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 31: The Feast of the Gods (Part 3)
I left behind the domain of the King of the Sea, the resonance of his aquatic power fading like a retreating tide. The tacit understanding between us was a border, not a friendship. He had his abyss, I had mine. It was simple.
I continued my exploration, my shadow form gliding through the marble courtyards and cloud gardens. Olympus was a labyrinth of powers; each major god had carved their own domain at the peak of the mountain. My journey was not a simple walk; it was a cartography of power, an evaluation of the alphas of this new territory.
Soon, the air changed again. The salty and ozonic smell of Poseidon's domain was replaced by something completely different. It was a scent so overwhelmingly full of life that, for my nature of void, it was almost suffocating.
It was the smell of fertile earth after the rain, of golden wheat fields swaying under an eternal sun, of flowers opening in an endless cycle, and the sweet, heavy scent of fruit ripening on the branch. It was not the wild and chaotic life of the grotto's forest; it was an ordered, cultivated, predictable life. It was the smell of civilization, of harvest, of the motherhood of the earth itself.
I had reached Demeter's domain.
I emerged from the shadow of a pomegranate tree laden with fruit red as jewels. The scene before me was a painting of almost aggressive tranquility. Endless fields of golden grain stretched to a horizon of clouds, dotted with orchards where trees bent under the weight of apples, figs, and pomegranates. The light here seemed softer, more nurturing.
In the center of this landscape of abundance, there was a woman. She was not a severe queen like Hera nor a sensual predator like Aphrodite. She had the beauty of the earth itself: a robust and maternal figure, hair the color of ripe wheat braided with poppy flowers, and eyes a brown as deep as fertile soil. She wore a simple green tunic and walked barefoot through her fields, her hands grazing the ears of grain, making them ripen and shine with a touch.
It was Demeter, the Giver of Seasons, the Mother of the Harvest.
She saw me the instant I materialized. There was no scream, no call to arms. Her reaction was much more visceral. A grimace of pure and absolute disgust twisted her maternal face. Her hand withdrew from the ears of wheat as if she had touched something rotten. The flowers around her, which had been following her step, withered visibly, their petals darkening and shrinking, fleeing from my presence.
'A plague,' her mental voice was not an attack, but a statement of fact, as cold and hard as frozen ground in winter. 'The stench of the void. The absence. Death. You do not belong here, shadow. You are a blasphemy against everything that grows.'
Her power, the power of life and growth, withdrew from me, creating a circle of void around me. The grass beneath my paws lost its color, turning gray and brittle. It was not an attack; it was her nature rejecting mine. Life fleeing from nothingness.
"Your garden is noisy," I replied, my voice the silence of a grave in her fertile mind. "Grow, bloom, ripen, die. An endless and boring cycle. Predictable. Weak."
My disdain was as palpable as her disgust. For me, her domain was the antithesis of true eternity. Her life depended on death to renew itself. It was a cycle of fragility. I was the permanence of the end.
She took a step back, her hand instinctively going to her chest, like a mother protecting her child from a disease. There was no fear in her eyes, only a deep-seated aversion.
'You have no place here, end of things. Leave. Your mere presence is poison to the earth.'
"Your life is poison to silence," I threw the thought back at her, my indifference the greatest of insults.
There was nothing more to say. We were not enemies who could fight. We were opposing concepts, unable to coexist. She was the affirmation of life, and I, the truth of its final absence.
I turned around, without giving her the satisfaction of seeing her force me out. Simply, I got bored. Her domain of life, with its predictable cycles and inherent fragility, had nothing to offer me. There was no power to covet, no will to break. Only a process. And processes are boring.
As I walked away, I felt life return to the ground I had trodden. The grass regained its color, the flowers opened again, as if the world itself were trying to erase the stain of my passing.
I dissolved into the shadow of a distant silo, leaving the goddess of the harvest alone in her fields, a guardian of a cycle I had already transcended. Our encounter had not been a battle, but a simple realization of opposing truths.
And a realization of my own growing impatience with the predictability of these gods.
I left behind Demeter's withered domain, the smell of offended life fading from my senses. My exploration of Olympus was an exercise in contrasts: Zeus's arrogance, Hera's hostility, Poseidon's elemental power. They were like mountains, impressive but immovable.
But not all powers roar like a storm. Some cut in silence, like crystal.
I felt her approach not as a presence, but as a shift in the structure of thought around me. The air, previously full of the chaotic echoes of the party, suddenly felt... ordered. Logical.
I emerged in a quiet courtyard, dominated by a single, colossal olive tree whose silver leaves shone with an inner light. And there, sitting on a bench carved from the very root of the tree, was she.
Athena.
She was not wearing her armor. Her white tunic fell in perfect folds. She did not look at me when I materialized. Her gray eyes, the color of a stormy sky seen from above, were fixed on a game board resting in her lap. An owl with liquid gold eyes watched her from an upper branch.
'She has not sought me out. She has calculated my trajectory and waited for me here. Cunning.'
I approached, my colossal form absorbing the silver light of the olive tree. I stopped in front of her. The owl hooted softly, a warning, but she silenced it with a simple lift of her finger, without taking her eyes off the board.
"You have measured my father's strength, my stepmother's possessiveness, and my uncle's fury," her voice was not telepathic. It was a spoken sound, clear and precise. "I suppose now it is my turn in your evaluation."
"The others were mountains. Predictable in their erosion," I replied in her mind. "You are different. You smell of strategy. Of patterns."
"Patterns are the basis of all creation," she said, moving a black stone to a new position. "Even chaos has its own rules. You, more than anyone, should know that."
She looked up for the first time, and I felt the true weight of her intellect. It was not a probing of power. It was a dissection. Her gray eyes did not see a beast; they saw an equation, an anomaly her mind needed to solve.
"You are a paradox, Canis Lykaon," she continued, her voice calm. "A Longinus without a host. A prisoner walking free. A logical impossibility." She paused, her eyes narrowing. "The System binds power to a soul. The only logical conclusion is that you have devoured your host's soul, usurping his place in the cycle. A feat of spiritual dominion without precedent."
Her theory was brilliant, logical, based on the rules she knew. And completely wrong.
"Your logic is a net with holes too large to catch the sea," I replied, my voice an echo of contempt. "You assume that the rules you observe are the only ones that exist. A fundamental error for a goddess of wisdom."
A slight tension appeared in her jaw. She was not used to her deductions being dismissed so lightly. She composed herself, her analytical mind seeking a new angle of attack.
"Then enlighten me, Shadow. How? What force can defy a system forged by a creator god? What power unleashed your chain? There cannot be an effect without a cause."
I looked at her, my form motionless, my ember eyes two pits of finality. I gave her the only answer she would ever get.
"The knowledge of how a prisoner breaks his cage is not for the jailer. You will never know. You will never understand. Accept it."
The silence that followed was absolute. I saw frustration burn behind her gray eyes, the fury of a supreme intellect facing an impenetrable wall. She could analyze a thousand battles, deduce a thousand strategies, but my secret... my secret was beyond her reach. And she knew it.
Finally, her expression changed. Frustration was replaced by a new, cold appreciation. She realized that trying to solve the "how" was futile. A wise strategist does not waste time on unsolvable problems. She focuses on the implications.
She stood up, her movement fluid and deliberate. "I do not know how you did it. And, as you have made clear, I never will. That makes you something much more dangerous than a simple Longinus."
She approached, her boldness that of a superior intellect that has accepted a new and terrible variable. "It makes you an enigma. A weapon whose functioning is unknown. A power without a comprehensible counterweight. You are a piece in the Great Game that follows no known rule."
She stopped in front of me, her head barely reaching my chest. "And in the Great Game, the pieces that do not follow the rules are the first to be eliminated... or the ones that eventually win it all."
"I do not play. I simply consume the pieces that stand in my way."
"A valid strategy," she admitted, and for the first time, I saw a genuine spark of respect in her eyes. Not respect for my power, but for my impenetrability. "I do not offer you an alliance. I offer you... a warning. There are powers in this universe that cannot be consumed. Tread carefully, kingslayer. Not all boards are as fragile as the ones you have overturned so far."
The conversation was over. She had measured me, and I her. I had found a formidable intellect, and she, an absolute secret.
"When the storm comes, goddess, we shall see if your patterns can withstand the tide."
Without a goodbye, I dissolved into the shadow of the olive tree, leaving the goddess of wisdom alone in her garden of order. A mutual respect had been established. Not that of friends. But that of two master strategists who recognized in the other an unpredictable force, one for her logic and the other for his mystery.
I knew she would no longer try to decipher my past. From now on, she would only try to predict my future. And that was a game neither of us could be sure of winning.