She floated inside the crystal in a fetal position.
There was a warm light inside this crystal. Warm light and cold liquid that cooled her body. It didn’t matter that the liquid-cooled her. She was being used as a battery for a world. The others had intended to drain her of her powers. Which is the same as waiting for eternity? Not like it mattered. He was gone. Not even a fragment left of the person that had been with her since the moment she merged with a cursed woman.

How did it start in the first place? Ah, that’s right, it always ended up like this. Salvatore, he had the same name, and yet they always leave me behind. They appear in front of me, they hurt men, and then they go away. They always arrive, hate me, curse me for what I am.

She recalled the time she was in her hut happily experimenting. She recalled a mob who dragged her to a stake, to be burnt, only to be saved by a Knight. Don’t die for me, she said to that knight. But that Knight died protecting her from those who did not understand what she was doing.

Every reincarnation she would find herself thrown into the pits of chaos or burn for her deeds. The War Maiden, a title given to her by the people, and to make herself stronger, she invented the merging and retained her memories. They all believed it was from God, or a being, but it was her power alone, and a way to cheat death.

I could have done anything, but I refuse to become what I am not. I want to save the world and help those who can help, no matter what the cost. Never become evil, and never be drunk. I failed.

An eternity of lifetimes she had seen all the evil that people could conjure. Whether human or not, she had seen all the evil, and mourn that evil. She had looked down on those who followed her. And she awoke as Ciara Alician, the War Maiden who wanted to save the world. The first she did was replay the memories of the War Maiden and saw a man who had abandoned her. The man broke her heart and she became stone to cope. She hated the man. And when found herself into a loop. She had done her best to make sure that the man would give up. She didn’t put her eyes on the man who was desperate for Ciara’s love.

She couldn’t forgive those who break the War Maiden’s heart. Yet, in the end, she had realized that the man kept coming back, and his choices all lead to the same answer. To test the man she had allowed herself to succumb to the evils of murder.

I had to kill you. I had to. Whether to see whether you’ll fail or give up. How many lives can a man give before he gives in to despair? How many lives will he offer to the same woman? I had given you all the death that anyone could give. Yet you always find yourself back to Ciara, back to her and me. I had become here, and I didn’t even know that, or was I mistaking myself? Am I her? Or is this simply what I thought after acting like her?

However, there was one thing she didn’t expect. The man came rushing to her without a thought of his life. It was never about lust. It always the man’s desire to find a home to share with. A person to be with in his lonely life. She had discovered the secret that he did. The lonely man who wanted to give her heart to the woman he loved.

When she realized that it was too late. His heart had grown weary and the eternity of waiting had made his soul fragile and tired. Her heart broke when he saw the man’s rage. Her heart broke further seeing him fight desperately to be freed from the loop he had found himself in.

What a fool I am. To fall in love with the person who I spat for an eternity. I was happy to live those moments with you. I was glad to give birth to them, oh what a foolish woman, and I thought had grown better. Oh, Ciara, I understand why you would fall in love with a fool. I understand it so well. Oh, I am sorry, and I am so sorry, please forgive me, oh what a foolish woman I am!

Still, she couldn’t decide if she was Ciara or not. Somewhere along the line, she had forgotten who she was, and she had relived Ciara’s life that she started that she was hers. Yet, here she was, stuck inside a crystal, recalling the woman who refused the merge. That woman died, that Ciara died, weeping over her husband’s grave, the iron woman, who survived the abyss, falling into despair, knowing that the husband she loved with her heart and soul, dead, gone, and never coming back to life.

How many moments had she shared with that man?

But deep inside she knew that she was never going to be truly Ciara. She might have lived so many lives as Ciara, but she never truly was Ciara, and that was going to be stuck inside this crystal, replaying the lives that she had spent with him.

Sad and happy. Cruel or kind - she replayed them all within her mind’s eye.
Body shaking sobs escaped her, and tears formed into the crystal, her body shivered, the cold, it was so cold and lonely, and she found herself begging, weeping, and wishing. She had spent an eternity living yet when she realized that he was no longer in this world. Not even a single fragment that she could detect. She began to know fear, and she felt it until all of her limbs trembled.

Please save me, oh Nolan, where are you? I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be inside here any longer, please save me, you always do, please, please, save me.

And the lonely Goddess muttered.