7.07 Rematch
Father Winter’s Embrace, 6310
Athena and Maria had been pointing their weapons at each other for what felt like hours, though she was certain that it had only been a few seconds. Miyu and Momo stood far away, with their elven hostage takers behind them, forced to watch the entire thing.
“If she kills me, let them leave without issue,” Maria suddenly spoke up, and the elves nodded, then she pulled her scythe away from Athena’s spear.
“And if you kill me?” Athena asked with a weak smirk, taking a combat stance.
“We’ll see. But the truth is that I still need you to complete my revenge. All you need from me at this point is my scythe,” Maria spoke, as her cold eyes were locked onto Athena from under her mask. The slightest twitch from her signaled the start of their duel, and Athena immediately rushed her. She thrust her spear forward towards the villainess but had to abort her attack immediately as a dream phantom in the shape of an elf jumped in her way and tried to touch her.
She swiped at it, and the shade vanished into thin air, but so had the villainess while Athena’s attention was elsewhere. She looked around frantically – left, right – and then she looked up, just in time to jump back and avoid being cut in two by the scythe’s blade, after which she took off into the sky. Maria followed and turned her weapon, bringing it up to hit Athena with the sharp tip of her scythe’s blade, but she immediately propelled herself backwards and watched the black blade soar past her.
Athena channeled lightning into her spear and was about to shoot it towards Maria, but she had to dodge another phantom attack. An arrow soared past her, leaving a trail of the same strange, foggy substance that the phantoms were made out of. As she followed the trail to its point of origin, she saw an elf who was clad in ornamental armor and gave the impression of a folk hero, with a dozen more behind him, taking aim at her.
Athena let out a little curse, flying in a zig-zag pattern to escape the barrage that came her way, then she extended the shimmering band flapping from her helmet. Images rushed across its surface until it settled on a whole flock of owls, which she swiftly sent towards the elf archers.
The magical creatures attacked with a rapid dive, some getting hit by arrows and dissipating, while others clawed at the phantoms and destroyed them in turn.
“Not a whole lot of variety in their dreams. They must live for duty,” Pallas commented dryly, and Athena shook her head.
It might just be one dream of many. One they have in common.
Athena cancelled her powers of flight and let herself fall to barely dodge another swing of the scythe as Maria closed the distance between them.
“Stop holding back, Seika! I won’t be satisfied until you fight me with everything you’ve got! You can give me that much, when Bellona isn’t here to settle the score with me!”
I’m a poor substitute for the person she really wants to fight.
Athena raised her shield and it worked its magic; as Maria made eye contact with the image of Medusa on it, she froze, allowing Athena to close in and hit her side with the shaft of her spear, guiding electricity through her body.
The villainess let out a scream before she powered through the attack and sent Athena back with a kick, making her tumble through the air before she followed up and used her powerful wings to propel herself forward, ramming directly into the goddess.
Eyes full of hatred glared at her through the holes in the mask, and the villainess let go of her scythe with one hand to throw a punch, bruising Athena’s ribs with the force of the impact. She exhaled sharply as pain radiated through her side, then she quickly brought her knee into the villainesses’ side in retaliation, and the woman let out a pained hiss as she let Athena go.
However, before Athena could orient herself, she was struck by something else from outside of her field of vision. More pain radiated through her back as she broke through the nearby forest’s canopy, breaking off multiple branches before she hit the frozen soil.
She grimaced and looked up into the sky, where one of the offensive types of dream phantoms circled as an oversized falcon. With a quick look she confirmed that it scratched her back as it attacked her.
Good thing that this type of damage doesn’t reach Seika.
“You should be more careful, regardless.”
“Ugh…” Athena grumbled, then her battle sense told her to duck; she did it immediately, and a black flash felled the trees around her. Maria appeared from behind one of the cut trees and approached her again, with the elven heroes in tow. Their blades clashed again, and the wild, brutal swings of the Dream Empress cut through many more trees with the scythe’s unnaturally sharp blade.
“Won’t the elves be angry with you?” Athena asked, raising her shield again to freeze Maria. The villainess closed her eyes, blindly following through on her current slash, though Athena could duck under it and ram the haft of her spear into Maria’s stomach.
The villainess stumbled back with a curse, coughing before she answered, while Athena had to dodge another barrage of arrows.
“We’re not in the corpsewood anymore. Caelon’s people will gather these trees as firewood,” the villainess answered her and attempted a vertical slash from above, which Athena blocked with her spear. The top of the obsidian blade got dangerously close as they were locked in a clinch, and as she looked around, she saw the elves surrounding them.
“Surrounded and struggling in a direct contest of strength! Is that really all you can do, goddess?!”
Athena didn’t want to admit it, but those words got to her. She clenched her jaw and pushed back, making Maria lose ground. The dream phantoms around them stepped closer, drawing ornate swords. Athena didn’t know whether their attacks would injure or trap her, but she wasn’t about to find out.
She shook her head, letting Arachne’s enchanted fabric flow behind her, with the fabric glowing brilliantly. She tried her hardest to think of something while focusing all her strength on pushing Maria back, and, finally, she took one of the simpler approaches.
An image depicting Capitolium’s human soldiers appeared on the fabric, and after it gave off a blinding rainbow shimmer, the men wearing bronze armor and brandishing spears emerged from the enchanted cloth, immediately attacking the opposing phantoms. The sounds of battle engulfed the two foes as Athena finally broke the clinch by headbutting the Dream Empress. Steel helm met wooden mask, and the villainess flinched back, uttering a curse under her breath.
Athena followed up and didn’t give the villainess time to catch her breath: she stabbed with her spear, and as Maria dodged it to the side, she let go of her weapon with her left hand to weave magic through the ground, raising a pillar of earth that struck the masked woman as it rapidly grew wider in its ascent.
Maria stumbled towards Athena, and all that awaited her here was the goddesses’ fist, striking the villainess straight in the face and shattering the mask, revealing her furious, offended visage.
She jumped back to a safe distance, and as Athena wanted to follow up, the villainess suddenly spread her wings, spinning once around her own axis and scattering feathers in every direction. Athena’s eyes widened and she tried to jump away, but one of the feathers brushed against her skin and she was immediately trapped in one of the Dream Empresses’ bubbles.
“My, how clumsy!” Maria taunted her as she stepped closer, leaning in and looking inside the bubble with a mad grin.
“We’re right back where we left off all those years ago, before Miori pierced my shoulder. And I doubt anyone is coming to save you this time. Not when I-” Maria interrupted herself to prove her point, slashing one of the magical soldiers in two who approached to free his conjurer. He collapsed and the magical energies shaping him dissipated, leaving a glittering trail in the air.
“Not when I’m here to stand watch. No one of Bellona’s caliber is nearby!” the villainess exclaimed, laughing as she turned around and threw her hands into the air.
“I won! I defeated the mighty Athena! Take that, Taenya! Take that, Fames, you bitch! Without resorting to the dirty tricks you prepared for me! Without even using those powers!”
Athena let her ramble. Her own mind was set on freeing herself from her prison, as she already felt the draining effect on her magical essence. She strained physically, grunting as she put her all into breaking the magical shackles that kept her suspended within the bubble.
“Not good. You’re restrained tight! Whatever force you’re expending to break free, it’s being sapped and directly fed into whatever phantom we’re creating right now!”
Athena grimaced, with her eyes frantically darting around before her mind wandered back to Hecate’s cryptic lesson about magic.
I got it!
She strained some more, feeding more magical energies into the phantom that was about to take shape from her prison.
Red magic. I’ll feed it lots of red, hot magic, and then…!
“Now what sort of dream do you have for me, Athena?” the villainess spoke as she turned around. Arisu emerged from the dream bubble, taller than her usual appearance, in a suit not unlike Seika’s work attire. A vision of her daughter, having grown up healthy and living a normal life. However, what separated her from the other dream shades was the way she emitted an orange glow, like molten steel.
“What did you do to…?”
The villainess didn’t get to finish her question. A fireball engulfed her, the bubble, and the ongoing melee surrounding them.
Momo rubbed her throat and threw a glare towards the elf, who took her scorn gracefully by ignoring it. Their captors had released them the moment it was clear that they showed no intention of getting involved in the fight, right after Athena declared her willingness to take the villainess on in single combat.
“I really don’t like the way you went about this, but what’s done is done,” she could hear Miyu grumble nearby. The clearing was filled with the dream bubbles of the Dream Empress, and phantoms emerged from them from time to time, walking towards the forest where the duo saw Athena vanish after a large falcon hit her.
“Do you think she’s going to be, like, okay?” Momo asked with a grumble as the duo watched multiple trees fall over in the forest, approximately where Athena landed. Miyu rubbed the back of her head, looking at the strange spectacle. The sound of battle reached them, like two armies were clashing, overshadowed by the even louder sounds of steel meeting an obsidian blade. Miyu turned around, letting out a long sigh.
“It’s fine. She’s fine. I guess.”
Momo could see Miyu figuratively swallowing her words as they were underlined by a huge explosion that knocked over multiple trees and sent smoke up into the sky. The sound of battle died down as the blast presumably wiped out the army of shades and whatever they were fighting.
“…yeah. She got this. That was her magic. Definitely.”
***
“Persistent little bitch…!” Maria growled, wiping soot off her face as she glared at Minerva, who stood tall after finally escaping the treacherous bubble. She barely managed to wrap herself in her wings, avoiding the destruction of her clothing by the violent explosion just in time. Trees had fallen and snapped away from the epicenter of the explosion, with fires licking at the now exposed wood of their stumps.
“What’s the matter, Empress? Didn’t you want to fight me at full strength? Will you now complain after your one trick didn’t work on me?” Athena challenged her, pointing her spear at the villainess. Maria’s right eye twitched, before she assumed her own combat stance, though she only held her scythe with one hand, away from her body, while her left hovered in front of her face. As Athena looked closer, she could see her hand shaking a little.
“I never wanted to use this part of my powers again after discovering it for the first time… all the way back when I first experimented with my new form.”
Athena didn’t quite like what she was hearing. She decided not to wait for Maria to use her previously unseen ability and charged her, but she was suddenly knocked off balance the second Maria touched her face. The villainesses’ eye glowed in a bright blood red color and shadows darkened the area around her as she let out pained-sounding groans.
“With Morpheus’ gift of dreams came a part of Melinoë’s domain over nightmares. And even if no one is around to shape them… I will simply release the horrors within!” the villainess shouted as she was engulfed by a pitch-black darkness. She vanished from sight, and in her place a nightmare in the shape of a man appeared, almost reminiscent of Scotus’ shadows, though Seika could feel a dark, driven intelligence behind the hateful, glowing eyes. Their surroundings grew dark, and the forest vanished until Athena found herself in a dark apartment, and realized that whatever this power was, it recreated Tokyo.
The interior of the place wasn’t overly luxurious, but she could tell that the owners were well off. An expensive, large television played the news, marking the one-year anniversary of the Kawaguchi Incident. The table was littered with empty cans, all of which used to contain shochu highballs and beer.
The scene was immediately disrupted as the large monster tossed the table into the TV. The image broke up into an arrangement of rainbow-colored bars and static around a large crack in the middle, then the TV itself was tossed into the nearby balcony door as the creature kept raging. Athena took a step back from the scene, and only now, as she passed the couch, did she notice that she was smaller than usual. The size of a child, maybe ten to fourteen years old.
The monstrous creature turned its head as if it only now noticed her presence. Its mouth was hanging open and its eyes were unfocused, yet its gaze pierced straight through her, filling her heart with a strange, foreign terror.
“…your fault…!” the creature muttered with a groan as it shuffled her way. Its hands deformed, the fingers elongated and turned into wide and thin appendages that hung loosely from its hands like whips.
“…all your fault!” The creature roared and used its new whip hands to grab the nearby couch, flinging it towards Athena. She was caught off guard, and the furniture slammed right into her, throwing her against the glass balcony door and right through it. She groaned as she felt cuts from the glass on her body and struggled to push the couch off herself, realizing with horror that her strength had been sapped.
“We’re so weak…! Don’t tell me she trapped us in a nightmare under her control!”
Athena grimaced after hearing Pallas’ observation and put all her strength into her push, managing to get the couch off herself, just in time for the shadowy creature to be on top of her. It raised its transformed hand and Athena let out a scream as five lashes hit her upper arm and her face. The creature didn’t let up, letting out an inhumane screech as it alternated between its left and right hand.
“Your fault! Your fault! Your fault!!Your fault!!! Good-for-nothing! Murderer! Murderer!!” it kept screaming as pain shot through Athena’s weakened body. Cornered like this, she did the best she could: she kicked the creature above her in the groin. Another inhuman shriek and it stumbled backwards, while Athena quickly got on her feet and ran back inside.
She ran to the front door first, but found that it was locked, with a key nowhere in sight as she kept pulling the handle in a panic.
Why can’t I think of a way out? I should have options, but I can’t focus…!
The creature had found its composure again and stepped between Athena and the hallway, cornering her against the door while it kept rambling in incomplete sentences.
“All your fault! Lazy child!”
It raised its hand again to strike Athena with its whip-like appendages, and this time she ran towards the creature. She ducked between its legs, barely avoiding being whipped again before she ran like hell. She left the living room behind herself, running past a few doors until she stopped in front of one that seemed to be calling out to her. A quick glance over her shoulder confirmed that the monster was following her, cracking the whip-like appendages as it got closer.
She quickly opened the door and closed it behind her, frantically looking around. She found herself in a neat room. A made bed was in the corner, and next to it was a desk. Only a few scattered books broke the orderly appearance of the bedroom in which everything made of fabric was kept in a light pink tone.
The books were theater plays and handbooks for aspiring actors. The former were predominantly Shakespeare: Hamlet, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, and, of course, Romeo and Juliet. However, Athena didn’t have the time to admire literature. Instead, she grabbed the chair by the desk and lodged the backrest under the door handle; just in time, it turned out, as it immediately rattled noisily from the monster trying to gain entry.
“No stupid dreams! Obey!” its voice shrieked from the other side and a shiver went down Athena’s spine. Suddenly an overwhelming feeling of fear filled her heart as she looked back at the books on the desk. Something told her that she had to hide them before the monster managed to break into the room, or something horrible would happen. Something even worse than the previous beating.
She quickly hurried over to the desk and grabbed the books, but as she held them in her hands, she hesitated, unsure where to put them. A cracking sound from the door told her that she didn’t have any time to consider, so she quickly opened a drawer and shoved the books inside, slamming it shut just in time for the creature to break down the door, knocking it out of the hinges. Athena tried to escape deeper into the room as the monster entered, but soon she found her back pushed against a cold, flat surface. A mirror, she guessed, but she didn’t take her eyes off the monster.
It didn’t attack, which was odd. Instead, it looked around the room, as if it was looking for something. It stepped towards the desk, eyeing it suspiciously before something under the bed caught its attention. Still ignoring Athena for the most part, it walked over and its long fingers wrapped around a rectangular object.
The strange, foreign fear took hold of Athena’s heart again as she recognized it to be a book about the Panasonic Globe Theater. And right after, the fear became unbearable as the monster looked straight at her, stepped towards her and grabbed her by the hair.
“Told you! Give up on stupid dreams! Do as I tell you to!”
Athena let out a scream as the monster pushed her to the ground. It grabbed her throat and pinned her down, its other whip hand raised, poised to strike her again. She squirmed and shook, but there was no escape – the only way she could look was up, and as she did so, the pieces finally fell into place as the tall mirror behind her revealed the truth to her. She wasn’t Athena. The reflection which looked back at her was that of a terrified young girl with dark hair. Sixteen years younger, but she was undeniably Maria, and the monster was an angry, middle-aged man.
She wasn’t a goddess, just a girl whose life was upended by circumstances beyond her understanding, subjected to a violent father who used to be loving and caring until the death of his wife. And now that she was aware of the nature of this nightmare, she could detach herself from the role she was forced to play. She could simply wake up from this nightmare, but there was one last thing she wanted to do.
I wish to save her.
A blinding light engulfed the room, and the monster recoiled as Athena stood up, growing back into her proper size and form. She gave the creature a stern look before she extended her hand and engulfed it in flames. It roared and shrieked, abandoning any semblance of its previous human speech and intelligence as it ran out of the room.
The young Maria was still on the ground, with tears marring her face and bruises her body, but at this very moment she was more confused than anything else. Athena reached out a hand to her, and the dream collapsed.
Maria and Athena still stood in the middle of the toppled trees, the same as they were before that nightmare devoured everything. The villainess was kneeling on the ground, breathing heavily and looking pale, with sweat and tears running together on her face as she stared into nothingness.
Athena walked up to her and reached out, but the villainess immediately slapped her hand out of the way.
“Don’t you dare give me your pity, Seika! I summoned this nightmare to crush you, not to gain your sympathy! I willingly embraced my old nightmares to try and gain an advantage! And it didn’t work…”
She sounded defeated after those final words and let her head hang. Her fingers dug into the ground as Athena looked on, unsure what to make of her foe looking like this.
“Well, do you want to continue, or…?” she suggested, and Maria shook her head.
“You won. You defeated me. You broke out of every prison I prepared for you and I have nothing else, unless you want us to hack each other to pieces with our blades.”
Athena nodded, still holding out her hand for Maria, who kept ignoring the gesture and pushed herself on her feet with her scythe. She looked at Athena with her spiteful eyes, though there was a small glimmer of something different behind them, now. And then they went wide.
Maria threw herself against Athena, who at first thought that it was another attack from her, but she simply shoved her out of the way, landing on top of her as something fast and large rushed past them. Athena didn’t even get the opportunity to wonder what that strange object was as it already crashed into one of the nearby tree stumps only a second later, and the strangely familiar sound of a car horn broke the silence of their battlefield.
A car had crashed into one of the remaining tree stumps, and the family of four inside was unconscious. A completely out of place familiar sight.
“Thank you,” Athena managed to speak after she overcame her severe confusion, before she hurried on her feet to deal with the injured civilians. She could hear Maria shouting behind her.
“This was only because I need you to get my revenge! You hear me?!”
***
The family was lying unconscious in the spare beds of Caelon’s house while Athena applied her healing magic. Maria leaned against the wall, her arms crossed as she endured the venomous glares from Momo again, doing her best to act aloof and unconcerned, even after everything she did just minutes prior.
The car this family came in had a license plate bearing the blue field and gold stars of the European Union, and Athena guessed that more particularly, this family came from France, judging by the F under those stars.
“How did they even get here…?” Miyu wondered, standing next to Athena as she inspected the man, woman and their two sons.
“It’s just as Doctor Grendel told us. The barriers between the worlds are getting thinner to the point of vanishing,” Athena spoke quietly. She finished her application of healing magic and turned towards their host, Caelon.
“We have wasted enough time. If we delay any further, then both of our worlds will truly collide, wiping out everything in them.”
Caelon inspected the family and gave a little grumble as he pondered those facts, then he nodded.
“We’ll have someone look after these humans. Will probably be very difficult if they wake up and we can’t communicate, but our people will do their best. I’ll guide you to the capital. There are ancient tunnels that even the city folk have forgotten about.”
Miyu, Momo and Maria acknowledged his words and looked about as ready as anyone could, given the circumstances.
“Just… promise me one thing,” he spoke, and Seika, having undone her transformation, nodded, listening to his request.
“There has been enough death already. Spare our people if you can; even the High Enchantress. This false goddess has already taken so much from us, so please spare my cousin. I don’t want Lilieth to die.”