No More Olympus

Chapter 20

"What in Hades are you doing?" Aphrodite demanded, putting herself between the two gods of war. Pink mist could be seen on her breath.
"She's a traitor to Olympus!" Ares shouted.
"Okay, buddy," said one of the bar's patrons, "You're done. Get out."
At the far end of the bar, the bartender could be seen dialling the phone.
"Yes, police," she said in a panic, "One of my customers just assaulted a woman. Now he's ranting about a mountain or something. I think we need an ambulance. She looks really hurt."
"Gray, are you okay?" Hermes asked gently, rushing to her side to check on her.
Athena lifted herself off the ground and attempted to speak; instead, she found that her jaw had been knocked loose. With one hand, she reached up and set it back into place with an awful crack.
"Could you hand me a towel, please?" She asked, shaking the rubble and splinters from her hair.
The bartender tossed a cloth to Hermes, who then handed it to Athena, who promptly wiped the wine from her broken glass off her face.
"What is the matter with you!" Hermes shouted.
"She destroyed our home, our family!" Ares ranted.
"Are you drunk or something?" Hermes questioned, "It was a prophecy. We all heard it. It was gonna happen anyway!"
"I'm soberer now than I've been in a long time," Ares said, "Finally, it all makes sense, the rejection of her true nature, her insistence on her foolish mortal persona, bad-mouthing everything that gave her excellence at every available opportunity."
The bar patrons watched this conversation with various expressions of befuddlement on their faces.
"She planned the whole thing," Ares continued as Hermes slowly helped Athena to her feet, "The destruction of Olympus, us being sent across the globe far from everyone we loved, forced to hide in the gutters of society. She planned it from the start, she placed herself beside our father to gain his trust, just to destroy him at the most opportune moment."
"Athena would never do that," Aphrodite insisted, "You of all people should know this. She was as loyal to the Olympians as any one of us."
"Then why, for this whole trip, has she been telling us that once our quest is complete, that is the last we will see each other?" Ares questioned.
They all stared at Athena, who was busy intentionally focusing on wiping herself clean of the debris on her shoulders.
"So what is it, dear sister?" Ares continued, "Is your cute little mortal family more important than your real family? Or do they just embarrass you less?"
Athena didn't respond. Instead, she turned around to look for some water to dip her towel in to clean better.
"Typical Athena," Ares sneered, "The same hubris that refused to allow you to face the fact that you may be wrong from time to time. But no, instead, you chose to beat against the wall of reality to make yourself correct. So, tell me, 'Gray,' how will you bend reality to your will this time? An immortal goddess with mortal children, how do you suppose that will work out? You watch them grow old as you don't age a day, assuming it's time that finally finishes them. Mortals are so fragile after all. Or are you going to pursue a different strategy? Cut yourself off from them, sever all emotional ties to them like Zeus and his many mortal bastards."
"Ares, that's enough," Aphrodite insisted.
"Will you even blink an eye as Thanatos flies by to drag them down to Tartarus?" He asked.
In less than a second, Athena spun around and sent her fist directly into Ares's face with such force that he was flown back through the wall of the bar before dragging across the street outside and stopping as he hit a nearby fountain, shattering it and spilling water all over the god of war.
The bar patrons' jaws fell in shock, staring at Athena as she slowly marched out of the bar. The whole thing caught even Hermes and Aphrodite off guard.
"Me!" Athena shouted as she walked through the hole in the wall and down the street toward Ares. Owl's Talon had materialized in her hand along with her golden arm guards from her Olympian armour, "You blame me! After everything I sacrificed to keep that goddamn mountain standing."
Ares lifted his head out of the rubble to look at her.
"Do you know the shit I had to put up with?" She continued, "Every time you started a genocide, whose job do you think it was to clean it up? Every time one of you horny little fucks decided to shack up with someone's wife, guess who made sure that the little demigod bastards didn't get their skulls split open trying to fight monsters to capture one iota of your attention. Do you think you'd still be standing here if I hadn't convinced Zeus to give you another chance after you fucked up time and time again? And now here you are blaming me for the fall of a kingdom, something we've both seen over the years like the changing of seasons, and why? Because I was Daddy's favourite? Get over yourself, you thick-headed, blood-lusting, sociopathic ape."
Ares lifted himself to his feet and summoned his black steel armour around himself.
"You weren't his favourite," Ares growled, summoning and pointing a sword at Athena, "You were simply the bastard of his first whore."
Athena roared in pure fury, leaping forward and thrusting her spear tip at Ares's throat.
He swung his sword at the last moment, throwing the spear off course and forcing her to improvise.
Athena let go of her spear and instead summoned a heavy war hammer. Changing direction in midair and swinging with all her might at his head as she arched over him. However Ares ducked at the last possible second, and she was only able to knock off his helmet.
In the time it took for Athena to regain her footing, Ares had spun around and began to swing his sword at her neck.
To counter, Athena summoned her Aegis shield to block the blow. Instead of decapitating her, the force against the shield sent her flying backwards across the courtyard, through at least two buildings and into a lamp post.
Before Athena could even stand, Ares was already on top of her in his dog form, and though she was most able to block him with her shield, he was able to stick his head over the top of it and gnash his teeth at her head, biting only the hair above her but still covering her it quite a bit of slobber.
Athena, even in her rage, knew she couldn't match Ares's strength even while he was in this form, and she wouldn't be able to fend him off forever.
Doing her best to focus her mind, she was able to locate her spear several meters away and telekinetically grab it, aiming it at Ares's back and sending it toward them as fast as she could manage.
With his canine senses, Ares was able to sense it coming just in time to leap out of the way, but not fast enough as the spear left a deep gash in his shoulder before digging itself firmly into the ground an inch away from Athena's head.
Ares howled in pain as Athena rose to her feet and pulled her spear from the ground.
"...rrrYou Bitch!" Ares spat as his dog snout changed back to lips while he clutched his shoulder.
"Says the dog," Athena retorted.
Ares summoned his sword, Hound's Jaw, as well as a smaller, less impressive-looking short sword.
Athena raised Owl's Talon and the Aegis Shield defensively.
"Oh, how I missed this," Ares grinned maniacally as his shoulder slowly regained its strength.
"Shut up and die," she ordered.
The two lunged at each other, each sending strike after strike at every possible angle. Each hit sent shockwaves across the immediate area when it wasn't sending one of them flying into buildings, cars and anything else unlucky enough to be caught in the crossfire.
Mortals ran for cover from the destruction. The only thing anyone saw was a pair of unidentifiable people moving impossibly fast, destroying the surrounding area like it was made of paper.
The two had done this dance hundreds of times, and if history indeed did repeat itself, they could have been clashing there for minutes, hours, or even days.
But never before had the two been filled with so much rage before. In the past, they had fought for pride, the outcome of mortal wars and even for seats at the feast table, but this time was different. They weren't distracted by such petty things, they just knew they despised one another.
During the conflict, both Athena's Aegis shield and Ares' secondary short sword were thrown to the side in one way or another, leaving the only weapons in their hands, the Hound's Jaw and Owl's Talon.
They found themselves in the Pedion tou Areos park, only a few feet from the statue of Athena. The two lunged at each other once more, and before their weapons could clash, a golden trail followed by a sudden burst of energy threw them apart and to the ground.
"What are you two doing?" Hermes demanded, having since changed to his Olympian armour, "If you keep this up, you'll destroy the whole city."
"Not unless Athena accepts what's coming," Ares groaned, being the first to lift himself to his feet.
"Your mother should have swallowed you!" Athena shouted, her voice still filled with rage as she propped herself up with her elbow.
The wind whistled in the silence.
"Oh damn it," Hermes cursed under his breath, almost looking like he was trying not to snicker.
Ares roared like a bear and charged forward at Athena, who quickly rose to her feet.
In the blink of an eye, Hermes ran behind Ares, grabbed his cape and shot off into the sky like a fighter jet, bringing the God of War with him in an attempt to break up the fight.
"Don't run away from me!" Athena shouted to the sky, preparing to turn herself into an owl when she found something had caught her foot.
She looked down to find pink mist surrounding her foot, having magically turned far denser than it was normally.
"What the?" Athena questioned.
"I figured that would finally work," Aphrodite began as she walked into Athena's view in her own Olympian armour. She let out another gust of breath, and another wisp of mist surrounded Athena's other leg, locking her in place as it grew impossibly dense. "You remember the rules, do the deed or even think about doing the deed and I have power over you."
Athena put all of her strength into lifting her feet but unluckily for her however she moved the mist just moved along with her to keep her trapped.
"Aphrodite, stay out of this!" She ordered.
"You know I can't do that," Aphrodite sighed, "My Dear Athena."
The power of Aphrodite's words hit her like a truck. All of a sudden, thinking became harder as if someone had tied a pair of cinderblocks to her brain. She was barely able to focus on her own hands in front of her, all sounds had been drowned out by some sort of noise, though in truth Athena wasn't hearing anything. It was as if being trapped in a fog that removed all your senses, where every rational thought in your head was nonexistent. You could only feel, and it felt good, better than anything Athena had ever felt as far as she could remember, which of course at the moment wasn't much.
"Now, isn't that better?" Aphrodite asked calmly. Her voice was all that could be heard, all that existed in this new world Athena found herself in, "Now we're calm and quiet and not levelling construction sites."
Athena barely managed to lift her head to where the voice was coming from.
At this moment, Aphrodite might have been the most beautiful thing in the world, like the physical manifestation of a sunset, the smile of her children, and everything that made Athena feel pride in herself, whether it be healthy or not.
She was intoxicating, and Athena could not stop looking at her,
The goddess slowly approached Athena, resting a hand on her shoulder and looking sorrowfully into her eyes.
"I'm sorry, sweetie," she said softly, "I had to do it. You know I had no choice."
Aphrodite was close enough that Athena could make out her features more clearly.
Her soft round cheeks,
Her golden fields of hair,
Those green eyes that always made her feel so full of envy,
The lips that would smile in pitiful judgement whenever Athena would wear a new dress, committed herself to help a demigod or spoke of higher values and standards that they as Olympians must follow.
The face of someone who spent most of her time in silent and sometimes vocal belittlement of everything Athena committed herself to.
And she was trying to control her?
Not on her life.
Athena finally shook herself conscious, and in one lightning-fast moment, she sent her fist directly into Aphrodite's throat.
The goddess recoiled, clutching her throat and struggling to breathe, causing the pink mist to dissipate and allowing Athena to escape her trance.
Aphrodite fell to her knees as her face went pale from lack of oxygen.
Athena walked over and grabbed the back of her head by the hair.
"Stay out of my head," Athena ordered.
Aphrodite nodded weakly.