The World Below - The Truth in the Darkness

"Where is Athena?" Anemus asked with some hostility in her voice.

"Anemus, calm down! You have to introduce yourself first! Tell them who you are!" Lunnia said upon seeing the expression of the white-haired girl and the others who were already there.

The girl in question was Ella, who wore a black dress with white ruffles, had fine features, straight and hair white.

Ella frowned at the moment when Anemus arrived there full of arrogance, inquiring as if she were the most important person in the world.

Ella hated fairies because they were always full of arrogance and Anemus didn't make the best of first impressions.

But as soon as she heard the nymph's name, Ella's expression changed.

"Anemus? That Anemus who is mad at Athena?" She asked with a slight smile of surprise.

"Who are you?" Fotiá asked as she approached with Kima following her.

"Waah!" The children exclaimed in chorus and backed away with fear in their eyes.

They didn't count on Hercules to protect them because he was still there, in the same place, facing Anemus.

"I am Chionothýella of the white dragon clan. And you?"

"I am Fotiá, my mother's daughter." Fotiá said, not bothering with the word "dragon", making Lunia laugh. "That hurried winged one is Anemus, the armored woman calming her down is Aunt Lunnia and there is the rest."

"How cruel, my love!" In a honeyed voice, said the short-haired young woman as she approached with Lobanna, the boy and the couple. "I'm not the rest." Edrik placed a hand over her nonexistent breast and bent gently to Ella. "I am Edrik Velence Veand, prince of the kingdom of Veand."

"A prince? But…" Ella looked at Edrik's slender body. "You are a woman."

"Don't worry about it." Fotiá said and looked at Edrik. "Shut up, you perverted woman!" Fotiá turned her gaze to Ella. "Where is my mom?"

Fotiá felt Athena's presence, but she couldn't figure out where she was. It was like Athena was everywhere there.

Ella looked at Fotiá and remembered that Athena said that Fotiá was around six years old, but that Fotiá in front of her was at least fifteen years old and more, she was a nymph.

"You cannot be Athena's daughter." Ella said and Fotiá's right eye twitched. "You are a nymph and Athena is a high-human... Ah, I see. You are a nymph born from Athena's mana."

Fotiá was starting to get anger with what Ella was saying, but then calmed down when the girl talked about how she was born.

If she was born from Athena, she was Athena's daughter and that was enough for Fotiá.

"Yes! I am my mother's daughter!" Fotiá stated with a proud smile. "So where is she?"

Ella ignored Fotiá's question and looked at Anemus with interest.

(She isn't a fairy? But she smells like a fairy and looks like one... However, she also smells like a nymph and has the elemental essence of one...)

She was intrigued by the nature of Anemus, who was neither fairy nor nymph.

With a gentle smile, Ella approached Anemus and gripped her shoulders. "What are you? I thought you were a fairy, but I think I'm wrong... After all, fairies wouldn't come to this decaying world unless you've fallen, but your wings aren't black..."

Anemus frowned at Ella and walked away. "I asked you a question! Where's Athena?"

At that moment Hercules awoke from his trance. "Ah! It's true! Ella, you're going after her, aren't you?"

"Huh? Ah! Yeah..." Ella looked away.

"Ella! It's been two weeks since she got down there!" Hercules yelled insistently.

More than fairies, Ella hated the dark. She didn't like not being able to see in the dark and so she lived in the far north, where most of the time was day.

But it wasn't just Ella there, the others were there too, and everyone was listening.

"We saw a hole in the middle of this forest. Did she go down there? Athena has been down there for two weeks?!" Lunnia asked in bewilderment.

"Two weeks? Shit! I spent two years thinking she was dead and now that I found her alive, she's going to starve to death?!" Lobana complained.

"Eh? Is Athena here?" Samy asked after his mind came back from somewhere happy. "Are we going back today? Three weeks ago I left my shop with the apprentice and I don't want to be robbed."

"I met an Athena... She was a very violent woman. Is she the same Athena?" Yrio asked.

"Shut up!" Fotiá screamed and pulled Ella by the collar of her dress. "Where is my mom?"

"Fotiá, let her go! We already know where Athena is." Anemus was already gliding when she said.

Anemus started to fly towards the center of the crater and then it happened.

The ground shook, air began to be sucked into the hole, and the trees dropped to the center.

All this in an instant, Anemus managed not to get sucked in and no one got hurt. They were starting to gather themselves when a column of darkness rose from the hole and the ground cracked in all directions.

***

Two weeks ago, Athena was looking at the dark crystal that even though it was dark, it glowed and illuminated the place with intensity.

Inside the crystal was a white haired girl who looked like Eun and Neu, but she was younger, she looked like a ten year old girl.

But more importantly, the place was full of mana. This was a dark mana, almost black, and she felt evilness and sadness from it.

Athena looked around the crystal and realized it wasn't an altar or anything special.

It was like before she was sealed, Faena sat there and waited for the seal to happen.

Athena could not understand what had happened in that place, but it wasn't like she cared either.

"Now I'm pretty sure that annoying dragon messed up the places and brought me to Faena instead of Lhia..."

Athena frowned as she sat down across from the girl trapped in the eternity.

"Must be pretty boring being in there..." Athena wondered and laughed. (That is, if she is aware of what happened to her...)

Athena looked around again, but now she was looking for a way to get back to the surface, but the walls were too muddy and steep.

She tried to use her claws to climb up, but the stones were too fragile for her claws and shattered every time Athena sank her claws into them.

After a few failed attempts, Athena gave up and screamed up, hoping to be heard, but then remembered she was too deep and gave up on this idea too.

"What the hell am I going to do?" Athena asked the girl in the crystal without waiting for an answer.

Two days passed slowly, and that was the time Athena took to notice that there were fish in the lake.

Her stomach was already complaining in loud growls and every time a fish escaped from Athena, it got even louder.

Another two days had passed and Athena had managed to catch her first fish.

This was only possible because the fish swam to the edge of the lake and Athena looked like a cat facing an aquarium.

"Finally! I thought I was going to starve..."

After a week it had become a habit to talk to the girl in the crystal.

"You don't talk much, huh..."

A/N: Wilson!!!

After the eighth day eating raw fish and drinking water from the lake where she also bathed, Athena was already tired of staying there and decided to do what Ella ordered her not to do.

Athena sat cross-legged as if in meditation, closed her eyes and heard Ella's voice in her mind.

"If you keep binding your mana like that, at some point you'll be in draconic form forever."

"And what am I supposed to do?" Athena complained to the silence and concentrated.

However, the place was full of dense, dirty mana and full of maleficence.

It felt like you were swimming in muddy blood that clung to her skin as if it wanted to devour her.

So every time Athena tried to bind her mana, the mana of the place mixed with hers and everything went back to square one.

On the fifteenth day, Athena had blood on her fingers as she scratched the floor, taking out her frustration and breaking some of her claws in the process.

That's when Athena noticed another new physical ability. Her nails broke or frayed soon returned to what they were before.

"Do I have super regeneration?"

Athena frowned, not knowing if she was happy or angrier.

But inside her, was a flurry that could be described as happiness.

She had gotten what she needed to be a nearly complete immortal, but that also meant that if she was going to die there, it would take a lot longer.

The next day, the sixteenth day, Athena had spent the night staring at Faena as she weighed the consequences of absorbing mana from that place and also from Faena.

"But if I don't do anything, I'll be stuck here forever... I'll leave it to fate!" Athena said almost as if she mocked Meno, the god of time and fate.

No god could touch her except Asherah, but this one didn't seem to show interest in the world.

Even when she discarded the gift she had received, Asherah did nothing, so Athena was sure of her immunity against the deities and wasn't afraid to speak ill and mock them.

Athena touched the crystal with both hands, feeling the cold matter, and thought about what she did when she absorbed the mana from the mana crystal in Sigma.

In addition to feeling with the touch, she would have to breathe, devour the mana in that place. Athena concentrated, expanding her consciousness around her, trying to get a sense of all that power there but...

As Athena began to gather the mana from the place, Faena opened her eyes and the hard crystal went gelatinous, and Athena's hands slip inside the crystal.

Athena widened her eyes at the sight of those dark eyes as deep as an abyss and for a split second her heart stopped in shock.

"What the fuck-!!!!!"

Athena, terrified, tried to pull her hands out of the thing, but then Faena grabbed it with her tiny hands.

"L-let me go! Fuck!"

Faena's hands were as cold as a corpse's, and the way she gripped Athena's wrists made her fingers sink into the woman's flesh.

"Shit! You weren't supposed to be sealed? Huh?" Athena felt the mana of the place begin to invade her body. "No! Let me go!"

The mana invaded Athena's body, but it didn't stay for long and entered the crystal through her hands.

Faena was using her as a bridge between the outside and the inside of the crystal and gathering her mana that had dispersed around the place.

With that, Athena felt sinister chills with each wave of mana that passed through her.

Inside the crystal, mana exploded in waves of smoke and penetrated Faena's skin that had a ravaged expression on her small face, as if she were suffering, but Athena didn't see it.

Athena was desperate. Every time the mana entered and left her body, she felt fear, anger, pain, hate, rancor, envy and sadness all with great intensity.

These feelings flooded her mind in a dense darkness that made her vision blur.

Athena's hair quickly began to darken, changing to an almost black brown, her green eyes losing light and gaining shades of black, and her skin became even paler.

After some time, Athena stopped reacting and just stood there.

At least the body was like that.

Not knowing what else to do to get out of that situation, Athena took a desperate and unexpected action.

Using the flow of mana like a river, Athena abandoned her body and invaded the crystal. She could no longer stand all that suffering and hatred in her body and plunged with her whole being into the universe of darkness that Faena was.

"Faena, where are you?" Athena screamed, but the scream didn't go very far.

In fact, it didn't even make a noise, it was like she was talking instead of screaming.

"Why did you come here?" A child's voice, sweet and sad asked. "It's your fault she'll come back... Your fault he'll have what he wanted..."

Athena frowned, not understanding what Faena was talking about.

"My fault? As far as I know, you're the one using me as a straw!"

"I don't control my body... He made me like this when our mother created us..." Faena's voice cracked as if she were going to start crying.

"He? He who? And who is your mother?"

"The magician who was always with her... He wanted to make me absorb all the darkness in the world, but this... Our mother's power was too great and along with all that darkness... I lost control and I wanted to destroy the world I was created to protect…" Faena sobbed. "He corrupted my existence…Mum wanted us to seal her, but he wanted me to take our mother's place and relieve her of the burden of being the Tormentor…"

"That magician was..." Gion was the only person who knew about the Tormentor when she asked. "..." Athena felt a bad taste in her mouth.

Athena didn't understand why she, Faena, was telling all this, but she understood that Gion was hiding something.

Anyway, Faena kept talking and talking as if she was venting her regrets on Athena, and Athena was already losing her temper.

"Enough of that." Athena screamed without screaming. "I'm sick of your crying. 'Then I can't control it', 'Mom wanted this and that, but he corrupted me' or 'Now I will destroy the world'." Athena floated in the darkness in search of Faena. "Argh! Too much whining for my taste."

"You have no right to talk like this to me!" Faena protested.

"Oh shut up! How old are you? Isn't it time to get out of your mother's hem? I don't even know how and why you woke up, but if you don't want your power, give it to me. I have someone I want to save."

"..."

Athena continued to throw her tantrum anywhere in the darkness.

Faena stopped talking as she listened to Athena's snarky and still-reasonable sermon.