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Chapter Text

As the Grand Pope, Shion did his best to ensure that the generation of Saints for the coming Holy War here in the 21th century would understand what sort of task they would face. Most of them were still children, and would need years of more training before becoming Gold Saints. Master Hakurei had always said that Sainthood at a far too young age, was asking for the young warriors in question becoming entitled and arrogant in a manner that would ruin their lives in the longer run.   

“I hope that I am not boring you with this needed history lesson about your predecessors.”  

“No, sir, it is just so many papers, names and dates to go through…” Saga admitted, while Kanon had started to make small drawings of various star signs on the corners of his note papers, a sign of him trying to pass time without feeling too bored. Feeling sympathy for the younger twin, Shion promised that they could enjoy the fine weather outside and the afternoon free from lessons and training as soon as they were finished here. 

“Pope Shion, what is this talk about a “Curse of Gemini”? We have overheard strange talkings about that over the last months when we have been wandering around the Sanctuary,” Kanon suddenly called his attention with an unexpected question. 

Oh no, Shion feared. Of all the things the twin brothers could have heard, it naturally had to be that subject. That horrible curse of the Gemini Saints, that seemed to strike every set of twins fated to fight in the Holy Wars since around 241 AD, that he could recall both Aspros and Defteros feeling bitter about back in the years before the Holy War of their generation in 1746. 

“The so-called “Curse of Gemini”, you ask?” 

So much for the intended free afternoon for them. But maybe it was high time for them to know about this, since there was a high risk that they would end up tangled into the curse as well. 

“Right, have your notes ready, because this is a rather huge amount of information that you may need to recall later….”

Neither one looked happy over having to do more handwriting, but at hearing how serious Shion sounded, they knew better than complaining. And the Grand Pope started the story:  

“As far as every source of information and eyewitnesses can tell, this “Curse of Gemini'' started in the Holy War of year 246 AC. But if one has to be more precise, it actually happened five years earlier, in 241 AD. In that year, there was actually some confusion over the wearers of the Gemini Cloth, because there was not just one set of twins in the Sanctuary born under the Gemini sign, but two, with six years in age difference.” 

One set was the 18-year-old Italian brothers, Romulus and Remus, born in a side branch to an aristocratic family in Rome and taken to the Sanctuary at an early age since it was just plain impossible to miss their vast amount of Cosmo when they were out in public, and their arrival here was hidden by making it look like they had been chosen to become priests of Jupiter in the Eastern parts of the Roman Empire. 

The younger set was the 12-year-old Greek sisters Lydia and Elena, who came from a completely opposite background: Born in slavery, and never knowing the identity of their birth parents. Their arrival to the Sanctuary was said to be pure coincidence, as their trainer had sensed a very faint Cosmo within the sisters when passing by the farm where they lived and managed to pose himself as a servant sent out on a mission to “buy” handmaidens for his young Lady. 

“Hold on for a moment!” Saga said with a hand raised up in the air, “everyone here in the Sanctuary are free people, right? Does this mean…that many of the earlier Saints…had a background of being slaves? ”

Shion signed, seeing how both looked uncomfortable at that mention.  

“As much as I loathe to admit it, it is right, Saga. Remember, slavery have been a part of many cultures and eras in history, and while we in the Sanctuay have always tríed to ensure that our Saints are free men and women, many have been marked by this bakgrund if they could still remembered that life.” 

In his seat, Kanon was actually looking at the name list of previous Gemini Saints during the Holy Wars. 

“Romulus and Remus…they are mentioned as the “False Gemini Saints” here…because Lydia and Elena proved to be the right wearers of the Gemini Cloth after all?” 

Then he saw something in the text that made him go pale in horror: 

Gemini Lydia; Murdered at age 12 in 241 by the “False Gemini Saints” Romulus and Remus.

Gemini Elena, died at age 17 in 246 in the Holy War, as the sole Gemini Saint of that fight. 

“Yes, the sisters was the right wearers of the Gemini Cloth of that era, but this rejection in front of Lady Athena herself, the Grand Pope and all the other Saints, after spending most of their lives being praised for their Cosmo and fighting abilities…the brothers refused to accept the truth…” 

In overwhelming rage and resentment over the rejection from the Gemini Cloth and public humiliation, Romulus and Remus attacked Lydia and Elena a few nights later when the sisters were returning back home to the Gemini Temple after spending that day training. Due to the difference in the length of their training period and ability to control their respective Cosmo, Lydia was murdered by a extremely powerful Galaxian Explosion straight into her back, but Elena narrowly escaped death by managing to move sightly aside at spotting the incoming attack in the corner of her eye, before help arrived and the Italian twins was executed for murder the very next day, because Lydia had been murdered and the severely wounded Elena spent nearly two weeks afterwards fightning against the massive bloodloss and high risk of a fatal infection to not end up following her sister to the realm of Hades.

Both Saga and Kanon were silent, giving each other nervous looks as they listened to this horrible tale. 

“That is where she was crippled, right, and struggled to fight properly in the Holy War five years later? Her left arm took most of the Galaxian Explosion intended for her back or neck, leaving not only a huge scar but also permanent muscle and nerve damage…” Saga started in unease, and Kanon finished in his stead:

“...and had to fight against the murderers of her sister as they had joined the army of Hades.” 

“Yes. At the cost of Elena giving up her own life in order to strengthen the seal, Lady Athena managed to seal away the souls of Romulus and Remus, but before that, they unfortunately managed to cast this infamous “Curse of Gemini” on future generations of Gemini twins that would fight in the Holy Wars: That one of them would die before the war, or that they would otherwise be separated from each other, so that these twins could not be able to fight together at the side of Athena. ”

Because the united Cosmos of the Gemini twins fighting together were a force unrivaled by even their fellow Gold Saints. All that, because Romulus and Remus had not wanted to admit, not even to themselves, that their dreams to become the Gemini Saint, turned out to be in vain.

“Pope Shion….are the souls of those False Gemini Saints still…around and risking to break out from that seal?” 

At least that was a question that Shion could give a happier answer on:

“No reason to fear that. Yes, they did break out because the seal eventually weakened so much that they were able to free themselves right around the time that Aspros and Defteros were born in 1719. In fact, Romulus and Remus revealed themselves to have been the real origin of that “star of chaos”, trying to possess your newborn predecessors, but found themselves overmanned from that attempt by souls of the generations of Gemini Saints who had been fighting in the Holy Wars over the passing years, alongside Pope Sage and my own master Hakurei. With a little help from Lady Athena herself, Romulus and Remus found themselves effectively obliterated from existence.” 

Now the twin brothers looked nervous for a different reason. 

“Suddenly I am getting scared for when we will be accepted as the Gemini Saints of this generation…and not because of this curse or anything like that…” 

In return, Shion laughed.   

“Worrying about the spiritual selves left behind in the Gemini Cloth, despite that the main part of their souls are now in the Underworld? No fear, the previous generations can be a little overwhelming about some subjects that can be tricky to avoid, but most of them are nice. None of them are really evil, but please do not mention that time-god around Aspros and Defteros, his messing of their brotherly relationship is a rather sore point for both. The others have some trauma triggers as well that I will help you write down.” 

It was in times like this, that Shion was grateful for his unique ability to be able to see the previous lives of Saints when in contact of wounded Cloths. Yes, sometimes that ability was not always so nice to have, but it had also allowed him to connect with those soul parts of historial generations in a way that few others had managed. 

Chapter Text

Year 239 A.D, in the Sanctuary of Athena; 

In general, it was nothing strange about Saints returning from a mission with a few orphans in tow, picked up to become cadets in training as possible Saints or other form of defense for the Sanctuary. Or, sometimes, just to ensure a healthy  population with reduced risk of inbreeding down in the village through new blood. 

“That is enough for today, stop,” Capricorn Darius ordered, and the two girls a bit away from him stopped any movements at his words. Like most girls aiming to become female Saints, they wore protective masks over their faces, but when those were removed, two near identical faces were revealed, mirror images of the same hazel eyes and dark purple hair. 

“Yes…master Darius?” the one to the left asked, both of them gasping for breath as they watched the Gold Saint. As usual, he was watching them in silence. 

“Lydia, Elena,” he addressed his two students, “You have done well today. All that effort to fix your malnutrition and poorer health from the past, between myself and my servants at the Capricorn Temple, has borne fruit. You both last longer in training for each day and your respective Cosmo no longer flutters like a candle about to be blown out.” 

“Really?!” 

Darius saw how this news brought joy to his two students, for there was an unspoken fear between the twin sisters about disappointing him to the point that he regretted bringing them here and risk being forced to leave the Sanctuary, to return to the life he saved them from just a few months earlier. 

“Yes. Now go and wash off yourself before taking a rest, because training or doing anything else hard during the hottest hours of the day is asking for overheating of the body. As you already know, you have a school lesson with Leo Julia later alongside the other cadets that are most likely to become Gold Saints.” 

“Yes, sir!” 

He watched them as they left, then began to do some movements of his own that had been a little dangerous with other people around. 

~X~X~X~X~X~X    

Later, after the break during the hottest hours, did Darius arrive to give a report to the Grand Pope and Lady Athena herself: 

“How is it going for you in training your two unexpected students, Darius? For all of that we have talked about Romulus and Remus possibly not be suitable as the Gemini Saint, we knew that finding another set of twins to become a alternative, was almost impossible due to that twins are often born early and risk dying in the cradle because they are smaller and weaker than other babies, or being abandoned to a early death because of superstition that they are a bad omen or that the parents simply can not support them for various reasons.” 

The Capricorn Saint knelt before responding: 

“Lydia and Elena have started to grow stronger now that they have slowly come to accept that this is their new role, and I have promised them that even if they do not end up as Saints, they shall not be forced back to their old life.” 

Athena looked a little sad at that indirect reminder. 

“Truly, what a contrast to the noble-born Romulus and Remus, if the actual Gemini twins of this era would turn out to be the two former slave girls…” 

For the two girls, who had been slaves their whole lives until this very spring, being found by Darius under the lie that he was a servant seeking for new handmaidens to his female employer and brought to the Sanctuary, had indeed shaken some of the expected norms here by their mere arrival.  

“Still, ensure that the girls are not running around on their own,” the Pope reminded Darius, “the supporters of the Italian brothers are not happy that there is another set of twins here in the Sanctuary, and I worry that those two brothers may try to bully the sisters though those.” 

“That is exactly why I always leave the girls in the hands of my fellow Gold Saints or those to become part of our rank, Grand Pope. Many of those “followers” are scared of facing those in the same age with much greater power. It is why they are bending their backs over in order to please the Italian twins, because they do not want to face them in a match and instead choose to be cowards serving them.”

They kept talking for some time about other things, like what happened in the Roman Empire and other places in the known world that was important to keep an eye on as possible forewarnings of the coming Holy War, before Darius was allowed to leave. 

“I know that not every Saint serving Lady Athena can be a model of goodness and willingness to defend humankind against Hades, but the mere thought of those two fighting in the Holy War among us….it makes me uncomfortable,” the Capricorn Saint thought for himself, “and the worst part of this problem is that they would only succeed each other, per the tradition of having the older twin wear the Gemini Cloth first and have the younger twin follow up if the older twin dies.” 

Despite that most of the Gold Saints did not openly admit it, they were not really looking forward to the day when the sixteen-year-old Italian twins Romulus and Remus would become the Gemini Saints of this generation. Yes, their raw talent in using Cosmo from a early age was a great skill, but ten years of the twins getting a little too much praise for every success they made and far too little criticism of their flaws, had made them had unfortunately made them arrogant and a strong refusal to humbly accept when something did not go as they expected. 

“That is why we have been seeking so much in secret for an alternative set of twins to serve Lady Athena despite the odds against being successful…because we fear that Hades would be able to temper Romulus and Remus with an offer that would make them betray Athena!, Lydia, Elena…you may be former slaves, but you know to not take things in life for granted like the Italian brothers!”  

In the Leo Temple:   

“Are the letters giving you headaches in having to memorize them, Elena?” the female Leo Saint asked at noticing one of the children frowning in a strange manner. 

“No!” the younger sister responded a little too hasty, out of habit from when she and Lydia had still been slaves, fearing some form of punishment for “laziness” or something else that made them work slower than expected. That sort of behavior was something they had yet to stop with, because a few short months was not going to undo habits and behaviors that had been necessary to survive so far in their lives.

“I am not going to be angry at you for having difficulty in those lessons to teach reading and writing, because that is a skill you were not expected to have before.” 

Given that Darius had mentioned to her that he had found the girls on a slave-run farm focusing on producing wool fabrice for sale, Julia tried her best to not sound like Elena was in trouble. After all, it said a lot about that they had been raised to do basic domestic skills of a female slave, without any special skills to raise their value if they were to be sold to a new owner in the future, and seeing education as something for the sons of freedmen and wealthy people who could pay for tutors. 

“Yes…lady Julia…”  

Next to her sister, Lydia did actually lean towards the future Cancer Saint, twelve-year-old Agi, to whisper a question for his help, while fourteen-year-old Utu, who was expected to become the Pisces Saint within the coming years, carefully paid attention to the three younger classmates of his, because he felt that as the oldest student, it would be rude of him to show off that he was quite a bit ahead of them due to being a few years older. 

~X~X~X~X~X~X    

After finishing the lessons for the afternoon, the four youngsters took the chance to do something their respective teachers had told them to do: 

Watching how Romulus and Remus behaved during their own training. And of course, how they would be surrounded by flatters and other people seeking their favor. 

“As someone who has spent quite a part of my training around them, I am really happy that Sir Darius was able to find you, Lydia, Elena,” Utu whispered with no hiding that he did not get along at all with the Italian twins. 

“Yeah, the very idea of those two as Gold Saints….no thanks, if anyone would ask me,” Agi added in, turning his back on the scene below as a sign of ignoring the crowd altogether. 

“Oh dear, they better not be trying to flirt with Tiamat again…!” Utu gasped at noticing a new person, and found himself right when the female Aquarius Saint sent off the crowd with a Diamond Dust after that Remus seemed to have said something that she did not agree with. 

“Let's give her some time to cool off if she is annoyed…” 

Despite being in her mid twenties, whatever she was free from her duties as a Gold Saint or from a mission, Tiamat spent a lot of time with Lydia and Elena on the request of Darius who sometimes was clueless about what to do with students that was girls, doing her best to help them adjust to the new life that they now faced here in the Sanctuary. 

“There is nothing wrong with being late bloomers in having your Cosmo awaken fully. Darius himself is a good example, as he was nineteen when he became the Capricorn Saint, and I was just two years younger when I succeeded my master.” 

By old habit, Lydia and Elena did not talk much themselves, instead listening to her as all three of them were spinning wool into thread. Even here in the Sanctuary, fabric had to be made for clothing and other textiles, and despite that this was mostly done by servants and the farmer wives down in the village, the female Saints sometimes helped out when the sheep had their wool cut off. 

“Tiamat, how come that you all seem to be really against the idea of Romulus and Remus becoming the Gemini Saint despite all their talent? I mean, we have not even talked to them face to face yet, so we do not really understand why…”

Stopping her drop spindle for a moment so she could add more wool to her thread, Tiamat tried to explain in a neutral manner: 

“Raw talent and long training to gain skills does not always make up for unpleasant personalities. And if we can not get along in peaceful times, what does that promise for the Holy War against Hades?” 

Lydia and Elena may have been unaware of the Sanctuary and the Saints of Athena until a few months ago, but this did not mean that they were slow in learning. 

Chapter Text

Year 241 AD: 

After that Lydia and Elena had spent two years in the Sanctuary, now having reached the age of twelve years, it was just plain impossible to miss the new rumors that had started to spread.   

“As if Master Darius would bring us here to become his concubines once we had started to become women! He has said that he is not one of those men attracted to such young girls and prefers properly grown-up women, those who are in the same age group as Julia and Tiamat!” 

Agi held up his hands as a sign of peace, having expected that reaction from the sisters, who he had grown rather close to as a friend over the last two years. 

“Exactly, and there is an even more ridiculous idea that he would be your father, even though he is actually only eleven years older than you and logically far too young to even notice any woman who would be old enough to get pregnant after a round in the bed.”

Behind them, Utu facepalmed just as the sisters did at just how impossible such an idea was. Signing in annoyance, Lydia spoke up: 

“We have already accepted that we most likely were abandoned by our birth mother before she could not afford to keep us, or possibly was forced to do it by others against her own will. Even if she had been a civilian woman, or a slave in some form, there are a lot of possible scenarios that can explain why we have never known our birth parents, and unlike a lot of stories, it does not have to mean that we secretly are the offspring of a high-status couple, either.” 

Elena nodded to the words her sister said. Just because they sometimes had dreamed of being reunited with their birth mother, or at least finding a family willing to adopt them and free them from a life in slavery, they had been forced to accept the bitter reality from a young age: that life was not a story where lost children would always be reunited with a high-status family, and the possibility of them coming from the endless amount of farmers and other people who got their lifehood from agriculture, was the plain truth of their origins. 

“Well, at least you try to see in a realistic way on your background and why you ended up as slaves almost straight from birth, as far as you two personally know. It is not uncommon for abandoned infants and young children to be a source of slaves, after all.” 

By now, it was nothing uncommon for Lydia and Elena to sometimes get themselves face to face with the followers of the Italian twins, who shared their view of the sisters not being a welcomed sight. 

“Instead of always copying the words from the mouths of those two, how about having a few original words for yourselves instead?” Lydia asked the small group of slightly older adolescent boys, mindful to take a step so she shielded her sister somewhat. Between them, Elena was more timid and scared of unknown people, though she was not a craven as more rude people sometimes would call her, while Lydia had always been quick to take the blame for a bad situation in order to protect her from harm. Elena was not dependent on her older sister to always protect her, it simply was that most people could sense how Elena was an easier target because of her quiet personality. 

“Hmp. As if the illegitimate daughters of a lupa would be worthy rivals of sir Romulus and Remus!” 

That comment struck a sore point for both the sisters, hearing the so common slang word for a prostitute. Even on the farm where they once had lived on, they had heard that word as part of gossip between the older slaves about their origins; lupa, the Lain word for “she-wolf”, which in everyday life meant slang for a woman who sold her body. 

“TAKE IT BACK!! ” 

Out of the blue, a blast of energy was sent from the dominant hand of Elena and straight into the stomach of the ringleader as reaction to his words, her hazel eyes suddenly cold with burning fury over the deeply offending insult, Lydia backing up her sister by jumping on top of him where he had fallen on his knees, bending forwards from the forceful hit that had knocked the breath out of him, and began to pummel him with her closed fists. 

“TAKE IT BACK! TAKE IT BACK, YOU DAMN CRAVEN WHO HIDES BEHIND THE BACKS OF OTHERS!!” 

“Just like him…just like the young master in the household that would always single us out for his own amusement and mocking us for not knowing about our parents!” Elena said in a furius voice that was so rarely heard, joining her sister in the fight. 

“Catch them!” 

Naturally, the loud shouting and sounds of a fistfight had to be noticed by someone. Tiamat, who had been out on a pratol to ensure that things remained calm now in the last days before the choosing of the new Gemini Saints, arrived with the speed of light to put an end to it. 

“Freezing Coffin!! ” 

A wall of ice trapped all the younger cadets inside it, leaving only their head out so they could breathe. With the boys effectively stopped in any movements like that, it was no problem for the adult woman to pick out Lydia and Elena from the ice. 

“Is this supposed to show yourselves socially superior in any form? You brats are pretty much showing yourselves to still be immature boys rather than young men in using that sort of insult, with the written records here explaining what is known of every newcomer and their background prior to coming here to the Sanctuary. How many of you are from the same birth origin again, I wonder? The abandoned offspring of exactly the sort of woman you just tried to use against the girls?”   

Her blunt question seemed to unnerve the boys, from how they suddenly became quiet instead of demanding to be freed from the ice. 

“Come on, girls, you need some ice to avoid some nasty swellings.” 

Leaving the boys behind to try freeing themselves as punishment for their behavior, Tiamat brought the twin girls along to her own Temple. 

~X~X~X~X~X~X  

Once they were up in the Aquarius Temple and Tiamat started to treat the bruises and swelling on various parts of their faces and arms that was the result of the fistfight, both Lydia and Elena began to cry. 

“Shh, it is alright to cry and feel upset about those nasty words. I will report this to my Master, the Grand Pope, because there is no way he is not going to let those boys think that such insults are acceptable here in the Sanctuary.” 

Even with the offered piece of old rags to cry her tears with, Elena could not stop herself from saying: 

“It is the same…the same words that the young Master would call us…” 

Debating with herself inside her mind, Tiamat choose to reveal a deeply personal secret of hers in order to ease the unwanted memories for the younger girls: 

“I am of the same origin as you, though a slave mother back in the last years of the Parthian Empire before it changed dynasties almost twenty years ago. So I can understand why you reacted so strongly on that insult, aiming it at a girl have a strong implication that she is no better than a sex object for customers buying her body for their own pleasure.” 

Given how common slavery was in the Roman Empire and in other parts of the world, some of the Saints having a such origin among the “lowest of the low” was not unheard of. Some may deny it due to traumatic memories, but others like Tiamat herself chose to simply not reveal the full details and merely mention that her background was among the commoners, which meant a lot of low-status occupations. 

“It must be either Romulus or Remus who ordered them to do this…this is not the first time we have been finding ourselves with their followers in this manner…” Lydia admitted, rubbing her eyes with the rag so Tiamat could place her hand over them and lessen the swelling from all the crying. 

“It has been happening more and more lately…because of tomorrow …” 

This did not surprise the Aquarius Saint at all. The Italian twins had started to act out of character for themselves, which was noticed by people, actually looking nervous when personally witnessing how the younger twin sisters kept catching up and more people starting to stand up against them instead of letting them seem superior like in the past. 

Keeping her promise after sending the sisters back to the Capricorn Temple where Darius soon would be back at, Tiamat did indeed tell the Grand Pope directly about what had happened earlier. 

“This is bad, indeed. I fear that it is all coming closer and closer to a thin line, where Romulus and Remus will not care about the consequences of their actions and attack the girls directly. They have been too used to always coming out as the winners in whatever they do, and have grown blind to the fact that not everyone fawns over them because their habit of bragging is actually turning people away and not liking them at all. Besides, taunting and humiliating opponents for losing can quickly turn out to be dangerous if the other person is angry enough to actually attack the winner physically.” 

“Exactly, Master. No matter the outcome of tomorrow, Lydia and Elena must be kept under protection and the brothers under strict guard, all day and night. Becoming a Saint does not mean that they can treat others as if they are below them! The sisters are still fearing to be thrown out of the Sanctuary and be made slaves again for any reason, despite being freed for two years already. It would break their spirits if those two rotten bastards was to start treating them as their possessions, worth no more than sex slaves taken as concubines….just like my mother…” 

Pushing down the memory of her mother in her broken state from being abused in such a way by her male owner, Tiamat closed her fists so hard that her nails tore into the skin so it began to bleed, indirectly showing how affected she was over this herself. 

“And that is why I took you away from that life while most of the household was busy with the burial of the man who sired you and who ordered his favorite “concubine”, your mother, to join him in the grave, Tiamat, because just like those two young sisters, you deserved a better life than what would await you otherwise,” the Pope said in a kind voice meant to calm her emotions somewhat, “Tomorrow, everything will be revealed for us all: Which set of twins that the Gemini Cloth will choose as its wearers for the Holy War!” 

She could only promise to witness it all tomorrow, alongside everyone else. 

~X~X~X~X~X~X  

The next day: 

For the sake of calming their nerves for the test, Darius allowed his two female students to have a slip of wine that was not watered down. 

“Bleh…how can this stuff be so beloved by the upper classes?!” Elena made a face at the taste, and Lydia looked like her sister had spoken for her as well. With this fixed, they were soon joined by Tiamat and Utu from their Temples further up. 

“Of course people are getting confused about which set of twins will be the Gemini Saint now. For ten years, everything pointed on Romulus and Remus as the natural choice since they are recorded as being born under the sign of Gemini, but the presence of Lydia and Elena have turned some things upside down,” Tiamat spoke to Darius and Julia as the group was passing through the Twelve Temples to witness the eventual choosing of the new wearers for the Gemini Cloth after that both sets of twins would show their powers. 

“Those Italian twins are starting to show more and more signs of being alarmed about the growing possibility that they actually have legitimate rivals about becoming a part of the Gold Saints, who are the very elite of the Saints. I have seen them take out their frustration on their trainer, who is having a harder time to calm them down with praise nowadays,” Julia mentioned, personally finding that sort of reaction to be immature in nature. 

“Well, using the same old worn-old words of praise is not going to help. For having spent only two years here, Lydia and Elena have shown that they can be quite inventive with the classic attacks of the Gemini Saint, once they learned the right pose and words for them, in order to make up for their shorter time of training and still being children in a sense,” Darius smiled, recalling how the sisters had used “Another Dimension” to literally make the Taurus Saint fall into a crafted hole, trapping him with his lower body in the dimension and his upper body in the real world.  

“Thank you, Master…” 

At least they had started to do things on their own now, rather than needing orders for everything or his permission at all times. 

As expected, the eighteen-year-old Romulus and Remus had no problem winning this last match to determine their skill in combat and ability to use their Cosmo. But despite that, all eyes were now on the six years younger girls. 

“GALAXIAN EXPLOSION!! ” 

That their Cosmos had awoken was not the surprise, but the sheer amount of it coming from each sister. While nowhere close to the Italian brothers, it was nonetheless enough to mark them well over the Bronze Saints and in the upper part of the Silver Saints. 

“No…no way!” 

“Impossible! For two skinny brats that looked half-dead from malnutrition when they came here…!” 

Mutterings from the gathered onlookers, glares between the two sets of twins, and towards Athena where she stood beside the Grand Pope. 

“It is finally time for the Gemini Saints to be named,” Athena said in a loud voice to be heard, pointing her Nike staff against the Gold Cloth that rested a bit up in the air, “Gemini, Third House of the Stars, let us see your choice! ” 

A golden light began to surround the Gemini Cloth, like a heartbeat, and everyone felt the heavy tension in the air as they looked at the Cloth. Which twins would end up wearing it, after having those hearts searched? 

“Master Darius promised that we would not be sent away in shame even if we were rejected…! ” Lydia reminded herself, holding tight to the hand of Elena, who thought nearly the same: 

“Anything, even working as low-status servants or even becoming the wives of farmers, is better than having to return to our past as slaves…! ” 

Neither one of them dared to open their eyes, trying to control their emotions yet also fearing the worst. 

“They are terrified of disappointing me by failing this final test!” Darius realized in sympathy for his students, wishing that he could say something to soothe their fear but kept quiet. 

“Darius, look! The Gemini Cloth is taking itself apart in pieces!” 

And the pieces…

The left half with the front chest plate placed itself on Lydia, while the right half and the back plate placed itself on Elena, the helmet hoving between them as the sisters opened their eyes at feeling the metal on their bodies. 

“No…how can this be…?”

“All those years…in vain?!” 

In shock over what just had happened, neither Romulus or Remus moved, only stared in disbelief at what they were seeing. This sight proved that the past twelve years here in the Sanctuary, all the training to make them strong enough to match the Gold Saints in power, had indeed been wasted. Behind their backs, their deeply terrified, personal trainer was backing away in fear for what sort of reaction that he would find himself with from the brothers. 

“As witnessed by us all, the Gemini Cloth has chosen its wearers for the Holy War in this era: Lydia and Elena!” the Grand Pope announced, breaking the stunned silence and a few cheers broke out instead. 

“Congratulations! Lydia! Elena!” Agi and Utu called as they came running down from their places among the already chosen Gold Saints. 

“I do not trust those two to accept this in silence,” Tiamat warned Julia a moment before freezing the Italian twins inside a Freezing Coffin for some time, well most of their upper bodies to be precise, so they had no other choice but to watch the reality that now unfolded. And even if Lydia and Elena did not start to brag about their victory, it was clear that their honest sympathy was not welcomed by Romulus or Remus. At all. 

“I have already sent my subordinates among the Silver Saints to start acting as bodyguards for the girls without them noticing them,” Julia promised in a similar whisper, Darius only needing a glare towards a few Bronze Saints under his command to do the same. This was a moment of triumph for the young sisters, where they were surrounded by close friends that they had found over the past two years, but it had also opened a massive danger for them. 

Chapter Text

Late August of 241, Sanctuary:  

Despite the fact that the Gemini Cloth had chosen Lydia and Elena as its new wearers with nearly the whole Sanctuary as witnesses, everyone knew better than trusting the very tense peace to remain. For the seven days which followed afterwards, Romulus and Remus refused to humbly accept that they have not become the new bearers and openly showed pure anger and resentment over the rejection they had faced.          

“Even with the girls protected by the most powerful Silver and Bronze Saints, it is only a matter of time before something happens. Grand Pope, Lady Athena, do you have any suggestions for what to do?” Darius wondered, his face showing an understandable fear for the two Gemini sisters, who still were his students due to their age and needing more training. Just because they had been chosen as a Gold Saint at the age of twelve, did not mean that they were ready for shouldering the role yet. 

“We have talked about easing their memories of the Sanctuary, Athena and everything they have learned here, and sending them as common soldiers to serve in the Roman army once their Cosmos have been blocked. Their birth parents are already dead, as are several other close relatives that could have taken them in otherwise,” the Grand Pope said and Athena nodded to show that they must have talked about this over the past days, “They have been trained as a sort of soldiers here, and while they have gotten a education in basic school subjects as part of what a Saint must know in everyday life, it is not enough to act as the claim that they left their childhood home in Rome to serve as priests to Jupiter in a temple in the eastern parts of the Empire. If they can not do the rituals right, everyone will come with uncomfortable questions about how they could have gotten a rather poor training for such a role in the service of the gods.” 

Darius could see the logic in that. It was well known that the Italian twins loved to fight, and did not exactly excel in the world of the written word. Even with twelve years of memories altered so they would not reveal the Sanctuary, allowing them to fight in the Roman army would still allow them to make a career in battle. 

“I understand, and I agree that it is the closest thing we can do to give them back to a “normal” life in the wider world.” 

Suddenly, the Virgo Saint came running at high speed into the chamber, looking alarmed. 

“Grand Pope! I was just going to alter the memories of Romulus and Remus as Lady Athena requested, but they have gone missing!” 

“What?!” 

“They must be planning something! Quickly! Find them before Lydia and Elena end up in danger!” 

Cursing in their respective native language over the Sanctuary being so lax in keeping a close watch on the Italian twins after the events a few days ago, the two Gold Saints hurried out.  

“Hurry!”

Even if Athena could not match the speed of her Gold Saints, she still did her best to follow after them, and neither she nor the Pope was surprised when Tiamat created an ice path along all the stairs way back down to the Aries Temple so the Gold Saints basically could slide along. 

“Thanks for making a few ice walls so we do not slide off, Tiamat!” 

“Spread out and search as wide as you can! If things goes wrong, I fear that the girls may be in a far different danger than just murder!” Julia ordered as she joined Agi and Baihu, the Chinese-born Scorpio Saint.  

“What do you mean, Julia?!” the Libra Saint wondered in confusion behind them, and narrowly ducked for a ball of hard ice that Tiamat threw at his head over the question. 

“Seriously, have you forgotten that Lydia and Elena actually are girls?! There is a reason for why Tiamat and I have trained the twins so much over the past three months despite Darius being their actual master: They have started their moon time every month now, meaning that despite just being twelve years old, they are fertile, aka they risk to end up pregnant if Romulus and Remus actually manages to force themselves on the girls!!” 

Even if they were not that familiar with how female bodies or pregnancy worked, both Agi and Utu did know the term “moon time” as a saying for the monthly bleeding of a woman, and with what Julia just had said, they hastened their speed even more, praying to arrive in time before something happened to the twin sisters right now. 

~X~X~X~X~X~X    

Unaware of the danger that was threatening them, Lydia and Elena were testing their strength against the Silver Saints that had been tasked with guarding them until Romulus and Remus had left the Sanctuary. Given their young age and that the adults had been Saints for some years, a few defeats were to be expected, though the sisters did prove the same stubbornness that had allowed them to awake their seventh sense just in time for the Gemini Cloth to choose its new bearers. 

“Not too bad. Having undergone training for just a little over two years, awakening your seventh sense at this age is a feat indeed!” the Lizard Silver Saint muttered, making a face over the swollen cheek that Lydia had managed to give him. 

“Are you guys not annoyed with having to babysit us on the orders of master Darius? I mean, it is true that Romulus and Remus did not seem to accept their rejection from the Gemini Cloth too well…” Elena asked with a nervous glare between the older Saints, her old fear of her and Lydia just being in the way or an unwanted burden having surfaced for a moment.  

“Babysitting? I would rather call it bodyguarding against real dangers because while you are currently the youngest Gold Saints of this generation, your ability to use your seventh sense is basically just awakened, and that makes you vulnerable against opponents who are bigger and more physically strong. But if you looks like harmless kittens, you can still give a nasty clawing across the nose of a dog to put it in place,” the Auriga Silver Saint reminded in a somewhat indistinct voice before removing a slightly bloody rag from his face, as he pointed at his broken nose that Elena had given him in a lucky strike not too long ago. The Silver Cloths had been left in their Pandora Boxes during the training matches earlier, in order to make it a little more even for the two younger girls in the training. 

“Kittens with sharp claws, indeed!” 

As it was clearly not intended as an insult about their smaller statue or anything with a nastier meaning behind, neither Lydia or Elena felt offended. 

“Alright, time to bring you back to the Gemini Temple, unless we want to be kicked in the rear by lady Tiamat for letting you keep training way past sunset.” 

Given that they had witnessed this happen a few times in the past two years, because Tiamat sometimes was not above kicking a rude person to literally be sent flying a very long distance away, sometimes even making them land on the stairs between two of the Temples further down and the Aquarius Saint also tended to leave a frozen inprint of one of the shoes of her Gold Cloth on the rear of the person she would kick, this mental image made the sisters giggle. 

“Well, it is her way of saying that she will not tolerate any screw-ups on missions or whatever else we have messed up with. Sometimes a literal hit is better than a verbal scolding in order to teach a lesson.” 

With the Silver Cloths back on the wearers, the small group left the training grounds.   

However, they did not get far, before a couple of Bronze Saints arrived at high speed. All five of them were spotting bloody wounds and their Cloths were partly broken in a few places.    

“Hey, guys! Bring Miss Lydia and Miss Elena back to the Twelve Temples as soon as possible! Romulus and Remus have snapped for real after the rejection they suffered from the Gemini Cloth a few days ago! We just found their personal trainer murdered and we believe that the sisters are the next targets!” 

“What did you say…?!”  

But the question was never finished, as two massive Cosmos could be sensed. 

“We will try to block their path for a while, get the girls away from here! Even two rejected Gold Saint candidates like those two are still powerful!” 

But Lydia and Elena were already running away towards the nearest path leading to the Twelve Temples, both realizing that trying to face Romulus and Remus right now would be asking for their own deaths. After all, they had not forgotten the shared look of pure loathing that the older Italian twins had sent towards them over the shoulder as they left the ceremony site. Sometimes spoken words were not needed to reveal the feelings of others.

“Oi, girls! You are not being cowards for choosing to stay out of this! Call it plain common sense around people that honestly have proved themselves to be dangerous to others!” one of the Bronze Saints commented as they followed after the sisters. 

“Watch out!” 

The battle cries of the Silver Saints, and then screams of pain following almost straight after, revealed that the danger was much closer than expected. 

“Damn! They are already here?!” 

Stopping in their tracks, the Bronze Saints made themselves ready for a fight. Even with Romulus and Remus having trained to reach the level of a Gold Saint, and that the Gold Saints were the elite of the Saints, this did not mean that the Bronze and Silver Saints would fail to give their best in a battle. 

 ~X~X~X~X~X~X    

As they had witnessed how strong the Italian brothers were, it did not come as a surprise that the Silver and Bronze found themselves quickly defeated. 

“They may be older and stronger, but we need to follow what Julia has told us about this sort of opponent: Attack the strong point! ” 

The arms if an enemy favored those as attack base, or the feet for kicking-based attacks. 

“Trap one arm on them both in Another Dimension, so they can not do Galaxian Explosion!” 

It was perhaps not the most well-planned idea on what to do, but the sisters knew that no matter how terrified they were right now, openly showing this fear for Romulus and Remus would only give the Italian twins a mental advantage against them. It would like proving themselves lacking a spine and be submissive to their masters in the past, back when they were still slaves, because they knew that any sort of disobedience or defiance would be punished in some form. 

“We can not give in to them and let them think that we can be ordered around…we can not! Master Darius saved us from the other way of profit that our owner did though the female slaves…!” Elena whispered, recalling another reason why the sisters tried to avoid the Italian twins. Something that they both tried to forget, and had dreaded to happen once their moon blood would start coming as a sign of them taking the first step into womanhood, had not Darius shown up. 

“And where are you two going, I wonder?” 

The unnerving calm voice of Remus was heard, making them stop at the spot before they ended up running into him, where he was leaning with his back towards a huge rock as if nothing dramatic was happening. 

“That is not your business,” Lydia responded with far more self-confidence than she really felt, it was rarely a good sign that the Italian brothers spit up like this. Romulus had to be somewhere, ready to attack them from behind. 

“Coming here to the Sanctuary and stealing the Gemini Cloth has really made the two of you pretty brazen, huh? Looks like you need to be reminded of your origins, then!” 

Despite coming from both Romulus and Remus, the Greek sisters managed to avoid the energy blasts aimed at them by jumping in different directions to the side. 

“For being the age to join the Roman Army, you both are pretty immature in your reactions to not becoming the Gemini Saint! You act like children ten years younger!” Lydia called out, jumping in and out from different spots with the use of Another Dimension even as Remus tried to grab her. 

“Or is it such a blow to your own egos that you lost to two younger girls?!” 

Noticing Romulus running towards her with an open hand where a new energy blast was getting formed, Elena sacrificed her mask and tossed it into the center of the energy blast, causing it to explore out of control instead. 

“AAAGH!!”

The broken shards of the mask flew into different directions, and the cry of pain from his brother as Romulus held his hand over a rather nasty cut along his cheek made Remus pause, looking in that direction. 

“You damn little lupa!! You will regret hurting my brother…”

“You are the perverted ones who keep using that word about us! If you think we were brought here to become your bed slaves once we was old enough for that sort of slavery, then you are all wrong!” 

First throwing her mask at him before using Another Dimension, Lydia trapped Remus with his lower body into the other dimension, then ran towards her sister and dragged Elena along after sending a energy blast of her own into the face of Romulus so he did not block a way to escape for her sister. 

“Either love or kill any man for seeing your bare face if you are a female Saint?! Who made that stupid mask law in the first place?!” 

Yet they did not make it that far away, before Romulus showed up again, using Another Dimension to arrive right in the path. 

“Trýing to run away? Forget it!” 

“You two are not the only ones to use this sort of trick, little fools!” 

But his voice behind them betrayed that Remus was aiming to attack the sisters from that angle. And they had seen the brothers using this sort of tactic in training battles before. So instead, the sisters merely allowed themselves to sink into the ground, causing the brothers to hit each other instead. 

“Who are the fools here?!” 

However, the two sisters knew that they were in a serious disadvantage here, they had already trained most of the day so they did not have much energy left and they both knew that if they did not manage to escape from the brothers soon, this situation would go really bad. 

“You are really begging for punishment now, you worthless little RATS! ”

Despite Lydia and Elena trying to avoid getting captured, their fatigue began to manifest itself openly, as they tried to gasp for breath and not waste whatever energy that they had left.

“This is bad!” 

“Did they intend this all along, aiming for a time when we were tired after today's training?!” 

Against their best attempts to keep the distance, Lydia found herself caught by the throat by Romulus, who held her hard enough to start choking her with one hand due to the size difference between them. 

“Let go of my sister!” 

To her growing horror, Elena found her arm grabbed by Remus, whose smile really was not friendly now. 

“Eager to join your sister so fast?” he laughed, for a moment mending together with a memory image of the young master back at the farm as he laughed over how helpless the sisters would be against him thanks to being living possessions of his family, and then Lydia felt her blood begin to boil at the sight of his face so close to that of her sister. Not out of fear, but out of pure desperation. 

“You… FUCKING ROMANS!!! ” 

Her Cosmo exploded with unexpected strength, and Romulus was forced to let go of her from the sheer force that struck him. 

“Do not touch me, bastard!” 

Grabbing a very thin hairpin of bronze from her belt normally used for keeping her braid into an updo during training, Elena twisted herself around and stabbed the pointy end into Remus' hand. He screamed in pain because while the wound was small, she had aimed for a nerve and managed to do so. 

“Damn little bitch!” 

The following beatings and resulting injuries on their bodies were expected, because now both Romulus and Remus were really pissed off. Even with the brothers now starting to outmatch the sisters in speed as they used this to strike them with their fists and even trying to kick them, Lydia and Elena were no strangers to this sort of treatment. It did bring up flashbacks of their previous life before coming to the Sanctuary, but now they no longer accepted the beatings in a passive manner. But perhaps the bigger trigger of a very different danger than death was when Elena got the front of her tunic grabbed and a long tear was torn up in the fabric as she tried to get away from Romulus, which exposed her upper body in a way that could not be misinterpreted. 

“Fucking whoremonger!! ” Lydia screamed, her Cosmos burning around her like fire from her fury at seeing what just had happened to her sister, “Do not think that we will allow ourselves to be treated like your playthings because you are older and bigger than us!” 

It was an act of desperation, but the sisters managed to catch the fists of the brothers on their own. The respective Cosmo from each one crashed at this close contact, causing cracks in the surroundings and the beginning of a pillar of Cosmo-based light around them as Lydia and Elena tried their best to not let the brothers form the pose for the Galaxian Explosion: 

“Not good! We are losing our remaining strength…! ” 

“Hmf. As if a pair of slave girls would be able to defeat us? Do not make us laugh at such a bad joke!” 

Due to both sisters focusing on stopping Romulus or Remus from trying to do the pose that signaled a Galaxian Explosion attack, both the Italian brothers managed to take them by surprise by a sudden knee slamming into their stomachs and both the twelve-year-olds landed dangerously near the edge of a deeper ravine.

“Ow!” 

Before either of them could react, partly out of getting their breath knocked out like that, the brothers lift their arms upwards and take a pose that spelled bad news for the younger sisters: 

“GALAXIAN EXPLOSION!!” 

But it was not the incoming attack coming straight against them that filled the sisters with horror, it was the distant sight of the other Gold Saints in the distance who tried to hurry over there in time to prevent the worst from happening. 

“They tried to prevent the other Saints from being able to help us earlier…!” the Greek sisters realized right before they were struck, at the same time as they could hear Darius call out in horror: 

“No! NO!” 

Even with the signature attacks of the other Gold Saints being sent towards them in a desperate attempt to lessen the impact and Darius using a Jumping Stone to slam Remus into his brother so the Italian twins lost their focus, the edge of the ravine exploded from the force with the overwhelming screams from the sisters. 

“LYDIA!! ELENA!! ” Athena screamed in horror at seeing the blinding explosion of flames and natural materials causing a minor landslide, unable to take her eyes away from the horrifying sight in front of her. Even if the young Goddess could not see anything yet, she knew that this would end badly. 

“Freezing Coffin!! ” 

With Tiamat freezing the Italian brothers inside a thick layer of ice, Darius, Julia and Utu hurried down into the landslide that now covered the bottom of the ravine. 

“Girls!” 

“Lydia! Elena!” 

But the sight that greeted them at the bottom, among a sea of blood strained rocks, was even worse than expected: 

The young sisters laid separate from each other, neither one moving or reacting on the voices calling their names, and there was a massive wound in the back of Lydia that could not be mistaken as anything else than a killing strike. This was confirmed when Julia carefully turned her around and there was a lifeless look in her hazel eyes. 

“Elena! Elena, please, wake up!” 

But somehow, Elena had narrowly avoided the same fate as her sister, instead her left arm was a broken mass of blood and bones, and she needed medicinal treatment as quickly as possible if she was to live. 

“Baihu, hurry down here and help to stop the bleeding!” Julia called to the Scorpio Saint. Agi was about to join the others, when he saw something float past him and he realized that he needed to go after it. 

“That was Lydia…!?”

As a Saint whose powers was connected to the spiritual world and underworld, he had seen many souls right after death as they went towards the realm of the dead, and given what just had happened as well the very big likelyhood of the Italian twins being executed for what they had just done, he had a bad feeling about letting the soul of Lydia join the underworld: 

“You sisters are not getting separated from each other so easily by death if I have something to say about it! Sekishiki Meikai Ha! ”  

Using his powers, he transported his whole body to the edge of Yomotsu Hirasaka. If he so had to drag the soul of Lydia back to the living world and place her soul in an object to avoid her returning to Yomotsu Hirasaka because she could not refuse the calling of every dead soul to the underworld, then he would do so. 

Chapter Text

Sitting on her throne and with the Pope at her side, Athena waited with deep anxiety over news of Lydia and Elena. She had seen the amount of blood on the ground around the landslide as Darius and Julia hurried away with the young Gemini sisters for acute medicinal treatment, despite the Gold Saints trying to cover the horrible injuries from sight with their white mantles. 

“I hope that Baihu was able to give Elena treatment in time…” 

She knew that Baihu had demanded the assistance of the healers trained in India and Egypt to help him in a surgery that needed to be done on Elena. 

“Lady Athena.” 

It was Tiamat and Utu who came into the chamber, and their pale faces from what they had witnessed earlier, revealed that it was not good news that they came with. 

“Yes?” the Goddess asked, unable to hide how her closed hands in her lap were trembling in fear for what they would say. 

“We regret to confirm the death of Gemini Lydia. The cause of her violent death was the Galaxian Explosion aimed at her back, and…it ripped both her heart and lungs into pieces because of how powerful it was from the emotions of sheer rage and bloodthirst from the Italian twins…” 

All that blood in the ground, and it could not be solely from Lydia. 

“I see…and Elena?” 

If both of the sisters were dead, then the Sanctuary would have to restart the search and training for a new set of twins that could become the Gemini Saint, because there was no way they were going to let Romulus and Remus get away with murder. But just as the previous search had proved over the years, any success was not promised. There was a good reason for why twins were so rare as the Gemini Saint outside the Holy Wars. 

“Still unconscious after the thankfully successful surgery to carefully try to place the broken bones of her shoulder and arm back in place without her losing too much blood, but Baihu is afraid that she will slip into a coma that lies between the border of life and death. We do not know if she will make it…”   

It was not the news she wanted to hear, but it was better than the worst. 

“I am glad that Baihu was able to use his past as the youngest son of a physician from China who sent his son out into the wide world to learn as much as possible about the human body…his long training from India and Egypt have already proved useful in the past, but now…” 

Rubbing her tears away, Athena stood up from the throne. 

“Even if Elena does manage to survive those horrible injuries she got, I want Romulus and Remus executed for the murder of her sister and for seriously injuring several Silver and Bronze Saints who tried to protect the sisters. I want their lives to end at dawn, and for Capricorn Darius to be the one to separate their heads from their bodies!” 

The choice of executioner was not surprising, because it was Darius who lost one student tonight and risked losing the other. 

“As you wish, mylady!” 

With this command from the Goddess, the Pope addressed the Gold Saints as well: 

“Make sure that the Italian twins are unable to fight against anyone. Paralyze them as much as possible, but not to the point of killing. That is for Darius to do in a few hours.”

“Yes, your Holiness!” 

Bowing to them both, Tiamat and Utu went to gather some of the other Gold Saints to start this order. 

“That reminds me…Agi has not returned yet, right?”

Tiamat shook her head, giving a quick glare in slight worry towards the Cancer Temple where they could not sense the Cosmo of the current Cancer Saint. 

 ~X~X~X~X~X~X   

At the edge of Yomotsu Hirasaka: 

“Bloody Romans, indeed!” 

In fact, Agi was pretty busy at the moment with preventing the soul of Lydia from falling out of reach, quite literally. He had not found the right line of dead people directly, and had found her just as she was about to fall into the entrance to the Underworld. Right now, he was half-way over the edge himself, trying to pull her back up. 

“Agi! Do not let go of me, please!! ” Lydia screamed in understandable panic as he felt how something invisible seemed to pull on her. It had to be the call of death that all humans felt the moment their lives ended. 

“What in the name of Athena do you think I am doing?! Elena would never forgive me if you were alone in the Underworld with those two bastards who murdered you!” 

His hold on her was already difficult with all the blood from the injuries that she had gotten before her death, but Agi refused to give up. He knew that the Gemini sisters had a very strong sibling bond because them together honestly had been the only guaranteed belonging they had during their life, when everything else could be taken from them or denied on the ground of them being slaves. 

“Oh, just come up already!” 

Using all his strength to jerk himself upwards, Agi finally managed to pull Lydia along. Not the most comfortable landing perhaps, but now he focused on picking her up and trying to get her away from the edge as far as possible. 

“My body…I could feel my heart and lungs get destroyed…” she whispered as he hurried away.  

“I am not so stupid as going to placing your soul back in a body that can not function, Lydia! I saw those fatal injuries on your body before Julia covered it up with her mantle! I am going to place you inside the Gemini Cloth so you can still be close to Elena even as a spirit!”

Baihu was not the type to enjoy causing torture in others with his Scarlet Needle, since that went against his originally intended training as a physician to heal people, so once he had given fourteen such poisonius stings to both Romulus and Remus, obeying the order from the Pope to leave the killing strike to Darius, he returned to the chamber where Elena was kept under watch. 

“Has she woken up yet?”

“For a few moments once in a while, sir, but then returned into her coma.”

Not that the Chinese man could fault Elena for it. She had just undergone a massive trauma that left its marks on her body, and he was very worried about how the loss of blood would affect her chances of survival.   

“Try to give her willow bark tea whatever you can. She is going to be in massive pain from those injuries and those are far too fresh for me to try using acupuncture to lessen the pain.” 

The sound of running footsteps was heard, and Agi appeared in the opened door, gasping for breath. 

“Oh, you are back, kid. We others wondered where you went earlier.”  

“As if I would let the soul of Lydia having to deal with her murderers in the Underworld, doctor!”

After telling Baihu what he had done earlier, and the older Saint nodding in confirmation that this was likely the best solution for now since the body of Lydia was far too damaged to function again even with her soul returned to it, Agi walked over to the bed where Elena laid and carefully placed her non-injured right hand and wrist into the hand protection of the Gemini Cloth for that side. Inside that part of the Cloth, was the soul of Lydia, in the hope that her spiritual presence would help Elena. 

“Do not walk in and out of here all day once we know that Elena is out of danger of dying. She needs peace and quiet if she is to recover to the best of her ability once she wakes up for longer periods.” 

Since the Scorpio Saint was infamous for using his Scarlet Needle on people that disobeyed his orders when he was in this mood as a physician, Agi held up both hands in the air as a sign of hearing the unspoken warning. 

“Not everyone are dumb enough to disobey a person who are trained in a wast field of medicine outside basic first-aid and can prove it too, doctor! I will pass on your request to Utu, alright?” 

Giving the Scorpio Saint a wide space because the older man was glaring in the manner that promised pain if he was not obeyed, Agi left to report to Athena about managing to bring the soul of Lydia back from the edge to the Underworld.

~X~X~X~X~X~X 

Once Romulus and Remus were executed by beheading from Darius in the wee hours of dawn the following morning, the Sanctuary worked to clean out all their followers and other people who believed that Lydia and Elena had usurped the Italian twins of their right as the wearers of the Gemini Cloth. 

“What? Two of the girls from the village hanged themselves earlier this morning after hearing the news of the execution?!” Julia wondered in shock and horror when one of the female Silver Saints came with an unexpected report. 

“Yes, Tiamat and I have just performed a autopsy on the two bodies to confirm a suspicion of the most likely possible motive for suicide, because her ability to control cold helped me to avoid too much blood on my hands while cutting up the blood veins, and it was what we both dreaded to find,” Baihu commented, carefully uncovering something that he held wapped in a cloth. 

“Is that…?!” 

Tiamat nodded, her face showing honest discomfort over this discovery. 

“Two fetuses around six weeks to two months of pregnancy, yes, based on what I have seen when helping the midwife perform abortions for both young girls and married wives in the village for various reasons. One from each of the two girls who hung themselves this morning in separate places. It seems like the Italian twins were going to become fathers this coming spring, had the mothers not chosen to kill themselves in despair over losing their lovers, and we have heard the older villagers talking and be very worried about those two girls firmly believing that Romulus and Remus were the real Gemini Saints.”

Darius, on the other hand, showed no regret over what he had this dawn, but he looked sorrowful over hearing that it had led to the deaths of two innocent girls that deserved far better. 

“I will tell Athena and the Pope about what Baihu and Tiamat have found, but please, can we bury those fetuses in an unmarked grave and let the parents of the girls not have to learn that they were going to be mothers out of wedlock? Because I very much doubt that either one of the Italian twins ever intended to marry those two girls in the longer run, pregnancy or not. It would have been a case of those marriages where one spouse turns abusive over time, because sexual lust and youngful attraction from how handsome or beautiful someone is, tends to not be very good bases for a sucessful life together.”  

“Fair points for not telling this to the couples who have to bury their daughters, Darius.” 

With this agreement about keeping those pregnancies a secret, the older Gold Saint went in different directions. 

It took two long weeks before Elena finally defeated the fever and infection in the massive wound on her left shoulder that threatened her life, and even then, she was alarmingly unresponsive to the news that her sister was dead.  

“I…could feel her… in here …so I understood…what had happened…” she finally managed to whisper as she trembled in her whole body, letting her tears fall freely and screaming in raw grief as she hugged the hand protection of the Gemini Cloth close despite how much pain it must cause for her damaged shoulder. 

“I am really sorry that we did not manage to arrive earlier…”  

Darius could feel Elena twitch at his touch, and he did not doubt for a moment about why she suddenly stared at her trainer with such honest terror in her wide eyes: Back at their first meeting, the young twin sisters had already shown a fear for men after witnessing how their male owner would let his guests and other male visitors use the bodies of the female slaves past a a certain age for their own pleasure, and it was a open secret in the farm that this was the origin of any pregancies among the female slaves. 

And the attack from Romulus and Remus must have instilled an absolute fear of unknown men in Elena. For her, any men that she did not know personally, was now assocalied with being attacked in a manner that borded on sexual assault and being reminded of her former status as a slave. 

“I will order that the servants in the Gemini temple must be all female for your own comfort,” Darius promised in a low voice, not touching her again because of the distress it would cause. On the table next to her sickbed, he left behind a new face mask for her to wear during training if she would desire it, painted with the Gemini symbol. 

 ~X~X~X~X~X~X    

But something else was found out in the months following the burial of Lydia and the slow recovery of Elena: 

“She has both muscle AND nerve damage in her left shoulder?!” 

Baihu had watched over Elena over the past months, and even personally treated her so he could confirm what he now told the rest of the Gold Saints, Athena and the Pope. 

“Yes. Her left shoulder blade was literally fragmented, and the ligaments to the whole shoulder joint were torn apart. The same happened with her muscles because it would be like they all were cut apart with a dagger. She is half paralyzed in her whole left arm, and can not move it over her head...or even lift her arm past the chest area because the damaged muscles and ligaments can not support such a move. In short, our young Gemini Saint sadly is crippled from the same event that murdered her sister and we can not expect her to make a major involvement in the Holy War when it begins.”

More than one of the gathered Saints looked uncomfortable at this information. Elena herself said nothing from her place with her eyes down to the floor, where her left arm was in the sling that she still needed. She barely spoke to anyone outside the servants in the Gemini temple or Gold Saints those days, becoming more or less mute from her trauma. And then the Pope broke the silence: 

“And we must be prepared for another uncomfortable thing; that Romulus and Remus likely have joined Hades. Their anger and resentment over being rejected by the Gemini Cloth is something that he would like to use against Lady Athena and her Saints.” 

Now mutterings of annoyance and frustration were heard instead. 

“Damn, can those two just stop haunting the Sanctuary?” 

“As if we would let them try and kill Elena as well, for she must be the target!” 

“Just how much can they refuse the plain truth that they were unacceptable as Saints despite their long training and everything else?” 

Suddenly, Elena chose to speak: 

“If they are going to target me…so let them come into a trap with me acting as bait. I know already that I will be unable to face them on my own, no matter how many years that passes before the Holy War starts.”

It was not a favorite solution, but unless they found another way, they had to plan how to do this. 

Chapter Text

Year 246 AD, somewhere in Central Asia:   

Elena was looking around, where she and Athena were sitting in the shadowed part of a mountain ravine, dressed in the Gemini Cloth and the Divine Cloth respectably. The Holy War had lasted for little over a month now, and both sides had lost warriors from several battles. From three different directions, three of the now remaining Gold Saints were running towards a pre-agreed place of meeting. Since they all were running by the speed of light, a minor crashing into each other was somewhat expected.  

“Ow!”  

“Sorry!”  

Landing in a pile on top of each other, Agi and Utu showed that some things between the two had not changed much over the past five years. Darius came at a slower pace, and knelt before their shared Goddess: 

“Athena, most of the Underworld Army are defeated for now, but to the cost of more losses among our ranks…” 

Since only those three Gold Saints had arrived, Athena had a strong feeling of who had died. 

“We feel no Cosmos remaining from Julia and her group. Same for Tiamat?”  

A confirming nod, and they held a minute of silence in grieving the lost friends and comrades who now were no longer in the living world. But they could not grieve for long, they knew that the Holy War was far from over yet. 

“I saw something in the distance that we must be careful with: Romulus and Remus have indeed joined Hades, just as we feared five years ago,” Agi mentioned, and Elena twitched quite visibly in all her body, though the mask hid whatever emotions that would have betrayed her face. 

“Elena, we have prepared everything we can to overcome your weaknesses in battle if you indeed were to face those two again on your own. You are not alone, despite how things may go,” Utu reminded her gently, and tenderly let the tips of their little fingers touch for a short moment. The lack of protests in any form, by either voiced or removing her hand, revealed that she trusted him despite her otherwise well-known fear of men. 

“Come on, we better act as bait so there are no innocents risking to be killed in this area,” Athena ordered, and Darius picked her up so he would carry her on his back. She could run pretty well in her own Cloth, but for the sake of faster speed with enemies behind, she allowed herself to be carried. 

“Wait for just one moment, please,” Elena suddenly asked, and removed her mask before she pulled Utu a little closer. Then, without warning, she did actually give him a quick kiss on the cheek, hiding her blushing face hastily again with the mask. 

“Thanks for agreeing to do the Red Bond ceremony with me despite the fact that I was not born under the Pisces sign, and for that we did not end up killing each other!” 

“...my pleasure…” Utu managed to say, still with a stunned look and even a faint blush because that was the first physical contact between them that Elena had made on her own outside the necessary touching for their blood to be mixed. Agi had the grace to not make a comment about what Elena just had done, though it was mostly out of shock to what he just had witnessed. Darius was also surprised, but a small part of him was happy to see that despite her fear of men due to the past, Elena did not see Agi and Utu as dangerous, or at least less risky to become a danger to her in some form. 

 ~X~X~X~X~X~X    

Soon, a battle started once again. It was no surprise that just like five years ago, Elena seemed to be the intended target of the Italian twins, clearly desiring to finish what they had aimed to do that horrible evening that had been the last time Lydia had been alive. 

“You two just do not know when to give up and admit defeat, will you?!” 

One small, but still major difference from five years ago, was that 21-year-old Utu and nineteen-year-old Agi were now fully grown men, and had earned five more years of training and experience in combat, while Romulus and Remus had more or less remained frozen in time due to dying at age eighteen and naturally would remain that age in death. The same could be said for Elena, since she no longer counted as a girl at the age of seventeen.  

“CRIMSON THORN!! ” 

Still, the trio of young Gold Saints did not attack randomly. Instead, they tried to draw Romulus and Remus towards an area where Darius and Athena had gone ahead. 

“ACUBENS!! ” 

Agi did not expect his most physical attack to be successful, given how it forced him within reach for Remus who he tried to cut in half by twisting around and using his legs. But he still heard a satisfactory sound of ribs being broken, and did not doubt that the spine also received a proper hit. 

“Thanks, guys!”  

Elena knew that she had to save the Galaxian Explosion as a attack of absolute desperation or having no other way to defend herself, the nerve and muscle damage in her left shoulder affected her performance in battle and she knew that her handicap would be playing a huge role in either survival or death for herself. 

“Elena, watch out!” 

For now, Darius, Agi and Utu could defend her well enough as she backed them up by using Another Dimension from a safe distance, but they knew that this could not last for forever. 

“How foolish of Athena to even let you fight in the first place, little girl. As if a cripple would be fit to be Gemini Saint, when you can not even use Galaxian Explosion, the ultimate attack of the Gemini Saint!” 

That same mockery that Elena wanted to forget from her old life as a slave. The feeling of being looked down at, as if she was worth nothing… 

“No way that I will use that technique in the same disgusting way as you two would! Not when it is the very attack that took the life of my own sister!! ” 

A quick memory image of Lydia when her body was buried five years ago showed up in her mind as the twin brothers kept mocking how Elena was worthless on her own, and the spiritual presence of her soul within the Gemini Cloth felt the wave of conflicted emotions from the heart of the living sister. Of course, this struck a sore point for Darius as well: 

“ SHUT UP WITH THAT BLABBERING MOUTHS OF YOURS, SCUMBAGS!! ” 

Utu let himself get cut by the Excalibur attack deliberately, but only enough to leave a rather minor wound on his arm so he could control the loss of blood. But just in case either Romulus and Remus looked over the shoulder, he acted as if he had gotten a much worse hit, landing on Agi with his least injured side so he did not accidently poison his close friend, the Cancer Saint already faking that he had gotten knocked out earlier. 

Pretending to run away like a terrified child when seeing Utu do this, Elena saw the brothers take the bait. 

“Master Darius! Lady Athena!!” she called out to where they were standing, and at once, a massive circle in golden light was spread around her. 

“What!?!” 

Taken by surprise, Romulus realized that neither he or his brother could move, as if there was something holding them in place.  

“Hah!” Agi laughed, using all his spiritual powers to add strength to the circle, “did you two morons miss that Utu actually managed to spill some blood on you while we jumped around to avoid getting hit?! We did expect from the beginning that you would aim to murder Elena just you did with Lydia five years ago, and we are well aware of that she have some trouble defeating you two bastards with her handicap!” 

“Yes,” Utu added in, having two Bloody Roses ready for attack, “making it a little more evenly for her.” 

Athena had placed her Nike staff in the ground, and from there, the golden light was coming into the circle. And from below the Gemini Cloth, blood was also slipping out from Elena's old scar on the left shoulder, as she had just injured herself in order to reveal the poisonous blood inside her veins that had been created from the Red Bond ceremony with Utu. 

“Romulus. Remus. I knew from the beginning that defeating you all by myself was out of the question, even with help from my fellow Gold Saints and Lady Athena. Yet still, as you have sworn allegiance to Hades and will most likely be brought back to life in another Holy War because he must see a long-term use for having a pair of “Gemini twins” of his own to use against the Saints, I can not let you haunt my eventual successors in 250 years, or the Holy Wars to follow!” 

A glowing image of the Zodiac was forming under the feet of Elena, and the soul of Lydia appeared next to her. 

“So for the sake of the future generations of Gemini Saints to come, I will not hesitate to give up my life to allow lady Athena the necessary equivalent exchange to seal you two away for centuries! For each one of the Twelve Gold Saints who have been fighting in a Holy War, and the younger twin to take up the Gemini Cloth after the older twin as well Lady Athena herself, there will be 250 years! You two being sealed away for a planned 3 500 years should be more than enough time to not give the coming 14 generations of Gemini twins in the Holy Wars any problems! ” 

With Elena having said this, Agi used his signature attack to pull out the souls out of the resurfaced bodies of the Italian twins:

“Sekishiki Meikai Ha! ” 

“Excalibur! ”

With the attack from Daríus, the souls of the brothers were cut off from their bodies, and Utu did not waste the chance to literally dose them in poisonous blood to ensure that if Romulus and Remus tried to get back, their bodies would be poisoned enough to cause death once more.   

“Sorry, Elena…that is all we can aid you with….” Utu admitted, his voice weak as he struggled to focus on what he was trying to see, feeling the loss of blood from two battles close in time beginning to affect him. 

“It is more than enough for this.” 

Darius hated it with everything of his heart and soul, but he knew that the next step was necessary for the seal to work. It was the cost to ensure that Romulus and Remus was not resurrected by Hades at the next Holy War, and Elena knew it, with her wish to not want to outlive her twin sister for many years until dying of old age or something similar. For her, those five years without Lydia alive at her side, had been a daily reminder of what had been lost despite everyone trying to help her, and Elena honestly trying to move on from the emptiness in her heart. 

“Master Darius, Lady Athena.” 

Elena looked over her shoulder at them, tears making her hazel eyes shine alongside a very sad smile as her Cosmo was rising to the highest level she could do. 

“Please tell my eventual successors that I did this for them, in the hope that no future twin set wearing the Gemini Cloth shall have to be separated from each other by those two like Lydia and I were.”  

Yet Romulus and Remus had no intention to be sealed away passively. Once again, they used the feelings and memories of the humiliation from being rejected by the Gemini Cloth as fuel for raising a sea of Cosmo filled with negative feelings. 

“Robbing us of the pleasure to kill every future twins that will follow you, little slave? Then, we will still leave them a gift!” 

“GALAXIAN EXPLOSION!! ”

Due to the seal Remus did not manage the full power of a Galaxian Explosion, but it was enough to slam Elena into the wall of the barrier inside the seal and knock off the helmet of the Gemini Cloth from her head. 

“Ugh….” 

Elena managed to stand up again, but something felt strange in her body as she did so. And the helmet….were broken in two parts! 

“Bastards…! What did you do to her?!” Agi growled, setting the Italian twins on fire with his spiritual powers in response. That both Romulus and Remus were openly laughing despite the pain from the flames, made them seem like they had gone mad for real. 

“If we can not fight for Hades in the coming Holy Wars…then those Gemini twins shall still have to fear for themselves: One of them shall die before the Holy War starts, or they shall not be able to fight together at Athena's side in other ways! ”

In horror, Athena realized what had happened; Romulus and Remus had just placed a multi-generational curse on the future Gemini Saints, and it was meant to be activated as soon as each new pair of twins destined for the Holy War were born. In short, those Gemini Saints of the future would be haunted by the fear of losing the other one, and weakening their united powers. 

“No… ” Elena whispered in a horrified voice as she too realized the meaning of the curse, “No…I will not let your refusal to admit your rejection from the Gemini Cloth haunt my successors!!” 

“Elena?! Do not act reckless now!” Darius ordered, but she did not seem to hear him. Trying to ignore the pain that caused her left arm to visibly tremble as she raised her arms, Elena took the pose for the Galaxian Explosion. 

“Darius, she is trying to prevent that curse from being activered before they are sealed away!” Athena told him as she slammed the Nike staff into the circle, hoping to help Elena. 

“I will not let my fellow Gemini Saints experience the pain of losing a sibling that has always been at their side from birth! GALAXIAN EXPLOSION!!!” 

Elena was prepared on that this attack in union with the seal was going to cost her life, and given what Romulus and Remus just had done, her own feelings of fear for the future Gemini Saints and knowing the pain of losing a twin, a person who had always been at her side throughout all her life, was helping her to pull all her remaining strength into it. 

“SEAL ACTIVATE!! ” Athena screamed, and a golden light overtook everything. 

When the golden light faded, Darius hurried over to where Utu and Agi laid, while Athena checked on Elena. Her breathing was shallow, and there was a look in her eyes that suggested that she was not far from drawing her last breath.

“Utu and Agi served their role well in helping with the seal, my Lady….” Darius said in a low voice, confirming that two had passed away from the strain of helping with the seal. 

“My successors…I am sorry…I am so sorry…” Elena whispered, unable to focus on the face of Athena as she openly wept in despair, staring out into nothingness, “I am really sorry…I didn't mean for that curse to fall upon you all….please…forgive me for not being strong enough to…defeat those false Gemini Saints…and leaving them to…you…” 

It did really hurt the Goddess to see how Elena would spend her final moments alive like this, feeling the heavy burden of responsibility for what would happen in the future. 

“You are not at fault for this curse upon the Gemini Saints, Elena. You tried to protect them from it, and you were willing to sacrifice your own life so they would not have to worry about facing Romulus and Remus.” 

A final breath, and Athena knew that her young Gemini Saint was gone as well. Now, only Hades was left to deal with, as the twin Gods had already been sealed away earlier and almost nothing of his army remained.  

“Darius. As the new Pope, please make sure that the Sanctuary will not look down on Elena for this. I will not accept future generations to think of her as weak, that she was not strong enough to defend her still unborn successors from this curse. She was willing to give up her own life to try and stop the curse, and the Gemini Saints should understand that.” 

“Yes, my Lady.”  

Inside a separate part of the spiritual space of the Gemini Cloth, the Temple of the Twins was being formed around Lydia as she dragged the soul of her sister along the floor, using a long cloak that Elena laid on. Both of them looked very beaten up, and were honestly exhausted. 

“...tired…I am so tired…” Elena gasped, hearing the breathing of Lydia as she made an effort to get closer to the common bedroom they once had in the seven short days they both had been the Gemini Saint together, five years ago. 

“Yes…we both need…to rest…that seal…took so much strength from us both…” 

Finally, they were inside the bedroom, and somehow, Lydia managed to pull up Elena on the bed despite that they now were of different heights and weights due to the difference in five years between their respective deaths. 

“Our successors as the Gemini Saints…let's wake up…when they are born…” 

“...sounds…good…” 

Their spiritual fatigue overtook the sisters, and they fell into a deep sleep that would last for most of the coming 200 years. 

 ~X~X~X~X~X~X

Three days later: 

The remaining guards and people living in the Sanctuary knelt in respect for the new Grand Pope, the only Gold Saint who had survived the Holy War of this generation. 

“What are your commands, Pope Darius?” 

The former Capricorn Saint looked around, towards the tombstones with the names of his fellow Saints on them. Not every body had been brought back for burial for various reasons. 

“From now on, the Italian twins brothers Romulus and Remus, who were rejected by the Gemini Cloth five years ago and later executed for the murder of Gemini Lydia, are to become known to history as the False Gemini Saints that joined Hades by their own free will after death!" 

That was the least thing he could do for the sake of Lydia and Elena, who had been the real Gemini twins all along but had to face suffering for it from the older rivals. If he could ensure that Romulus and Remus would become known as traitors to Athena, then their names would be spoken like a curse, forever known as a disgrace. 

Chapter Text

Given their personalities, Shion did not expect Saga and Kanon to always get along, since that was a stereotype of twins that did not always prove to happen. Most of the time, they got along well in everyday life, but today was one of the days when they poked on the sore points of the other brother in a rare argument, ignoring Shion as he tried to block out their raised voices behind the thick book of world history that had been intended for today: 

“For being as clever as you are, it can be annoying as hell when you are so sensitive about things that you have no control over!” 

“You are just jealous that I do better in the school lessons!” 

Saga was the more sensitive of the two, and Kanon could be pretty mean at times. For Shion, who had witnessed their growth from newborns into the ten-year-old boys they were right now, it was yet another insight in how foolish it often was to expect twins to be identical in so many ways. And he had met a lot of different twins over his long life so far.  

“Do not start a fight, will you, boys? Or I will send you outdoors.” 

Too late, Saga had grown angry enough to punch Kanon, and a fist fight started as they rolled around on the floor, wrestling and under name-calling. Giving up on even getting the lesson done with their current behavior, Shion used a minor Stardust Revolution to send them out from the small classroom, both breaking up the fight and trying to keep the brothers apart until they both had calmed down. 

“Oh, oh. A far cry from our generation, indeed. I can not remember Aspros or Defteros name-calling each other like that, but then again, they were nine years older than us and would never have allowed themselves to be witnessed doing anything that may look childish, ” Shion heard Dohko call through his Cosmo. 

“You tell me, old friend. Then again, those boys are only ten years old and I am trying to follow Master Hakurei's advice to let them remain children for a few more years before they shoulder the responsibility that will one day become theirs. Not everyone is ready for being a Saint at a young age like Regulus was.”

He could almost imagine Dohko nodding in agreement. 

“True words spoken in wisdom from a long life, indeed. Yes, there are cases of young children proving themselves worthy of a Cloth at a young age, but there is a reason why we do not send out Saints on missions until past the age of twelve at the minimum. Nowadays a lot of things have changed, children that age are expected to be in school rather than learning a craft or working. ”

Shion put a hand over his eyes, muttering about how annoying such changes in the outside world could be at times, indeed. 

“If Aspros had been alive in this era, he would have loved to explore an alternative identity as a traveling professor for his missions. He did study a lot of various fields of knowledge as preparation for the opportunity to become Pope after Sage, despite that it all ended up in vain when that damn Fenir Wolf killed him before the choosing of the new Pope could happen.” 

“He did protect Defteros from getting crushed between its jaws because Defteros had just caught Sasha and Regulus from falling over that cliff edge, his instinct as the older twin to protect his little brother. It was not the fault of Defteros that his hands were literally tied at that moment by pulling them back up on safe ground, we others were pretty busy in trying to kill that overgrown wolf and it aimed for our young Goddess as a snack because it hunted those with vast Cosmos. ” 

No one knew how that wolf from Norse mythology had managed to break free from the seal it had been under, but it had came straight to the Sanctuary likely due to the gathering of so many people with Cosmo, which it must have felt to be like a buffert of fresh prey and spiritual energy to cause terror with in the world. 

“And he still saw his unexpected death as a chance to mess up with the army of Hades in order to ensure a victory for us from the shadows. Acting as a mole and pretending to have betrayed Sasha…only he could have mastered it to the point of not being found out at all, indeed, playing with the dual theme of the Gemini Saints.”

Ah, the memories of those long gone…

Suddenly when remembering the class about the previous Gemini Saints a few days ago, Shion got an idea and left the classroom, aiming for the Gemini Temple where the Gemini Cloth was patiently waiting for their future bearers. 

 ~X~X~X~X~X~X    

Again proving their different characters, Saga went to the main library building in the Sanctuary to cool off his head there with a favorite book, while Kanon went off to have an angry rant while doing some light training. 

“Stupid! Stupid! Stupid brother!!” 

It did feel nice to kick away some small rocks and other things that he could attack without any reason to hold back, but a small part of Kanon did feel guilty over verbally poking on Saga earlier. If things went really bad, then he likely had triggered a anxiety attack for his brother again that tended to happen when Saga was pushed towards a personal line, and for what stupid motive? Being angry over that Saga once again had gotten better grades than himself. Not that Saga would ever brag about it, but it had still annoyed Kanon to see his brother make such a fuss over a simple school test that would be perfectly normal in the modern world outside the Sanctuary, now in 1968. 

“Ugh! Why did Saga have to inherit that damn anxiety disorder from our birth mother, and it made her unable to care even for herself back when we were little?!” 

They did know their birth parents pretty well, being a married couple in the local village that had produced generations of both male and female Saints ever since ancient Greece, yet it also seemed a irony of fate that in this generation, the future Gemini Saints was born to a mother whose anxiety disorder had gotten worse during her pregnancy because she had worried herself sick about whether she would become a good mother or not, and her getting a postpartum depression after their birth, had not helped either. Even now, ten years later, she was needing regular medication from the healers in the Sanctuary, since its long history of Saints did not always mean Saints or other people who were what one would call “normal” and unexpected opportunities to study mental disorders long before the outside world, and any ideas of future children for her and her hard-working husband was out of the question. 

“Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” 

While Kanon would never admit it openly, he was actually scared of how things would be for Saga in adulthood when they most likely were Saints. If their mother, a normal civilian, could have such bad meltdowns on really bad days, then how would his brother manage to deal with being the Gemini Saint, likely leading the generation that would fight in the Holy War? And what if he ended up as the Pope, having to lead the whole Sanctuary? 

“Ugh!” 

Letting out a wave of his own Cosmo, Kanon shattered the huge rock in front of him. Finally, he had calmed down enough to not start a screaming match again. 

“Kanon, is that you?” 

Looking up, Kanon saw that it was his father that waved at him from a distance. Based on the fact that he had a hoe over one shoulder and a basket of food in his other hand, he must have been out on the fields earlier to check on the crops and remove weeds. 

“...hi, dad…Saga and I had an argument earlier…”

Lifting a eyebrow and then nodding towards a stone bench to sit on, the farmer with his beard and hair in the same blue color as his twin sons, offered the younger son to keep talking: 

“Dad…you know how…frustrating it can be when he reminds too much about mom on her bad days…how can you bear to still be married to mom, despite all that? You even had to give us to Pope Shion not long after our birth, because her depression made it impossible for you to care for all three of us and keep the fields and livestock in order, despite all four of our grandparents trying to help even though they were already pretty old back then…” 

His father took off his straw hat and placed it on Kanon, allowing his son to brood under the shade. 

“I knew of her anxiety disorder already before we married, since we both knew each other from childhood but originally did not think of romance as something to happen between us, which is why we married when we were closer to 30 years rather than 20 because other relationships had failed. A steady support net and people to always be at her side during her worst days, is what she needs, not prejudices and ignorance about the darkness in her brain that haunts Saga as well. Besides, if I had not married her, I fear that she would have become a victim of some scumbag that had the face of an angel but the hidden personality of a devil that would have killed her eventually. Some really nasty people believe that mental illnesses do not really exist, but that is faked for attention, and may even find pleasure in driving such persons to commiting suicide without any remorse for their part in that.”

“What?! That is sick!” Kanon commented loudly in horror, feeling his anger melt away as his father explained more of the dangers that his mother could have faced in life if they had not lived here under the protection of the Sanctuary, without him as her husband, such as others not understanding why she could be so anxious at times and how that sort of narrow-minded views did not help. 

“And you do not really like to hurt Saga with cruel words despite everything, do you, Kanon? It may not be intended, but poorly-chosen words can hurt more deeply than one may think.” 

The boy shook his head. 

“No! But I do not want him to become a nervous wreck either, that needs medicine to function somewhat normally. I still can slip into nightmares of mom during that really bad episode back when we were five, after the burial of her parents when they had died not long after each other from high age, and instead of her, it is Saga…” 

His father hugged him close. 

“I know what you mean by fearing that Saga will end up like that, I think that is why Pope Shion tries so hard to give you the best upbringing you can get, despite that we can not raise you two in our own home. As for an apology about the argument earlier between you…this might help? My mother asked me to give this for you, she knows that this is a favorite for you both.” 

Kanon felt his mood brighten up at the small glass jar that he got in his hands. 

“Grandma's homemade yogurt for tzatziki! Thank you, dad!” 

Now feeling a lot more joyful, Kanon thanked his father again and hurried away to find Saga. 

~X~X~X~X~X~X     

Saga had also calmed down when Shion found the older twin inside his favorite corner in the library, though he was still crying in regret over his own harsh words from earlier. 

“Sometimes it feels like all Kanon and I do is argue between us, Shion…”

The former Aries Saint offered a cup of strong chamomile tea to the youngster, knowing that Saga would need its calming effect. 

“You both are strong-willed and want to not be seen as identical copies of each other just because everything suggests that you are the future Gemini Saints, so I am not surprised that you crash at times. Not every set of siblings can always get along in harmony, it would be idealizing reality to such a degree that it is impossible to live up to.” 

Soon, Kanon arrived, and while both twins were still a little on their guard in case their tempers crashed again from a poorly timed comment or something such, the peace offering in the form of the glass jar with the treat inside was welcomed. 

After leaving the library, they went back to the Gemini Temple. 

“...Pope Shion, are we going to restart the history lesson again?” Saga wondered once he had placed the glass jar inside the coldest storeroom for dairy products so it did not spoil from the summer temperature outdoors. 

“No, I realized that a different sort of history lesson may be better today, Come with me, please.” 

An identical look of confusion on their faces met him, and it grew as all three entered the chamber with the Gemini Cloth. 

“Are you going to tell us the full details about Tiernan and Owen, the Irish twins who fought in the Holý War of 496 AD? Since you told us the whole story about Lydia and Elena a few days ago?” 

But Shion shook his head as he placed one of their respective hands on the Cloth. 

“Not me this time as the history teacher. You will hear all their life stories from the previous Gemini twins themselves.” 

“Wait, what…?!” Saga started in shock, before a spiritual force dragged them inside the Gemini Cloth. 

Chapter Text

The sound of some people landing on the stack of hay just outside the window, made Aspros look up from the scroll where he had done a lot of calculations. He could see Shion without the long robe he normally wore as the current Pope, that wild hair of his was impossible to miss, and the two boys were a slightly familiar sight from everytime one of them passed by the Gold Cloth. 

“Ah, Shion already bought them here? Oh well, if the boys already have stopped that argument, might as well start the tales of our lives right away.”   

Closing his inkwell, the oldest twin from the 18th century went out to greet the three visitors to this spiritual space inside the Gemini Cloth.   

“Ah…ah….achoo!”  

While they did enjoy playing in the hay during harvest time together with the other children in the village, this unexpected landing caused Saga to sneeze from some stray hay straws in his nose.  

“Fun to see you twice in a day, Shion, it is not often you get to have a talk with us thanks to your duties as the Pope,” a voice greeted them in the Persian language spoken in the Ottoman Empire which Greece had been part of in the 18th century when they had been born, and Shion had to hide a smile. Of course Aspros would show off his skills as a polyglot just to impress the young Saga and Kanon, which was rather common among the Saints of Athena due to them coming from across the world.   

“I think you and your fellow Gemini twins may be able to tell the story of your lives and the details of that damn “Curse of Gemini” better than myself, because there are some things that I personally do not know about,” Shion responded in the mostly unchanged Greek spoken in the Sanctuary, so Saga and Kanon would understand what they were talking about.   

 ~X~X~X~X~X~X   

While Aspros was guiding the three guests to an agreed room for this meeting, the other generations of Gemini twins were busy with other stuff that could be useful for this. 

“Defteros, could you please bring Amari and tell Irina to bring the girls too? I think he is still in his painting chamber,” Daria asked as she kept an eye on the pot of boiling water for tea that was on the heath. Right behind her, Azel and Amir were helping to finish a few trays with bowls of dried fruits and nuts on one hand.

“Sure,” Defteros responded, moving out of her way before something risked to happen without warning because it got a little cramped with too many people in there. The kitchen was the domain of Daria, because she was most like a normal housewife in character at first look, with literally nothing revealing her as a former Saint of Athena in her typical dress for the Viking culture and head scarf that she wore as a sign of having been married in life. 

First, he went to a chamber where the female Gemini Saints would spin thread and weave fabric into clothing for them all. Even as spirits, they needed to pass time to avoid boredom between the Holy Wars in the living world and why not do the stuff that they had done in life? 

“Irina, Shion have already brought Saga and Kanon, I saw Aspros greeting them.”

“Oh, that was fast of him,” an older-looking woman whose orange hair was strained with silver as a sign of having lived to a high age, yet still somewhat similar in looks to Daria, responded as she had just finished helping Elena and Lydia to dress up in finer clothing for this meeting. But unlike her sister, Irina wore a robe over her dress that revealed her as having been a Pope in life after their Holy War. 

“We did not want to bring attention to our scars, so we chose to dress in our ankle-length dresses with long sleeves. You guys are used to seeing them after all those years, but Saga and Kanon are…” 

“Yes, yes. They are our likely heirs in this era but still strangers yet because this is their first meeting with us all,” Irina interrupted after attaching a hairpin to Elena's braided updo, then checking so the hair band was not too tight in keeping the hair of Lydia out of her face. 

“Ramses! Seti! Where are you?” 

“Coming right away, granny Irina!” 

Out of habit from life, the two Egyptian twins hastly ducked for a pair of sewing needles of bone that were buried into the stone wall behind them from the sheer force of strength that Irina had tossed them with. 

“Don't you ever learn that you better call me Master in public and Granny in private, you two desert brats!” 

But the scolding from the sewing chamber was spoken in fondness, and the two brothers did grin towards each other, knowing that it was a normal reaction from their female Master. Some things had not changed in death. 

“Irina, we crafted those new bone needles for you and the other ladies only half a year ago at the winter slaughter, do not break them that quickly, thank you! ” Amir called from the gathering chamber further away, after recognizing the sound. 

“Where is Sade?” Azel asked Ramses as he poked out his head from the kitchen, giving over two trays for the Egyptian brothers to carry with them. 

“She went to catch Tirenan and Owen so they are coming back for this meeting. You know how far they can swim…” 

In another chamber, Defteros was not surprised at the other man not reacting to him entering. And it was not merely for Amari being very focused on the half-finished painting in front of him. 

“Amari, Amari.” 

Patting the African Gemini Saint gently on a shoulder for attention, Defteros made sure to keep his face within eyesight for the other. 

Saga and Kanon have come with Shion to be told of our lives and that stupid curse that Romulus and Remus placed on the generations following Lydia and Elena.

Defteros did say this with his voice, but he was also raising his Cosmo so Amari did hear the words by connecting it with his own. After all, Amari had gone completely deaf from a hard-won fight against the Dream Gods just before the Holy War that he and his younger twin sister Sade had fought in, and yet that complete loss of hearing had been expected for a long time since Amari was born with a congenital hearing impairment, which had not been a easy handicap to live with in a era where literacy was not particularly widespread outside the educated nobility and others who could pay for a school education. 

I will come, Amari responded by putting down his brush on the table next to him. From an open window as he handed over a damp towel for Amari to clean off any color stains on his hands, Defteros heard the muted sounds of protests followed by what had to be two separate bodies being tossed out of the water. It seemed like Sade had just returned with the Irish twins, just in time to pour two large buckets of freshwater over them to try and lessen the almost eternal smell of saltwater on them before they would be hastily dressed in dry clothes. 

“Good, no one is missing.” 

 ~X~X~X~X~X~X   

On the way towards the chamber where they could hear different voices, Saga and Kanon could tell that this spiritual version of the Gemini Temple had to be much bigger in size than the real one. But it was not only the indoor decoration that revealed the different eras and cultures of their predecessors, but the surroundings outside. 

“Is that the sea?!” 

“And the pyramids in Giza!” 

Laughing for himself over their wonder, Aspros took the chance to explain what the different surroundings meant:  

“Yes, we believe that this spiritual temple is trying to let us connect with our roots, even if some of the cultures now are part of history. The sea here to the west is for Tirenan and Owen as they were born in an Irish fishing village, Amari and Sade come from a tribe living in Sahara not far from the Nile, so they have a small connection to Seti and Ramses despite being born centuries apart. That dense forest in the north side is for Russa where Daria and Irina was born, but also for their blood relatives in Sweden during the Viking era. And the steppe there is for the Mongolian origins of Azel and Amir, despite that they were named in Arabic because that was the common language of the era.” 

“Wow…” 

Shion made a point of not reminding the young brothers that they were acting differently from earlier today. 

The chamber was big enough to hold a high number of people, pillows and mats to sit on had been spread out, with a table of snacks and drinks in the middle. Yet the different Gemini Saints had made a point of dressing in the everyday clothing of their birth cultures, perhaps to help to keep them separate, and they also made a point to not dressing up in the same colors or patterns. 

“Saga, Kanon, let me present them all and the years they fought for Lady Athena, clockwise: Lydia and Elena, 246 AD.”

The Greek sisters nodded from their place, despite having died five years between them, there was little doubt that they had been identical sisters in the same age.

“Tiernan and Owen, 496 AD.”

The Irish brothers were less identical despite sharing the same brownish-blonde hair color and pale grey eyes, Tirenan having a Celtic spiral tattoo in blue under his right eye and slightly curly hair, while Owen had straight hair with a faint scar on the left side of his nose. 

“Amari and Sade, 746 AD.” 

The African twins was indeed a break from the norm of same-sex twins by being a brother and sister-set, and looked more like normal siblings born close in age. Sade wore a head scarf as sign of that she and her older twin brother had been born in the faith of Islam, and kept following it even now in death. 

“Daria and Irina, 996 AD.” 

If they had died at the same age and people only saw their shared orange hair in the distance, the shoulder-length hair and scar across her left eye would have revealed it to be Irina on a close look, while Daria had hips-length hair in two long braids on her front. 

“Seti and Ramses, 1246 AD.”

The direct successors to Irina as the Gemini Saint in the mid-12th century had also styled their hair differently to easier tell them apart; Seti had his hair cut short like most men in a hot desert climate would do, while Ramses had his hair a little longer, enough for a small pony tail to be spotted over his shoulder.

“Amir and Azel, 1496 AD.” 

Perhaps as a nod to their nomadic origins, Amir had a single yet very long braid falling along his back, and Azel several smaller ones. 

“And finally, my brothers in arms, Aspros and Defteros, 1746 AD.” 

Since those seven sets of twins were their seniors as the Gemini Saints, Saga and Kanon knelt as a sign of showing respect. 

¨We are honored to meet you all.” 

“You are welcomed, boys.”

“Shion, how much do they know about that curse?” 

Revealing that he had only shared the story of Lydia and Elena so far in the history lessons when that curse had been mentioned, Tirenan and Owen looked at each other. 

“Might as well start our part of the tale, then. Amari, could you please?”

Taking out a long scroll that he had laid beside him and carefully rolling out the first part, Amari revealed it to not be written text, but a long series of drawings of the different generations that he had used his artistic skills in to create a little help for this sort of storytelling. Rolling past the drawings of Lydia and Elena during their life, Owen came to the image of him and his brothers as infants, with the same Celtic spiral as the tattoo of Tirenan painted above them to help identify which generation it was, and the year of their birth. 

“Our story begins in Eastern Ireland, in the year 481, in the small fishing village where we were born…” 

And the tale of the Irish-born Gemini Saints from the 5th century started.

Chapter Text

Eastern Ireland, late summer of year 488:   

It had been a rather good day for fishing despite the dry weather that threatened to make a long drought a huge danger for the intended harvest, the father noticed in pride as he carefully rowed his boat closer to the beach. And a good day to bring his seven-year-old sons as well, because this was a small village where most sons learned to become fishermen or some other work related to the sea from their fathers.  

“Boys, do not get out of the boat before me, will you?”    

The seven-year-old twins obeyed, trying to make sure that the catch of today would not be slipped overboard when handing the wicker baskets filled with fish to their father. 

“Tiernan, mind the slippery stones now when you step into the water…ah!” 

The older twin fell forwards into the water with a cry of surprise, Owen hurrying forwards to help his brother. 

“I should have lifted you up on the shore, son, it was an error of mine,” the father said in a gentle voice, comforting the older twin as he tried hard to not start crying from cutting up his hand palms on the stones and the wounds stinging from the salt water, which was not helped by that he also had gotten a few abrasions on the knees. 

“Oowww!! It hurts!” 

“Granny should have some medicinal salve to help with that, right, Father?” Owen wondered, looking a little worried for his brother. This was not the first time that Tiernan had problems resulting from the nearsightedness he was born with, because it made certain chores in everyday life more difficult than for Owen who had no problems with his eyesight. 

“Yes, if we try to divide what we are to carry back home, with Tiernan taking the fishing rods, we can get back home quickly for her to look at his palms.” 

Suddenly, there was a small rock being tossed from the upper part of the beach and hit Owen in the head. 

“Ow!” 

But the father stopped another rock from striking Tiernan, turning around with an angry look on his face. 

“Hey! Stop treating my boys like some stray animals to be chased away with stones, brats!” 

This was actually not the first time this happened, Tiernan and Owen being targeted by the more well-off village children for no other reasons than children sadly being cruel against others. And as always, the ringleader for the gang was twelve-year-old Pandora, the daughter of the village chief. 

“You pagans do not belong in a Christian congregation! Worshiping idols of darkness with offering sacrifices, that is going to land you in hell after death!” 

Normally, the father would have done his best to ignore those words, which the children picked up from the priest at church and many times did not really understand, but this was part of a deeper conflict within the village itself: Those who had converted to the new faith which came from foreign lands, and the few remaining families that still worshiped the Irish gods as part of their ancient culture as Celts. 

“Watch that mouth of yours and what you are saying, Pandora! You never know what may listen or watch you!” Tiernan warned, yet not fully able to hide that some of her cruel words did hurt him. 

“Yes! There are forces in the world that will not care for your social status for a human! ” Owen added in, despite their father ordering them to be quiet. In fact, both the twins could sense something in the air around them all, beings that were not of the physical world. The Fair Folk. 

“Boys! Ignore them and take your baskets! We are going home! ” 

Shooting a death glare towards Pandora who did not seem scared at all over their warning that was bound to be ignored anyway, the brothers obeyed their father. But another rock was tossed and the strike caused Tiernan to fall forwards in the sand, barely keeping himself from crying over how the sand got into his wounds from earlier. 

“Hah! That is right, grovl in the dirt or I will tell Father…”

But before Pandora could start another verbal taunting of the fisherman and his sons by knowing that she would be protected by her status as the village chief's daughter, a melody was heard from a lyre in the air:

“It is not nice to attack someone who is already injured from an honest accident. Do as people around the Mediterranean, in this heat and take a short nap during the hottest hours of the day, children.”

As the melody was focused on Pandora and her gang of bullies, they fell asleep rather fast as a person in plain yet clearly Irish clothing came out from the forest next to the beach, a small lyre held in his dominant arm.

“Great-uncle Cian! Granny will be happy that you are here on your annual visit!”  

The Lyra Silver Saint nodded in greeting to his sister-son and grand-nephews, then started to pull the sleeping children into the shade so they were not getting sunburns from the afternoon sun.  

Despite being happy to see Cian coming alongside the three male members of the family, it was not the most joyful mood within the roundhouse that evening, as the mother and grandmother learned of what had happened at the beach. 

“Fewer and fewer believers of the old faith remain for each passing year, especially after really bad winters or other periods of fatal illnesses that can take both adults and children in different ages…it is almost only we outside six other families, and all of us are almost outcasts due to not following Jesus Christ. Our children are often attacked by the children from the Christian families if that girl Pandora leads them on, and comes home with signs of having suffered physical violence if they are alone…”

Due to a poor harvest the previous year followed by a very cold winter six months ago, their family had lost several relatives to the winter cold compinted with the starvation after the failed harvest, as had happened to nearly every family in the fishing village. Cian could understand how that made his sister and the other three adults extra protective of Tiernan and Owen, being the only children left apart from the unborn sibling that their mother would have in less than a month now. 

“Oh, I really wish that I could slap that insolent girl without having to worry about the consequences that would come! She has some nerve, bullying the boys for being of a more humble background as well for that of our family still follows the old faith and because her family is the leaders of this village!” the old woman muttered in anger, stirring in the pot while her daughter-in-law kept weaving some fabric on the loom. 

“Nothing has changed much from our own youth, indeed, apart from that the Christian faith has proved to be the stronger force…” Cian agreed, recalling how things had been more than fifty years ago as he had left to train in Greece in order to become a Saint of Athena. Even if he did only visit his birth village once a year, he knew from his sister and her family what kept happening in Ireland. His nephew spoke up again: 

“The boys are old enough to be fostered out in other families now, but with Christanity being the dominant faith of so many, I fear that they may be forced into getting baptized against their will under threats of injury or even death and that they would be forced to give up all the ancient rituals we taught them…” 

Cian could understand why his nephew and his pregnant wife hesitated to send away their twin sons, if they risked such treatment based on the fact that they still belonged to one of the families who worshiped the ancient gods. 

“When were the boys born again? I can never keep the right date in mind,” Cian wondered aloud, having a possible idea growing in his mind that could be a solution that would soothe the fears of his relatives. In response, the Silver Saint got a beheaded fish tossed at him from his sister. 

“You are indeed starting to grow old if you are forgetting that detail despite being there to witness the birth, brother! They are born seven days before the summer solstice! ” 

14th June, just as he did actually recall. And that date was within the last six days of the Gemini constellation. Pope Darius had paid attention when Cian had told him of that detail after returning to the Sanctuary every summer, especially as both Tiernan and Owen had survived the birth and their childhood so far. 

“How about that I may foster them, then? I may serve as a bard to a different Goddess in Greece, but no one is forcing me to convert to Christianity or some other belief in other gods there and I believe that the boys would thrive in an environment where they do not have to be ashamed of their faith.” 

At first, all the three other adults stared at him, even Tiernan and Owen looking up from their task of helping their grandmother with preparing the meal as if wondering if they really had been hearing right.  

“You mean it, brother?! That foreign Goddess you serve, will really not allow anything such?!” 

Cian did not talk much about Athena or the Sanctuary that much for the sake of its security from possible enemy attacks, but he knew that if his two great-nephews stayed here in the village, they would live as outcasts because they were not raised in the Christian faith. 

“Athena herself is from an era long ago, way before Christianity even began in the East. If this Greek Goddess herself is still around, then there is still hope that our own Celtic Gods of Ireland will still be around for future generations as well. But with how Tiernan and Owen are treated by the Christian children here in our own village, especially by the chief's daughter, it is awfully clear that they are favorite targets of hers for some reason. Perhaps for that we are among the poorer families, perhaps for that both halves of a twin set rarely tends to survive long past birth.” 

In the end, they agreed that Cian would take his great-nephews with him away from the village after the birth of their sibling, so they did not miss that important family event.

~X~X~X~X~X~X  

For some time, things were mostly the same in the village. But Cian proved that despite his high age, he could still play the lyre and sing like other visiting bards here in Ireland. 

“Young miss, please leave my great-nephews alone. ” 

Somehow, Pandora actually seemed scared of Cian from the moment she first saw him, and while she did not have the other children physically attack Tiernan and Owen anymore, she still tried with cruel words. 

“They are freaks, for being born with more than one child just like animals! And the older one is worthless with that horrible eyesight of his!” 

Judging from how the brothers visibly twitched at those words, it was not the first time that Pandora called them this. 

“People with the habit of insulting others, will pay dearly for it at some point. Even if you were to grow up to become the most beautiful woman in the world as an adult, do you really think that my great-nephews will forget and forgive you for what you have done towards them now in childhood?”

With Pandora being five years older than Tiernan and Owen, Cian guessed that she had targeted them for her bullying because they would always be smaller and weaker than herself. But that was something which could change…in adulthood, when they no longer were children but fully grown men. 

“Great-uncle, we will go to the beach and see if we can catch something for Mother with our fishing rods!” 

Blocking Pandora from their sight, Cian refused to let her pass by him as the twins hurried away. 

Six weeks later: 

“Brianna, after her long-lived grandmother.” 

“A good name, and I have a strong feeling that she will become an adult as well, just like her brothers.” 

It was a healthy little sister that arrived into the Irish family, after a successful birth where both mother and child survived. 

“Mother, we are sorry for leaving now when you need help in caring for Bria.” 

Their parents looked at them. 

“Tiernan, Owen. This may be your best chance to see the wider world outside the village, so please, do not waste it.”

“Become strong, so Pandora can not be mean to you anymore.” 

“And make sure to bring some harmless chaos in the life of your great-uncle without annoying him too much, alright?” their grandmother requested with a smile, pretending to not notice the annoyed look from her brother behind the children. 

“I promise to bring them along every summer for their day of birth and for little Brianna. When they are old enough, they will be able to travel by themselves.” 

Hopefully, as the Gemini Gold Saints of this generation.

Cian did not say that, but he believed that there had to be a reason why both Tiernan and Owen had survived the early birth, and why they were born within the zodiac sign of the twins. That if they trained well and did awake their Cosmo within the coming years, they would become part of the Gold Saints for Athena.

“Come, boys, it is a long way to travel from Ireland to Greece.” 

Cian knew that even with his top speed that could be done at his age, he needed to carry the twins for a quicker journey. Waving goodbye to their family outside the roundhouse, they walked next to their great-uncle so he could see them at his side. 

Chapter Text

Year 495 AD, Sanctuary:    

It was at times like this that Darius could feel his high age. Generations of humans with a normal lifespan had come and gone under those nearly 250 years which had passed since the Holy War where he had been the only surviving Gold Saints, but now it was time to fill the final spots of various Saints that would serve in the Holy War of this era. 

If only that Curse of Gemini was not hanging around like a dark cloud to haunt his thoughts. The memory of Elena's horrified face when she realized that Romulus and Remus would haunt the future generations of Gemini Saints through the curse, and her desperate attempt to prevent it from happening.  

Now when Tiernan and Owen had succeeded in becoming Saints, even proving themselves powerful enough to join the Gold Saints despite being only fourteen years old, would the curse strike down on them when they least expected it to happen? Would one of them die before the Holy War started? Or would they be separated from each other in a different way during the fighting? 

The former Capricorn Saint wanted to just stop thinking of all the scenarios that could happen to the Irish twins thanks to that damn curse, and to keep focus of the present, he addressed Cian: 

“You have trained your great-nephews well over the past seven years as your students, Cian. At first, I was haunted by the memory of Lydia and Elena when first seeing them, but they have managed to take themselves out of that shadow over the last seven years and proven themselves to be worthy wearers of the Gemini Cloth. As their great-uncle, you must feel proud of them.”

The Lyra Silver Saint was kneeling in front of the Pope and Athena, and raised his head at being addressed. 

“Your holiness, I am indeed proud to have witnessed them become the Gemini Saints of this era after all their hard work under my training. Even if there is that small issue of Tiernan being nearsighted, he is working really hard to not let that become a handicap in battle…

Darius could see why the almost retired Silver Saint was worried about that detail for his oldest great-nephew. It was not so bad to the degree that Tiernan was almost blind, but not being able to see clearly on longer distances risked becoming a danger for himself if an enemy realized that weakness.  

“If you two old men worry for his eyesight out on missions, then I can ask Tiernan if he can imagine the role of being my main bodyguard!” Athena suddenly said, already on her way out. 

“Lady Athena?! It is a nice idea, but please wait a moment and let us talk a little about how to not make it sound like we do not trust Tiernan to be successful on missions…?!” Cian pleaded as he rose to his feet, but the fourteen-year-old Goddess was showing the difference of her young body and his own. 

“No need to worry, Cian,” Darius said as the purple-haired girl vanished out of sight, “she knows that his eyesight is something that Tiernan really does not want to be seen as a weakness by others. Athena must already be thinking of what to say so it does not sound like an insult to both the twins to make Owen the one to get out on missions while Tiernan stays behind to protect her.” 

Once Cian too had left, Darius looked over the newest reports of what happened in the world, events that the Sanctuary needed to know and keep an eye on for the aftermath. Nineteen years ago, a coup to depose the Roman Emperor Romulus Augustus had marked the end of the Western Roman Empire as a political entity. The Eastern Roman Empire with Constantinople as its capital city was still standing, but Darius knew that it was a far cry from the days of Pax Romana, when the Romans ruled their empire across Europe. 

“I can really imagine Lydia and Elena cheering in joy over how the Roman Empire ended up as a shadow of its glory days, because their owners were Romans from Italy just like Romulus and Remus.” 

 ~X~X~X~X~X~X    

After doing some mourning training with their comrades in arms, the Irish brothers had gone to the sea to do their version of relaxing: 

A longer swim in the sea near the beach, and then taking out a boat for some fishing with nets and fishing rods. 

“We may not be fishermen and working that way to support a family in the same manner as Father, but we at least know the basics.”

Standing on the row of the boat, Tiernan took a pose that looked like he would throw out another net.  

“Knowing how to get food from the sea is important, it was what helped our family to survive despite the famine after the failed harvest in our sixth year.” 

Focusing his Cosmo to his fingers, Tiernan uncovered the new attack that he had spent so much time on creating in order to hide his nearsightedness for a possible enemy:

“Dimension net! ” 

A fishing net made of Cosmo, but not intended for normal fishing. No, this was as much a way of training as back up on the training grounds of the Sanctuary.

“Careful, brother, I am trying to keep the balance of the boat here!” Owen requested at feeling that he was close to falling over while dragging up the normal fishing net into the boat. 

“I really need to get this side effect fixed in some way…” 

Somehow, neither one was surprised by the giant wave that suddenly showed up, Tiernan was using the Dimension net in a curve around himself and this would not be the first they accidently knocked themselves out of the boat on his road to perfect this attack. 

“Galaxian Explosion! ” 

While the wave was blown out of existence, they could finish the rest of the fishing trip and more or less jump back to the beach after picking up the boat to carry between them. 

“That was your best attack so far, brother…ouch!” 

Without any warning, Owen was suddenly knocked to the ground face first into the sand by someone landing on him from above. And it was no one else than Athena herself. 

“You accidently shattered the cliff I was standing on when you sent off that Galaxian Explosion, in case neither of you noticed.”

Both the twins looked a little alarmed at that information as Tiernan helped her back up on her feet, even if Athena was unharmed. They were going to hear no end of a scolding if Pope Darius and Cian learned what had happened. 

“Our apologies, lady Athena.” 

Soon, a fire was burning on the beach and three fishes were being grilled for a quick snack, as the three adolescents talked about what Darius and Cian had discussed earlier.  

“I am actually not that greatly surprised that they worry about my nearsightedness possibly becoming a danger to myself or any fellow Saints in battle, we have noticed that a lot during our training over the years,” Tiernan commented, but he did not manage to completely hide some disappointment over it though the way he lowered his eyes. They knew stories of historical Saints who had not been ideal warriors for whatever handicaps in some form they may have, but it was impossible to not notice that many did not treat Tiernan in the same way as Owen at times. 

“I am rather protected by one of you Gold Saints than any of the Bronze Saints who tries to impress me for some silly reason,” Athena huffed in annoyance. She may be in the age when normal human girls would start to notice boys in a different manner than before, and the reverse for said boys, but quite a lot of the same-aged Bronze Saints tended to get distracted by her presence and not exactly show themselves impressive despite their training as Saints due to acting immature for their age.

“I fully agree on that. Sometimes I think we may come off as more mature than our peers, because great-uncle Cian has always insisted that there are times for acting childish and times when you need to either act or think more like an adult despite not being of age yet. As he says “If a group leader can not earn respect by acting as a role model for the whole group, then the others may not follow any given orders during a critical time,”, and I think that is part of it,” Owen agreed, handing his brother and Athena their respective grilled fishes. 

“I think there are some who are jealous that we are the same age but managed to rise to the elite of the Saints, as well. Not everyone may like to take orders from an even younger yet superior person.” 

Athena looked angry at being reminded of how plain jealousy could sometimes cause tensions between various Saints, often because of their own egos or self-image. 

“Then why are they fighting for me when most of my past lives tend to be between ten and twenty-five years of age when the Holy War breaks out? My very birth is an omen that the Holy War will start in the coming years and every Pope so far, has done their best to avoid that I am still a very young child when the battle starts!” 

Her still being a young child and learning how to use her godly powers when the Holy War broke out, was a nightmare scenario that the Pope of every era desperately wanted to avoid, because while Hades always chose a human vessel for his soul, the young age of Athena herself would be a huge obstacle for her in battle even with the Saints protecting her. 

 ~X~X~X~X~X~X 

On the way back to the Gemini Temple after leaving the catch of fish to the village to share, Tiernan and Owen placed their customary offering of food and drink at the tombstone wearing the names of Lydia and Elena, as a sign of respect for the Greek sisters as their predecessors in the Holy Wars.  

“I have gotten used to seeing you do this regularly ever since coming to the Sanctuary, even before you became the Gemini Saints of this era. It is nice to see older generations be cared for even if they can not thank you themselves.” 

It was Leo Alaric who came into the graveyard, with some flowers to place at the grave of his own master, the previous Lego Saint who had died from high age a few months ago. He was five years older than the Irish twins, but had no problem accepting them as part of the Gold Saints despite being the youngest members. 

“We want to show that despite the whole danger with that Curse of Gemini, we do not blame Elena for not being able to stop it from happening. Besides, the sisters had a very difficult life before they came here to the Sanctuary, Pope Darius should not have to feel that his late students are not viewed with respect for something out of their control,” Tiernan responded, as he removed some unwanted weeds among the soil around the tombstone.  

“Aye,” Alaric said, “but please, be careful. That damn curse clearly is intended to kill one of you when we least expect it, to cause distress for the surviving twin and weaken the power you share.” 

The twins nodded, remembering what Darius had told them of the curse and his own worry for them getting caught up into it. 

“Curse or not, we will do our best to help Athena defeat Hades even if it ends up costing our lives.” 

Pleased with the answer, Alaric let them leave with no other comment. 

On the other hand, there was a minor problem to be found when they were almost at the Twelve Temples: 

“Oi! Do you want the Aries and Taurus Saints to witness this become a fight, or what?!” Owen wondered, blocking a kick from the Unicorn Saint. Most of the time, the Irish brothers got along well with most of their peers here in the Sanctuary, but there was a few that naturally was jealous on how Athena herself often would seek their company: 

“Do not think that you can charm Lady Athena by being part of the Gold Saints, you…?!” 

Tiernan sighed as he simply avoided the intended punch aimed at his face, by turning around. No wonder Athena complained about how some of the Bronze Saints came off as immature whatever she was spotted, and their great-uncle being so strict about that he and Owen needed to take their roles as Saints seriously. 

“And exactly what do you aim to succeed in by beating us up? Impressing Lady Athena by being a brute in battle, more suited for the style of Ares?”

Really, while some of the Saints seemed to be out place in the army of the Goddess fighting Hades and other threats against humankind, this was a sign of how Athena, apart from being the Goddess of wisdom, was also the Goddess of War, with war intended as fighting smart, as opposed to Ares who were the God of War, as in violence and bloodshed. The Cancer and Pisces Saints was a good example of how “fighting smart” could have pretty flexible meanings; the ability to teleport the souls of an enemy directly to the entrance to the Underworld alongside other attacks connected to the spiritual side of the living world and the other using poisonous roses as well poisonous blood as a extra back-up in case said roses was not enough to make a victory?

“Damn…do not think that you can look down on us, just for being Gold Saints!” 

Realizing that the next punch was aimed at his left eye, where his nearsightedness was worse than in the right eye with his spiral tattoo on the cheek as a way to help people know which twin that was which, Tiernan repeated his earlier movement by turning around so the Bronze Saint simply fell past him without any success in getting a hit. 

“Lady Athena does not enjoy the company of immature boys who think that they can impress her in childish manners. If you want a compliment from her, then act your actual age instead of what you are doing right now!” 

Even if Tiernan or Owen had not yet found someone they may like in a more romantic sense so far, Cian kept repeating one very important thing to remember now when they were in this age group: “You are never entitled to someone else's affection or attention just because you're interested in them. ” The Lyra Silver Saint had witnessed quite a lot of ugly results from that sort of mindset over his nearly 60 years as an active Saint since he was the same age as the twins were now, which was a rather long time for this sort of service without choosing a successor of his own, and refused to accept his great-nephews acting like that. 

“Come on, brother, we have something more fun to do at the Gemini Temple than this nonsense.” 

Despite that it took them a few more minutes before all the Bronze Saints laid defeated on the ground so they could leave, Tiernan and Owen showed another sign of maturity that Darius had praised them for in the past: 

Refusing to gloat about a victory, or openly enjoying said victory because of their different level in power and Cosmo. This also marked them as a clear contrast to the memories of Romulus and Remus for Darius, who understandably had very mixed emotions about seeing a new set of twins being trained as the Gemini Saints after the events in 241 AD. 

 ~X~X~X~X~X~X  

Inside the Gemini Temple: 

Even if they now were Saints, Tiernan and Owen had tried to expand their skills in starting to craft pottery as a hobby, and also to find a way to support themselves in adulthood outside the fishing. They did decorate those pots by carving triquetra and triple spiral ornaments into the clay before the drying. 

“There, all finished. With some luck, we can bring some of those out in Athens to sell at markets and maybe get some coins for them.” 

With the new pots finished and placed on shelves in a storeroom so they could dry, they went towards the Gemini Cloth, carrying a roll of brightly coloured woolen fabric and two small boxes with thread and sewing needles.

“Lydia and Elena should be happy with those gifts as a sign that we are not planning to become the type of men that they despise so much from their own lifetime. Trying to befriend them was a good idea, even when we had just started our training.”

“Yes. If we end up staying in the same spiritual space after our own death, it is a lot nicer to pass time if the sisters are not afraid of us!” 

As usual when the Irish brothers entered the spiritual version of the Gemini Temple inside the Cloth, the Greek sisters were a bit hesitant at showing themselves at first. But it was a lot better than the first meeting between the two twin sets in this place six years ago when Tiernan and Owen had accidently opened their spiritual senses around the Gemini Cloth, when they had flat out refused to open the door to their shared bedchamber for the brothers, their old fear of unknown males acting up. 

“Lydia, Elena? We have brought something for you that we hope will be to your taste,” Owen called aloud to get their attention, while Tiernan almost walked into a stone pillar because he was looking to the sides. 

“...y-yes?”

Even if they wore a spiritual version of their face masks as female Saints because they still did not feel completely comfortable around their successors to openly show their bare faces, it was a good sign that they had shown up. 

“Are those…for us?” Lydia asked in a surprised voice at seeing what the brothers were carrying. 

“You want to have some other clothing than the standard training suits you are still wearing here in death, right?” 

The body language of Elena hinted to a realization about that, or that they possibly had not been thinking much of it before. After all, they were ghosts in a sense, forever the ages when they had died. 

“...t-thank you…” Elena managed to say, though her voice naturally was not very strong due to spending most of her last five years alive almost mute due to the trauma of losing her sister in a such brutal murder. Placing the gifts on the floor between them, Tiernan and Owen then stepped back so the sisters could pick them up and get a closer look on what they had been given. Perhaps with time, Lydia and Elena would feel safe around them to take off their masks one day. And who knew? Maybe it could even be the first “physical” contact between them one day. 

Chapter Text

31th October, year 496, Eastern Ireland:   

It was the night of Samhain. Those in the village that owned cattle had brought them back from the summer pastures and livestock was slaughtered for winter.

“Alright, time to set out this to the fairies.”  

As usual, Tiernan and Owen had come home to their birth village to celebrate important festivals in the Celtic calendar. They had done this since Cian first brought them to the Sanctuary, and Pope Darius refused to deny them this link to their origins since Cian himself had traveled back and though between Ireland and Greece throughout all his years as the Lyra Saint. 

“Aren't great-uncle Cian here yet, brothers?” 

Helping their now eight-year-old sister Brianna to set out offerings of food and drink to the fairies, Tiernan looked around. A shake on the head from Owen confirmed what he thought. 

“No, but he is never this late to come here and celebrate Samhain with the whole family, I must admit. Sure, he is rather old by now, but he is still able to keep up with us most of the time…” 

The twin brothers did actually share a nervous glare between them over the head of their sister. Had something happened to Cian on the way here, or had it been careless of them to hurry ahead home? He had taken a long time to give Pope Darius and Athena his rapport from the last mission after all, and wanting to come home before the ending days of October, the twins had chosen to travel to Ireland without him for the first time. 

“The sun is not setting yet for an hour, he may still be here on time.” 

Offering to carry Brianna back on his back, Owen told her about how things was for them now as Gold Saints. 

 ~X~X~X~X~X~X    

In fact, Cian was doing a separate mission that was more important than celebrating Samhain right now, despite the fact that he had laid out the customary offerings of food and drinks to the fairies just to not offend them tonight. 

“I was too careless in thinking that it was a pure coincidence that the village chief's daughter had the same name as the woman who serves Hades! Sure, he married a Christian woman whose family had roots to Greece though being Romans, but I did not think of a possible connection to the Emperor of the Underworld!” 

Five years ago, Pandora had become old enough for marriage by Celtic customs and found herself married off to ensure a trade alliance between her home village and a larger village further inland. But this very summer, she had been caught with a lover, a young warrior serving her husband, and after murdering said husband, the warrior had escaped with Pandora, neither one having yet been caught for the murder. 

“Without doubt, it must be the host of Wyvern Rhadamanthys that stole her away! While not well documented from previous Holy Wars, enough Saints in older generations have confirmed that those two seem to have a certain habit of always being close to each other, in a way that often speaks of a close bond!” 

Mentally cursing, Cian kept playing on his lyre in the hope of acting like a bait for the Specters of Hades. He may be old, but if he could confirm that Hades would soon awaken, this very night was ideal. In Celtic myths, Samhain was a liminal or threshold festival, when the boundary between this world and the Otherworld thinned. 

“Something is coming towards me!” 

Preparing himself for battle at sensing several unfamiliar people with Cosmo coming closer, Cian took off his cloak that hid his Silver Cloth from view. 

 ~X~X~X~X~X~X  

By now, bonfires had been lit across the village to light up the dark autumn night. 

“Is it me, or is our grandmother feeling offended over that great-uncle is not here yet?” Brianna wondered aloud, she did not have the same spiritual sense as her brothers, but she was pretty sure that she did sense the soul of the deceased woman in the house. During Samhain, the souls of dead kin would revisit their homes seeking hospitality, which was why they had made a place for her at the table. 

“You are not wrong, sis. Grandma is not happy that he is so late,” Tieneran confirmed as their mother laid up food in the bowls for the meal. 

“Maybe we should see if we can find him, something could have happened due to his old age…” 

Suddenly, there was the sound of a deafening explosion from the other side of the village, quickly followed by horrified screams. 

“A attack!? On Samhain of all times?!” 

Rushing over to the door and opening it, Owen realized that it was not normal enemies showing up. 

“Tiernan, the Gemini Cloth! They are the servants of Hades!” 

“What?! Here!? ” 

With Owen summoning the Gemini Cloth and hurried away to try defending the villagers, based on the fact that Tiernan's nearsightedness would hardly help in this situation, the older twin turned to face their family members. 

“Mother! Father! Take Brianna and hurry down to the shore! If you escape in the fishing boat Father uses, you can get away from the attackers! I will try and act as a bait for them!” 

“Do not be foolish, Tiernan! We have seen that you and your brother have become fine warriors under the care of Cian, but we refuse to let you be killed for our sake!” his father protested, even as his oldest surviving child started to drag him along to the door. 

“Would you prefer that all five of us get killed, and Cian to find us among the villagers that could not escape?! Let the boys show that they are not children anymore, but youngsters on their way to become adult men!” his wife protested, already holding the terrified Brianna in one hand. 

“Hurry!”

But they did not get far, before a group of Specters blocked the path down to the beach where the boat would be drawn up on land. 

“Tiernan, watch out!! ” 

While the Irish twins were the youngest Gold Saints of their generation, it did not mean that they were the weakest ones in terms of power.  

“A Saint of Athena …?!” 

“A Gold Saint!” 

Killing some low-ranking Specters with a Galaxian Explosion was no problem for Owen, though he was not foolish enough to think that he could deal with them all on his own. 

“Not good, they are too many for me to handle alone!” 

Still, he could feel the Cosmo of his older brother come closer, and that gave him some hope in not being killed. 

“What are you fools doing? Kill that Gemini Saint at once so there is one less Saint of Athena for you to deal with!” a feminine voice ordered, and despite it sounding slightly different due to the passing of seven years as well that the twins had avoided the main part of the village on their precious visits home, Owen knew that it could only be Pandora. 

“You really have not changed much over the past eight years, have you, Pandora?” he asked, openly showing a face of dislike when his former childhood bully came out among some of the burning houses. She may be an adult woman now, but that sneer on her face when spotting him had not changed. Basically confirming what Cian had told his twin great-nephews: 

“Just because a childhood bully may grow up to become a stunningly beautiful woman or a very handsome man, does not mean that they are safe choices for romance. In fact, they may trap their former bullying victims in an abusive relationship, if the victims allow themselves to be naive about them “changing their ways” by pulling on a false act and pretend to be the very opposite of what they could be in childhood.”

“And you have not changed that poor respect towards me either, you damn fisherman brat!” 

Really, Owen wondered for himself as he ducked for two separate attacks and responded to these, who was the immature one here? 

“Pandora, stop acting like a child and let the Specters take that of that Gold Saint,” a chilling voice ordered, and a youth stepped forwards, his hair black as the darkest of winter nights and his eyes blank as if he was being possessed by something. 

The host of Hades. 

“Damn…this is bad!” Owen realized, understanding that he was overmanned here and besides, Athena would need to know. 

“Get out of my way, creatures of death!” A voice called out as a Galaxian Explosion cleaned the area of enemies around Owen, and Tiernan showed up next to his twin with a shell-shocked Brianna in his arms, both being dripping wet with sea water yet also having blood on their clothing. 

“What…did you not help Father and Mother to…” Owen started in alarm, but stopped at seeing his brother openly crying in anger. 

“Father's boat was spotted by Griffin Minos and his men when the houses at the outer edge of the village caught fire too. ” 

Tiernan did not need to mention what had happened. That he held so tightly to Brianna in his arms as she was visibly trembling in her whole body from horror while silently crying and the blooded clothing, was enough details. 

“Both the Gemini twins here?” Hades spoke as if he felt amused by the sight in front of him, “Perfect, your heads will be a nice gift for that Goddess you are serving!” 

But there was a sound of music being played among all the screams from the yet alive villagers, from a lyre, and it was holding the Specters in one place, unable to move for now. 

“BOYS!! WHAT ARE YOU TWO DOING HERE WITH YOUR SISTER TO WITNESS THIS BLOODBATH!?! GET BACK TO THE SANCTUARY AT ONCE AND TELL ATHENA THAT THE HOLY WAR HAS STARTED THIS VERY NIGHT!!”

Everyone looked towards the entrance of the village, where Lyra Cian was standing against a tree for support, gasping for breath and looking half-death with all the visible blood on his mostly broken Silver Cloth. But his hand kept playing on his almost broken lyre, trying to protect the three grandchildren of his sister, the only family members still alive. 

“What do you think we were just planning to do, old man!? That we are so irresponsible that we do not realize when it is better to withdraw for a later battle?” Owen responded, creating a dimension behind him and Tiernan hurrying inside with him after. 

“Do not let them escape!” 

But the twins were not going to let Cian face death without a few lesser opponents at least. 

“GALAXIAN EXPLOSION!! ” 

For the first time in five hundred years, because the Holy War in year 4 BC had been having both the Gemini twins alive and fighting together for Athenan, because the “Curse of Gemini” had not been placed on the expected wearers of the Gemini Cloth until the following Holy War 250 years later, the Specters of Hades got a taste of the united force of both the older and younger Gemini twins fighting side by side. Not only was their united power enough to powderize the burning village and a part of the forest around, but the three Judges and Twin Gods had to act quickly with protecting the host of Hades before the boy was hurt. 

“Well done with protecting your sister…my great-nephews,” Cian smiled, before facing the remaining Specters. 

“I may join my men in the afterlife soon enough, but I will not beg for mercy with my final breath!” 

Steadying himself for his final stand, to die like the Saint he had been for most of his life, Cian showed no fear as Wyvern Rhadamanthus flew towards him.

 ~X~X~X~X~X~X    

Sanctuary, near the statue of Athena: 

Athena and Darius could feel that something was not right tonight. 

“Hades have awoken. It can not be any other reason for this strange feeling of dread we all feel,” the Virgo Saint, named Ishir, commented as he too looked up at the night sky. 

“Yes,” Darius confirmed with an unhappy frown around his mouth, recalling events from 250 years ago, “it was the same feeling back then.”

“I hope that Cian and the others are not running straight into the Specters. Or that they are anywhere near the birth village of Tiernan and Owen…” Athena whispered, feeling anxious at the mere thought. She did not see any of the Gemini twins in a more romantic scene, they were simply close friends of hers because they were roughly the same age and she knew of the “Curse of Gemini”. If the awakening of Hades awoke the curse…. 

“The other dimension used by the Gemini Saint!” 

It was not only the twins showing up with clear signs of having been in battle, but Tiernan was carrying a younger girl who looked so alike that there was no doubt that they must be siblings born from the same set of parents. 

“Tiernan! Owen!” 

Both were coughing from inhaling smoke, and there was a haunted look in their grey eyes that revealed that something horrible had happened. 

“....Cian was right in that Pandora was that older girl from your home village?” Darius asked with dread, and they nodded without any words, only hugging Brianna closer to help her calm down by the physical contact from her brothers. 

“I am sorry for what you had to witness. That girl, she is your younger sister that was born the same autumn as you came here?”

Another mute nod. And now both the twins was crying, fully realizing that they would be unable to give their murdered parents a proper burial after this horrible attack on their home village. 

“Ishir, help them back to the Gemini Temple. Tell the servants that they have my permission to let their sister stay with them. I am not going to separate a traumatized child from the only familiar faces in this unknown place with strangers.” 

“Yes, Your Holiness.” 

Ishir even offered his cloak to Tiernan to wrap up his sister in, so Brianna would not be cold from the night air as the three Gold Saints left for the long walk long the stairs between the Twelve Temples. 

“Thank you for your long service for the Sanctuary long before I was born, Cian,” Athena spoke with tears in her eyes as the broken and blood-spattered Lyra Cloth showed up in front of her, a clear sign that Cian had been killed, “We will take care of your younger relatives, from now on.” 

Darius said nothing, but he too was crying, knowing the feeling of when a Saint died in battle. And there was another reason for his tears: 

“Lydia, Elena. I will do my best to prevent those Irish twin brothers, your successors in this era, from being separated by death like you two were. ” 

He had failed to prevent Lydia's murder so many years ago, and as a personal punishment for that failure as their Master, having to witness how broken Elena ended up afterwards. If he could prevent the same happening to Tiernan and Owen, if only for a short time, then it would feel like he was lessening that burden of guilt related with the Greek sisters he had freed from a life in slavery. 

Chapter Text

News about the awakening of Hades and the deaths of Cian with his men spread quickly around the Sanctuary. For the sake of Brianna and her slow recovery out of the trauma of losing their parents, Tiernan and Owen were ordered by Darius to stay out of any coming battles because she did not know anyone else in this new place, and guard Athena alongside Ishir.   

“Thank you for helping us with Brianna, Ishir, despite that you can not speak much Irish so she can understand you.” 

The Virgo Saint looked up at being addressed, from where he was seated with the Irish girl sleeping in his lap.  

“If Brianna ends up spending her life here in the Sanctuary or down in the belonging villages as an outside-born wife to someone there, the first step is to help her feel safe. And the two of you need to grieve the loss of your relatives as well. Caring for your sister is good, but you are allowed to be a little selfish at times too.” 

What Ishir did not need to mention, was that he generally had a good hand with children despite that not everyone of them were used to seeing someone like him and the twins had witnessed this several times over the eight years that they had been here. 

“Tiernan, is something wrong?” Ishir wondered when noticing that the older twin narrowly avoided tripping over a carpet near the main hall that the Virgo Saint believed to have told his own servants to remove just in case this happened. 

“Just having some trouble with my nearsightedness again. I hope that it will not become even worse…”

Despite not being near the building houses in the village for long before he and Owen escaped with Brianna back to the Sanctuary, the thick smoke had affected Tiernan's eyes and even with trying to rinse his eyes with clean water, he struggled with not tripping over things on the ground. However, as the Sanctuary did not have the medical knowledge that would be more developed a millennium and a half later, Tiernan honestly did not know that his ongoing growth spurt caused by him and Owen having entered puberty, was part of the reason why his nearsightedness had become worse over the last year. 

“Just take it easy and nothing in haste unless your battle skills are needed. Do not risk to harm yourself by mistake…and I think this young lady wants some of your attention for now.”

Brianna had woken up from her nap, and dashed over to her oldest brother for the comfort of a familiar sibling. 

 ~X~X~X~X~X~X   

As the third week of November came, the Holy War had been going on for three weeks. Many Saints had lost their lives, and others were still recovering from the injuries they narrowly survived. Eventually, to try and avoid the rising numbers of dead Saints, Owen had to join the fighting as the Gemini Saint while Tiernan stayed behind in the Sanctuary to guard Athena. 

“Lighting Plasma!! ”

Alaric gave Griffin Minos a hard fight for victory, despite being caught in his threads and getting various bones inside his body broken by those as Minos pulled on the threads. It also helped that said lighting caused the threads to break right as the Judge broke his neck, and Minos felt that his heartbeat became irregular as another side effect of the lighting, forcing the Judge to drop to his knees in a desperate attempt to avoid a fatal heart attack by taking deep breaths. 

“Sir Alaric has fallen!”

On the other hand, Owen had some trouble against Garuda Aiacos, and suffered a broken leg after narrowly avoiding the Garuda Flap attack by him. 

“Agh!” 

“Hpf. You were faster than expected, Gemini brat, but not fast enough to escape, it seems.” 

Gritting his teeth from the pain, Owen chose a temporary retreat by using Another Dimension and reappeared behind the group of remaining Saints. But before a new battle started, Darius showed up:  

“Leave those two Judges to me, and make a splint to set that broken bone Owen just suffered. If it heals wrong, he will have to live with a limp for the rest of his life, quite unnecessary given his age.”

“Pope Darius!” 

Not that this seemed to alarm the two Judges very much.

“Hah. As if a single old man, who already is injured with those visible blood stains on your clothes, is an opponent to fear!” Minos laughed before he and Aiacos hurried forwards. 

“Suit yourselves.” 

Proving that the Popes tended to be very flexible with their battle skills and knowledge collected over their long lives, Darius used his signature attack Excalibur to behead both Minos and Aiacos at the same time with almost no trouble at all, but at the cost of said movements being too much after the massive blood loss he already had suffered earlier. 

“Grand Pope!” 

“Tiernan! Owen! Do not let the Curse of Gemini…ensnare you two…Elena and Lydia…did not want you to be touched by the hate…from Romulus and Remus as well… ” the former Capricorn Saint thought, his eyes focused on the figure of Owen during his dying moments, seeing how the younger Gemini twin limped from the broken bone, now set in an improvised splint, and struggling to walk with more weight on his unharmed leg despite the rather obvious pain he must be feeling.

“Sir Darius!” 

But it was too late to do anything at this point, the surrounding Saints realized, for the Pope had given up his life for the Goddess he had served for so long. 

“We must return to Lady Athena and let her know…” 

Using the argument that he needed to have the healers look at his broken leg anyway, Owen used Another Dimension to travel as fast as possible back to the Sanctuary. 

Back at the Sanctuary, Ishir had raised a protective barrier around Athena in case an attack from Hades himself or one of the twin Gods would come. 

“It is to the best of my ability. Tiernan, how are things for you?” 

Squirting with his right eye where his sight was better, the older twin looked around for any signs of danger that Ishir may somehow miss, despite how impossible that would be. 

“I can not sense anything yet, but knowing Hades, it will come out of the blue.” 

At least Athena now had her Divine Cloth on her, so she could defend herself somewhat from physical attacks. Yet Ishir felt worried that the Gemini twins were separated from each other like this in such a critical moment, as if it would prove to be a fatal weakness they had missed to cover up. 

“Owen…please return quickly to your brother! I sensed in the distance that it was not all three of the Judges that Pope Darius brought with him in death! Wyvern Rhadamanthys is still alive somewhere!” he thought, not showing his own unease. 

“GREATEST CAUTION!! ”

“Kān!! ” 

Ishir managed to block the incoming attack from Rhadamanthys with his protective barrier, but the Judge took the chance to slip along the barrier and grabbed Tiernan around the throat when he hurried to place himself between the enemy and Athena. 

“Ugh!” 

“Tiernan!” the Goddess screamed at seeing him be slammed into the ground.

“Ignore me right now, Ishir, and get rid of this brute that Pandora allowed to kill her own parents back when our home village was attacked, all because she resented the arranged marriage which she would enter once she was a legal adult by law!”  

Seeing his young comrade in arms risking being killed if he did not do anything right now, Ishir acted without any hesitation. 

“Tenbu Hōrin! ” 

Using the full force of this attack, the Virgo Saint stripped Rhadamanthys of all five senses, and Tiernan killed the Judge with a Galaxian Explosion straight into his chest after that Ishir kicked the body off him. 

“Ugh…next time you need to get an enemy off me and both are trapped in your attack, kindly take one of my other four senses rather than my eyesight, thank you very much!” the Irish youngster complained while trying not to trip over his own feet, struggling to find a balance so he could stand still and Ishur restored his eyesight. 

“My apologies, Tiernan….LADY ATHENA!!”

Hades had shown up right behind her, waiting for the right moment while the two Gold Saints were distracted by Rhadamanthys, with his sword raised for a killing strike, but despite what just had happened, Tiernan acted faster than Ishir.  

“BROTHER!! ” 

But Tiernan was not the only one hurrying to place himself between his Goddess and the Emperor of the Underworld. Using the dimension travel, Owen did exactly the same, jumping in straight before his brother so he would take the blunt part of the attack with the Gemini Cloth. A sickening sound was heard alongside the shattering of the Gold Cloth, as the sword went through the back and stomach of both the brothers, impaling them in a deadly manner yet this also allowed Ishir enough moments to set up the barrier around Athena once more, effectively blocking the sword from even touching Athena or coming anywhere near her. 

“Gemini! I told Minos and Aiacos to kill you two!” Hades growled at seeing how his chance for a quick victory had been prevented. 

“Heh…nice try to separate us, either by that one of us would be killed either before or during the Holy War, or just being unable to fight side by side, just like that damn curse intended! But Romulus and Remus seem to not have realized the scenarios of us Gemini Saints trying to work around that stupid curse despite the odds of said attempt not working!” Owen laughed in defiance, just to mock the Curse of Gemini that Hades seemed to have tried using against them. Coughing up blood from the mouth, Tiernan glared over their shoulders at the God. 

“Dimension Net! ” 

Due to this being an attack he personally had created and it not being a traditional one of the Gemini Saint, Tiernan managed to ensnare Hades in the fishing net crafted from the Cosmo of both himself and Owen. 

“Athena, hurry and remove Hades from that host body of his! Do not think of us two two right now!” 

Ignoring her horror at what she just had witnessed to happen, the young Goddess did so, not wanting to waste this chance to victory. Raising her Cosmo, Athena forced the soul of Hades out of the human body, before holding up the staff of Nike into the air so to use herself as a central point to sealing away everyone in the Underworld army in a seal that would last for another 250 years, and this also forced Hypnos and Thanatos to reveal themselves. 

“She is using the Gemini Saints to strengthen her reach?!” the God of Death wondered in confusion, he and his brother being caught by surprise by chains, formed by nature spirits that had no ties to death or sleep.

“No! They have a strong spirituality from the moment of their birth, look around them!” 

It was not only their respective Cosmo backing up Athena as the sword of Hades faded away so Tiernan and Owen collapsed, but something completely different was coming from their bodies. The very same spiritual chains that trapped the Twin Gods.

“Hypnos! Thanatos! Begone with you back to the Underworld and stay there!” 

With a blinding light of Cosmo that shone up the whole Sanctuary, Athena sealed the Twin Gods and the army of Hades away, again standing as the winner of another Holy War.   

“Tiernan, Owen…thank you for lending me the last of your strength and sacrificing your sixth sense in order to capture the Twin Gods. You both would have made a wonderful duo of twin shamans with strong ties to the spiritual side of the world, had you been born in a different culture somewhere in Asia rather than in Ireland.”  

Kneeling at the young man who had been the human host of Hades, Ishir could confirm a sad detail that had showed up in previous Holy Wars when surviving Saints had tried to help the human hosts of Hades after freeing them from being possessed by him: 

That once the Emperor of the Underworld did awoken in said human host, his very presence became a deadly poison for the host, eventually killing the unfortunate human youth who had no idea of what sort of spiritual parasite he would carry inside him from a young age. 

“If only there was a way to ensure that one host of Hades manages to survive and us Saints being able to help him return to his normal life, with no memory of being dragged into a fight he has nothing to do with….” Ishir said in a regretful voice, feeling sadness on behalf of all those young humans who had their lives ended by Hades possessing them for every Holy War ever since he had started to take human hosts. The worst part was to know that it would be repeated every 250 years, over and over, in an endless circle, until Hades himself somehow was killed, in both divine body and soul.

“Ishir, help me place them in a more comfortable position, please?” 

Carefully turning them over to their backs, both Athena and Ishir could tell that the twin brothers were dying, the impalement wounds being far too serious for any chance of survival. 

“Is…Ishir…please…take care of…Brianna…for us…tell her that we are sorry…for leaving her alone…” Tiernan whispered, his sight going more and more cloudy as he did not see anything clearly. Out of lifelong habit, he reached out for the hand of his brother, as Owen too tried to say something:

“We wanted to see her grow up…and create a…new family together…if we all three…were to find…someone to love and…have children with…”

Laying the hand of Tiernan over the one of Owen so they had the familiar comfort of each other in those last moments of life, Ishir nodded. 

“Do not fear for your sister now when you are at death's door, I will do my best to give her a good life.”

They did not doubt his promise, as Darius had chosen Ishir as his successor to be the next Grand Pope, should the Virgo Saint survive the Holy War, mere days prior to the night when the three siblings had lost their birth home and parents.

“Thank…you…”

“Athena….it was an honor…to fight for you…a true Goddess of…War…”  

Drawing a last breath, the souls of Gemini twins of the Holy War in 496 AD left their bodies. And just like Lydia and Elena, a smaller part of their souls was split apart from the main part of their spiritual selves, to join the Greek sisters in the spiritual Temple inside the Gemini Cloth for those who had been ensnared by the Curse of Gemini. 

“Ishir. I must return to the realm of the Gods now when the Holy War is over, but I look forward to meeting you again, and the next generation that will fight at my side.” 

Kneeling in front of her, as the human body of Athena began to fade away, the Virgo Saint made a promise to her: 

“Just like Capicorn Darius before myself, I swear to try finding a way to break that Curse of Gemini, which started with Lydia and Elena over 255 years ago! For the generations of future Gemini twins that are fated to fight in the Holy Wars, and have nothing related to Romulus and Remus! ”

Smiling gently at him, it gladdened Athena to once again hear a confirmation that there was people who held the Gemini Saints dear, either as friends or other forms of close relationships, and wanted to help them. 

“All the intended suffering aimed at innocent generations, from two twin brothers who could not accept a rejection from the Gemini Cloth…it is unacceptable, what they did!” 

Her voice was calm, but her eyes showed that Athena had not forgiven how the Curse of Gemini had started in the first place. Nodding to Ishir, she then vanished, leaving only her own Divine Cloth behind next to the partly damaged Gemini Cloth. 

“Just telling poor Brianna that her brothers are gone…I better make my ears ready for some loud screams of denial and crying from the poor girl…” Ishir signed, using his own cloak to cover up the bodies of Tiernan and Owen as a few other surviving Saints and servants hurried up along the stairs of the Twelve Temples to see if there were any survivors at the top. 

 ~X~X~X~X~X~X  

Inside the spiritual Gemini Temple:

Despite their still remaining fear of unknown men and boys, Lydia and Elena pushed that emotion down, for now Tiernan and Owen, who had just arrived there as a sign of their deaths, needed whatever medicinal care that they could give them. 

“S-sorry if this is going to hurt…” 

It was a small blessing that the Irish brothers were not fully grown men, with the expected height and weight they would have, else it would have been a lot harder for the sisters to move them over to a new bedchamber that had not been in the spiritual temple before. In this one, unlike the very plain one of the sisters, the walls were decorated with Celtic symbols, as a sign that Tiernan and Owen had been the Gemini Saints of this era. 

“It will be alright…we will help you…” 

As a sign of accepting how the brothers would live with them here now, as well as how childish it would be to keep refusing them to see their bare faces, both Lydia and Elena removed their masks. 

“Not as possible lovers, but as a family. Brothers and sisters, in a found family, you hear that?” 

Giving them a faint nod in agreement since any other movements hurt too much now, Tiernan and Owen showed that they would do their best to uphold that promise. 

“If it calms you to know…there were two nice girls in the local village…that we hoped to ask out for a picnic or something like that…if the Holy War had not come this winter…” 

At least it felt good to admit that there had been something normal in their lives, for all of that Cian had told them to not fool around with girls until they were a little older and knew better than causing something that would result in too early parenthood.  

Chapter Text

It was quiet around the table as the Irish twins finished their tale. Finally, Kanon broke the silence:    

“...did you manage to find out what happened to your sister after you two died?” 

“Proving a good example of what is commonly called “Saint bloodlines” across the centuries,” Shion spoke up while holding up his cup for a refilling of tea, “Normally a Grand Pope only have one student, generally in the last years before the next Holy War, as I likely will do and as Pope Sage did with Manigoldo, but Brianna managed to become the next Virgo Saint during the first twenty years of Ishir's reign as the Pope after that her personally trained her and after marrying a fellow Saint from Jamir, she actually had seven children who all left behind descendants right until this current era. I would not be surprised if I end up having a student to train as the next Aries Saint, who may actually be one of her very distant descendants, since the people of Jamir generally are very long-lived.” 

“Wow…descendants over 1 400 years…” Saga said in awe, while Tiernan and Owen smiled in pride over that their sister had made such a fine legacy.

“Defteros, did you not close the door to that lava chamber?” Aspros wondered when they suddenly felt a faint smell of something burning in the air. 

“That is coming from the kitchen,” Azel commented, causing Daria to suddenly look alarmed. 

“The lamb roast I placed over the fire earlier!” she realized, and left her place at the table. 

“The lamb roast intended for dinner tonight, you mean?!” 

Letting out a mixture of foul words in various languages over forgetting that they needed to turn the roast around on the spit so it was roasted evenly under an open fire, the older Russian sister ran off to the kitchen with Azel and Amir right after her in case she needed help. Out of habit from their life as slaves, Lydia and Elena also made a movement to raise, but Irina stopped the younger sisters with some words: 

“No, Daria will fix that on her own. Besides, your respective scars from the attack that killed Lydia did act up this morning, and we all know from before that it is not a wise idea to let you two do any chores when those phantom pains act up, remember?” 

The Greek sisters gave each other a look, but they did not seem offended by the reminder. Some behaviors simply were a natural instinct remaining from life.

“Just because we are spirits, does not mean that we are just aimlessly floating around in this place. And sleeping away the years between every Holy War gets boring rather quickly even with every new generation joining up and adding to the numbers here,” Seti explained to Saga and Kanon about why they were making meals despite being spirits, as Ramses filled up more tea for Lydia and Elena. 

Soon footsteps were returning from the kitchen. 

“Phew…thanks for getting our attention to the smell of something burning, Aspros, else the lamb roast would have been very unevenly roasted and getting dry without the needed coating with its own juices due to a lack of attention. I think we got a little too caught up in listening to Tiernan and Owen telling their life story, because we generally do not have that sort of story telling too often,” Daria thanked, looking like she could allow herself to relax a little. 

“Shion, why are you using that sign language commonly used on missions and by the Sanctuary guards when talking is not allowed?” Saga wondered, then noticing something that he had missed due to the minor caused a few moments earlier: 

Shion was signaling this language with Amari and Sade, and judging from the fast hand movements all three made, they seemed to have a sort of debate going on between them. 

“.... should know the whole tale …? Reasons behind said action? ” Kanon repeated in confusion, because he was better at learning by observation than his brother and was proud that he could read that sign language far better than Saga due to often running around the Sanctuary when they did not have any lessons and playing a private game of hiding himself where he could overhear adults talking yet not notice him. 

“...of course you are able to “overhear” us thanks to that habit of yours to sneak around, Kanon,” Shion muttered when realizing this, stopping the talk with the African twins. 

“Excuse me for a moment, I need to bring something. Amari, it was in that chest where we kept spiritual versions of the stuff our parents left us at their deaths, right?” Sade said, raising her Cosmo to touch him for attention, and her brother nooded. 

“Shion, as the current Pope who should have learned the story in the scrolls Ishir left behind, I think you can give some of the details better than us.”

“What story and what details?” Saga and Kanon wondered at the same time, one of the rare moments they would do so. 

“In a moment, boys, Sade needs to return first. It is related…to how she and Amari tried to avoid having the Curse of Gemini kill them in their Holy War.” 

~X~X~X~X~X~X  

Sade was quick, and came back with something covered in cloth. 

“Saga, Kanon…does the name Gemini Ayaan ring any bells? Your paternal grandmother is one of the storytellers in your home village, she should have mentioned that name at some point in tales of historial Saints,” Shion reminded them, and the ten-year-olds tried to remember what they knew. 

“Ayaan? Ayaan is an Arabic male given name meaning "watchful, seeing, witnessing, viewing" which is a connotation to the Arabic word ‘ayn, meaning "eye" or "sight", Grandma always says this sort of information before starting her storytelling… “ Saga mumbled as Kanon knitted his eyebrows, mentally hearing the scolding his grandmother would threaten to give any listening child if they did not pay attention to what she would tell, because this was an oral tradition with ancient roots and the elders really did not want the younger generation to lose that connection to their ancestors. 

“Gemini Ayaan…Gemini Ayaan…I know that name from the story tellings!” Kanon said slowly as he made a mental filter of the tales that he recalled his grandmother telling, “Gemini Ayaan…hey! Isn't that the Gemini Saint at the beginning of the eighth century who stole the sealed-away Scythe of Chronos from its hidden place in the Sanctuary and used its time-cutting powers for some unknown reason, causing himself to age forty years overnight?!” 

Shion was grateful to hear that both Saga and Kanon did not dismiss those storytellings of their grandmother, she and other elders were a great help in teaching the new generations about knowledge that was not always written down. 

“Ayaan stole the Scythe in a desperate attempt to break the Curse of Gemini, despite not being affected by it himself. By his generation, the Sanctuary had gathered enough clues about the Curse that it would mark every set of twins that was fated for the Holy Wars. In the form of the Gemini symbol on the left shoulder and over the heart on the back, where Lydia and Elena had their injuries from Romulus and Remus. Tiernan and Owen had the Gemini symbol partly masked by some birthmarks, so it was not so obvious on them.”

For some reason, Saga and Kanon felt really unnerved by the silence around the table now. 

“...Amari and Sade had that mark on their bodies when they were born?”

“Yes, but not only that. Gemini Ayaan was their birth father. ” 

It was likely for the best that neither Saga or Kanon had eaten or drank anything in that moment, else they would have done a spit take in shock. 

“Wait… WHAT?! ” 

Of course, Saga and Kanon knew stories where Saints had families without giving up their Sainthood or service to Athena, and that some of those children would end up succeeding the parent, Leo Regulus becoming the new Leo Saint after his father Illas in the 18th century was a well-known example. 

“...how…?” 

Both Amari and Sade seemed uncomfortable with sharing that tale, perhaps due to the fact that Ayaan had been banished from the Sanctuary after stealing the Scythe and undoing the seal on it. 

“We are born in the year 706 AD according to the Christian way of counting, and with the Holy War proving true to happen in 746, it would be perfectly logical to believe that we would not be involved in it apart from possibly witnessing it happen and see the Gemini Saints fight for Athena, after that Father had trained his successors. But when we arrived into the living world on that 25th May after a successful birth, everything seeming like we would grow up in the typical lifestyle of the nomadic tribe of our Mother with Father coming to visit us from time to time as he still served the Sanctuary…and had those marks on our tiny bodies…Father realized in unimaginable horror that we would be the next set of twins caught up in that Curse, that we, at the age of forty, would fight in the Holy War as the new Gemini Saints. ” 

His paternal instinct as a father wanting his children to be alive and not have them be haunted by something that would kill them. Knowing what had happened to the Gemini twins in the two previous Holy Wars. 

“So…he stole the Scythe from the Sanctuary despite knowing that it would be a reason to be executed…in an attempt to break the Curse once for all? Since Chronos is the Greek god of time?”  

Recalling what he had read in the ancient scrolls, Shion took over: 

“Ayaan did not manage to break the Curse, but instead he tried to twist it. By placing upon himself. With the Scythe, he caused a rift in the flow of time, temporarily breaking the connection between the present where his children was newborn and future where their adult selves would be the Gemini Saints after succeeding himself in serving Athena, adding those forty years upon himself to age prematurely so that the Curse would kill him instead of Amari and Sade during the Holy War in 746.” 

All this had been recorded in the writings after that the aged-up Ayaan had been found by his fellow Saints, and it had only been firm orders from Ishir that had prevented that he was killed on sight for his crime. 

“Pope Ishir showed mercy when Father explained why he had done it, since Ishir had witnessed the Curse of Gemini himself with Tiernan and Owen. He did not strip Father of his Sainthood on the grounds that the crime had been done with honest intentions to prevent that Athena would risk to lose one of the needed Gemini twins before the Holy War broke out, but instead chose to banish him from the Sanctuary for the coming ten years, ordering him to stay with the tribe of his wife and raise us as a family in the Sahara desert, so it would not seem like Father escaped any punishment at all apart from suddenly becoming a old man by his own actions…” 

Sade interrupted herself, using the sleeve on her craftan to wipe away the tears that threatened to emerge. Amari also looked very emotional at remembering what their father had sacrificed for their sake, because he had not wanted them to live knowing that they risked death because of the toxic resentment from two long-dead brothers from the Roman Empire. Taking over from his sister, Amari did his best to speak with his normal voice despite that he generally did not talk very often, partly as a result of his congenital hearing impairment that had slowly turned into real deafness over his life, and because he was of a silent character: 

“Father chose to bear that burden on his shoulders, to suffer a legacy of questionable behavior that would shame his name as a Saint, because he knew that Lady Athena would need both me and Sade alive at her side.” 

Unwrapping what she had brought before, Sade revealed a painting that had to be one of her older brother's drawings on canvas as a young boy. It was a clear family portrait with the two of them, an African woman around her late twenties to early thirties and a much older African man whose beard and hair was all white as a sign of high age. 

“What happened…when those ten years of banishment had passed?” 

The African brother and sister immediately turned serious again at that question from Saga. 

“Being 75 years at his return to the Sanctuary, did not stop Father from insisting on training us two personally as the new Gemini Saints or bringing our mother Fatima with him when she refused to divorce him and get a chance of remarrying to a younger man that could give her more children than just the two of us. He would end up having only seven years left to live, but he wanted to make use of those remaining few years of his lifespan to ensure that we would be a very different legacy from his crime.”     

Irina did actually laugh a bit at hearing the detail of how Fatima had chosen to stay with Ayaan despite how he had changed. Divoce had been legal in Viking culture, a right for the women that she and Daria had witnessed themselves. 

“Even if there are better marriage offers after separating from a husband, he may have proven himself to actually have been such a good match in the longer run, that only a fool would leave him in favor of another man who fails to live up to the standards of what the wife is used to from the first husband.”

And with this beginning, where their birth father had tried to twist the intended fate for them already when they were less than a day old, Amari and Sade shared their life story as the Gemini twins of the mid-8th century AD, serving Athena in the Holy War of 746.  

Chapter Text

The Sanctuary of Athena, late summer of year 723 AD:        

There were not many mourners around the newly dug grave in the graveyard of deceased Saints as the body wrapped in a simple shroud was lowered into the earth. A widow, her son and daughter, and a young foster child that had joined the family not long before the death of the family patriarch from high age. But one of them stood out by his role in the Sanctuary when Athena was not there. 

“You did not need to come here when Father is laid to his final rest, Pope Ishir. People have already spent the past seven years wondering why you let Father return from his banishment in the first place. They will gossip about why you would even be here.”

The former Virgo Saint looked at Sade, who stood beside her twin brother, both hugging their crying mother in this very emotionally difficult scene. Seventeen years old, ranking as the new Gemini Saint since a few months ago, yet also carrying the burden of the deed which had given their birth father a such questionable reputation for posterity. 

“Ayaan had no wicked intentions when he stole the Scythe of Chronos seventeen years ago, when you two were less than a day old,” Ishir said with a sorrowful look at the grave as it was being covered over by earth, “Even if he could not break the “Curse of Gemini” which you was branded with, he wanted to try freeing you from dying before the Holy War. It is true that he committed a crime, but his motive for said action is not what I would call treason against Lady Athena. Rather, an act of desperation to prevent a disaster for the Saints when the Holy War comes.”

They knew the tale. They had heard their Father explain his actions so many times over their childhood, about the “Curse of Gemini” that had started almost five hundred years ago, and how they were tangled into it as the next set of twins who would fight for Athena as the Gemini Saint. 

“....thank you for understanding why he did it, your Holiness. Without it, our lives would have been much harder,” Fatima, the mother of Amari and Sade, spoke without looking away from the grave that held the body of her late husband.  

“Lady Athena may not be here right now, but if her incoming incarnation is anything like her previous self that I served as the Virgo Saint in 296, then she would never accept that Ayaan had been executed without us at least asking him about the motive why he committed his crime. After all, such a quick action can prove to be a grave mistake in the longer term, not seen in the moment it is done.”  

Ishir could not blame the brother and sister for feeling conflicted yet not wanting to admit it openly. On one hand, he had shown mercy to their father despite that Ayaan normally would have been executed, but at the same time, this meant that the whole Sanctuary was viewing them with distrust because of his actions, and whispers about them possibly going down the same path as Ayaan had done. 

With the burial over and escorting their mother back home to the cottage where they had lived in the past seven years, Amari and Sade knew that they had to return to their duties in three days when the mourning period was over. 

“Anshu, can you please stay with Mother while we returning to our duties? The healers said that you can not restart your training yet, because of the injuries you had when coming here.” 

The seven-year-old looked at Sade, trying to understand her attempt to speak in Hindi since he did not understand much Greek or Arabic yet. Four months ago, Ayaan had informed Pope Ishir that there was something suspicious with the increasing number of new graves on the edge of the rose garden around the Pisces Temple, and during the investigation, it was revealed that the not exactly mentally stable Pisces Saint had hidden a high number of orphans from across the known world and mixed his blood with them all in an attempt to find a successor, almost all of those children had been poisoned to death. Being the only child left alive, with a broken arm and covered in rather nasty bruises that was from the hand size of a adult, Anshu had been brought to the family of the former Gemini Saint since Ishir had hoped that being in a nuclear family may help the traumatized boy to open up and recover from what he had witnessed.  

“.....help…? Sweeping?” the Indian boy asked slowly, pointing towards the broom used to clean out the henhouse when he did not find the right words. He had begun to talk more and did understand Greek a lot better than before, but today he had been almost as quiet as when he first came to the family, clearly being affected by the death of Ayaan. 

“No, no! Just…stay with her, please? She is very sad now because Father is gone,” Amari hurried to add in, lifting up his ten years younger foster brother in his arms and carrying him inside to where Fatima had seated herself at her loom to weave more fabric. 

“Mrs Fatima!” Anshu said in a slightly raised voice to get her attention. 

“Ah, thank you for bringing Anshu indoors, I was worried that he would trip because he was crying so hard earlier. Please bring some more water from the well, please?” Fatima asked as Amari set Anshu down beside her. 

“Yes, Mother.” 

 ~X~X~X~X~X~X    

Three days later:

Coming near the training area, the twins spit up, with Sade taking the Gemini Cloth. 

“I will take the patrol, brother, and you training on developing that new attack that we hope will help you in the future with your congenital hearing impairment?” 

He nodded in return. From an early age when their parents had realized why Amari often asked people to repeat themselves or seemed to not hear things clearly when they were in a rather noisy place like a market, they had known that his handicap risked becoming a fatal flaw in battle, especially if he kept losing his hearing over time and eventually went deaf for real. 

“Right. Do not let those bullies think that they can target you for their mean words and cruelty about your poor hearing. Remember how Father always said that not all historical Saints in Athena have been of perfect health, be it physical or mentally. Unlike what those poorly educated idiots think, some of the most famous Saints have been among those “flawed” ones that seemed most unlikely to succeed in becoming a Saint and serving Athena.” 

It was information like this that had helped Amari to not feel like he was worth less than his sister, that his handicap was not an obstacle in the dream of following in their father's footsteps and serving Athena as the Gemini Saint.

“Yes, sweet sister of mine.” 

For Sade, it was perfectly normal to try supporting her brother at times when she knew that he needed it, but she had also learned from an early age that she had to allow Amari to deal with difficult situations himself. If she acted as if he was helpless without her, then their sibling relationship risked being strained because Amari resented that he was treated like he could not do anything himself and was dependent on others for everything. 

Personally, Amari preferred to train in places where other Saint apprentices would be, partly for the fact that he did not want any innocents to end up caught in his slowly developed and more refined new attack. 

“Focus on my Cosmo…make a clear image of it in my mind…” 

A glowing image of the Zodric showed up under his feet, and it spread out in a very wide circle around him as the center. 

“...yes. I can sense something in the distance, since I am using my Seventh Sense to strengthen the reading of my surroundings. A disturbance?”

“Amari! ”

Suddenly his focus broke at the cry from Arash, a young student of the Scorpio Saint, who came running. In haste, Amari ended the Cosmo circle so the younger boy were not hurt by mistake. 

“Is something wrong….”

“The new Persian girl! Those mean guys who always say that only Greeks should become Saints of Athena! They stole both her clothing and her mask right now when she was washing off in the river after training! I saw them run off with her stuff while she screamed for them to give the clothes back!” 

Oh, oh. It was true that female Saints would rather be seen naked than without their masks, unless it was for someone they loved or saw as a very dear friend, but having to remain in the river water, which was rather cold even now in summer? 

“I will help. And I will tell Sade about it, too.” 

Hopefully, his long caftan was enough to cover her up and the sleeves an alternative to cover her face. Not to mention, his sister and her fellow female Saints would never let this go unpunished.

~X~X~X~X~X~X    

Indeed, Sade had met up with the other female Saints for a short talk, when they became aware of an incoming presence. 

“Isn't that your twin, Sade?” 

Amari landed with grace next to them, carrying a slightly younger person in his arms. 

“Nasrin!? What happened, sir Amari?!”

“Her clothes and mask got stolen earlier, which Arash witnessed and came to get me in the hope that I would be able to help her from getting sick, after needing to remain in the river.” 

Of course, this information caused the atmosphere around all the female Saints to drop in temperature, though it was not aimed at Amari. He always treated them with respect, and this was returned. 

“What?!” 

“Both her clothes and mask?!” 

“Those guys who always look down on you for your hearing problems?” Sade asked in a chilly tone, showing why she was sometimes referred to as the leader of the female Saints. 

“Yes.” 

“Tell young Arash that we will return this favor later, when we have found something suitable for a boy his age. This is a good example of why we Saints should help each other and build up bonds of trust between us.” 

Taking the twelve-year-old girl from her brother, Nasrin using a wide sleeve on his craftan to cover her face, Sade gave out orders to the others about what to do: 

“Spit up in pairs and search for those guys around the Sanctuary! When finding them, let them have a taste of what we female Saints think of this “prank” of theirs! ” 

Alrough Nasrin was looking away from him, Amari showed why many of the younger children would admire him: 

“Let the healers check on you so you do not fall sick from the long stay in the cold water, alright, miss Nasrin?” 

Even with the wide sleeve covering her face, it was rather obvious that she was blushing. 

“....y-yes!” she said in her native Persian, trying to not stare at him for too long. And Sade had to hold back a smile over that Nasrin would become yet another member of the future Saints who would not view Amari and herself in a negative light for what their late father had done almost two decades ago. That the next generation would see them, the twins who were the current Gemini Saint, as role models. 

Helping Nasrin over to a hut where the women and girls would have some spare clothing for this sort of situation, Sade also took the chance to ask: 

“Did they…see more of you than your back?” 

Realizing what the African woman referred to, Nasrin violently shook her head. 

“N…no! I…do not think so…nor did sir Amari…” 

“That is good. Those who feel that their souls are not in the right body, are having enough trouble in their everyday life and revealing their naked bodies to others. Poor Anshu will have a hell starting when he starts to bleed every month as a reminder that he actually was born as a girl, and you being a eunuch yet viewing yourself as a girl…” 

Althougth Nasrin had not spoken much of it during the months that she had spent so far in the Sanctuary, the scars on her lower body was enough proof of what birth gender she had been originally, and what sort of horror she had faced at a younger age when getting caught by slave traders who specialisted in delivering “safe” workers for royal courts in the East who did not want the women of the royal harem to be guarded by intact men and risk having children not sired by the ruler. In other words, eunuchs, enslaved boys who had been castrated at a young age. 

“There is no rule saying that the Saints of Athena must be intact men or following rigid gender norms, Nasrin. You have the same chance to become the Sagittarius Saint, just like all the under students of your trainer.”

“You think so, miss Sade?” 

Some doubt was understandable, since Nasrin already had faced some difficulties in life so far due to identifying as a girl. 

“Yes. It is those like you and Anshu, who must remind those narrow-minded ones that the wearers of the Cloths are all different personalities, strengths and abilities. If Athena did not allow those to become Saints or dismissed them for not living up to an rather limiting ideal of perfectly able bodies and minds with no handicaps at all, quite a few of the historical Holy Wars would have ended with Hades winning.” 

Those were the teachings of the late Gemini Ayaan to his son and daughter as they grew up, to prepare them for what sort of Goddess they would serve, if they managed to take over his role as the Gemini Saint. And both Amari and Sade had sworn to pass on those teachings to their fellow Saints and new generations. 

Chapter Text

Year 731 AD, Sanctuary of Athena:  

“Athena, wait! You are going to fall down the stairs if you do not slow down!” 

“Miss Athena!”     

It was now five years since the Athena of this era had been reborn as a baby, and like most children of that age group, she had quite the energy to burn if she was in a good mood. 

“Got you, cutie! Was Pope Ishir taking too long in his duties to not come and play with you as promised?” Sade smiled as she showed off how the Gold Saints could move at the speed of light, tossing the young Goddess up in the air and then catching her again a few times, making her laugh in joy. 

“Again, Sade! Again, Sade!”

“Thanks for helping us catch her before something happened, lady Sade!” some worried nursemaids thanked the twenty-five-year old female Gemini twin as Sade landed in front of them with no problems. 

“I have some free training with young children thanks to Anshu when he was just two years older than what Athena is now. So no reason to worry.” 

“Sade!” Athena said aloud, demanding her attention, “where is Amari and Nasrin?” 

Oh, she had wanted to see the female Sagittarius Saint train on her dance performance, where Amari often would be seen and painting something?

“Ah…they were sent on a mission by Pope Ishir three days ago, sweetie, I do not know when they will be back.” 

Athena made an unhappy face at learning this. Then, she asked something out of the blue, like most children would do at times: 

“Are they going to kiss like you and Eagle Lihua did yesterday?” 

This caught Sade off guard, with the reveal that someone had indeed seen her and her female lover despite trying to find a private place for some more romantic mood. 

“Why do you think that my brother and Nasrin would kiss each other?!” 

“He is looking at her in the same way as you and Lihua do without your masks on your faces,” Athena answered bluntly, as if that was the most obvious thing for anyone to know. 

“...I am having a talk with the Pope. Right now.” 

And under the confused protests of Athena, Sade hurried up towards the Chamber of the Pope with her in the adult woman's arms. One reason to why she had been a bit alarmed about the young Athena noticing how her brother looked at Nasrin, was the risk of rather uncomfortable questions: 

With his congenital hearing impairment which was viewed as an undesirable handicap for a Saint by the same people who looked down on them for what their late father had done despite that twenty-five years had passed, Amari had a history of rather poor, short-lived relationships when it came to romance. Narrow-minded people who did not see his true self, who looked down on him for not hearing normally and would make fun of him when all Amari wanted to be loved by someone outside his family members and few friends. 

And one of those who Sade believed to see the true worth of her older twin brother, was Sagittarius Nasin. 

“The problem is that Nasrin is actually likening my brother as well now when she is an adult woman as well, but she is so scared of confessing her feelings to him because she is aware of how his previous experiences risk making him think that she intends to mock him as well!” Sade thought for herself while mentally cursing those thick scars in his heart that Amari only revealed in paintings that no one was allowed to see without his own permission, and hoped that this time, her brother could find happiness with someone who saw him for who he was. 

 ~X~X~X~X~X~X    

Somewhere in Egypt, alongside the Nile: 

No matter how much Nasrin hated to remember how she had ended up with this body, she was very grateful that her castration into a eunuch had given her one serious blessing for fighting as a Saint in the form of long arms and legs. Sure, she could sometimes be called a beanstalk as a joke by her fellow female Saints because of her height and those long limbs, but it was never done with unfriendly intentions. 

“Arrow of Faith!” 

One of the last foot soldiers of Hades was shot down with the golden arrow of the Sagittarius Saint. 

“Good shot there, Nasrin!” 

It was rare for Amari to do missions outside the Sanctuary because his poorer hearing risked causing misunderstandings, but when two Gold Saints were sent out together, like he and Nasrin this time, it worked with her covering his weakness

“Thank you…eh!?!” 

Suddenly, the leather strap keeping her mask fastened revealed itself to have been partly cut in two pieces in two during the fight despite how those bandits would have been common foot soldiers for Hades, and what was even more distressing for Nasrin in this very moment, was how both the mask and her headscarf suddenly slid off her head. 

“....ah!” Amari realized in growing alarm what this risked to have for outcome when he felt her Cosmo suddenly send out emotions of distress and naturally turned around to see what the cause could be, with her mask not covering her bare face. After all, the rule for this sort of situation said that a female Saint had to either love or kill the man who saw her without her mask. It was not without reason that many female Saints across the generations wanted to get this law abolished, for while it did give them the power of a choice, not all of them, like Sade and Lihua, wanted to kill someone who had seen their face in an honest accident. Not to mention, there were also tales of how said law risked being abused by both men and women to force someone else into an unwanted relationship.  

“I was not doing this on purpose, Amari! ” Nasrin called out to him while trying to cover her face in both hands and backing away, referring to how Islamic women would always cover their hair, which she, Sade and a few other of the female Saints were doing as a way of showing their faith. By backing away, she also tried to non-verbally tell the African Saint that she did not want to kill him. 

“Nasrin…wait!”

But she was already running away at the speed of light, ignoring that her mask and scarf had been left behind. 

“Nasrin…” 

Thanks to having a sister who could enlighten him about this rather idiotic rule for the female Saints, Amari could tell that Nasrin must feel deeply conflicted about what just happened. And to be honest, he felt the same. Mainly because he had hoped to use this mission as an opportunity to tell her that he wanted to try out a courtship with her, if she would like. 

Back in the Sanctuary, it was pretty impossible to miss how Nasrin basically crash-landed into the Sagittarius Temple. 

“Nasrin? Nasrin, where is Amari? What happened to make you rush home like this?” 

Sade had seen the Sagittarius Cloth standing in the outer hall, so she went straight to the inner chambers, where she found the five years younger woman curled up into a ball under a blanket. 

“It is all over now, thanks to my own carelessness during the battle….he was not supposed to see my face or my hair! I tried to cover myself before he turned around due to sensing my Cosmo shuddering in alarm over the leather strap breaking, but he did see it. He did see it very clearly because I was careless!” 

Oh, Sade did understand what Nasrin had to be so distressed about. 

“I would rather have you as a sister-in-law than a murdered brother because of that damn law, you know.”

A faint crying could be heard from below the blanket. 

“What if he does not want to be married to me because of seeing my face?! I know how those previous relationships shattered some of his self-confidence, because one of those people saw him outside his handicap! I do not want him to think that I am like…them…that I will only pretend to act affectionate towards him in public and then belittle him behind closed doors!” 

Feeling a headache entering, Sade knew that this was going to be another situation where she was caught between two people she cared for. 

“Mother?” she called as Fatima just passed with the empty bread basket in her arms that suggested she had been delivering some freshly baked bread to Athena, “Please come over here and help me? Nasrin and my brother have ended up in a situation where they both are caught between a rock and a hard place.” 

“Amari and Nasrin? Ayaan, please give me some wisdom to help those two and not make it worse,” Fatima whispered for herself as she entered the Sagittarius Temple.

Just to avoid any misunderstandings when he returned late that evening from Egypt, Amari did mention the accident to Pope Ishir, who agreed that it was a tricky situation. 

“What are your own feelings about all this, Amari? I know that you like to watch Nasrin when she does that dance training that she faintly remembers from her young childhood before more sorrowful things happened to her.” 

Amari did look away slightly, as if he felt somewhat ashamed for watching Nasrin in such a manner. But he did often see Nasrin fly around in the sky, and do those graceful movements with her long-limbed body whenever she did the usual training or dancing… 

It was a grace that he wanted to try catching in his paintings, even if it would be only a faint echo. 

“I do not know if she feels alright with a more or less forced relationship out of the blue, if she does not choose to kill me, sire.”

At least he was honest in that, and Ishir chose to not poke further into this. It was for the two Saints involved to fix this mess, they were fully grown adults several years back, even with the age difference of five years between them, and more than old enough to deal with those sorts of situations themselves. 

“Amari, welcome back!” Anshu greeted from the back of the Pisces Temple at seeing his former foster-brother leave the Chamber of the Pope, holding up a lantern next to his face so Amari could see his face clearly, “Hm? Isn't that the headscarf of Nasrin? And her mask?!” 

And Amari had to explain the whole thing a second time for the evening. 

“Daw, really a nasty situation, indeed. I am grateful that I am not going through any of that nonsense…yet…I mean, I am fifteen already, so something in the romance field is likely to hit me hard soon.” 

Somehow, seeing Anshu showing a faint nervousness though his body language, looking side-ways before focusing on him again, made Amari smile a little in sympathy.  

“Enjoy those blissful moments of peace before it hits you, yes.” 

Of course, with Anshu identifying himself as a man despite being born on the body of a woman, he was sort of blurring the normal lines between the male and female Saints. 

“Sorry for not being able to offer any useful advice here, though…” 

But Amari was grateful that Anshu did not think that either he or Nasrin had done anything wrong. Just like Pope Ishir also said, it was an honest accident that could happen between many Saints of Athena, and it was the law who proved problematic because it forced Nasrin to choose and Amari having to worry about how she would act, not the two Saints this time. 

“Do not apologize, as you admitted yourself, you have yet to know how it is to be in love. Wisdom comes throughout life no matter what age a person is, in the form of experiences and new knowledge that will be collected every day of your life.” 

 ~X~X~X~X~X~X    

Over the coming seven days, neither Nasrin or Amari made contact with each other. Apart from leaving her mask and headscarf at the entrance to the Sagittarius Temple so she could cover up herself as normally, the male half of the Gemini twins stayed away from her. 

“Oi, Sade. Earth to Sade, your head is up among the clouds. Are you fearing the worst scenario to happen?” Lihua asked when noticing that Sade was staring out into nothing.  

“Of course I am! I do not want to lose my brother, but I also do not want to see Nasrin force herself into a relationship that she and Amari feels to be…based on something they were forced into against their own will.” 

That was a polite way of saying it, since they both knew of stories where the mask law had caused miserable relationships because the female Saint had not wanted to kill the male who had seen her face, and the man or boy feeling trapped in a relationship which he can not leave on the risk of being killed.

“Ugh…of all the times I want to be a helpful sister to my brother, especially after everything in the past, it is impossible for me to do something!” 

But the worst was this anxious fear she felt, to dread that every time she saw Amari, it risked to be the last time she would see him alive. 

On the other hand, Amari had gone to the place where he knew Nasrin to be found dancing. 

“A good breeze is passing though.”

Spotting her, he did let go of several parchments where he had drawn her in various poses and situations in the past, the wind carrying them towards where Nasrin just had removed the mask to wipe off her face with some cloth. 

“Ah….?”  

Understandably, she got a little curious about seeing the parchments land around her, and when turning one upwards, naturally blushed when seeing that it was a drawing of herself, dressed in the Sagittarius Cloth and its wings spread out behind her like she was about to fly off to the sky. Made in the characteristic style of Amari. 

“We need to talk, Nasrin.” 

She almost jumped in fright at hearing his deeper voice so close, with her focus on the same artistic skills that had caught her own eye long before realizing that she liked Amari more than just as a friend. 

“Um…Amari…about what happened on the last mission…even if it was an honest accident that you saw my face…you see, for the past year…” 

Her body language spoke of nervousness, even as she did not yet turn around. With how the female Saints wore those masks, he and Sade had agreed on the importance of being able to read their body language when their faces was covered like that, and given that Amari knew of the very real possibility that he one day would go completely deaf in the future due to an injury in battle or similar, he wanted to read other people though their body language from a early age. 

“Yes?” he asked kindly, hoping to help her a little that way. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, Nasrin turned around to face him, no longer hiding her face with her hands as the mask laid on a stone nearby.

“I-if you are fine with it, then I…I would…I mean…I have been liking you for the past year! Not merely as a fellow Saint of Athena and a good friend…but as a man that I want to marry! It has nothing to do with you seeing my face eight days ago, I mean in a real, romantic sense! ” 

Glaring around in case someone would see them, Amari laid his hands gently on her shoulders and then stunned Nasrin by kissing her on the mouth. 

“Then we are even in that feeling. Because when the mission was over, I was thinking of asking if you would like to try a courtship with me.” 

There, he had finally said the words that he had wanted her to hear since a few months back. 

“....y-you….really…mean it?” the female Sagittarius Saint asked, wondering if this was a dream that she would soon wake up from. 

“Do you want another kiss to prove it? he teased in a friendly manner, and she shook her head, feeling bubbling emotions of joy and victory in her chest. 

“Amari!” they could hear Sade calling from somewhere, “Where are you? Not the right time for you to start a new painting, it is time for the new captain of the Sanctuary guards to be named and you know why the Pope wanted you to be present!”

For some reason, Amari smiled. 

“Come, I think you will like to witness this.” 

He picked up his scattered drawings from the ground and the mask, which he then gave to Nasrin so she could cover her still very blushing face again. Then, holding hands, they left together. 

 ~X~X~X~X~X~X    

Being the Captain of the Sanctuary guards was an important role due to them being the main defense of the Sanctuary if all the Saints were out fighting in the Holy War or some other situation that made a lot of Saints be absent.  

“I have chosen the new Captain after much thinking of every possible choice,” Pope Ishir addressed the crowd gathered in front of the Aries Temple, “and the candidate I ended up picking, was offering a suggestion that could be useful for both the guards and the Saints, even for future generations.”

Of course, this did draw attention. 

“Both the guards and the Saints?”

“Even future generations?”  

“What could that be?” 

Seeing that Amari and Nasrin had arrived, Ishir chose the moment to reveal the new Captain of the guards: 

“The one chosen as the new Captain is… Gemini Amari. ” 

Of course, there were some mixed reactions when the name was revealed. And one woman among the civilians, who had openly mocked Amari in the past for his poor hearing outside the rather worn-out scorn towards the Gemini twins about the deeds of their late father Ayaan, even had a nerve to say straight out: 

“What use is a handicaped Saint who can not even hear properly!? No, let someone else with normal abilities take that role…or someone with a less criminal lineage.” 

“SHUT UP ABOUT MY BROTHER AND FATHER!!” 

Then, all of a sudden, the intended rant was broken off by Sade closing one fist and showing no restraint about literally hitting the other woman straight in the face, sending her flying a distance away.  

“If being “ normal ” means belittling those who are different and acting all high and mighty, like you are better than those persons, then shut up!!” Sade kept raising her voice despite not shouting, and looked ready to strike out again if needed as the other woman sat up in shock with a nasty bruise forming on her cheek and her mouth bleeding, “You know nothing of the world outside this part of Greece, having never traveled beyond our hidden borders!! You dare to look down on Amari and act as if he is worthless, even now… because he refused to let you treat him like a helpless child who is depending on others for every single little thing in daily life, was it? Stop viewing him as less able than others! So what if he is having difficulty hearing? If you bothered to look up historical Saints from the past, you would find that quite a few of them have successfully served Athena despite their handicaps!”  

As Sade raged and even had to be held back by Amari with a hand on her shoulder to avoid the situation going out of control, Ishir had actually expected this sort of reaction on his choice. Besides, it was really getting worn-out with people trying to bring up the infamous deed of Ayaan as an excuse to look down on his now adult twin children.  

“Just how many times do I have to do this every year before you people learn to stop insulting Ayaan for his deeds into the faces of his offspring or stop taking all five functional senses for granted? Sometimes I get the not very flattering impression that a group of monkeys would be more intelligent than us humans. Tenbu Hōrin! ” 

With the most powerful attack of the Virgo Saint, Ishir stripped all of the protesters of two senses. To give them a taste of what sort of life that Amari would have in the future, he chose to remove their hearing, and the ability to speak by numbing their tongues as they kept using hurtful words against the Gemini twins about Ayaan or how he would “taint” their lives by being the massive shadow neither one would ever step out from. 

“Spending the next twelve months as fully deaf and mute should teach you a lesson about how much you take your hearing and ability to speak for granted in everyday life.”  

With the protesters quickly scared off by Sade raising her Cosmo in a very threatening manner, Amari could finally speak in peace: 

“As His Holiness said, I have an idea that can be rather useful in situations for both the guards and Saints. To be precise, a sign language with set signs that means either words or a whole meaning. Sister, Anshu? Can you please help me show an example of what I mean?” 

Nodding, Sade made a set of hand signals to the young Pisces Saint, who sent back a different signal.

“Sade just said “Incoming enemy attack, be on guard” in this sign language that I have figured out, and Anshu responded with “You as well, comrade”. In a situation where calling out our position to an enemy, this sign language could be a savior to agree on plans or other forms of agreements.” 

Among those who looked very curious about this sign language and how Amari made some rather good points in how it would be useful in situations where talking was impossible, was Capricorn Cyrus. 

“Have you made a sign for Lady Athena?” 

Smiling at the question, Amari made the symbol of Nike, by first drawing a straight line and then a circle on top, that would be seen on banners and other places here in the Sanctuary, which was quite natural as a symbol for Athena herself. 

“I expect everyone to gather at my new office tomorrow, and that you all will learn this new sign language. Remember, it can prove useful no matter what you think of this idea right now.”  

Thankfully most seemed rather eager once they had gotten over the shock that he would be the new Captain of the Sanctuary guards, and Amari hoped that it would remain so. He was not afraid of challenges, but he did agree with Sade and Ishir: 

People really needed to look past his poor hearing as his main trait, or thinking that the twins would never be able to get a legacy outside their father.   

~X~X~X~X~X~X    

Of course, they had to talk with Fatima about how Amari not only had been chosen as the new Captain of the Sanctuary guards, but also about him and Nasrin agreeing to be in a relationship. But to the surprise of her two children, when Nasrin admitted the main reason why she would not be able to give her possible mother-in-law grandchildren, Fatima did not seem too upset. 

“Not having any grandchildren from either Sade or Amari is not the end of the world, despite what most people may think in such situations. I want my babies to be happy with their partners, not feeling as if they must follow the norm by having a partner of the opposite gender and having children in a traditional marriage. If I want young children to dote upon as I grow older, there are always new orphans arriving to the Sanctuary who would need a mother figure.” 

Being married to Ayaan as a Saint of Athena, had opened a whole new world for Fatima about people who would be different. Yes, he had been only five years older than herself, but he had a completely different area of wisdom and experience which she, as his wife, had never known or even been thinking about prior to their first meeting because she honestly did not know any other life than living in a nomadic tribe and expected to follow the same traditional life as a wife and mother like all the other women and girls in the tribe. 

“Thank you for accepting Nasrin, Mother.” 

The African widow smiled at her son as he bowed his head in gratitude. It clearly helped that Nasrin was not a random stranger showing up at the side of her son all of a sudden, but that she was a long-time friend of Sade and Lihua as well. 

“I still expect you two, and those two ladies over there, to be wed in a proper wedding ceremony after a betrothal period with lots of witnesses in a few months, though. No rude gossip about my family members acting out of line for acceptable behavior!” Fatima suddenly said, pointing at the shocked Sade and Lihua next to her. 

“Mom, can we not be allowed two separate ceremonies to be held over two days? Amari and I are already sharing our birthday every year and we became the Gemini Saint together eight years ago. We would like some major event in our lives to not be shared with the other twin for once, right, brother?”

Amari nodded to what Sade had just said. 

“Yes, something to not be shared between us as twins for once, yes.” 

Well, that was a rather humble request from both mother and daughter that the two couples could agree to. Fatima would get two daughters-in-laws, and Sade and Amnari would get separate wedding days. Besides, it was not like the food and drinks served at such grand events would run out already the next day with careful planning. 

Chapter Text

Year 746 AD, somewhere in northern Greece: 

A rift to another dimension opened, and both the Gemini twins landed on the ground. 

“If you do not mind, brother.” 

Snapping her fingers near both his ears, Sade once again checked how his hearing worked by his reaction. As she did so, Amari spread a Cosmo version of the Zodiac around them as a way to notice enemies. 

“I can hear you, sister.” 

Over the passing years, they had noticed that Amari was slowly going deaf for real, and doing solo missions were out of the question for him those days for the honest reason of him being caught by surprise from an enemy that may realize his weakness. 

“It is such a relief that you wearing the Gemini helmet, seems to protect the remaining hearing that you have left. If you go deaf now, just as the Holy War has started…it is not that I doubt your fighting ability, Amari, but I am scared of you getting hurt because you are not noticing an incoming attack from a different direction…” 

He gave a light pat on her shoulder to let Sade know that he did not blame her for having those thoughts. Being the younger twin, part of her self-identity was to both protect him and also try to be her own person. 

“They are following us! ” Amari suddenly said, as they both sensed a group of massive Cosmos coming closer. The very same ones that had been chasing them across all of Europe. Worse, they both felt how the curse marks, over Amari's heart on the back and her left shoulder, was starting to feel like they were burning. 

“Is it the Curse of Gemini that is attracting the Dream Gods!?” 

Given the very nature of the curse in question, aiming to either try to kill one Gemini twin before the Holy War or separating them in the fighting, it was not an impossible scenario. 

“No idea, sister, but we are NOT going anywhere near the Sanctuary and Lady Athena right now! Remember, they are serving Hades through their connection to Hypnos!” 

Opening two separate portals into the different dimensions, the twins split up in an attempt to separate the Dream Gods from each other as well. 

 ~X~X~X~X~X~X    

“Finally in the mood for some playing, Gemini princess?” Phantasos smiled as the female twin appeared. Molding her face into a look of seriousness, Sade reminded herself to be on guard. 

“I do not have time for playing around when I know that Lady Athena is needing both me and my brother at my side in this war.” 

But the god was only laughing. 

“You are really devoted to that brother of yours, are you not. But …I wonder, have you never really desired a reality where he was not needing you guarding his back all the time? Is he not sort of dependent on you or others?” 

Against her will, Sade twitched. That did strike deep into a very personal space inside her, and she knew it. Her fear for Amari and how his handicap affected his whole life. 

“My brother is stronger than he seems! And I trust him to take care of himself when I am not around! GALAXIAN EXPLOSION!! ” 

Unleashing the strongest attack of the Gemini Saint and then showing how flexible she was with her whole hobby of dancing and doing yoga in her free time, Sade hoped to make it harder for Phantasos to bring out her soul from her physical body. 

In his own dimension, Amari was kept busy with Icelus. The nightmare god's ability to bend space was problematic, and the male twin knew that his hearing was a true weakness in this fight. 

“Not good! Even with my Cosmo raised to try and trace his attacks, I am at a disadvantage!” 

“You seem pretty desperate to keep that helmet on your head as you move around, Gemini. Perhaps…it is your weak spot!” 

In horror, even with crossing his arms in front of himself in a desperate attempt of defense despite not wearing the Gemini Cloth, Amari was unable to avoid being pushed back with such force against his face that he was sent flying backwards. 

Both the twins were pushed out of their respective dimensions, and slammed into each other's back from the force. 

“UGH!! ” 

Gritting his teeth from the pain after they had landed on the ground, both bleeding from some wounds that Icelus had caused with his claws, Amari could feel his weakened eardrums react to the attack despite the Gemini helmet taking most of the hit, as the sound waves were not stopped. In fact, it hurt so much that he could not stand up, holding his hands over the sides of the helmet as a non-verbal signal to Sade that the strike against his head was a bad one. 

“Time to bring your heads to Lord Hades!” 

All four of the Dream Gods aimed for the twins together. 

“Amari, GET UP!!” Sade screamed, rushing in front of him out of an old habit from their earliest childhood. Worse, both of them could feel their curse marks for the Gemini Curse burning like they were being branded with a white-hot iron, like a warning that death was coming. 

“Die!”

Yet in that moment, a third Cosmo was sensed from a new rift in a dimension not of Earth, appearing at the side of them all. A African man in his mid-twenties, looking almost identical to how the twins had been in that age, wearing the Gemini Cloth and a massive scythe like he just had cut though time and space. 

“That face…! ” the twins realized, and the Dream Gods was surprised over this arrival: 

“Impossible! A second Gemini Cloth?! ” 

Spotting the adult versions of his newborn children being in the face of death, Gemini Ayaan did not hesitate for a single moment. 

“Amari, Sade! Get out of the way! GALAXIAN EXPLOSION!! ” 

Giving a taste of why he had been successful in training his children as his direct successors as the Gemini Saint, Ayaan managed to interrupt the attacks intended to kill them as Sade threw herself over Amari, pushing them both down on the ground. 

“Father…!” 

Using how the Dream Gods were distracted by his presence, Sade pulled out a wooden casket with the name of Athena written in Ancient Greek letters on the lid, made by Athena and Ishir, intended to seal away the Children of Hypnos until a later Holy War somewhere in the future. 

“Amari! Help me here!” 

Grabbing one of his painting brushes and focusing his Cosmo into it as a central point, Amari revealed a attack that was unique, created by him to make up for his slow loss of hearing alongside the Zodiac circle: 

“STARS OF THE CREATION!! ”

Just like how the Big Bang had created the universe, this Cosmo explosion blending with the Galaxian Explosion of Ayaan was so powerful that the Dream Gods were caught in its blinding light. 

“Impossible, a third Gemini Saint…?!” 

Holding up the casket in the air above her as she opened the lid, Sade trapped the Dream Gods within it. 

“Wrong generation. Father was the previous Gemini Saint before us, forty years ago! ” 

The blinding light was cut off as the seal of Athena was activated, and Ayaan knelt forwards from exhaustion as the gathered Cosmo of the four Dream Gods vanished, feeling how the scythe was slowly draining him of his lifespan the longer he held on to it. In fact, he was already aging rapidly as the twins looked at him. 

“Not yet…not yet, I can not go back yet…the Curse of Gemini…I will not let it…take you! Above you…!”  

Swinging the scythe again, Ayaan aimed at the dark shapes above Amari and Sade which had shown up as a sign of their incoming death, cutting those in half. As Amari and Sade already knew from their own past that he would only manage to twist the Curse to instead take his life, they knew that it was nothing they could do apart from letting Ayaan do this. After all, he was acting as a father fearing for his newborn children in his own timeline, not out of any personal desire for glory or anything such. 

“Father! Please, tell Mother that we both are happily married at this age! Lady Athena asked us to let you know that she is grateful for this sort of action despite what it will cost you…!” Sade cried out, trying to reach out for Ayaan as the rift began to close. 

Smiling faintly at them, Ayaan allowed the rift in time between their birth and current age to get closed again, his now whitish-grey beard and hair looking close to their earliest memories of their parents so long ago. 

“Serve our Goddess well against Hades, my children!” 

And he was gone. 

“I am sorry that we can not help you, Father…Amari, what is wrong!?” 

In fact, Anari was now kneeling over, almost touching the ground with his face from the pain that he had managed to avoid showing Ayaan to not cause their time-traveling father unneeded worry. 

“Amari?!” 

Carefully removing the Gemini helmet from her brother, Sade saw in horror how he was bleeding heavy from both his ears. 

“Amari! We need to bring you home right now!” 

Feeling that he was about to fall into unconsciousness while her terrified face became blurry in his view, Amari knew the last remnants of his hearing had been lost from how the Dream Gods had aimed at his head even with him wearing the Gemini helmet. The cost of Ayaan saving them both from death at the hands of the Dream Gods was him going completely deaf. 

“ ....I wanted to hear the voice of Nasrin one last time… ” 

As he fell into the darkness of unconsciousness, Amari did not notice how Sade dragged him into the other dimension and landed in the Sanctuary, screaming in panic for the healers as the other Gold Saints noticed the beaten-up twins at the Aries Temple. 

~X~X~X~X~X~X   

Of course, the news of him losing what little hearing he had left, was a horrible thing to learn for the whole family. The sight of Amari with bandages around his head to stop the bleeding from his eardrums, seemed to hammer in what really had happened. 

“Amari…my poor boy… my poor boy! ” Fatima cried as she hugged her son, and Nasrin was also crying over how this battle injury would affect her husband in everyday life from now on. Even if he could not hear a sound of what everyone said, Amari knew why they were acting like this. 

“So Ayaan managed to save you from being killed by the Curse of Gemini, just as he told me forty years ago, but naturally he would not know the outcome of your battle with the Dream Gods after that the rift in time was closed again…” Ishir said in honest sorrow when Sade had told him the full details of what had happened in their battle against the now sealed-away children of Hypnos. 

“It is not Father's fault! He had so little, limited time to act, before he risked being aged so much that he would be near death himself from old age…Just this small time here in the future for him, caused him to age forty years, from twenty - five to sixty - five…the same number of years that we are now in age…!” 

She was ranting as her way of showing how upset she was over Amari going deaf at the worst time possible. Seeing how Sade's closed fists were trembling from her emotions of shock and grief, Athena hugged her as a sign of showing support. 

“You can still fight, both of you. We only need to help Amari avoid being taken by surprise because he can no longer hear someone attack.” 

“Thank you, Athena…” 

The reborn Goddess was only twenty, but she still showed the needed support that both the Gemini twins needed now. 

For now, Amari was told to stay in the infirmary while Sade took the role of fighting as the Gemini Saint along with the other Saints, so the healers could overwatch his ears and try to see the full damage that had caused his deafness from the injuries. But he was not alone there: Anshu was in the infirmary after nearly dying from blood loss after needing to use a massive amount of the Crimson Thorn attack on the army of Hades a few days earlier, and given the amount of blood he had lost, Athena had been very firm on her Pisces Saint to not fight anymore for now. 

“Of all the times for you to go completely deaf, during the Holy War has to be the worst timing possible!” Anshu muttered, before using a simple wax tablet to write the same thing for Amari to read. Due to losing his left arm in battle during a mission a few years earlier, he had grown quite flexible in using his feet and toes to reach for things so as not to be limited in that he only had his right arm left. 

I am rather deaf than dead, you know. 

Sighing over that his former foster brother had a very good point about how things could be far worse, Anshu switched positions in bed so they could take the ordered rest instead of getting scolded by the healers for disobeying orders from Athena herself. 

~X~X~X~X~X~X   

As always when it happened every 250th year, the Holy War was brutal. Many Saints fell in battle, Lihua and Nasrin being among those to die when they defended Athena from attackers. 

“Grand Pope Ishir!” 

Athena and the Pope had teamed up for a barrier around the Sanctuary, even ordering the evaluation of the local villages to be gathered within the Sanctuary itself to avoid that more people died at the hands of the Specters. 

“You will not come anywhere near Lady Athena this time either, Emperor of the Underworld!” 

Even at the cost of his own life, Ishir showed the power of a survivor from a previous Holy War, using himself as bait to have Hades come close enough to force the Godly soul of his current host body. 

“Ishir!” 

Yet Athena saw a new danger, two of the Judges coming towards her, intending to kill her now when no Saints were near her as protection. Even with her own Cloth, it was a danger to her life. 

“Did they aim for the moment when I had just removed the soul of their Lord from his host…?! ” 

“ATHENA!! ” 

Out of the blue, she fell into a different dimension that opened up below her feet, only the firm hold on her Nike staff across the hole preventing Athena from falling into it completely, and Amari rushed forwards to face the Judges instead. 

“Not alone, brother dearest!” Sade called, showing up right next to him. 

Capturing Rhadamanthys and Aciacos straight on and pulling those with them up into the air above the Chamber of the Pope, the Gemini twins made a suicide attack by combining their Cosmos for a better chance of success:  

“Mother, we are sorry for leaving you all alone, but this is why Father took the risk with the scythe of Chronos all those years ago! For us to ensure that Lady Athena won the war once again! ” 

Somewhere in the distance to the ground far below, they could hear the horrified Fatima screaming their names as she saw what her children were about to do, and Athena saw the whole scene as well when she managed to climb back up from the dimension hole that Amari had sent her into. 

“GALAXIAN EXPLOSION!! ” 

 ~X~X~X~X~X~X  

Feeling dumb over how her victory against Hades came at the cost of losing so many Saints, somehow Athena did expect what she found at the Gemini Temple: 

The empty Gemini Cloth, and only a few personal items left of Amari and Sade to bury as substitute for their real bodies, a paint brush and headscarf. 

“My babies…! My babies…! ” 

With her violent crying as she knelt in despair in front of the Gemini Cloth, Athena could not blame Fatima if the old widow felt like Athena and her Saints had robbed her of her whole family. First the husband that she had loved so dearly, and now the two children that she had borne him. 

“I am proud of you…I really am…for you and Ayaan to protect humankind to the cost of your own lives…I am really proud of you all three…” Fatima whispered, trying to not let her raw grief overwhelm her common sense. Coming closer, Athena laid a hand on the shoulder of the kneeling woman. 

“I never intended to steal the Saints from their birth families or anyone else who holds them dear. I want them to join me by a free choice, not as something against their own will.” 

Feeling her tears start flowing again, Fatima could only give a weak nod in understanding. 

“Anshu,” Athena addressed the Pisces Saint, who used a pillar for supporting himself as he still was not fully recovered from his earlier blood loss, “I am afraid that you are the only Gold Saint left. You know what this means, do you?”  

Allowing his trembling legs to give out below him, Anshu knelt in front of Athena while her human body began to fade away.

“I swear to lead the Sanctuary and the new generation of Saints over the coming 250 years as the Grand Pope until your next rebirth, Lady Athena.” 

Smiling sadly over that she once again had to return to the realm of the Gods, Athena kissed Anshu on the forehead as a blessing for the future until their next meeting. 

“Live on to the best of your ability during your last years here on Earth, Fatima, with my blessing to return home to Africa if you want to get away from all the memories here in the Sanctuary, and know that both Ayaan, Amari and Sade did this so you could be free from the reign of Hades.” 

Handing Fatima the same family drawing of them all four as a family which Amari had done so many years ago before Ayaan had brought his wife and children to the Sanctuary as a sign of his ten years in exile coming to its end, Athena smiled a regretful smile at the Muslim widow as she faded out of sight.

“I will not leave. I will have my final rest beside my husband and children…” Fatima responded as she tried to not have her tears strain the drawing of her family. Coming over to his foster mother, Anshu hugged her, neither one saying anything in their shared grief over those who were now lost to death.

Chapter Text

Understandably, both Saga and Kanon were crying rather hard at the end of the tale, as Amai and Sade finished the story of their own life. 

“....j-just how….much did Romulus and Remus resent not becoming the Gemini Saint to end up causing whole families to be torn apart like that….?” 

It was Azel who answered, after that he and Amir remembered their own wives and children for a moment: 

“Proving just how childish and self-centered they were for their age, because until the arrival of Lydia and Elena, they had gotten everything they wanted in their lives served to them on a silver plate. To suddenly be rejected in front of all those witnesses by the very Gold Cloth they had trained twelve whole years for, and to see those younger twin sisters gaining a slowly growing support for the very role that they desired….clearly the whole Curse of Gemini was something in style of “If we can not be the Gemini Saint, then those chosen in the future shall pay the price for our rejection, just like Lydia and Elena.” And as our lifve stories in the Holy Wars have shown, that damn Curse indeed aimed to not let us Gemini twins show the united powers of us fighting together for Athena. A pair of immature, spoiled brats who were not used to being refused whatever they wanted.” 

For a moment, the mood around the table from the previous generations was pretty gloomy at that reminder. 

“Immature indeed.” 

“Lydia may be struck at age twelve, but both she, Tiernan, Owen and Elena are way more mature than what those two manchildren ever were.” 

“Hey! Remember that Elena and I are chronically the oldest ones here! I may not always act mature for my age but I am not menally a toddler!” Lydia protested, and Elena also hurried to defend the Irish twins who was more or less in the middle of said sisters ages: 

“Tiernan and Owen may be three years younger, but they are far more likely to be called proper men in terms of understanding that the world does not center around them and their desires or wishes….” 

SLAM!! 

Daria put a rather loud end to the possible quarrel by slamming two pot lids together. 

“Behave in front of our guests, will you?” she smiled sweetly, but her Cosmo was raised in a far more threatening manner that was a clear warning. And at her side, Irina was adding a silent death glare that Seti and Ramses knew to fear. 

“Yes, madam!” 

With the gloomy feeling gone, they changed subject to talk about: 

“At least this spiritual version of the Gemini Temple began to feel more like a real home when Sade and Amari arrived. It was not that easy for us four to always fix stuff by ourselves,” Elena spoke up.

“It was not a complete disaster with you four living alone here until our arrival, but yes, sometimes the touch of adults are needed, and this temple is too big for only four people living here,” Sade smiled at the seventeen-year-old. Checking on his pocket watch to see what time it was out in the real world, Shion could see that he and the living twins needed to return to their bodies soon or the Sanctuary may think that something had happened to them. 

“Saga, Kanon. I am afraid that we three can not remain here for much longer today to hear the story of Daria and Irina next. If our souls stay away from our flesh and bone bodies for too long, the thin line between a coma and actual risk of death begins to blur. Besides, you are needed down in the village tomorrow to help your family with the grain harvest, especially if every family wants food over winter.” 

This caught the attention of the other twin pairs as well. 

“Same for us. We may be spirits, but we are trying to pass time by doing what we were used to while being alive. Besides…. “Daria shot a side-glare on her younger twin sister, “since Irina had to witness the Curse affect two generations of the Gemini Saints in the Holy Wars….there are some unpleasant memories that she may find a little too difficult to mention right now.” 

The female Pope seemed stoic, but from the way her dominant hand had closed around the iron hammer symbol of the Norse thunder god Thor that both of them did wear as necklaces, Daria knew that Irina must be feeling an emotional storm of conflicted feelings inside. 

“Then we thank you all for letting Saga and Kanon know about your stories so far, and that we shall meet soon again when there are no pressing demands for us in the real world. I too, have learned details about your lives that have not been well documented in  the past for various reasons.” 

Laying a hand each on the heads of the boys, Shion made them bow slightly in goodbye for the older Gemini generations before they vanished back to their bodies. At once, Daria returned her attention to her sister, since the long sleeve of the robes Irina wore had hidden just how hard she had been holding the hammer like it was a lifeline she could not let go of: 

“Irina, let go of the sharpened edge of that hammer, you are holding it so hard that your fingers are bleeding!” 

At the sight of the bloodied fingers of their female master and foster mother, both Seti and Ramses naturally freaked out as they knew it to be a bad sign of how Irina was battling the memories of her long life. For her to not even notice herself cutting up the scars that were already on her fingers from before, it meant only two things: 

Either the memories of when she and Daria had served as the Gemini Saint in 996, or the night that had led to Seti and Ramses ending up in her care at a very young age. And both events were connected to the Curse  of Gemini. 

“Ramses, get the first-aid kit now! ”    

 ~X~X~X~X~X~X 

As it was almost evening here in the real world, Shion escorted Saga and Kanon to their birth home, since their family had wanted them all gathered for a real family dinner today due to the tasks of the following day.  

“Shion….do you think we can tell our parents and Grandma about what we have learned today?”  

He saw no problems in that, but still requested them to not mention any more private details of the lives of the previous Gemini twins, it would be breaking the newly started trust between them and the brothers that could very well be their new successors in the future.

Of course, the older family generations did notice that their two youngest members seemed oddly quiet while eating the meal. It was a perfectly normal dinner for this time of the year, and normally there would be some talk about tomorrow around the table, but today only the three adults seemed to be talking to each other. 

“Boys, have you been having such a poor day that it ended with you two having an argument twice today?” Argyros finally asked his twin sons at one point, half-way through the meal. His wife Eirene and widowed mother Melissa also felt that this was very much out of character for the boys, though they had been unsure how to ask what was wrong. 

“Um…lots to think about…we have been told more of the previous generations of Gemini Saints in our history lesson today,” Saga started, but Kanon went straight to the point: 

“When we were born, did we have those marks that the previous Gemini twins are said to have on their bodies as a sign that they were intended to be in the Holy War?” 

“NO!!” all three adults said at once, realizing that the boys must have heard about the rumors and possibly been searching out clues in the library if Shion did not mention too many details himself. 

“Did not His Holiness say that it was broken somewhere in the previous Holy War from his own youth?” 

“What? It was broken in the 18th century!?” 

“Yes, something that Pope Shion did not personally witness, though, so we do not know any details…Where are those photos from their birth…” Eirene muttered for herself, leaving the table and went to a small chest with more valuable belongings to the family.  

“See? Here are the photos that were taken at your birth and first days of life because some of the Saints had brought those modern cameras from Athen! Do you spot any Gemini symbols on your tiny bodies there? Or have you seen any on your own body so far with the help of a body mirror?” 

That was a rather good point from their mother to mention. Thinking back of whatever they would bathe together or other times when they were naked for some reason, neither Saga or Kanon could even remember having such a birthmark. 

“No, Mom.”

With this the mood around the table lightened up a bit. 

But before the brothers went to sleep that night, Eirene had a small talk with them.

“Boys? Are you still awake?”

Both turning around in the bunk bed that they had, she revealed something that her sons had to learn about, now when they knew about the Curse:

“Even if the Curse of Gemini is broken since the last Holy War….I will admit that due to that Curse affecting so many Holy Wars and its Gemini Saint twins in the past, it was actually part of why my anxiety disorder  grew worse when I was pregnant with you two, after learning that my due date was at the end of May unless you was born premature for some reason, and caused the postpartum depression that I got afterwards… I was haunted by nightmares about you being dragged into the Curse somehow, that one of you would die before the other…or that you would end up separated from each other for many years and grow apart… ” 

It was a burden that Eirene had carried within her, and the shadow of those fears was still deep within her despite the help of the Sanctuary healers and the medicines she got for her anxiety. 

“Mom?” 

Showing his softer side for a moment, Kanon offered her a hug, which she accepted. And Saga did the same from the lower bed. 

 ~X~X~X~X~X~X 

The next day after an early breakfast at dawn, all focus was on the harvest.

“Come on, everyone! The more wheat we can finish today, the less work for tomorrow!”

Even the Saints and their students present in the Sanctuary, had been called in to help. And apart from Saga and Kanon, quite a lot of familiar friends from the village or school classroom were spotted among the adults. 

“Aiolia, no! You can not eat wheat grain like that!” Aiolos protested at spotting what his seven years younger little brother was about to do, namely putting the wheat stalk into his mouth to see if it could be eaten or not. With Aiolia being only just over two years, he naturally did not know much of the difference between the wheat being grown on the fields and the finished harvest that would be made into flour or other forms of food. 

“Having fun babysitting your brother today, Aiolos?” Kanon teased as their one year younger friend ended up having to put the toddler into a large storage box for apples next to the wagons to avoid that something happened. 

“Mom and Dad told me to help keep an eye on him, everyone is so busy today that not all the old grandmothers can watch all the younger children….” 

Well, it was no big surprise. If the villages did not manage to get the harvest indoors in the barns before the weather turned worse, or the harvest was poor, the Sanctuary would need to buy grain from the outside world to survive winter. 

“Thinking about it, Dad, haven't the Saints mentioned something about most farmers nowadays in the outside world having machines to help?” 

Realizing that it may sound like he did not like the physical work that involved the life here in the village just for survival, Kanon hurried to add: 

“I am just curious! I have nothing against helping out like this like our ancestors always have done!” 

While Argyros rarely was out in Athen and the rest of Greece, he knew what Kanon was thinking about. 

“Yes, it is perfectly fine with asking, Kanon, but those often heavy and large machines would be worthless here. Look at the fields around here, many are on the mountain slides that are not exactly nice and flat, and we are trying to use every possible piece of land to grow food with different grains or other sources of food like vegetables or beans. Not to mention the needed pastures further up in the mountains for the goats and sheep that we have for milk and meat, well the wool to make clothing and fabrice from.…” 

So many things that a farmer needed to think about every single day, and learn from an early age. 

“At least the hens can be kept close to the houses, and the cats as well…oi! That is our missing hen that we thought a fox had taken!” 

A stray hen had somehow been spooked from its hiding place among the remaining wheat, scaring quite a few of the workers by suddenly showing up like that. 

“Do not let that hen escape again, boys!”

 ~X~X~X~X~X~X 

After quite an eventful day, it was nice to return home. 

“Nice to find out that the hen was still alive, if choosing a rather odd hiding spot! Losing even a single animal can be so much trouble when it affects the food on our table…” 

Eirene knew what she was talking about, as she carried the hen under her arm. With the whole family having been farmers for countless generations back apart from a few Saints popping up somewhere in the family tree, they all knew how valuable the animals were.  

“Mom, dad, grandma? I am really glad that you are still alive.” 

Knowing about how common it had been to make orphans into Saints, it really made Saga realize just how lucky he and Kanon were to have their family. 

“And we are grateful for being blessed with two strong, handsome young sons like you!” 

“Mom! Not in the open yard where everyone can see us!” Kanon protested half-heartedly as Eirene caught them in a hug together from behind, as his father and grandmother just laughed at the scene.  

“It is really important to value family members when you have them, no matter how the family may look like, boys, because you never know if you may lose them.”

~X~X~X~X~X~X  

Meanwhile, in the spiritual Gemini Temple inside the Gemini Cloth: 

Even if it was just them to the work, the previous generations had also spent most of the day bringing in the harvest. 

“Where is Aspros?” Defteros wondered, after not finding his brother anywhere in the usual places.

“Challenging Irina to another duel out in the steppe symbolizing the Mongol origins of Amir and Azel, he said something about trying to win this time,” Seti responded from where he was using a part of the lava chamber as his personal forge, holding up a newly crafted fishing hook next to his eye to see if it was acceptable. 

“Again? Sometimes I wonder if my brother, for all his cleverness, is just using those duels to bring down his own ego. He knows that arrogance is not viewed fondly by the Greek sisters, after all, due to who they connect it with.” 

The sounds of a large sheep herd was heard coming closer, as the 15th century twins returned the livestock home for the evening, Ramses taking in the now dry bandages that he had washed the evening before. 

“The expected result: Irina sweeping the floor with Aspros without problems despite that we could not see the exact spot where they were. She is not a former Pope for nothing,” Amir reported as he dismounted and took off the saddle from his Mongolian pony. 

“Of course. She did live to be 272 years old after all. Proving why women can be just as dangerous as the men despite the difference in physical strength and such details.”  

Having gotten the task of bringing some fresh fish for the dinner, Tiernan and Owen arrived just as Lydia, Elena had started to help Daria to milk the sheeps and goats. 

“A nice catch today,” Sade said at seeing the basket full of freshes that could be gutted and fried alongside the vegetables, Amari being on the lookout up on the roof to see where Irina and Aspros could be.

Soon, Irina arrived at the temple as well, carrying a quite beaten-up Aspros on her back like he weighed nothing. 

“Will you never learn that sometimes, it is cleverness that determines the winner in duels and not physical strength, greenhorn? ” she asked, using her nickname on Aspros that had been the result of that compared to her, he really was a greenhorn who had never gotten the role of the Pope despite his gathered knowledge and reaching for that goal. 

“How about that I actually enjoy a good challenge once in a while despite losing most of the duels against you? Everyone here is good at fighting, but you have the most experience in combat due to being the most long-lived Gemini Saint apart from Amari and Sade.” 

She rolled her eyes at that answer. 

“Says the one whose twin brother outlived him by two years and is part of the eternal twenty five-year-old years in this gang alongside my desert brats. And it is your turn to wash the dishes after dinner tonight, by the way.”

With the setting sun behind the distant mountains, another day was ending for them as well.

Chapter Text

As could be expected, the harvest took some days to deal with. But it was all finished before the weather turned worse, and rain clouds gathered above the Sanctuary.   

“What a pourdown! Imagine if we had needed to bring in the last part of the wheat in this rain!” Kanon commented when he and Saga woke up from the rain outside the window.  

“...still need to help Grandma and Mom with the animals no matter the weather…” the older brother groaned, half-asleep as it was still early morning, rolling over under his blankets as Kanon jumped down from the top part of the bunk bed. 

“Boys? You will likely have indoor lessons today with His Holiness due to the weather. Not ideal for training outdoors with the risk of slipping and getting badly injured,” Agyrios reminded his sons, before walking over to the bunk bed and gently dragging Saga out from his warm nest of blankets so they could dress for the day. 

“Yes, Dad…” 

Still, even with a nice breakfast made by their mom and grandmother, there were some chores needing to be done before they could leave the farm. 

~X~X~X~X~X~X

Even without training outdoors, there were other lessons that they needed to learn, despite that Shion could not overwatch the lessons himself. World history had suddenly gotten a lot more interesting thanks to meeting the older Gemini twins, because even if they had not always witnessed important historical events thanks to coming to the Sanctuary and serving Athena, there was still information to explain some of their mindsets and beliefs. 

“Daria and Irina would count as Russians today because that is where their birth city Novgorod are, even if they may have seen themselves as more…Swedish due to where their family came from?”

One good example was the 10th century Gemini sisters from Kievan Rus', and since their story was next to be told, Saga and Kanon had wanted to see what sort of information they could find about the Viking culture in the written records. 

“I think we should ask the sisters when we return to the spiritual temple.”

“Sounds fair.” 

Of course, there were some lessons that they still needed to do with the other children. Team-work, for example, where Shion had pointed out that the twin brothers needed to be able to work with others apart from the other twin. They could not always be expected to be sent out on missions together, after all. 

“Helping to do basic house cleanings and everyday chores seems like an odd idea of team-working…” 

But those among the boys who were complaining, quickly shut up when they were ordered to help clean out a building for textile production. 

“Watch those wall hangings!” one of the maid servants warned in a dangerous voice that promised painful punishment for those who were careless with the older stuff, “Some of them are ancient and frail, so if you are not handing them carefully, you will ruin a piece of history!” 

Beating the dust out of the wall hangings had to be done very carefully, and for this, Saga and Kanon reminded themselves of how their grandmother would always carefully handle the inherited family embroideries at home. She had always mentioned the fine lace which really couldn't be washed anyway because it was so delicate. 

“Quite a lot of different styles here on the decorations, now when we are looking closer. Given how multi-cultural the Sanctuary has been over the centuries…”

“Oi, Saga, look at this wall hanging! It is more like a portrait that is made from weaving on a loom and then embroidering the finished length! And it is the Gemini Cloth in the middle between the people, in the bright yellow thread here!” Kanon called to his brother, gently pulling out the wall hanging into its full width and length on the floor. 

“Blacksmith toys and the sort of leather bag that a doctor would carry with him on sick visits…it must be from the era of Seti and Ramses in 1246!” 

Indeed, it looked like a stylized image of the Egyptian twins, in whatever style that the weaver must have been familiar with. 

“Saga? Kanon? Are you done over there?” 

“One last wall hanging to dust off, madam!” 

Finally, the school day was over and Shion joined them at the Gemini Temple. 

“We have about two hours before you need to return home for the evening. Should be enough time to hear about the Russian sisters and the Egyptian brothers if we are planning this well.”

This time, the pull on their souls into the Gemini Cloth was less of a surprise. 

~X~X~X~X~X~X    

It was quite a sight that met the three arrivals. 

“Oh? What is this?” 

Amir and Azel were showing off the horseback-based warfare of their Mongol origins, while Daria and Irina were dressed like Viking shieldmaidens, weapons and all. In fact, it seemed like they were having a duel to test how well their respective cultures would flare against each other, though they naturally used the classical Gemini attacks and Cosmo out of habit from their lives as Saints of Athena. 

“Get them, Irina! Get them!” Elena called, showing a side of herself that no one in the Sanctuary of her time would have seen. 

“Are you suddenly finding Daria more scarying than her sister, guys!?” Lydia added in, from where she was seated on Amari's shoulders for a better view. The other pairs of twins were also cheering from a safe distance, and showed no behavior that suggested that this was anything new. 

“Welcome back! If you just wait until the training match is over, we can restart the story telling…“ Tiernan greeted the visitors, before noticing something with his good eye, “Watch out for that huge waraxe Daria just threw around with the use of her Cosmo!” 

The axe was thrown with such force that a nearby pine tree, resting against the temple wall to become firewood later, was split in half before the axe got stuck into a large stone further away. 

“Eh…I thought that Saints were not allowed by Athena to use real weapons unless the Cloths had one?” Saga asked nervously to Shion, looking quite scared over whether it was real weapons both the 10th century sisters and 15th century brothers used, Azel now aiming with an arrow on his war bow which he shot against the round shield that Daria lifted to protect herself. 

“What Athena does not know, she can not complain about. Besides, it is not like she can ease out the customs and traditions of their birth cultures out of their minds either,” Aspros responded, as if that was the most simple answer to the question. Shion only nodded, knowing that Sansa would never have done anything such to them back in the 18th century even if she may have guessed something. After all, Athena was the Goddess of fighting smart in battle, which did sometimes involve dirty tricks to ensure a victory against an enemy. If a surprise attack with using something unexpected was the key to winning, well, simple as that.

“And we used stuff from our civilian professions to take Speacters by surprise. Master Irina was very insisting on that during our training,” Seti smiled, patting one of his smithing hammers in his belt, while Ramses calmly threw a scalpel into the head of a training dummy without even looking. 

“Oh, Daria and Irina are winning this round!”  

With the hard-won match over, in the form of Irina and Daria managing to pull Amir and Azel out of their saddles and then a quick wrestling match on  the ground, it did not take much time. 

“Just give us a few minutes to wash off and change clothing, please, so we are ready.” 

Tiernan and Owen helped with caring for their ponies, while Azel and Amir also checked over themselves for any injuries. 

“Daria may be the sweet-natured sister, but she sure can hit just as hard as Irina if she needs to....ow!” 

Bruises and a few cuts, which Ramses treated with a soothing cream and bandages. 

Finally, they were all seated in the story chamber again. 

“Here is the scroll.”

Rolling to a drawing of the orange-haired sisters as babies under the Gemini sign and the date of 6th June in the year 974 AD, Irina started the tale: 

“Our first contact with the Sanctuary was in the autumn following our eighth birthday, when one of the female Silver Saints was passing through after finishing a mission. We learned afterwards that she had seen the Gemini marks on us after being in the sauna alongside the women in our household, and told Pope Anshu about it when reporting about her mission. At hearing that we was two daughters of a well-off merchant family, he realized that it would not do with merely requesting us as handmaidens for the yet unborn Athena, but that our father and mother may demand a payment in money or other valuable goods because normally, we would need a dowry to attract suitors when we was old enough for marriage.”

Daria smiled when thinking back on that day when they first met the Grand Pope. 

“It was quite an impression we left on him and the Saints acting as his escort to bring us along, despite our young age…because a small group of common foot soldiers of Hades was brazen enough to show up right on the meadow where we had just trained with real weapons of iron against some of the local boys from the families around.”

And they started the tale of their own time as the Gemini twins serving Athena in the Holy War of the year 996. 

Chapter Text

Year 982, outside Novgorod:    

While Anshu could have traveled with just a few of the current Saints to act as his bodyguards in the disguise of them being a merchant group traveling towards the city, there was a good reason as to why they had brought a smaller ship for easier travel.   

“No way the family is going to give up their twin daughters without protests. It is only going to look strange to request the girls to become “shieldmaidens to act as protectors” for Athena if we did not offer a good-sized payment in return for taking them. A little exchange of what should have been their dowry in marriage.” 

Of course, the Saints knew that the Pope had a point, but some of them were still surprised at the amount of money they had brought in the ship. 

“Where does all this come from, anyway, sir?” 

While Anshu did know, he pulled out a small list from a pocket inside his robe to make fun of the younger men. 

“Old gold and silver coins from the Roman Empire that were just collecting dust because they are not used anymore, silver dirhams from the Abbasid Caliphate, and a few objects in the same metals that the parents can melt down for jewelry or whatever they want to use them for. If we have to pay the parents in order for those twin girls to come along to the Sanctuary, we better give proper money and not some trash that turns out to be worthless.” 

Suddenly, there was some screaming in the distance, up on the ground. 

“That sounds like children?!” 

Pulling out a few Bloody Roses from his robes which was then removed to reveal the Pisces Cloth underneath, Anshu jumped from the boat to see if this needed them as defenders of humankind when Athena was not around in her human incarnations. 

“Grand Pope Anshu! Wait on us!” 

But even as he ran, the ancient Pisces Saint could sense something else. 

Not one, but two different Cosmo that had just started to awake. 

“Amari, Sade…are this the awakening of your successors as the Gemini Saint in the Holy War?” he wondered for himself.

On a meadow further away from the river: 

“Get lost, you fucking mutts!” 

A few foot soldiers of Hades had gotten a rather harsh lesson in not underestimating children, as two orange-haired girls were showing that their weapons were made of real steel. A battle ax, a sword, two separate shields, all made in the classical Viking style.

“Brazen stray dogs!”  

It was the sister with her long hair in twin braids who proved herself to have quite the foul mouth, sending the battle ax into the head of one foot soldier with an unaware use of Cosmo. The other twin was also showing that in Viking culture, it would fall upon the wives to defend the family farm from attackers while their men were on raids, and how this was the cause of them being trained in weapons just like their brothers. 

“Daria! Irina!”

When their father and his men came to personally kill this threat to the twin girls as well the boys who had run for help, several bodies were lying on the ground, the sisters unharmed but covered in blood. 

“Girls! Have you been harmed anywhere?!” 

As much as their father was relieved that they were unharmed, it was still disturbing that his daughters and their friends had been attacked by those strange-dressed soldiers. 

“I am going to have a talk with the fathers of those boys about running away and leaving you two to do all the fighting.” 

From a safe distance, Anshu had seen the whole scene, and he was impressed with how the twin sisters had been using their respective Cosmo to get in a stronger attack despite those foot soldiers of Hades being fully grown adults. 

~X~X~X~X~X~X 

Carding the washed and dried wool before spinning it thread on a drop spindle and then weaving it into fabric on a loom, was a skill that Daria and Irina had been taught by their mother almost as soon as they were old enough to help out. After all, this was the usual way of getting enough fabric to make clothing for the family, even if they were wealthy enough to buy fabric on markets.   

“Girls, we have guests from far away.”     

Not that this was anything strange, and their mother was already preparing the dinner meal with the help of their female servants, but rather that this group of guests clearly came from the far south, because quite a few of them had dark skin that was not the result of working outdoors in the summer sun from dawn to dusk. 

“I wonder if they have stuff for trade…” Daria whispered to Irina, who nodded; 

“I would like to see if they have some other writing than the Latin letters, because surely there can not be the same letters everywhere in the known world? I mean, our runes are different from the Latin letters, after all.” 

As the daughters of a merchant, Daria and Irina had a shared interest in items that could not be found or made here in Novgorod. After all, there was a high chance that they would be married off to such husbands, and use what they had learned now during childhood.   

“So, you want our girls to serve your young lady as shieldmaidens?” 

One skill that came with being the Pope, was the necessity of learning about different cultures in the wider world and knowing how to show respect even if there were some customs and traditions that one personally felt abhorrence or repugnance towards. Such as that the Viking culture could sometimes offer humans as sacrifice to their gods, but that did not stand out too much when looking deeper into the darker sides of humankind. 

“I personally witnessed their battle skills against those strange men today on a distance, and believe them to be ideal for this task, as I am the chosen guardian of this young lady and would like her to not merely be guarded by the male soldiers in the household. Shieldmaidens can pose as normal maids, and take attackers by surprise since quite a lot of southern men are brought up to not realize that women can be dangerous as well in their own manner.” 

Despite the fact that they were supposed to focus on making more cloth, both Daria and Irina did try to eavesdrop on what the adults said. They could not understand what Anshu said, but the female Saint acted as an interpreter in Old Norse, as her home village had been near York and she herself was a Viking descendant thanks to York being the capital of Viking territory in England and at its peak having 10,000 inhabitants. This was a population second only to London, and York, under its Viking name Jorvik, proved an important economic and trade centre for the Vikings.

“It has to be some very important trade, they talk about! Look at how Father acts!”

“That old man clearly knows how to bargain, he is very firm in not giving in!”

Eventually, Anshu brought out a trump card: 

“Such skilled warriors as the Norse would be excellent soldiers in the Byzantine Army. Perhaps spreading the word to young men in the area that are not going to inherit their family farm due to not being the oldest son and want to make a living out of fighting as well as getting paid for it? Pretty sure that it will be easier to buy land and make their own farms with enough money steadily collected  as payment over the years, and perhaps useful contacts in the big city as well. Not to mention the honor of having a son or nephew serving the Emperor himself because the native Byzantine guardsmen, whose loyalties often shifts with fatal consequences, will really come off as less loyal compared to men who have come a long way to find work in the distant city and thus have little reason to betray the person who pays them well.”

The deal was struck, then, as the merchant realized that yes, there was a lot of profit to be made outside the trade between his homeland and the mighty empire in the south. With the amount of gold and silver coins for both of them, Daria and Irina would follow the Saints back to Greece. 

“Are there others like us there, and not merely Christians?” Irina asked, hoping that there would not be a demand for them to convert to the other faith just because they were “pagans”. 

“I am personally from a distant land where Christianity is known but not the dominant faith among the people. There are two Norwegian sisters who would love to have their fellow Norse serving the young Lady Athena. They have felt a little lonely in being among the very few Norse among the protectors of the young lady and will be very happy to befriend you,” Anshu responded in a manner that eased that fear for the younger twin sister, and he was also referring to the eighteen-year-old Aquarius Saint named Skadi and her four years younger sister Ragnhild, who had just became the new Scorpio Saint. 

“Systrar, precis som vi?!” Daria asked with the native Swedish of her parents in an eager voice, and Anshu had to explain it quickly:

“Not twins, I am afraid, but I believe that you four ladies will be a powerful force together in times of need.”

~X~X~X~X~X~X 

A few days later: 

Greece was a far cry from their northern homeland, indeed, which the twin sisters noticed at coming to the Sanctuary. The landscape was different, the language and customs…  

“Anshu! Welcome back!” the five-year-old Athena called when spotting the Pope leading the group towards the Twelve Temples, where she had just been playing together with some similar-aged children under the watchful eyes of two young women, who used the time to spin woolen thread on their drop spindles. But it was their clothing, hangerok dresses in strongly dyed fabric with its belonging brooches to fasten it over the white underdress, which revealed them to come from the same Viking culture as the twins. 

“Skadi, Ragnhild. I would like you two to show Daria and Irina around the Sanctuary, since your native Norwegian is closer to their Swedish.” 

“Yes, Your Holiness. Storesøster, can you take a short break from spinning?” Ragnhild said, addressing Skadi with the Norwegian word for “big sister” which Daria and Irina could hear to be similar to how Irina could address Daria as the older twin. 

“Storasyster,” they agreed on as one, using the Swedish word. With the two Norwegian sisters bowing to the Grand Pope and the young Goddess before bringing Daria and Irina with them, the era of the 10th century Gemini twins in the Sanctuary had started. 

Chapter Text

The Sanctuary of Athena, year 993 A.D:   

Due to how rare it was for women to be members of the Gold Saints, Daria and Irina had learned from the start that they would need to work even harder to show that them being women, would not matter as Saints. 

“Daria? Daria, are you here?”

Now, at the age of nineteen, the twin sisters had been the Gemini Saint in this generation for three years, and were the second duo of biological sisters rising to the Gold Saints, alongside Aquarius Skadi and Scorpio Ragnhild. But right now, it was the older twin that the younger one was searching for. 

“She better not have given birth already!” 

Currently, there was a very good reason for why Irina had gone out on missions as the Gemini Saint over the past six months; that Daria was expecting a child with her lover, Altar Vlad, and was due any day now in mid-summer. 

She met Taurus Aziz in his temple, the African Saint busy as always with making medicines and what else he would need off-duty, from his studies as a doctor in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. 

“Oh, welcome back, Irina. If it is the condition of your sister that has made you hurry back, there is no need to worry about her entering labor yet.” 

Hearing this, the younger Gemini sister took a deep breath of relief, setting down the Pandora Box with the Gemini Cloth inside on the floor as she allowed herself to calm down. 

“Am I being more difficult than normal with how anxious I am for her entering the birthing bed?” 

“No, I personally find it perfectly normal and understandable that you want to be near Daria now, as it is her first childbirth and both of you are fearing that the Curse of Gemini may be acting up during the birth, since it unfortunately is a risk that Daria may lose her life.” 

Death in childbirth. The three unspoken words that Irina feared to be the outcome for Daria, since they were the first Gemini sisters over the past centuries since Lydia and Elena, both who had died without leaving any descendants behind due to Lydia being twelve at her death and Elena avoiding any physical contact with men outside the male Gold Saints in the five years before her own death, and Sade, the sister in the previous Holy War, had never been pregnant with a child in her body despite living to the age of 40 years. 

“Translate those scrolls from ancient Egypt into Arabic, and give yourself something else to think about.”

Somehow, Irina was not surprised over this. 

“You are just using my interest in being able to read as many different written languages as possible, because one never knows if that skill may come to use during missions.” 

Pulling out her own notes about how to translate the Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and Demotic scripts to Ancient Greek, Irina knew that she had been extreme lucky to find that granodiorite stele back in Egypt during one of her first missions and getting the chance to learn how to read those scripts. 

Thankfully, it did not take long before Daria appeared, her huge stomach showing that the arrival of her baby could happen any day now. Dressed in her everyday clothing like any other Viking woman, Daria showed no sign of being the older Gemini Saint. 

“Irina, welcome back. Shall we go up to Lady Athena and Pope Anshu together for your report about this mission?” 

“Yes, please.”

Yet as they left the Temple of the Ox together, Irina noticed in the body language of Daria that there was something on her mind that she did not dare to say aloud so people could hear her.

“Are you starting to feel the cramps grow stronger and more closely?”

Daria shook her head, taking the hand of her sister as if needing some emotional support for what she was about to reveal. 

“This pregnancy…has made me realize that my heart is not fully into the role of a Saint. That I would prefer to live a normal life, that of a married wife and mother instead. ”  

Oh. Irina had seen the signs of how Daria was proud of being a Saint of Athena, but also that yes, her heart was not fully into it as people may expect. For many Saints, their role was for life, but Daria wanted something more than just having to fight for humankind and serving a Goddess. And in Vlad, she had found a way to remind herself that even Saints were normal humans with wishes and desires of their own.  

“Leave the fighting to me, then, since Hades and his army are rather unlikely to know which one of us is the oldest twin. Besides, you will have a very good excuse to not leave the Sanctuary, in having to care for this little one.” 

No way that Irina would let people look down on her sister for desiring a life outside the duty of a Saint and loyalty to Athena. Humans were unpredictable, and would change throughout their lifetime. To not expect some form of change in any manner at all from childhood to adulthood, by gaining new experiences…was ridiculous.

~X~X~X~X~X~X  

The next day, Daria entered labor, and Aziz brought along some local midwives to help with the childbirth. 

“JAG SVÄR ATT JAG KOMMER ATT HACKA DE DÄR TVÅ FÖRBANNADE ROMARNA TILL KÖTTSTRIMLOR MED MIN EGEN KÖTTYXA OM FÖRBANNELSEN DYKER UPP NU!! ” 

Of course, it was to be expected that there was some foul words and curses from Daria during the contractions, and with Irina offering a more or less literal translation, most of the gathered women who knew about the Curse of Gemini, did agree that Romulus and Remus deserved to be chopped into meat strips as the least punishment for causing this sort of multi-generational curse. 

“Um…I know that I am pretty much useless right now, but…Are she alright?” Vlad asked nervously from the doorway at hearing Daria muttering to herself in her native Swedish where Ragnhild and Skadi was supporting her for a small walk around the birth chamber until that it was time for her to start pushing, the Silver Saint showing understandable worry about the whole situation as he was the one who had knocked up Daria the previous autumn. 

“We will tell if something goes wrong. But please, leave this to us who have experience in those situations,” the oldest midwife requested, but said this in a kind voice which did not dismiss Vlad being worried as the father. 

“Something to calm your nerves, Vlad, do not get drunk, though,” Irina offered a cup of wine to him, trying to ignore how her left shoulder was aching in a manner it had never done before. Her birthmark of the Gemini symbol, and she did not doubt that Daria must be feeling the same about her back, over her heart. 

Just as both the sisters had feared previously, soon they could feel their respective Gemini symbol start to feel more like a burn. 

“Tror de verkligen att de kan använda förbannelsen till att döda mig i barnsäng och låta Irina strida ensam, precis som Elena tvingades göra efter att hon förlorade Lydia? Nej, absolut inte! ”

A dark shadow began to hover around Daria, but the sight of it seemed to only make her even more determined to survive. 

“Irina!” 

“Yes! Another Dimension! ”

“Wait, do not enter the other dimension right now, Daria is vulnerable…!”

Too late, both the older and the younger twin sister had already vanished through the portal.  

Bringing themselves into the other dimension, Irina supported Daria against herself as their shared collection of various viking swords, shields, spears and battle axes showed up around them. This collection of real weapons was a secret from Athena, intended to be used in the coming Holy War as a way for the sisters to take the army of Hades by surprise. 

“I know that it can not be long for your baby to be pushed out soon, so I will try to be quick!” 

Grabbing an ax and a sword in each hand, Irina aimed for the shadow above her sister. She managed to cut it partly in two, allowing Daria enough time to release the ultimate attack of the Gemini Saint: 

“GALAXIAN EXPLOSION!! ”  

As it had only passed a few minutes at most, they returned together to the birth chamber. 

“Do not run off like that!” the oldest midwife scolded as Daria sunk to her knees in pain from a new contraction: 

“We were trying to avoid the Curse taking me by dying in childbirth….ow, ow!” 

There was no time for more talk, they could see that the birth was close now. 

“Come on, Daria, get yourself up in a squatting position!” 

It felt like hours for Daria as she pushed to get her baby out, even as the Norwegian sisters supported her in the upright position, but upon hearing the crying, she realized that not only was the infant finally out of her body, but it was alive. 

“A boy! It is a little boy!” 

As her son was placed in her arms for that first skin contact between them, in this new and strange world outside her womb, Daria felt her eyes get filled with tears from various emotions: 

Joy over that her baby was alive and healthy, triumph over that she had survived both the pregnancy and the delivery, and yet a small dread about if she had a second child, she might not be so lucky next time. 

“The Curse of Gemini will haunt other female Gemini Saints in this manner just like it had done in the back of my mind the last months…the fear of dying in childbirth… ”

But the voice of Vlad brought her out of those thoughts. 

“Daria! Are you alright?!” 

The sight of him, the father of her baby, reminded Daria of what she had started to desire for herself ever since getting the pregnancy confirmed. 

If I survive the Holy War, I will retire as a Saint of Athena and return to the life of a normal woman. To merely be a married wife and mother, if Vlad wants the same. 

That was the secret conflict within Daria that only Irina knew of so far, her own desire VS her duty as the oldest Gemini twin in this generation. 

“Look, Vlad…” she whispered with a tired smile as she allowed him to hold his son, “Do you remember what we talked about for names for the baby? We have been blessed with a little Eric.” 

Smiling for herself in happiness over the fact that her sister had survived, Irina took the chance to just enjoy the scene of the now expanded family being together there in the bed so Daria could rest after the childbirth. 

“Irina…I know that it is very late in the evening, but please, can you make some fresh bread? I really want some of those now.”

The question made Irina smile. 

“I am not surprised that you are hungry after all this hard work, Storasyster. In fact, I prepared a dough just in case, let me bake them in the oven first and I will be back soon enough.” 

~X~X~X~X~X~X  

Thankfully, the dough had not fermented so much that it came over the edge of the bowl where Irina had left it in the morning. 

“Small bread buns made with wheat flour, of course it will be a special event with me becoming an aunt!” 

While the oven was heated up by fire, Irina made the dough into small buns before pulling out the coals with a long iron stick on the floor so she could place a wooden board with the buns inside and then quickly closing the opening with another board to avoid the heat escaping. 

“Kind of late for baking bread at this hour, Miss Irina?” 

It was the Virgo Saint Hiresh, who must have arrived back from his own mission. 

“Special request from Daria. You would also be hungry like a wolf if you had been in labor for most of today to give birth. She and Vlad have gotten a little Eric this evening.” 

The mention of her sister seemed to give him the needed clue. 

“Ah? My congratulations to all three of you, then, both the happy parents and the new aunt.” 

Laughing, Irina checked on the bread buns to avoid them getting burned and then tossed one of them to Hiresh. 

“Here, a little hot snack to eat on your way up to the Chamber of the Pope for your report.” 

As the bread buns came straight from the heated-up oven, Hiresh had to blow on his fingers to avoid blisters from the warm bread as he temporarily had to throw it between each hand. 

“Ow, ow! Fresh from the oven, indeed! But thank you, it is a long way between Greece and my native India, even for a Gold Saint traveling at the speed of light.” 

Smiling, Irina returned her focus to the other bread buns and placed them in a basket to bring with her to Daria, therefore missing the look of honest wonder on the face of Hiresh as he tasted the bread bun and literally realized that the rumors about her skills in baking bread were indeed true. Or that one well-proved way for a woman to gain the attention of a man was through his stomach with food. 

Chapter Text

Lucky for those who had feared for her risking her life in childbirth, Daria did survive the risky time after the delivery when there were so many risks for complications that could have taken her life. And no less than four months after the birth of their son, Daria and Vlad got officially married in a wedding with the blessing of Athena.  

“I want my Saints to feel that there is something in this world worth protecting, and that this joyful union of two persons in love will symbol that." 

Over the six months following said wedding, Daria did notice that Irina was beginning to act a little unlike her usual self. A careful little questioning of Ragnhild and Skadi gave a few clues about how they had witnessed similar behavior from herself when starting to fall in love with Vlad.     

“Well, she does have a softer side well hidden for most people, so I think it is quite logical that only we who know her really well can tell this little change. As long as it is not some two-faced rogue who plays with her heart just to make her a…conquest,” Vlad commented when Daria told him of why her sister did act a little strange.  

“I really hope that it is not some of the Christians around here who aims to make her convert to that faith in the hope that she will be too blinded by love to realize,” Daria admitted with a shudder of unease, looking like she suddenly felt very cold at the mere idea, “It is not very nice to hear our gods and goddesses be called demons, and that we are pagans that will go the Devil in hell after death, because we do not follow White Christ. If someone was to ask me, what does a male God truly know about the woes of women? What offer of comforts and strengths can this male God offer to women, when he has not undergone pregnancy and childbirth himself? Our Norse culture allows women to own property, request a divorce and reclaim their dowries if their marriages end. What will happen to really unlucky women if those rights are taken away by the faith of White Christ? Will they have to stay with an abusive or neglectful husband, with no way out of that sort of living hell? Will they no longer gain respect for being the ones taking full responsibility for the house and the farm when he is absent for some reason, and be viewed as stepping over accepted lines simply for having to take her husband's place full time if she is widowed? ” 

Some rather good points about being averse towards the Christian faith, Vlad agreed as he allowed Eric to use his own pant leg as support for standing up on his unsteady feet. While he hailed from the area that one day would be known as Ukraine in the future and followed Slavic mythology as his own faith, he could see why Daria feared the more negative side of life for women in the Norse homelands if they abandoned their ancient gods in favor of the southern, Christian God. 

“Oh, look behind you, dearest. We seem to have just gotten to know who it is that has caught the heart of your sister.”

Turning around, Daria had to cover her mouth to not shout in surprise and joy at spotting Irina with Hiresh in the middle of a not very chaste kiss. 

Since Irina was known as a “harsh beauty” in line of her being a brutal and unyielding warrior among most people in the Sanctuary, the eventual reveal of her being in a romantic relationship came as quite a huge shock for many. 

“What? She is human, just like me, of course Irina was going to eventually make someone fall for her out of the blue , it just needed to be someone who managed to look past the first impression of her. Just because we serve Lady Athena, does not mean that we both are sweet motherly personalities or friendly,” Daria stated in annoyance when too many repeats of this shocked disbelief was asked straight to her face.

“But…but…Virgo Hiresh of all people?!” 

Losing her remaining patience over how they failed to understand that the sisters merely had different tastes in lovers, Daria grabbed a distaff made of iron next to her and used a tiny amount of her Cosmo to make a huge crater in the ground with the distaff, scaring the doubters into silence. 

“Have you never heard about characteristics like good is not nice because being native can end up a disaster in the long run? Or someone that is cruel to be kind because it may be the only way to teach someone the more unpleasant side of life? Some really important lessons in life are best learned through bitter experiences. Nice is different from good. And, even more damningly, neither “nice” nor “good” are necessarily the same as right!” 

Showing herself a good example of “beware the nice ones” saying, Daria ended up chasing around some of those people with her distaff held above her head as a clear warning of that she aimed to hit them with it, yelling and cursing at them for disrespecting her younger twin by thinking that she was completely heartless.

~X~X~X~X~X~X  

And yet, everyone in the Sanctuary knew that those happy times would come to an end. In the middle of autumn, in the year 996 A.D, the Holy War of this era broke out. 

“Leaving Eric at our paternal relatives that are living near Uppsala?” Irina asked as the sisters took a chance to talk. 

“Yes. I am scared that if Hades sends the Specters to attack the villages around the Sanctuary, our house may be one of the homes ruined in the attack. Even if it is only temporary, I want to keep my child out of danger where I or Vlad may not be near to protect him…” 

Nodding in understanding, Irina could see the point. She too, had been worried about her nephew, who at the age of three years, sadly had a habit of running off from the adults to explore something that caught his attention, and it was far too easily to imagine him ending up in the middle of a attack where a Saint or civilian needed to protect the young child from a enemy.  

“Both Vlad and I have tried to make him stop that habit, but he is so stubborn and sometimes refuses to listen to either of us…” Daria signed, feeling like a poor mother despite that she was not spoiling her young son and was very clear with him facing punishment or other consequences if he did disobey his parents. 

“He will learn, sister. He can not keep doing this poor habit of running off without a thought or not thinking things through. Not if he wants to live a long life and avoid death at a young age…” 

Right now, they could only do their duties as the Gemini Saint of this era and try to ensure that Athena would come out as the winner of a Holy War once again, even to the cost of their lives. 

Even with the fast speed to travel north to Scandinavia and the Temple of Uppsala in Sweden where the relatives of the twin sisters lived, Daria and Vlad knew that this might be the last time they saw their son while being alive, for the Holy War tended to cost Athena many Saints fighting for her. 

“Eric,” Daria said in a steady voice while trying to not reveal that she was almost crying as she took the face of her son between her hands so he was looking straight at her, “Mama wants you to be nice and behave now while you are here. Mama and Papa will come back soon, Lady Athena asked us to do something for her and you are too small to come along.”

“Not small! Papa, I want to come along!” her son complained, but Vlad remained firm in this, as he and Daria had talked about it long before the Holy War had started. 

“Adults only, son. You would only be in the way for me and your mother.”  

Of course, it did slightly hurt as Eric kicked his skin in anger and then started a loud temper tantrum, but in the end, they left him with her relatives who promised to take good care of Eric for them until either parent or Irina came to bring Eric back to Greece.  

“We will have him back soon, dear, it should not be too long before we are all back home in the Sanctuary again.”  

Daria nodded, trying to ignore the loud crying of Eric after them in the growing distance. 

~X~X~X~X~X~X  

Yet on the way back to Greece, the married couple became aware that something was following them. And neither one had a good feeling about the people who came closer. 

“Specters?” 

“Most likely, I am afraid.” 

Now, had Daria been a civilian woman, Vlad would have been more afraid for her safety if there were several opponents, but as the oldest Gemini twin, she was used to fighting without her Gold Cloth if Irina was out on a different mission. Besides, she had not used her pregnancy and motherhood allowing her battle skills to get rusty. She did not dislike the lifestyle of a Saint so much that she only did the minimum training needed to use Cosmo, after all. 

“Well, time to use some spinning, it seems.”

Picking up her drop spindle out of her belt, Daria began to spin a thread of Cosmo just like how she would do when spinning wool or other fibers into thread, and threw the thread across nearby trees and bushes like a spider web. This way, the enemy would not be able to sneak up behind them so easily. 

“Please, be ready with the Gemini attacks, darling.” 

“I will.” 

Standing back to back, they heard the sound of running feet come closer. 

At the same time, somewhere in Central Asia: 

“That cursed Judge and his men! I hope that my secret collection of real weapons will delay their return to life, by having their limbs cut off and the same with their heads, before they were nailed to the ground by swords and spears!” 

Irina was carrying the injured Hiresh on her back, running as far away from the group of Speacters led by Garuda Aiacos as she could get before using her dimension travel to reach the Sanctuary faster. 

“You did well in surprising them…” 

“Do not talk, stupid!” 

During the battle, Aiacos had managed to break both the right arm and leg on Hiresh, before the Virgo Saint and the younger Gemini sister had teamed up to kill him. Still, even with his defensive attacks, Hiresh knew that he needed medical attention from Aziz or the other healers in the Sanctuary now, because he feared that there was inner damage beyond his broken ribs and hip on the same side. 

Opening the portal near the Aries Temple, Irina rushed towards the hospital building. 

“Aziz?! Aziz, please! Hiresh is injured!” 

With the Virgo Cloth carefully stripped off him to see the full damage, it was impossible to miss the huge amount of blood on the clothing Hiresh wore. 

“So many broken bones and the loss of blood despite how you tried to bring him here as soon as possible…Irina, do not expect Hiresh to join in more fights during the reminder of the Holy War, I am afraid,” the Taurus Saint admitted, and she nodded weakly, pale from seeing the injuries herself. 

“We managed to pin down a Judge and those under his command, at least…” Hiresh smiled in victory, before groaning in pain from moving himself more than intended. 

“Well, you are going to get willow bark tea for the pain and treatment for those broken bones, my friend.” 

Irina was about to say something, before making a sound like she was about to throw up. 

“Excuse me for a moment, my stomach is reacting to the smells of medicines in here! I think it is a delayed reaction to all the blood during the battle…” 

Hurrying out from the treatment room, they could hear her emptying her stomach out on the compost pile. 

“Well, some of those medicines are quite strong in smell, and coming directly from a battle, it is no wonder that she feels the need to empty her stomach. It is different from the annual slaughter of animals, after all.” 

Rinsing out her mouth with some water to remove the taste of vomit and then spitting that out, Irina suddenly felt something that alarmed her: 

Her Gemini mark on the left shoulder felt like it was burning, just like it had done three years earlier when Daria had been risking her life during the birth of Eric. 

“No…not now! Not the Curse of Gemini acting up! ” 

Her heart going cold in terror for that Daria could be in mortal danger, Irina knew that she had to find her sister. 

~X~X~X~X~X~X      

It was Griffon Minos, another of the three Judges, who turned out to have been chasing Daria and Vlad with his men.

“Cosmic Marionette! ” 

As Daria had revealed her rank among the Saints of Athena with a Galaxian Explosion, it was her he aimed to trap with his threads, leaving Vlad to fight alone against his men. 

“Daria!” 

“Vlad?!” Daria screamed in horror at seeing her husband being forced to flee a distance away, the men of Minos blocking his path, and she tried to not scream in pain as the Judge broke her fingers, hands and arms, one by one, all to make her unable to use the attacks of the Gemini Saint. 

“Quite a nice catch for me today, one of the Gold Saints. But…I wonder which one of the Gemini ones?” 

Glaring at him, Daria responded by trying to throw herself backwards, for all that proved to be in vain with his threads controlling her body. 

“That hammer necklace…” Minos said when noticing something that Daria had dropped to the ground right before he had caught her, “you are hailing from the nordic pagan people, I see. Those who have not understood the might of Jesus.” 

Of all the times to be reminded of her dislike for White Christ, this had to be one of the worst, Daria privately thought. 

“What does a male God truly know about the woes of women, compared to Goddesses who share the same gender? What offer of comforts and strengths can this male God offer to women, when he has not undergone pregnancy and childbirth himself? ” 

No matter how much her body hurt from him breaking various bones, Daria knew that she had to withstand the pain until she either found a way to free herself, or Irina arrived… 

“Daria!” 

Being one of the most powerful Silver Saints, Vlad managed to defeat the other Specters and now rushed towards Minos, aiming to break the threads which trapped his wife. 

“Pagans who do not know the might of the Son of God…will go to hell!” 

In horror, Daria saw the threads from Minos' other hand wrap themselves around the neck of Vlad, and out of desperation, she opened the other dimension in trying to save him, by trapping Minos inside. 

“Another Dimension! ” 

But in that same moment, Minos acted as well. 

“Go to hell, you two barbarians!” 

With a forceful pull on the threads, he snapped the neck on both Daria and Vlad. 

Inside the other dimension, Irina felt the Cosmo of her sister explore and then vanish, and the mark felt like she was being burned with a white-hot iron straight out of the forge. 

“Nej, nej! Daria! STORASYSTER!! ”

Following where she had sensed the Cosmo of her sister just a moment earlier, she opened the portal. 

“Daria! Daria!” 

What met Irina as lighting gave her some light in the night darkness, was a sight that she would never forget: 

The broken bodies of her sister and brother-in-law, both hung up on two trees, acting like an improvised crucifixion and a mockery of how the Vikings would do animal offerings to their gods. And around them both, was threads that revealed who their murderer was. 

“No…no…no…” 

Collapsing to her knees as she began to cry in realization over what had happened, Irina let out a raw scream in grief over that once again, the Curse of Gemini had separated a set of twins during the Holy Wars. 

“MÅ GUDARNA FÖRBANNA DIG, GRIFFIN MINOS!! JAG KOMMER ATT FÖRFÖLJA DIG OCH HÄMNAS MIN SYSTER!!” 

Her Cosmo explored from her grief and anger as she screamed, over and over again. Then, finally after driving herself to exhaustion and having no more bitter tears to shear, Irina felt numb as she forced herself to free the two bodies and bring them home to the Sanctuary. 

~X~X~X~X~X~X  

The Sanctuary of Athena:

“I am sorry that we have lost Hiresh, Lady Athena…” 

The Virgo Saint had fallen unconscious not long after Irina had disappeared to search for her sister, and death had taken him without him waking up again. Going by the amount of injuries that he had suffered in his last battle, Aziz had guessed internal bleeding as the cause of death. 

“Where is Irina?” Athena asked, crying in grief over losing another one of her faithful Saints against Hades. Suddenly, they all could sense an explosion of Cosmo from far away. 

“That was her Cosmo…” 

“That amount of unreleased power can not mean anything good…” 

Soon, a portal opened up, and Irina showed herself, carrying the bodies of Daria and Vlad. 

“No…do not tell us that they…!” Scorpio Ragnhild whispered in fear, rushing down to meet Irina. From the way Irina looked at them with an empty look in her eyes, they could tell what had happened. 

“I am so sorry for Daria and Vlad, Irina…”  

But Irina did not respond as she slowly walked over to the bed where a white sheet now covered the body of Hiresh, and then looked at Aziz with a pleading look, to which he could only shake his head in confirmation. 

“An internal bleeding, I am afraid, and one which I could not prevent.” 

At those words, it seemed like something broke in Irina. 

“No…” 

Then, she felt something in her own body, and something warm along her pant leg which was not the rain from the place where she had found Daria and Vlad. Strange cramps, which caused her to gasp sharply. 

“...m-my stomach…hurts….”

“Irina…” Ragnhild asked with some dread when she, as a fellow woman, had a faint guess to what was about to happen, “when was the last time you had your monthly bleeding?!”  

Her eyes widening in horrifying realization of what the Scorpio Saint meant, Irina collapsed to her knees as the other woman rushed to her, and a few maids as well. 

“Get out of our way!” 

“Is there a spare room we can borrow?!” 

“No other man present now than Aziz, you hear that?!” 

Against her weak protests, Irina was brought into another chamber and the door closed shut for the sake of her privacy. 

Athena and the others did not have to wait long, before Aziz came out with a sorrowful look on his face. There was silence within the chamber, apart from the broken sobs from Irina who laid on her side, her back against the doorframe.

“Irina has unfortunately suffered a miscarriage, and she was about 12 weeks along. The child would have been one last gift to her from Hiresh, if she had not lost it today with the rest of her family.”

It was the 2th november, also known as All Souls' Day and the Day of the Dead, in Christianity. A date which Irina would forever come to associate with the loss of both her twin sister Daria, brother-in-law Vlad, her own lover Hiresh and the unborn child that Hiresh had conceived in her womb. 

“You are going to regret this day, Minos…and the role you played in stealing my loved ones away from me!” Irina whispered between her tears, holding the iron hammer of Thor that Daria had worn, between her palms and finger so hard that its sharp edge was cutting up her skin and making her hand bleed. This oath of revenge against the Judge was something she intended to keep, no matter how long her life would be. 

Chapter Text

Everyone could see how broken Irina was by the loss of Daria, Vlad, Hiresh and her unborn child on the same day. There was a haunted look in her eyes, and she made a point of staying inside the Gemini Temple while she healed after the miscarriage, just to be allowed to grieve alone.    

The worst of everything, was how empty Irina felt without Daria, the void in her heart whatever she looked around after her sister, expecting to see her or hearing her voice somewhere, only to be met by silence in every room or chamber that Irina searched.  

“She is not here… ” 

Even the bittersweet knowledge that Daria's soul was inside the Gemini Cloth, did little to ease the grief over her death that haunted Irina. Not to mention, with how she felt right now, Irina knew that she was not emotionally stable enough to bring herself to Uppsala and tell Eric that his parents would never come back because one of the Three Judges of Hades had taken their lives. She knew that she could not handle the reaction of her young nephew right now, and the Holy War was not over yet.

Yet she paid attention to what happened in the Holy War because Saints had to pass through the Twelve Temples to give reports to their Goddess, and knew that Athena had lost more Saints in battle. Among this, was the news that Aquarius Skadi was looking more and more sickly whatever she showed herself, openly coughing in what clearly was a painful manner and struggling to control the freezing cold temperatures that was part of what an Aquarius Saint was able to do.   

“How is Skadi, Ragnhild?” Irina asked when entering the Aquarius Temple. 

“To be honest? Really bad,” the Scorpio Saint responded, where she was seated next to the bed where Skadi slept, her upper body supported by several pillows as if she struggled to breathe properly when lying down, “Aziz does not think she will live for much longer, her lungs are growing weaker and unless something changes, the next time she will go out in battle… she will not come back alive to the Sanctuary. ” 

Twenty years earlier, Skadi could have lost her life to a fatal pneumonia after saving her sister from drowning in an accident involving the ice breaking underneath their fleet and them falling into the freezing cold sea water during the cold winter months, if she had not accepted a drop of the divine blood from the previous Athena. She had felt that becoming permanently mute, with a massive scar over her throat from said accident, was a small price to pay if Ragnhild had escaped death. But her own lungs were permanently scarred after the pneumonia, and everyone knew that Skadi was living on borrowed time with how her lungs one day would collapse and death would claim her for real. 

“Her goal was to live long enough to fight with us now in the Holy War, and die for Lady Athena…is not that why you developed that particular version of Scarlet Needle, to use on her as pressure points to help her breathe easier whenever she had one of those “cold spells” of hers where her lungs reminded us all about how she walks between life and death thanks to the blood of Athena?” 

Irina did not know anything else to say, knowing herself how it would feel to lose a beloved sister, and Ragnhild made a pained expression at the reminder of what the female Aquarius Saint had always mentioned about the future. 

“Yes…and I need to do it several times a day now, just to help her sleep somewhat peacefully as she does right now because Aziz fears that giving her medicines to help her sleep…will be dangerous at this state. He is worried about the risks of giving her an overdose by mistake, and basically causing her to never wake up, but spending her remaining time alive in a coma…” 

At touching Skadi for a moment, Irina felt how cold the Aquarius Saint was, despite the fresh “tattoos” of the stars in the Scorpio constellation on her upper arms from Ragnhild using her Scarlet Needle to help her sister breathe easier through pressure points. 

“Lady Athena?”

Suddenly, they heard the Goddess speak to her Saints through her divine Cosmo, and Athena said something that really took quite a few of them by surprise. 

“An alliance with Poseidon, the Emperor of the seas?!” 

“No way, that has to be a trap! Lady Athena, please do not agree!” 

Yet the vast Cosmo of a different God was already present next to Athena, at Cape Sounion.

“Hold on…his human host and the Sea Dragon general…” Ragnhild commented when noticing something in a mental image of the two Gods, and then stormed off from the Aquarius Temple with a furious look on her face.

“OI, SEA DRAGON!! THERE BETTER BE A VERY GOOD EXPLANATION TO WHY YOUR WIFE, MY AND SKADI'S OLDEST NIECE FREYA, IS THE HOST OF POSEIDON!!” 

Even Skadi, who had woken up at hearing the voice of Athena through her Cosmo, looked pissed at noticing the same as her sister, but lacked the energy to leave her Temple for now. 

“The oldest daughter of your elder brother, who got married into a merchant family from Hedeby just this very autumn? Oh dear, sounds like your nephew by marriage really is asking to be beaten up for getting her involved in something she may not even truly understand, yes,” Irina agreed once the deeper meaning behind Ragnhild storming off became clear, and Skadi used her Cosmo to write in runes that no, they had never mentioned anything about Athena or the Sanctuary for their family, only the same story that Pope Anshu had used when finding Daria and Irina as the future Gemini Saint: Pretending to be shield-maidens acting as the female bodyguards of a young, wealthy lady in Greece. 

“Given how important longships and other boats are in our culture, somehow I am not surprised that one of the seven Marina generals under Poseidon turns out to be from one of our homelands. But your nephew by marriage, and your niece as the host of Poseidon? Yes, I would want to do what Ragnhild is threatening to do with him right now.”

In the end, Athena and Poseidon agreed to make an alliance against Hades, even if it would only last until the end of this Holy War, because the Emperor of the seas saw Hades as a threat to his own undersea domains. 

~X~X~X~X~X~X   

It was the day of the Winter Solstice, as the Saints and Athena acted as a bait to lure the army of Hades into the depths of the sea, changing the battlefield to Atlantis, the capital of Poseidon. 

“The civilians have already been evacuated to Siberia, so do not worry about finding any innocents getting caught in battles! Go!” 

Proving her promise from six weeks previously, Irina did search for Minos among all the fighting, and when spotting him, she showed no mercy for the murderer of her twin sister. 

“DET HÄR ÄR FÖR DARIA!! GALAXIAN EXPLOSION!! ”  

Unleashing her Cosmo in an attack powered by her rage over the death of Daria, that Minos had no chance against, Irina also revealed her hidden collection of weapons behind the Galaxian Explosion. By rushing forwards with a shield on her arm, she slammed it into his face and gave Minos no chance to recover from the already deadly force of the most powerful attack of the Gemini Saint.   

“BLOT TILL ODEN!! ” 

Like an animal sacrifice to Odin, Minos found his throat sliced, in this case by the iron hammer of Thor that Irina was wearing. 

“Lord Minos!” 

Yet even with the help from the Marina generals and Poseidon, the army of Hades showed their immortality. 

“This is bad, they just keep coming back to life…!” 

Both Athena and Poseidon were protected by their warriors for now, but they spotted bleeding wounds underneath their Divine Cloths. 

“There has to be a way to take them all out, at once…Skadi!” 

From the way Skadi knelt to the street stones of Atlantis and could not hide how she was now coughing up blood, they all realized that this was the moment Ragnhild had feared for twenty years; That her sister now stood at the door of death. 

“Storesøster!” 

“This is bad! We can not get her out of here with all the Specters around us!” 

Coughing as she struggled to breathe, Skadi noticed Freja come closer to her, her eyes showing no sign of Poseidon being in control over his female host right now. 

“Aunt, use this raw piece of Orichalcum alongside your ability to freeze everything solid.” 

Somehow, this seemed to alarm the still alive Marina generals. 

“WHAT?! ”

“Lady Freja, what are you suggesting?! If the Aquarius Saint uses that, all of Atlantis will be frozen in a massive iceberg for centuries to come…”  

Slamming the Trident of Poseidon over the head of her legal husband to shut him up, Freja snapped: 

“What is worse in this choice, you idiot?! Hades winning by giving his soldiers immortality, or Atlantis frozen in a massive iceberg?!”

But Skadi had already taken the raw piece of Orichalcum, feeling how it connected with her own power.

Athena… 

The Goddess could tell what Skadi intended to do as her final stand against the enemy. 

“Watch out!” 

A new attack from one of the Judges aimed at Freja, barely blocked by her husband, forced the soul of Poseidon out of her body. 

“Damn you, Hades!” 

Holding up an amphora, Athena placed a seal with her own name over it so the soul of her uncle was somewhat safe. As this happened, they all noticed a glowing blue light from the piece of Orichalcum, and how the temperature was quickly dropping around them as Skadi gathered her Cosmo and Ragnhild helping her sister to stand up on trembling legs. 

“We do not have time for any more talk! Get back to the surface, all of you!” 

Opening a portal to the Sanctuary, Athena ensured a way out for the surviving Saints. 

“This is a message that Anshu asked me to pass on in case he was not alive now at the final battle: Irina is his chosen successor as Pope. ” 

Her? Out of the four Gold Saints that now remained, Irina could tell the reasons why, like that Skadi had been unlikely to survive the Holy War and had been lucky to even live long enough to fight in it, Ragnhild clearly intended to die alongside Skadi because she had spent nearly all her life as the caretaker of her sister, and Aziz had admitted long ago that he was a better doctor than leader. 

And yet, it still came as a surprise. 

“Irina, come on!” 

Tossing her over one broad shoulder, Aziz rushed after the others and even the Marina Generals followed with Freja, Athena remaining behind with the two Norwegian sister Saints.

“Athena! Skadi! Ragnhild!” 

AURORA EXECUTION!! 

Caught by surprise by the massive cold, the soul of Hades was forced out of his host body as the Specters was all encased in the resulting ice, Skadi ensuring the victory for Athena in yet another Holy War, to the cost of her own life and that of Ragnhild as Atlantis indeed became a massive iceberg at the sea bottom. 

~X~X~X~X~X~X   

One month after the end of the Holy War, the Sanctuary was slowly getting used to the sight of Irina in the robes and helmet of the Pope. A contact with the four surviving Marina Generals had confirmed that they could not enter Atlantis due to the massive iceberg now covering the undersea capital, and Freja had personally promised to keep her husband in check from now on, so he did not get any other “funny ideas” with other Gods. 

“Female Popes are sadly quite rare even among the female Saints, so you may face some trouble in getting your orders followed by those who are not used to taking orders from a woman.”

Right now, Irina and Aziz were having a private talk about the future. Being the only two surviving Gold Saints left, they both knew that they would play the role of being the leaders of the Sanctuary for the next 250 years. 

“Having to fight their way back to the real world out of Another Dimension should be enough of a lesson that I am a Gold Saint in my own right.” 

For now while Irina led the Sanctuary as its new Pope, Aziz had plans of traveling to the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, and expand his medical knowledge if there was something new discovered there. As one of the most learned healers in the Sanctuary, this was important to ensure survival of those caught in accidents or illnesses that could risk death. 

“Well, I know one thing that will haunt me for sure, my good friend: My own successors as the Gemini Saint, and that damn Curse. The pain of losing Daria, my own twin, to the Curse was bad enough. Will I have to witness the death of those two, a new set of sisters or brothers, fated to fight in the next Holy War?”

Knowing that there was no promised right answer to that right now, Aziz instead reminded Irina that surely this was a good time to bring Eric back to Greece now that the Holy War was over? 

“Thank you. I was thinking of doing that, but everything has been so busy and taken most of my attention since the Winter Solstice…” 

On her way towards Uppsala, Irina naturally passed through a lot of holy places for Viking culture. But it still made an unpleasant sight for her to witness Christian priests and monks preach their faith in marketplaces and how Jesus was the son of the One True God. 

“If my heirs as the Gemini Saints in the next Holy War are coming from a Christian family…I will daily face the symbol that caused the death of Daria! ” 

The sight of the Christian cross had become a trauma trigger for Irina, and she had already refused to change her mind about whether any Saints who were Christians, had to gather for worship in a remote building in a remote part of the Sanctuary, far away from the Twelve Temples. And she refused to allow the Christian cross to be visible anywhere in the Sanctuary, even as part of a necklace. 

“Should my heirs indeed be born in a Christian family…then I may need to take them away at a young age, and have them convert to Islam, so that symbol of loss are not in my view whatever I am around them for their training…”

It was a possible scenario that Irina personally did not like, but given how everything pointed towards that Christianity soon would ensnare the homelands of the Viking culture as well, she realized that unless something prevented it, she risked to be the only “true” believer of the Norse Gods in the future outside Bluegard, the place in Siberia where many survivors from Atlantis had started a new life. 

“The future…will indeed hold a lot of things, both pleasant and unpleasant.” 

But for now, Irina knew that there were two things for her to do: Rule the Sanctuary as the Pope, and try to raise her orphaned nephew to adulthood as a testing of how well she would be able to care for the twin set that would inherit the Gemini Cloth from herself. 

Chapter Text

As Irina finished the tale of the Holy War in 996 AD, Daria pulled back her sleeves to reveal some very faint scars on her arms, hands and fingers. From the way she also rubbed her neck, it seemed like she felt some form of phantom pain from how she had been killed.      

“It is not very visible now, but it took a long time for those broken bones of mine to heal here in the spiritual temple. And I am not the sort of person who can remain in bed for long without feeling restless…” 

For most of the earlier Gemini generations, they had one thing in common outside serving Athena: They all hailed from historical eras where physical work was necessary for survival, especially if one wanted a roof over the head, clothing to wear and food on the table. They did know the need of taking a break, but honest boredom from not having anything useful to do, was almost worse than an endless list of things, even those which were repeated every day like cooking, caring for the animals and such chores. 

“What happened to Eric? He should have lived in your first decades as Grand Pope unless he died young, right?” Kanon wondered carefully, mindful of what the others had told of what had happened to their families past their deaths. 

“Yes, he did survive to adulthood. But being the nephew of the Grand Pope sadly was a special position that he abused to act like a bully towards others, which I naturally did not accept him doing and often led to me being more harsh than intended in his punishments. And when he entered the wider world… he converted to Christianity in the foolish belief that Irina and Vlad would welcome him in heaven upon his own death, something which led to a massive argument between us two because it felt like Eric was taunting my memories of their deaths by abandoning the Asar gods, and ended with me actually banishing him from the Sanctuary because I wanted to force him into realizing that disobedience to a leader can have unpleasant consequences for oneself. He died unmarried and without any known offspring for me, during a battle in England in late 1013, when Sweyn Forkbeard, already the king of Denmark and of Norway, overthrew King Æthelred the Unready of the House of Wessex,” Irina signed in a defeated manner, clearly feeling some form of guilt for how her nephew had turned out in character despite her attempts of raising him well among all her most pressing duties as the Grand Pope. But Daria laid a hand over the one of her sister, to show that she did not blame Irina for what had happened to her son. 

“Is it just me imagining things, or are the goats outside being unusually noisy?” Amir asked, looking out through the small window to see what was happening outside. Then he rushed out:

“Some of the goat kids have managed to climb over the enclosure which they are in when they do not graze out on the steppe!” 

“Eh?!” 

“We strengthened the fence to avoid this happening just a few weeks ago!”

Nearly all of them followed out. 

~X~X~X~X~X~X   

With the goat kids being quite fast in escaping on this unexpected little adventure, Azel and Amir chose the natural way for them to quickly catch the runaway animals: 

Riding on their Mongolian ponies, bringing some ropes with them in order to not have the goat kids running away. 

“You others try to find the spot where they managed to climb over!” 

Grabbing a few axes with Amari coming with them, Tiernan and Owen knew that they better bring some more hazel trees to make the already present wattle fence higher. 

“Never a boring moment with animals here!” 

Thankfully, most of the herd of goats had not escaped because of the quick reaction from the Gemini Saints. Now, the humans ensured in a team effort that any further escape was impossible. 

“This is how we basically pass time here, doing the same things that we did in life. With us coming from different cultures, we have tried to find the best solution to this sort of situation,” Aspros explained to Saga as he and Defteros helped to weave the willows together into a higher wattle fence, Saga blocking the goats from running past the older twins. 

“The elders in our villages get furious if any of us are careless when watching the sheeps and goats as sheep herders during summer, and our grandma would be quick in knocking her closed fist down on our heads as punishment as well as scolding us…” 

They heard Ramses laugh somewhere on the other side of the enclosure, in a quick break of his hammer putting in iron nails into the raised posts to prevent the now higher wattle fence from falling down in a bad storm. 

“Sounds like something master Irina would agree with, about raising children. Tasking me and Seti with watching the herds of sheeps and goats belonging to the villages around the Sanctuary was her way of teaching us responsibility for the lives of others and that we could not be careless.” 

With Shion using his telekinesis to move away smaller rocks and other things that the goats could use to try climbing on the way to a new attempted escape, Azel and Amir returned with the escaped goat kids. 

“Here are the troublemakers.” 

While the others were outside to deal with the animals, Daria took the chance to boil some more tea water on the kitchen hearth. 

“I do not think you need to mention for our young guests that your reign as the Grand Pope happened during a difficult time in history, Syster.”

She referred to the crusades, a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The ones happening in the Holy Land, intended to recover Jerusalem and its surrounding area from Islamic rule. With the Holy War against Hades happening in 1246, Irina had witnessed six of those, or seven if one more was added, in the Barons' Crusade of 1239–1241. 

“Witnessing Eric openly wearing that damn Christian cross was bad enough, but I can not forgive the crusaders for orphaning Seti and Ramses! If I had not saved them that night…the Curse of Gemini would have ensured their death along with the rest of their village! It was impossible to ignore such a scenario, when my own curse mark burned like it did when you died, Daria…!” 

Irina was rather open with how Christianity was a sore point for her, especially in how it had robbed her of many things that she viewed as precious in her long life. Not only most of their family, but also what had made the homelands of the Viking culture unique when the kings in Denmark, Norway and Sweden realized that Christianity was a source of increased power base together with the church, like how it was down in Europe. The loss of the Great Temple in Uppsala had been a very painful blow for Irina.  

“Irina?”

Holding out her arms, Daria welcomed her sister in a comforting hug.

~X~X~X~X~X~X      

Finally, they all gathered back in the chamber after checking one last time that the goats would not be able to climb out as a way of escaping again. 

“Um…can I ask something which I have noticed to be a little odd?” Saga asked, looking a little unsure if it was a safe question or not. 

“Yes, Saga?” 

“How come that Seti and Ramses have names from Ancient Egypt, and not Muslim names if they were born to parents who lived in a Egypt with Islam as the main faith?” 

Ah, of course he would have noticed something after checking in a history book in the library of what was known of the ancient cultures across the world. Shion glared at Irina and her two successors, who honestly seemed to also have expected that question to show up when someone noticed that their names did stick out a little bit from the others. 

“Because they were freshly orphaned by crusaders when I brought them to the Sanctuary and I had no contact with their birth parents prior to that. They got their names from a pillar with engraved hieroglyphs not far from their burned down home village, where I could read the names of two Pharaohs, Seti I and his son Ramses II. As I did not know their original birth names, I instead named them those names in the hope that they would feel a connection to those famous warriors who had been the divine Kings of Egypt.” 

The sheer venom in her voice told them all that Irina still held some very much alive bitterness over that.  

“My original plan, after realizing that Seti and Ramses was born on 5th June in 1221 AD, was to let them just enjoy life with their birth family for their first  years and then, carefully, start arriving from time to time with Aziz in the disguise of a old, married couple and that my “husband” was looking for possible apprentices to pass down his skills to. Unfortunately, it never happened, and all the blame is on the fifth crusade that ended in September that year…” 

Rolling up her sleeve as she talked, Irina revealed a rather nasty-looking old burn mark on her arm among other scars that she had gotten over her long service to Athena. 

“This is from that attack on their home village, as I had to save them from being burned alive inside their cradle.”

Taking the scroll and pulling out a drawing of Seti and Ramses as newborns under their date and year of birth, she started the tale of how they had ended up in her care at such a young age. 

Chapter Text

Late September in 1221, the Sanctuary of Athena: 

Irina would hardly call her reign as the Grand Pope a problem-free era. For her, seeing Christianity become the dominant faith of the Viking homelands had been a personal blow to her upbringing as a believer of the Asar Gods. And the Crusades in the Middle East between Christians and Muslims, felt like it would keep happening even after her death. 

“One small and bittersweet joy this year is that my successors seem to have been born…” 

The day before her own birthday, 5th June, she had felt oddly strange when waking up for the day, and somehow had held her arms by instinct like she would carefully hold two newborn infants. And her own Gemini mark had not burned in a painful manner like when Daria died, but rather like the feeling of warm water helping to make cold hands stop freezing in winter. 

“If only I could figure out where they are born, so I and Aziz could plan a small visit to the family. That may help my mood for the 2nd of November this year.” 

Right now, Irina was finishing weaving new fabric on her loom, a habit she had kept despite her many duties as the Grand Pope. For her, spinning and weaving was a personal way of relaxing, as well doing something useful to not waste time. Besides, fabrice made out of wool or other spun fibers was always needed, both for personal use and as a valuable item for the Sanctuary to discreetly sell on the markets of Atens. 

“Nice and soft to the touch. Perfect for two infants whose skin may be a little sensitive to more rough fabric,” she smiled at moving her fingertips over the green cotton fabric which she had just made. If she found the parents of her young successors soon, she would offer this fabric in a trade as payment for being a guest under their roof for a night or so. 

“Is it already this late at night? I must have stayed up later than intended because I wanted to finish this today,” she realized at looking towards the Fire Clock and saw that there were only two hours left until midnight.

But she had only taken a few steps towards her own bedchamber, when she suddenly felt her Gemini mark burning like she was being branded with a white-hot iron, in the same manner as she had felt in the last living moments of Daria. The pain was so unexpected that Irina dropped the bundle of cloth to the floor. 

“W-what?!” 

Forcing down the memories of that horrible day she associated this pain with, Irina tried to not kneel from the pain. 

“No…no…do not tell me that…. the children are in danger of dying?! ” she whispered in growing horror. They were already facing mortal danger, despite their tender age of not even being half a year old?! From what Irina herself knew of the Curse of Gemini, it was not aiming to kill any of the Gemini Saints in the Holy Wars though illness, but by violent deaths, in general though murder. 

“No…no, I will not let that happen!” 

As she summoned the Gemini Cloth, Irina saw a vision that hopefully could give a clue to where she needed to search. 

“The Pyramids of Giza… Egypt! ” 

And now she realized the possible danger the future Gemini twins of this era faced, based on what a Bronze Saint had reported to her about events in Egypt mere days ago. The Fifth Crusade ended with nothing gained for the West, with much loss of life, resources and reputations, but not all Christian knights had chosen to leave Egypt with the ships. 

“Damn Christians! ” 

Opening a portal to the other dimension, Irina left the Sanctuary. 

~X~X~X~X~X~X      

Indeed, not all Christian knights had left Egypt earlier that month, and now, a group of them had chosen to raid an innocent farming village far out on the Egyptian countryside in revenge for the failed Crusade. 

“Do not let anyone remain alive…ugh!” 

The leader of the group found himself beheaded by a battleax from behind, and the fires from the burning houses around made the Gemini Cloth shine like an omen of death. 

“So you see nothing wrong with murdering innocents in cold murder like this, all because you failed to get a victory over the Ayyubid Sultanate? Well, allow me to give you a lesson in what we non-Christians are able to do! Galaxian Explosion! ” 

Irina knew that attacking normal humans like this was technically against Athena acting as a protector of humankind, but the Goddess was not yet reborn for this coming Holy War, and right now, the female Gemini Saint wanted two things: 

One, to protect her young successors from an early death this night, and two, to get some personal anger taken out on the Christian faith that had robbed her of so much in the past, with those knights acting as the targets. 

“Where are they?! In which house?!” 

In her growing fear that she would waste too much time, she called on the souls of the other Gemini twins marked by the Curse to help her. 

“Lydia! Elena! Tiernan! Owen! Amari! Sade! Daria! Please help me search for the little ones!” 

Their ghostly forms left the Gemini Cloth, and Irina killed a few more of the knights as they foolishly tried to attack her. 

“Irina! There is a Christian knight in here! ” 

The ghostly form of Daria waved from a burning house where two murdered persons, most likely a husband and his wife, was laying on the ground just outside the door, and Irina threw her axe though the door.

The ax swiftly gave a brutal death to the knight in the back of his head, just as he had raised his bloody sword to search for any more persons that could be hiding inside. The terrified cries of two infants were heard as Irina hurried inside. 

“I need to get them out before the whole house is burning up!” 

The thick smoke made her cough, but she found the bed in a corner, and there, two infants were lying next to each other, undoubtedly screaming for their now late parents and not understanding what was happening. 

“Sch, sch, I will not harm you…” 

Irina had just wrapped them up in her cloak, when the roof suddenly collapsed above her. 

“Oh no!” 

By instinct, she raised her dominant arm above her to protect her head and sent off an energy blast to blow the burning roof out of existence, but not even the Gemini Cloth managed to prevent a nasty burn from appearing on her arm as a burning wooden frame fell over her from the side because she focused on protecting the infants. 

“Ow!” 

On top of everything, one final Christian knight showed the same foolishness as his dead comrades and tried to attack Irina as she hurried out of the house with the young children in her arms.

“Are all Christians that desperate to become martyrs for their faith, or what?! Bot till Oden! ” 

Having seen that none of the villagers was alive, Irina chose to make the dead knights into an offering to Oden, hanging them from the burning house ruins as a warning to what had happened here that night. 

With the silence of death hanging over the area, Irina allowed herself to sit down with her back against an ancient stone pillar, trying to calm down the crying infants in her arms. 

“I am sorry for not coming earlier…or your parents may still be alive…” 

Once they had calmed down a little bit, most likely from exhaustion over crying so much, Irina carefully unwrapped them quickly to confirm the likelihood of them being her successors. 

“Looks like I will have to name you two myself now, without knowing your original birth names,” she said in a sad voice at seeing that it was two boys, and the far too familiar Gemini marks on their bodies that she and Daria had worn. The one with the same mark on the left shoulder as herself was the younger twin, and the one having the mark over his heart on the back was the older one. 

“But what names, I wonder…you are undoubtedly born in a Muslim family…” 

In that moment as she rested her head against the pillar, she felt that there was something carefully carved into the stone. And by using an energy bolt as a improvised lamp, she saw that it was ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. 

“This pillar was raised by Pharaoh Ramses II, in memory of the successful military campaigns of his father, Pharaoh Seti I…” 

Seti and Ramses. The names of two Ancient Egyptian Pharaohs from the 19th Dynasty, a father and son. 

“Well, you are native Egyptians as well, little ones, so…perhaps to honor a historical era where Egypt was ruled by its own divine kings…” 

It was not like she was that familiar with naming customs in Islam, for the manner. 

~X~X~X~X~X~X  

That morning, the maids got a huge surprise at hearing two howling cries from two infants from the bedchamber of Irina. Inside, her smoke-smelling clothes had been tossed next to the door, and she was using her Cosmo to gently heat up a cup with cow milk

“Pope Irina?!” 

Raising her open palm as an unspoken order to not rush inside, Irina returned her focus to the freshly washed and changed babies on her bed, ignoring the very confused maids.

“Hush, you two, I understand that you are hungry and likely wonder why I am trying to spoon feed you right now instead of you getting to nurse as you are used to, but I need to find a wetnurse for you, I am much too old to feed you in the usual way myself and my only pregnancy sadly was cut short centuries ago.” 

Seti made some meowing sounds from her arms before realizing that the spoon was offering food, and Ramses was kicking his tiny feet against her hip in impatience to get his share of the food. 

“M-my lady…who are those babies?” 

“My successors, sadly freshly orphaned by Christian knights in Egypt during the night. Do not just stand there, get Aziz here for checking their health and to find a wetnurse down in the village! They are too young to eat solid food yet.” 

The order seemed to make the maids realize that this was not the time for asking questions, instead they hurried to obey the female Pope. 

And before the morning was over, rumors about what had happened with the female Pope had spread. 

“This burn mark will remain as a scar after healing, I am afraid,” Aziz said after spreading a soothing salve on the burn and wrapping her arm in bandages, having checked on the babies first as per the insistence of Irina. 

“A small prize to save them from a far too early death. I do not know if another pair of innocent twins next year would have been marked by the Curse if Seti and Ramses had died tonight before I had arrived at their village, but somehow I would not be surprised if such a scenario really happened,” she commented, glaring towards the wicker basket where Seti and Ramses now was sleeping side by side together, having relaxed at Aziz confirming that one of the little brothers was harmed from the fire which had ruined their home and would not get any breathing problems from the thick smoke. 

“You did well in protecting them. No matter what age, being burned alive is a horrible death.”

The old Taurus Saint could imagine the reason why Irina said this. She did not say it openly, but she clearly was horrified over how close the small boys had come to death tonight by the actions of adults who could still pose a mortal danger, and feared how another set of twins somewhere else in the wider world could have gotten involved in the Curse of Gemini as well. 

“Oh, and you do realize that you basically are their foster mother now, right?” 

When not getting an answer, Aziz looked up and saw that Irina was almost asleep, blinking with her eyes in an attempt to stay aware. 

“Go to sleep, Irina, I can take some of the paperwork today, you need every strength you can have for raising those two…” 

Ignoring him, the female Gemini Saint picked up the wicker basket from the floor and placed it on the bed between herself and the wall, a sign of motherly instincts that few would have imagined her to have. 

“Want them…near me…” 

Seeing that she had fallen asleep, Aziz placed the blanket over her before packing his first-aid kit together and leaving the chamber as quiet as he could without waking any of the three sleeping Geminis up. It had been a long night for Irina, and right now she needed some rest before taking on the task of raising Seti and Ramses as her own foster sons before they became the new Gemini Saint of this era. 

Chapter Text

Year 1231, the Sanctuary of Athena: 

Helping to watch the large herds of sheep belonging to the Sanctuary, was not quite what many orphans were expecting when they had been sent out today. 

“This is soooooo boring!” 

“I thought we were brought here to learn how to fight for Athena, not doing the same chores on the land as we used to do before!” 

Quite a few of the boys were bored out of their minds, but two in the group were focusing on the task, showing that they had done this before. 

“Hey! Three of the lambs are missing! We need to search for them at once, or the adults will be furious!” Seti expressed with alarm in his voice when both he and Ramses had done the counting twice, and each had found that something was not quite right with the number. 

“What? They are likely just laying next to the ewes so they are not seen…” one of the newcomers started, only for Ramses to imitate how Irina would react when he or the twin brother was in trouble for some serious mischief and rammed his shepherd's staff upon the other boy's head.

“You idiot! Have you never watched sheep before?! If any of them goes missing and is found dead because of our failure to watch the whole herd properly, that is a loss to the Sanctuary as a whole because we need the wool for making textiles, the meat for food and it is a resource of fats and other stuff needed for something else!” 

Not to mention how their master, Grand Pope Irina, most likely would react upon hearing that they had not tried to fix the situation. After living under her care for almost their whole lives and being ten years old now, Seti and Ramses knew better than angering the old, female Gemini Saint on purpose unless it was to cheer up her bad mood. 

“Granny is going to insist on this group searching for the missing lambs for the whole night until they are found…” 

“I can already feel her furious glare upon us for being so careless despite clear orders from the adults!” Ramses admitted to his brother, both of them shuddering in fear of the mental image of Irina reaching out for her iron distaff for using it in a beating. 

“Current mission to have been done before nightfall: Find those lambs and prove once again for Granny Irina that we are taking our responsibility for the sheep seriously!”

“Yes!” 

Of course, the other boys had heard the twins not exactly being quiet. 

“Oi, what is so scary about your grandmother being angry? Old people are not that scary.” 

“Nor able to hit us that hard, for that matter. Chill down, I am sure that lambs are just around the rocks here.” 

But the Egyptian twins were already sensing a very familiar Cosmo coming closer, and made the wise choice in dashing off at top speed in order to try and find the missing lambs, leaving the others to suddenly face the Grand Pope standing on a cliff a bit above them. 

“Are you neglecting the intended lesson in taking responsibility for living beings?” Irina asked with a smile that would have terrified anyone more familiar with her. 

 ~X~X~X~X~X~X    

It took an hour or two, perhaps, the brothers were not quite sure of the time, but when the sun began to settle, they had found all three of the missing lambs. 

“Worth the extra trouble of needing to climb around the cliffs with the ropes for a bit,” Ramses said, carrying one of the lambs over his shoulders because it had injured one front leg and could not walk as it should. 

“Yes, it was dangerously close that they could have fallen down in a ravine and died there from starvation before being found or a predator taking them.” 

Having lived in the Sanctuary their whole lives, Seti and Ramses knew how important the livestock was not only for the farming villages, but for the whole Sanctuary itself. A place, like this, hidden away from the wider world, needed to ensure its survival by not being too dependent on food that was being smuggled in from Athen. The amount of needed food stuff to feed everyone was too large for that, and thus the Sanctuary owned a lot of fields where different types of grain and other crops were grown. Even the Twelve Temples and the main Temple where Athena was being raised, had their gardens where food was being grown, apart from the Pisces Temple needing some wider space for the poisonous roses acting as a last defense to the Chamber of the Pope and the temple of Athena herself. 

“Seti! Ramses! Where are you?”

It was the voice of a young girl, calling their names in the twilight.  

“Athena?”

“She better not have sneaked out when we did not return home earlier! Granny will freak out if she is gone!” 

The young Goddess was five years younger than the twins, and they knew how rare it was for Athena to get separated from Irina or Aziz when she was brought out in the parts of the Sanctuary which was further away from the Twelve Temples, in general done by the female Grand Pope tying a rope around the waist of Athena to their own belt to prevent the young child from running too far, much like how she had done with Seti and Ramses in the same age. The old Taurus Saint was less strict about doing so, but both of them shared the same feeling of keeping the young Goddess near themselves. 

“Seti! Ramses!” 

Upon seeing them, five-year-old Athena broke out in a huge smile. And not far behind her, was Aziz in his everyday clothing as a doctor and his medicinal bag hanging over one broad shoulder. 

“Good work, boys, on finding the lambs. You are showing yourselves able to understand the responsibilities that a Saint of Athena will face, in that the lives of comrades in battle may depend on you.” 

They bowed their heads in greeting for their senior Saint, and felt pride over doing well. 

With all three of the children asleep in their beds some time after dinner, Aziz found Irina sitting at her loom to weave more fabric. 

“It is a selfish wish of mine, Aziz…to deny Athena the twins needed to protect her as part of the Gold Saints. Because I know the pain of losing my own sister due to the Curse of Gemini, which haunts my foster sons as well from the moment they entered the world from the womb.”

As much as Irina would have preferred to do otherwise, she knew that she had to train the boys as the next Gemini Saint and witness them wear the Gemini Cloth in the coming Holy War. 

“No. It is a personal wish, in conflict with what you personally witnessed in the past. You know what Seti and Ramses will face as the Gemini Saint, and you want to spare them from the pain of being separated from each other by death,” Aziz answered, pouring boiled water over some chamomile flowers in a cup so Irina could drink the herbal tea later. 

“Exactly. It is my duty to train them to be my successors as the next Gemini Saint, but I am not comfortable with how the past will be repeated again.” 

Yes. Even with the soul part of Daria being inside the Gemini Cloth, it still did not lessen the horror and pain Irina could still recall as being connected at her death. She had long ago accepted that she could not mourn Daria for the rest of her long life, but the horrible knowledge that the same risked to happen again with Seti and Ramses in the same situation, gave her nightmares during really bad nights.

~X~X~X~X~X~X 

As Seti and Ramses were born to Muslim parents in Egypt before they had been orphaned, it fell upon Aziz to teach them about their native faith, since Irina refused to let go of her own belief in the Asar gods. 

“I wish that Granny Irina could come with us to Mecca, uncle Aziz.” 

Of course this would come up, Aziz had expected it from one of the boys at some point now when they were old enough to understand the difference between different faiths. 

“Unfortunately, non-Muslims are strictly prohibited from entering the city. Irina may not be too fond of Christianity, but she respects this rule among us Muslims and thinks that it is not worth drawing the wrong sort of attention to herself.”

Neither Ramses or Seti enjoyed the answer, but Aziz did agree with Irina on this point that they had to learn the differences between wishes and reality. 

“Is that why she does not allow us to witness when she makes offerings to the Asar gods? To avoid that we would see something we should not?” 

“Most likely,” Aziz admitted, without mentioning that once Irina was gone, any closer knowledge of her religion would disappear, because Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland and all the other places where the Vikings once had lived, now were Christian kingdoms. That reveal would only break their hearts, and Irina had enough trouble with them and Athena on her bad days. 

Perhaps she was not the most warm or nurturing woman when it came to caring for children, but Irina drew a clear line between discipline to teach right from wrong and actually hurting children without remorse. One good example of this, happened one day when Seti and Ramses overheard someone insult her which resulted in a fist fight between the young boys before a adult broke up the fight, and she had to scold them for how they had acted:

“Boys. I am grateful for you defending my honor against those newcomers with a horrible lack of social manners, but you are still not allowed to get into this sort of trouble. Your punishment is to go and help Aziz wash clean and sterilize his surgical instruments and deliver him a basket of clean bandages for next time someone comes to him with an injury.” 

“Yes, Granny!” 

“Men vid Tors hammare…” Irina started in her native Swedish, before this response resulted in a light slap on their respective heads. 

“Call me Master in public and Granny in private! Will you two never learn, desert brats.”

But with the fondness she addressed them and using this nickname on the twin brothers, revealed her softer side.  

At their current age, it was to be expected that the brothers would have found different interests, to not always be together or enjoying the same thing. 

“Down at the forges today as well, Seti?” Irina asked, pausing in her writing, as the older twin returned from whatever he had done when having the afternoon free of training. He paused, then realized that she might have spotted him on the walk with Athena earlier. 

“I like to watch the blacksmiths as they truly transform pieces of metal into everyday stuff and other items by using the very hot fire in the forge, their hammers and anvils.”

Ah? This was not something Irina had expected. During the first months that she had been their foster mother, the female Gemini Saint honestly had worried that the boys would develop a fear of fire, from a tenuous connection deep within their first memories, that fire spreading itself around them and a burning building was somehow connected with losing their birth parents. 

“If you choose to become a blacksmith outside your duty as a Saint when you are fully grown into an adult man, then you can help Ramses in becoming a doctor under the tutelage of Aziz by forging his own surgical instruments.”  

Hearing this suggestion, Seti smiled brightly and went off to find his brother and tell him about what she had said. 

Chapter Text

In choosing to become a blacksmith as a civilian career outside his duty as a Saint of Athena, Seth ensured a life outside being tied to his twin in everything, while Ramses became a medicinal student under Aziz to become a doctor outside being the Gemini Saint. 

“Thank the Gods, both my own and Allah, that they chose different civilian careers for their adult lives if they both manage to survive in the Holy War against Hades. Some people are so set on viewing twins as sharing everything that they forget that twins actually need a separate identity and being their own persons instead of…well, one soul shared between two bodies, or whatever,” Irina told Aziz, who agreed with her about that her foster sons would have more healthy lives and self-confidence if they were not pushed into acting and thinking like each other all the time.

“Given how different Daria and yourself were in personalities from an early age, that sort of mindset about forcing you two to dress and act the same, would not fare well.”  

The female Pope did not respond, but instead returned to her weaving because she wanted to finish the cloth before the end of this month. 

~X~X~X~X~X~X 

Having separate goals for their lives past the coming Holy War, if they could survive, was having a good effect on the Egyptian twin brothers as they kept growing from children into young men. Like the other future Gold Saints of their generation, a major focus was laid on the group creating a close bond with Athena under the watchful eyes of Irina and Aziz, since the Gold Saints were the ones protecting the young Goddess by being the guardians of the Twelve Temples. 

Of course, there were some things that the brothers kept reporting directly to Irina if they felt that she needed to know something. 

“Holding you two back from becoming the Gemini Saint already now despite all the progress you are doing?! What a bunch of nonsense!” she growled, as she grabbed the ankle of Ramses after he attempted a kick towards her. 

“Exactly, Granny! We tried to explain that Elena and Lydia actually is an extremely unusual case of becoming the Gemini Saint at age twelve after only two years of training, and that the Gemini Cloth actually chose them because Romulus and Remus were unworthy of serving Athena as Saints of any rank!” 

Seti knew that it was pointless, but he still tried a sneak attack towards Irina, just to keep this talk going. 

“Did you not say that there have been Saints who never entered Sanctuary prior to being young adults and being quite a bit older than the other trainees?” 

“Correct, Seti.”

Exactly as he had expected, despite still holding the ankle of Ramses in that awkward one-leg position that made the younger twin struggle for balance, Irina just blocked his Galaxian Explosion by grabbing one of his hands and then threw Seti away some small distance. Since he landed in a somewhat soft bush that did not have any painful thorns poking out, he did not complain. 

“Youth and being able to burn their Cosmo does not always mean that someone is suitable for being a Saint of Athena. There are other things to think of, such as being able to fight in a team effort and obeying orders from someone of higher rank. Look at the Pegasus Saint as an example, one of the keys to victory over Hades, but they are still a Bronze Saint and often risk falling in battle alongside everyone else.” 

Letting go of Ramses before he risked falling backwards, she took a few steps back, allowing the twins to try against her as a team. 

Outside their training to become the Gemini Saint and the basic schooling that was taught in the Sanctuary, Seti and Ramses also made progress in their chosen civilian careers.

“Studying in the House of Wisdom, what luck!” Seti commented when he and Irina oversaw the departure of a small group from the Sanctuary. 

“Do not give yourself any nasty burn injuries from the forge before I come back, big brother! Or dropping a hammer on your foot, as well!” 

Since Ramses had asked Aziz to teach him how to become a doctor, using the logic that this would not only prove to be useful in the Holy War but in everyday life as well, it was perfectly normal that the old Taurus Saint brought Ramses and a few other such students with him to Baghdad. 

“Come on, you all, I want to cover a good travel distance before the sun sets in the evening!” Aziz called to the preteen boys and girls under his watch as he went ahead, forcing them to set top speed just to keep up with him. 

“You heard your brother, Seti, Ramses will be back sooner than you may believe, just keep yourself busy in the forge until then with no major injury,” Irina said gently to cheer him up, as this was the first time the twins would be apart for an extended period of time. They were not unfamiliar with being apart for a few short days as part of her training to not make them dependent on each other and finding their own separate paths of life, but she could still see on his body language that Seti was less happy than he seemed.

“I am just worried that other students there may bully him for coming so far away and that he may become homesick for the Sanctuary, Granny…” he admitted in a thick voice and face partly covered by him looking down in the ground so his hair was falling loose, sounding like he fought to not start crying. 

“It is perfectly normal to cry when you are sad or upset. Do not listen to that idiot nonsense that “big boys don't cry” as part of being tough. It just leads to boys having trouble expressing their feelings properly and harms them in adulthood with a poor view on what a real man should do,” Irina reminded him in her most motherly tone, pulling Seti into a hug so he could be as emotional as he needed over the separation from Ramses for the coming months. 

~X~X~X~X~X~X

Eventually, when Seti and Ramses were seventeen years old in the year 1238 A.D, they both underwent the public fighting match to prove themselves worthy as the new Gemini twins of this era. Rather than her usual robes as the Pope, Irina openly wore the Gemini Gold Cloth, and smiled as her foster sons proved to be the winners. 

“Well done, my boys.”

To be honest, it felt strange for Irina to have the Gemini Gold Cloth leave her own body and each half set itself on Seti and Ramses, the helmet floating in the air between them. She had worn the Gold Cloth for so long, even if it had been less often than her robes as the Grand Pope, that she was not sure how to feel at that moment. 

Pride over that Seti and Ramses had proved themselves ready for the duty ahead of them, yes, but also a weak feeling of not really knowing where she was standing outside her role as the female leader of the Sanctuary. 

“We may still need your guidance at times, Master Irina.” 

“Even in adulthood.”

Yes. That was true. She may have handed over the role of the Gemini Saint to her successors, and all three of them knew that the Curse of Gemini was lucking like a shadow in the deepest part of their minds, but Irina was still the Grand Pope and she would show what she could still do as the surviving Gemini twin from the previous Holy War, when the time came. 

Chapter Text

The Alps mountain range somewhere in Austria, year 1246: 

The Holy War had started somewhere after midsummer, and now it was early autumn. Both the Saints of Athena and the Specters of Hades had suffered losses in battles so far, but once again, Hades having the ability to revive his soldiers, while Athena truly lost hers to death because they were mortal humans, showed a problem that tended to show up in each Holy War unless the Evil Stars was sealed away in pre-prepared seals that Athena and the Grand Pope was making in the last few days before the Holy War broke out. 

“At least we did not lose you in the last battle, Nari, it would have been horrible to lose the Pegasus Saint now when we hopefully can get a final battle set up soon,” Irina told Athena, where the Goddess and a young Korean woman was buddled up in her long robes for warmth near a fire. Right now, the remaining army of Athena had taken cover inside some caves, hoping to wait out a snow storm that Aquarius Krest had accidentally triggered when dueling Wyvern Rhadamanthys earlier in the day. 

“I still feel guilty for my Cloth getting smashed into pieces like that, because of…” 

A howl of pain came from the inner part of the caves where other Bronze Saints was given first-aid, and a very uncharacteristic cursing from Ramses, followed by Seti saying in a dry, unamused voice: 

“Congratuations, Unicorn. You just ensured your own retirement as a Saint by not following the orders of the doctor treating you, and gave yourself permanent nerve damage by moving around like that when my brother needed to cut up your wound with that scalpel. Now do your Goddess one last favor and donate the blood needed to repair the Pegasus Cloth!” 

“And QUIT that nonsense about only men being able to serve Athena as Saints, or that they need to be of European birth!” 

"Well done in showing your claimed male superiority, oh great genius," Krest commented, happy over that the female Pegasus Saint, his fellow student under the previous Aquarius Saint, no longer had to deal with those repeated sexist and very often rude comments about her Korean background. Any protests from the Unicorn Saint that he could still fight and that Ramses was in the wrong about the fresh nerve damage, were quickly muffled by the twin brothers teaming up to keep him pinned to the cave floor, while Irina rolled her eyes. 

“Same old story that never seems to end, I am afraid. Despite following a Goddess, some men in the Sanctuary really have trouble accepting a woman fighting among them, and even more so foreigners.” 

Nari said nothing while looking a bit confused over what the female Pope said. In this era, it was easily to dismiss her as a airhead outside training and fighting as a Saint, someone with a quirky personality who really did not seem to live up the often rather idealized image of the legendary Bronze Saint who often was the key part of Athena winning the Holy Wars, but over 700 years later, she would have been identified as autistic. 

“Ignore Unicorn, Nari,” Ophiuchhus Aisha spoke up, removing her face mask since it was only women around this fire right now, “He just can not get it into his thick head that a female artisan with a speciality in dance was able of literally shooting though training and become the Pegasus Saint of this Holy War. He wanted the glory of being the key player for Athena being the victor this time as well.” 

“Kisaeng,” Nari corrected out of habit whatever someone mentioned her past occupation before coming to the Sanctuary after that her teacher, the retired Aquarius Saint, had seen her during a performance in Korea and realized that she had awoken her Cosmo without knowing about it, “and what is so weird about that I use my rehearsed dance moves outside the traditional Pegasus attacks?”

“Narrowminded people who forget that Athena is the goddess of fighting smart," Krest sighed, recalled how he had often needed to defend her against those same bullies even after that she had became the new Pegasus Saint.

"And here we have a repaired Pegasus Cloth ready for being used!” Seti called, again showing a good use of his blacksmith skills in his civilian life by helping to repair the Cloths that were broken in battle. 

“Thank you!” Nari responded in a far more emotional tone, her blue eyes shining up in joy, not wasting a moment to have the Pegasus Cloth back on her body again. Now when all the remaining Saints were able to fight again, it was time to make some new plans. 

~X~X~X~X~X~X    

Soon battle began again, with Irina and Aziz waiting alongside Athena at the very top of this mountain. 

“It feels weird not wearing our Cloths, but this is the fight of the next generation, not us,” the former Tarurus Saint admitted, seeing the distant movements far beneath them. They just hoped that Aquarius Krest would not accidentally bury his comrades underneath a snow ravine again by mistake, like a few days ago when they first had come here. 

“We can still help by jumping in where it is needed.” 

Irina seemed almost unusually focused, even for being her, as if she waited for the right moment. 

“Are you planning to make use of the fact that there are three Gemini Saints here, Irina?” Athena asked, knowing that this scenario of a Gemini Saint surviving to the following Holy War and raising their successors, was practically unheard of, ever since the Curse of Gemini had been laid so long ago. This made Irina laugh:

“Of course, my lady. Better use the chance when we have it…like now!”

The constellation of Gemini suddenly appeared above her, in a golden light, and then was sent downwards in two different directions. 

“SETI! RAMSES! NOW!!” 

The 25-year-old brothers saw the signal, and hurried into the same directions so they had a very wide area between them. 

“Yes, Master Irina!” 

“ANOTHER DIMENSION TRIANGLE!!” 

With three Gemini Saints able to do this triangle trap together, nearly the whole army of Hades was sent into the fabric between time and space. Only the three Judges and a few others now remained. 

“It is to prevent those guys from being restored to life by Hades! Master Irina tried a few other plans, this was the best one!” Ramses called from somewhere in the darkness, followed by Seti: 

“Do not expect us to do all the hard work in the war, hurry up!” 

There was no way of telling if Hades and the Gods of Death and Sleep would soon show up, so they better make good use of the time. 

The three Judges were the strongest members of the Underworld army outside the Twin Gods of Death and Sleep, but even they struggled to make any meaningful harm to their enemies as Irina and Aziz joined the fight. 

“Griffin Minos.” 

One of the Judges suddenly found the Pope of Athena in front of himself, and his hands grabbed hard enough to break his fingers, making his string attack worthless. 

“Y-you…!!” 

“I do not care if you are a different host body than the man from 243 years ago. I will NOT let my fellow Saints die after being caught in your cursed stings and used like puppets by you! The worst day in my life, so long ago…will not be repeated!”

With power beginning to collect itself in her hands, she pulled up their hands in the air above their heads, her own arms crossed. 

“GALAXIAN EXPLOSION!!!” 

Minos had no way of escaping a such powerful attack literally in front of his face, and quite a few other Specters that were standing behind him were also killed. 

“The Pope…the Pope is a Gemini Saint!?”

That reveal seemed to alarm quite a lot of the remaining Specters, especially when Irina was now having Seti and Ramses not too far behind her. 

“Come on, boys. Lets give them a little history lesson…that they can not always expect the Curse of Gemini from Romulus and Remus to be an advantage for Hades!” 

Several Bronze and Silver Saints fell in battle, and two of the Gold Saints as well, but the number of Specters was growing smaller and smaller. 

And then….

A dark aura which Aziz and Irina knew too well, from over 200 years ago, appeared above them. 

“I did wonder why my army suddenly vanished like that. It seems like the Curse of Gemini was not quite as effective this time as the Roman twins promised me that it would be in every future Holy War to come.” 

In the next moment, Irina found herself stabbed in the back, with a black sword. 

“Last time there was a trio of Gemini Saints around, the four sons of Hypnos were sealed away. I can not have that risk happening again.” 

“Grand Pope Irina!?" 

Athena realized at once what the Emperor of the Underworld meant: 

Back when Gemini Ayaan had used the Scythe of Chronos to make a temporary rip in time to the future 40 years forward, and saved the grown-up Amari and Sade from being killed by the Dream Gods through the Curse of Gemini! 

“Irina!” 

But Hades made an error that cost him. By focusing on Irina, as the senior and most powerful Gemini Saint, he was caught off guard as Seti and Ramses suddenly appeared behind him, grabbing his host body together, capturing it between them. 

“Lady Athena, hurry! Nari!” 

The female Pegasus Saint shot forwards like a ash-gray bolt of lighting, saving Aisha from getting attacked in the back by a Specter in the same movement, and Athena also used her own powers and Cosmo, aiding Nari to push the soul of Hades out from the host body, the pair getting a little extra help by that Seti struck the sword out of the God's hands with his hammer and Ramses using a scalpel to make a small stab wound in the same hand, breaking the concentration of Hades by making him feel an unexpected pain in his host body, thus making him unable to block the incoming attack. 

“Irina!” 

Even with her fostersons and successors catching her as she fell forwards, Irina knew that it was a mortal stab. 

“....at least it was…after defeating Hades…Aziz knows…the spell for…sealing the Twin Gods…” she thought as her sight became unsteady, hearing the voices around her like in a mist, distant and unclear. 

“Granny Irina!” 

And then, to the dread of Aziz, did Hypnos and Thanatos show up in the sky. 

“Spread out!” 

Grabbing Athena to carry her, Krest used his power as the Aquarius Saint to create a new snow storm, hoping to confuse the two Gods long enough for Aziz to seal them away. 

“Nari, Aisha!” 

Like how Krest had done with their Goddess, Libra Itia grabbed Aisha and Nari under his arms before taking off in a different direction with them, because it simply was quicker to carry the two younger women with him. 

“Brother!” 

But as the Gemini twins hurried away with the body of Irina, in the same moment as Aziz started to activate the seal, Hypnos and Thanatos sent off some attacks to get some revenge for Hades losing this Holy War as well. One hit the twins in their legs, snapping the bones, and they fell into a very deep ravine while trying to avoid dropping Irina. 

“Seti! Ramses!” 

Aziz could not prevent the avalanche from swallowing the Egyptian brothers, or that they fell towards pieces of sharp ice as they fell deeper into the darkness… 

~X~X~X~X~X~X    

“....and the next thing we knew of, we was here, just as the others had welcomed Irina,” Seti finished, pushing his hair slightly aside from his forehead to reveal the scar of a nasty head injury that had ended his life, and Ramses rubbed his neck as an unspoken fact that he had broken it upon landing on the ice. 

“At least I got to choose my successor as Grand Pope before that battle, and Libra Itia was the following leader of the Sanctuary and the Saints to the next Holy War,” Irina signed, her eyes showing some form of guilt for that she had indirectly caused her fostersons to die so soon after herself. They had talked about it many times over the passing centuries, and told her that it was not her fault, but the guilt was still there in knowing that they could perhaps have lived a normal life after the Holy War while still serving as the Gemini Saint, maybe even getting married and starting their own families. 

“And Aziz managed to bring their bodies back to the Sanctuary to be buried together, before he died from the strain of the seal for the Twin Gods,” Shion informed Saga and Kanon, before they could ask. Checking his pocket watch again, the current Grand Pope realized that they needed to return to the living world again, with a promise of soon hearing the tale about Azel and Amir soon, and then that of Aspros and Defteros. 

Once their three living guests were gone, the group of dead Gemini twins looked at each other. 

“We are going to need to mention him at some point.” 

At once, the mood turned into a united fury. 

“Messing around with human lives, simply because of his own poor sibling relationship.” 

“Nari was incredibly lucky to escape him and avoid being used by him.” 

“Just what could have happened back when Aspros and Defteros were born, if people had not noticed that Star of Chaos…the very thought makes me sick.” 

“And how Saga and Kanon might have been the next Gemini twins to have to worry about that Curse…” 

“Avenir might not have known the details by being an Aries Saint and thus not a Gemini himself, but just that he was able to tell our Athena and us that the Curse would be broken before the end of this millennium…” Azel muttered, hoping that Shion might help them explain to Saga and Kanon how there had been two Aries Saints at the Holy War of 1496.