Before she would accept the challenge from Tavras, Val wished to gather any information that she possibly could. Given that he had raised and trained other demigods in the past, she could simply look back and see if he had ever done anything like this with them before.

A long time had passed since she had last called upon Past Insight. This allowed it to feel refreshing, closing her eyes and drifting into the stream of the past.

Whenever she searched the past, Val needed to seed Past Insight with five values: who, what, where, when, and why. Since she had figured out the puzzle of where Ross had gone after her mother’s obfuscation, Val only needed three pieces of information to incite a vision. So, Val thought of these.

The ‘who’ would involve Tavras but would also involve some other actors who she did not know. Having information on partial participants did not suffice for Past Insight, so Val decided to throw in some random people. Since he had mentioned raising the god and goddess named Fangarus and Iharu, she thought of them.

The ‘what’ was easy—some kind of trial that would reward the winner with a new privilege. Likewise, she chose the ‘where’ to be the most obvious choice of this very same island: Tavras’s Paradise. The ‘when’ was not something that Val could discern, so she picked a random time, around one hundred years into the past.

As for the ‘why’, Val figured her strongest bet would be to figure Tavras’s personality had been the reason behind the trial. Whatever challenge he had offered, it would have been because of his playful yet grueling nature.

Of all this information, she only needed to get three out of fives things correct, so Val felt like she had probability in her favor. With that, she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and let her consciousness detach into the flow of time.

The construct of time opened up to her like a tunnel of a trillion colorful threads, all interwoven with a complexity that was impossible for her to understand. A tugging sensation started up, drawing her through the tunnel some hundred years ago into the past. Apparently she had been in the ballpark with regards to the timeframe, at least. Whenever she successfully initiated a vision like this, Past Insight always brought her to the event of the past in which she searched.

Without further ado, Val delved into that scene by phasing through the web of colorful threads.

The very same island of Tavras’s Paradise seemed to manifest around her, though Val’s perspective had been relocated to the edge of the beach.

A particularly large wave came hurtling towards shore. When it collapsed and crashed over the beach, Tavras appeared after the water receded back to the ocean. With his long, flowing hair that shifted in its aquatic colors and the same style of leather clothes, he looked the exact same as he did a hundred years from then. Eternal youth would do that for a god, but perhaps he looked less tired back then—a bit livelier if that were possible for him.

“I told you that he would be back soon,” a little boy’s voice said.

“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” another voice cried. A little girl came bolting forward. Her hair was a long and wild, unbrushed mess. She latched herself around Tavras’s leg and said, “Daddy, I’m hungry.” The girl looked older than she acted, appearing to be about seven years old.

Despite this, Tavras seemed to have a lot of difficulty in prying her free from his leg. Once he managed to pick her up, the girl that must be Iharu slipped underneath his arm. Somehow, she climbed up his back and perched on his shoulder there.

A second child came jogging up the beach. The little boy had poorly cut, but well-kept hair. He was dressed in leather clothes, identical to Iharu which kind of made the two of them look like smaller versions of Tavras. If not for their messy versus clean appearances, Iharu and Fangarus might have just passed for one another at that age.

“Dad, you were gone too long,” Fangarus said. “You had said that you would never be gone for more than a week.”

“And here I am, back after one week, just like I had told you.” Tavras crouched down and opened up his arms. “Come give me a hug too, won’t you Fang?”

Fangarus crossed his arms over his chest and turned his pouted face away. “I had to fish for Iharu this entire time. She eats so much, but she won’t fish for herself. She has kept trying to go into the forest that you have forbidden from us. I’m the only reason that she wasn’t eaten by some wolf!”

“Wolves can’t eat me,” Iharu said in a shrill cry, awfully close to Tavras’s ears. “I am the wolf!”

“Something worse than a wolf could eat you.” Fangarus lifted his arms up, big and scary.

In response, Iharu shrieked at him.

“Ow, hey.” Tavras covered his one ear. “Let’s use our calm outdoor voices, the way that we are supposed to talk to other people.”

“That’s another thing,” Fangarus continued. “Iharu never uses her calm outdoor voice. She won’t even let me brush her hair.”

Val made note of that. Anytime that Tavras claimed that he had raised Iharu and Fangarus, what he really meant was he had trapped them on his island. Fangarus had been the one to raise both Iharu and himself.

Tavras did not get to reply to a single one of Fangarus’s complaints before he had to holler, “Ow! Why are you biting me?”

Up on his shoulder, Iharu clawed away at Tavras’s long hair. Her teeth chomped down a few times on both his ear and his skull. “I’m hungry!” Iharu cried.

“Okay, okay, but why are you biting me?” Tavras tried wrestling her off of his shoulder, only to get his hair pulled some more and his hand bitten a few times.

“Feed me,” Iharu snapped.

“I’ll go fishing,” Tavras said, “just get off of me please.”

Iharu pushed herself off of Tavras’s head and dropped down to the beach with a small, “Hup!”

Kneeling in front of her, Tavras tried to explain, “You can’t bite other people, Iharu. I know that I was gone for longer than I said that I would be, and for that, I’m sorry. I really mean it, though, when I say that you can’t bite others. People don’t like that.”

Iharu snorted at him. “That’s the point. Now go fish, or I’ll bite you again.” She even flashed her teeth at him in a snap to drive her point home.

Exactly how bad of a father was Tavras to have let this terror of a girl behave this way?

“You know what, since you are trying to order me around, I won’t fish for you anymore.” At least Tavras seemed like he was trying to discipline her, but Iharu did not take that too kindly.

She screeched and went straight for his shins.

A wave came to his aid and wiped her out before she could touch him. Where Tavras and Fangarus stood dry on the beach, Iharu had been swept into a sopping heap.

The little girl lay there for a moment, blinking. Then, she screamed in her cries and flailed her limbs in the most iconic image of a temper tantrum.

“That’s right. I am never going to fish for you while you act like this.” One step brought Tavras closer to loom over her. “If you behave, apologize, and ask me nicely, I might reconsider.”

“No,” Iharu yelled. “I don’t even like fish. I want to hunt the animals in the forest, but you won’t let me!”

Tavras stood there as he waited for her to quiet down. “Fang, are you hungry? I will still fish for you. I’m sorry that I have left you alone for so long, dealing with Iharu on your own.”

Fangarus shifted his feet in the sand. His gaze could not lift to meet Tavras in the eyes. “It’s okay. I understand.”

Visible disappointment crossed Tavras’s face. To some extent, he must be aware of how terribly he was raising these kids. “You know what Iharu, if you want to hunt for yourself so badly, fine. Go ahead. I’ll offer you a challenge.”

This right here had been the reason that Val had been drawn to this moment in the past. Indeed, Tavras had set up some kind of trial for Iharu. While Val needed to prove herself to travel to the Summit of Ascension, Iharu needed to pass in order to gain access to the forest.

“If you can successfully go into the forest, catch your prey, and come back out again unscathed, I will give you free range of the forest.”

Iharu gathered herself up and nodded. “I can do it.” Without a second’s more of consideration, her body changed in one fluid motion. Iharu transformed into a small wolf with fur as mangey as her own hair. In wolf form, she took off running towards the tree line.

“Wait, Dad.” Fangarus jumped in front of Tavras, keeping him from walking off. His voice sounded overwhelmed with alarm. “You can’t let her go out there.”

By comparison to all of that brotherly concern, Tavras did not seem to care much. Worse yet, he was supposed to be playing the role of their father figure. With a shrug, he said, “Iharu needs to learn a lesson somehow. If you think that you can teach her better, you are welcome to try and stop her.”

Fangarus stood against Tavras and nodded his head. “I will.” He turned and ran off into the forest after Iharu, staying in a human form.

This seemed like a horrible idea. Being from the future, at least Val had the reassurance of knowing that they make it out all right. Both Iharu and Fangarus had lived to adulthood and had become gods. Even so, she dreaded what would happen to them as children due to Tavras’s oversight as their guardian.

Val shifted her vantage point to follow the children with dread.

Character Update

* All entries are based on what Val knows.

Iharu Title: the She-Wolf Rank: Goddess Attributes: beasts Abilities Name Class Description Transform tactical, combat - a wolf is the only known, available form Unknown n/a - probably has a lot more abilities as a goddess in the present day