When the boy rose to face the darkness, he glimpsed phobos, intangible fear, peering back at him. The fear looked at him teasingly, infuriatingly, on the verge of withdrawing itself into its own silent rage. The boy gazed fiercely into it. He saw the ghost of a wave in the sea of murk. He felt that it was the silhouette of his own disembodied dread making its untimely departure. Deep inside, the boy had already become a man. He felt the fear wither away, and then waited for the silence to end. His eyes remained rigidly still on a sight devoid of sound. All was blackness before him. Then he saw the frightened eyes of a girl. He saw her fully materialize before him in mere seconds. His hand instantly reached for hers, as if by doing it would destroy the factory of fear, the place in which all fears exist. This place was woven into every element of bodily displeasure abiding beneath a layer of skin, ever desirous of encroaching upon the intangible realm of spiritual courage. The boy and the girl knew that they had to walk through the dark to cross the dreaded doorway of adolescence. But they knew that they had a already done so, for they recognized what the darkness was. Phobos. Fear of death. War. These were as familiar to them as the faces that fed the earliest of their life's memories. Leonidas glanced at Gorgo, who held on to his now-deepening gaze. With their hands entwined, they walked through the darkness. Then Gorgo saw a sea of scarlet spreading under a darkening sky. She saw an army of silver visages rushing through the blackness. Gorgo saw Leonidas fighting valiantly as his scarred limbs persisted. Time passed. She saw her husband's scarlet cloak waver in the breeze as he prepared to face death. The time for timeless self-sacrifice had arrived. The sea of scarlet was slowly devoured by the dark shapes of the Immortals. Gorgo was queen of Sparta, letting her gaze wander across vast stretches of land to glimpse Leonidas' bravery. Leonidas looked at the dark shapes of the Persian royal guards and remembered the darkness he faced as a boy. He remembered the fear that stood before him. He felt that Gorgo was there beside him as his felt fear crumble and die inside him. Leonidas looked up and saw a cosmic radiance. For a brief moment, he wondered if it was intangible freedom itself becoming manifest to him in the bloodying dark sword storm. Gorgo could see it too. But this was all a dream. She knew it. A part of her clung to her dream before succumbing to the gentle stabbing of consciousness. Gorgo opened her eyes, her hand instantly gliding above the empty space beside her. She wanted to hold his hand again, but the empty royal spaces were as stark a reminder to her as the vacant throne was. Now, Gorgo stood before a different darkness. Her grief breathed before her, forcing her to drift undeterred through it in order to reach to the brighter side of who she was. Gorgo imagined that she strode a lightning-quick stride across the blackness. Then she marched on defiantly, still feeling the astute warmth of the hand that held hers so long ago. Her heart pulsated more gently, for she now fully fathomed her irreparable sense of loss. She knew that the only way to bend the blackness was to make it bleed light. She watched as the darkness bled. A light flickered through the insides of a blackness hemorrhaging before her heart's impenetrable gaze. She gazed at the light as it was colored scarlet. Somewhere, a scarlet cloak billowed in the breeze.