Netori: Stealing The Hero's Party!

Chapter 970: In The Heart Of Horror

As Raven and his companions finally caught up with Athenia, she held up a hand to lessen their pace. Before her were the budding souls of numerous unborn children, floating in the ether of darkness behind the pale standing of a half-elven woman. Her long, glassy hair covered most of her body, and the iridescent look in her eyes reflected all light.

"Who are you?" The girl asked, her head leaning heavily on her side.

Like an owl, she stared at the group with a bemused look, her neck twisted beyond what should’ve been possible.

"That’s Aurora?" June murmured, struggling with the realization that her daughter was standing before her as a young woman and not as a child.

"Aurora?" Shifting her head onto the other shoulder, the girl smiled while looking at her mother. "Aurora...Is that my name? But mother calls me her monster."

"That–" Swallowing the curses, June ran right up to her daughter and wrapped her tight within her embrace. Squeezing her body, smelling her hair, even listening to her heartbeat against hers, filled June with a great deal of regret. "She stole you from me, baby. I-I’m your mom, and you are my daughter, Aurora."

While June was pouring her heart into her words, Aurora’s body and expression remained stiff as ever. She did not understand what her mother meant, nor did she figure out what was going on as Athenia moved past her to set the souls of those trapped children free.

"Where is mother? She hasn’t been back for a while..."

"I am your mother," pulling herself away for a moment, June grabbed Aurora’s hands and flipped them to the side. "Look, your skin, your color, everything matches me so perfectly. And your father–"

Turning around, she held a hand extended towards Aradin, who’d just taken a trepidant step forward.

"You have his fierce eyes, can’t you see it?"

"Hmm..." Taking a step forward, Aurora’s head twisted and turned like a hooting owl–studying her father’s expression, and everything else about him. "I can smell mother’s odor on him."

"Tsk...The dark water," Aradin cursed fate for that damned night when he fell into that pit of dark water in the sand.

"Athenia, how long will this take?" With time ticking overhead, Raven finally moved past the parents and addressed the goddess directly. In the process of freeing the children from this dark prison, she was touching their souls with her bare fingers to imbue them with a lick of her essence so that they may find their way back home. Upon hearing Raven’s desperation, however, Athenia closed her eyes, and a drove of her clones emerged from within herself. Scattered inside the dark room, they did the same act as the original to free the children–all of them, at once.

As their illuminating souls grew fainter, everyone finally felt a wave of relief washing over them. But that relief wouldn’t last for long, as the moment Athenia turned back to the group, her instructions instilled urgency into their hearts once more.

"Fifteen minutes to get back." Shifting her gaze to Raven, Athenia held her hand forward with her fist closed. "Take this; I will get Aurora and Aradin’s group out of here. You will have to deal with the fae mothers yourselves."

Opening her fist, she revealed a glowing golden orb with the ability to cast away the toughest darkness from the group. With their group forking in two, the heroes would need it, but there was something yet that needed to be answered before they moved.

"How will we get out of here?" Amedith asked.

"The fae will know a way, I’m sure, but if nothing works–" Taking a brief pause, Athenia drew a deep breath. "Pray that I can get back here before they come back."

"They?" Raven’s eyes narrowed, but he wasn’t entirely sure if he even wanted to know.

"Don’t worry who, because if they are here then there’s nothing we can do anyway. At that point, it would already be too late for us and too late for Atlaris as well." Unaware of what her other self was talking about with Nerva, Athenia assumed that the many goddesses of calamities throughout many worlds must be headed their way.

At least in that regard, the group was fortunate. For a while, the goddess took away Aradin, and his party and the heroes went on their own way; the best, most benevolent version of the goddess had disarmed Nerva’s drive to exact revenge for this transgression.

"Once I have control over my world and before it is consumed by nothingness, I will be back here you sow. To cut your head off and give a taste of calamity to the people of your so-called perfect world!"

"Scream if you have to, but you’re here with me for another fifteen minutes." A giant hand passed the veil and reached for Athenia while she was talking to Nerva. It tried to grab her and envelope her body in the corrosive corruption that it was made of–a sign of a god who’d been simmering in the condensing pool of nothingness but hadn’t yet dissolved. "So you have succeeded in devouring your own world in some places."

Avoiding the hand by moving out of its trajectory, Athenia appeared a few feet away from the hand. With the snap of her fingers, she conjured golden chains that quickly wrapped around the massive hand.

"This world wouldn’t be one of them, so get back!" Squeezing the hand with its individual fingers being pulled in different directions, Athenia shoved the whole thing back through the dimensional tear. Glancing at the colossal hole left in its wake, she reached outward and sealed it with a great deal of heavenly strength.

"Your hold is getting weaker," Nerva laughed, finally feeling her powers returning from beyond the many worlds between the current and her own.

"Tell me something I don’t know." Athenia scoffed and shot her an angry glance. "Fifteen minutes, just like I said. Then you’ll be out of my hair, and I’ll never have to see your face ever again."

"We’ll see about that," Nerva snickered, slipping back into her element.

Fifteen more minutes, that’s all the group had left. Whether Nerva gets the chance to interrupt them during their mission or not? Now depends entirely upon the urgency they present.