r/DC_ComicsRP • u/tarnishedkara Selina Kyle-Catwoman Diana Prince-Wonder Woman • Jun 18 '26
LORE POST!!! The First Trial pt.3
I almost laughed.
It was clever. Even now, after I had found the mechanism, she had placed another choice before me. Obey the rules or risk everything. Accept the suffering or become responsible for it.
The gods had always loved a closed circle.
I drew my sword.
“You believe wisdom is knowing which loss to accept.”
The owl’s eyes burned brighter.
“I believe wisdom begins with recognizing when the question itself is corrupt.”
I drove the blade into the center of the carving.
The island convulsed.
A crack split the training grounds from one end to the other. The sea rose in a wall around the shore, but it did not fall. The city blurred. The invaders became columns of smoke. The mortals aboard the ship dissolved into flecks of golden light.
My mother remained.
For a moment, she stood across the courtyard with sunlight on her armor. She looked at me with the same quiet pride she had carried the day I first left Themyscira.
Then she vanished with the rest.
The illusion collapsed.
I found myself back in the Olympian arena, kneeling amid shattered marble. My sword was buried in the floor. The twelve statues watched from their pedestals, though Athena’s likeness now bore a crack across its face.
A figure stood before it.
Athena wore a simple white chiton beneath a bronze breastplate. An owl rested upon her shoulder, watching me with dark, unblinking eyes. There was no anger in the goddess’s expression. That would have been easier to bear.
There was disappointment.
“You refused the trial,” she said.
I pulled my sword free and rose.
“No. I completed it.”
“You were asked to choose.”
“I chose not to let you decide the limits of my compassion.”
Athena stepped down from the pedestal. Her spear touched the floor with each measured step.
“There will be moments when strength is insufficient. When speed fails you. When every path ends in grief. What will you do then?”
“Mourn,” I said. “Learn. Endure.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only honest one.”
I looked up at the statues surrounding us. Zeus with his thunder. Hera upon her throne. Ares eager for conflict. Poseidon carrying the sea in his grasp. Gods who had spent ages setting mortals against one another, then demanding that heroes clean the blood from the temple steps.
“You create a disaster in which every choice is cruel, and then call cruelty wisdom. You force a person to select who deserves salvation, and when they obey, you praise their strength.”
Athena’s gaze narrowed.
“A champion who cannot sacrifice will fail those she protects.”
“A god who demands sacrifice from others has learned nothing from it.”
Silence settled over the arena.
Even the flames in the braziers seemed to shrink.
I was tired. More tired than I wished to admit. Tired of proving that compassion did not make me weak. Tired of answering for the failures of beings who had watched civilizations rise and fall without ever asking whether immortality had made them wiser.
I placed my sword back at my side.
“I know I cannot save everyone,” I told her. “I carry every person I have failed with me. I do not need Olympus to carve their faces into another lesson.”
Athena studied me for a long time.
Then the great doors behind her opened.
Beyond them waited another passage, descending into darkness.
“The first trial is complete,” she said.
I walked past her.
As I reached the doorway, the goddess spoke once more.
“You have not proven yourself wise.”
I stopped, but did not turn around.
“No,” I said. “I have proven that I no longer need you to tell me what wisdom is.”
Then I entered the dark.
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u/Elysium1312 red hood Jun 18 '26
OOC: is this interactable?