Bellona laughed and answered Ares'' question, “Every year, Red Sun hosts an international ranking competition with prizes. Well technically it’s not Red Sun that runs it, they just allow it to be held there as it’s the most central location in this domain, making it easy for everyone to visit. There’s a reason this country is called ‘Central Land’ after all. It’s a bit of a dull name, but you can’t say it’s not accurate. Anyways, the competition has three entry levels for disciples of sects; outer court, inner court, and core. Of course, other lands and countries operate under different systems, but it’s always equivalent. For instance, Neo Gear land has D, which stands for droid, C.U, which stands for computational unit, and A.A.I, which stands for advanced artificial intelligence. Outer court disciples will compete against droids and so on so forth. The competition is team-based, and every sect or establishment will choose the five strongest people within each category to take part in their respective entry level, totalling fifteen competitors. As for who gets to fight, that’s decided by fighting amongst your peers for the five spots. From there, once the five-man teams are decided, they compete in regionals. In other words, they fight other people within the local area for the right to represent. After that’s decided, it moves to a national scale where the process is repeated with every team still-standing across the entire country. Finally, it becomes an international fight with teams from across seas. The winning country / land gets various benefits and, of course, so does the winning team and sect / organisation, so it’s a rather important event. As for how exactly teams of five compete against one another, we aren’t told in advance. It changes every year, so you just have to wait and see. Red Sun City is in the ‘Red Region’ alongside Red Soil City, Red Sky City, and Red Sea City. Those are the four cities that will compete in the regionals. Myself and the others are residents of Red Soil City. If you compete, you’ll inevitably come across us as we’re no doubt the strongest within our sect at the outer court level.” Bellona nodded her head in the direction of the other members of the Legion Clan with a proud look on her face. Ares could tell she wasn’t including Trew in her pride but that he was probably a part of their team too regardless.


    “I see. Sounds fun! I always enjoy a good fight,” Ares responded.


    “Oh, I should also mention that when the teams for the international event are locked in, every team from around the world will gather to celebrate and meet the competition at a fancy party in the Heaven’s Path sect. It’s quite a high-class shin-dig!”


    “Huh, I’ve never been to a party before. I wonder what they’re like.”


    “You’re getting ahead of yourself. Maybe we’re giving you too much credit,” spat Trew. “With a pitiful cultivation like yours, maybe you won’t even make it onto your own sect’s team.”


    Ares just rolled his eyes and directed his question to the others, “Do you have any idea who your fifth is going to be? I only see four of you.”


    “Yeah, we have a pretty good idea. It’s really a shame Enyo isn’t with us though. We have a formation that requires a defensive specialist, and no one can compare to her in that regard,” Charity said.


    “Honestly, if we had Enyo, we would probably be guaranteed 4th at worst internationally,” Gladius said dejectedly.


    “You sound pretty confident,” Ares remarked.


    Enyo replied, “I won’t spoil it but, we, the Legion Clan, have something really interesting going on. It requires five people, one for each of the key roles. It all revolves around Gladius’ unique magic, so he’s integral, but the other four can be anyone who fits the role. Back at the Legion Clan, Charity and I were made to be a part of the main five-man team alongside two other clansmen you haven’t met.”


    Bellona added, “The Legion Clan chose the people who were best suited to their positions, Enyo is the strongest defender in the clan, and Charity is the best healer. In other words, it’s a five-man combination of the four strongest clan members in their respective fields… And Gladius is there too, I guess.”


    “HEY! Just because it’s true, doesn’t mean you have to say it!” Gladius felt insulted.


    “Well, I look forward to seeing it. Do yourselves a favour though, and make sure your defensive specialist is up to the task, ‘cos they’ve got a lot of work in store for them,” Ares intoned playfully.


    “What about your side of things then? You’ve never taken part before, Enyo, are you going to this year? Also, do you have an idea who your five are likely to be yet?”


    “I’ll be competing this year, yes.” Enyo left out the part about her conveniently going on missions during the competition in previous years to run away and hide from Trew. “Ares will make it onto the team, no doubt about that, I mean the idiot killed one of our top three disciples before we left for this mission anyway.”


    “Seriously?” Bellona was both surprised and questioning Ares'' decision at the same time.


    Ares let out a guilty laugh while scratching his head. “Whoops, my bad.”


    “Esme will definitely make it. I have no idea who the other two will be though.”


    “Ah, that’ll probably be two people from the entrance exam. I don’t see Onno making it, but it could be the Lighter Duo, they’d do good work,” Aejaz mused.


    “Lighter duo?” Enyo had never heard of this strange sounding duo.


    “Completely average and forgettable on their own to the point no-one can even remember their names, but really quite impressive together,” Ares explained briefly. “I suppose it depends on what kind of competition it is. If it''s to do with running away, Dirk and Onno would be good. If it’s one-on-one fights, then Li Li would be great. We’ll just have to wait and see.”


    Allie tugged on Aejaz’ clothes. “What about you or Appa?”


    “Me!? No, no, no, no,” Aejaz replied nervously.


    “And why not, brother?” Ares'' Grim Reaper-esque voice came ringing like the bell that tolls.


    Gulp


    “Could it be that you haven’t been training even though you assured me you were?”


    “Haha, no. Nope, definitely not. I mean no, as in, I’ve definitely not been lying. As in, yes, I’ve been training.”


    Enyo decided not to call him out on his lie that was conveniently snuck into the sentence at the end.


    “Oh, and have you been working on that mental art like you said you would?”


    “Yes! It’s done! Made! And quite effective! Effectively painful! Painfully effective!”


    Allie giggled.


    “So, if you’ve made your new art, and you’ve been training, then why not fight? You sound prepared to me.”


    Gulp


    “Oh, I see… You need… More training, right? In that case, it''ll be like the good old times. I’ll personally train you… More, brother.” Ares cracked his knuckles while staring Aejaz dead in the eyes.


    Gulp


    Bellona jumped in to save Aejaz, “And what about this ‘Appa’ person?”


    Enyo hurriedly interrupted, “It’s probably for the best if Appa doesn’t compete. We wouldn’t want Ares actually killing someone mid-competition because they looked at it funny.”


    “It?”


    “Appa is a damned shade… And a very cute one at that,” Enyo added that last part quietly at the end.


    Ares immediately gave up on Aejaz and wore a beaming, proud smile on his face. “Damn right it’s cute! The cutest!”


    “Err, what’s with him?” Charity felt like some clarification over Ares sudden outburst was needed here.


    Enyo filled in the blanks, “Appa is his newly-adopted daughter.”


    “You have a daughter!?” Bellona’s brain was doing mental gymnastics trying to imagine Enyo acting like a mother.


    “Yep! I can’t wait to go back and see it again. Appa probably misses me.”


    Trew was getting irrationally fed up with this meandering conversation. “So what? Who cares if it misses you? It’s just a pet.”


    Pet?


    PET!?


    Ares took a deep breath and tried to stay calm. “I’m giving you one chance to take that back. My daughter is not ‘some pet’. If you don’t correct yourself, I will tear your goddamn lungs out through your throat.”


    Trew was taken aback by this overly-aggressive side of Ares he had never seen before, but stubbornly maintained his arrogance. “You''re right, it’s not ‘some pet’, it’s ‘your pet’.”


    A monumental pressure descended, making everyone feel sluggish, uncomfortable, and weak. Although the earth remained still, to Trew it felt as though the whole planet was collapsing.


    Ares ran annihilation magic through his blood, lighting up his cape.


    Something strange happened. As the annihilation magic passed along Ares’ body, it partially diverted and flowed straight to his new optic nerves. It provided a warm sensation that kept progressively getting hotter and hotter yet never became painful. It was a cosy, pleasant experience that Ares paid no attention to whatsoever as he was too busy conjuring up fun ways to maim and torture Trew inside his head.


    Ares'' eyes shut uncontrollably and he finally took notice of the changes occurring within him, but he didn''t understand or care about what was happening to him right now so he just forced his eyes open again. As it turns out, that was the catalyst for activating his new nerves. They weren’t just ordinary nerves; they were a pair of treasures. When Ares re-opened his eyes, the sound of a fire-burst resounded throughout the forest as a flash of fierce, dark-gold flames flared forth from his retinas. A stream of golden ethereal fire trailed across his eyes, shimmering off the sides of his face, and flickering violently at the tail-end as it hung in the air. The fire’s idle sway was reminiscent of the way the Stygian Zephyr ebbed and flowed when buffeted by wind, and would no doubt leave lingering afterimages in the same style as the Zephyr, rippling behind Ares whenever he’d move quickly. If anyone listened close enough, now that the blazing cacophony of noise had ceased, they would be able to hear a crisp, crackling noise with occasional snaps akin to a yule-log fireplace. There was a lot to process, and a whole lot of things Ares was seeing as a result of this change made absolutely no sense to him, so he decided to ignore it for now and focus on Trew.


    Ares Shifted in front of Trew and swiftly reached out with his hand to grab Trew’s face. Although Trew made no obvious movements, he reacted to the Shift surprisingly quickly. What was weird about this was that Ares could somehow see how Trew was manipulating the mana through his body to perform an art and, to add onto that, he could even decipher what type of magic he was about to convert mana into. On the surface Trew was doing nothing but, thanks to this information, that presumably this new treasure was providing, Ares knew that he was about to escape using spatial magic.


    The thing about space is that it loses horribly to nothingness when the amount present is roughly equivalent. It’s not even close. Nothingness essentially has full control over space and can mould it to its will. It can even destroy it completely, spawning more nothingness from its broken, shattered remains. The Space/Time aspect had long since enjoyed the special privilege of not ever having had a direct losing matchup to any other aspect in existence, so those that could learn it almost always made an effort to. The only way to ever efficiently deal with it was to be proficient in spatial or temporal magic as well. Now though, there was a new way, albeit completely unique to Ares. It may have been hard to time it reactively if it weren''t for this odd vision enhancement but, as things stood currently, there was no possibility he would miss the timing. As for what he had to do, it was just a matter of crushing the space around Trew precisely as he summoned it. Not only would that cancel the teleport, but it would also cause a serious injury as he would be stuck inside of collapsing space in reality, effectively pulverising him for a split-second.


    As the teleportation art began to form, Ares snapped the finger on his hand that hadn’t reached out. A sound like shattering glass was accompanied by a short wail from Trew who wildly spasmed as a majority of his limbs spontaneously ruptured, causing blood to erupt like a fountain from within.


    This move completely bewildered everyone as no one even knew what happened. It just looked like Ares snapped his finger and demanded the heavens smite Trew which, combined with the pressure and fire emanating from his eyes, made him look and feel like royalty blessed with divinity.


    Trew was in the middle of falling backward limply when Ares’ hand finally grabbed his face and followed through, slamming Trew into the ground and kicking up some dust. The fight realistically shouldn’t have been this easy, but Trew hadn’t taken into account the possibility that his teleportation could be shut down in such a manner as it had never happened before. Ares lifted him by the face and was prepared to keep slamming him headfirst into the mud until he took back his words from earlier…


    Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    “Ares!”


    … But Enyo sharply called out his name, so he begrudgingly pushed forward with his hand, throwing Trew back onto the floor. He made sure to catch him on the chin with his palm as he let go though, for good measure. “I’m only going to tell you this once, never call my daughter a pet ever again,” and with that final warning, the annihilation magic stopped coursing through his veins, the fire in his eyes dimmed before snuffing out, and the pressure faded away.


    Bellona now understood why Enyo had once likened Ares to their father. The similarities were almost disturbing when Ares was like that. Completely dominant, no room for discussion and an air of suffocating arrogance that resulted in welling feelings of insignificance to all who were present. Thoughts of the past came rushing into her head of her father, standing victorious with one foot raised atop a corpse, planting a flag that would elegantly wave to and fro in a steady pattern. These thoughts merged with an image in her head of Ares standing triumphantly in the exact same pose and position, with the fiery trails from his eyes precisely mimicking the motion of the flag. The parallels were undeniable, they were essentially one-and-the-same image.


    Ares sat back down with a frown on his face, rested his head on his fist, and ran a finger around the table in circles like a pouting child. This wasn’t a victory for him, he hadn’t forced Trew to apologise, but he couldn’t bring himself to ignore Enyo. He didn’t even care about beating up a Legion Clan member in front of his clansmen, it was literally just Enyo asking him to stop that prevented him from laying down some serious punishment.


    Cough Cough


    Trew struggled to his feet and leant on a nearby tree while he caught his breath. “You… Win this time… And… I apologise.” Trew was struggling but managed to get out that sentence before skulking off into the forest out of shame.


    Ares was actually surprised Trew apologised and acknowledged losing, a lot of other people would make excuses at the very least. He assumed the Legion clan were just all like this, and that even the scummiest and most annoying of the bunch still had a baseline level of decency that they would adhere to due to righteous-oriented indoctrination. The Legion clan weren’t just putting up a well-regimented facade, they genuinely were the real deal.


    “Soooo, care to explain why your eyes were on fire!?” Aejaz asked.


    “Is that not normal then?” Bellona questioned. It’s not like the Legion clan were familiar with Ares and how he usually fought, although they had certainly learnt a fair bit from this scuffle. Mainly that he was not to be trifled with despite his low cultivation.


    “No,” Aejaz replied before turning to face Ares again. “Did it hurt? It looked like the kind of thing that would hurt.”


    “Nope, it feels quite nice actually. Warm and cosy. As it turns out, the nerves I picked up in the mansion are treasures that allow the wielder to use a unique art. I did a quick check of their history and I found that they’re called the ‘Celestial Prisms”. They’re part of a set of treasures called the ‘Celestial Cluster”. All the treasures in the set are replacements of body parts that grant a unique and incredibly powerful art depending on the part of the body they attach to. I don’t know how many there are but, at one point in time, they all belonged to Dominus. He wanted to keep them safe and intact in the event that he managed to die, so he hid them all before each and every suicide attempt. Why he put one here in this domain is beyond me, but it would explain why no one was able to sneak past the traps if this was set up by someone of his level.”


    “What about the art?” Gladius was more interested in the practical application of the treasures.


    Any art that is received via ownership of a treasure comes under the forging pillar’s ‘bestowal’ aspect. This aspect has easily the widest variety of arts given that they’re decided by the treasure, and not the pillar.


    “Uh, well, about that. As it turns out, the Celestial Cluster is considered the strongest known, and attainable, treasure in existence, even in whichever domain Dominus lived in. Each individual treasure is considered legendary in their own right as they grant inestimable power. The Prisms have given me ‘Omniscience.’” Ares hadn’t particularly wanted to share this information for the same reason he didn’t want to talk about the Primordial Blade but, unlike the Blade, he was going to be using this art really quite frequently. He didn’t feel like Gladius, Charity, and Bellona were people he should lie to as they were already doing him a kindness by sweeping his race under the rug and pretending they saw nothing. He could lie to everyone else if they asked, but he felt it was alright for these Legion clan members to know at least this much.


    “Omniscience!? You mean like, Omniscience, Omniscience?” Bellona exclaimed.


    “Yes and no. I don’t know everything, but I can figure out anything, I think. I can visualise mana in the air as well as the mana people manipulate in their bodies. For instance, I knew what type of magic Trew was going to use ahead of time because I could see him casting it. I can also see-through magic. I can see the core of everything created by mana, meaning illusions and runic formations might as well not even exist. That’s just the mana related stuff, I can essentially see the answer to things. If you show me a malfunctioning machine, I can fix it, but I can’t tell you how I fixed it or why it was broken in the first place. If you show me a fighting style, I imagine I could copy it much faster than a normal person would take to learn it. It gives me the ability to right wrongs despite lacking the knowledge that others who are more versed would be able to give and explain. Although I have no idea how to make runes, and I’ve never learned even a single thing about them, I imagine I could replicate and or dismantle any rune I can visualise. It’s basically a perfect divine sense.”


    “So, what about my runic eye magic? Could you copy this?” Charity asked as she activated Diagnosis and a runic formation appeared over her retina.


    Ares activated Omniscience by closing his eyes and then sharply re-opening them. As he was actually familiar with the art now, he could do it without having to make that loud noise like last time. He could’ve easily gotten rid of the fireplace crackling noise too if he so wished, but he quite liked it. It wasn’t loud enough to be easily heard by anyone else and he could always remove it if he ever needed to be stealthy. He glanced over at Charity''s eyes and took a feather off his Zephyr. He ran disintegration through the feather and started carving out the runic formation, in full, on a plank of wood. He turned off his omniscience when he was done five minutes later and turned back to Charity. “Is this correct?”


    “Wow. It’s perfect. This formation is a unique art that I spent the better half of four years working on. It took you five minutes to figure it out. I’m a little annoyed, if I’m being honest.”


    “I hate to say it, but it didn’t even take that long. It was instantaneous. It just took me five minutes to write it out because I have no idea what the hell I’m doing.” Ares pointed at the rune carving on the wood. “None of this means anything to me.”


    “Life’s unfair,” Charity moaned as she slumped back into her chair. “Wait… can you use ‘Diagnosis’ as well?” Diagnosis was the name of Charity’s runemancy pillar, Body-Imprint aspect art.


    “Diagnosis!”


    Ares manipulated the mana in a similar fashion to what he had seen Charity do earlier and constructed an identical runic pattern across his eyes successfully. “It would seem I can.”


    “Well, whatever. At least you can’t use healing magic, then I’d just be out of a job.” Charity shrugged and gave up before sighing loudly. “Guess I should go heal Trew, although I really don’t want to.” Charity got up and went off to find her patient.


    “We’re probably gonna set off when Trew’s good to go, our sect’s try-outs for the regional teams are coming up and we have to get back,” Bellona said.


    “We’ll head back to the entrance of the forest with you, we have nothing else to do here anyway. Or maybe Ares is going to go off on another bizzare adventure, honestly, who knows?” Enyo looked over at Ares who froze and chuckled sheepishly.


    “Alright. We also need to get some proof we actually killed monsters on this trip of ours, so do you mind if we take the spoils of the stuff we kill on the way?”


    “Hmm, we also need some proof, maybe we can split it?”


    “No need,” Ares chimed in. “I have more than enough proof.”


    “Seriously? Where the hell are you even storing it all?” Bellona was mystified.


    “Same place as the food and the kitchen.”


    “KITCHEN!?”


    “How do you think I cooked the food?”


    “You know what? Forget I asked. Enyo, come!” Bellona dragged Enyo off to gossip about her conversation with Ares.


    Aejaz and Allie were whispering something to one another until eventually they scarpered off into the forest leaving Gladius with Ares.


    “Just out of curiosity, how many revenants have you killed?”


    “Me personally, or our Red Soil branch?”


    “Branch.”


    “Three.”


    “Only three? I’m surprised it’s not more.”


    “You almost sound disappointed. But yeah, no, it’s hard to tell who’s a revenant or not until bloodline awakening. The three we found were purely out of luck. We found them having a meeting, if it weren''t for that, we wouldn’t have even known.”


    “What were they like?”


    “Desperate people, just like the rest of us. Well, I say that, but you’re a little different. I’m jealous you were born without the same constraints as the rest of us, but I’m not envious of the life you’ve lived, so I guess it evens out. I hope you find success because, if you do, it will do a lot of good for a lot of people.”


    “Maybe it’s selfish to say this, but I don’t care about those people. I''d be lying if I said I wasn’t doing this for myself.”


    “That’s why you’re different. We’re all doing this for people in the severed domain we’ve never even met, or for the older generations of our clans. It’s tiring really.”


    “I don’t doubt it. On a side note, good luck.”


    “What with?”


    “Charity.”


    “...”


    “You hide it pretty well; I doubt anyone knows.”


    “If I hide it well, then how do you know?”


    “I can just tell.”


    “Seriously?” Gladius complained.


    “I know right? I’m really good at this stuff. Well, anyway, I have another side note.”


    “I’m not sure I liked the last one…”


    “Good luck.”


    “Dear god, what with now?”


    “Putting up with Trew.” Ares stuck his tongue out.


    “Oh, that’s real mature,” Gladius snorted.


    “...”


    “...”


    “She likes you too, maybe even more than you like her.”


    “... Seriously? Thanks. That’s reassuring.”


    “...”


    “You know, Enyo was smiling earlier when she was eating.”


    Ares raised an eyebrow. “You make it sound like that’s not normal.”


    “It isn’t. You accomplished something no one else has been able to do since Enyo was a child.”


    “... Thanks for telling me that.”


    “Ha, I’m actually warning you.”


    “How so?”


    “If Enyo’s mother finds out… Well… Let’s just say, good luck. She’ll hunt you down to the ends of the earth just so she can test whether or not you''re suitable.”


    “Ha, fair enough. What about Trew then, has he been tested?”


    “Nope, she just beat him up and kicked him out of her land when he showed up. He didn’t even reach the minimum required benchmark.”


    “I’ve heard a lot about Enyo’s mother, and yet I’m not sure if I should be excited to meet her or scared out of my wits.”


    “Both, it’s a wild ride for sure. Also, you might want to be careful of Enyo’s brothers. Two of the three are really quite protective and even bully Trew every time they find him until he scampers away in shame.”


    “Haha, sounds like a fun family.”


    “You’ll know soon enough, her brothers and sisters should all make it to the international stage of the ranking tournament. Since it’s always held in Red Sun, you’ll meet them eventually regardless of whether you make it to the international level. I’ve also heard rumours their mother is starting to get fed up with their absence and may make a guest appearance. She doesn’t always come down for the internationals, but this year it''s very likely. So yeah… Good luck.”


    “Is she not a little too high profile to show up at an event like that?”


    “Ah, she doesn’t care. She just does as she pleases. She even goes around to the Umbra Wolf’s matriarch’s house for tea every now and then. She just strolls through your clan like it’s nothing.”


    “Seriously?”


    “Apparently they get along.” Gladius shrugged. “Your clan’s matriarch should also show up. Unlike ours, she drops by every year actually. Honestly, she’s quite a similar matriarch to ours. She also pops up in our clan every now and then, albeit for nothing good. Now that our generation has grown up a little, the stakes of the international tournament are actually quite high. There may be a temporary truce just so the clans can watch the younger generation compete. It’s entirely possible the elites, as opposed to just a few high-ranking elders, of all the clans turn up so they can gather information about the next generation that will be taking part in the war. I would suggest that, if that comes to pass, you try to remain as low profile as possible. The fewer the number of people that know about you being a revenant, the better it will be for you and your goal in the long run.”


    “Noted.”


    “So, come on, spill it. What happened with you and Enyo.”


    “Well, aren’t you a gossip? We opened up about this and that, she took her helmet off, I showed her my greatest secret and then she hugged me. That about sums everything up I think?”


    “...” Gladius froze as though he’d just been hit by a Temporal Distortion.


    “Uh, Gladius?”


    “... You’re fucking dead. No, seriously, her mother is going to murder you in cold blood. She tried for years to get Enyo to hug her and could never convince her. If she finds out… God, you may actually be the first person Enyo has ever initiated a hug with. And she even took off her helmet? Are you a fucking wizard? Have you mind-controlled her? Bellona must be having a field day right now…”


    ---------------------------------


    “Bellona! Will you cut that out!?”


    “Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.” Bellona rolled around on the floor, laughing uncontrollably with tears in her eyes.


    “Fine. I’ll let you just roll around to your heart''s content. I’m going back.”


    “Wai… Hahaha… W… Wa… Hahaha… Wait.”


    Enyo crossed her arms and tapped her foot repeatedly while waiting for Bellona to stop.


    “Aw man, that was hilarious.”


    “It was just a hug.”


    “Yeah, hugs are normal, but you hugging someone? Oh man. You remember when mum used to ask you for hugs and you would say no every single time?”


    “That was a different me.”


    “Exactly. This you? This you is great! Can I have a hug?”


    “...”


    “C’mon! Come here and give your lil’ sis’ a big hug!”


    “...”


    “Oh, I see. You only want to hug Ares, hmm?”


    “That’s not true,” Enyo replied hastily.


    “Oh really? Then who else would you hug if not me?”


    “... Fine. BUT ONLY ONCE.” Enyo walked over and hugged Bellona with a stiffness that would make fully autonomous robots look like jelly in comparison.


    “Really? You call that a hug? Ares must think you’re a weirdo.”


    “No, our hug was more natural than that. This is your fault.”


    “Maybe it’s ‘cos you didn’t really wanna hug me in the first place.”


    “You did make me do it.”


    “So, you’re saying you wanted to hug Ares.”


    “... I felt sorry for him.”


    “Mhm. Sure. I do too. You don’t see me hugging him.”


    “What are you implying?”


    “We all saw you smiling at lunch today, Enyo.”


    “... The food was good.”


    “It was! It really was! Maybe that’s also why you hugged Ares! Because he can cook well!”


    “I’m going back.” Enyo couldn’t take the ribbing anymore and started walking away.


    “Back where? To Ares? I don’t think he has any food left!” Bellona shouted after Enyo.


    Enyo paused. “Please stop.”


    “I’ll stop when you admit it, Enyo.”


    “... WHY!? I don’t get it. I don’t understand... Why am I falling for him, Bellona? He messes around with me ALL the time. I can’t figure it out. It feels like Stockholm syndrome. I can’t get him out of my head. He’s… I don’t… I can’t… I DON’T KNOW.”


    “What''s there to be confused about, really? He cares about you and you know it. The dryad that he killed for you, hiding his injuries so you wouldn’t feel responsible, offering to leave to make you happy, not taking a side in the war because he can’t bring himself to take a stand against you. Dad wants you to be like himself and mum wants you to be like anyone but dad but, amongst all that, all Ares wants is for you to be you. He appreciates you as you are no matter what you are, he even told you that.”


    “I just want to be the person I am in my head,” Enyo sounded upset.


    “You already are, Enyo. Falling in love doesn’t have to change that.”


    “But I have changed since I met him.”


    “And there isn’t anyone who matters that thinks it''s been for the worse. Stop caring about what dad will think of you because I promise you, he doesn’t think about you at all. Care about the people who care about you.”


    “... You sound just like Ares…”


    “And look how happy we are with life and everything we’ve managed to scrounge out of it. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be happy. You want to be happy and that’s why you’re so frustrated, because your ‘responsibilities’ are standing in the way of it.”


    “... Bellona… What should I do?”


    “Why are you asking me? You know that’s your own decision to make. Also, you’ve already made it anyway. You made it when you couldn’t bring yourself to kill him. You’ve already chosen him over your responsibilities, and you smiled while doing it.”


    “What if he doesn’t…”


    Bellona interrupted immediately, “Oh, believe me, he does. He’s had his fun, it’s your turn to know everything now. I think it’s time you and I worked together for a change; you are my sister after all. He loves you, Enyo, and everyone knows it.”


    “W… WHAT?”


    “Yep. Well not Trew, but everyone else.”


    “... Seriously!?” Enyo tried not to sound incredibly pleased but completely failed.


    “Come on Enyo, he literally told you.”


    “When!? I don’t remember him saying any… THE CAVE!? BASTARD.”


    “Hahahahaha, he got you good there. He got everyone actually.”


    “... Has he felt like that since then? I thought it would be more recent if anything…”


    “Enyo, hon’, he told me it was since he first met you.”


    “WHAT!? WHAT IS WRONG WITH HIM!?”


    “Say what you will but whatever voodoo magic he’s been conjuring has clearly worked.”


    “Unbelievable intolerable unbearable insufferable unacceptable incorrigible...”


    “Hahahaha, like I said, now it’s your turn to have fun. Now it’s just you and I that know everything.” Bellona smirked evilly. “Everyone else still thinks you don’t know, and Ares doesn’t think you feel the same way about him just yet. You’re in control now, feel free to mess around with him as he has with you.”


    “Oh, I will.”