Beginning of a multi-generational curse
Year 246 AD, somewhere in Central Asia:
Elena was looking around, where she and Athena were sitting in the shadowed part of a mountain ravine, dressed in the Gemini Cloth and the Divine Cloth respectably. The Holy War had lasted for little over a month now, and both sides had lost warriors from several battles. From three different directions, three of the now remaining Gold Saints were running towards a pre-agreed place of meeting. Since they all were running by the speed of light, a minor crashing into each other was somewhat expected.
"Ow!"
"Sorry!"
Landing in a pile on top of each other, Agi and Utu showed that some things between the two had not changed much over the past five years. Darius came at a slower pace, and knelt before their shared Goddess:
"Athena, most of the Underworld Army are defeated for now, but to the cost of more losses among our ranks…"
Since only those three Gold Saints had arrived, Athena had a strong feeling of who had died.
"We feel no Cosmos remaining from Julia and her group. Same for Tiamat?"
A confirming nod, and they held a minute of silence in grieving the lost friends and comrades who now were no longer in the living world. But they could not grieve for long, they knew that the Holy War was far from over yet.
"I saw something in the distance that we must be careful with: Romulus and Remus have indeed joined Hades, just as we feared five years ago," Agi mentioned, and Elena twitched quite visibly in all her body, though the mask hid whatever emotions that would have betrayed her face.
"Elena, we have prepared everything we can to overcome your weaknesses in battle if you indeed were to face those two again on your own. You are not alone, despite how things may go," Utu reminded her gently, and tenderly let the tips of their little fingers touch for a short moment. The lack of protests in any form, by either voiced or removing her hand, revealed that she trusted him despite her otherwise well-known fear of men.
"Come on, we better act as bait so there are no innocents risking to be killed in this area," Athena ordered, and Darius picked her up so he would carry her on his back. She could run pretty well in her own Cloth, but for the sake of faster speed with enemies behind, she allowed herself to be carried.
"Wait for just one moment, please," Elena suddenly asked, and removed her mask before she pulled Utu a little closer. Then, without warning, she did actually give him a quick kiss on the cheek, hiding her blushing face hastily again with the mask.
"Thanks for agreeing to do the Red Bond ceremony with me despite the fact that I was not born under the Pisces sign, and for that we did not end up killing each other!"
"...my pleasure…" Utu managed to say, still with a stunned look and even a faint blush because that was the first physical contact between them that Elena had made on her own outside the necessary touching for their blood to be mixed. Agi had the grace to not make a comment about what Elena just had done, though it was mostly out of shock to what he just had witnessed. Darius was also surprised, but a small part of him was happy to see that despite her fear of men due to the past, Elena did not see Agi and Utu as dangerous, or at least less risky to become a danger to her in some form.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Soon, a battle started once again. It was no surprise that just like five years ago, Elena seemed to be the intended target of the Italian twins, clearly desiring to finish what they had aimed to do that horrible evening that had been the last time Lydia had been alive.
"You two just do not know when to give up and admit defeat, will you?!"
One small, but still major difference from five years ago, was that 21-year-old Utu and nineteen-year-old Agi were now fully grown men, and had earned five more years of training and experience in combat, while Romulus and Remus had more or less remained frozen in time due to dying at age eighteen and naturally would remain that age in death. The same could be said for Elena, since she no longer counted as a girl at the age of seventeen.
"CRIMSON THORN!"
Still, the trio of young Gold Saints did not attack randomly. Instead, they tried to draw Romulus and Remus towards an area where Darius and Athena had gone ahead.
"ACUBENS!"
Agi did not expect his most physical attack to be successful, given how it forced him within reach for Remus who he tried to cut in half by twisting around and using his legs. But he still heard a satisfactory sound of ribs being broken, and did not doubt that the spine also received a proper hit.
"Thanks, guys!"
Elena knew that she had to save the Galaxian Explosion as a attack of absolute desperation or having no other way to defend herself, the nerve and muscle damage in her left shoulder affected her performance in battle and she knew that her handicap would be playing a huge role in either survival or death for herself.
"Elena, watch out!"
For now, Darius, Agi and Utu could defend her well enough as she backed them up by using Another Dimension from a safe distance, but they knew that this could not last for forever.
"How foolish of Athena to even let you fight in the first place, little girl. As if a cripple would be fit to be Gemini Saint, when you can not even use Galaxian Explosion, the ultimate attack of the Gemini Saint!"
That same mockery that Elena wanted to forget from her old life as a slave. The feeling of being looked down at, as if she was worth nothing…
"No way that I will use that technique in the same disgusting way as you two would! Not when it is the very attack that took the life of my own sister!"
A quick memory image of Lydia when her body was buried five years ago showed up in her mind as the twin brothers kept mocking how Elena was worthless on her own, and the spiritual presence of her soul within the Gemini Cloth felt the wave of conflicted emotions from the heart of the living sister. Of course, this struck a sore point for Darius as well:
"SHUT UP WITH THAT BLABBERING MOUTHS OF YOURS, SCUMBAGS!"
Utu let himself get cut by the Excalibur attack deliberately, but only enough to leave a rather minor wound on his arm so he could control the loss of blood. But just in case either Romulus and Remus looked over the shoulder, he acted as if he had gotten a much worse hit, landing on Agi with his least injured side so he did not accidently poison his close friend, the Cancer Saint already faking that he had gotten knocked out earlier.
Pretending to run away like a terrified child when seeing Utu do this, Elena saw the brothers take the bait.
"Master Darius! Lady Athena!" she called out to where they were standing, and at once, a massive circle in golden light was spread around her.
"What!?"
Taken by surprise, Romulus realized that neither he or his brother could move, as if there was something holding them in place.
"Hah!" Agi laughed, using all his spiritual powers to add strength to the circle, "did you two morons miss that Utu actually managed to spill some blood on you while we jumped around to avoid getting hit?! We did expect from the beginning that you would aim to murder Elena just you did with Lydia five years ago, and we are well aware of that she have some trouble defeating you two bastards with her handicap!"
"Yes," Utu added in, having two Bloody Roses ready for attack, "making it a little more evenly for her."
Athena had placed her Nike staff in the ground, and from there, the golden light was coming into the circle. And from below the Gemini Cloth, blood was also slipping out from Elena's old scar on the left shoulder, as she had just injured herself in order to reveal the poisonous blood inside her veins that had been created from the Red Bond ceremony with Utu.
"Romulus. Remus. I knew from the beginning that defeating you all by myself was out of the question, even with help from my fellow Gold Saints and Lady Athena. Yet still, as you have sworn allegiance to Hades and will most likely be brought back to life in another Holy War because he must see a long-term use for having a pair of "Gemini twins" of his own to use against the Saints, I can not let you haunt my eventual successors in 250 years, or the Holy Wars to follow!"
A glowing image of the Zodiac was forming under the feet of Elena, and the soul of Lydia appeared next to her.
"So for the sake of the future generations of Gemini Saints to come, I will not hesitate to give up my life to allow lady Athena the necessary equivalent exchange to seal you two away for centuries! For each one of the Twelve Gold Saints who have been fighting in a Holy War, and the younger twin to take up the Gemini Cloth after the older twin as well Lady Athena herself, there will be 250 years! You two being sealed away for a planned 3 500 years should be more than enough time to not give the coming 14 generations of Gemini twins in the Holy Wars any problems!"
With Elena having said this, Agi used his signature attack to pull out the souls out of the resurfaced bodies of the Italian twins:
"Sekishiki Meikai Ha!"
"Excalibur!"
With the attack from Daríus, the souls of the brothers were cut off from their bodies, and Utu did not waste the chance to literally dose them in poisonous blood to ensure that if Romulus and Remus tried to get back, their bodies would be poisoned enough to cause death once more.
"Sorry, Elena…that is all we can aid you with…." Utu admitted, his voice weak as he struggled to focus on what he was trying to see, feeling the loss of blood from two battles close in time beginning to affect him.
"It is more than enough for this."
Darius hated it with everything of his heart and soul, but he knew that the next step was necessary for the seal to work. It was the cost to ensure that Romulus and Remus was not resurrected by Hades at the next Holy War, and Elena knew it, with her wish to not want to outlive her twin sister for many years until dying of old age or something similar. For her, those five years without Lydia alive at her side, had been a daily reminder of what had been lost despite everyone trying to help her, and Elena honestly trying to move on from the emptiness in her heart.
"Master Darius, Lady Athena."
Elena looked over her shoulder at them, tears making her hazel eyes shine alongside a very sad smile as her Cosmo was rising to the highest level she could do.
"Please tell my eventual successors that I did this for them, in the hope that no future twin set wearing the Gemini Cloth shall have to be separated from each other by those two like Lydia and I were."
Yet Romulus and Remus had no intention to be sealed away passively. Once again, they used the feelings and memories of the humiliation from being rejected by the Gemini Cloth as fuel for raising a sea of Cosmo filled with negative feelings.
"Robbing us of the pleasure to kill every future twins that will follow you, little slave? Then, we will still leave them a gift!"
"GALAXIAN EXPLOSION!"
Due to the seal Remus did not manage the full power of a Galaxian Explosion, but it was enough to slam Elena into the wall of the barrier inside the seal and knock off the helmet of the Gemini Cloth from her head.
"Ugh…."
Elena managed to stand up again, but something felt strange in her body as she did so. And the helmet….were broken in two parts!
"Bastards…! What did you do to her?!" Agi growled, setting the Italian twins on fire with his spiritual powers in response. That both Romulus and Remus were openly laughing despite the pain from the flames, made them seem like they had gone mad for real.
"If we can not fight for Hades in the coming Holy Wars…then those Gemini twins shall still have to fear for themselves: One of them shall die before the Holy War starts, or they shall not be able to fight together at Athena's side in other ways!"
In horror, Athena realized what had happened; Romulus and Remus had just placed a multi-generational curse on the future Gemini Saints, and it was meant to be activated as soon as each new pair of twins destined for the Holy War were born. In short, those Gemini Saints of the future would be haunted by the fear of losing the other one, and weakening their united powers.
"No…" Elena whispered in a horrified voice as she too realized the meaning of the curse, "No…I will not let your refusal to admit your rejection from the Gemini Cloth haunt my successors!"
"Elena?! Do not act reckless now!" Darius ordered, but she did not seem to hear him. Trying to ignore the pain that caused her left arm to visibly tremble as she raised her arms, Elena took the pose for the Galaxian Explosion.
"Darius, she is trying to prevent that curse from being activered before they are sealed away!" Athena told him as she slammed the Nike staff into the circle, hoping to help Elena.
"I will not let my fellow Gemini Saints experience the pain of losing a sibling that has always been at their side from birth! GALAXIAN EXPLOSION!"
Elena was prepared on that this attack in union with the seal was going to cost her life, and given what Romulus and Remus just had done, her own feelings of fear for the future Gemini Saints and knowing the pain of losing a twin, a person who had always been at her side throughout all her life, was helping her to pull all her remaining strength into it.
"SEAL ACTIVATE!" Athena screamed, and a golden light overtook everything.
When the golden light faded, Darius hurried over to where Utu and Agi laid, while Athena checked on Elena. Her breathing was shallow, and there was a look in her eyes that suggested that she was not far from drawing her last breath.
"Utu and Agi served their role well in helping with the seal, my Lady…." Darius said in a low voice, confirming that two had passed away from the strain of helping with the seal.
"My successors…I am sorry…I am so sorry…" Elena whispered, unable to focus on the face of Athena as she openly wept in despair, staring out into nothingness, "I am really sorry…I didn't mean for that curse to fall upon you all….please…forgive me for not being strong enough to…defeat those false Gemini Saints…and leaving them to…you…"
It did really hurt the Goddess to see how Elena would spend her final moments alive like this, feeling the heavy burden of responsibility for what would happen in the future.
"You are not at fault for this curse upon the Gemini Saints, Elena. You tried to protect them from it, and you were willing to sacrifice your own life so they would not have to worry about facing Romulus and Remus."
A final breath, and Athena knew that her young Gemini Saint was gone as well. Now, only Hades was left to deal with, as the twin Gods had already been sealed away earlier and almost nothing of his army remained.
"Darius. As the new Pope, please make sure that the Sanctuary will not look down on Elena for this. I will not accept future generations to think of her as weak, that she was not strong enough to defend her still unborn successors from this curse. She was willing to give up her own life to try and stop the curse, and the Gemini Saints should understand that."
"Yes, my Lady."
Inside a separate part of the spiritual space of the Gemini Cloth, the Temple of the Twins was being formed around Lydia as she dragged the soul of her sister along the floor, using a long cloak that Elena laid on. Both of them looked very beaten up, and were honestly exhausted.
"...tired…I am so tired…" Elena gasped, hearing the breathing of Lydia as she made an effort to get closer to the common bedroom they once had in the seven short days they both had been the Gemini Saint together, five years ago.
"Yes…we both need…to rest…that seal…took so much strength from us both…"
Finally, they were inside the bedroom, and somehow, Lydia managed to pull up Elena on the bed despite that they now were of different heights and weights due to the difference in five years between their respective deaths.
"Our successors as the Gemini Saints…let's wake up…when they are born…"
"...sounds…good…"
Their spiritual fatigue overtook the sisters, and they fell into a deep sleep that would last for most of the coming 200 years.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Three days later:
The remaining guards and people living in the Sanctuary knelt in respect for the new Grand Pope, the only Gold Saint who had survived the Holy War of this generation.
"What are your commands, Pope Darius?"
The former Capricorn Saint looked around, towards the tombstones with the names of his fellow Saints on them. Not every body had been brought back for burial for various reasons.
"From now on, the Italian twins brothers Romulus and Remus, who were rejected by the Gemini Cloth five years ago and later executed for the murder of Gemini Lydia, are to become known to history as the False Gemini Saints who joined Hades out of free will after death!"
That was the least thing he could do for the sake of Lydia and Elena, who had been the real Gemini twins all along but had to face suffering for it from the older rivals. If he could ensure that Romulus and Remus would become known as traitors to Athena, then their names would be spoken like a curse, forever known as a disgrace.