As the words of refusal left his mouth, Shiomi immediately realized he might have made a mistake.
Even dealing with someone mentally unstable required caution.
Let alone a god who was just as unstable.
"What a naughty child…" A look of sorrow surfaced on Demeter's face.
At the same time, the air suddenly grew heavy, as if it had frozen in place.
An invisible pressure bore down on Shiomi and Skadi.
Sensing that combat could erupt at any moment, both of them braced themselves at once.
"I see no reason to obey you," Shiomi said, his eyes wide with anger, his voice low but steady.
That pressure was Demeter's authority as a goddess, the manifestation of her divine power.
If they failed to respond properly, the consequences were impossible to imagine.
"Look around you!" Skadi warned.
The Olympian soldiers Shiomi had killed suddenly began to move. Their limbs twitched, and one after another, they struggled back to their feet.
"They revived?" Shiomi exclaimed in shock.
"No," Demeter said sadly. "Lives that have already been taken cannot return. But I cannot allow their sacrifice to be meaningless. Letting these children fight one last time as warriors is the final mercy I can grant them."
Shiomi found her words deeply disturbing. "Meaningless?! Do you even understand what you're doing?!"
"Turning fallen soldiers into walking corpses and sending them back into battle. Is that truly something a goddess of the earth should do?" Skadi couldn't help but challenge her. "What you're doing now is nothing more than putting their sacrifice on display!"
"…?!" Demeter looked as if she had been struck hard, clutching her forehead in pain. "Their sacrifice… I'm putting on a show?"
Shiomi desperately wanted to seize this opening to attack, or at least suppress Demeter completely, but he couldn't get close at all.
The authority of the Goddess of Harvest permeated everything around them. He had to exert all his strength just to counter it, restraining its influence and preventing it from spreading further.
If it were allowed to engulf the entirety of Hestia Island, Shiomi couldn't begin to guess what it would do to their companions still on the island, or to the humans living there.
This wasn't an uncontrolled rampage. If divine power were exercised consciously and without restraint, the first consequence Shiomi could think of was what his mother, Tiamat, had once wrought in Uruk.
"How do you view sacrifice?" Demeter suddenly asked.
"I believe it would be better if there were no sacrifices," Shiomi said after exchanging a glance with Skadi. "But more often than not, they're unavoidable."
Along their journey, everyone had made sacrifices within their own limits.
He couldn't deny those sacrifices. All he could do was acknowledge them and carry them with him.
"Exactly," Demeter said. "You, me, and everything that exists now is built upon sacrifice. Because of that, we must respect those who gave themselves and offer them our gratitude."
She lowered her hand, then raised the scythe high above her head, ready to bring it down.
"That is the mindset a harvester must have."
"I won't let you reap him!"
Skadi raised her staff, having already sensed Demeter's intent.
While Shiomi was suppressing the spread of her authority, the Goddess of Harvest was still able to lift her scythe.
A spring wind swept across the land as the blade descended. Skadi loved the breeze of spring, the vibrant life of tender shoots emerging in early growth.
But she felt no fondness for this wind.
The power of the Goddess of Ice manifested, halting Demeter's strike. The force of the harvest could not advance and instead veered away from Shiomi and Skadi, spreading across the plaza outside the temple.
The soldiers who had risen moments earlier froze in place. Their bodies were wrapped in green light, then scattered into the air in an instant.
Snap.
Seizing that moment, Shiomi took a large step forward, closing the distance to Demeter, and reached out to grasp the blade of the scythe.
The same words rang out at the exact same instant.
"My authority."
The ground began to tremble, and the temple shook along with it.
From the once-barren sanctuary, countless shoots of fresh green forced their way up through the cracks in the hard limestone floor.
Demeter drove her scythe forward, then swept it aside in one fluid motion. The blade of the Goddess of Harvest sliced across Shiomi's palm, yet the moment his skin split and blood welled up, it flowed back in, vanishing as if it had never been there.
For either of them, a wound like that wasn't worth noticing.
Shiomi's authority and Demeter's authority clashed, each fighting for dominion over the land beneath their feet.
Whoever prevailed would not only seize control of the earth itself, but would be free to harvest everything upon it.
None of this should have been necessary.
As long as Demeter set foot on Hestia Island, her authority over the land should have naturally taken hold. Shiomi's presence, however, obstructed her.
And the same was true in reverse.
"You are…"
Demeter still looked lost, her mind shrouded in confusion.
There was no doubt that her earlier words about "sacrifice" had been nothing more than an instinctive response from the goddess.
"At least… not your child…"
"Ah… yes… that seems to be the case…" Demeter's voice was sorrowful and lilting, like a mournful song. "My daughter, Persephone. My beloved child…"
As her words faded, Demeter swung her scythe once more, its sharp force driving Shiomi back.
When he tried to advance again and thrust forward with his crimson Gáe Bolg, dense vines and foliage surged up, blocking his path.
He slashed through them with his spear, only to find the space ahead completely empty.
"Don't think you can escape—!"
Skadi's voice rang out as biting frost swallowed the vegetation that had just sprouted, racing upward toward the sky. Yet it came to a halt just a short distance from Demeter.
"Your power cannot reach me," Demeter said, looking at Skadi, "just as mine cannot reach you, foreign goddess of ice and snow."
"…" Skadi had no words to refute that fact.
Then Demeter turned her gaze back to Shiomi, sorrow still lingering in her eyes.
"I never expected to encounter such an interesting child here. It seems I underestimated that person's request."
"Running away?" Shiomi tried to provoke her.
Demeter did not answer directly.
"Child of Tiamat, you are the only golden ear of rice in this world. We will meet again. Until then, be careful not to be harvested by someone else."
With those words, her figure dissolved as if melting away. Even if Shiomi wanted to pursue her, it was already too late.
"Golden ear of rice… harvested?" Skadi froze, unable to grasp what Demeter meant.
But before either of them could dwell on it, a familiar and immense surge of magical energy from the heavens left Shiomi no time to think.
"This is bad. Because of that goddess, our coordinates have been exposed!"
Once again, Artemis's arrows took aim at the earth.