The air itself ignited behind Hermes as the Olympian flew toward the daughter of Poseidon, the world taking halt to his senses due to how fast he was.
Only three things were cognizant, aware in this world of higher thought, higher speed, Death, the abyss and Hermes himself of course.
The son of Zeus gripped tighter his cadeceus. In less than an instant, he had crossed the distance, wings on his feet propelling him forward to a speed that would have crossed millions of kilometers in less than a second.
The air, matter, the atoms themselves ignited in the world around him yet he still was focused only on Benthesicyme, the daughter of Poseidon, time itself being left behind him, relativity stopping to matter so that Hermes would arrive, reach Benthesicyme before he even had originally moved, a feet clad in Greek armour rushing toward the stomach of the sea goddess with enough might and power that a dwarf planet would be sent tumbling in pieces, out of orbit. In a movement that defied all logic, one even faster than the one of Hermes which should be impossible, the trident of Benthesicyme moved, the body of the trident being put on the path of the leg of Hermes.
They clashed, the leg of Hermes and the trident of the daughter of Poseidon, the son of the sky and the daughter of the sea and while Hermes may have attacked with a world shaking might, Benthesicyme still didn't bulge. What did though was the world , the flames, the plasma that had been caused by Hermes moving too fast, who had excited atoms to a point that they split was pushed back, a void taking birth from the place of impact between Hermes and Benthesicyme, a void that pushed the world back, jets, no, the air, the ground, any trace of moisture, the sky itself, the entirety of the state of Nevada, a world turned plasma was pushing back in an insult, in defiance of a world of logic but was it surprising? After all, what could logic, what could the world do but cower when gods clashed.
After all if they weren't capable of such, could they truly be called gods?
Hermes saw a smile bloom on the face of the daughter of Poseidon, one that seemed to taunt him, almost as if asking him if that was all he could do. It was only natural that Hermes answered with a smile of his own.
The truth was the god thought that that the goal of his kick had never been to struck at the goddess. No, it had instead thad been for two things.
The first thing had been to create an opening for Thanatos. It was at this moments that hundreds, no, thousands of tentacles like limbs with thorns as dark as the space between the stars, tentacles that seemed to be living, moving darkness adorned with eyes, angry rolling ones rushed toward Benthesicyme acting like the bloom of a flower, forming a dark halo around Hermes' shape as they rushed at the daughter of sea.
The second had been for only one thing, one that would be surprising especially in such situation , potential energy. Hermes pushed back with the sole of his feet, pushing in such a way that he would go up, with all of his might calling on his names, calling on the names of Craterus ( strong, mighty), of Eriounes (Luck-Bringing, Ready-Helper), of Acaceta ( Guileless, Gracious), of Promachus ( champion), of his name of messenger of the gods (Angelus Athanaton).
He used them, activated, drawing strength from them and soared beyond the sky of his father, beyond the body of Uranos until he was above the planet Earth, above Gaia and Ouranos in the darkness of chaos and Nyx or what mortals called space.
For an instant, he felt weightless before with another push, he came down, faster, even harder than before with enough might to reduce the Earth into mist, his right leg extended, his surroundings blurring as he moved faster than the space time continuum in such a way that it would be more accurate to say that he had teleported instead of moving.
Hee could see hundred, thousands, hundred of thousands of the trendrils of Thanatos, of death trying to tear through the form of Benthesicyme, how in less than a nanosecond, thousands of death coated tendrils rushed from every direction to Benthesicyme.
The Olympian god could see that none of them had made the daughter of Poseidon move, stumble which meant only one thing, that he had to do more than death itself.
The son of Maia fell like a fallen angel, fell like a comet from the heavens, shining as bright as a star, right foot directed toward Benthesicyme's skull.
With how fast he moved, Benthesicyme shouldn't be able to see him coming but even in the case that she did, she shouldn't be able to dodge.
A battle between immortals was different from a battle between mortals, that In such battle, only tricking your opponent or hurting them so much that they gave up, that they weren't able to fight back was the way to win.
The father of Luke Castellan may be a trickster but for once, his heart longed to make the daughter of Poseidon feel pain instead of
Tricking her.
To understand the incredible energy generated by Hermes moving faster than the speed of light, we needed to break it down in simpler terms.
The humanoid true form of the god Hermes had a weigh of around 70 kg, about the weight of an average adult. The god speeding to 1.5 times the speed of light, wasn't just just moving quickly; he was generating an astonishing amount of energy.
Energy can be thought. in terms of a massive explosion. With the Olympian moving at this incredible speed, he carried kinetic energy—an energy of motion.
To give a sense of scale, the energy the god was producing just by falling was equivalent to about 3.76 gigatons of TNT. Such energy was In fact more than 75,000 times stronger than the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated on Earth, 75,000 times stronger than the Tsar Bomba meaning if Hermes was trying to make contact with Benthesicyme with enough energy to shatter Earth's crust, vaporize matter in the immediate area, and potentially cause devastating planetary-level consequences.
As Hermes fell, shockwaves began to form from the intense pressure difference. The immense heat generated by his re-entry and friction with air particles caused the air around him to ionize, turning it into plasma. This ionized air glowed brightly around him like a meteor streaking through the sky.
It was good thing in a way the god thought that there were no more living soul in the city of Las Vegas, that Benthesicyme had creaated giants inversed waterfalls he knew were sturdy enough and separating and limiting their fight to the state of Nevada only, that would ensure that he wouldn't have to worry about more human lives lost.
The kick of the winged messenger entered in contact with the daughter of Poseidon and reality itself seemed to rattle.
The world around him felt like ending, as if the Earth mother was awakening. shockwaves powerful enough to rattle the bones of a god came to life yet when his eyes peered under him, he didn't see a broken form, maybe a deformed limb or any injury.
No, the only thing that he saw was the face and many eyes of Benthesicyme looking at him with what seemed like disappointment, as if she had expected more and had been disappointed.
Benthesicyme spoke softly.
"All of this f'r yond, all of this not coequal f'r a staineth of ich'r?"
The ground around her hadn't even caved in, it had been erased, tthe only thing that remained was the place where she was standing.
"i guesseth yond t meanteth yond t is mine own turneth," the daughter of Poseidon said before in less than a blink of an eye, the face of Hermes was her in palm.
'how was this possible?' The Messsenger god womdered in shock.
He was Hermes, the messenger of the gods, the fastest god amongst the Dokatheon, amongst the Olympians yet he hadn't seen her move which meant that she had moved faster than him which shouldn't be possible, which would mean that him, Hermes had been too slow.
In less than an instant, she launched him at the true form of Thanatos. The god crossed kilometers in less than instant, his abrupt flight stopped by Thanatos who had used his tentacles limbs as cushion. His instincts chose this moment to scream at him danger and there were few things than Hermes trusted more than them so without even thinking, without even logical knowing why, he swung his cadeceus forward like a bat.
The Olympian swung and found resistance, an orb, one made of water not bigger than a tennis ball had crossed the distance, one that felt against his Cadeceus akin to the weight of the world.
'Something this small shouldn't weigh such,' the god thought while gritting his teeth.
Hermes was pushed, pushed into the form of Thanatos who was pushed too due to the strength of the orb their form tearing through the ionised air and ground.
Hermes struggling, tried his best, and yet he was not succeeding. Slowly and inexorably , his cadeveus, a divine forged artefact began to bend.
Hermes felt despair and anger at he saw what was close as to him if it already wasn't his symbol of power close to breaking.
fortunately, at that moment, he felt the shadows of Thanatos bloom, portals opening to the nowhere regions in the dark cosmos that was the body of Khaos above the Earth.
The orb was swallowed in the portal, portal of darkness that closed immediately after. It still didn't stop Hermes from feeling the orb exploding.
Above the sky, above Earth, for an instant, a second sun came to life.
Hermes' view allowed him to see how debris, asteroids, human stations unlucky to be near the orb created by the daughter of Poseidon were erased.
Heat, how kinetic energy great enough to sear the entirety of the surface of the Earth, to shatter the sky approached from Earth.
The instant Hermes realized that, he had already moved, thousands of kilometres crossed. The Olympian called on his authority that he inherited as a son of zeus, the authority giving a smidge of Dominion over the body of Ouranos. He manipulated the winds, the heavens to push it away. He created a wind, a powerful one, a wind strong enough to tear apart continents and made it rise to push against the orb, cosmic whirlwinds trying to choke the birth of a star.
Hermes found himself struggling to do so. He felt as if he was burning from the inside. It was expected. After all, he only had that much control over the heaven and its constituant because he was the son of Zeus, not because they fell under his domain.
If it wasn't the case, If this was truly his domain, it would have been so much easier. He knew he was given an opening to Benthesicyme but he knew that the goddess didn't care about the possible consequences of her actions on mortals especially now that they were in a divine war.
Hermes knew that he didn't need to do anything. Another god would have possibly acted and in the case one didn't, it would still be fine because mortals could be made and remade if the need arose. He knew this was how most other gods thought, how and why they saw mortals as commodities at worst and important but not vital at best.
The worse was that they weren't wrong because all the pantheons did recreate or modify mankind in the past at least once.
It didn't change that he still couldn't allow the possibility that humanity may be wiped out not because he was a kind god but because he was in love with one of those humans.
Hermes was in love, with a human woman Oh, how many would laugh if they knew. He would have preferred if it had only been a fancy of his, something that would have gained his attention for a while and lost it because if that was the case, his heart wouldn't have wept so much those last two decades.
Hermes had truly fallen in love for the first time in all his immortal life and it was for a mortal, not an exceptional one most would say but special for him, May Castellan, the woman he had, still wanted to marry, would have made immortal with their son if it wasn't for the Moirai and their cruelty.
This is why he would not allow any chance that humanity would be wipe out, not accept any chance that May will be hurt. With a grunt of Pain, Hermes took the life away from the star Benthesicyme had created the cosmic winds smothering it until only several sprites were left.
The god allowed a tired smile to bloom on his face only for it to freeze at the voice of Benthesicyme whispering in his right ear
"Not lacking valor dram olympian," She said almost the way one would have spoken to someone they loved.
"H're is a gift," she spoke and the words coming from her mouth felt like doom. His body was already instinctively trying to move away from the daughter of Poseidon at the first word utter.
One of her was approaching, moving toward his right arm almost like in slow-motion. Yet even with his prodigious speed, he wasn't able to move away because as he was trying to move, it seemed as if Benthesicyme was capable of doing the same, of moving as fast as him.
The goddess successfully was able to touch one of his fingers before a tentacle of Thanatos appeared, lashing out like a whip, moving at relativistic speed to strike again the daughter of Poseidon.
With a boom akin to Earth core opening, Benthesicyme was sent flying to the horizon. Hermes' eyes allowed to see her form shaking, not shaking, laughing in deligh. He would probably forever have nightmares about her no matter how the fight ended.
The Olympian turned toward Thanatos. Thanatos seemed as if he had seen better days. Hermes could see that there were thousands of fractals cracks bleeding dark ichor from his divine flesh. Hermes could see that hundred of appendages had been severed leaving just stomps.
Indeed Benthesicyme was terrifying, they hadn't been wrong to choose to team up against her. They powerful gods in their own right, one being the literal incarnation of Death and the other being an Olympian with more names and domains than most gods in history would ever be able to boast about yet they were the ones in difficulty. This was ridiculous. Something was wrong.
Before the eyes of Hermes, time seemed to reverse around the form of Thanatos until the god of Death looked as pristine as he did at the beginning of the fight.
It must be nice the Olympian thought with some jealousy, that the other god had probably used his authority to literllay kill his injuries or something like that. Hermes could feel his body healing but he knew that it was more due to his nature as a god and less because of any divine authority, that even with the minor names he had related to healing and hospitals, it felt as if it was taking too long.
"We need a strategy," Hermes said to the chthonic god.
"It is a thing easier said than done," Death answered dryly.
It was at this moment, around them, that the sky became darker, menacing and Hermes realized with alarm that it wasn't because of his authority as the son of Zeus.
Before he could even think to stop what he knew would be nothing good, he had to cross his arm to block a flying kick that sent him tumbling through the sky.
His instincts screamed at him to move so he did by bending his body almost making a figure that could be called a bastardry of an acrobatic one.
At least, it had been good enough to put him out of the way of a trident, of Benthesicyme's trident.
In a fluid movement, he spun used his essence as son of Zeus and his different names powering him to launch a lightning-fast strike at the face of the daughter of Poseidon.
She avoided it with a tilt of the head that was as insulting as gracious. Her trident moved but not toward Hermes but behind her this time intercepting a strike of Thanatos. She rolled in the air, moving as if she was from the sky and not the oceans, the head of her trident clashing against a tendril, the body of it dispersing one and the bottom of it standing almost perpendicularly. With almost a dismissive roll of the eyes, she pushed the bottom of it with the heal of her foot, making it cut through tendrils and spin like a disk clashing and almost dancing by itself as if sentient against thousands of tendrils literally coated in death, each one as big as a building and looking more than sharp.
Hermes tried to profit from the possible opening to strike. He used his cadeceus almost like a bat by making a downhard strike with the goal of bashing it in the skull of the daughter of Poseidon. she weaved on the right, making him miss her. Hermes struck again this time in direction of her midsection.
Instead of trying to dodge like Hermes thought she would, instead of moving back, she went forward in his guard. She stopped the strike by closing her hand around his Cadeceus. The next instant, she sent a right hook at the face of Hermes. it was his instincts that made himdodge, his head moving on the right barely at the right time.
Unfortunately, it wasn't enough though because her hand he just had dodged moved again and swatted him down as he was fly.
For an instant, everything became a blur. To stop his fall, Hermes manipulated the winds turning them something almost like a trampoline. He created dozens, hundreds, thousands of layers in an instant superposing them. he felt they almost crack, almost fail but they succeeded. It would been a good thing if Death didn't crash on him from above.
They fell like meteors and their form dug into the ground and its layers painfully. Hermes opening his eyes in pain with some difficulty. It seemed he had closed them instinctively.
It seemed as if they had been launched kilometers in the Earth crust. The fact that they were surrounded in a sea of lava, bathing in it was proof enough.
After the hits he took from Benthesicyme, the lava felt like a well needed bath. He could see the form of the daughter of Poseidon above. When she spoke, he heard her speak almost as if she was at his side.
"The two of thee shouldst hie and standeth up so yond those gents shall continueth the square. Th're wast nay chance i wouldst beest did satisfy with such pitiful danceth, yond in the mycenaean era, the gods w'ren't so soft but t hath seemed y'all wouldst needeth an incentive, a crucible to maketh thee bett'r."
"Munos" the daughter of Poseidon whispered yet the word seemed to reverberate in reality. For a moment, nothing happened, the next one, Hermes' world became only Pain.
"The one thing," the daughter of Poseidon said "yond people not from the oceans and their abysses don't knoweth is how t'rrifying coequal simple and basic concepts did relate to t 're pow'rful
The pain, how could something hurt this much?! IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS
It was worse than anything Hermes ever experienced. It made him wish to die, wish he wasn't immortal so he would be able to escape it.
"Doth the two of thee knoweth what happeneth at which hour thy corse is subm'rs'd in wat'r f'r a longeth timeth without being able to receiveth dryeth?? writeth h'r pray pardon me yond thee roteth. Thy flesh bloats, thee receiveth s'res yond receiveth did infect, coequal in st'rile wat'r. The pressure of the wat'r eke reduces circulation and maketh breathing m're sore," the daughter of Poseidon explained. "yond this wast what happening to those folk but did speed up and enhanc'd by h'r divinity yond all those times those gents hadst been did touch by any traceth of moisture, wheth'r t wast their owneth blood, h'r trident, the clouds 'r coequal h'r skin those gents w're helping h'r setting h'r spelleth, the spelleth yond wast making those folk roteth from the inside both physically and spiritually. The dram int'resting thing roteth itself is did tie to death, couldst beest hath said to beest death too and this is wherefore thee thanatos art struggling to dealeth, to killeth."
In the sky above her, the clouds began to conglomerate to take the shape of a giant trident. She closed her palm and the trident the size of a mountain froze.
"I has't to giveth t to the youngest of our brood, that gent kneweth how to doth thing with style. Th're art only two paths bef're the two of thee, beest broken 'r em'rge stout'r. I desire t's the lat'r," the goddess spoke before she made the trident fall toward the forms of Hermes and Thanatos and the world take a tint of blue.
Let me reassure y'all. This is not the end of the fight. Far from it to be honest. It's been a while since I posted a chapter here. It's kinda nostalgic. Anyway, hope y'all like the chapter. If you do, comment why you do so and if you don't, comment, what you don't, how you think this chapter could become better
PS: I got a p.a.t.r.e.o.n.c.o.m / Eileen715 with more than two or three chapters available on it, chapters that are actually free for all my subscribers but honestly if you could visit and still try to support me, it would be cool.