The diamond torturer of Tartarus!? Megaera's burning resent!
(タルタロスのダイヤモンド拷問者!? メグの激しい憤慨)
"There is it, the Third Temple. Are you alright?"
"I'm coming to, but I feel like something is sapping my energy."
His footsteps heavy, and his body weight down by another, Pegasus Kouga only looked up the staircase leading to the next Temple. It was still far off, a dusky looking temple, and who could even count how many total steps were left. Orion Eden supported by Kouga's back like a bag. Both he and Kouga had regained consciousness after fighting Ginga, but something tightened Orion's chest and legs. He felt like the reverse was happening, his Cosmos being dragged by the gravities of a dark, black hole.
"Kouga, that place," he said, referring to the Temple that they approached, "something's off about it. Yuna and Souma's Cosmos disappeared, but Ryuho…"
"Right. Ryuho is fighting hard, so we got to try hard for him too." But then, Kouga panted and fell to a knee.
"Kouga! That place isn't anything I've felt." Orion Eden had felt the powers of darkness before, but being the son of a God, he braved its destructive, empty power. However, something commanded his life to turn around, and he knew that sensation came from the structure ahead. Some wafting wind; Kouga also began to feel his strength sapping against his will. To both, it fell like a storm of weights falling on their heads and spines one by one, chipping away at their consciousness.
There is only one way to Demeter's Temple, but you can't reach it without going through her four Gardens first. Kouga recalled Arion's words. He and the others must've been so close to Demeter – that she had a barrier as a final resort, knowing that she disliked fighting. More steps, moving closing, and their guts were eaten. Something seemed to watch them and drove knives into their hearts; something wanted to kill them, and the intent grasped them tightly. The dark aura swelled around The Garden of Androktasiai.
"Ryuho-!" Kouga groaned, his eyelids dropping from weight. He fell against the stairs with Orion on his back. They both stalled; using his knees, gripping the edges of each stair, Kouga crawled up the ascent. He pulled on each step. At times, he had to stop.
Dragon Ryuho entered a daze as the sight of Swithen Megaera who was stripped of her Stole. Her arms and elbows buckled in, most of her pale skin was exposed. Her hands covered her face. Her body, in a distraught expression, was blotted by brown stains and curves. Peculiar; was it a skin disease, the young Saint had wondered. However, what stunned him the most was the sound of sniffles. Meg's hands slid down her face, and it was contorted in pain. Through her lips were stifled breaths, and a stream of tears ran down from her burning red eyes. Naxos's monster of death shed genuine tears.
"Megaera, are you…okay?" His voice thinned near to a whisper, Ryuho could not obscure his compassion for others. In truth, he did not expect the Jindaiko to cause a teary breakdown.
"It seems you have bore my wounds," The Terrae mumbled. "My history…"
Wounds? Ryuho was frozen stiff. That gap in a follow up attack, invoked by both Ryuho's curiosity and surprise from what he had witnessed—
Meg was a human being. Back at her Temple, an answer about her magnanimity and her tolerance of Megaera would come to the Mother Goddess Demeter: "Rage exacerbates her abilities. Nothing more." To which Hermes followed with a chuckle: "Keh. You gotta fight like a demon sometimes, you foolish goddess." As the cycle of nature was rudimentary to Earth, so was the concept of fighting; even Athena, a bloody war god with a noble heart, understood this. And Demeter was no stranger to fighting.
Ryuho lost his balance, and he was point blank met with Megaera's exasperated eyes—on a face wholly unfurled with rage.
The Dragon Shield had flown away again - in various directions.
"Dragon Ryuho!?" Swithen Megaera screamed out from her throat. Her long black hair poppled in the air. Ryuho could not process. The inside of the Garden began to heat up, and the blue clouds shredded into emptiness, plunging the chamber back into darkness. Dragon felt heat caress through his entire body, up to his face; complete loss of breath, his eyes felt like there were going to be yanked out – from one single punch by Megaera. Her bare fist smashed into his gut. His vision whirled as her hooks crashed into his face, one after another. It was the same swift but stout fists, albeit just one, that destroyed the Dragon Shield. The final hit warped his legs downward and, before he collapsed, Meg threw her palm against his head, clutching it in a tight raptor grasp.
The Terrae trembled, her face contorted in anger.
"I'm going to make you suffer!" Meg released Ryuho by shoving him back a fair distance. The temple lit up again; following right after Dragon was a head-sized fireball. All his senses screamed into action.
Uwaaaaaaaaah! Dragon's jaw jumped open as the fireball thrown at Ryuho touched and rolled against his Cloth, gripping there as a bee sting, shuddering. He then felt it eroding through his torso. His first impulse was to grasp it to prevent it from eating his ribs.
"Do you like my Alecto Fire? It will sear your body right through. Yes, have something like I have—when a spear went through me." Meg said as she kept her launching hand upraised.
"You faced the wrong opponent, Dragon Ryuho!" Meg watched the agonizing Bronze Saint desperately clutch her fireball in attempt to pull it away from him. "My sister Pan may simmer, but if anyone who contains the same scale of hate that my mother has it's me!"
Ryuho continued to scream, bending back his head, the fireball singed even behind his Cloth. His palms felt like tearing as he tried to shove away the flame. It had the weight of iron. He only moved it an inch.
"Then Megaera…" His words strained out his throat, "do you..enjoy…th-AGH!"
"Of course I love to destroy my mother's enemies! Even though I faced the aggression of war, felt no hope, I learned that someone like me could be adopted. Humans. Why do they kill so brutally?! The term 'Swithen' comes from deforestation and scorching fields, which supposedly supports humanity and the Earth, but not without consequence. But why should there be love in killing?"
Those stains that shocked Ryuho-down Meg's arms and legs were closed cells. They were holes and thinned gashes. In her abdomen, below her breasts, was a large one, a 10 cm healed puncture. It was a history of either abuse or worse, a distasteful memory that she kept locked behind her warrior visage. That sudden burst of tears, and anger afterward, was result of her being violated when stripped of her armor, revealing a tragedy.
The stench? What Hermes did not mention was when he stepped in the Second Garden (and he dare not tell Demeter), he could sense the cold presence of the dead. It lingered from the Third Garden even at a higher elevation, and he dared not to approach as such presence of losing one's mortal life suffused over the heat of the sun. Even it gave the Cancer Saint—the one Gold Saint that felt at home in the Underworld—a bit of a tremble. Plus, due to her elusiveness, he has never seen Meg's face.
"To revive the Underworld—," Meg continued, "Persephone and I were true friends. Even I was allowed to meet with her when she stayed with her beloved. She was the only one I spoke to, and the dark spirits hated me there because I was human, but I would quiet them. That was my purpose. In other words, I had the purpose of easing mother's worries every Winter. You Saints ruined that!"
Haaaaaaa! Ryuho felt compassion again, but this time, it came as a surge. If he died now, would the Saints fail completely? Even more so, Dragon wanted to answer Meg's question. Somehow, an act of will, Ryuho hefted and threw away the fireball, which flew into the wall and burst apart. Ryuho doubled over, panting. Even Megaera, her eyes trembling, was a bit stunned by his persistence.
"I thought you were dead like Mister Genbu and the other Gold Saints, but you are not dead at all are you?" Asked Ryuho.
"I am pretty much alive."
"You ask 'Why people like killing?'" Ryuho paused after his question; an answer wouldn't come quick, perhaps due to the shock of the attack or maybe he wanted to give a sincere one after some thought. Or maybe Meg already knew the answer.
"I don't like to kill if I can avoid it." After some breaths, Ryuho looked up from the floor and to Meg. "I don't like it but, I fight because…toxicity lives in Heaven and Earth. Even martial technique can bring peace, in the heart and mind."
"You are a fool and a liar!" Quickly, the Terrae grabbed Ryuho's head again.
"Enough! Grove of the Dead!" Megaera groaned through her teeth, and her Stole floated, reattaching to her body. That included her clawed gauntlets, which consumed Ryuho's head. The Dragon Saint screamed as he was once again assaulted by the illusions from before. The wooden stakes within men, torn by spears, the screams of women and children, mowed down by bullets; limbs stretched and torn apart; flesh simmered in cauldrons. The Grove of the Dead - that was the source of weakness among the Saints' five senses and their Cloths, breaking easily. An illusionary attack that expressed grief, torture and pain among man's destructive techniques. Meg released Ryuho and he fell to the ground in silence, his eyes pale. A loud whistle or ringing pierced through his ears, and he could only pick up a part of Meg's voice.
"The past is the past," she began to ramble again, "my wounds are wounds, but now Dragon Ryuho, I am with mother. Even though I am a repulsive monster, I serve her. Despite the vices behind the Swithen Stole, the Diamond of Tartarus construed by both Hades and Demeter, I've made up my mind. Weakening my heart is not possible and you failed to turn around this battle."
Eventually, her voice would drown out completely. Her body, that ivory skin now covered by the Stole once more, melted further into darkness.
"Not yet!" This time her hand closed onto the boy's neck. Ryuho dangled in her grasp; Meg's other hand, taking a chopping knife form, began to vibrate with a bright coral blaze.
"Die Dragon Ryuho!"
Ryuho couldn't hear her words, see her flustered face, but somehow his body was conscious of her anger. Everything was a haze; running through skin and bones, Megaera's smoking hand exited out of Ryuho's back. Meg may or may not have missed his heart. She felt certain she aimed in the right place to at least nick it with her flame. She pulled away and there was an explosion between them. The Bronze Saint fell onto the floor once more. There was not a twitch or shudder, just a lifeless boy with a smoking gape in his chest. The Dragon Cloth was in burnt, broken pieces everywhere, and seeing Ryuho fallen in the middle of the fragments made Meg fill with calm. It was over and she could breathe. A smirk touched her lips. This affirmed that she was one of the strongest Terrae; she had avenged Pan and Ginga and eliminated the threat that agonized Demeter. Three Saints from the Naxos Invasion fell before her. She almost dared for them to be more. Waving her finger, giant vines spun around Ryuho and slowly elevated him. He was now going to join the wall with his friends.
Dragon Ryuho had never experienced the feeling of being near or truly dead. He would often say that battling two evil gods had let him near that point, but life still trembled within his body. Still, something about this predicament felt different. Meg's raging fire and Grove of the Death made him feel completely empty, pulled out his organs and severed his spirit. It was an indescribable feeling; something pulled him away from the determination to awaken.
It's like he was in the depths of water untouched by sunlight. The sky gradually faded from sight, stretching further way, but below was so deep that you couldn't see the bottom. The heavy pressure of the ocean, while falling, causes the veins to hyper function and eventually rupture. Human lungs are compressed, such as atelectasis, thus the reason why humans can't breathe under water. Sea creatures that live around 1800 feet could survive 800 psi; it could be imagined that angler fish and viper fish could go much more. If we reach that far, only God could deliver you to the next path.
Ryuho, at this point, actually felt like a mortal. But something anchored him to a plane above Yomatsu Hirasaka, the mountain that led to the next world.