Posted by She had finally found me. After decades of this life, she had found me. She just had to win this last battle and she’d be free to go with me.
With these thoughts, Athena ran to her enemies. She wanted this to end as soon as possible. She was aiming for their hearts and heads. With swift blows, the men that approached her fell one after the other. But her mind slipped for a fraction of a second and, there was one soldier that came from her blindspot. She turned around and thrusted her sword toward his chest, but his was coming for her head. She moved sideways and avoided a fatal hit, but the tip of the sword was already too close and slashed both her eyes.
Everything started going red. It went darker and darker, until it was pitch black. Athena was effectively blind on the spot.
She screamed as she pulled the sword out of the lifeless soldier, a scream that was heard miles away from the bloodied plains where the battle was taking place.
It was not the pain that made her scream so loud, as she had felt so much worse so many times before. Is was not the blindness. Athena had learned to fight almost as perfect in complete darkness by focusing on her other senses. What hurt, what really hurt, was that she wouldn’t be able to see his eyes. Without her eyes, he wouldn’t recognize her.
For so long she had been looking for him after his last death, only for her efforts to be thwarted because of a meaningless war.
Frustration. This feeling filled Athena so strongly that for the first time she felt true wrath. The soldiers closest to her could feel the heat of her blood cruising rapidly through her veins. Her skin took a reddish tint, her muscles tensed so much that the grip of her sword bent, taking the shape of her hand.
Athena let go of the shield on her left arm and took the soldier’s sword from the floor. The same sword that blinded her. Because of the contact with her blood and the act of stripping her of her sight, the sword became holy and stronger than any metal made by men.
With her hearing heightened and her connection with the earth, Athena could feel the entire battlefield and the movements of every soldier. She could predict where they would come from. Her body was going so fast that she was barely visible to the untrained eye. As she moved through the battlefield, blood followed, just not her blood.
While at the beginning she wanted this to be quick, nothing mattered anymore. She had no use ending this, as meeting me would be useless. She wanted this army to feel the wrath of Athena. To know the cost of what they had done.
With a sword in each hand, she dedicated to each man as long as she had before the next one was close enough. She severed arms, legs, she went for thighs and guts, some were cut in half by their stomachs.
When she felt a sword too close she moved her hands in a semicircular motion and removed the arms from their original owners. Pieces of men, both dead and alive were spread in the battlefield. The amount of blood was so much that as she danced between her attackers, her legs were splashed red up to her knee.
After her initial scream, she went silent. Her mouth only moved to create some sort of psychological balance and keep moving between the soldiers. But the battlefield was not silent, the screams of the soldiers was heard all over it. Some were war cries as they approached the goddess and some were screams of pain and horror as they went away from her and into their next life.
But her, she couldn’t hear anything anymore, she couldn’t feel anything. The rage inside of her was so powerful that it blocked all other emotions.
When the battle was over and Athena could breathe normally again, she let go of the swords. Both weapons fell to the ground getting stuck perfectly upright.
Then she realized that what she really felt was not rage. It was sadness. So deep and strong that she didn’t know how to consciously let it out. She fell to her knees, grabbed the earth and cried. She let out gutural screams of pain as tears that ran through her cheeks red from the blood still coming out of her eyes. Four days she cried for what she had done and for what she had lost.
The legend tells that trees and grass still grow red leaves in The Red Plains area because of the spilled blood mixed with the power of Athena’s tears.