembled her Father the least of all of her siblings. She, unlike the rest, was shaped in the form of the humans who lived below, in the dirt.
Yet, that was why, her Father loved her so much. And because her Father loved her so much, he also trusted her with various tasks, ever since she first woke up. Never did she disappoint her Father, rather, she went above and beyond to please her Father. The humans were easily turned to the right faith, as they were creatures ruled by their emotions. Just a bit of helping hand here, a bit of strictness there and they all fell in line.
And thanks to all of the successes she achieved, a few short weeks after she first woke up, her Father was bestowed with the task of the highest importance. There, to the west of her Father's dominion, was a small territory controlled by the lesser creatures calling themselves Olympians. Her Father informed her that those were inferior creations by His once great rival, known as Gaia, who ever since, has fallen.
Her Father also warned her, that even if inferior, the Gaia's creatures outnumbered her and it would be unwise of her to go alone. That was why He gave her a disposable army of her lesser brethren. And off to Olympus, she went.
"I bring you the grace of my Father, do not resist!" she said once she broke, through the upper part of the barrier surrounding, what must have been the throne room of Olympus.
There were two of Gaia's creatures, both mirroring the appearance of some of the older humans, yet with unnatural grace, which demanded respect. But not from her, she respected only her Father.
"Just you alone?!" said one of them, sharing the look with the other.
"No. Me and this army of three hundred thirty-three angels!" she proclaimed, and with the blinding white light, graced by her Father, the odd shapes of her lesser brethren appeared.
The two Olympians were in awe, from the magnificent display, and impotent to do anything as much as close their mouths. She enjoyed this very moment, she enjoyed how powerful she felt. But sadly she could not enjoy it much longer as other Olympians barged in. It was time to strike.
Diving down at incredible speed, she struck one of the newly arrived Olympians, instantly killing the creature in the explosion of gold. With the swift rotation, she did the same for the other, who just barely managed to turn his head in her direction.
This left her with the initial two, who in those short moments, she took down the newly arrived Olympians, greatly reduced the number of her lesser brethren, at a minimum by half from the looks. While she held no compassion towards the lesser angels, it still proved the potential danger the two older-looking Olympians possessed towards her.
But she had faith in her Father, His grace would guide her hands through this ordeal. That very moment a trident flew her way, gouging several feathers from her wings. She would not stand such a transgression! And with a swift movement, she was onto the offending Olympian, taking his still stretched arm as a reparation for her lost feathers.
The sudden geyser of golden liquid and cry of pain, shocked even the other remaining Olympian, who until this moment, was solely focused on reducing the number of her lesser brethren. She of course noticed his attention, not a moment too late as a lightning bolt was hurled her way. She would not be able to dodge it, even if she wanted.
But her options were still not all used up. With a silent prayer, she called for the help of her Father and a soft light sphere enveloped her, protecting her from the insidious attack. The lightning raged around the impervious protecting light of her Father, scorching everything in its wake, but she was unharmed.
The shocked look on those lesser creatures was satisfying to observe as she emerged unharmed and invigorated, any and all blemishes caused by the fighting so far, were gone, as if they were never there.
With a strong force she, took down the trident-throwing Olympian, trampling over him to her final target. The lightning-hurling Olympian tried to dodge out of her way, attempting to force her to miss her target, but it was for naught, as he too was knocked down to the ground. With this, her main objective was done.
"Father?" she said surprised as her Father appeared from the sky.
"I heard your call, my child. You fought valiantly, you can go and rest now,"
"As you command, Father," she answered and moved away from Olympus
She was well enjoying her vacation, waiting for her lover to return from that stupid quest, on which Zeus sent her. At least the wine was decent and helped her pass the time. However, if this waiting continued much longer she might be forced to have some humans entertain her, with their antics.
Quite frankly, humans did not stop fascinating her even after all those millenia she was observing them. How long was it again, ten or hundred thousand years, ever since several others of her kind came to this world? The time had a different meaning back then when she was still complete when she still called herself Gaia. So taking this fact into consideration, it must have been well over a hundred thousand years, ever since she arrived on Earth.
How ridiculous for humans to call their homeworld dirt? But in a way, it did make sense, since humans from back then knew nothing much about their world, only the "earth" beneath their feet.
Those were certainly different times. The tragedy they caused before she and her kind figured out how to commute with humans, nearly drove humanity to extinction. She would have never forgiven that to herself, should the humans disappear. After all, it was only this species, that had something similar to her kind - the soul, or rather the essence of their being. Everyone else they found in the whole universe, as sapient as they might, was lacking this little spark. Not that they mattered any less, but she and her kind were trying to find something similar to themselves, something that could possibly empathize with them. Until finally one day...
Her reminisce of the past over the cup of wine, has been disrupted by the noises from the throne room of the Olympus. And the noises would just not go down, which greatly annoyed her. Her creations, her children, adults they might be, but if they intended to renovate in the middle of the day, without any beforementioned warning, she would have to make her disappointment with them known.
"Zeus! What is the meaning of this ruckus?!" she shouted at the idiotic creation of hers.
"Hello Gaia, it has been a while," the very familiar voice, she hoped to never hear again, spoke through Zeus's lips.
"What are you doing here, Xemha?" she hissed at the impostor.
"Looking for a faith-inspiring vessel that can well interpret my greatness to those human beings. I have still not decided whether to go with this Zeus or Poseidon, of yours," the alien in the stranger's skin replied.
"You are not supposed to be here! This planet and its inhabitants are not yours to enslave! We had a deal with your faction, remember?!" she said.
"And who is going to stop me? You? Others who came here? I don't think that any of you have the power to do so, since you reduced yourself to such minuscule forms. Moreover, whatever deals you had with the faction I was a part of at the time, do not concern me any longer, since those fools, would not acknowledge me as their supreme god," it said slowly approaching her.
"You are disillusioned Xemha! None of our people, not your faction, netíther you were ever gods! You are just playing pretend with other sapient beings," she said with hate in her voice.
"I will not deny that, the other sapients... I found them lacking. But aren't you hypocritical Gaia? You yourself were playing gods with the humans, not unlike what I do?" he said.
"You know nothing, Xemha, of what is going on here! None of this was ever my intention!" she hissed with regret.
"The intention matters little when the result is what it is. Although I have to say, thanks to you and your kind meddling with this world, I have a hard time trying to unite the humans under my rule. But I have a lot of patience, you know me, right?" he said, taking another step towards her.
"The rest of our kind will not let you do this forever!" she threatened
"No, they won't stop me. They either don't care any longer or they did throw themselves into Oblivion. There is no one else Gaia, other than you and me. But you know what? I will let you stay by my side, all you have to do is to prostrate yourself before me as one true god of this universe, and I will even maybe restore you from this pitiful state you put yourself in," he laughed raising his hand towards her.
"Screw you, Xemha!" she shouted, teleporting herself away.
She had to run! How demeaning it was, that she the goddess of hunt was now a prey, but with her Athena being nothing more than a small blob of ichor, she had to take both of their cores from Olympus. Just to protect her Athena from that monster.
The life was good, really. He might not have been as busy as he was as of late for many centuries, but doing great work was oddly satisfying. The main bonus being, that he did not have to deal with his two brothers' idiocy. Hopefully, they would keep themselves in check, at least until he upgraded the Charon system to the new version. However, thinking about his idiotic duo of brothers marred his overall good demeanor.
Either way, the update was going so far quite well, Persephone did indeed make a great and robust upgrade to the Charos system. He had a lot less work with it than he expected. The girl sure did learn to quadruple-check her work after the disaster that was her version of uplifting formulae, all the youthful arrogance gone. Which was good, she would sure have a great future before her. Maybe one day he could transfer the Underworld into her care? Certainly not a bad idea, since it would allow him to enjoy himself. Though, that moment, when he retired, was probably several centuries in the future since he did love his work.
That was why he was so surprised when Aphrodite suddenly appeared in the Underworld, heading straight towards the central core. Didn't she get his message, about him not wanting to be disturbed, during the critical system updates? And even if she, could technically do whatever she wanted, she probably should have still sent a message that she coming here. So, now on top of the updates and manually handling the recycling of human souls, he would also have to entertain Aphrodite.
"I'm in the middle of some important updates, so what are you doing here, Aphrodite?" he asked with a slightly annoyed voice but got no response.
Which was very unlikely for the usually cheerful woman, who liked to tease all of the Olympians, whatever she could.
"Aphrodite?" he asked again trying to catch her attention.
"Tartarus, brother, please forgive me," Aphrodite said with tears in her eyes and activated some form of a system he didn't even know, existed!
On the way towards the Helicarnassus, Medusa seems to get somewhat better, verbally communicating, again. Especially after I started discussing the transformation spell with Persephone, this intrigued my acquaintance greatly. Not to mention it was a great means to make her join the discussion, thus subtly forcing her to communicate. At this point, I sort of wished, that I had taken more of the psychology classes during my time as a university student, all the way back in my first life. Quite frankly, the deeper psychological knowledge might come in handy in my current predicament. It also most likely would have been a good, well-esteemed profession back then. Alas, I chose such a career, which would allow me to have fixed working hours. Even though, as a professional psychiatrist, I would have a better-paid job. And compared to my second life, working hours would still be preferable. Maybe I should try to study the field, once it is established, several thousand years in the future.
Alas, as there was no other option, studying psychology would have to wait, for the time being. Instead, I poured my best effort into learning the transformation formula, translating it to the language Medusa understood, while also transforming the components of transformation formulae in such a way, that they would be usable for my kind of magic. After all, I had to make sure that my acquaintance, did not suffer another mental breakdown in the home city, she wanted to visit. As a bonus, it would be also a great showcase of my ability, to Persephone, my future senior coworker. Not to mention, should I explain the way I used Olympian magic to Persephone, I expected to earn several bonus points from the ardent researcher, which Persephone was.
The transformation spell itself was surprisingly not completely unknown to me. I did recognize several of its components, which were similar to my reduced protective film formulae. This made it easier for me to understand the spell and subsequently explain it to Medusa. Until finally, several weeks later, even she, got to perform the transformation formula perfectly. Therefore it was time for me to shine and hopefully, for my acquitance to get better once and for all.
"Shall we go then?" I asked while extending my hand toward Medusa.
"B-But I can't!" the uncooperative woman said.
Say what?! What did she mean that she couldn't? There was no reason why she could not go to visit the city of Helicarnassus since she got the transformation spell perfectly down, and even was quite comfortable staying in it far longer than I! It could not be that Being X decided to suddenly rear his ugly head and mess with my acquaintance, making her so unreasonable.
No, I already well established that he had nothing to do with me in this life, therefore I would not blame things on him. Better yet, I would not think about him at all, as far as I knew, Being X did not exist in this world, so he might as well be dead to me.
Alas, I was dealing with a person with severe mental trauma, therefore I could not get emotional when dealing with Medusa. And even if the better knowledge about psychology would now be useful, I had to do with what I had. Logic would dictate, that the place she had a good experience with, should help with healing her mental trauma. Therefore it was necessary to get Medusa in Helicarnassus, so she could go down memory lane and think about all the positive things she experienced in her once home city, since it was likely that it barely changed, much like the Colophon.
"Medusa, I quite ran out of options here on how to help you, except of forcing you to go, since you wanted to go. Please, do explain to me why it seems impossible for you to go to Helicarnassus, now?" I asked once I formed a rough plan of action.
The first step to successfully solving the problem was to understand what the problem was, after which the solution could be established.
"Because they will turn to stone," my acquaintance said in a small voice, after a bit of silence.
"You mean like the monster that attacked us?" I asked, remembering whether there was a time Medusa caused someone to turn into stone.
My acquaintance nodded as an answer. Silly woman, did she already forget, that the people she turned into "stone", were not in fact turned into the stone, but rather put into the stasis, it was what the whole spell was about. Even if the people under the spell gained stone-like texture, that was just the hardened protective layer, not dissimilar to the Olympian shield formula, which Medusa already knew quite well. At this point, Medusa should know, how it worked. However, the fact was that I never saw her use it, except for that one time, still remained.
"You can't control it?" I asked once the realization dawned on me.
Medusa nodded again, confirming the wild thought that occurred to me. How could she use a spell not knowing it, or even realizing it was a spell in the first place? That was something I needed to know since this made Medusa a potential flight risk.
"Miss Persephone, could you please explain how did this happen?" I asked the only expert on Olympian magic I had access to.
Not to be outdone by Medusa, even Persephone was acting unreasonably, mumbling something at a very high speed under her breath. Oh, how I missed my well-disciplined soldiers and troops, both of these groups of people would have reacted immediately once I had a question for them, not daydreaming at every occasion possible. Not even potato-obsessed Visha, was this bad.
"Miss Persephone?!" I asked once again, this time more forcibly, trying to get the rambling Olympian's attention.
"This makes sense! So much sense, now! It's brilliant! Sorry I mean horrific, from a personal and humanitarian angle, but still brilliant. It would explain why Miss Medusa is able to use different spells, or mainly the shield formula with such ease. You see, the basis for the shield formulae is a component for the statis formulae, which Miss Medusa unwillingly uses! Meaning that it was active, or had some specific condition to activate for the whole three hundred or so years since Miss Medusa was turned, resulting in Medusa being able and instinctively using the Olympian kind of magic, without problems, because she was already using it for so long. Thus in principle cheating the need to actively learn how to use the magic!" the dread queen hurled out all the words possible, trying to explain what was going on.
"Good to know. But how does Medusa deactivate this spell, or prevent it from activation if there is some kind of condition?" I asked, trying to get the Olympian back on track.
"Yes! I can't say with certainty, but based on the observation, there must be some kind of condition that forces the spell to activate and must have been placed by Athena on Miss Medusa. Without any equipment, I'm afraid I cannot do anything about it, without risking Miss Medusa's wellbeing. If she was willing to go with me to the Underworld, I have the necessary equipment there and could look into it more in-depth. But-But there is also an option how she can prevent the activation on her own," Persephone said, probably accidentally incentivizing Medusa to go into the Underworld.
Not that I could blame her, it was after all her job to get Medusa and me to work for Hades in the Underworld. If I knew Persephone any less, than I knew her, after some months spent together, I would have suspected her of possible foul play. But at this point, I now knew better.
"How?!" Medusa forcefully asked.
"If you learn the stasis spell, Miss Medusa, you can then detect when it is forcibly activated and prevent it from completion, by changing some of the components that are needed for the spell to be active. In other words, intentionally preventing the spell from manifesting. It will cost a bit more mana, and that could make you tired as a result, but the stasis formula will not manifest, thus no one will get hurt! And as I said before, with the right equipment I would be able to remove the forceful activation condition, if there is any," the dread queen said.
"Arachne!" the woman with snakes for hair looked at me with pleading eyes.
"First you should learn how to sabotage the statis formulae on your own. Once you know how to do that, we can go visit Helicarnassus. We will discuss writing Underworld later, Medusa," I answered.
I still wanted Medusa to have a clearer mind, before agreeing to go into the Underworld.