The years before grief, part 2
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 knelt from the unexpected pain, still bending forwards while gasping for breath after getting it knocked out of his stomach, 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 Nke 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.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Author note: The Parthian Empire, also known as the Arsacid Empire, was a major Iranian political and cultural power in ancient Iran from 247 BC to 224 AD. The Sasanian Empire (224-651 AD) succeeded the Parthian Empire, and re-established the Persians as a major power in late antiquity alongside its neighboring arch-rival, the Roman Empire (after 395 the Byzantine Empire).