As the creature slowly stomped closer to the girls, someone shouted a battle cry.
Who was that, they thought.
And so, both Heli and Shion had come flying in with wings and all.
"I had never seen Shion with wings!" said Athena.
"He is prone to being shy about his small special features within him." replied Odette.
But the creature had become closer. He grabbed Athena by surprise. But the Crimson Heart glowed…and slashed the head off of the monster. But soon enough, there were more sudden abnormal mutations. This made the team a bit hesitant.
"What do we do?!" asked Odette.
Athena was not strong enough to kill all of those monsters.
"RUN!" she shouted.
They ran for a very long time. But then, they stopped.
"Athena," said Heli, who was running out of breath, "We can't keep running any longer! We have to do something!"
But then, Athena remembered what the necklace could do to its user(s). It can be used as a weapon or a wishing device. But Athena wished for only one thing: knowing how to defeat the monsters. The Crimson Heart glowed again…Athena then swung it, and then-SLASH! The necklace was able to defeat one monster.
One slash after another...and then-BOOM! And after all of that...all of the monsters were defeated. Suddenly, five shadows appeared in front of the gloopy mess that the monsters had made. They came closer and closer. Until the moonlight revealed them: they were the Crimson Girls. Athena used the Crimson Heart to defend her and the others.
"Please," begged one of the Crimson Girls, "We mean no harm unto you! Forgive us!"
Athena made the heart stop glowing. And then, the Crimson Girls curtseyed.
"Your royal highness," said one of the girls, "Today, we meet. We are the Crimson Girls. I am Joan, the previous owner of the Crimson Heart."
"I'm Sena!"
"I'm Dabi!"
"My name is Yurina!"
"And I'm Looisha!"
"Pleasure..." said Athena, a bit in her defense.
"You must be the princess Athena. How delightful!"
"It wasn't so delightful when those monsters popped out of nowhere."
Joan was shocked.
"Then it must have been from those fireflies, then."
"That's what I was thinking! And I was thinking about what they meant by the warning we were given."
"They didn't mean that abnormal mutations can not be stopped, did they?"
Athena nodded.
"Well…the only thing we can do right now is nothing. There is no way to break the curse of the blue fireflies. Unless one of us finds a solution to destroy all of these terrifying insects."
"There could be a way," said Heli, "If we find out who began the curse, then we can figure out how to stop them."
"Darling, I don't think it's that simple!" said Athena, "Besides, Joan had a point, we can't do anything at the moment."
"He's right, actually," said the slightly bewildered and stuttery Sena, "Because…I've seemed to have known who began everything in the first place."
"Who?!" asked Athena.
Sena then spelled out the name: O-D-I-L-E.
Athena gasped and then began to hyperventilate. Heli held on tight to her. Even he was in shock as well.
"My sister!" cried Athena, "My sister is behind all of this?! But how?! I've killed the Krampus andSooha! But not my sister?! How could she still be alive?!"
"For some reason," Dabi said as she was explaining, "She had regained consciousness and quickly nursed all of her injuries. She is known for being indestructible!"
"But how can we make her destructible?" asked Shion.
"Well..." said Joan, "We don't know for sure, but it is said that her weakness is within the Crimson Heart itself."
"And so what you're saying is, we have to travel to this Place of the Unknown, find my sister, and defeat her with this necklace?"
"It sounds about right." said Heli, "There doesn't seem to be anything else for us to do."
Athena couldn't play it safe anymore. She wanted to end everything that had happened ever since her birth. All she wanted to do was live in a world that was good and pure of heart. She eventually gave in…and nodded her head.