30 — GODS AND CHILDREN

The night at the big city is that of a huge crowd on the big avenues, the skyscrapers emptying while the bars and sidewalks are filled with people eager to live their end of the day in a more cheerful way than in their afternoon hours.

The bathers of the beach are no longer there, but the sand now gathers a lot of people interested in the night and in the sound of the sea: couples, friends, bohemians.

Not far away from there was the huge building of a Coliseum, built in the style of the classic Roman arena that had spanned through ages. For this modern Coliseum was also in ruins, stricken by arson.

Half of its building is torn down.

And above that rubble, where warriors once fought to the enormous delight of a passionate audience, are seven silently wounded young kids.

In her young eyes there were shame, confusion, amazement, fear, anxiety or pain. In all of them. They were only children.

Seiya was looking in the sky for his stars, but he couldn't find them. He therefore looked to the side, and saw his friends.

"Protect Athena." Shun said.

Seiya looked at Saori sitting in her white dress. Her feet, shod in a curious sandal, crossed in front of her. She was just a girl.

He was used to the grandeur and the rites of the Sanctuary; the march of the Camerlengo, the sacred ruins full of history, the silent and haughty figure of a fabulous woman above the Pontiff, the rigidness of Marin. Being in that city beside his friends, taking care of orphanages, washing dishes and trying to smile and play was another world for him. A World where Gods would never descend. They couldn't even exist.

Seiya was sure that the day before he had thrown a pillow at Saori. Without a shadow of a doubt he cursed her dozens of times before going to sleep and was barely civilized when they first met at the Mansion. And then he remembered other times they'd almost hit each other when they were much younger.

Protect Athena.

Athena was Saori.

"What's it like to be a Goddess?" Seiya asked honestly.

The question caught everyone off guard, because after that imposing demonstration and the story of Eris being told, there was a tense atmosphere between them all. A lot of doubt and confusion. What should they do? How to go from t here? They were still children. And there were gods among them.

Saori didn't expect the question either, as no one had ever asked her that.

"I don't know." she said. "It's not that different, I think."
"Do you get hurt?" he tried again.
"Yes," she replied. "But I think it gets better sooner than everyone else."
"That's cool." Seiya commented with Shun beside him and his friend nodded.
"Can you heal other people?"
"I still don't control my Cosmo." said Saori. "But… I've already managed to do that." she said, looking at Alice. "Actually, you are much more powerful than I am."

There was a smile on her face as she looked at them all.

"I saw you all fighting incredible battles that I would never be able to withstand or match." She spoke as she looked at each of them there, for she had actually seen them fight bravely in various situations.

Seiya agreed with that and remembered her against the Black Saints; there was absolutely nothing special about her, any preparation, nor knowledge. There was not even a remnant of that huge cosmos she had manifested.

There was still something that bothered Seiya.

"Did you already knew you were a Goddess when you humiliated us, you know, when we were kids?" he asked.
"Seiya!" Shun scolded, and Alice also looked at him crossly.
"Hey, I want to know." he said, and Shiryu tried to smile beside her.
"No," she replied. "I found out after you all left."
"What's your favorite dessert?" Xiaoling asked joining in the joke and everyone looked at her.

Saori smiled and thought for a while looking up.

"Pudding." she replied and Xiaoling made a delighted face.
"What's your pajama like?" Shiryu asked, to everyone's shock.
"It has little stars." Seiya and Saori replied together.

Everyone broke down laughing and Seiya left after Shiryu determined to stop her heart again. Xiaoling, unable to be quiet, ran after the two of them laughing and encouraging the nonsense. Alice, who was always so serious, also tried to smile at Saori, who was very flushed wanting to hide inside that dress.

Shun saw that Hyoga was still very serious.

When the prank died and everyone sat tired in the ruins again, Seiya spoke to Saori for everyone.

"If you really are Athena, we're doomed." he said sincerely. "But we will protect you." he said.

And all rose one by one so that she could see there before her the young warriors who would protect Athena. They would protect her, Saori, who also saw before her young kids she considered her friends.

She had a smile on her face that slowly died away.

She also got up from the rock she was sitting on and finally spoke. And it was Athena who spoke.

"We will have to fight." she began seriously. "Jab, Ichi, Ban and Nachi are back with their mentors and have not received any threats from the Sanctuary. This means that the Sanctuary has no interest in you for having participated in the Tournament. They want the Gold Cloth."

She placed her hand over the Golden Urn which lightly resonated to her touch.

"And I feel they are also suspecting of Master Mayura." she said.
"Master Mayura?" Xiaoling asked.
"Yes, Xiao. Mayura knows who I really am. It's possible that whoever is behind these Sanctuary attacks suspects she knows Athena's true whereabouts."

Seiya remembered his Master Marin following the path through the mountains.

"And that's not all." she continued, looking at Hyoga. "I don't believe that the threat of Eris is over. In fact, it's possible that her come back was caused by this entire crisis."
"Do you think the emergence of Eris happened because of the attempt on Athena's life?" Shun asked and Saori confirmed.
"Eris took the body of a very important person to me. And I don't think that was a coincidence."

They looked at her with regret, as Kyoko was her friend.

"The battle ahead of us may feed even more Discord."
"Then let's go to the Sanctuary!" said Seiya confidently. "With Athena by our side, I'm sure people will support us."
"Saori is not ready." said Alice, worried. "Look at what it took for you to believe it. Do you really think those Silver Saints would believe in her? Or all the other warriors in the Sanctuary, who have lived with a lie for so many years? Do you think it's just Saori to show up and they'll kneel down in front of her?"

Seiya looked at Saori. She was a decided girl, but still a girl. He remembered the imposing figure of that woman beside the Camerlengo and understood what Alice meant. He still hardly believed in that reality himself.

"We also cannot abandon the Ruins of Discord that have manifested near here. I want to go there in person." Saori announced, drawing Hyoga's attention.
"The Temple of Eris is in Greece." Seiya said.
"Do you know where it is?" Saori asked and he nodded.
"You're not going to Greece." Alice spoke very seriously to Saori, who looked at her annoyed.
"But we can go." Shiryu said. "Seiya and I can go to the Temple of Eris."
"Yes." Seiya agreed. "If Eris is still a threat, we will know more in her Temple."
"It's too risky." said Saori.
"The lives of the Athena Saints are risky." Seiya returned.

The two looked at each other, Saori understood that she could not disagree, because, like them, she also knew the enormous risks involved in being close to Athena and being the Goddess' own reincarnation.

"Oh right." she agreed, resigned. "But first there's a place we need to go."

The young children stayed there as the night lengthened.

They were warriors and a Goddess. They were young and a goddess. They were all young.

Young children tired of that night without an end.

Early in the morning, they climbed the endless mountain stairs that Seiya, Shiryu, Shun and Xiaoling had so long climbed to visit her Master. A time when Seiya was busy going after his sister and anything that might tell him where she was.

And as he walked up those steps in silence beside his friends, he thought of Seika and remembered that she, too, had trained there. Climbed those steps maybe far too many times. He wondered if she also knew that Saori was the Goddess Athena.

When they reached the end of the worn steps, they saw how they were already being awaited on the plateau. The small pagoda on one side, the huge stone in the background ornamented with a rope and wooden portal that led to a cave within the stone.

The Master of the Mountains in her wheelchair, her body entirely covered in sashes, wore a ceremonial robe and beside her was a boy and a girl. It was Shinato and Mirai, whom Seiya had met before.

"Athena." greeted the serious voice of the Master, her eyes blindfolded.
"Master Mayura." Saori spoke back.

Behind Saori were all the young children who followed her.

"How can I help you, Athena?" asked Mayura, guessing that they were there on a mission.
"We will go to the Ruins of Discord and the Temple of Eris." said Saori.

Mayura folded her hands in front of her.

"Shinato. Bring the papyrus urn." She asked, guessing the mission, and the girl left her side to enter the pagoda.

Silence reigned on the plateau while the girl did not return. Seiya recognized for the first time that he was facing a ritualistic scene, because those silences and the magnificence of the two reminded him too much of the different moments in the Sanctuary.

Shinato returned with a small urn that she gave to Master Mayura. She slowly opened it and took out two small scrolls, barely larger than the palm of her hand. Beside the urn, she slipped a small antique feather, dipped it in a solution into the box, and wrote on the two scrolls.

Αθηνά

Athena.

Saori then approached Mayura and Shiryu felt a chill, as she knew what would happen. Mayura offered the urn to Saori and she placed her right hand on the lid and pressed it lightly. It was enough for a small pinch to be made in her finger, thanks to a sharp edge of the lid.

With the blood that dripped from her finger, she followed the characters drawn by Mayura, reinforcing them in the papyrus.

Mirai, beside her, handed her a new rag to clean her blood, but it wasn't long before her wound was closed. She returned to where she was, alongside her companions; Shinato and Mirai also drifted away from the Master of the Mountains.

Mayura lit her cosmos and, just for herself, muttered inaudible words as the two small papyruses floated in front of her, imbued with immense power.

When her Cosmo subsided, the two scrolls rested in her lap. She took out of the urn two golden cylinders, very small and thin. She rolled the two scrolls very tightly and placed them inside the cylinders. He called Alice to her.

The girl came forward to her Master. She offered her a cylinder and spoke in her deep voice.

"Here is the Seal of Athena. Protect Athena." She finished.

Alice returned to her companions' side when Mayura's voice rang out again.

"Pegasus."

Seiya was surprised to be called, swallowed hard, but advanced to Mayura. He reached out to receive the Seal, but realized that Mayura didn't give him the golden cylinder.

"Your Master was here." she began, and Seiya froze instantly. "She's not happy with you at all."

Seiya withdrew his outstretched arm in shame and Mayura continued talking.

"Your sister has dropped out of training when she learned that the Sanctuary was taken over by evil forces." she told Seiya, who was absolutely in shock. "She went after you."

Time has stopped.

His sister. Seika.

He looked back at Saori's face, afraid that she had been lying about it too all this time. She was gaping as well.

"Seiya… I don't…"
"Athena didn't know anything." interrupted Mayura. "Seika made her choice and her choice had nothing to do with Athena."

Seiya didn't believe in his bad luck; his sister left that place to go after him, and he also left the Sanctuary to go after her. And on the way they got lost. They lost their ways. She left Athena for him. He left the Sanctuary for her.

He looked again at Saori and there he saw a mournful girl. He saw a wavering Goddess. And Seiya didn't want to admit it, but something even more important to him was in Shun and Shiryu's face. His friends' eyes.

He looked back at Mayura with his chest renewed, for there he knew that his sister was alive. He knew they were going to meet again. One day.

Then time returned to him. And he knew who he was.

"I am a Saint of Athena." he said decisively.

And he burned up his cosmos, turning off the mountain lights so that everyone could see the infinity of his cosmos in the universe; painted in the stars, a majestic Pegasus blazing with light.

"I am Pegasus Seiya. A Saint of Athena." he repeated, bringing back the colors of the mountain.

Mayura handed him the gold cylinder.

"Here is the Seal of Athena. Protect Athena." she said.

And Seiya took his fate by his hand.

The girl marched, determined.

The entrance to the Ruins was now even more invaded by gnarled roots, vines and leaves through the spaces of the treaded stone. Alice, her inseparable guard, came with her, as well as Shun and the Ice Saint, Hyoga. Perhaps out of care, to march alongside the Goddess Athena they were all wearing their Sacred Bronze Cloths.

Hyoga noticed that the tower in which he had defeated a Ghost had been completely taken over by vegetation. They all entered as best they could and noticed that there were still remnants of the ominous presence: the table and chair the man was using were still there, slightly tilted by the invasion of roots beneath them, but still there. Fallen on the ground, the dry chalice made Hyoga remember something very far away, but still very painful for him.

"They disappeared." said Alice's mysterious voice. "The body of the warrior that was here. And also the one we fought near the sphere."

They marched on and, as they went by, the forest closed in even more and a darkness began to take over those Ruins. Before, it had many openings to the sky that illuminated it completely, but now that the vegetation was advancing and growing, the details that were once so vivid now passed unnoticed. It was as if nature rushed to erase those Ruins of Discord, and if that visit were to be a few days ahead, perhaps they would find nothing more.

Shun found a thick branch and, using his cosmo, set fire to its tip so that they could see better. He went ahead of the group and lit the path and the roots that crisscrossed the stone, to keep them from tripping in the dark.

It didn't take them long to finally reach the heart of that ruin, where once the host of Discord was given birth inside an Amber Sphere in the heart of a huge tree. The tree was still there, its trunk huge at the base, a big emptiness just above the roots and the gnarled, bare branches above, which slowly seemed to retrieve their leaves.

There was nothing in the Ruins.

Not even a remnant of an evil cosmos.

"There's nothing here." Alice commented.

Saori walked alone up the invaded stairs to the emptiness inside the tree; the glow of Shun's flames illuminated the place well.

"There's nothing now." said Saori inside the tree's belly, where the bodies of the unfortunate girls used to be. "Mii." she called.

Alice entered the heart of the tree and took out the golden cylinder that Master Mayura had given her. Saori reached out her hand touching the twisted wood of that gap, as if looking for the remains of anything. And, with success, she found a very small and almost imperceptible resonance, but which she knew was still the dying remnant of Discord.

"Nature is amazing and really is erasing the Discord that used to be here, but we can't give Eris any chance." she said, telling her where Alice should seal.

The girl pulled the papyrus out of the golden cylinder and it immediately straightened in midair. Everyone felt a slight cosmos flow from that seal. Calmly, Alice pushed the papyrus with her hand. The paper dimmed and then faded, becoming just writing paper taped to the bottom of the tree.

Saori smiled at Alice.

Mission accomplished.

Shun, who watched all of this off the trunk beside Cygnus, noticed a strange fluctuation beside him; he used his torch to better see what it might be and saw a frozen trail in the stone that still gave off an icy, impossible smoke. It looked very recent. The boy approached the fire of the torch to the frozen stone and realized that the heat of that fire did not alter the ice in any way.

He looked behind him to Cygnus and noticed that he was looking at him.

"What is it, Shun?" asked Saori.

Shun didn't answered for it was Hyoga who spoke to everyone.

"I was here." he began. "On the day of battle." He looked at Alice.
"Is that how you knew who I was?" Saori asked, and he nodded.
"What were you doing here?" Alice asked.

He hesitated, because he really didn't want them to know the whole truth. And, in effect, he didn't tell them anything about how much he missed the ponytailed girl. He told everyone what he had already told Saori before. That he had been sent to punish them and, within his plans, he noticed the movement of the Black Saints, to whom he began to devote his attention.

"I found Andromeda being attacked by two Black Saints near here."
"So it was you." Shun remembered.
"And the place of that attack was near the entrance to these Ruins. And when I walked in… that's when I saw it." he said.
"You were the one who defeated the Guardian Ghost then…" Alice said.
"No," answered Hyoga. "It is true that I fought, but there was someone else." he said mysteriously.

He looked at Saori before telling.

"The Gold Saint."

His voice carried a hard seriousness and it took everyone in amazement.

"The Gold Saint was here?" asked Saori.
"Yes," answered Hyoga. "I saw it with my own eyes his enormous power. His armor gleamed like the sun. And he defeated the Guardian Ghost in the blink of an eye. And with just his look he could completely paralyze me."

They all looked at each other, dumbfounded.

"He just hesitated and stopped when we all felt a huge cosmos. And that's when I saw you walking ahead of me. Like a projection from another world." he said, looking at Saori. "You said you were the Goddess Athena and walked in the Amber Sphere next to... next to the girl. And in a short time the Sphere crumbled into dust."
"When we woke up, there was no one else here, only the girls." Alice commented.

Hyoga just kept silent.

And Saori chose to leave that place, because she saw in the boy's eyes that there was a pain there that he wouldn't want to feel again.

They left the Ruins of Discord to the light of the woods.

Hyoga was sitting in front of a table leaning against the wall of his room. The light was low as it was already night and he was getting ready to try to rest. Seiya and the others had left for Greece and he hoped that everything would go well for them. Beside him, a closed curtain to a fake window. Through the glass, there was a nocturnal projection of the Siberian pines of his land. Someone knocked on the door and he looked at it.

The door opened and Saori entered.

Hyoga looked down and a chill went up his spine.

He arose then, for it was the Goddess Athena who was visiting him.

"Is everything in order?" she asked.
"Yes, yes." he just said.
"I know it's a little stupid, but the doctors say it can help." she said, pointing to the fake window.
"It's very well done." he agreed.

She then closed the door and approached the boy.

"I saw you very sad in the Ruins, Hyoga."

He didn't want to answer, but she wanted to be able to help him.

"They'll be fine." Saori finally spoke, and Hyoga immediately looked at her.

In the look of Hyoga, Saori guessed what it was about. She took her dark cell phone from one of her pockets and placed it on Hyoga's desk; she fiddled with some apps and played a voice message. Hyoga didn't recognize the voice, but listened carefully.

"Ahm. Hi. Saori, right? I feel very weird sending this message. But I found a lot of notebooks here at home and you're everywhere. Your name is written on almost everything. I think… I think we were friends and… that you like pudding a lot. Hehe. Anyway. I also found your secret cell phone number. So I thought I could send you something. Ren... I mean, my dad... This is all so weird. He said you helped us move. And I saw on the television that you're quite famous too. I really don't know what to make of all this. It's awful not remembering anything, but with so many messages on the notebooks, I feel like I'm starting to know a little more about who I am. It says here I like green Jell-O, Ren always does. And it's true, it's really good. It's allright here and... Hey. Either in or out.

Who you're talking too?

I'm sending a message to that Saori from the notebooks. Come here to say hi.

Hi, Saori!

Now get out of here.

Ren said this is my sister. And yes, he has a lot of pictures of us together, so that seems to be true. But it's still very weird not to remember. But it's also good to be here. Ren likes us a lot and takes care of everything here. I don't know, I just wanted to say that everything is fine here. And I wanted to thank you for what you did for us. Well, that's it. Bye."

Hyoga had teary eyes, as he had heard Shoko's voice very briefly in the message. The longing he felt. Saori also listened to the message with a smile on her face and a huge longing in her chest.

"They are fine." She spoke to comfort himself. "She sent a photo."

She accessed her cell phone and opened a photo for Hyoga to see on the small screen. His heart melted.

It wasn't Shoko, but a photo of Kyoko with a half smile and notebooks in her lap. Perhaps Saori thought that what hurt him was precisely the fate of that girl, taken by the spirit of Eris. But that was not the case. It was another case that hurt his chest. Hyoga smiled emotionally, however, when he found behind Kyoko's smile, on a desk table, a small crystal swan.

ABOUT THE CHAPTER: The chapter continues right after Saori's revelation about being Athena and it is understood that she tells them all about Eris. And I figured it would be important to bring the story back into the youth/childish vibe, as it's very easy to get carried away by the deities and the story could become a fight between gods very fast. So the scene of them asking Saori what it's like to be a Goddess had this function, of reminding them that they were still children.

NEXT CHAPTER: A TERRIBLE SACRIFICE

Seiya, Shiryu and Xiaoling go to Greece in hiding to check if everything is ok in the Temple of Eris, when they are surprised by Silver Saints.