The God of Gravity part 3: Apocalypse

Distant Relatives

“WHAT?!!” the goddesses exclaim around me. I thought I was the only one who finds this troublesome.

“How much can she pull?” Lady Aurelia asks.

“When we fought, she pulled eight while using her sword—which I think is impossible.” They look very alarmed about it. 

“Eight and with the sword, are you sure, Leo?” asks Lady Mila.

“Yes, my lady. I'm sure about that. Since I went against it with my seventh DT but thank goodness I knew about it and avoid getting sliced. Oh! And also, Jasper said that she wants to find the leader of the Masked League because he slaughtered her family.”

“Alright,” she nods and looks around. I feel cautious all of a sudden. Like I shouldn't have talked about it. “Let's talk inside our room. We don't want somebody else into this conversation.” 

So we follow her and her sister to their room—which is in front of ours. As we enter, the room is fragrant, as expected of a girls' room. Everything is orderly. The floor is clean, the bedsheets are well-kept, and there are more closets than what we have. It's warm here and I feel I could sleep here without forcing myself. Not that I would, because this is a girls' room. I notice Lady Mila closing a closet thoroughly and looks suspiciously at me. Although, I never saw anything. I pretend I didn't care by looking at the side.

“You guys can sit on my bed,” she says. “except Darius.” She looks at him and points at the ground. “You sit on the floor.”

“What?!” he questions. “Why?!”

“I don't want your stench to stick on my bed.”

He frowns and growls folding his arms before sitting on the floor. I sit at the right-most part of Lady Mila's bed. I'm surprised by its softness when I touch it with my hands. Cairo is sitting at my left then Hyeon. Lady Juliet is behind us, lying on the bed like she owns it. They're close friends after all so she could do anything that she wants here. Lady Aurelia is on the top bunk directly above us. I guess she owns it. Lady Mila just stands in front of us, walking to and fro.

“An Oriental goddess…,” she mentions. “age of around sixteen, a peculiar sword, and knows Dimensional Touch. It couldn't be…” She's looking at Lady Juliet—looking like she knows what she is thinking while resting her chin on Hyeon's left shoulder from behind. “Miyamoto, Shizuku,” she finally utters. 

Wait, I think I heard that name…

“Is that the name of the daughter of the Great Goddess of the East?” asks Cairo. “I never had any reliable source but only heard rumors.”

“That's her name, Cairo. And she's our distant relative.” It makes sense, actually. I can see the family resemblance. “You know that the House Hayashi is an Eastern House that descended from the Miyamoto Clan, right?” We nod. “And trust me that it was the Great Goddess Akio-”

“Aiko?” asks Darius.

“No, Akio. The ‘i’ comes after the ‘k’.”

“Okay,” he nods.

“Lady Akio, the Goddess of Archery was the one who studied the texts that Lord Seok decoded from what my father found from the book of the ancient Jovian Civilization on planet Jupiter.”

“So that's why that goddess knows DT!” I remark. She nods.

“Eight?” scoffs Darius. “I'll surpass her in no time.”

Cairo says, “I think maybe you'll need so much time to get there, Darius.”

“Huh?!!” he reacts violently. “You're questioning me, Cairo?!!” And frowns at him. Cairo looks cautious and apologetic.

Lady Mila clears her throat so we listen to what she has to say next. “Father couldn't master the technique so he took it to her, hoping that she can master it. Eventually, she did. Then she taught him.”

“You mean, she's your father's master?!” I couldn't help but exclaim.

“By the looks of it? Yeah. She taught him many things.”

“I like her,” says Lady Aurelia. “We met her once. Although she's strict, she was so sweet!”

“Yeah, and she's very clever too. On some occasions, we met Lady Shizuku, the Goddess of Blades, and Lady Akio's first-born daughter.”

“She has another child?” I ask.

“Yes, but for some reason, only Shizuku survived that s*******r. The reason could be that she has that sword she was carrying. At first, when I was a little girl, Olympus asked me to get the sword they wanted deep in the depths of Tartarus. I sensed nothing peculiar about the sword unlike what you described to me, Leo. But the violet fire suggests that it might be a f*******n Relic. The violet fire is like Aurelia's violet lightning that is a product of consciousness. My guess is that the sword absorbs the soul of its victims. That's why you sense thousands of souls from it.”

“What?” exclaims Lady Juliet, touching her lower lip as she thinks about something. “Then why did Olympus told you to release it? It's an absolute rule that these kinds of Relics shall be locked away, never to be used again.”

“Yes, but at that time, they asked Lord Seok and he deemed it was nothing in particular. As everyone guessed, it was nothing but a failure of a Relic with no master. It's made out of an unactivated Olympian Steel and never made by any God of Smithing so no one can use it or even discover its power… until now.”

Those last words are in my mind for a while after we left the room. Darius is already sleeping on his bed while my thought keeps me awake. I just lie down and stare below his bed bunk.

Lady Mila said that the sword of that goddess absorbs the soul of its victims, then every time she wins a fight, she gets stronger. Thousands of souls in her sword… I wonder who they belong to. I mean, she doesn't like a person that would kill innocent people. If so, then we would've known about it. The whole world should've known about it. She's hunting the Masked League, maybe that's why. And she has Jasper with them. Concealing their existence must be easy for him.

I yawn very deep. I'm getting tired. I guess I'll sleep. As I did, my tears wet my pillow. I can't help thinking about Hera. 

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*

In Mila's room, Juliet decided to sleep over but Hyeon went to his room to rest. Aurelia is sleeping and that leaves Mila and Juliet still talking to each other on her bed. They wear their black pajamas as they lie beside each other and under the same blanket. Juliet is at Mila's right.

“I feel uncomfortable,” says Juliet.

“Okay, I'll scooch a little-”

“No, it's not about that.”

Mila stops moving the asks, “Then what?”

“About my brother.”

“Uh-huh?”

“I get the feeling that he found his ‘Queen piece’.”

“Yeah, that's definitely quite alarming.”

“Right? He always talked to me about how messed up Olympus is, and how much he wants to change everything. I never expected him to follow this path—being rogue. If it wasn't for the explosions, he could've been the one who's responsible for the destruction of Olympus.”

“That's quite far-fetched, to be honest. You know what he's like. He looks like he's a madman, evil genius or something but you know how kind he is.”

“Oh… I forgot about that. Looks like you know him more than me,” she smiles at her. “Sometimes I forget that you are the scary Goddess of Death, you know.”

Mila scoffs a laugh. “Why?”

“You're very kind too.” She hugs Mila, sobbing a little. “I feel my family is falling apart.” She buries her face on Mila's chest to hide her face.

“No, that's not true.”

“It is. Nobody knows where my father is, I don't know what happened to my mother on Mars, my only brother has gone rogue, and even before everything that recently happened, they already hated each other. I think I'm not enough to hold this family together.”

Hugging her tighter, Mila says, “Don't worry. Your family will stay strong as long as you believe. You're enough to keep them together.” She caresses Juliet's head.

“I also feel so sad after hearing about what happened to Leo's family. If that happened to my family, I would've killed myself.”

“No, don't say that.”

“I can't imagine how much pain he felt when he saw them with his own eyes but still he remains strong and never shed a tear. I wish I could be so strong like him.”

“If that's what you think, you're wrong.” Juliet with her eyes wet with tears she looks at Mila. “Before even he found his parents, he was in deep pain like you do. He cried so hard but I was there for him to stop him bottling up his emotions. He just likes to show everyone that he's strong physically but he's weak inside. Perhaps, weaker than you. But if this is the only way I can help, I will be there for all of you. So, don't worry.”

Their embrace gets tighter until Juliet says, “Thank you, Mila. You're like a sister to me.”

“You're welcome,” she says, patting her head. Then they sleep.

On the contrary, Jasper wakes up in the middle of the night, like someone is thinking about him so hard that they get through his dreams. He scratches his redhead and sits up. Then notices his goddess fully awake, standing, and looking through the glass pane. The darkness is darker than ever as the moonlight could not pierce through the clouds. Her gaze is colder than the weather. Jasper dares not to disturb her. Just looking at her mighty stature from behind, could be all he wanted before a good night's sleep. He goes back to lie down but then Sayuri is in his mind now. Standing up, he decides to try and talk to her.

“You're still awake, my lady,” he says declaratively, having no idea how else to start a conversation.

No answer coming from her. He sees the sight she is seeing, standing beside her at her left. They are in a building, on the third floor but the highest among the remaining standing buildings. Jasper hopes that seeing what she sees, could give him clues of what she is thinking but he could not.

“You want to sleep, my lady?” he asks. “I'll watch over all of you so please rest.” Again, no answer. “My lady? Is there something in your mind?” She is treating him like a ghost she cannot hear. He nods and steps back away from the glass pane.

Then as he is about to turn, she asks, “Tell me more about those boys.”

As if dawn arrived early for him that his sleepiness is entirely gone. He smirks and says, “Their names are Leonide Padine and Darius Ozan. Leonide is a human but with a power of a god. He's the God of Gravity. Whereas Darius is a demigod and has the power like Enzo. Recently, I asked our new comrade, Philip about those two. He said Leo—for short is a very stubborn boy. His dream is to become the King of Olympus—which I deem to be almost impossible for his caliber.” Emotionless, she gazes at him like showing the impression that she disagrees with him. He did not correct himself anyway and continues. “Darius Ozan wants to be stronger than any King of Olympus. And apparently, both the King and Enzo taught these boys on some occasions. It's clear because they know Dimensional Touch. They're interesting, aren't they, my lady?” Unexpectedly, she nods. Jasper feels warm all over his body. “What do you think about them, my lady?” he asks as soon as he felt it.

Her breath is fogging the glass after letting out a soft sigh. Jasper braces himself for what she is about to speak.

*

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