"You… were awake?"
"Of course, who do you think I am? I was awake the whole time… my head hurts like it was stepped on by a thousand centaurs, though. What in the world did you put in that wine?"
Athena continued to let out a somewhat sedated groan as it seemed like it took all of her strength to just stand up. She then spat out something from her mouth, it was a yellowish liquid that sizzled as it hit the ground.
"H… how?" Dionysus could not help but once again move back a few steps as he saw Athena collect herself, fixing her hair and patting out the edges of her clothes that creased from Dionysus carrying her to the table, "I put enough of Hypons's urine to put down even father!"
"Did you just say… urine?" The calm tone in Athena's voice finally broke down as her stuttered words echoed through the room, "You made us drink pee!?"
"Well, if you put it like that, it does sound kinda wrong, doesn't it?" Dionysus let out an awkward chuckle, "But I thought I had to use nothing but the best… drug to put the Goddess of Wisdom to sleep."
"You fucking rantallion! So that's why I quickly recognized the somewhat menacing smell that was mixed with the fresh scent of the wine!"
"...You recognized Hypnos's pee?"
"That doesn't matter! You have desecrated my unsoiled mouth, and not to mention pure Artemis's!" Athena could not hold back her emotion after knowing what she just drank. Although she spat out most of it, she swallowed enough to turn her groggy. She then looked at Artemis with a shake of her head.
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "64ce79d606107d003c23ea27", id: "pf-5140-1"})If there was anyone from the Olympians that should have recognized that there was urine mixed in the wine, it should have been the Goddess of the Hunt. But alas, a thousand years of isolation would have probably dulled even her senses… not to mention her bloodlust.
"Of course it doesn't matter!" Dionysus then also screamed, "What matters is that it is your fault that everything happened!"
"Your feeble mind does not understand, there is and was a reason for me to destroy Mt. Olympus. And it was Father himself who approved of what I have done! How else do you think a Fury would have found out? He was probably fucking her and accidentally told her about it!"
"Father approved of the destruction of Olympus? You may be the Goddess of Wisdom, Athena… but your lying skills are just a tad bit subpar," Dionysus's chuckle held a sort of sarcasm in it as he started walking around the room, "Zeus? The one who would sooner kill all of us just to keep his position? Father uses Mt. Olympus as an escape from the mortals that he fucked and raped down on Earth, why would he destroy it!?"
"Because our universe was already dying even before the Seraphs came!"
"W… what?"
The room suddenly turned quiet as soon as Athena's words reached their ears.
"Although the Seraph surprisingly knows a lot about our universe, she was wrong about something," Athena then pulled a chair then sat on it, her breaths still affected from sedative that Dionysus placed in the wine, "This, the Fractured Worlds, they aren't dying because they were separated from the Core of the Universe or from the fact that they're fractured. Our World had been dying even before that."
"What… are you saying?" Dionysus could not help but stutter. Van, who had been quietly listening in on the side, could not help but cover his mouth from all of this. He was told that he was a god… was this a conversation that was going to be normal soon for him? Just a year ago, he was busy talking with Harvey on how many barbecues they could eat in an hour, and now, it was talk of an end of a world.
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "64cc9e79c7059f003e4ad4b0", id: "pf-5109-1"})"We… we're the ones who caused it, we who stood on the top of Mt. Olympus," Athena shook her head as she let out a long and deep sigh, "There were just too many of us. Too many Gods for one universe, father and the others just kept fucking and fucking around until there were too many baby Olympians loitering around everywhere, not just on Earth…
...It turns out, our divinity was sucking out the natural resources of the Universe. There was nothing left."
"You are still guilty of destroying us!"
"I was saving us! I saved us!"
"You call this being saved!?"
"He is the proof!" Athena then suddenly pointed towards Van, "My plan worked, Olympus will live on!"
"You… impossible," Dionysus shook his head slowly as he also turned his attention towards Van, "You couldn't have known. You couldn't have known that Hermes and the Seraph would have an offspring."
"No, I didn't," Athena let out a chuckle, "I knew that Hermes would eventually have a child in the other world, it was not a matter of if but when... but I didn't think it would be with the Seraph herself. I did not even know that she was a female god, but what I did know was that she was capable of traveling to different universes, why else would she have lived while her other kin died? But that's the wonderful thing about plans, they don't always go the way you expect them to."
Athena then turned her head towards the unconscious Artemis, "We, the remnants of Olympus, were supposed to perish. The plan to send us to the Afterlife was a lie because the Afterlife no longer exists."
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "663633fa8ebf7442f0652b33", id: "pf-8817-1"})"...No."
"…It was a lie that would ensure that we would at least die by the hands of one of our own, and not wait for the cruel demise that we ourselves have created-- a mercy," Athena then gently caressed Artemis's face as she let out a smile, "But who would have thought that my plan would encounter a mistake, a beautiful mistake-- a mistake that could very well give us a chance to redeem ourselves."
Van's head was starting to hurt from all the words that Athena was releasing. If this is what it means to lead the people… then he was definitely not ready for it.
"So… your plan was to let our blood live on in the other world, using Hermes… and just let the rest of us wither away because… we deserved it?"
"Poetic, is it not?"
"You… carried that burden with you for all these years?" A tear suddenly fell from Dionysus's eyes as he looked at Athena. He was already crushed by the burden of knowing Athena's secret all these years, but it was nothing compared to what Athena had to carry.
"As I said earlier," Athena let out a wry smile, "Who do you think I am?"
Dionysus only let out a small breath from Athena's words before proceeding to drink his goblet of wine. Athena, on the other hand, slowly approached Van…
...and knelt in front of him.
"Athena!?" Dionysus could not help but spat out his wine from Athena's sudden action.
"Now I ask you this, Evans, Devourer of Gods, God of the New World, and the Child of Two Universes, please…
...would you be the Savior of Olympians as well?"
