Athena and Poseidon
Everyone could see how broken Irina was by the loss of Daria, Vlad, Hiresh and her unborn child on the same day. There was a haunted look in her eyes, and she made a point of staying inside the Gemini Temple while she healed after the miscarriage, just to be allowed to grieve alone.
The worst of everything, was how empty Irina felt without Daria, the void in her heart whatever she looked around after her sister, expecting to see her or hearing her voice somewhere, only to be met by silence in every room or chamber that Irina searched.
"She is not here…"
Even the bittersweet knowledge that Daria's soul was inside the Gemini Cloth, did little to ease the grief over her death that haunted Irina. Not to mention, with how she felt right now, Irina knew that she was not emotionally stable enough to bring herself to Uppsala and tell Eric that his parents would never come back because one of the Three Judges of Hades had taken their lives. She knew that she could not handle the reaction of her young nephew right now, and the Holy War was not over yet.
Yet she paid attention to what happened in the Holy War because Saints had to pass through the Twelve Temples to give reports to their Goddess, and knew that Athena had lost more Saints in battle. Among this, was the news that Aquarius Skadi was looking more and more sickly whatever she showed herself, openly coughing in what clearly was a painful manner and struggling to control the freezing cold temperatures that was part of what an Aquarius Saint was able to do.
"How is Skadi, Ragnhild?" Irina asked when entering the Aquarius Temple.
"To be honest? Really bad," the Scorpio Saint responded, where she was seated next to the bed where Skadi slept, her upper body supported by several pillows as if she struggled to breathe properly when lying down, "Aziz does not think she will live for much longer, her lungs are growing weaker and unless something changes, the next time she will go out in battle…she will not come back alive to the Sanctuary."
Twenty years earlier, Skadi could have lost her life to a fatal pneumonia after saving her sister from drowning in an accident involving the ice breaking underneath their fleet and them falling into the freezing cold sea water during the cold winter months, if she had not accepted a drop of the divine blood from the previous Athena. She had felt that becoming permanently mute, with a massive scar over her throat from said accident, was a small price to pay if Ragnhild had escaped death. But her own lungs were permanently scarred after the pneumonia, and everyone knew that Skadi was living on borrowed time with how her lungs one day would collapse and death would claim her for real.
"Her goal was to live long enough to fight with us now in the Holy War, and die for Lady Athena…is not that why you developed that particular version of Scarlet Needle, to use on her as pressure points to help her breathe easier whenever she had one of those "cold spells" of hers where her lungs reminded us all about how she walks between life and death thanks to the blood of Athena?"
Irina did not know anything else to say, knowing herself how it would feel to lose a beloved sister, and Ragnhild made a pained expression at the reminder of what the female Aquarius Saint had always mentioned about the future.
"Yes…and I need to do it several times a day now, just to help her sleep somewhat peacefully as she does right now because Aziz fears that giving her medicines to help her sleep…will be dangerous at this state. He is worried about the risks of giving her an overdose by mistake, and basically causing her to never wake up, but spending her remaining time alive in a coma…"
At touching Skadi for a moment, Irina felt how cold the Aquarius Saint was, despite the fresh "tattoos" of the stars in the Scorpio constellation on her upper arms from Ragnhild using her Scarlet Needle to help her sister breathe easier through pressure points.
"Lady Athena?"
Suddenly, they heard the Goddess speak to her Saints through her divine Cosmo, and Athena said something that really took quite a few of them by surprise.
"An alliance with Poseidon, the Emperor of the seas?!"
"No way, that has to be a trap! Lady Athena, please do not agree!"
Yet the vast Cosmo of a different God was already present next to Athena, at Cape Sounion.
"Hold on…his human host and the Sea Dragon general…" Ragnhild commented when noticing something in a mental image of the two Gods, and then stormed off from the Aquarius Temple with a furious look on her face.
"OI, SEA DRAGON! THERE BETTER BE A VERY GOOD EXPLANATION TO WHY YOUR WIFE, MY AND SKADI'S OLDEST NIECE FREYA, IS THE HOST OF POSEIDON!"
Even Skadi, who had woken up at hearing the voice of Athena through her Cosmo, looked pissed at noticing the same as her sister, but lacked the energy to leave her Temple for now.
"The oldest daughter of your elder brother, who got married into a merchant family from Hedeby just this very autumn? Oh dear, sounds like your nephew by marriage really is asking to be beaten up for getting her involved in something she may not even truly understand, yes," Irina agreed once the deeper meaning behind Ragnhild storming off became clear, and Skadi used her Cosmo to write in runes that no, they had never mentioned anything about Athena or the Sanctuary for their family, only the same story that Pope Anshu had used when finding Daria and Irina as the future Gemini Saint: Pretending to be shield-maidens acting as the female bodyguards of a young, wealthy lady in Greece.
"Given how important longships and other boats are in our culture, somehow I am not surprised that one of the seven Marina generals under Poseidon turns out to be from one of our homelands. But your nephew by marriage, and your niece as the host of Poseidon? Yes, I would want to do what Ragnhild is threatening to do with him right now."
In the end, Athena and Poseidon agreed to make an alliance against Hades, even if it would only last until the end of this Holy War, because the Emperor of the seas saw Hades as a threat to his own undersea domains.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
It was the day of the Winter Solstice, as the Saints and Athena acted as a bait to lure the army of Hades into the depths of the sea, changing the battlefield to Atlantis, the capital of Poseidon.
"The civilians have already been evacuated to Siberia, so do not worry about finding any innocents getting caught in battles! Go!"
Proving her promise from six weeks previously, Irina did search for Minos among all the fighting, and when spotting him, she showed no mercy for the murderer of her twin sister.
"DET HÄR ÄR FÖR DARIA! GALAXIAN EXPLOSION!"
Unleashing her Cosmo in an attack powered by her rage over the death of Daria, that Minos had no chance against, Irina also revealed her hidden collection of weapons behind the Galaxian Explosion. By rushing forwards with a shield on her arm, she slammed it into his face and gave Minos no chance to recover from the already deadly force of the most powerful attack of the Gemini Saint.
"BLOT TILL ODEN!"
Like an animal sacrifice to Odin, Minos found his throat sliced, in this case by the iron hammer of Thor that Irina was wearing.
"Lord Minos!"
Yet even with the help from the Marina generals and Poseidon, the army of Hades showed their immortality.
"This is bad, they just keep coming back to life…!"
Both Athena and Poseidon were protected for now, but they spotted bleeding wounds underneath their Divine Cloths.
"There has to be a way to take them all out, at once…Skadi!"
From the way Skadi knelt to the street stones of Atlantis and could not hide how she was now coughing up blood, they all realized that this was the moment Ragnhild had feared for twenty years; That her sister now stood at the door of death.
"Storesøster!"
"This is bad! We can not get her out of here with all the Specters around us!"
Coughing as she struggled to breathe, Skadi noticed Freja come closer to her, her eyes showing no sign of Poseidon being in control over his female host right now.
"Aunt, use this raw piece of Orichalcum alongside your ability to freeze everything solid."
Somehow, this seemed to alarm the still alive Marina generals.
"WHAT?!"
"Lady Freja, what are you suggesting?! If the Aquarius Saint uses that, all of Atlantis will be frozen in a massive iceberg for centuries to come…"
Slamming the Trident of Poseidon over the head of her legal husband to shut him up, Freja snapped:
"What is worse in this choice, you idiot?! Hades winning by giving his soldiers immortality, or Atlantis frozen in a massive iceberg?!"
But Skadi had already taken the raw piece of Orichalcum, feeling how it connected with her own power.
Athena…
The Goddess could tell what Skadi intended to do as her final stand against the enemy.
"Watch out!"
A new attack aimed at Freja, barely blocked by her husband, forced the soul of Poseidon out of her body.
"Damn you, Hades!"
Holding up an amphora, Athena placed a seal with her own name over it so the soul of her uncle was somewhat safe. As this happened, they all noticed a glowing blue light from the piece of Orichalcum, and how the temperature was quickly dropping around them as Skadi gathered her Cosmo and Ragnhild helping her sister to stand up on trembling legs.
"We do not have time for any more talk! Get back to the surface, all of you!"
Opening a portal to the Sanctuary, Athena ensured a way out for the surviving Saints.
"This is a message that Anshu asked me to pass on in case he was not alive now at the final battle: Irina is his chosen successor as Pope."
Her? Out of the four Gold Saints that now remained, Irina could tell the reasons why, like that Skadi had been unlikely to survive the Holy War and had been lucky to even live long enough to fight in it, Ragnhild clearly intended to die alongside Skadi because she had spent nearly all her life as the caretaker of her sister, and Aziz had admitted long ago that he was a better doctor than leader.
And yet, it still came as a surprise.
"Irina, come on!"
Tossing her over one broad shoulder, Aziz rushed after the others and even the Marina Generals followed with Freja, Athena remaining behind with the two Norwegian sister Saints.
"Athena! Skadi! Ragnhild!"
AURORA EXECUTION!
Caught by surprise by the massive cold, the soul of Hades was forced out of his host body as the Specters was all encased in the resulting ice, Skadi ensuring the victory for Athena in yet another Holy War, to the cost of her own life and that of Ragnhild as Atlantis indeed became a massive iceberg at the sea bottom.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
One month after the end of the Holy War, the Sanctuary was slowly getting used to the sight of Irina in the robes and helmet of the Pope. A contact with the four surviving Marina Generals had confirmed that they could not enter Atlantis due to the massive iceberg now covering the undersea capital, and Freja had personally promised to keep her husband in check from now on, so he did not get any other "funny ideas" with other Gods.
"Female Popes are sadly quite rare even among the female Saints, so you may face some trouble in getting your orders followed by those who are not used to taking orders from a woman."
Right now, Irina and Aziz were having a private talk about the future. Being the only two surviving Gold Saints left, they both knew that they would play the role of being the leaders of the Sanctuary for the next 250 years.
"Having to fight their way back to the real world out of Another Dimension should be enough of a lesson that I am a Gold Saint in my own right."
For now while Irina led the Sanctuary as its new Pope, Aziz had plans of traveling to the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, and expand his medical knowledge if there was something new discovered there. As one of the most learned healers in the Sanctuary, this was important to ensure survival of those caught in accidents or illnesses that could risk death.
"Well, I know one thing that will haunt me for sure, my good friend: My own successors as the Gemini Saint, and that damn Curse. The pain of losing Daria, my own twin, to the Curse was bad enough. Will I have to witness the death of those two, a new set of sisters or brothers, fated to fight in the next Holy War?"
Knowing that there was no promised right answer to that right now, Aziz instead reminded Irina that surely this was a good time to bring Eric back to Greece now that the Holy War was over?
"Thank you. I was thinking of doing that, but everything has been so busy and taken most of my attention since the Winter Solstice…"
On her way towards Uppsala, Irina naturally passed through a lot of holy places for Viking culture. But it still made an unpleasant sight for her to witness Christian priests and monks preach their faith in marketplaces and how Jesus was the son of the One True God.
"If my heirs as the Gemini Saints in the next Holy War are coming from a Christian family…I will daily face the symbol that caused the death of Daria!"
The sight of the Christian cross had become a trauma trigger for Irina, and she had already refused to change her mind about whether any Saints who were Christians, had to gather for worship in a remote building in a remote part of the Sanctuary, far away from the Twelve Temples. And she refused to allow the Christian cross to be visible anywhere in the Sanctuary, even as part of a necklace.
"Should my heirs indeed be born in a Christian family…then I may need to take them away at a young age, and have them convert to Islam, so that symbol of loss are not in my view whatever I am around them for their training…"
It was a possible scenario that Irina personally did not like, but given how everything pointed towards that Christianity soon would ensnare the homelands of the Viking culture as well, she realized that unless something prevented it, she risked to be the only "true" believer of the Norse Gods in the future outside Bluegard, the place in Siberia where many survivors from Atlantis had started a new life.
"The future…will indeed hold a lot of things, both pleasant and unpleasant."
But for now, Irina knew that there were two things for her to do: Rule the Sanctuary as the Pope, and try to raise her orphaned nephew to adulthood as a testing of how well she would be able to care for the twin set that would inherit the Gemini Cloth from herself.