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 34: The Feast of the Gods (Part 6)
I left behind Aphrodite's temple, the scent of her frustrated lust was a cloying aftertaste in my essence. Her power, though immense, was one-dimensional. It relied on an inherent weakness of living beings, a need I did not share. It was child's play.
My exploration of Olympus had left me with an impression of shallowness. Zeus was a storm of ego. Hera, a cage of rules. Apollo, a peacock of light. Artemis, a hunter obsessed with a single trophy. Ares, a hammer looking for a nail. They were powerful forces, yes, but simple. Predictable.
'Is this all there is in this realm? A collection of glorified instincts sitting on golden thrones?'
I was about to abandon my exploration, to retreat to the honest brutality of the mortal realms, when a new stimulus caught my attention. It was not a scent, nor a sight, nor an aura.
It was a sound. And a heat.
A rhythmic CLANG!, deep and resonant, vibrating through the cloud floor, as constant as the beating of a metal heart. And with it, a wave of dry, scorching heat, not the light of the sun, but the heat of a star's bowels, the heat of creation itself.
Curiosity, my eternal companion, guided me. I followed the sound and the heat, moving away from the perfect gardens and banquet halls. The path led me to the lower slopes of Mount Olympus, to a section that seemed rough, industrial, almost forgotten.
Here, the white marble was stained with soot. The air did not smell of ambrosia, but of coal, hot metal, and the sharp scent of the sweat of exertion. Pillars of black smoke rose lazily toward the golden sky, an industrial blasphemy amidst ethereal perfection.
I had found the forges of Olympus.
I emerged from the shadow of a pile of celestial bronze ingots, my wolf form a smudge of night amidst the orange glow of the forge fires. The place was a cavernous cave, open to the mountain winds. The CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! was deafening here, the sound of hammers the size of men striking anvils that glowed red-hot.
One-eyed Cyclopes, their bodies mountains of sweaty muscle, worked the bellows and moved molten metal. But my attention focused on the figure in the center of it all, standing before the main anvil.
He was not like the other gods.
He was deformed. One of his legs was twisted at an unnatural angle, forcing him to lean on a black iron cane. His face, framed by a matted beard black as coal, was not beautiful; it was functional, marked by soot and concentration.
But his body... his body was a masterpiece of power. His shoulders were broader than Ares', his arms were two tree trunks of pure muscle forged by eons of hammering creation. Every time he raised his massive hammer, the muscles in his back and arms rippled beneath his soot-covered skin, a symphony of applied strength.
It was Hephaestus. The Smith. The Cripple. The Artisan of the Gods.
He did not see me, or if he did, he didn't care. His attention was completely fixed on the piece of glowing metal he was hammering on the anvil, shaping it with a precision that was both brutal and delicate.
I approached, my colossal form moving between the sparks and the heat. The Cyclopes stopped their work, their single, enormous eyes widening in alarm upon seeing me, but a single guttural word from their master made them return to their task.
I stopped a few meters from the anvil, watching him work. There was no arrogance in him. There was no lust, nor anger, nor politics. Only the pure and absolute concentration of a creator on his work.
Finally, he gave a last resonant blow to the metal, and plunged it into a vat of water that hissed and burst into a cloud of steam. He set the hammer aside, its impact echoing on the ground, and only then did he turn to face me.
His eyes were not like those of the other gods. They were not storms, nor suns, nor seas. They were like glowing coals, burning with a slow, deep intelligence, the gaze of someone who understands the fundamental nature of things.
"So the Wandering Shadow has found his way to my fire," his mental voice was neither melodic nor thunderous. It was raspy, like the sound of metal scraping against stone. "A strange place for a creature of the night to roam."
"Fire casts the deepest shadows," I replied, my voice the cold of quenched steel in his burning mind. "And your fire... is the hottest in this realm."
He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of a soot-covered arm, his gaze sweeping over my form. But he didn't see me like the others. He didn't see a beast, nor a weapon, nor a toy. He saw... material.
"Solid darkness," he murmured in his mind, a genuine craftsman's interest in his tone. "A paradox. How do you maintain your form? What law binds your nothingness into something tangible? It is not magic. It is... will."
"Will is the first tool of any creator."
A slow smile, cracked by heat and soot, drew across his lips. "That is so. I see you understand. The others... they only use things. My father uses lightning bolts. My brother, the sea. My wife... well, she uses everyone. But none of them understand the how. They do not understand the act of creation."
He leaned on his hammer, his deformed body straightening with pride. "I create with fire and metal. I take the raw material of the universe and force it to adopt a new form, a new truth. I give it a purpose."
"I create with nothingness," I retorted. "I take the absence of everything and shape it with my will. I do not give it a purpose. My creation is its purpose."
We stood in silence, two creators from two opposite ends of the spectrum. The one who shaped matter. And the one who gave matter to nothingness.
Hephaestus looked at me with a new respect in his burning eyes. A respect I hadn't seen in any of the other gods. It was not the respect of one alpha to another, nor that of one strategist to another. It was the respect of a craftsman toward a master of a different but equally fundamental trade.
"You have created your own existence out of a conceptual cage," he said, and I realized that he, in his fundamental understanding of systems, was closer to guessing my secret than even Athena. He didn't know the how, but he understood the what. "A feat of craftsmanship that would shame even my father."
There was nothing more to say.
"Your forge is noisy. But it is an honest noise," was my farewell.
"And your silence is heavy, Shadow. But it is full of purpose," he replied.
Without another word, I turned around and began to walk away. As I left, I heard the sound of Hephaestus's hammer striking the anvil again, a steady and powerful rhythm. It was not a sound of war, nor of celebration.
It was the sound of creation.
I had found the only soul in all of Olympus who was not playing a game. And for that, in a strange and silent way, he had earned my respect.
The heat of Hephaestus's forge was a reminder that not all power in this realm was superficial. I left behind the honest din of his hammer, the silent respect of one creator toward another was a strange and lonely note in the symphony of egos that was Olympus.
I continued my path, a current of night flowing through the less traveled courtyards, avoiding the main shine and the noise of the party that still roared in the distance. My exploration was almost over. I had measured the alphas, identified the enemies, and discarded the irrelevant. This place was a map of power I had already memorized.
I was about to withdraw, to dissolve and return to the honest solitude of my own realm, when I felt a new type of movement.
It was not an apparition. It was not a walk. It was a... hum. A vibration in the air, the sound of something moving so fast it seemed to be everywhere at once. One instant there was nothing, and the next, a figure was leaning casually against a pillar right in front of me, as if he had been there the whole time.
He was young, with a mischievous beauty and a lean, wiry body, built for speed rather than strength. He wore a winged helmet and sandals that fluttered softly, keeping him an inch off the ground. In his hand, he held a caduceus, two intertwined snakes that seemed to watch me with an intelligence of their own. He smelled of wind, dusty roads, and the unmistakable scent of gossip.
Hermes. The Messenger. The Thief. The Trickster.
He did not look at me with Zeus's power or Apollo's hostility. He looked at me with a bright, almost childlike curiosity, the gaze of a collector who has just found the rarest and most exotic specimen for his collection.
"By my sandals!" his voice was not telepathic, but a spoken sound, fast and excited. "So it is you! The great dark wolf everyone talks about! I have heard whispers about you from the Nile to the Euphrates, but seeing you in person... You are much bigger than the stories say. And much more... silent."
He moved, circling me in a blur of speed so fast that to a mortal eye it would have seemed he teleported. He appeared behind me, then beside me, then in front of me again, his bright eyes examining every angle of my shadow form.
'Noisy. And fast. Like an annoying hummingbird.'
"You talk too much, little god of the wind," my voice resonated in his mind, heavy and slow in contrast to his frenetic energy. "And you move too much. You disturb the stillness."
Instead of being offended, he laughed, a quick, sharp sound. "Stillness is boring! Movement is life. And you, my shadowy friend, are the biggest news to hit this universe since my father swallowed Metis! A Longinus without a chain. Azazel in Grigori would pay a fortune for your secrets! How did you do it? Was it a ritual? A pact with Chaos? Did you find a flaw in the fabric of creation?"
His questions were a flurry, a rain of unfiltered curiosity. He didn't expect an answer; he simply vomited his thoughts.
"My existence is not gossip for you to share on your travels."
"Oh, but it is!" he retorted, his smile pure mischief. "It is the best gossip! Do you know what they say in Hell? That you are a secret weapon of Lucifer. In Heaven? That you are an abomination, a soul that escaped judgment. But I know you are something else! You are a story no one knows! And I, Hermes, am the collector of all stories."
He leaned in, his face coming dangerously close to my snout, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "What is your story, wolf? What do you really think of those on this mountain? Do you think my father is a tyrant? That my stepmother is a harpy? That Aphrodite is as good in bed as the legends say? Come on, share! One secret for another."
The game was obvious. He was trying to wheedle information out of me, to gain an advantage, a story he could use. And in his childish game, I found a new form of amusement.
I gave him a predatory smile, a stretching of jaws that revealed rows of night teeth. And then, I dissolved.
My colossal form collapsed into the shadow beneath my own paws, disappearing in an instant. Hermes blinked, his smile wavering, now speaking to an empty space.
"Oh? Playing hide and seek?" he laughed, and in a blur, he disappeared, his speed a distortion in the air as he began to search for me.
I reappeared a hundred meters away, materializing from the shadow of a statue of Hercules. Hermes stopped, saw me, and smiled, his thrill of the hunt growing. "There you are!"
He launched himself toward me, a golden comet of divine speed. And just before he arrived, I dissolved again.
I reappeared at the other end of the courtyard, this time from the shadow of a small flower growing in a crack in the marble. The game continued. He chased me with almost absolute physical speed. I evaded him with conceptual teleportation.
It was a charade. A demonstration of the futility of his power against mine. His speed required space, a path. Mine only required a speck of darkness. He could move through the world. I could move between the world.
Finally, after a dozen jumps, he stopped in the center of the courtyard, panting slightly, not from exhaustion, but from pure frustration.
"Alright, alright, you win!" he shouted to the air, laughing. "You can't catch a shadow! I get it!"
I emerged one last time, this time right behind him, my cold breath grazing the back of his neck. He jumped, spinning around, his eyes wide with surprise.
"It is not a game you can win, little god," I told him, my voice a final whisper in his mind.
He composed himself, his mischievous smile returned, though now tinged with a new respect. "No. I suppose not. You are a well-kept secret, Lykaon. But all secrets have a key. And I am very good at finding keys."
He watched me for a final moment, his trickster mind already working, filing this defeat for future use.
"It has been... enlightening," he said. "When you finally get bored of this place, look me up. I know all the paths. And all the secrets. We could make a good team. Or be wonderful enemies."
And with a final wink and a casual wave, he dissolved into a blur of movement, a whisper in the wind that was gone as quickly as it had arrived.
I remained alone in the silent courtyard. The encounter had been, in its own way, as revealing as the others. The messenger, the trickster... he was superficial, yes. But his curiosity was a weapon. It was a reminder that, although I had cheated the System, the universe was full of other players who would now try to figure out my own game.
'Another noisy insect,' I thought as I dissolved back into the night. 'But this one... this one might be entertaining to crush someday.'
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If you liked the chapter, please leave your stones.
Mike.