To protect a Goddess
News about the awakening of Hades and the deaths of Cian with his men spread quickly around the Sanctuary. For the sake of Brianna and her slow recovery out of the trauma of losing their parents, Tiernan and Owen were ordered by Darius to stay out of any coming battles because she did not know anyone else in this new place, and guard Athena alongside Ishir.
"Thank you for helping us with Brianna, Ishir, despite that you can not speak much Irish so she can understand you."
The Virgo Saint looked up at being addressed, from where he was seated with the Irish girl sleeping in his lap.
"If Brianna ends up spending her life here in the Sanctuary or down in the belonging villages as an outside-born wife to someone there, the first step is to help her feel safe. And the two of you need to grieve the loss of your relatives as well. Caring for your sister is good, but you are allowed to be a little selfish at times too."
What Ishir did not need to mention, was that he generally had a good hand with children despite that not everyone of them were used to seeing someone like him and the twins had witnessed this several times over the eight years that they had been here.
"Tiernan, is something wrong?" Ishir wondered when noticing that the older twin narrowly avoided tripping over a carpet near the main hall that the Virgo Saint believed to have told his own servants to remove just in case this happened.
"Just having some trouble with my nearsightedness again. I hope that it will not become even worse…"
Despite not being near the building houses in the village for long before he and Owen escaped with Brianna back to the Sanctuary, the thick smoke had affected Tiernan's eyes and even with trying to rinse his eyes with clean water, he struggled with not tripping over things on the ground. However, as the Sanctuary did not have the medical knowledge that would be more developed a millennium and a half later, Tiernan honestly did not know that his ongoing growth spurt caused by him and Owen having entered puberty, was part of the reason why his nearsightedness had become worse over the last year.
"Just take it easy and nothing in haste unless your battle skills are needed. Do not risk to harm yourself by mistake…and I think this young lady wants some of your attention for now."
Brianna had woken up from her nap, and dashed over to her oldest brother for the comfort of a familiar sibling.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
As the third week of November came, the Holy War had been going on for three weeks. Many Saints had lost their lives, and others were still recovering from the injuries they narrowly survived. Eventually, to try and avoid the rising numbers of dead Saints, Owen had to join the fighting as the Gemini Saint while Tiernan stayed behind in the Sanctuary to guard Athena.
"Lighting Plasma!"
Alaric gave Griffin Minos a hard fight for victory, despite being caught in his threads and getting various bones inside his body broken by those as Minos pulled on the threads. It also helped that said lighting caused the threads to break right as the Judge broke his neck, and Minos felt that his heartbeat became irregular as another side effect of the lighting, forcing the Judge to drop to his knees in a desperate attempt to avoid a fatal heart attack by taking deep breaths.
"Sir Alaric has fallen!"
On the other hand, Owen had some trouble against Garuda Aiacos, and suffered a broken leg after narrowly avoiding the Garuda Flap attack by him.
"Agh!"
"Hpf. You were faster than expected, Gemini brat, but not fast enough to escape, it seems."
Gritting his teeth from the pain, Owen chose a temporary retreat by using Another Dimension and reappeared behind the group of remaining Saints. But before a new battle started, Darius showed up:
"Leave those two Judges to me, and make a splint to set that broken bone Owen just suffered. If it heals wrong, he will have to live with a limp for the rest of his life, quite unnecessary given his age."
"Pope Darius!"
Not that this seemed to alarm the two Judges very much.
"Hah. As if a single old man, who already is injured with those visible blood stains on your clothes, is an opponent to fear!" Minos laughed before he and Aiacos hurried forwards.
"Suit yourselves."
Proving that the Popes tended to be very flexible with their battle skills and knowledge collected over their long lives, Darius used his signature attack Excalibur to behead both Minos and Aiacos at the same time with almost no trouble at all, but at the cost of said movements being too much after the massive blood loss he already had suffered earlier.
"Grand Pope!"
"Tiernan! Owen! Do not let the Curse of Gemini…ensnare you two…Elena and Lydia…did not want you to be touched by the hate…from Romulus and Remus as well…" the former Capricorn Saint thought, his eyes focused on the figure of Owen during his dying moments, seeing how the younger Gemini twin limped from the broken bone, now set in an improvised splint, and struggling to walk with more weight on his unharmed leg despite the rather obvious pain he must be feeling.
"Sir Darius!"
But it was too late to do anything at this point, the surrounding Saints realized, for the Pope had given up his life for the Goddess he had served for so long.
"We must return to Lady Athena and let her know…"
Using the argument that he needed to have the healers look at his broken leg anyway, Owen used Another Dimension to travel as fast as possible back to the Sanctuary.
Back at the Sanctuary, Ishir had raised a protective barrier around Athena in case an attack from Hades himself or one of the twin Gods would come.
"It is to the best of my ability. Tiernan, how are things for you?"
Squirting with his right eye where his sight was better, the older twin looked around for any signs of danger that Ishir may somehow miss, despite how impossible that would be.
"I can not sense anything yet, but knowing Hades, it will come out of the blue."
At least Athena now had her Divine Cloth on her, so she could defend herself somewhat from physical attacks. Yet Ishir felt worried that the Gemini twins were separated from each other like this in such a critical moment, as if it would prove to be a fatal weakness they had missed to cover up.
"Owen…please return quickly to your brother! I sensed in the distance that it was not all three of the Judges that Pope Darius brought with him in death! Wyvern Rhadamanthys is still alive somewhere!" he thought, not showing his own unease.
"GREATEST CAUTION!"
"Kān!"
Ishir managed to block the incoming attack from Rhadamanthys with his protective barrier, but the Judge took the chance to slip along the barrier and grabbed Tiernan around the throat when he hurried to place himself between the enemy and Athena.
"Ugh!"
"Tiernan!" the Goddess screamed at seeing him be slammed into the ground.
"Ignore me right now, Ishir, and get rid of this brute that Pandora allowed to kill her own parents back when our home village was attacked, all because she resented the arranged marriage which she would enter once she was a legal adult by law!"
Seeing his young comrade in arms risking being killed if he did not do anything right now, Ishir acted without any hesitation.
"Tenbu Hōrin!"
Using the full force of this attack, the Virgo Saint stripped Rhadamanthys of all five senses, and Tiernan killed the Judge with a Galaxian Explosion straight into his chest after that Ishir kicked the body off him.
"Ugh…next time you need to get an enemy off me and both are trapped in your attack, kindly take one of my other four senses rather than my eyesight, thank you very much!" the Irish youngster complained while trying not to trip over his own feet, struggling to find a balance so he could stand still and Ishur restored his eyesight.
"My apologies, Tiernan….LADY ATHENA!"
Hades had shown up right behind her, waiting for the right moment while the two Gold Saints were distracted by Rhadamanthys, with his sword raised for a killing strike, but despite what just had happened, Tiernan acted faster than Ishir.
"BROTHER!"
But Tiernan was not the only one hurrying to place himself between his Goddess and the Emperor of the Underworld. Using the dimension travel, Owen did exactly the same, jumping in straight before his brother so he would take the blunt part of the attack with the Gemini Cloth. A sickening sound was heard alongside the shattering of the Gold Cloth, as the sword went through the back and stomach of both the brothers, impaling them in a deadly manner yet this also allowed Ishir enough moments to set up the barrier around Athena once more, effectively blocking the sword from even touching Athena or coming anywhere near her.
"Gemini! I told Minos and Aiacos to kill you two!" Hades growled at seeing how his chance for a quick victory had been prevented.
"Heh…nice try to separate us, either by that one of us would be killed either before or during the Holy War, or just being unable to fight side by side, just like that damn curse intended! But Romulus and Remus seem to not have realized the scenarios of us Gemini Saints trying to work around that stupid curse despite the odds of said attempt not working!" Owen laughed in defiance, just to mock the Curse of Gemini that Hades seemed to have tried using against them. Coughing up blood from the mouth, Tiernan glared over their shoulders at the God.
"Dimension Net!"
Due to this being an attack he personally had created and it not being a traditional one of the Gemini Saint, Tiernan managed to ensnare Hades in the fishing net crafted from the Cosmo of both himself and Owen.
"Athena, hurry and remove Hades from that host body of his! Do not think of us two two right now!"
Ignoring her horror at what she just had witnessed to happen, the young Goddess did so, not wanting to waste this chance to victory. Raising her Cosmo, Athena forced the soul of Hades out of the human body, before holding up the staff of Nike into the air so to use herself as a central point to sealing away everyone in the Underworld army in a seal that would last for another 250 years, and this also forced Hypnos and Thanatos to reveal themselves.
"She is using the Gemini Saints to strengthen her reach?!" the God of Death wondered in confusion, he and his brother being caught by surprise by chains, formed by nature spirits that had no ties to death or sleep.
"No! They have a strong spirituality from the moment of their birth, look around them!"
It was not only their respective Cosmo backing up Athena as the sword of Hades faded away so Tiernan and Owen collapsed, but something completely different was coming from their bodies. The very same spiritual chains that trapped the Twin Gods.
"Hypnos! Thanatos! Begone with you back to the Underworld and stay there!"
With a blinding light of Cosmo that shone up the whole Sanctuary, Athena sealed the Twin Gods and the army of Hades away, again standing as the winner of another Holy War.
"Tiernan, Owen…thank you for lending me the last of your strength and sacrificing your sixth sense in order to capture the Twin Gods. You both would have made a wonderful duo of twin shamans with strong ties to the spiritual side of the world, had you been born in a different culture somewhere in Asia rather than in Ireland."
Kneeling at the young man who had been the human host of Hades, Ishir could confirm a sad detail that had showed up in previous Holy Wars when surviving Saints had tried to help the human hosts of Hades after freeing them from being possessed by him:
That once the Emperor of the Underworld did awoken in said human host, his very presence became a deadly poison for the host, eventually killing the unfortunate human youth who had no idea of what sort of spiritual parasite he would carry inside him from a young age.
"If only there was a way to ensure that one host of Hades manages to survive and us Saints being able to help him return to his normal life, with no memory of being dragged into a fight he has nothing to do with…." Ishir said in a regretful voice, feeling sadness on behalf of all those young humans who had their lives ended by Hades possessing them for every Holy War ever since he had started to take human hosts. The worst part was to know that it would be repeated every 250 years, over and over, in an endless circle, until Hades himself somehow was killed, in both divine body and soul.
"Ishir, help me place them in a more comfortable position, please?"
Carefully turning them over to their backs, both Athena and Ishir could tell that the twin brothers were dying, the impalement wounds being far too serious for any chance of survival.
"Is…Ishir…please…take care of…Brianna…for us…tell her that we are sorry…for leaving her alone…" Tiernan whispered, his sight going more and more cloudy as he did not see anything clearly. Out of lifelong habit, he reached out for the hand of his brother, as Owen too tried to say something:
"We wanted to see her grow up…and create a…new family together…if we all three…were to find…someone to love and…have children with…"
Laying the hand of Tiernan over the one of Owen so they had the familiar comfort of each other in those last moments of life, Ishir nodded.
"Do not fear for your sister now when you are at death's door, I will do my best to give her a good life."
They did not doubt his promise, as Darius had chosen Ishir as his successor to be the next Grand Pope, should the Virgo Saint survive the Holy War, mere days prior to the night when the three siblings had lost their birth home and parents.
"Thank…you…"
"Athena….it was an honor…to fight for you…a true Goddess of…War…"
Drawing a last breath, the souls of Gemini twins of the Holy War in 496 AD left their bodies. And just like Lydia and Elena, a smaller part of their souls was split apart from the main part of their spiritual selves, to join the Greek sisters in the spiritual Temple inside the Gemini Cloth for those who had been ensnared by the Curse of Gemini.
"Ishir. I must return to the realm of the Gods now when the Holy War is over, but I look forward to meeting you again, and the next generation that will fight at my side."
Kneeling in front of her, as the human body of Athena began to fade away, the Virgo Saint made a promise to her:
"Just like Capicorn Darius before myself, I swear to try finding a way to break that Curse of Gemini, which started with Lydia and Elena over 255 years ago! For the generations of future Gemini twins that are fated to fight in the Holy Wars, and have nothing related to Romulus and Remus!"
Smiling gently at him, it gladdened Athena to once again hear a confirmation that there was people who held the Gemini Saints dear, either as friends or other forms of close relationships, and wanted to help them.
"All the intended suffering aimed at innocent generations, from two twin brothers who could not accept a rejection from the Gemini Cloth…it is unacceptable, what they did!"
Her voice was calm, but her eyes showed that Athena had not forgiven how the Curse of Gemini had started in the first place. Nodding to Ishir, she then vanished, leaving only her own Divine Cloth behind next to the partly damaged Gemini Cloth.
"Just telling poor Brianna that her brothers are gone…I better make my ears ready for some loud screams of denial and crying from the poor girl…" Ishir signed, using his own cloak to cover up the bodies of Tiernan and Owen as a few other surviving Saints and servants hurried up along the stairs of the Twelve Temples to see if there were any survivors at the top.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Inside the spiritual Gemini Temple:
Despite their still remaining fear of unknown men and boys, Lydia and Elena pushed that emotion down, for now Tiernan and Owen, who had just arrived there as a sign of their deaths, needed whatever medicinal care that they could give them.
"S-sorry if this is going to hurt…"
It was a small blessing that the Irish brothers were not fully grown men, with the expected height and weight they would have, else it would have been a lot harder for the sisters to move them over to a new bedchamber that had not been in the spiritual temple before. In this one, unlike the very plain one of the sisters, the walls were decorated with Celtic symbols, as a sign that Tiernan and Owen had been the Gemini Saints of this era.
"It will be alright…we will help you…"
As a sign of accepting how the brothers would live with them here now, as well as how childish it would be to keep refusing them to see their bare faces, both Lydia and Elena removed their masks.
"Not as possible lovers, but as a family. Brothers and sisters, in a found family, you hear that?"
Giving them a faint nod in agreement since any other movements hurt too much now, Tiernan and Owen showed that they would do their best to uphold that promise.
"If it calms you to know…there were two nice girls in the local village…that we hoped to ask out for a picnic or something like that…if the Holy War had not come this winter…"
At least it felt good to admit that there had been something normal in their lives, for all of that Cian had told them to not fool around with girls until they were a little older and knew better than causing something that would result in too early parenthood.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Author note: Especially during growth spurts of the pre-teen and teen years, when the body grows quickly, nearsightedness/myopia can get worse, which is what Tiernan is struggling with. At the age of 20, myopia usually levels off.