The Path of the Gods Part II: Judgment of the Sky
The silence lasted barely a second.
Then Olympus roared.
The sky that covered the mountain turned white; not with light, but with the absence of color. As if the very concept of the storm had been torn from the world and compressed into a single point. From the remains of the shattered mountain, an invisible pressure descended upon the entire hall. It was not wind. It was not force. It was authority.
Percy fell to his knees, unable to stop himself.
Not because he wanted to. Because his legs simply stopped responding.
The air grew heavy, dense, as if breathing itself were a privilege that could be revoked at any moment. Percy clenched his teeth, trying to rise, but the ground seemed to have turned into lead beneath his body.
Miraak took a step forward, placing himself in front of Percy. As he did, part of that weight vanished, as if an invisible barrier had interposed itself between the boy and the will crushing him. Even so, it was not the same as with Ares. Although Percy no longer felt his body being ground into the floor, he was still unable to stand while Miraak remained there.
Miraak had been in his draconic form from the very beginning. Unlike his confrontation with Ares, he knew with absolute clarity that Zeus stood on another level. It was not merely raw power; it was hierarchy. Absolute dominion.
And the god's mere presence was enough to make that clear.
A flash crossed Miraak's field of vision. Before he could even react, Zeus was already standing before him.
His armor was burned across the chest; his skin marked by incandescent lines that faded and reignited like living sparks. His gray eyes showed no pain. No weakness. Not even a true wound.
Only pure fury. Trampled pride. Hatred. Paranoia. Violent emotions that crossed his face in an instant, before he raised his hand and pointed it directly at Miraak.
Then the clouds surrounding all of Olympus suddenly shone. An unnatural radiance swept across the sky before it spat its lightning straight toward Miraak, right in front of Zeus.
Ethereal speed. Immediate destruction. As if an insect had stung him and the god had merely lifted his hand to crush it.
There were no words. There were no warnings. There were no questions of mercy, because the thought of granting it never even crossed his mind.
Miraak glanced back for a brief instant, aware that he could not move. That attack did not seem meant only to destroy him, but to erase everything nearby; Percy included.
So, with a simple motion of his hand, using telekinesis, he seized Percy and hurled him directly toward Poseidon, who already seemed prepared to catch him.
Percy did not process anything quickly enough. He only felt his body float, then be grabbed from the other side, before hearing hundreds of thunderous impacts and seeing flashes of light that blinded him for several seconds.
"You have made the oldest mistake there is," Zeus said, as he watched the lightning fall upon Miraak, already convinced he had reduced him to dust.
At the same time, he turned and raised his hand toward the debris of the mountain, calling the master bolt back to return to his grasp.
And as it flew toward him, an arm appeared out of nowhere and caught it effortlessly in midair.
"Ah, yes. And what mistake would that be?" Miraak said calmly. It was he who had stopped the bolt.
Zeus opened his eyes with a slight, almost imperceptible surprise. Then he looked back, toward the place where Miraak should have been completely carbonized. There stood another Miraak. His body was entirely burned by the lightning, his armor destroyed, his skin blackened, yet he was still alive, drawing in a deep breath as if he had just emerged from great depths.
"How…?" Zeus managed to ask, before being struck once more by the master bolt, this time directly in the chest.
"STRUN BAH QO."
At the same time, the other Miraak used the shout Call Storm.
Zeus was sent flying yet again, this time tearing across Olympus to its far end. He crashed directly into the area where several minor gods and worshippers lived their ordinary lives. The only thing they saw was a colossal figure falling among them, destroying everything in its path.
Hundreds of storm clouds, the very same Zeus had used before to attack Miraak, surrounded Olympus once more. They shone again and began to spew thunder. This time not at Miraak, but at Zeus.
Those nearby panicked, believing their king god was punishing someone. Many fled hastily from the devastation, fearful of being caught in the wrath of their own god.
Miraak smiled faintly, with a hint of mockery, looking toward the place where Zeus had fallen. His attacks would obviously not truly harm the god of lightning. This was not an attempt to kill him. It was a blow to his pride. A return. The very same lightning Zeus had used against him in the past.
Of course, Zeus would not be defeated so easily. The only reason Miraak could face him at that moment was because he was using Zeus's own master bolt, preventing him from reclaiming it. Even so, Zeus remained genuinely dangerous.
The only reason he had managed to strike him twice in a row was the contempt the gods usually felt toward those they deemed inferior. But now, Zeus would not make that mistake again.
Miraak turned his gaze toward his clone, created through the shout FIIK LO SAH. At that look, the clone dissolved into mist before flowing back into Miraak's body, its task already complete.
Before he could even finish turning his head, Miraak drew his black sword, shielding himself with his entire body, crossing it before him on pure instinct.
But a sudden blow sent him flying kilometers in a single instant. The clouds tore open violently in his wake, ripped like fabric by his body. Cold and heat inverted without warning, and direction itself lost all meaning.
In midair, Miraak tried to regain control of his movement, but suddenly he felt a hand gripping his face with crushing force. His body was slammed into the ground amid an explosion of lightning, as the earth surged upward like a colossal wave, forming a massive crater around him.
"Who do you think you are?" Miraak heard, just before a new rain of lightning fell upon him almost immediately.
Miraak launched himself from the ground and rolled, barely evading some of the bolts. Others managed to strike him, but his armor absorbed the impact; with each hit, the runes of its enchantments flared brightly, containing most of the electrical damage.
Before he could react, he felt a brutal kick to the stomach.
The impact was so violent that, in an instant, he appeared in a distant jungle. Trees were torn from the ground and dragged along by his body from the force of the blow, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake.
"You enter my territory. You attack me with my own master bolt," Zeus said again, while holding pure lightning energy between his hands. It crackled violently, as if it contained hundreds or thousands of compressed bolts. Zeus kneaded it as if it were clay, shaping it into a spear, which he hurled at Miraak without a second thought.
"WULD NAH KEST."
Miraak barely managed to evade it. Behind him, a thunderous explosion shook the world. An entire mountain seemed to have been completely obliterated by that attack.
"Only total destruction awaits you," Zeus said once more, as his body transformed into lightning, hovering over Miraak with both hands raised.
Storm clouds, so black it was as if night itself had fallen all at once, formed on an unimaginable scale, as though every cloud in the world had gathered into a single point.
The smell of moisture and the static in the air grew violent, tangible, as the energy began to concentrate in one place above Miraak.
Zeus was not seeking to defeat him; he sought to erase the fact that he had ever existed.
Miraak looked at the sky for a moment. Then he looked at Zeus. And, for a single instant, a smile appeared on his lips.
Zeus saw it, and for the first time, he hesitated.
Then the largest, most destructive, and most thunderous bolt fell from the sky. It tore through the land in its path; not even a meteor would have caused the devastation left by that impact. The earth itself turned into molten rock around the point of impact.
The electrical energy continued to pour down for what felt like an eternity, though it lasted only a second. It was as if sky and earth had suddenly been connected by a column of pure lightning and light.
When the attack ended, Zeus remained floating in the air, waiting to see Miraak's ashes. Someone as paranoid as he was could only feel at ease by confirming that his enemy had been completely destroyed.
But his brow furrowed when he saw a shadow in the midst of the lake of molten earth and rock. There stood Miraak, upright, his armor destroyed, his body blackened; yet utterly calm.
Then Zeus felt something.
It was not pain. It was not physical impact. It was a sudden absence. An invisible fracture.
His expression changed as he sensed some of his believers beginning to disappear, as if their voices were being extinguished one by one, cut off at the root. They did not die. They simply stopped sustaining him.
Zeus looked back at Miraak.
He was wearing a calm smile directed at him, one that showed neither mockery nor defiance, but understanding.
"What did you do?" Zeus asked this time, with an ominous sensation that came not from the outside, but from his own throne.