When she arrived and, from afar, saw the chaos of those monsters at play, she already understood.
She understood why her all-knowing Mother had given that "fetch the flower" order.
Everything lay within Mother's sight; had she not come today, humankind would truly have been wiped out.
"Mother… really…"
"Even the excuse was prepared so perfectly for me."
"Then, next…"
"All I need to do is lose my temper."
Only now did she finally turn that icy gaze fully back upon Absu Naya.
Faced with Absu Naya's extreme humility, she did not soften in the slightest.
Calliope let out a cold laugh.
The sound rang like the opening verse of some vast epic, filled with the chill of judgment, revealing all the cutting edge of the goddess of epic.
She scolded directly from the front. "Absu Naya!"
"You are truly bold!"
That single rebuke struck like a thunderclap through Absu Naya's divinity.
Her divine body trembled violently.
Just seeing Calliope's hard expression, she had already known something was wrong; hearing this scolding, her heart clenched even tighter.
"She… clearly has no intention of letting this go lightly."
"But… I—I am in the right…"
She hurried to bow and be even more humble, her words tumbling out fast and earnest:
"Honored Your Grace, on what grounds do You say this?"
"Is there not some misunderstanding?"
"I have always dwelt in the peaceful trench of the sea, rarely leaving it."
"I have ever held absolute reverence for the great God-King and always kept His Holy Just Order."
"Even in sleep I recite His Twelve Holy Laws, never daring the least disobedience."
"If, without knowing, I have offended You, I offer You my sincerest apologies!"
"Please, I beg You, point out my fault! I will correct it at once!"
"And I ask You to believe me when I say I would never dare show any disrespect to the great God-King or to You!"
Her tone, urgent yet soft and humble, even sounded rather pitiful.
Calliope, though goddess of rhetoric and the art of speech,
found herself pausing a heartbeat before such lowly deference; it truly was a little tricky.
"This slippery little fence-sitter really does know the law."
"I haven't even done anything yet and she's already this low to the ground."
"If I press too hard now, would it not seem beneath my station?"
"If I had the law on my side, I could afford to be relentless."
"The problem is, when it comes to the legalities of humankind, the law really isn't on my side…"
Calliope was the goddess of eloquence, mistress of words.
She knew how to quibble and argue as well, but had always disdained such tricks.
She was the eldest daughter of the all-good, all-beautiful, all-knowing, all-powerful Sovereign—the eternal God-King Zeus—and the all-wise Mnemosyne.
How could she stoop to such petty maneuvers and stain her Father's and Mother's majesty?
Yet as she looked upon the nearly thousand dead in so short a time, upon bones strewn across the ground and endless sobbing,
the anger in her heart could not be borne if it were not loosed.
So she snorted coldly, divine power surging again.
"Impudent!"
"I have not yet stated the charge; how dare you already argue your innocence?!"
Absu Naya quivered under that power, but one thing was certain now:
the Muse Crown Princess was absolutely here to stand up for humankind.
Retreat was already in her heart.
But before she could speak, Calliope's rebuke rolled on:
"Absu Naya! Those filthy, foul creatures you birthed are outrageously bold!"
"My revered Mother has been preparing a surprise gift for my great Father—and a crucial part of that gift lies here in the mortal world!"
"Yet just now, that thing is gone!"
Absu Naya's heart went cold.
"Bad! Very bad! She's stopped being reasonable…"
"The Muse goddess is openly making trouble now."
She opened her mouth, ready to rush to plead: "It wasn't me, but I'm willing to compensate."
But a cold gleam flashed in Calliope's golden eyes first.
The splendid longsword at her waist—cast by the Cyclopes at Zeus's command, a powerful artifact for His beloved daughter,
symbol of all "epic praise"—rang sharply as it slid from its sheath.
A burst of indescribable, majestic golden light shot toward the sky.
Blinding brilliance carved a blazing arc across the heavens.
Light—
but not merely swordlight.
There was also sound—
the sound of Heaven's Order, of law made real at the God-King's word.
"Vmm—"
The blade quivered, giving off a tone of judgment like an epic chant.
"Judgment."
Calliope's icy oracle shook heaven and earth.
With a sacred song like broken lines of poetry, the swordlight thundered downward.
These were not mortal words or letters but heavenly runes condensed from Heaven's own Order.
She did not move from where she stood, did not even swing her sword—and still the stroke fell.
From the instant it appeared, the "result" had been defined.
The golden swordlight swept toward Absu Naya's back with unstoppable force.
By reflex, Absu Naya tried to block it; she unfurled her domain of abyssal calm, and the authority of sea's tranquility froze all within an instant.
But…
it was useless.
The golden holy light became an invisible wave of Order, sweeping unhindered behind Absu Naya.
This was not physical destruction.
It was a total erasure on the level of concept and law.
Not of one.
Not of two.
Not just the two offenders, Mokela and Oryth.
But of the tens of thousands she had brought on this outing as her escort—the cream of her brood.
Those grotesque Abyssal Whelps, the instant they touched that Ordered light,
did not even have time to scream.
Their chaotic, filthy divine bodies met the epic swordlight of civilization and Order as filth meets holy fire, as darkness meets dawn.
Before Order itself, their very existence was an error.
Under that single stroke, they all unraveled and fell apart, reduced to primal, pure energy and dispersed into heaven and earth.
Turned wholly to dust.
No sound, no trace, no ash.
Not the faintest breath of their existence remained on that land.
Only a swept-clean clarity of air,
and the incredulity on the Deep-Sea Chanter's face.
Absu Naya was stunned, terrified, furious, and enraged all at once.
Her flat chest felt like it would burst.
She had brought these children both to show her strength and to grant them wisdom; naturally they were the ones she valued most.
Now they were all gone.
Every one of them wiped out.
Her divinity roared in silent fury:
"My honor guard!"
"I—I—"
"I have already lowered myself so far! Been so humble!"
"And you, Calliope, still show no mercy—slaughtering all my children right before my eyes?!"
"An insult beyond bearing!"
"What then?!"
"The mortals behind you are precious?!"
"While my children, these divine lives, count for nothing?!"
"My brood is worth less than a flock of mortals?!"
Even the most timid, the most cautious, the mildest temper cannot endure such humiliation and bullying.
And deep-sea gods do not, by nature, have good tempers.
Absu Naya's face went cold in an instant; all softness vanished, leaving only anger.
The monstrous half of her features twisted even more grotesquely as her emotions slipped their leash.
"Lady Calliope!"
"You—you go too far!"
"You—you are openly contradicting His Majesty the God-King's Holy Just Order!"
She roared her accusation, but still she did not dare strike.
On the one hand, she knew she could not win; on the other, she was truly cautious.
To shout she might; to show real disrespect, never.
For however many children she could spawn with a single twitch of her wings, she could hardly risk them in a fight against the God-King's daughter.
If she could not act, then she could only argue law.
Fortunately, the law was on her side.
She herself had done nothing yet.
Her tens of thousands of children had been wiped out first.
By any account, reason was with her.
Her claim earlier had not been empty talk; she truly did recite the God-King's Twelve Holy Laws every day.
No god
knew His Majesty's holy code better than Absu Naya.
Under His Holy Just Order, so long as she had the law, she need not fear.
She drew a deep breath, forcing down the turmoil in her chest, and strove to keep her voice steady:
"I have ever upheld His Majesty's Twelve Holy Laws, carefully kept His Holy Just Order!"
"I may be small, but I know what laws the God-King has laid down!"
"Now You have wiped out all my offspring! This—this is the true overstepping of His Majesty's Holy Just Order!"
Calliope only gave a slight cold smile at this grief-stricken charge.
"Impudent!"
"You dare prattle to me of my Father's Holy Just Order?!"
"I have not yet held you to account for failing to discipline your brood, and you rush to plead your own case?!"
"My revered Mother has been preparing a sacred surprise gift for my great Father."
"And a crucial part of it was a single edelweiss."
"This flower is unusually delicate and unusually precious, yet grows in a special way. Thus Mother placed it in the mortal world to be nourished by human wisdom and spirit."
"The flower had bloomed; Mother sent me to collect it."
Her golden eyes locked sharply on Absu Naya, her voice filled with epic majesty and the sternness of Order:
"And just now!"
"It was fouled by the filthy, vile, chaotic spawn at your back!"
"Not merely fouled—but completely polluted and crushed beneath their corrupted divinity!"
______
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