Previously on More Than A Friend:

It was the diary of the original Eleos, the one born with the very spirit I now carried within my body.

Reading through the diary, I learned a lot about Eleos and her time before the court, a time from before much of the ancient times of Greece. She travelled aimlessly, wandering the land and helping out those in need as much as possible. Even then, she'd had to be careful, for they hunted her from the moment she and they were born.

I also learned about what the court was like when it first was formed, during the very beginning of Ancient Greece. She'd had some people join her and eventually leave the group, but only a few remained. The original court.

I have formed a court this day. The Court of Five, they are named. The five people I trust above any other, who have travelled with me as I journey the land to spread my ways of mercy, pity, clemency, and compassion. Of humanity.

These five have travelled with me for their own reasons, but they all have pure hearts. As they are now my court, this Court of Five, they will live and travel alongside me for eternity, spreading our message and doing right in this world. They know that they have entered, in the eternal struggle between me and Them, but they have agreed to stay by me despite it. They will do well with this world.

Catalina, she is a mortal, but a mortal with a heart truer than any other I've come to know. She was born to join me, she believes, and she will leave behind anything to do what is right.

Dreyden, son of Dionysus. He has taken over management of our food and resources. He brews a particularly good ale, but I know that his heart truly lies in the art of cooking. He has a bad past about him, but he is a good soul.

Alazae, daughter of Hephaestus, she is our smith. She can craft the most beautiful sword and shoe a horse with equal precision, and can get it done in less than half the time I've ever seen anyone take. She joined me in my travels shortly after Beren did, when we rescued her from the home of a group of raiders.

Beren, son of Athena, he is to be our history keeper. He has a keen mind, wonderful for remembering every detail of stories, and he can spin them in just about any way he pleases. He was the second to join, when the raiders took his daughter. He wishes no other father to ever lose their daughter or son or wife or mother.

And Avalon. Avalon has been a steadfast friend, and my most trusted advisor. When I do not know how to lead, what to do, he guides me. When I am in need of a friend, he is there. He has been by my side the longest, far longer than any other who has come and gone or come and stayed. He is to be my second, my right hand. I know he will do right by us all, he is, perhaps, one of the goodest beings I have met. I don't exactly know what manner of being he is - whether demigod or mortal like the others, or primordial like myself. I suspect he is a god, possibly a primordial, but he has not told me.

The diary went on to describe the things the court did together, the growing relationships between Eleos and each of them. Catalina was like a daughter to her, Dreyden and Alazae like siblings. Beren was almost a father figure to Eleos, and Avalon...

Of course, only having ever met Beren, the last standing survivor of the Court of Five, I knew that meant that the other four would die.

Out of all of us, I never imagined it could be Catalina. Poor, sweet Catalina. The girl was like a daughter to us all.

The one who believed in me the most was the first to die.

I will never forgive myself for it.

I don't know how They found us, nor how they tracked us so far as we ran, casting as many disguises and cloaking enchantments as we could. But they caught up to us, and one of Them caught Catalina. Even as they gutted her in front of us, she held her head high and mouthed the court's decree. "Protect humanity, for without it, what are we, as human?"

There was a riot today in the square. I was handing out blankets a street away, so I could not get there fast enough, could not get through the crowd. Someone had accused Dreyden of poisoning the ale he was handing out. "What man gives away what he can sell?" The man had shouted. The people had believed in it at first, but those words sent them all into a drunken rage. The man didn't even have a reason to accuse him. He himself had taken some of the ale, and he showed no signs of a bad reaction.

I believe he was working under Them. I swear it, I saw one of Them in that monstrous form, lurking at the edge of the square. I did not tell the others. It wasn't a good time, they, and I, were mourning for our lost family. We placed his ashes in his favorite cooking pot, and left it in a temple for Dionysus. Dreyden had always said he wanted to meet his father again one day when he died.

All of my family is being taken away from me. I do not know what I might have done to deserve this. I have only ever done what I believed to be the right thing to do. Beren and Avalon are all I have left now.

Alazae was taken from us in the night when she ventured too far from the protections we placed around our camp. Avalon saw her go, when he woke to take his turn for watch. He told us she'd had a dreamy expression on her face as she went. We suppose she was sleepwalking, though I've never known Alazae to do such a thing. Catalina, maybe, when she was alive, but not Alazae.

The next entries were spaced out more over time, as the three of them were constantly on the run. But it was the very last entry, written in a hasty scribble, that shocked me the most. Many lines were crossed out, as though she couldn't even bear to see them written down.

Everything I know is wrong. No, it would only seem so.

It was Avalon.

This entire time, it was Avalon.

I cannot count the amount of times I have entrusted our safety to him, how many times I have gone to him for advice and guidance. It had seemed he was born to lead, but he was truly born to deceive.

I am ashamed to think of how I once would lay with him. How I once… loved him. How I now carry his child. I carry the child of a monster. I carry a child of one of Them. He, They, will never know. If They do not kill me first, I will not let this child live to see any day.

But could I kill a child? This child may be half evil, but the other half is of myself. Goodly. Would the child have the capacity for good? Or would the evil corrupt it? I must do what I can to protect humanity, but I fear I will lose my own humanity if I kill this child. I do not think I could do it. The child may very well be good, and I must protect that.

Avalon is one of Them. He has been deceiving us, me, since the very moment we met. I do not know how I never could have seen it. I truly believed he was good, the kindest and most caring good of any else on this world. But he is not.

He is evil, of the purest form there is. He is my enemy, and he seeks to destroy me. He does not love me, as I once would have thought. He wishes to see me dead, my flesh torn from my skin and my bones turned to ash. He told me so himself.

I cannot write for much longer. Beren and I must run, as fast as we can, to get away from Them. The Court of Five is no longer, but I suppose it never was the Court of Five. It was always the Court of Four.

I know of a place, a place holy to me. The place where I came into this world. We will build a temple there, a place They cannot enter. And we will rebuild. The remnants of the Court of Five will become my court, the court of the Lady Eleos. We will accept only those with true intention.

There will never be another Avalon.

Avalon. That was one of their names. Judging by the scattered descriptions, "eyes and hair of night", "taller than a horse", "broad as a lumberjack", Avalon was the male that taken Bennie from camp.

He'd pretended to be someone invested in Eleos and her ways for hundreds upon thousands of years? She'd been around since the dawn of time, and hadn't become a spirit until sometime around the beginning of Ancient Greece, when the gods of Olympus were still new. That was a long time to keep up an act so opposite and against everything you were and stood for. He must've become quite the actor.

Now that I'd finished the diary, though, I didn't know what Beren expected me to do. Did he know what Eleos had written, or did he think she'd written more? Had he expected me to figure something out, something he couldn't tell me for fear of them hearing?

Unable to think the problem through any more thoroughly for the moment, I set the diary down beside me and laid back farther against the pillows. I was tired. Just sitting around, waiting for them to kill everyone off, was draining me. I suspected it also had something to do with the onyx chains I still wore. They weren't dumb, they wouldn't let me roam around at full power. And the more they picked off my court, the more I weakened.

It was less than an hour later that I woke. Likely because I was above the bell, and when it chimed the hour, eleven, I could hear it loudly and could feel the vibrations in the tower.

I wanted to go find Beren to ask him about the diary, but that wouldn't be wise. I couldn't verbally question him, and going to him right away wasn't a good idea, either. They didn't have eyes everywhere like they did ears, but I didn't want to take any chances.