To be a protector

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.

"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.