[The boy speaks the truth. This is my doing, shade.] The dungeon responded, its voice emotionless. Despite the lack of emotion audible in the dungeon's voice, there was a certain viciousness in its word choice.
The word "shade" felt unnecessarily mean, even if it was technically an accurate descriptor of Athena. For a moment I was happy that the thing was telling the truth, but that moment was interrupted by none other than Athena's vestige herself when she reacted to the Parthenon's statement.
"Why!?" The goddess' vestige demanded, anger infusing her corporeal form and causing her aura to thicken around her. She once again handled her spear, dramatically redirecting the thing so that it pointed straight upwards, towards the ceiling of the temple's innermost chamber.
Silence filled the chamber we found ourselves in. Athena turned and glared straight up, ignoring me for the time being. We waited until the dungeon spoke again, as both of us wanted to know what the dungeon's motivations were. When it next spoke it spoke at length, and upon successfully uttering each sentence it spent a single second in silence before pressing onward with its explanation.
[Althos is a lawful god. And he was born months ago. Do you not see what that means?] The dungeon asked. I looked at Athena curiously, because I didn't know what that meant given the strange behavior of the Parthenon itself. Athena considered this revelation curiously.
Athena was quiet for a good few seconds while she thought about what the dungeon had said. There was a look of introspection on the vestige's face, which lasted a tense few moments. And then she began to speak.
"So what? He's a lawful god, should that mean anything to me?" She asked, haughtily. There was a certain arrogance in her voice and for a second I was reminded of the memories I had absorbed. In many of those memories, I had learned something important: it was often arrogant people who were clueless. I smiled at that thought and wondered if Athena's vestige's arrogance was proportional to her wisdom or to her cluelessness.
The dungeon sighed before it began to speak next. [He can restore order. He's here in...] The dungeon's voice suddenly stopped talking, as if it realized it had made a mistake. And then in a flash of insight, I realized something: the vestige might not have known where she was. Athena began to speak in response to the Parthenon's last comment and I attempted to scan the thing's mind and memories. And was promptly disappointed.
I threw myself like a coiled spring, or an angry serpent, at the mind of the Olympian vestige. And unsurprisingly I was rebuffed, just like I had been when I attempted to snap up Paimon's memories. But unlike last time I received a notification from the system.
[Alert:
Athena's vestiges' mind has thoroughly thrown off your attempts to penetrate its defenses. Fortunately for you, the vestige has barely a third of the power of Athena, and none of this vestiges' power is related to the mind. So she doesn't know what you did. If you try it again though, she may find out.]
The system's alert made my eyes go wide and I was quietly grateful that by coincidence this vestige had no mind-related powers. It also hinted at something quite interesting: Does each vestige have different powers? I wondered, which was what had just been quite strongly hinted at by the system. All of this took place in the instant before Athena began to speak.
"'He's here in...'? Where is 'here'? Where are we?" The vestige asked, two new emotions seeping into her voice as she did so: fear and confusion.
[Well we've messed up. You see, Athena's vestige has two big problems: the thing can't leave the Parthenon and it has... memory problems.] The Parthenon rather cryptically told me. I responded with my own cryptic and simple message.
[I'm gonna need you to tell me what's going on. In full.] I demanded, my mental voice filled with power and with annoyance. The Parthenon's walls seemed to shift subtly around Athena's vestige, my followers, and myself as if the entire place were sighing in annoyance. And then it began to talk to me.
----------------------------------------
[Athena's vestige is not Athena. That's something that you need to remember. We'd argue it's the first thing you need to remember. The shade is... an imitation of her. And because of that, it has some real flaws.] The message revealed, causing me to sigh in annoyance. Why can't anything ever be simple? I wondered, closing my eyes for a second while I considered what could come next. And then the Parthenon revealed more.
[We were not originally in Infernius. And the vestige was not always like this. Over half a million years ago,] The Parthenon told me, beginning an explanation. Half a million years? So the cataclysm happened at some point over half a million years ago... I realized, knowing that Athena died during the catastrophic end of the so-called "Mythic Age", but until now I had no clue how long ago this age ended. Now I had one clue, a small one, but a clue nonetheless.
I had creatures in my service who remembered the incredibly distant past, but their memories were hazy. It was because of that that I didn't yet have an exact date, especially one relevant to the current era, of when the old era ended.
[We were on Earth. Which is a world in a different universe. As you no doubt know, Athena was born on Earth. She never became a transcendent being, which... makes the fact that her vestige is here, in a different universe even more complicated than it would have been otherwise. While she was there, she was a normal vestige. And I was just a temple, not a dungeon. It was in the process of arriving here that I became... something more.] Said the Parthenon.
I looked at Athena's vestige in a new light now that I knew some of the things I knew. It was an ancient thing, not as old as some of my followers, nor as old as Paimon, but it was still unimaginably ancient. Half a million years was a difficult amount of time to wrap my mind around, even theoretically. I could only do it because of the memories of my oldest servants that were already safely stored within my mind.
[Athena's vestiges' memory is wrapped here. At the beginning of every week, she remembers everything, including our time on Earth. And by the end of the week... she forgets everything. We're pretty late in the week so her memory is hazy right now. She can remember Athena's life without any problems, it's her own time as a vestige she can't remember properly.] The Parthenon explained, informing me of a great deal at once.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
I looked up at the Parthenon's ceiling above me and I asked a question out loud. It was to both the vestige and to the Parthenon itself.
"Is the plan for me to heal the vestige?" I asked, allowing my voice to explode outward and fill every centimeter of the temple I found myself in. In the wake of my question, there was a stunned silence that filled the place I found myself in. It was an awkward silence and one that lingered for far too long.
----------------------------------------
In the wake of me asking my question, everyone turned to face me. I felt several pairs of eyes, and the gaze of the Parthenon fall upon me. I sighed and waited for a response.
"Do you think you could do that?" The vestige asked, unsure of what we were discussing healing her from. I looked at her and studied her carefully. There was a look of confusion on her face, and a twinge of fear in her grey eyes. And then I asked her a simple question.
"Do you even know what we're discussing healing you of?" I asked, my voice soft even though there was a hardness in my gaze. I had asked her the question, knowing the answer. I wanted to see how honest she'd be with me now that she was confused and suspected I had something that she didn't have. She was quiet for a moment, a look of softness and fear in her gaze. And then she responded.
"No. I don't know what you're discussing, but I do know you're not lying." She said. Her words were honest, and they revealed that she knew she had a weakness. In that moment my estimation of her rose. And I considered how to respond to what she had just say, in a way that was tactful and respectful.
"I don't know if I can heal you. But you see... I want to try." I told her, conveying a newfound desire honestly and respectfully. She studied me for a second, before asking me a question.
"Althos... what is that you like to heal me of? And... why?" She wondered, which in all fairness were sensible questions. I mulled them over, quietly for over half a minute before opening my mouth to speak.
"I've been told that you have memory problems. I would like to help you overcome those problems." I explained, simply and sincerely. And that was just the beginning of a longer statement I wanted to make.
When I opened my mouth I first sighed. And then I began to speak. "Athena we are not enemies. I understand why you'd think that we were, but we aren't. The true enemy is out there." I said, before gesturing in the general direction my party and I had come from.
"The true enemy is Paimon. He's the foe we should fear. He seeks something from me. I now suspect it's my blood, so that he may evolve, but he'd also seek something from you if he got the chance. He's interested in the gods. He'd find his way here, and figure out how to harass you until he gets what he wants. But he won't. Because with your help I'm gonna stop him." I explained to the vestige, my voice growing increasingly intense with each word. And I wasn't done.
I waited the span of time it took for a heart to beat once, allowing the tension to build in the air before next speaking. And when I opened my mouth to speak I began to channel the special sort of pride a small part of me felt about my godliness.
"I am going to heal you so that you can more effectively help me stop Paimon. I am going to attempt to help you recover your memories, memories you appear not to realize you have momentarily forgotten." I informed the goddess, my voice soft and kind.
"So long as Paimon exists I am in danger. But that's not my only reason. I hate and fear ignorance. I hate and fear ignorance so much, and you're suffering from major, almost hellish ignorance. It plagues you so well that you don't even know what you do and don't know. If I were suffering from that... would you sit idly by and do nothing if you had the power to help?" I asked, looking Athena directly in the eyes.
I watched her carefully consider the question, visions of hypothetical situations flashing in her gaze. After a few seconds she looked at me and then spoke softly. "Yes I would. But I suppose you're nicer than I am." She told me. I looked at her in confusion while asking her my next question.
"What do you mean? I thought you were supposed to lean lawful good?" I questioned, surprised by the vestiges' honest response. She chuckled at me, the sound that escaped her lips being quite soft but still plainly audible. And then she began to speak.
----------------------------------------
"Well Althos... just because I lean lawful good doesn't mean that every action of mine is that way. Just because you lean lawful evil doesn't mean that every one of your actions is lawful or evil does it?" She asked, wittily. And she wasn't done talking either.
"I can be bad." She told me, slyly.
"Let me tell you a story. There once was a woman named Medusa. This woman had unearthly, nearly divine beauty. You see she was blessed by the gods, or more accurately by one goddess. She was blessed by Aphrodite, the goddess of sexuality and beauty. Well Medusa's beauty was so intense that one of the gods, Poseidon himself lusted after her." The vestige told me, her eyes growing quite faint as if she was recalling a far off memory.
"Poseidon was my uncle. He was also one of my greatest rivals. But what he did to Medusa was... singularly cruel. Medusa was a priestess of mine, and he fell upon her like a tsunami on an unsuspecting, ill-prepared coastal village. And he had the audacity to do it in my temple." She moaned, her voice filled with grief at this intrusion.
"He not only violated a temple to me, but he also laid a hand on one of my servants. He took the place and left it unclean!" She was shouting now. But there was something... off about what she said.
Her priorities are the... temple? I wondered, having picked up what was left unclean.
"Poseidon's... semen dirtied my floor! That bastard not only robbed me of a servant, he even left the place he had the audacity to do it in disarray." She said, snarling. Her voice was animalistic now. I was looking at her, and I could tell there was a strange expression on my face, because my mind was running a mile a minute.
"So in order to get the girl out of my temple, and to scare away Poseidon, who I couldn't move directly against due to rules we had in place in the Olympian pantheon, I had to get creative. So I laid a curse on Medusa." Athena said, now beginning to whisper quietly. And at this I reacted.
"Wait, someone got sexually assaulted in one of your temples, a worshiper of yours, and you curse the victim? I just... I could almost accept not moving against Poseidon, but why did you attack a worshiper of yours who was the victim of a heinous crime? That's not lawful or good." I remarked, truly at a loss for words.
It wasn't the evilness of it that got me, because as an evil being I could stomach pure spite. It was the nonsensicality of it that truly took my breath away. But Athena just laughed and brushed my concerns aside. A second later she was ranting again.
"Oh my curse... it was a creative one you see. I am a goddess of inspiration after all. You may think of me as a villain in this story, and my actions were spurred by malice, but my curse protected Medusa! For you see, anyone who opted to look at her from that point on turned into stone. That way no man would ever violate her again." Athena's vestige told me, before beginning to fall into a fit of cold, cruel laughter.
"You... you were right." I said, after a few seconds of stunned silence. I wasn't the only person who was stunned by that story either, my followers behind me were also quietly absorbing the horrifying nature of that tale.
"You said not all of your actions were good or lawful, and your actions to Medusa were absolutely not good or lawful." I said, exasperated. I looked at her, wondering for a second if this was the right path. And then she looked me in the face. There was a decidedly serious look in her eyes, one that left no doubt in my mind that whatever she was about to say was important.
"I didn't tell you that story idly. I told you it to convey to you the seriousness of my actions and how I react when I feel wronged. You may disagree with my actions, but I care not for your judgments. I just wanted you to know how I may act if I feel... slighted." She said, her word choice threatening and defensive.
"But I didn't do that to scare you. Just to inform you. If you believe you can heal me, and if you want to try, I want to offer you something suitable in exchange for your efforts. I recognize people's talents, even if I have a peculiar way of showing it. I reward good work." She told me, regally.
"Althos I would like to bargain. I would like for us to swear oaths on the River Styx. And I offer you something significant and you offer me something significant." She said, ominously. And then she waited for me to respond. Her grey-eyes glinted with impatience, it permeated them, as she awaited my response.