With Curt and Anna facing their destiny with their mother... Sklya... decided to do something relatively mundane with her grandmother, rather than egage in magic lessons, finding her grandmother in her room, Skyla asked the first thing that came to mind/
"Grandma... do you need any help moving your things to the estate?"
"Oh Doodle-Bug," Grandma rubbed Skyla's head fur. "I took care of that myself. I inherited the house to your mother in case she wants to do something with it."
"W-when? How?"
"Oh this morning, it didn't exactly take long to pack and unpack, shrinks everything down and carry it, or just unamke it, while suspending the essence of what it is in my flames, and then reconstituting it, it isn't hard."
"Oh. Grandma... You wouldn't happen to have a record of the family tree would you?"
"Happy to hear you're taking an interest." A flame of green flames, and a scroll came into existence in grandma's hands, she gave it to Skyla. "Here Doodle Bug."
Skyla wondered if her grandmother had summoned it, or teleport it, either way, she took it and unfurled it... and it went, and went until it hit the floor.
Skyla's eyes widened at the length of the scroll depicting her family tree... on her father's side nothing had changed... but on her mother's side, everything had changed from her ggrandmother onward. That was when reality hit Skyla, hard.
'I might now have my parents back, and my grandmother... but... I'm no longer biologically related to grandpa, he was an in-law... and grandma's parents... are completely different people now... I should be grateful that she's still as much the person I knew in the old reality as much as she is!!! And mom's father is now a completely different person! And Auntie's parents... all different now. Because of me.' Skyla thought again of the warning of the ray gun, no more changes to anyone in her family tree would be allowed.
Skyla saw that she had half-aunts and half-uncles and half-cousins and half-nieces and nephews over the world. She had an aunt who apparently preferred solitude and lived by herself in Antarctica. Not counting her family in America, she had family in Japan, China, Europe, two in Oceania and an uncle in Africa. Most of them centuries old.
Skyla's family was as wealthy as Curt's. Maybe more. Skyla though of how her grandma could create gold and jewels out of nothing, with apparently no effort, no wonder they were wealthy. 'Then again, that much raw gold and treasure could sink the price of gems and gold all over the world... It's what happened when the Spanish brought a fortune in silver back from the new world, only for the value of silver to nose dive as a result... Hopefully grandma's been around long enough for it to matter...' Then Skyla noticed, next to the branch where her mother appeared... was the name of another kitsune, blotted out.
"Grandma, what's this?"
A pained look crossed Myra's face, and the pseudo-goddess actually shrank away a little. She sat down on her lavish bed.
"That is... I suppose I might as well speak about it now... That was... My eldest daughter of that marriage, your mother's big sister, your auntie, Minako."
Skyla had never heard that name, with this and Vincent, Skyla wondered how much of a family she now had that she didn't know of.
"I was proud of her at first when she got her second tail, and her third... I was shocked when her tail came in fifty years early! It thought it was a miracle. She even entranced an entire caravan into posing and becoming statues... But one day, I took a deeper examination of her work... And I realized... they were dead. Their consciousness, their spirit, their soul... it was gone, snuffed out, or passed on. I could sometimes feel life-force from them... but it was like a body as it cooled to room temperature. Their souls had fluttered onto the next world, while their living minds had been simply flickered out once the transformation was finished.
"... I met with her about it, I thought it had to be some terrible accident. I explained to her the proper way to do it, to ensure the spirits of the works of art didn't fade and leave you with glorified petrified corpses. ... She laughed. 'Mama I've known all along how to do it that way! But this way I can feed off of them, and make my magic even stronger! I'll be a nine-tails before I'm five-hundred!' ... I was horrified. I tried to explain what we did to humans was supposed to be a blessing. ... 'That is YOUR reason mother! Not mine!' It only got worse from there. I went back to the caravan, de-petrified their stone remains, and made sure their dead bodies were return to their families for a proper funeral.
"The worst part is, I think I might have been more upset if she'd been more upset. That would mean she actually care about her stone corpse figures. Instead, she shrugged it off saying, 'Plenty more where those came from.' I realized right there, she never intended to stop. I've been more ashamed of anything I've had to do in my life. I destroyed any record or knowledge she'd possibly saved on her predatory magic. I destroyed my own memories of what I'd learned of how it worked just to be safe."
SKyla was shocked... Skyla knew there hadn't been a Minako in her family before... so... had all those people died because of her? No, the ray gun didn't allow for that! Those people must have died another way in the old reality! Maybe bandits or something, or plague, it was hardly impossible even a hundred years ago!
That was when Skyla noticed something: a small black five tail kitsune figurine, caught in a savage snarling pose, positioned so anyone who looked in the mirror, would see it. Skyla realized the features of the beast were familiar.
"Grandma... that figure, is that..."
"Her corpse... It's nothing but dead stone now. No different from the concrete used in this house's foundations. Less than a statue made by a mortal artist, since those always contain a fraction of the artist's soul. It's less than empty vessel... I keep it around as a reminder of how I wasn't able to save one of my children from herself, all I could do was save everyone else from her."
Skyla hugged her grandmother. "Gramma, I'm sorry..."
"It's okay dear... " She hugged her granddaughter back. "When you get to be my age... you have to learn to live with things you aren't proud of."
Skyla hated forcing her grandmother to relive this memory that didn't exist in the old reality... she cried. Gramma patted her on the back, lovingly wrapping her tails around her like blanket.