Unfortunately, right now she was in the Trojan temple of Athena. She hadn’t meant to come in here – why would any Trojan? Athena had sided with the Greeks, and no offering or supplication in ten years had changed that. But the Greek soldiers spreading through the city had forced her hand – she'd been in the Agora, keeping an eye on the suspicious wooden horse, when the effigy had disgorged the Greek men. She'd tried to summon help, but everywhere she went, the Greeks were there ahead of her, dousing signal fires, cutting bell clappers, and slitting watchmen's throats. When the gates opened, Kassandra knew the end had arrived. She'd fled; a right, a left, two rights, a jot through an old tavern, and finally into the city’s most useless temple, all in an attempt to dodge the Greek hunting parties spreading through the city.
In most of the timelines where she ended up in Athena's temple, she was captured there, and in some, she didn’t make it out at all. Her visions presented probable outcomes, but they weren’t absolute – sometimes events were so unlikely, even she didn’t see them coming. When she’d warned her father not to take the horse, it had only been because she had a general sense that it would bring about the city’s fall – she wouldn’t have dreamed that she would ever see forty Greek men pour out of such a small thing. But then, the gods were most likely involved, and that’s where her visions always became muddled. Gods could do so many things at a whim, and were so fickle, that they were difficult for even her to predict.
Right now, though, that might be her salvation. Athena’s temple was trivially small compared to those in Greece. Her statue was human sized – surely smaller than the actual goddess. Kassandra rushed to kneel before it, gripped the marble feet, and begged.
“Please, wise Athena, goddess of war, strategy, and civilization, protector of maidens and purity, please don’t allow the Greeks to take me. Please. Name your price.”
“You’re praying to the wrong side,” a coarse voice said, “Athena’s the one that helped us win this war.”
“Are you Ajax the Lesser?” Kassandra asked, still gripping the feet.
That gave the man pause; she hadn’t even looked at him yet. Creepy. “That’s a nice parlor trick,” the man said, “You do any other tricks for the Trojan boys?”
Kassandra closed her eyes and ignored him – she knew she couldn’t outrun him, she’d seen that, so she prayed. It was all she had left. The man continued on saying crude things, and finally grabbed her and yanked her away from the statue. Kassandra tried to maintain her grip, but the statue slipped from the plinth it was on and fell – nearly landing on both of them.
The man laughed as he hauled Kassandra to her feet, “That was close. Now, how about you and I spend –" he stopped when he saw Kassandra staring behind him, mouth agape. Ajax turned around and saw a living breathing titan of woman, with marble white skin and red eyes that all but glowed beneath her golden helmet.
“Lady Athena… what are you doing here?”
“You come into my temple, assault a woman worshiping at my statue, break said statue, and then ask what I am doing here?”
“I… I… uh…”
“Stuttering fool. Run. Rejoin your masters. Rape someone else.”
Ajax didn’t argue, he released Kassandra and ran for the door.
“So, Priam’s daughter, Kassandra. Student of Apollo and unpraised strategist of Troy,” Athena said, “It’s remarkable we’ve never met. Do you know why I’ve chosen to come to you now?”
“I know a few different reasons,” Kassandra said, “It depends on which timeline this is. Usually you just leave or stand there and let him rape me, so I’m not sure what’s going to happen now.”
“I’ve come up with a plan to exploit this chaotic final chapter of the war,” Athena said, “I’m going to hide my spirit in a mortal, just like Apollo and Artemis did, and then, while my current host runs off the other way, I will be free to move without fear of reprisal.”
"Reprisal?"
"Yes, I'm afraid a good friendship of mine may soon reach its end."
“And you want me to be your new... host?”
“Very perceptive girl,” Athena said, “Your natural abilities… with them, I would be unstoppable. We would be unstoppable.”
“But I would still be just a woman,” Kassandra said.
“Oh no,” Athena reassured her, “My 'soul' can transform you, give you real power. Strength, knowledge, resilience…”
“I would become like you?”
“Not like me, child, you would become me.”
“What do I have to do?”
“Simply breathe in when I breathe out,” Athena said. She exhaled in Kassandra’s face, the grey cloud that was Morgania snaking out of Athena’s mouth and down Kassandra’s throat. Athena took a knee, feeling momentarily weakened.
Kassandra began coughing.
The coughing got worse. Wet, ragged, echoing coughs, until finally she retched and splattered Morgania across the floor.
“What have you done?!” Athena cried, desperately scooping up Morgania’s essence and dribbling the slimy grey solution down her throat.
“I’m… I’m sorry!” Kassandra panicked and ran for the temple’s door.
Athena desperately scooped up as much of the girl’s expulsion as possible and sucked it down, hoping Morgania could still be salvaged. She’d been prepared to pass the gift on, to see it flourish in someone else, but not to see it die on some dirty floor in a glom of sputum.
Morgania had saved her centuries ago when she’d had another name. She’d grown up raised by the temple’s priest, who had not been kind to her. He’d treated her like a slave, abused her in terrible ways, until the day she’d finally gotten a handle on her powers. She’d ripped the man open from one end to the other and strangled him with his intestines. The brutality might have been justified, but then she’d gotten such a taste for it, and her need for revenge had been unsated, so then she attacked the other priests, who’d turned a blind eye to her decades of suffering. Then she had gone after their sons. She’d killed two dozen Athenians before the city's soldiers finally drove her out of Athens and into seclusion.
She’d hidden in the ruins of an older temple, dispatching any men foolish enough to come for her, and counting the days before Zeus inevitably sent Nemesis or one of his demigod sons to dispose of her. But then Pandora had come to her with an opportunity to start over – a higher calling, and the means to shed her old skin and become someone new – someone people would respect, adore, and worship, instead of cringe from in fear. She’d given her a small vessel and asked her to inhale the dust within, and on that day, Medusa had died, her identity subsumed and her sins absolved by the birth of the woman who would become the champion of Athens. Everything she’d had worth having had come from Morgania, and while they sometimes disagreed about how things should be done, Athena knew that she would do anything for her savior.
She concentrated… she could feel Morgania moving in her mind, but her thoughts were fragmented, erratic, confused. They became louder as the moments passed, but no more coherent, and before long Athena’s mind was burning. She had to know what had happened, and how to fix it, and for that she needed the Trojan woman.
Parts of her at least.
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