The moment Night stepped into the tent, he noticed an old man leaning on a staff who had apparently been waiting for some time and got startled.
Someone actually slipped past his senses without him noticing.
No hero so far had been able to do that.
Who was this mysterious elder?
The thought that surfaced immediately was "a god."
Greek heroes were rarely known for stealth, but gods were another matter entirely.
When they chose to, they could suppress their presence completely and take on the appearance of any mortal.
"Guess who I am," the elder said, his wise eyes settling on Night with a smile.
Night: "..."
Riddle-speakers can take that energy and leave Greece.
"I have no interest in knowing who you are. This is my resting quarters.
Please leave."
"Don't be so cold. Can the young people of today not handle a small bit of playfulness?"
"Get to the point, or you can try staying here and find out whether I will actually kick you out."
Night was not sure who this person was and even suspected it might be a god, but the brief alarm faded almost immediately.
Nevermind.
There were too many debts to worry about any single one.
With the sun god and moon goddess both behind him, as long as he stopped short of direct blasphemy or actual deicide, no god was going to push things too far with him.
And besides, something in the air had already given him a faint idea of who this was.
He just refused to name it, ignoring his own suspicion and letting the act play out while he enjoyed the rare chance to say exactly what he wanted.
When Night actually lifted his foot as if to follow through on the threat,
The old man flinched, eyelids twitching frantically.
He had no desire to find out what it actually felt like to be kicked in the ass by a mortal.
If word of that got back to the other gods, he would never live it down.
"Fine, fine, stop! I am Apollo!
Mortal, you have overstepped!"
A thread of divine authority slipped out, spreading like a wind across the surrounding space.
The furniture nearby trembled faintly, and Night's body went rigid.
Like being caught in some kind of judgment, a visceral sense of alarm rose instinctively from somewhere deep in him.
Under that pressure, he slowly and regretfully lowered his foot.
He should have kicked first before the introduction came.
He had never had the chance to experience what kicking a god felt like.
If that made it into an epic, would it generate some ability or Noble Phantasm along the lines of
"The Legend of Kicking the Sun God"?
As the formidable divine authority faded back to a quiet undercurrent of wariness and warning, Night gave a slow bow. "So it is Lord Apollo. Welcome. Then, great god of light, what brings you here?"
Apollo regained his composure at this time and pretended to be majestic.
"A private matter I needed to discuss with you."
Night: "?"
No, please don't say something that dangerous.
The private matters gods brought up tended to be...
"I just went to Artemis's temple and wanted to ask her why she took you as a follower, but..."
Hmm.
Apollo stopped midway, clearly finding it difficult to continue, and snapped his mouth shut.
Could he really say he saw his own sister with flushed cheeks and a faraway look in her eyes?
And that she kept asking him whether the flower crown on her head was beautiful?
That completely abnormal version of Artemis gave him the creeps, goosebumps rising all over.
Thinking about how Night had spent a short time with Artemis and she ended up like that,
He strongly suspected Night had done something.
But even Apollo could not bring himself to suspect the possibility that Artemis had developed feelings for someone.
After all, his sister had that kind of track record.
How could that crazy girl actually be moved?
Impossible. Absolutely impossible.
No matter how much it looked like it, it was still impossible.
The odds of that were lower than the odds of a sow climbing a tree.
What Apollo wanted to ask was how Night managed to do whatever it was he did.
But he didn't quite know how to describe it for a while.
He was aware that if he described Artemis's state out loud, it would definitely make the mortal mistakenly think that the goddess was in love with him.
Hah?
If that happened, Artemis's reputation as the pure, untouched virgin goddess would be completely destroyed.
Mortifying.
And beyond that, he had no interest in watching Night, a mortal, make that smug face.
If Artemis ever found out he described her that way, she would come after him too.
"So what exactly is your question?" Night said.
Apollo went quiet for a moment, then asked carefully: "I want to know what you did to her that made her so... out of it."
No matter how carefully he chose his words, that was still the only way he could put it, keeping his meaning as vague as possible.
But Night understood immediately and went still for a moment.
Artemis was out of it because of him?
He thought back to the moon goddess bolting away, and it did look a bit like someone who got flustered after being teased.
He wasn't entirely sure before, but with Apollo saying it now,
He started to think maybe he really did do something that got to her in that moment.
Though he didn't know how long that effect would last.
Artemis wasn't the kind of goddess you could win over easily.
He was confident she wouldn't stay in that state for long. She wasn't the type to fall for someone that quickly.
But that didn't stop him from feeling quietly pleased about it.
Making the pure, untouched goddess feel even a single moment of something—that alone was the kind of thing any Greek hero could boast about for the rest of his life.
And watching Apollo stammer and stumble around the subject right now made it even better.
He smiled. "I understand what happened, Lord Apollo. Please don't worry. Lady Artemis should be fine again before long."
Apollo's brow furrowed.
"What do you mean? Did you actually do something to Artemis?"
"I think the goddess simply liked the flower crown very much. That's probably why she seemed a little different."
"A flower crown?"
Thinking about it, Apollo started to feel calmer. Was it really just that?
Then Night opened his mouth again.
"Some people have pale colors.
Some have muted ones. Some have a certain sheen to them. But every once in a while, you find someone who is iridescent. And at that moment, nothing else compares.
We look at a tree in the sunlight and think it's beautiful.
But we have to step back and take in the whole picture.
Like painting. A painting isn't just a sum of its parts. A bull on its own is just a bull. A meadow on its own is just grass and flowers. Sunlight through the trees on its own is just a beam of light. But when you put them together, something miraculous appears.
Lady Artemis is the free moon herself. The flower crown, woven from blossoms that symbolize a pure and unblemished heart, carried that iridescent miracle precisely because it was offered at the right time and the right place.
I think the goddess must have loved that crown deeply. That's probably why she seemed so out of it."
Apollo: "..."
You better be talking about that damn flower crown.
.
.
.
(End of the Chapter)