Hello, guys!
Because of the holiday season, I want to celebrate with you in two ways.
The first is that, starting today, Monday the 22nd until Sunday, January 4th, I will publish daily chapters so you have plenty to read during these holidays.
After that date, I will return to my usual schedule.
The second surprise is that, starting December 24th, I will activate a 50% discount on all tiers of my Patreon.
The promotion will be active for 2 weeks, ending on January 6th.
If you wanted to read the advanced chapters, this is your chance.
Merry Christmas!
Mike.
Patreon / iLikeeMikee
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Chapter 32: The Feast of the Gods (Part 4)
The chess game with Athena had been a stimulating mental exercise. I left her garden of order with a new understanding of the Olympian mind: they were logical, predictable, even in their genius. But logic was only one facet of this noisy realm. The other, as I was about to discover, was pure, arrogant emotion.
I continued my exploration, a current of night flowing through the golden courtyards. And then, I felt it.
It was not an approaching presence. It was an environmental aggression. The perpetual light of Olympus, which had been a constant, annoying hum, suddenly intensified. The warmth turned into scorching heat. The air around me began to shimmer, to ripple like the air above a bonfire. The light itself was becoming a weapon, trying to burn me, dissolve me, purge me.
'The noisy peacock. He has come to strut.'
I stopped in the middle of an empty courtyard, an open space of solidified clouds, and waited.
He appeared, not walking, but manifesting, as if the sunlight itself had concentrated into a single point until it took human shape. He was the personification of perfection. His hair was spun gold, his skin glowed with an inner radiance, and his body was a sculpted work of art, every muscle defined with a grace that Ares, in his brutality, could never match. He wore a simple golden tunic, and on his back, a bow of pure gold seemed to sing with contained energy.
It was Apollo. The god of the sun, of music, of prophecy. And his beauty was only surpassed by his arrogance.
He did not approach. He stayed on the other side of the courtyard, his aura of golden light clashing against my aura of blackness, creating a twilight, dead zone between us where neither energy could dominate.
"Stain," his mental voice was not a melody. It was a sharp sound, like a lyre string stretched to the breaking point. "You have soiled our halls with your lust. You have defied my father with your hubris. And now, you profane my domains with your very existence. You are an imperfection. A discordant note in the perfect symphony that is Olympus."
"Your Olympus is a song repeated to the point of boredom," I replied, my voice the absolute silence found between notes. "I am the silence that gives meaning to the music. Something a musician as vain as you would never understand."
A grimace of disgust twisted his perfect lips. "Your darkness is a plague. An absence of beauty, of truth, of light. You are a void pretending to be a power. You hide in the cracks, afraid of the day."
"I hide in the same place where you sleep every night, little sun god," I retorted, my contempt a wave of conceptual cold. "You hide in my domain to recover your strength. The night is not my hiding place; it is my throne. And you are simply a noisy, temporary guest in the cycle."
His aura shone brighter, the heat intensified. I could feel him trying to burn me, to dissolve my shadow form with pure solar energy. But it was useless. My darkness was not the absence of his light; it was a fundamental concept. It was like trying to burn cold.
"You are a blasphemy against creation," he hissed in my mind. "A shadow that has learned to think. An error that must be corrected. My father may find you entertaining, but I find you... offensive. You are a reminder that perfection has not yet been achieved."
"Perfection is a cage. The final state of evolution is death. Your search for perfection is simply a longing for your own end. I am that end, Apollo."
I took a step toward him. A single, deliberate step. And with that movement, I did not attack. Simply, I expanded my domain. The shadow beneath my paws spilled outward, not like a tide, but like an ink stain, devouring the light, turning the floor of golden clouds into black obsidian.
Apollo took a step back, an instinctive movement of repulsion. He saw his perfect light being corrupted, consumed by my advance. "Do not dare touch me, filthy thing!"
"I do not need to touch you," I told him, stopping. "I am always there. In the shadow you cast. In the doubt that clouds your prophecy. In the night that inevitably follows your brightest day. I am your final certainty."
We stood looking at each other, two antagonistic forces in a stalemate. He was the arrogance of life and light. I was the certainty of the void and darkness. We could fight for an eon and get nowhere, simply canceling each other out.
And I had no time for a stalemate. It was boring.
I broke eye contact, deliberately turning my head to observe a distant statue of one of the Muses. It was the greatest insult. In the midst of our conceptual confrontation, I had simply lost interest.
I could feel his fury. A wave of heat so intense it caused the air around me to distort. His hand moved to his bow, his fingers tightening on the string.
But he did not shoot. To attack me here, without direct provocation, would be to defy his father's welcome. It would be an act of instability. And Apollo, above all, was a god of image.
With a final hiss of pure frustration and hatred, he dissolved. His form came undone in an explosion of golden light so bright it would have blinded a mortal, a final, petulant display of power before vanishing.
I remained alone in the courtyard, now half-submerged in the darkness I had created. Slowly, I withdrew my influence, allowing the golden light of Olympus to reclaim its territory.
The encounter was over. The enmity was sealed. We were not rivals who would fight for dominion. We were opposing truths. And the universe was not big enough for both.
'Someday, little sun god,' I thought as I dissolved back into the shadows. 'I will teach you what a true eclipse is.'
The confrontation with Apollo left an unpleasant aftertaste in my essence, like ozone after a lightning strike. His arrogant light was an irritation, a discordant note in the spectrum of Olympic power. I withdrew from his presence, not out of fear, but out of pure disdain. The sun was predictable. His cycle of rising and setting was a cosmic monotony. He was not a threat; he was a nuisance.
My exploration took me far from the golden courtyards and banquet halls. I followed an instinct, a longing for a deeper silence, for a place where the light of Olympus was not so... relentless. The trail guided me to a vast forest growing on the slopes of the sacred mountain.
This was not a mortal forest. The trees here were giants of silver and gold, their leaves whispering melodies instead of rustling in the wind. The ground was covered by a carpet of moss that glowed with a soft silver light. The air was cold, pristine, and smelled of pine, damp earth, and the purity of virgin nature. It was a sanctuary.
And I was an intruder.
I emerged into a clearing, my colossal wolf form a smudge of profanation amidst the silver beauty. The forest fell silent at my arrival. The melody of the leaves ceased. The glow of the moss seemed to dim. Nature itself held its breath, sensing the presence of a predator that did not belong to its order.
And then, I felt the gaze.
It was not Zeus's arrogant gaze, nor Athena's analytical one. It was not Apollo's burning hostility. This was different. It was cold. Precise. Absolutely motionless. It was the gaze of a hunter who has found her prey. A gaze that did not evaluate power, but calculated the trajectory, the weak point, the instant of the kill shot.
Slowly, I turned my huge head.
At the edge of the clearing, beneath the branches of a colossal silver pine, they were there. A dozen female figures, dressed in silver hunting tunics and armed with bows of polished silver. They were young, ethereal, and moved with the silent grace of deer, but their eyes shone with the coldness of wolves. They were her Hunters, immortal maidens dedicated to the hunt.
And in the center of them, was their goddess. Artemis.
Her beauty was not that of Aphrodite. It was not sensual or inviting. It was a wild, austere beauty, as cold and perfect as moonlight on a winter night. Her silver hair was pulled back in a practical braid, and her eyes... her eyes were two full moons of liquid silver, devoid of all emotion except absolute, deadly concentration.
She did not look at me like a god, nor like a monster. She looked at me like a trophy. The head of the legendary beast that would adorn the wall of her hall. The skin of the ultimate predator that would become her rug.
Her hatred was not conceptual like Apollo's. It was personal. I could smell it. It smelled of wounded pride, of an insult to her dominion.
'The Amazons...' The thought echoed in the silence between us. 'You have defiled my charges. You have broken my warriors. You have turned them into your whores. You are a plague in my domain.' Her mental voice was not a sound. It was the sensation of an arrow grazing your throat.
I did not answer with words. I answered with an image.
I projected into her mind, not a thought, but a vision. A vision of her proudest queen, Myrina, kneeling in the sand, her warrior body broken and trembling after my assault. Then, the vision changed. I showed her the other Amazons, their stoic faces contorted into masks of ecstasy as they were taken by my shadow tentacles.
And then, I showed her a vision of the future. Her own Hunters, her pure, virgin maidens, in the same position. Kneeling. Broken. Their silver bows broken at their feet, their pale bodies marked by my essence, their muffled moans as they served me.
A stifled gasp of pure, absolute fury escaped her lips. Her aura, previously so cold and controlled, exploded in a blast of frozen power. The moss at her feet froze, covering itself in silver frost. Her Hunters instinctively stepped back, their faces pale with shock at their goddess's anger.
Her hand moved to the bow on her back with blinding speed. She drew an arrow of pure moonlight from her quiver and drew the string. The arrowhead glowed with energy capable of killing a Titan.
The challenge was thrown.
I remained motionless, my ember eyes fixed on hers, accepting her challenge. 'Do it,' I thought. 'Shoot your little splinter of light. Let's see if it can scratch the night.'
Our silent confrontation stretched for a long minute. The entire forest seemed to hold its breath. The moon arrow trembled in her bow, yearning to be released. My darkness swirled around me, hungry, ready to devour her light.
But she was a strategist, not a furious beast like Ares. She knew what would happen. If she shot, I would counterattack. The battle that would follow would devastate her sacred forest. And, though she wouldn't admit it, she wasn't sure she could win. Not here. Not now.
Slowly, with self-control that was almost as terrifying as her fury, she lowered the bow. The arrow of moonlight dissolved, its energy withdrawing back into her quiver.
The battle had not been avoided. It had merely been postponed.
'One day, beast,' her mental voice was now as cold and sharp as the tip of an obsidian arrow. 'When you are in open ground, far from the shadows of the other gods. I will hunt you. Not for glory. Not for sport. But for extermination. I will cleanse your stain from this world.'
I returned a final predatory smile, a baring of jaws that revealed rows of night teeth.
"Many have tried. Their bones adorn the forgotten corners of my kingdom. I will await your attempt with... impatience."
Without another word, I turned around. I turned my back on her, the greatest insult to a hunter. And I began to walk away, my wolf form moving with deliberate calm through her sacred forest.
I heard the sound of a silver bow snapping behind me, the ancient wood shattered by the sheer frustration of its owner.
War had been declared. And I had just added the greatest hunter in the universe to my growing list of enemies.
'A game becoming increasingly interesting.'