Confrontation: Part II

Everyone stood in silence. Drael and Orin were the most curious, wondering where Apollo had gone, because if a fight broke out, they would be completely powerless against Nova. Not that Apollo would have done anything.

"Where is he?" Drael spoke up, his voice urgent and trembling slightly. Supreme Gods weren't supposed to tremble.

Orin stepped forward, his tone harder, words blunt and biting: "Tell me where he is. Now." His voice cracked faintly on that final word, fear creeping in.

Nova scoffed. He placed his hands on Freya's shoulders, drawing her in, asserting his dominance. She blushed faintly. Elesch sighed, watching with veiled disdain, thinking Nova was overplaying it.

Nova laughed and said: "If you want to know where he is, then why don't you just explore the dimension I sent him to? As simple as that."

Before he could snap his fingers, a figure emerged.

A truly transcendental presence: it possessed no bounds, no metaphysical body, and no identity. It defied comprehension, even for demons and gods of the Low Heaven.

It was a being unmoored from the lattice of existence. No from clung to it, no essence marked its presence. It had neither name nor identity, neither mass nor momentum. It did not occupy space, nor did it traverse time. It simply was outside the sum of creation's logic, a riddle that defied everything in the universe. 

No sculptor could shape its visage. No voice could give contour to its thoughts. It lingered in a state of un-being, suspended in contradiction, composed of threads alien to any known fabric of reality. It was a rupture in ontology, the stillness that preceded the first breath and would remain after the last. 

To demons, to shades, to the lesser gods of fractured heavens, and to everyone else, it was not feared. Fear required recognition. Instead, it was ungrasped, a nullity of concept, an abstraction minds failed to anchor. It passed through perception like light through shadowless glass, untouched and untouchable. Even the Celestial Archons, ancient and vast, forged in divine axioms, would not name it. Naming was a form of containment, and it could not be contained. 

It did not act, for action bore intent. It did not desire, for desire assumed direction. Instead, it existed as a tremor in the absolute: the silent pulse that precedes creation and endures beyond oblivion. Its presence left no mark. What followed was not absence, but the eerie sense that nothing had stood there, and yet, everything had changed. 

Those who brushed against its essence returned broken, not shattered by terror but eroded by exposure to what could not be conceived. They spoke in fractured patterns, their thoughts misaligned, their words warped. Language disintegrated in its proximity. Laws, physical, metaphysical, and divine, unraveled like thread in water. 

It was not a god, for gods possess shape and myth. It was not a force, for forces yield to measure. It was the breath between, the stillness in the storm's heart, the unspoken syllable suspended at the center of all meaning. 

Nova spoke up immediately, his voice sharp with disdain. "The fuck do you want, Father?"

Father gave no reply. He never did. But Nova understood, more than anyone, why he was there. No words were necessary. The weight of it pressed into him like gravity. Nova scoffed again, rolled his eyes, then sighed through his nose. He knew exactly what had to be done.

With a flick of his fingers, the ceiling split open. A portal tore into existence: reddish-black, veined with streaks of pulsing violet, a jagged wound in the fabric of time and space. It spiraled outward, violent and unnatural.

Orin tensed. He hated it. As the God of Time and Space, such a breach should have fallen under his dominion, but it didn't. It writhed just outside his reach, beyond his command—a mockery of his authority.

Then, from the tear, Apollo fell.

He hit the floor hard. His face had been torn away, unrecognizable. His legs were gone, ripped off at the thigh. Naked and barely breathing, he was a ruin of flesh and blood, covered in deep, infected scars that mapped suffering across every inch of his body.

His powers remained sealed. By all rights, they should have awakened the moment he crossed into High Heaven. But they didn't. Nova had sealed them too well: too completely. Even now, they lay buried beneath layers of divine suppression, unmoving.

Nova flicked his fingers once more. Apollo's powers unlocked in an instant. Light surged beneath his skin, sealing wounds with unnatural precision. Muscle reknit, bone fused, and breath returned to his lungs. His consciousness surged back.

He stirred slowly. Vision blurred at first, then sharpened by degrees. The first figure he saw was Nova.

His heart skipped. Fear slammed into him, raw and immediate.

He recoiled, dragging himself backward across the floor until he collided with Orin's leg. Glancing up, he saw both Orin and Drael. Relief flickered across his battered face. For a moment, he was glad, truly glad, to see them. But they were far from calm. Tension rippled through both gods, their eyes darting between Nova and the silent presence that still loomed nearby.

Orin and Drael helped him to his feet. Apollo staggered upright, scanning the chamber. At first, he saw nothing unusual beyond Nova.

Then, from the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse, just a sliver, and froze.

His breath hitched. Horror twisted through him as the truth settled in. Father was here.

He blinked hard, rubbed his eyes until they stung. Still, the figure remained. Still, the presence pressed down.

"Fa-fa-Father...?" he whispered.

The word trembled out of him like a confession.

It wasn't a hallucination. Father was truly there. And the weight of that truth nearly dropped him again. His knees buckled, his body swayed, but he forced himself to stay upright. Gritting his teeth, he tried to summon something: rage, defiance, control. Anything.

But nothing came.

No gears shifted. No divine will sparked into motion. His thoughts were hollow, floating like ash in a vacuum. His mind, once a storm, was now a void.

Then he saw the diamond: Elesch. That grin returned to his face, twisted and vile, laced with a kind of triumph that snapped Nova to attention. It was the grin of a man who believed he had leverage.

Apollo looked up from Elesch, eyes burning. Freya instinctively moved to shield her, stepping between them. But Apollo's gaze had already shifted, first to Father, then to Nova. Rage swallowed every trace of his earlier fear.

He spoke, voice low and sharp, dripping with venom."Father... if I may, do I have your permission to present a truly vile creature, one that Nova and Freya have been hiding since the battle with the Eldritch Terrors?"

No words came from Father, yet everyone felt the answer. Silence cracked with consent. Apollo's grin widened, rabid with vindication. He thought he had won. He thought it was finally time for payback.

"Well, you see," he began, eyes gleaming with childlike glee, "behind Freya, a terror still remains. Hidden from the rest of us; even from you."

That last line shifted something. A pause. A weight in the air. To claim ignorance before an omniscient being was bold, foolish even.

"Elesch," Apollo continued, pointing with theatrical flair, "an Eldritch Terror that Nova claimed to have slain, still lives. Still hides behind Freya. Which leads to only one conclusion... Nova and Freya must be charged for their crimes in assisting the Terrors."

He stood tall, chest rising, waiting for judgment to fall. In his mind, this was it, the reckoning, the reversal of power.

But Father did not react. Not a twitch. Not a flicker of emotion.

He had already known. Long before Apollo had spoken. And now, the silence was heavier, steeped in a colder, deeper disappointment.

Nova and Freya exchanged a glance, then laughed softly under their breath. Their whispers were barely audible, mocking in tone.

"He really thought that would work," Nova murmured.

Freya smirked. "He's dumber than I remembered."

Father vanished without a word. The room seemed colder in His absence, though the pressure remained, like the echo of a judgment that had already been passed. Apollo stood still for a moment, but it didn't last. His legs gave out. He dropped to the floor, hollowed and shaking.

Arrogance flickered back into his expression, a mask of pride poorly stitched over raw humiliation. But it couldn't hold. His eyes stared blankly ahead, his mind spiraling. He had thought he could win Father's favor, or at least provoke a reaction. Instead, he was dismissed. Forgotten.

Nova and Freya turned away, already finished with him. Elesch walked between them, and just before stepping through the threshold, she glanced back. Her expression twisted into a mocking grin. She stuck out her tongue like a child taunting a rival on a playground, then turned away with a snap of movement, vanishing into the distance.

Apollo sat there, crumbling.

His breath hitched. His hands curled into fists. All the rage he had tried to bury surged back: thick, poisonous, and choking.

He lowered his head and whispered through clenched teeth, voice shaking with venom: "I'll make sure that piece of shit suffers... like the rest of the cattle."