We were clashing in the centre of a star. Even though my armour protected me against most of the harm of it, at least for now, it didn't mean that it was comfortable.
I had walked before in one of the abandoned forges of the Elder Cyclops, children of The Earth Mother and the Sky Father.
It had been as if I had left completely the domain and the presence of my father to an inferno just waiting for the good moment to swallow me.
I stopped trying to dodge. Doing so showed itself useless. My armour was in a constant flux of evolution.
What was once taking seconds was now taking milliseconds. The healing becomes with each clash between the god and me less a botched work only focusing on me surviving and more on improving me.
I was paradoxically becoming stronger and weaker. Each moment was one that could be my last.
Each moment was one where the God's cosmic energy formed and twisted in various shapes only with the goal of ending my existence.
Each moment was one where I felt alive.
With a twirl of the fingers of the gods, spears made of lightning and something else that made my instincts scream at me to be careful were launched at me.
'World alteration,' my armour fed to my mind. Authority used. Divine weapons incoming. Analyse…copy.
I didn't try to dodge rushing toward them unbothered. Before they could Pierce my flesh, spears of dark metal appeared from thin air and collided against them.
Divine weapons clashed creating a vacuum in the center of the star before disappearing, collapsing.
My spear ignited with the thrum of divinity. The more I was fighting, the more I was learning and the more I was learning, the better I was.
I couldn't perfectly copy and understand Hephaestus' attacks. What my armour was trying to do was crack, decyphering them to their bare components so that I could understand them because understanding the impossible meant winning.
Ice, no calling it ice would be an understatement. Entropy recovered my spear. Hephaestus was a god of fire but not in the traditional sense.
Hephaestus was fire in the sense that he was life, advancement, civilization. I could see it now because of my armour.
Hephaestus was evolution. He was potential. Trying to fight him with Potential would be foolish especially when I just grasped at it. It would be like throwing a ball full of water at my father. Completely useless.
What I could do was use the information I gained to create something else equal to his potential.
In my veins and essence ran the Ichor of Poseidon. I wasn't blessed with the control of the sea but nevertheless, the sea was a part of me.
The thing is the sea was ancient, old. Some myths say that The Earth Mother Birthed the Ocean.
Others said that the Ocean predated her. Pontus in his sunken city slept a dreamless dream some sages shared when not in recluse or in the throes of madness.
What I knew is that by using my connection to the sea and adding it to the data I had been able to collect, entropy met against potential and potential fizzled out for an instant.
The god's eyes widened. He tried to dodge. He failed to do so completely. The blade of my spear went through his arm separating it at the elbow.
I rotated, my spear moving into an arc to bisect the god at the Hip. Flames solidified thickening to create armour.
My spear cut through it but not fast enough. It had been able to slow me a nanosecond and that nanosecond was all the god had needed to retreat.
I stopped to watch him. The battle hadn't been kind to him. Even though he was the immortal here, saying that he had the advantage would be a lie. I felt disappointed…yeah, disappointed. Was that all? Was that the peak I always searched to surpass?
"Is that all you can do?" I asked him seriously. Is this all the best you can give?
The god stayed silent, his gaze turned toward his stump. "It won't come back easily you know," I told him.
It shouldn't even come back at all but he was a god and gods and bullshit were synonyms. "All this time, I first saw you as a fly and after a mosquito, I needed to crush," the voice of the god rumbled.
"But you just showed me that you were dangerous, too dangerous to be allowed to live. You created something capable of hurting an Olympian. I can't allow your creation to propagate."
"Weren't you already taking me seriously?" I asked him. He had changed. I had seen his authority expand. I had thought that this was his true form.
The form of the god began to fizzle out like static "I hate taking my godly form," the voice of the god rumbled. "Be glad Aras. I acknowledge your existence."
I felt my body being moved. "Temperature rising too quickly," the robotic voice of my armour spoke before I emerged from the star.
The realm was crumbling…no, shifting all around me. My scanners were analysing the phenomenon but there was too much information, too much data that even with my augmented mind, it was nearly impossible to analyse.
"Do you know why they called me a cripple even though I am an Olympian, Cyclops?" I heard the god say his voice both everywhere and nowhere.
My mind focused on the question. There was an explanation, wisdom and maybe victory in the knowledge.
I needed to think. Think Aras. Think! Hephaestus was born of Hera and Zeus and when he was born, thrown out of Olympus because of his ugliness.
Not all the myths agreed on this version though. In others, Zeus had never been Hephaestus' father. Hephaestus had been born because his mother had wanted a child without cheating on her adulterer husband. She had wanted to show Zeus that she didn't need him.
Hephaestus was born ugly. Hephaestus was born ugly and was crippled by a fall from Olympus. Gods were born perfect. Gods couldn't, shouldn't be crippled.
Hephaestus was born imperfect. Hephaestus was crippled. Was Hephaestus not a god? No, I had felt, I had seen with my scanners how he used divine authority to create weapons, to create this world.
The Hecatoncheires and elder Cyclops weren't gods too but they were immortals capable of standing proudly at the side of their siblings Titans.
Did it meant that…, no it must be something else but imagine if it was actually that. If it did, things would start making sense about a lot of things.
Hephaestus had called himself an Olympian. "You aren't a god, are you?" I spoke softly. It all matched.
"My mother full of hubris tried to do the same thing as the Night and The Earth mother. I am like them she had dared to think!" the bitter voice of the god spread.
"My mother tried to create a god, one on par with the divine bastards of her husband. She tried."
"And she failed," I finished softly.
"Yes!" the god laughed. It was an ugly sound, the one of scraps of iron tearing into each other.
"She failed! I wasn't born right! I wasn't born what she wanted me to be so she threw me from Olympus. I'm sure she had hoped that doing so would have killed me. I was after all in her words just an upjumped half-god."
"But you survived. You were still divine and more than that, you were born with divine domains."
"This is the funny thing thing," the god chuckled. Over me, something began to take shape. It was big, absurdly and it was coming from me who had seen the wonders and horrors of my Father's realm.
It was as if fire and Metal had intertwines neither losing their shapes, connected in a way that only felt wrong. The thing had too many mouths, mouths filled with mouths, mouths open in what I recognized clearly as agony, mouths from which silver Ichor fell down and dripped before fading into nothing and dripping again in an endless cycle.
Arms made of cinders and brimstone grew from its flesh like the branches of a gnarly tree. "Ugly, isn't it?" the Olympian because it was Hephaestus I realized spoke.
Why was he seeming further and further?
Was I falling?
Why was I falling?
Thinking…thinking…what was I?
When did thinking become so hard?
"Athena once said to me that history doesn't repeat itself but rhyme. I fell on the island of Lemnos and almost died. Would have probably done so if the humans who had lived on the island, the Sintians hadn't taken pity and tried to save my life. I wouldn't have survived if they hadn't made sacrifices and prayed for help to save me. I would have died if Tethys, my Vová and Eurynymone hadn't come."
System failing, system failing. Urgence protocol activated. Urgence protocol activation failing. Too much damage. Survival of the host is endangered.
"I was just like you Aras, the Cyclops. I wasn't a god. I was born with no domain but I dreamt of being great, of proving to the one who had discarded me my worth. The Sintians were great smiths so I learnt from them. I pushed myself, never stopping no matter how hard it was, no matter how gruelling it was, no matter how pathetic it made me look," Hephaestus spoke.
Images of a young boy assaulted my mind and for a brief moment gave me clarity. Images of a young boy yearning for more, someone just like me.
"I became good. So good that with my hands, I was able to create miracles. I became so good that the ones around me stopped seeing me as their peer, as just exceptional and hard-working. They began to worship me and the more they worshipped me, the better I became and the better I became, the more they worshipped me. It came to a point that they gave me a name. Hephaestus Polymetis, Hephaestus of the many crafts. Names for your last lesson are the backbones of domains. There's no point in hiding anything from you because you won't survive," the god spoke with a certainty-filled voice.
"They're domains and At the same time not. A god may have a domain without a name even most of the time, they followed shortly but names in themselves could be said to be keys to a domain. They gave me names, multiples but I wanted more. It wasn't enough if I wanted to be their equal, if I wanted to be recognized, and respected! So I did what I knew best, I made myself better. A true smith can use everything to forge, to create something new so I use the names I gained to create a god! If only you had listened, if only you hadn't been so proud, you and I would have created so many wonders but fret not, I saw your invention. I'll remake it, better as proof to the world that you Aras were great. Now fall".
My visions went black. I knew I was dying. I could feel my armour trying to do something but it was only delaying the unavoidable. I would die here. I would lose here.
I fought and made a god bleed. I'm sure that my father's servants had used the opportunity I gave them to ransack Hephaestus' forge. It counted for something right? Then why did it feel so bittersweet?
I wasn't disappointed because I was dying. I was disappointed because, in the end, the only thing I truly have been able to do was push the Olympian to reveal his best. Was I truly going to go out like that?
Nah, fuck that.
The spark of divinity inside of me that I inherited from my father, which I had refused to use because of my pride moved at my command.
I was a smith and Hephaestus had said it. What kind of smith was unable to create wonders with metaphysical components? Only a bad one and I wasn't one!
I wrenched it out, this spark. I ignored the pain akin to my heart having been torn out of my chest.
My body didn't answer me but it was fine. My armour had improved me at every level. It had improved my mind. Things passed, memories of things rushing perfectly remembered. I could forge with my mind.
I was a blacksmith. It didn't matter how strong, or how horrifying the world could be. I just needed to create with my hands, with my soul a miracle, a phantasm to tear the nightmare above apart.
Threads, microscopic threads appeared only visible, only being able to be felt by me.
Hundreds, Thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, billions. They multiplied again and again and again.
Those threads, they were me. They were my eyes. They were my hands. They were my souls. They dug deep into the world surrounding me at my will.
My body, my mind and my soul were broken. I could see it so clearly with them. My soul, no my essence, I wasn't human was leaking like a broken faucet.
I could fix it right now but doing so, doing something akin to intruding on the domain of my uncle the rich one would be leaving me unable to attack, to hurt Hephaestus, to win.
According to my will, my body bent, nothing but a puppet for the billions of strings manipulating me, puppeting me.
The smart thing would be to try to run. The smart thing would be to try to call my father. Doing The smart thing would be synonymous with betraying myself.
Better fade, essence sucked into Tartarus, changed and shifted into something that wasn't me than continuing living while I could have touched my dream just if I had tried.
No, I would not heal myself even though it meant doom for me. I wouldn't heal myself but direct some of the threads to my leaking essence.
It was nothing than temporary, probably buying me nothing but ten milliseconds at best and that was if I didn't redirect all the threads to what I was about to do.
Ten milliseconds. Ten milliseconds would be enough. Hephaestus had been right when he had said I would perish today but he had been wrong thinking he would be the one to prevail.
The Olympian being what he was because of hard work, because of grit and pain only made me want to win even more.
My body stood shakily, nothing but a vessel. My threads, they gave me sight. They gave me everything I needed to triumph.
"A name? You gained a name?! No," the abomination in the sky chuckled softly before it exploded in full-blown laughter. Reality screamed in agony as a sound that shouldn't exist came to life from the mouth of the Olympian "You made one! You used your own inherent divinity! No, it is more than that! A symbol of power! You turned your essence into a symbol of power! You did what only Primordials, the Elder Cyclops and I have been able to do!"
9 milliseconds. I had only 9 milliseconds left. I didn't have time to ponder about the words of the Olympian.
"Crush," I pushed my body to whisper before the world bent. My threads, they dug into atoms, dug even more in a realm of the infinetmenstal small and dug again until they reached for the domain, the state of reality I now knew where Gods' powers operated.
The false world of Hephaestus broke at my will. The weight of an entire world collapsed on the form of the Olympian. Only my thread kept me safe in a limbo state untouchable for a brief instant to the madness I had brought for.
Billions of tons that did nothing to the Olympian. I could see it. Matter had simply stopped existing near him. It just meant I needed to do worse.
Above me, the sun fell. No, it wasn't one I realized. It was just a sword the size of it. Calculations ran into my mind analysing the phenomena, proof that my armour even gone had more than served its purpose.
The sword was made of Plasma my threads fed to me. A sword with a heat of at least 100753789 degrees.
Cold, I needed cold. My threads surged to my will and shifted the world. "Absolute Zero," I commanded them and time stopped.
The sword the size of the sun had frozen. It had also stopped falling. Gravity, I had frozen gravity itself a part of me realized.
Even then, the Olympian moved when it should have been impossible. "My fire," the Olympian spoke. "Is Evolution itself! Do you truly think that would be enough?"
Before my eyes, the sword began to melt the ice covering it. No, I would not let it do so! I pulled with my threads.
They tied themselves around the hilt of the sword dragging it to cut through the flesh of the Olympian.
The sword touched Hephaestus and sank as if he was an amorphous being. The threads I used weren't spared. Even though I tried to pull them back, some of them sank too in the flesh of the Olympian making pain blossom even more into my soul.
They've been cut away from me. It's as if something had taken clipper, clinched them on my flesh and pulled savagely but with my soul. '6 Milliseconds,' I calculated. 'There were only 6 milliseconds left.'
"Is that all that you can do?" the voice of the Olympian moved through the void between us. "This is no more an affair of war between our sires! This is a battle to see who's the best smith! Me, the greatest in all history and you who I dare to call the greatest I saw in the modern age!"
5 milliseconds left. I only had 5 milliseconds.
Hephaestus was right. I was still hesitating. I hadn't gone all out. Where was my imagination?! Would I be satisfied with a less-than-satisfactory showing? Hell no!
Space and time began to distort as I copied what I had once seen the Olympian do. To beat him, I needed to think like a god! To beat him, I needed to become a god and what was a god without a domain?!
I was now standing on an island in the middle of what I knew was an endless sea. Before living in Atlantis, before learning the way of the forge, I had been a child, the only child of a nymph.
She hadn't loved me. It had always been clear to me how she had only looked at me with disappointment and disgust as if I had failed her just by existing.
She hadn't loved me yet I had. She hadn't loved me yet those days had been some of my best memories because on this island, no matter how much she hated me, no matter how different I wished things would have been, I had been free!
I had been free because I had been ignorant. I had been free because, at this time, I only had thought she and I existed. I had loved this island because by being on it, I had felt as if I was everything I could possibly be, not the disappointment my mother thought me as. I had felt like a god.
It had been childish and idiotic. Still was and yet…and yet! This was an island surrounded by an infinite ocean.
An ocean mine to control only! An ocean mine to shape only! this world was one where I was god because this was a forge, my forge.
Starlights, flames and cosmic weapons each capable of shaking cities to their cores and splitting mountains in two rained from above.
The sea moved, copies of the weapons, superior copies created by the Olympian were sent back to clash against the original.
As long as Hephaestus was in this realm, everything he created would directly be analysed and sent back to my mind to be reconstructed by my threads under the infinite ocean surrounding me.
'3 Milliseconds. Only 3 Milliseconds left,' I thought as the sky shone like a cosmic tapestry being weaved before my eyes.
I was in my world. I was the one with the advantage here! It didn't matter that Hephaestus could seemingly create weapons straight out of fairy tales!
He was now on my turf! Two scarlet spears with barbs met above me tearing through space. The one Hephaestus created shattered while mine only cracked before going forward and being broken by another weapon created by the Olympian.
All over the world I had created, this was happening. Millions and millions of weapons so much more numerous than sand particles clashed.
'2 milliseconds left,' I noted my essence nothing but a bonfire to the star that it was.
I was winning. Hephaestus was slowly but surely losing ground. Weapons were coming closer and closer to puncturing his flesh, from hurting him. The problem was that it was happening too slowly.
I didn't have the luxury of continuing this for longer. A spear, a simple-looking one appeared in my right hand.
It meant that I needed to go claw out victory! The Olympian was distracted I knew. By acknowledging me, he had done me a favour. He had stopped holding back or holding back completely which meant that every weapon I copied was one worthy, powerful enough to affect the Olympian even if most would have been akin to the bite of a mosquito.
I switched with a white Jian meters away from the Olympian. Thousands of skeleton hands made of fire rushed at me the Olympian seemingly expecting such a thing from me.
One contact I knew would be my loss. Only one contact. Fortunately, I knew what to do to not be touched.
Darkness pooled above my brow manipulated by my threads to take the shape of a helm. What I was wearing was a copy, one badly made because I had been fortunate or unfortunate enough to never have seen the rich one's symbol of power but even then, everyone knew of its existence.
More than that, even though I may have not seen the Helm in real life, items of invisibility, items originally made by Hekate and Hephaestus were tools well known that even though they didn't give a hundredth of the powers of the Helm could be a decent substitute when they were of good quality.
They were copies from the Helm of Darkness. They didn't make the wearer simply invisible. They made the wearer undetectable by reality at least at a mortal level.
By using this concept, the idea of a copy and its original, I created a crown. Already it was fading out but it was okay.
It was still a copy made by my own hands! I phased out of reality, the hands not touching me because I shifted for an instant out of reality giving me an opening to strike.
It was a minuscule one, a more than microscopic one I would have missed if it wasn't for my threads.
My grip on the spear tightened. '0.20 Milliseconds left.'
A true wound wasn't one physical. Physical ones could with time heal, and mend. Inflicting Physical wounds to gods or similar beings was useless.
To hurt a god or something akin to it, one needed to strike at their soul, at their essence, at their domain. I could see it so clearly guided by my threads.
My spear flew out of my hand pushed by my threads. I watched the spear dig into the abominable artificial flesh of the Olympian, its goal the core of Hephaestus.
I watched how the body of the Olympian shifted, changed trying to protect him leaving me undisturbed.
My spear was slowing down, the thread not seemingly enough to pierce the Olympian. '0.10 milliseconds.'
That was okay. My body was a wreck, a broken thing that should be allowed to rest. I was bleeding and what was blood if not a liquid?
My mother was a nymph and my Father was a god yet I was born a cyclops, a creature considered a monster.
There were other nymphs who went to have children with gods. The messenger of the gods' mother was one of them yet he had been born a god, not a monster.
It is only now through what I learned due to my now destroyed armour, the Olympian and my threads that I finally understood why.
I was Poseidon's son yet I had never been able to bend water to my will, to make miracles with it until today unlike most of his demigods and godly children.
Monsters were failed gods. Gods who hadn't inherited enough from their divine parent, who weren't loved enough or lucky enough at the moment of their conception.
Even then, I had inherited a part of my spark of divinity, of my essence from my father, Poseidon.
This is why I had been able to breathe underwater, to understand the basic mermish tongues without learning them.
'It such a shame that it was only now,' I thought 'that I cracked it'. My Blood moved leaving my body, a proof of my understanding of the laws that ruled this world, to take the shape of a singular bullet.
The bullet moved faster than lighting to perfectly end at the butt of the spear to push it deeper and break through the flesh of Hephaestus.
Checkmate I thought as the spear flew and cut Hephaestus shredding what I knew were the links to his domains, his names.
0.2 Millisecond.
My eye focused on the last thing I would see, the broken and wailing shape of Hephaestus, the greatest Smith in history.
'0.1 Millisecond'.
'I win!' I thought with a smile as I watched him fall apart before everything went dark.
Sorry to not have written anything for so long. Stuff happened IRL but things go better. I always loved Mythologies. When I was younger, my grandpa told me tales of Greek gods and monsters. He gave me a book on mythology with most Greek myths at twelve before I even read Percy Jackson. In the original Myths, the distinction between monsters and gods is really really thin. Monsters most of the time are created by gods or children and descendants of gods. In the Myths, the Furies are immortal Daimoms( gods with one domain to be resumed), same with Echidna. This is why I always found baffling how Percy won in the first book against Alecto and her sisters so easily. If they were so easy to beat. If an untrained demigod no older than twelve could beat them, no one would have feared them at all. I wanted through this story to try to make it more realistic, to make the books more compliant with the original myths. About the Hephaestus I created, I was inspired by the original Myths and an Undertow of Sand of Shujin to make him. Hephaestus in the original myths killed giants (children of Gaia) when only a god and a demigod should together be able to do so. More than that, Gods can Shapeshift. They can't even die normally. Ask Kronos. They regenerate from almost everything and this why the Olympians scattered the body parts of Kronos all over Tartarus and even then, it wasn't enough yet Hephaestus was said to be crippled because Hera threw him from Olympus at birth. Hephaestus was born ugly, not crippled. If he was a god, what Hera did shouldn't have mattered. Hephaestus shouldn't be called a cripple or even ugly when gods can shapeshift unless Hephaestus isn't one but something close or an offshoot of it like with the Hekatoncheires, the elder cyclops and monsters. Anyway, hope you like this chapter. Don't hesitate to comment about what you think of the chapter or even my theory about gods and monsters. Discussion literally feed me. Also I got a ( p.a.t.r.e.o.n.c.o.m / Eileen715 ) and I am working on interesting things. Don't hesitate to visit if you want to support me maybe with 1 dollar or read other interesting stuff.