dusa smiles.
It's not a wide smile, nor a theatrical one, nor cruel in the obvious sense. It's small, restrained, almost serene—the kind of smile that doesn't spring from imdiate pleasure, but from the confirmation of sothing awaited for too long. The smile of soone who finally sees history reach the exact point where she always knew it would arrive.
She takes the first step.
The sealing circle pulsates beneath Athena's feet, runes reacting to the goddess's silent attempt to reorganize her own mind, to rediscover the axis of strategic reason that has always been her absolute domain. Athena is not physically weak; her divine body remains intact. What falters is sothing rarer and more dangerous for a god: certainty.
dusa advances without haste, the petrified Yamato resting on her shoulder as if it were a natural extension of her arm. Each step echoes with a weight that doesn't co from strength, but from the condensed mory that envelops her. The air bends slightly around her, as if space itself recognizes that this approach is not rely physical—it is historical.
Athena closes her eyes for a brief mont.
Not to pray.
But to think.
She forces her mind to pierce through the noise of the sealing, analyzing symbols, flows, interferences. This shouldn't be possible. The circle doesn't follow any traditional Olympian logic, doesn't respond to known divine archetypes, doesn't respect celestial hierarchies. It's sothing… opposite.
She opens her eyes again, now fixed on Vergil.
"How," she asks, her voice firm but laden with unprecedented tension, "how does a mortal dare to seal a goddess?"
Vergil tilts his head slightly, leaning relaxed on his throne, his fingers intertwined like soone watching a play whose ending he already knows.
"Mortal?" he repeats, amused. Then he smiles. "You remain too confident."
He rises slowly, the sound amplified by the absolute silence of the coliseum.
"Demonic energy is not a variation of divine energy," he continues, walking a few steps forward. "It's the opposite. Where yours imposes order, aning, and hierarchy… mine exists to corrode concepts. Pure contradiction."
Vergil stops, facing Athena directly.
"Think about it," he says, with an almost gentle smile. "If sothing exists only because it believes itself untouchable… what happens when it encounters that which does not recognize its authority?"
Athena tries to answer.
She tries to reorganize her internal logic, align symbols, recalculate possibilities. Vergil's words are not just provocation—they are an exposed logical flaw. A blind spot she never had to confront, because she never believed that anything could operate outside her sphere of influence.
For a mont, she almost understands.
And then dusa attacks.
Not with absurd speed.
Not with overwhelming force.
But with absolute precision.
The petrified Yamato cuts through the air in a clean, silent arc, charged not with imdiate destruction, but with accumulated intent. The blow does not target Athena's body—it targets the concept that sustains her.
The goddess's instinct reacts before her mind.
The Aegis erges between them in a golden flash, solid, ancient, a reflex conditioned by ages of battle and divine survival. The shield interposes itself at the exact instant the blade descends.
The impact does not explode.
It resonates.
A deep, reverberating sound, like stone against stone at the bottom of the world. The Aegis withstands the blow—but not unscathed. Ancient runes tremble on its surface, the golden light wavers for a fraction of a second, as if forced to acknowledge sothing not in its registers.
dusa does not retreat.
She presses the blade against the shield, constant pressure, eyes fixed on Athena's, so close now that neither can feign distance.
"You still know how to defend yourself," dusa says, her voice low, almost intimate. "Good. It would be disappointing if you'd forgotten even that."
Athena clenches her teeth, pushing the Aegis with divine force, creating space between them. The shield vibrates, reaffirms itself, but sothing within it has changed. An invisible fissure runs across its surface, not physical—symbolic.
Vergil observes everything with genuine attention.
"See?" he comnts casually. "Untouchable isn't the sa as immune."
dusa doesn't imdiately respond to Vergil's comnt.
She simply advances.
And this ti, there is no contemplation.
The serene smile dissolves like an abandoned mask, replaced by sothing raw, visceral, ancient. The petrified Yamato moves in her hands with an almost unnatural fluidity, each blow coming in irregular sequence, without a fixed pattern, without respect for classical forms of combat.
She attacks like soone who has waited too long.
The blade descends, rises, spins, tears through the air at angles that obey no martial logic whatsoever. It's not an elegant dance. It's a collision of intention. Each impact carries mory, frustration, years of silence compressed into pure force.
Athena barely has ti to react.
The Aegis appears once, twice, three tis in succession, each appearance accompanied by a dry impact that makes the entire field vibrate. The sealing circle reacts in irregular pulses, trying to keep up with the abrupt change in the rhythm of the confrontation.
"She lost control," soone murmurs among the spectators.
Vergil smiles slightly.
"No," he corrects, calmly. "She took over."
Athena takes a step back.
Then another.
Not out of incapacity—but out of surprise.
dusa presses, twists her body, uses the weight of her own petrified blade to break defenses, forces impossible angles, slides under the shield and reappears on the other side as a solid shadow. A blow passes inches from Athena's face, tearing golden sparks from the air.
The goddess's eyes widen for a mont.
That… shouldn't be happening.
"Since when," Athena growls, narrowly dodging a horizontal slash, "since when do you fight like this?!"
She changes her stance.
The Aegis is no longer just defense. Athena advances now, launches herself forward, using the shield as impact, as a weapon, as an extension of her own divine will. A frontal collision pushes dusa several ters back, the ground cracking beneath her feet.
Athena gives no space.
An energy spear forms in her hand and is hurled without hesitation. dusa spins her body, the Yamato intercepts the projectile, the divine energy shattering against the spiritual stone of the blade like glass against rock.
The impact reverberates through the coliseum.
The two advance simultaneously.
The combat ceases to be one-sided.
It becos sothing… strange.
Casual.
Brutal.
Divine and spiritual collide in chaotic sequences: Athena attacking with impeccable tactical precision, dusa responding with instinctive adaptation, body language reading, movents that follow neither manuals nor Olympian dogmas.
Fist against blade.
Shield against stone.
Strategy against survival.
Athena blocks a blow—and feels her entire arm vibrate up to her shoulder.
She frowns.
"This is trained strength…" she murmurs, retreating just enough to create space. "It's not blind rage. You… when did you have ti to learn this?"
dusa pauses for a split second.
Don't lower your weapon.
Don't relax.
Just tilt your head, your eyes burning with sothing that isn't pride—it's bitterness.
"I've had plenty of ti," she replies, her voice firm but laden with contained venom. "While you were adored."
She advances again, striking from above with enough force to bury the blade in the ground beside the Aegis, tearing chunks from the field.
"Artemis is a great friend," she adds dryly. "She teaches well… and doesn't abandon her own."
Athena feels a tightening in her chest.
Not guilt.
But belated recognition.
The fight intensifies.
Athena summons multiple manifestations of the Aegis, creating moving layers of defense and attack, shields that erge and collide like constellations at war. dusa responds by spinning between them, using the petrified Yamato to break the rhythm, cracking symbols, forcing Athena to recalculate every second.
The field no longer looks like a coliseum.
It looks like a field of ruins in formation.
Vergil observes with genuine interest now, his smile sharper.
"Look at that…" he comnts, satisfied. "A goddess struggling to adapt. That's rare."
The two collide again in the center.
This ti, neither yields.
The impact generates a shockwave that makes the sealing circle tremble dangerously.
And Athena, panting for the first ti in ages, faces dusa no longer as a mistake of the past…
But as sothing she gravely underestimated.
And dusa?
dusa smiles again.
Now, not serene.
Now, hungry.
"Co on, goddess of strategy," she says, clenching her fist on the stone hilt. "Adapt."
The change in Athena cos without announcent.
There is no battle cry, no solemn declaration.
She simply stops testing.
The relaxed posture disappears, the calculated rhythm gives way to sothing older, more dangerous. The Aegis ceases to respond as a reactive defensive tool and begins to move before attacks, anticipating trajectories that haven't even been executed yet. The energy around the goddess reorganizes itself, not in explosions, but in clear, efficient, lethal lines.
Athena is fighting seriously now.
dusa feels this the instant the air changes.
The first attack almost reaches her without warning—an energy blade erges laterally, not as a projection, but as a direct extension of Athena's strategic will. dusa dodges instinctively, the blow passing too close, cutting a strand of petrified hair that falls to the ground and shatters.
She retreats.
Then again.
And yet again.
Athena's attacks are no longer predictable. They don't follow repeatable patterns. Each blow is a specific solution to dusa's previous movent, as if the goddess were learning in real ti, dismantling possibilities before they even materialize.
"—Now then…" dusa murmurs, feeling sothing she hadn't felt since the temple. "—Danger."
She moves with agility, dodging by centiters, using the destroyed field as terrain, leaping between debris, the petrified Yamato spinning to block what it cannot avoid. Still, the pressure mounts. Athena doesn't advance chaotically—she closes gaps, forces bad choices, corners.
dusa understands.
If she continues like this, she will be crushed by the goddess's conceptual superiority.
So she changes.
It's not a dramatic decision.
It's survival.
dusa's body reacts before her mind completes the thought. The humanoid form begins to dissolve in an organic and ancient flow. Bones rearrange themselves, muscles lengthen, the remaining armor crumbles and falls away as the transformation completes.
The lower part of her body elongates, scales erge like living plates, overlapping with a dull, ancestral sheen. The serpentine tail uncoils across the ground, heavy and powerful, occupying space, creating new possibilities for movent. The center of gravity shifts. Weight ceases to be a limitation.
dusa returns to her Lamia form.
Gorgon.
Whole.
Her serpentine hair rises, not in fury, but in absolute alertness. Her body is now pure elasticity, muscles prepared for explosive impulses, curves that do not obey humanoid geotry.
Athena frowns.
Not out of fear.
Out of miscalculation.
"Interesting…" she says, adjusting her posture. "So this is your true field."
dusa doesn't respond.
She disappears from where she was.
Not by teleportation—by speed.
Her tail contracts and extends in a violent movent, throwing her body to the side with absurd force. She erges at another angle, slides across the ground, climbs an almost vertical rock formation, and attacks from above, Yamato descending in an impossible arc.
Athena blocks reflexively—but ti is different now.
dusa no longer fights in straight lines.
She wraps around.
She circles.
She uses her own body as mobile terrain, her tail sweeping the ground, creating waves of pressure that unbalance her, forcing Athena to reposition her feet, sothing she rarely needed to do. One blow passes, another cos from below, another erges from behind, her elasticity allowing for a series of attacks without pause.
Athena takes a half-step back.
Enough to realize her mistake.
She was trained to face warriors, titans, organized armies, entities that follow the logic of front, flank, and rear. This… this is sothing else. Continuous movent. Constant pressure. A creature that doesn't respect human rhythm.
"You abandoned the form I knew, you accepted being a monster?" observes Athena, raising the Aegis to repel a lateral attack.
dusa erges from behind, her tail wrapping around a destroyed column, using it as a pivot to launch herself again.
"No," she replies, her voice echoing with a deeper, more ancient tone. "—I simply stopped pretending I needed to fit into your narrative."
The fight shifts focus.
Now it is Athena who reacts.
Not out of weakness—but out of novelty.
And Vergil, observing from afar, smiles slowly, satisfied, like soone who has just seen a rare piece placed on the board.
"There it is…" he murmurs. "The goddess of strategy against sothing that doesn't want to win… only survive long enough to bite back."
The field trembles again.
And the battle enters a new stage.
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