Between Saints - Fairies, Dragons and Gods

Athena left Anemus' arms and with a complicated expression touched the crystal that reacted as if it gave off sparks to Athena's touch.

"What is Helena doing in this place?"

Ella approached with a confused expression. "What are you talking about? This is Lhia!"

"Huh? But, this face..."

Lhia had the same delicate and gentle face than Helena. They were exactly the same except for the hair that while Lhia was blonde, Helena was red-haired. But that was too little for the moment, it was as if Athena was looking into the past, into a good part of it.

"I don't know what you're thinking, but this is Lhia for sure." Ella reaffirmed.

"How did you know I wanted Lhia?" Athena looked at Lucifer and then at Ella. "Never mind, Ella must have said something unnecessary..."

"Hey!" Ella complained. "I brought Lhia to you, didn't I?"

"Not." Athena replied. "You gave Lhia to her and I imagine to make me feel indebted and help her."

Ella looked away quickly and disguised running to a book she pretended to recognize with false nostalgia.

"Call Faena." Athena said and looked at the crowd there. "What's up? Go to work! Didn't you see the chaos the palace is in? Serien, call some masons to repair the walls, buy... You know what to do."

Serien gave a brief smile and along with the knights, disappeared through the corridors of the palace, leaving only Athena, Mifa, Anemus, Yggdrazil, Lucifer, Ella and Hercules there.

Athena looked at Hercules and raised an eyebrow. "What you want?"

"That woman in the crystal, she's a goddess, isn't she?" Hercules asked.

Athena looked at Lhia and then turned her eyes to the young man. "She is not."

"Athena, don't lie to me, I read in some books-"

"Heh? Did you learn basilican that quickly?" Athena said with legitimate surprise. "Very well."

Hercules blushed slightly at the praise, showing how young he really was. "I... I had help from Lunnia and Malana."

"Wow! Malana already knows basilican to the point of teaching? Mifa, please remind me to hire some good teachers for this girl, I don't want to lose such a talent."

Mifa, who had sat down on a table close to all the mess, smiled as she nodded. She was just watching so she could better understand what was going on, as the place had two new people in there that she didn't know.

"Wa- Athena you changed the subject!" Hercules complained. "I read in some books that this woman is a goddess."

"And I'm saying it isn't!" Athena snapped. "Besides, so what if she's a goddess? I'll absorb her completely, nothing will be left of her!"

"You will do what?!" Hercules asked with indignation. "Are you listening to yourself? She's a person!"

"No, she is not." Faena said when she arrived at the place. "She is a prototype of a divine herald. Just like me, a poorly made imitation."

"What do you mean?" Hercules asked.

"You do not need to know." Athena said. "Anyway, what are you doing here? A guest shouldn't be meddling in the host's affairs."

"But Athena, if she is a divine herald, she can ask her god to take us back!" Hercules insisted and Athena's gaze on the young man was so cold it sent shivers down his spine.

"Is that all you want to talk about?" Mifa asked as she got up and walked towards the young man when she realized that Athena's patience was running out. She touched Hercules on the shoulder and then whispered. "Leave or you will die."

Hercules looked at the crystal and reluctantly turned his back on the people there and walked away.

"So…" Faena said after the silence that had stayed in place with Hercules' departure. "How are you going to absorb this bitch?"

"Aren't you angry or at least against it?"

"Why would I?"

"Isn't she your sister?" Athena asked.

"Technically, yes. But she and I have nothing like a fraternal relationship. I doubt she would see me as a sister if she were released."

"Hm..." Athena watched the crystal for a moment. "That remind me why I called you."

"??"

"Is she really Lhia?"

Faena frowned confusedly at Athena's question and looked at the crystal where a more adult, more beautiful, and clearer version of herself was imprisoned. "Yes, it's Lhia."

"Then why does she have the same face as someone I met in the other world?"

"Another world?" Faena, tilting her head, asked with a funny expression. She looked at Anemus and Mifa and asked. "Did she hit her head?"

"Just answer..." Mifa said shaking her head.

"How would I know? I'm practically fifteen days old."

"..."

"After all, who are these people?" Faena, looking at Lucifer and Yggdrazil, asked.

"That's the fairy queen, Yggdrazil, and that's Lucifer over there. She's one of the demon lords who came out through the gates of hell you opened." Athena said and Lucifer smiled amiably at Faena, while Yggdrazil turned her face away with revulsion in her eyes.

After that, Athena made Yggdrazil explain everything she would do with Anemus and patiently waited for the fairy queen to do the entire mana replacement process on Anemus.

The result was quick.

Anemus' hair returned to its original colors in moments, and when she opened her eyes, it was green like newly formed leaves on the branches of a young plant.

These changes meant that Anemus was complete as a fairy.

Now she was a real wind fairy and being a wind fairy, she could take mana from the wind and so would never run out of mana. She could cast spells at will, as long as her mind bore the burden the act caused.

After finishing what she had to do, Yggdrazil looked at Athena, still repulsed, and disappeared as if she had never been there, reluctantly leaving Anemus behind.

"Now that we've got rid of a problem, let's get to it." Athena said and took the crystal.

"Wait!" Lucifer said. "If you are accepting the crystal, can I understand that you will help me?"

Athena stopped and thought for a moment. She hadn't heard Lucifer's reasons for wanting to kill her brother, but it didn't matter either. Athena was considering something else.

"Before that, stop hiding your power." Athena said.

Lucifer looked at Ella who just smirked and sighed, letting her mana flow naturally again and as soon as she did, Athena could see the extent of Lucifer's powers.

The demon lord's mana spread out and weighed everyone there as if gravity had grown stronger, making everyone but Athena and Ella practically bend over.

Athena was dazzled and surprised by so much power. (If her brother is stronger than she is, it will be like fighting a god.)

Looking at Athena's reaction, Lucifer smiled and suppressed her power so it wouldn't affect others. "Are you going to help this fallen goddess get rid of her wicked brother?"

"It will be a good workout." Athena said and with the crystal over her shoulder she started to walk towards the exit but then stopped. "Goddess?"

"Hm?" Goddess?" Ella repeated and looked at Lucifer.

Anemus, Mifa and Faena who followed Athena also looked at Lucifer with a complicated and confused expression, thinking they had heard wrong.

"Yes." Lucifer said. "What else would be the daughter of gods?"

"Wait. Aren't you an angel?" Athena asked with her eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"Angels are lesser gods." Said Lucifer.

With Lucifer explaining how the divine beings worked as they followed Athena out of town.

"There is a god above all, but he has neither conscience nor will, making the primordial gods the existences that are above all." Lucifer said, signaling with her hands what he was saying. "My parents were primordial gods until they parted."

"Alone they are not primordial?"

"No. They are incomplete."

"Why?"

"Well... Before they parted, Asherah and Yahweh, or Jehovah for those of the other world, were part of a pantheon..."

In that pantheon there were four great gods, three kings and a queen, Asherah and her three husbands.

The four together formed a single god, which was called the primordial god. This god had power over everything that existed and knew everything that exist, existed and could come to exist.

"He was perfect but..."

Normally, primordial gods were made up of pairs rather than quadruplets. They were born together, lived together and completed each other as a whole to give rise to a new existence.

However, with the four it had been different.

There was a time when a other world in that dimension also had abundant magic. In that world, two brothers, from an extinct race, managed to ascend to divinity in a dimension where gods did not yet exist.

"Wait, so who created life and things if there wasn't a god?" Anemus asked.

"Haven't you ever heard the phrase 'There is no god more beautiful than infinity'?" Lucifer replied.

"So there was a god in that dimension! Infinity."

"Not." Lucifer denied it. "Infinity is a god without consciousness. He creates dimensions, universes, stars and planets, but he does not create life. He is like mana, an energy."

"How did life come about then?" Athena asked. "And what are the gods?"

"Life is a mystery that only the first god could answer and already what we are..." Lucifer thought of a convincing way to answer. "We are fragments of infinity and this is not just true for the gods."

"This whole explanation has come to nothing…" Athena grumbled.

"How could you not understand?" Lucifer complained. "I explained it in a way any mortal would understand!"

"Maybe that's why no one likes you in the other world…" Athena said softly and even though she heard it, Lucifer ignored it.

"Continuing..."

At the same time that the brothers ascended to divinity, Asherah and Yahweh were born to them. Perhaps something went wrong in their ascension and from one came Asherah and from the other came Yahweh.

"Why are you telling your parents' birth story?" Athena interrupted, lost in history. "I just wanted to know…" Athena frowned suddenly. "What did I really want to know? Oh yes! Why your parents weren't primordial gods."

Lucifer snorted and continued her explanation, giving up on Athena.

The two new gods tried to become a primordial one, but failed, just as Asherah and Yahweh tried and failed. They failed a number of times and whenever they failed, they wreaked havoc on the universe, leading many planets, even the planet they were born, to destruction.

This kept happening until Asherah got an idea. Since the four were interconnected, she suggested that the four try to become one and thus the primordial god of that dimension emerged.

Asherah became the wife of the three gods and together they ruled that dimension.

However, Yahweh wanted Asherah all to himself. Yahweh convinced Asherah that it would be better for just the two of them to exist as gods in that dimension and together they plotted and killed the two other gods.

"So they can't complete each other even if they're together?"

"Exactly. They killed the other two that were key parts for them to form a primordial. With that..."

Yahweh impregnated Asherah several times trying to emulate the power of creation from a primordial, but only great and lesser gods were born, which waned their powers.

"In all, there are a thousand children, great and lesser gods." Lucifer said. "I am a lesser goddess of light."

"And Death?" Athena asked curiously.

"She is a lesser goddess of the end."

"Huh? Lesser Goddess? So Uran..."

"Uran is a great goddess of the end." Lucifer stated. "She is an existence that could kill even Asherah and Yahweh. How do you know about her? Since I arrived in this world, I tried to find her to help me, but I couldn't."

"She was sealed by her mother and I want to set her free." Athena said and then stopped when she noticed an awkward silence. "What's up?"

"Has she been sealed?" Lucifer asked. "Why?"

"Do you want to release that neurotic?" Ella asked. "Why?"

Anemus and Mifa just looked at each other and shrugged. They would follow Athena even in death and no matter who they came to confront, they would fight alongside Athena to the very end.

"She said she was sealed for having destroyed some cities while trying to gain Asherah's attention and I'm going to release her because I'm her friend and I made her a promise that I would make Asherah apologize."

"Are you crazy? She lied!" Ella said. "In a fit of possessive jealousy, she has erased out half of this planet. We dragons have rebuilt everything as it was. Imagine what she'll do after she's released!"

"What do you mean with it? She's a good girl."

"Uran was born with the twisted essence of Asherah and Yahweh. She's everything bad they both have, but at the same time, she's also the better of the two." Lucifer explained. "If she now has a friend in you, I doubt she would destroy the world you live in. But I also doubt that Asherah will let you free her easily."

"That's why I need power." Athena said.

After a few more minutes of walking, they were outside Basilian's walls. Athena, moved away from all the others, placed the crystal on the ground and transformed into her draconic form.

After a long time with the knowledge of the Akashic Records, Athena had several ideas on how to acquire more power, but they all had some kind of consequences and at this point, she couldn't take any risk.

So the only option left was to expand her existence. She would slowly grow until have enough power to face the gods. Well, if she had to choose, she would rather not have to face any gods and hoped the gods would choose that too.

"What are you going to do now?" Mifa asked. "Absorbing someone must be quite different than what you did with the world's mana and Faena's powers."

(Yes, the only way I can absorb Lhia is like this.)

Athena opened her mouth and in a single bite, swallowed Lhia in her crystal, leaving everyone present surprised by Athena's choice.

All the girls had a different reaction. Ella laughed, Faena just widened her eyes and shivered at the thought that this could have happened to her, Lucifer made a confused expression, Anemus sighed and Mifa gaped.

"By 'absorb' you mean digest?" Mifa asked in a shaky voice, worried that this could harm Athena. "Spit it out, Athena, it'll hurt you!"

"It's all right!" Ella said through laughter. "Everything a dragon eats is nutrient. Everything is absorbed to strengthen the body and with that concentration of mana, Athena will get exactly what she wanted."

As Ella said this, Athena curled up in a huddle of scales and closed her eyes as golden runic patterns appeared all over her body.

"What is that?" Anemus asked with an aggrieved expression.

"Eh? I don't know." Ella replied. "This never happened to me."

"Faena!"

"I don't know either, the seal has more to do with the soul than the flesh." Faena made a complicated expression. "But it looks like she won't move for a while."

"So..." Mifa tooke off her dress, getting naked right there and transforming. ""We'll protect her until it's over."

The instant Mifa finished saying that, between them and Athena, Gion appeared in a pale beam of light.

***

Theikós was in Meridian, the capital of Mizhar, looking for news about the dragon that had been there.

The city was in turmoil, greedy merchants shouted their wares to the people who worked hard to rebuild their city that had just survived an Armageddon.

Theikós had just arrived in town and was in a newly rebuilt with hand rammed earth tavern.

As the only entire tavern in the capital, the place was always packed. There were men standing, leaning against the wall of mud and hay, and sitting on the dirt floor as drinking in laughing groups.

Some women who were there, wearing few clothes, allowed themselves to be groped, kissed and other services in exchange for a few copper coins.

The women were young and beautiful, and each of them shared the same story, and did that kind of work for lack of choice.

The men, those who couldn't get ordinary jobs or didn't leave the city, or didn't become thieves, became adventurers even if they weren't skilled at it. Since the city's destruction, dozens of them have died in jobs impossible for them.

They had families to support.

This was the new reality Athena had forced upon the people that lived in that city.

However, that didn't matter to the dragon who visited the city following in the footsteps of her much-desired husband.

Theikós, who wore a simple blue summer dress, attracted the attention of men for her beauty and despite her noble appearance, she was easily mistaken for one of the prostitutes who were in the tavern.

"Sorry, but we're not taking any more hookers here. We're already out of rooms." Said the tavern keeper with a long thick mustache and thin eyes.

"I didn't come here to let that little men copulate with me in exchange for some stupid pieces of metal." The woman with two longs blue braids replied and looked at the people in the tavern with contempt. "I want a information."

"Gyahahahaha!" Laughed a skinny man with a nose so red as his cheeks. The man reeked of alcohol so much that even the pretty brunette on his lap had a disgusted expression on her face. "Look at her fine clothes, she's a noblewoman. Even if she was starving, a noblewoman would never bed a commoner like us, Tucal!"

The man pushed the woman off of him and, unsteadily, walked to the bar of the tavern, making the wood of the tavern counter moan as he braced himself on it, beside Theikós.

"Information? What information?" Asked Tucal, the tavern keeper, glancing irritably at the drunk.

"I want to know where the dragon that attacked this city came from and to where him have gone." Theikós said, not caring about the drunk that was now messing with her braids.

"Dlagon?" the drunk asked with his tongue curled. "I know where he ish!" The man sniffed the perfume in Theikós' hair and let out a sigh with a delirious smile.

"Efir, stop it." Tucal ordered.

"It's all right." Theikos said. "You said you know where he is, tell me."

"I will say." Efir caught Theikós' chin and lifted his little face. "If you kiss me with your gentle, noble lips."

At that moment, everyone in the tavern laughed out loud, but the laughs were short-lived. It only rest until Theikós felt the dragon's presence again, coming from farther west, like if it was a call.

The faces of the people in the tavern paled as they saw Theikós' eyes gleam and long horns the color of lapis lazuli protruded from the sides of the woman's head.

Theikós smiled at Efir. "Unfortunately, you're no longer useful."

"Eh?"

Suddenly, the tavern was in chaos with the screams of whores and drunks running in panic through the tavern's narrow doors and windows.

In the hands of a smiling Theikós, Efir's head looked like a new toy with a stupid expression. His body was on the ground, in barely noticeable spasms, blood spilling from his headless throat like a punctured canteen.

Theikós waited for the people to leave the tavern before she could leave. It because she didn't want to harm the kind tavernkeeper by transforming and destroying his establishment.

She was anxious again and in a great mood.

"Fufu~ Just a little longer my husband."