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.
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Chapter 30: The Feast of the Gods (Part 2)
The understanding with Zeus was not an alliance. It was a truce, the pause two predators grant each other before deciding if the territory is big enough for both. I left the peak of his citadel, not because I was dismissed, but because the air up there, charged with ozone and pride, was monotonous to me.
I spilled myself again into the lower gardens of Olympus, my shadow form flowing through the golden light like an oil slick on water. My exploration continued. Zeus was the power. Now, I needed to measure the other pillar of this realm: the structure.
The trail led me to a different place. Far from the chaos of the banquet hall and the austere grandeur of the throne room. It was a walled garden, an enclave of perfect and controlled beauty. Here, flowers did not grow wild; they were arranged in geometric patterns. Trees did not twist with age; they were pruned into elegant shapes. Even the birdsong seemed rehearsed.
It was a place of order. A sanctuary of stability. Hera's domain.
I found her sitting on a white marble bench, next to a fountain that did not sing, but whispered. She was not alone. A peacock, with a tail that was a galaxy of iridescent blues and greens, strutted at her feet. She was watching a small pond, her face a mask of severe beauty and regal melancholy.
She wore no crown, but her aura was that of a queen. Her power was not a storm like Zeus's, nor a wildfire like Ares'. It was the gravitational pull of a planet, an immovable force that held everything in its orbit. She smelled of cold marble, ozone after a storm, and the subtle fragrance of lilies. She smelled of permanence.
I emerged slowly from the shadow cast by a perfectly trimmed hedge. There was no surprise on her face when her eyes, the color of the sky before dawn, settled on me. She had been waiting. I felt it.
She did not rise. She did not speak. She simply watched me, her gaze a measuring instrument, evaluating my size, my power, my very existence. There was none of Zeus's curiosity nor Aphrodite's hunger. There was... calculation. The cold calculation of a matriarch assessing a potential threat to her nest.
'The alpha wolf of the pack. The one who maintains order.'
I took a step into the garden, my shadow paws leaving no mark on the perfect grass. The peacock at her feet let out a sharp, alarmed shriek, its feathers puffing up in a display of panic. Hera simply placed a calming hand on its head, and the bird fell silent instantly, though it continued to tremble.
I stopped at a respectful distance. The conversation, like the one with Zeus, would be silent, an exchange of wills.
'So the stray dog of the feast has found his way to my garden,' her mental voice was not melodic. It was clear, precise, and as cold as the marble of her bench. 'You have entertained my husband. You have soiled the whore's palace. What do you seek here? This is no place for wild beasts.'
"Every place with a shadow is my place," I replied, my voice a block of night in the clarity of her mind. "And your perfect garden casts the darkest shadows of all."
A slight tension appeared at the corner of her perfect lips. She did not like my answer.
'Your power is chaotic. Unnatural. You are a rabid dog unleashed in a world of order. I have seen many like you throughout the eons. They come, cause havoc, and eventually, are put in their place.'
"I am not like the others. I am the one who puts others in their place."
She watched me in silence for a long moment. Her gaze drifted, passing over me, toward the main palace. I could feel the direction of her thought, not toward Zeus, but toward her children. Ares. Hephaestus. Toward the delicate family structure she had spent millennia building and defending.
'You have won my husband's favor. You are his new toy. He tires quickly of his toys, beast. But the damage they cause often lingers. You are a variable I do not like. A stone thrown into my perfectly still pond.'
"Quiet ponds rot," I threw the thought back at her, a conceptual growl.
It was then that her gaze returned to me, and for the first time, I felt the true weight of her power. The air around me thickened, gravity seemed to double. It was not an attack. It was a warning. A demonstration. The goddess of marriage, of order, of family structure, was showing me that her dominion was not just social. It was physical.
'Understand this, Shadow,' her voice was now as hard as diamond. 'You may play with the nymphs. You may wallow with the foam whore. You may even drink wine with my husband. But you are a guest in this house. And in this house, there are rules.'
Her power intensified, a crushing pressure. 'If you threaten my marriage, if you corrupt my children, if you endanger the stability of my family... you will discover that you do not need to be a storm to destroy. Sometimes, all it takes is the silence of a grave. And I have buried more monsters than you, beast.'
The warning was unequivocal. Zeus ruled the sky. But Hera ruled the house. And she was infinitely more possessive of her domain.
Slowly, she withdrew her power. The air returned to normal.
I returned her gaze with my absolute, unwavering indifference. Her power was impressive. Her threats, interesting. But her game... her game of families and legacies... was a mortal concept, irrelevant to me.
It was the greatest insult I could offer her. Her sacred family structure, the center of her universe, was to me simply boring.
Without another word, I turned around. I turned my back on her, a gesture I knew would infuriate the queen as much as it had pleased the king. And I began to walk away, my wolf form moving with deliberate calm through her perfect garden.
I heard a soft hiss of anger behind me. She had understood my message.
The encounter was over. No truce had been established. There was no respect. Only a line, clearly drawn in the grass of Olympus. And the silent promise that, if I ever crossed it, the Queen of the Gods would become my most relentless enemy.
'Another noisy peacock,' I thought as I dissolved into the shadow of a cypress tree. 'Just with sharper feathers.'
I left the Queen's garden behind, her silent warning a weightless echo in my consciousness. Her power was that of structure, of rules, of the cage. And I had spent eons learning to break cages. Her threat was irrelevant.
My exploration continued, aimless, guided only by my instinct. I was drawn by a sound, not the music of lyres nor the laughter of nymphs, but a deep, constant rumble, like the heartbeat of a colossal heart. The sound of moving water. On a grand scale.
I flowed through the shadows of an endless colonnade and emerged into a courtyard that defied logic. There was no ground. Only a vast pool stretching as far as the eye could see, a lake of water so crystal clear it looked like liquid air. In the center, a series of monumental fountains rose like geysers, shooting columns of water hundreds of meters into the air before falling in thunderous cascades.
The air here was different. It smelled of salt, ozone, and the unmistakable, primordial potency of the ocean. This was not a simple water garden. It was a piece of the sea, torn from its bed and brought to the peak of Olympus. It was a domain.
And its lord was present.
Standing at the edge of the lake, ankles deep in the water with bare feet, was a figure radiating power as vast and ancient as Zeus's, but of a completely different nature. If Zeus was the storm in the sky, this was the earthquake beneath the sea.
He was tall, wilder than his brother. His hair and beard were an untamed tangle of green as dark as abyssal algae, flecked with strands of white foam. His body was not that of a salon king, but that of a swimmer, every muscle a steel cable forged by the pressure of the depths. In his hand, he held a celestial bronze trident that hummed with the power to boil oceans and shake continents.
Poseidon. The Earth Shaker. The King of the Sea.
He did not look at me. His attention was fixed on his fountains, but I felt his consciousness settle on me the instant I emerged. It was not Zeus's curiosity nor Hera's calculation. It was the territorial caution of a predator sensing another at the edge of its watering hole.
'So the shadow comes out of its mud puddle and dares to approach my shore.' His mental voice was not thunder. It was the deep, rumbling roar of a wave crashing against rocks.
I moved forward, my shadow paws landing on the surface of the water without sinking. I walked on his domain as if it were solid ground, an act of silent defiance. I stopped a few meters from him, two kings of two different abysses, one of water, the other of night.
"Your abyss is alive. Full of prey," I replied, my voice the cold silence of the depths where light has never reached. "But it is noisy. And wet."
A slow smile, cracked like dried salt, drew across his lips. Finally, he turned his head, and his eyes, the color of the sea during a storm, met mine. They were ancient eyes, full of the fury and melancholy of the ocean.
'Everything that lives comes from water, shadow. Even you, in your forgotten origin, needed it. You show a lack of respect.'
"I come from nothing. I am what remains when everything else is gone. Respect is given to equals. And I see none here."
The provocation was direct, brutal. The air between us charged, not with Zeus's ozone, but with the heavy humidity that precedes a tsunami. The trident in his hand began to glow, the water at our feet began to swirl, to heat up.
I could feel his power, a physical, crushing force, trying to sink me, to crush me with the weight of entire oceans. I resisted, my own aura of darkness expanding, not to attack, but to create a bubble of nothingness, a void his power could not fill.
'You are strong, beast. Stronger than the whispers suggest. You have the weight of the void in you.' His assessment was grudging, an acknowledgment of strength to strength.
"And you have the weight of a drowned world. A kingdom of life that feeds on death. I know it well."
We stood like that, in a silent standoff, for what seemed like an age. Two primordial concepts measuring each other. The sea, with its chaotic power full of life. And darkness, with its absolute, empty power.
Finally, it was he who yielded. The light of his trident dimmed. The water at our feet calmed. The pressure vanished.
'This world already has enough storms,' his thought resonated, this time tinged with ancient weariness. 'We do not need to start another.'
He turned around, turning his back on me, his attention returning to his fountains. "There are rules, even for abysses, shadow. The sea does not venture into the night, and the night does not try to drown the sea."
The warning was clear. A non-aggression pact. A boundary.
"My shadows already dance in your darkest depths, King of the Sea," I reminded him, my voice a final whisper. "And they always will."
Without waiting for a response, I dissolved. My form collapsed back into the shadow I myself cast on the water's surface, an oil slick that vanished, leaving the lake as pristine as before.
The encounter was over. No alliance had been forged, no friendship. Only a tacit understanding, as ancient as the elements themselves.
The sea belongs to Poseidon. The shadows belong to me. And neither king would bow to the other.