Enid didn’t bother removing her armor before she returned home. She was greeted at the gate by several scouting parties that were getting kitted to go out. They looked surprised to see her. Bjorn pushed through the crowd and hugged her.

“Mother!”

Enid hugged him tightly.

“You leave a cryptic message and instructions with Freya, and tell me nothing, then you return with a new blade and wearing your battle armor. You should not do such things! You are an old woman. Such things are men’s work. You should be tending to my sister!

Enid nodded.

So, you’re not going to slap him for that? You would have beat me to a pulp.

“Yes, I should be here for Hazel. I wish I could have sent you with your men, but it was a battle I had to fight. You know my blade…”

“Your blade was destroyed mother, you said so yourself.”

“I forged a new one and asked the Winter Wolf to help bind it to me.”

“Surely I could wield such a blade and you could have stayed here safe.”

Enid patted his cheek. The cheers of the scouts at her return had alerted the rest of the village. She saw Morgana trying to hold Hazel back, but she was unsuccessful and the ten-year-old ran at her and hugged her legs.

“You’re alive mom!”

Enid picked her up and kissed her on the cheek.

“Yes I am.”

“Do I get my sword now?”

“We can start making it once I am finished with Bjorn and I’ve gotten something to eat. Now go back to Morgana and make yourself useful.”

Hazel grabbed her and hugged her head tightly before kissing her on the nose. Enid put her down and she ran back through the crowd to Morgana.

“A sword, mother? You are filling her head full of nonsense, just like you did with Freya and look at her, forty-three seasons and no man or child to speak of.”

Enid pulled the tie from her hair. Releasing the bun.

“Bjorn, I will be happy to continue to listen to your advice on raising daughters properly over a good meal. I will ignore all of it of course, but you can speak to your hearts content.”

He paused, then laughed.

“I will have something prepared for you.”

The crowd parted and Enid made her way to her round house. She sat down on the bench heavily. She pulled Lucius and his sheath off her back and put him gently down on the table.

These people genuinely care about you Enid. Not the pretense of caring like the Romans, they actually love you. I had always thought the Gaul’s barbaric monsters.

“It is easy to judge people you have never met.”

Enid opened the seam at the front of her armor and pulled her arms out of it letting it fall behind her.

“Mom, who are you talking too?”

Enid motioned to Hazel to come to her. Enid hugged her tightly.

“I’m talking to my sword my sweet.”

“Is it talking back?”

Enid caught the subtext of her tone quickly, it translated into: Are you going crazy?

“It is, it has a spirit bound to it.”

“Can I talk to it?”

“You can talk to it, but he can’t answer you. I can hear him in my head.”

“What’s his name?”

“Lucius.”

“You named it after Lucius?”

“No…It is better to say I named Lucius after it, or rather the spirit that is in it.”

“Mom, you sound crazy.”

“When do I not hon?”

Hazel giggled and hugged her again. When Hazel released her, she began pulling the armor of her legs. She folded it up and put it in her pack.

“Get me a dress would you please?”

Hazel moved over to a chest and pulled out one of Enid’s summer dresses. Enid pulled off the sports bra. Hazel pointed at the sports bra.

“What is that for?”

“It is to keep my chest out of the way in battle. It’s just a very specialized piece of clothing. Our women warriors bind their chests with a wrap of linen. This is just more comfortable for me.”

Enid folded the sports bra and put it in her pack she then pulled off her underwear.

“Why don’t you wear them all the time?”

“Because I can’t replace them, and they’ll wear out.”

“I understand the whole holding our breasts in place, but what about those.”

She pointed at the underwear.

“Ah, just to protect my sensitive areas from getting pinched by the armor.”

Hazel made an o with her mouth but and got very quiet. Enid smiled at her and put the underwear in her pack. She pulled on her dress and put her hand on Lucius’s hilt.

“I need to leave you here.”

I can speak to you no matter the distance. We are bound.

“So, I can never be rid of you.”

Nope and now, you understand the true extent of my diabolical plan.

“Hilarious.”

She touched the hilt again.

“Mom, you really do seem crazy.”

“I am at least eighty seasons old according to the villagers, I am allowed to be a bit crazy. Let’s get some food.”

Hazel hugged her again.

“Mom, I’m glad you’re alive.”

“I am too sweety.”

Enid hugged her and kissed her on the head.

“Are you going to tell me about the battle?”

“I would but you’d think I was crazy.”

Hazel giggled and hugged Enid’s waist as they walked.

“Will you though?”

“I stabbed him in the face with my sword. The end.”

“In the face?”

Enid poked her on the nose.

“In the face, right there.”

Hazel shivered.

“He must have been a terrible fighter if he got stabbed in the face.”

“Well, he swallowed something that disagreed with him, violently.”

Enid made an exploding sound and made a motion with her hands.

“There were bits of him all over the place.”

“Disgusting!”

“I still have bits of him in my hair.”

“Mom! That’s terrible.”

Enid shrugged. The pair sat on a bench in the long house and one of the village women brought Enid a plate of meat, eggs and bread. Enid began to eat it hungrily. Sun was streaming into the long house from open shutters in the roof and she could enjoy the food as a mortal would. Bjorn sat across from her big hands on the table.

“Mother, where did you send Freya?”

“To my father.”

“Your father’s grave?”

“No to my father.”

“How is that possible? He’d be a hundred or more seasons old.”

“Bjorn, do I in any way seem near death? Frail?”

“Well no.”

“Then would it not stand to reason my father is similar?”

“I guess that could be true.”

“But why send for him? We have a standing army.”

“Because… my father…would know how to deal with the beast if I failed.”

“What is so dangerous that you would refuse to send our troops?”

“Do you remember my stories of the creator’s agents?”

“Angels you called them.”

“It was one of those that had been cast out by the creator.”

Bjorn’s eyes went wide.

“Surely those were just myths.”

Enid dug into her hair and put a chunk of bone on the table then a withered feather that still carried the chill of death about it causing the table to frost around it.

“None of my stories were myths Bjorn.”

He touched the feather snapped his finger back.

“It is as cold as the dead of winter.”

“A creature no mortal weapon can kill which is why I needed to craft a new sword.”

“But…”

Enid leaned across the table and placed her pale finger over his lips.

“If I could have sent someone else, I would have. That is all there is to it, your father would have understood. He would not have been happy, he never was when I would go to war, but he always understood I have a duty that goes beyond being your mother. I am the watcher at the wall that protects mortals from the demons of the night. Just as you have a duty to protect our tribe, I protect the tribe of humanity.”

Bjorn nodded. Hazel had run off; she was not about to sit at a table with a human spinal bone resting on it.

“Is that why you train Hazel with the blade? To take your place?”

“No, I train Hazel with a blade because she is wolf-born.”

“She should be with the pack we are bound by oath to the spirits.”

“That is true, but I won the right to raise her from the Winter Wolf.”

“You bested him in battle?”

“No, I fed him from my own breasts when he was a pup.”

“Mother you say the strangest things.”

“But I never lie.”

Bjorn nodded.

“I am beginning to see that now mother.”

Their conversation was interrupted by a runner from the gate.

“My king, there is a Roman at the gate asking to see your mother.”

“What does he look like?”

“He’s tall, dark hair.”

“My father.”

Enid frowned. Bjorn looked to her to judge her reaction.

“Send him here please.”

The runner looked to Bjorn.

“You heard my mother, send him here.”

Bjorn remained where he was and crossed his arms.

“He is here now; Will he try and take you again?”

“No, if he read my letter this is a social visit. And if he didn’t, I’m his equal in power and he can’t force me to do anything. Should have thought of that when he made me Empress.”

Enid was eating a second helping of bread by the time Sextus walked into the Long House. He walked directly to Enid she motioned for him to sit down. Bjorn remained where he was glaring up at Sextus.

“Bjorn, he’s my father he will do me no harm.”

Bjorn stood looked Sextus in the eyes.

“If he tries his head will hit the floor before he can.”

Sextus glanced at him and then sat down across from Enid.

“I received your letter. I was somewhat surprised because I am the only one who can make secure scroll cases.”

Enid nodded and continued to chew on her bread.

“So, I opened it, there was no manner of greeting, just a location and the words demon of rage and death. Signed with name of my daughter who has vowed to never speak to me again. I was concerned. The woman who brought it was middle aged and just an average person, but I could see my daughter in her eyes and face. My daughter who is…unable to have children.”

Enid nodded again and swallowed the last of her bread.

“The woman was happy to answer any of my questions. She seemed worried. I asked her what troubled her. She told me her mother, Enid, had asked her to deliver her message if she had not returned in three days. It had been five days by the time she arrived. She was exhausted so I provided her lodgings and food. I spoke to her while she ate. I asked her about her mother, how old she was.”

“She spoke of an eighty-year-old woman that looked no older then fifteen seasons. So, I knew it was my daughter now, Enid, young looking because of her… history. Brash enough to run off alone against a fallen angel, she did have Bloodseeker after all. So, I asked her if she was your only child, then I hear you have had twenty.”

“Twenty-one.”

He nodded.

“Then I asked her, did her mother carry a blackened silver blade. She looked at me with confusion. She said her mother had no weapons she knew of, that her mother had spoken of a weapon of legend she had lost in battle against the destroyer.”

“So, I flew to where I knew my daughter to be, concerned about her safety, and I found her feeding on a human. Blade strapped to her back. So, then I travelled to where the letter requested, I look. I waited for a day, the I saw my daughter with longer hair and older eyes, wearing Atlantean armor and carrying a different soul drinker sitting in a tree. Only this was daylight. My daughter had no amulet, or at least I was not aware of one, nor could she have travelled such a distance in one short night, she had limited ability to alter time, and she certainly cannot fly.”

Enid held up her hand.

“Actually, she can, she can turn into a falcon.”

He quirked an eyebrow.

“Sorry, continue.”

He nodded.

“Then I see this girl, who could be my daughter’s twin bring about devastation on a scale only seen before by an elder of the highest order. She was flippant about it; She wasn’t taking any of it seriously. This had to be my daughter, because no one else could be that insolent. Then she turned the ground into lava… I assume you know the rest of this story.”

Enid nodded.

“How are you in two places at once and what am I going to have to do to clean up your mess?”

Enid blushed deeply. Two thousand years and her father could still make her feel like a twelve-year-old girl in trouble for beating up a mouthy young future Emperor of Rome. Enid reached out and touched his hand, he took her hand in his. She could see him smile and his façade of stoicism fade.

“Father, let’s go somewhere private so we can hear each other?”

He nodded. Bjorn watched them leave with a cautious gaze. Enid walked to her round house and went inside, Sextus followed her.

Father is here? You cannot tell him who I am!

Enid patted the sword hilt gently. Sextus looked around the Round House, it was not regal by any means. It was humble. He looked at the sword and to her pack the same one her other self was carrying.

“You seem to have forgiven me.”

“I am not the one who needs to forgive father. You need to forgive me for treating you so badly. You were only doing what you needed to for our people.”

He looked at her intently, then a look of consternation crossed his face.

“Can’t read my mind hmm?”

“It is not possible for to you keep me out, you are not old, or powerful enough to have this kind of resistance. You look like my daughter, but you are not her.”

Enid turned to her father and wrapped her hands around his.

“I am your daughter. I would love to let you see my thoughts, but I cannot. There is too much you must not know yet. Look into my face you will know I speak the truth.”

She looked into his eyes. He looked at her intently and he sat down on the bench heavily.

“I do not understand Enid.”

Enid sighed heavily blood tears began to drip down her cheeks. She kneeled and put her hands in his lap.

“I do not know where to begin father. I’m just so happy to be talking to you. I am so sorry it took me so long to realize how foolish I was being. I wish I had time to…I wish I could have…”

He wiped away her tears and rubbed his hands off on his pants then wrapped his fingers around hers.

“I am here now Enid.”

“Father, I am two thousand two hundred and fifteen years old.”

He blinked.

“You are barely over a century and half turned.”

Enid shook her head.

“The me from your time is that old, but I am over two thousand years old.”

He squeezed her hands tightly.

“Start from the beginning Enid. How did you get here?”

“I should start…before that. I will be…fuzzy on the details. Some things I cannot tell you, it might alter the past…and then who knows…”

“I understand. Start where you think would help me understand so I can help you get home.”

“Mariana, Eyre and I, we beat the Black Son. He is gone forever. Not trapped, not dispersed, he was obliterated. So, you see I know Mariana is alive. I know you didn’t betray her and kill her.”

“I knew you and Mariana were not lying. I could not…would not let the council know. Some would choose to join his side.”

“They did, and when I return to my time, even if I have to live through another two thousand years, I will punish them for it. But I’m not…I don’t want to make this about you and our, well my inability to see the big picture like you did at the time.”

Sextus nodded and pushed back her unruly bangs as he would when she was a child. Enid smiled at the sensation. Her father was in front of her in the flesh. She took a deep breath and recounted the details surrounding the defeat of the Black Son. He nodded along. He stopped her when she reached the part about Lilith.

“So, Lilith sacrificed herself to save you?”

“Yes father. She was my mother…well my mother before my mother. She is the one who taught me to be a good mother. I…I know you had…have your differences but she is a good person…was a good person. She sacrificed everything to save the world. I can’t explain but it was more than just saving me at the end. She made it all possible. She is the real hero.”

“So, Lilith tried to push you into Limbo, but you ended up here.”

“Yes, and I landed during daylight and my armor was depleted from fighting the Black Son. Luckily for me Rolf, my husband, had sent search parties out to find me, well the younger me, you had taken back to Rome. So, I was able to get inside and heal before I died.”

He pulled her close and hugged her.

“My little Enid. How you have grown. I have a few more questions, if you could answer them...”

“I will answer what I can father.”

“Whose amulet do you possess.”

Enid touched her chest reflexively. She looked at him and hugged him tightly.

“It is yours father.”

“As I assumed by your words and your regret, I am dead in your time.”

“You finally decided you could live no longer without mother.”

“I assume part of the reason I cannot read your mind is that you are now Empress. Inheritor of the second son’s station.”

“You are right father.”

He nodded.

“I believe future me chose wisely.”

“I don’t know if he did father. I kind of resented you giving me the day the forcing me to stay tied to a job that can only be done at night.”

“Who is Eyre?”

Enid bit her lip.

“She is my daughter.”

“As in you turned her?”

“No, I gave birth to her, and then when she was ready, I turned her.”

“How is that possible? You have so many children here.”

“Eyre and her brother were…forced on me by God. That sounds wrong, I was upset at first, you’ll see. But please no matter what I say don’t let me abort them. I love Eyre with all my heart, and I would never want to lose her.”

“And the others?”

“Well, that is more of a result of me thinking with my…womanhood than anything else. I agreed to a marriage and the spirits bound us together. I was pretty much a mortal for the last sixty years. The last one almost killed me. Speaking of which.”

“Hazel stop snooping!”

Her daughter peaked out from the chest she had hidden behind at the entrance a few minutes before. Her face was red.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you mom.”

Hazel turned and ran out.

“Wait here.”

Enid stood and rushed after Hazel she easily caught up to her daughter.

“Hazel, that is the problem with snooping you catch half a conversation, and you don’t understand what it was about.”

Enid pulled Hazel close.

“Even if you had killed me, you would have been worth it. Come on, it was rude of you to run off without saying hello to your grandfather.”

Hazel nodded clutched onto Enid’s hand she had her eyes squarely on the ground.

“I’m sorry father, this is my youngest daughter, Hazel. Hazel this is your grandfather.”

She looked up from the ground and took a peek at Sextus.

“Hello sir.”

Sextus smiled at her.

“You can call me grandpa, Hazel. You are getting big. I heard you were going to be getting a sword soon. You know your mother got her first sword when she was about your age.”

Hazel’s face perked up when she heard that.

“Yes, mom promised when she came back from her hunt she would help me make one!”

“She did? You are a lucky girl. Your mother always keeps her promises. I am sorry for taking up so much of her time, but we need to talk some more, maybe I could watch you make the sword?”

Hazel nodded furiously.

“Hazel, go find Morgana and make yourself useful, make sure to practice your sewing!”

Hazel had already run off. Enid sighed and sat down beside father. He smiled at her.

“You know, you are a much more involved mother then you used to be. Your first set of children you let the servants tend to them. You treated them like a necessary evil, a task to be completed before I would turn you.”

“I was a terrible mother. I have had a lot of practice now. Where were we?”

“You were explaining how you came to be mother too twenty-two children.”

“Umm…technically twenty-three but one is adopted. Rolf and I had an extremely healthy marriage. And the spirits made me mortal at least temporarily.”

“You willingly agreed to this.”

“Yes, I loved Rolf, and I loved my wife Hazel and the spirits granted us our…request.”

“Hazel is a wolf-born isn’t she?”

“Yes, she is. I haven’t told her yet.”

“Shouldn’t she be with her own kind, I thought they had some law.”

“I won the right to raise her and train her from the Winter Wolf.”

“That must have been hard earned.”

“Not really, I just grabbed him by his ear and demanded he stop being an insolent brat.”

He laughed.

“How did he react?”

“He said: Sorry mother.”

Sextus laughed.

“Enid, I am so proud of you. I did not think your heart would ever soften to the mortals.”

“Eyre.”

She spoke the name with no further explanation.

“She thawed your heart?”

“Eyre is more human than most humans even at eight hundred years old. She has spent her entire life living amongst them. I don’t want to spoil things, but I know you and she spoke often. So often that when you…took your eternal sleep you passed your wishes and mother’s amulet to her.”

He smiled.

“I look forward to meeting her.”

“She is the most amazing person I have met in two thousand years.”

“She is your daughter; She must have learned it from somewhere.”

Enid wiped away a few more blood tears and shook her head.

“No, no she was raised by a girl I saved from death. I did not realize it at the time. How amazing is that? I saved one person out of a hundred and she is my daughter’s stepmother. She saved me by saving my daughter and she had no idea.”

“You left your children?”

Enid shook her head.

“I was injured, and they thought I had died. Because I slept for twenty years.”

“Can it be prevented?”

“No father you must not interfere. Eyre is who she is because she was raised by her stepmother. I am who I am because Eyre showed me a better way.”

He nodded.

“The more we speak the prouder I am of you. You could create your own future. Have more power than anyone could imagine. Yet you chose to hide away, be a mother and wife. You gave up your power to be a mother and wife.”

“I suppose you aren’t proud of my behavior…at the dead zone.”

He pondered for a few moments.

“You know, I was still proud of you. I do not understand what powers you wielded against it. I was fairly sure you would need to use blood magic to extract it from the earth. I could see you researching it on your stelis. But then you didn’t”

“Humans have…made great advances in waging war in the time I’m from. I was part of one of their militaries.”

He looked concerned.

“I know, I know we must not get involved in their wars and politics. I was one pilot amongst millions. I only joined because it was the only way to fly a jet.”

“What is a jet?”

Enid smirked and reached into her bag and pulled out her twentieth first century tablet. It still had half a battery of charge. She opened it. Sextus watched her intently. She found the picture of her sitting on her F-22N.

“That is a jet. A fighter jet.”

“It flies? We had things like that in Atlantis.”

“No, you didn’t have anything like this in Atlantis. It was so fast it could fly faster than sound.”

“And you flew that?”

Enid grinned.

“Yes.”

Enid scrolled to some pictures she had scanned in.

“This is me in Japan, I was a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl. I studied to be a doctor afterwards.”

“A doctor?”

“A healer. Oh, this is me with Eyre and Mariana.”

“Mariana looks well. Eyre is beautiful.”

Enid nodded and touched the screen of her tablet wistfully tracing Eyre’s shape. She powered it down and slid it back into her pack. She leaned against her father’s shoulder, and he wrapped his arm around her.

“I know I don’t understand half of what has happened to you, but you are still my daughter and though I will not be able to do this with my version of you, I am glad I got to see you after you have grown so much. This is the relationship I always wanted with you. Where we could spend time together where you would be smiling and laughing. Telling me about your days or years when we would meet up. I was worried you would hate me for the rest of your life.”

Enid shook her head and wrapped her arms around Sextus.

“No father, I never hated you. I was just too angry to see I loved you.”

“You know you need to go home as soon as possible, right?”

“I need to stay until my children don’t need me anymore.”

“Your children will always need you. You need to know when to let go. I agree that you must stay at least until Hazel is grown and trained. But after that we must find you a way home.”

Enid bit her lip and nodded.

“Until then, can we just be father and daughter. I need an adult in my life.”

He laughed.

“You are two thousand years old.”

“And I still need an adult in my life now and then.”

“I see, I am the adult.”

Enid nodded.

“You are way better then Ezekiel. He is…nice but he isn’t my father.”

“Ezekiel, the angel?”

“Yes, he is/was my designated adult in the future.”

“I can see how that would be lacking.”

“Can you stay?”

“I can stay for a while. If your son doesn’t behead me.”

“Bjorn will warm up to you.”

Enid stood and stretched.

“I have a promise to keep.”

Sextus took her hand.

“One last question, the sword.”

“Yes?”

“Did you craft it?”

“I did. I followed the instructions from the Atlantean database.”

“Database?”

Enid stammered a few times.

“Knowledge repository.”

He nodded.

“You have surpassed me in strength.”

“I didn’t do it alone, I bargained to have a spirt of war bound to it.”

Sextus nodded.

“I hope you understand the responsibility you took on by creating that weapon.”

“I understand, I carried Bloodseeker for two thousand years. But this sword is different.”

“How is that?”

“I created it with love, not hate. The spirit bound to it did it because it wanted to, not because it was forced too. It was not created with selfish intent. Not like Bloodseeker. It is a weapon of light. It is the opposite of his sword.”

Enid touched the hilt. Sextus smiled.

“I am happy I got to see the day when my daughter’s capacity for understanding surpassed my own.”