The Twelve Olympians (4)
So these are the Twelve Olympians.
Twelve men and women stepped out of the rift. I could already tell them apart by sight, and I looked them over without a word. Eve had asked me to keep quiet until a fight broke out, so there was no reason to open my mouth. I had no intention of refusing her offer to do the explaining in my place, either. I kept my lips shut and let my eyes travel over the figures standing before me.
Yeah. One look, and I can tell who's who.
They were nothing like the versions I'd seen in comics, of course, but the traits stuck in my memory lined up well enough. Each of them carried a presence so distinct that sorting one from another wasn't hard at all.
The one out front is Zeus. Blue hair's Poseidon. And next to him... Athena?
A blond stood at the head of the group, a blue-haired man beside him with a trident in hand, a woman in a helmet among the rest. Weapons and looks alone identified most of them, and whenever appearance left room for doubt, their bearing settled it.
So I let Eve's explanation go in one ear and out the other, amusing myself with the private game of matching each of the twelve to a god—until a shout loud enough to jolt me wide awake tore through the air.
"You insolent bitch!!!"
I snapped my head toward the roar. A man with reddish hair, plainly the one who had just yelled, was driving a spear straight at Eve. The instant I saw him, my body moved ahead of thought. The tip of the sword I had formed from divine power cracked upward and struck the thrusting spear aside.
"Kh—?!"
The gap in raw strength and divine power was overwhelming. His spear went flying. He clearly hadn't imagined his own weapon could be knocked away, and he stood there gaping, dumbstruck, at what had just happened.
After that single exchange, a brief lull settled in. I rested the sword on my shoulder and turned to Eve.
"So this is where I step in?"
"Yes. I believe it's about time you did, Arche."
She nodded and took one step back. Then, a smile tucked into her eyes, she addressed the Olympian gods watching us.
"None of you seem particularly eager to follow the Laws of the Constellation Realm, so allow me to make a proposal. Defeat Arche, and we will involve ourselves with you no further. Your freedom will be yours. Lose, however, and you will quietly abide by the Laws of the Constellation Realm. How does that sound?"
She offered it as though she were doing them a kindness—and without so much as waiting for an answer, flicked her fingers and vanished. Not that anyone present failed to grasp why hearing their reply hardly mattered. Even a fool could see that whoever won this fight would be the one standing over the other.
"You are the master of this Constellation Realm. Is that what you said?"
"Yeah. Not exactly a job I asked for."
Zeus was the first to break the silence. Wherever the magnanimous look from earlier had gone, his face now was grave without limit as he put the question to me, and I answered his confirmation with a shrug. It was a seat I had more or less been swindled into, and one I could no longer bring myself to climb down from. I let out a self-mocking little laugh and turned the question back on him.
"And you were Zeus, right?"
"Indeed. I am Zeus, king of the gods."
He answered with pure arrogance. Thunder rolled, and lightning gathered into his hand.
"I am grateful that you invited us here—we, who had nothing before us but eternal annihilation. A handful of requests, I might have tolerated. But to use us as mere aides, bound to attend you without end? That, I cannot accept."
"So? Quit circling and spit it out. What do you actually want to say?"
"......That attitude of yours, looking down on us, is no less grating."
My demand that he get on with it drew a frown, his brow tightening. A moment later he let out a sigh, smoothed his expression, and spoke again in a voice thick with arrogance, as if granting one last mercy.
"Out of respect for you, I will not go so far as to command you to place yourself beneath me. But interfere with us no further, and do not stand in the way of a new Olympus being raised upon this ground. That is the greatest courtesy I can extend in repayment of the debt of our salvation."
"Oooh."
An exclamation was all I could manage. The words were so staggeringly arrogant that nothing else would come out.
"Isn't that usually something the stronger side gets to say?"
"Surely you don't imagine you can face all of us alone?"
"Ahaha......"
He answered my question with a question, and all I could do was laugh, awkward and thin. Honestly, they were so sure of themselves that it did spook me a little. Eve's certainty had given me confidence earlier, but now that the moment was actually here, doubt crept up in a slow, unpleasant crawl. I couldn't take it back, though. And more than anything, Eve had asked me to trample them without mercy. All that was left was to give everything I had and see that request through.
"Sorry. We're a little short on hands ourselves."
"To the very last, you refuse the cup I offer and reach for the forfeit instead......"
"That's my line."
At my answer, the twelve gods settled into fighting stances, and I took mine in turn. I regripped the sword that had rested on my shoulder and drew divine power up through my whole body. A low rumble rose as my power crashed against theirs, and a sharp heat-haze shimmered into the air between us. All that remained was a battle in which neither side would hold anything back.
Zeus looked at the girl standing before him. A sword that looked every bit a legendary blade rested in her hand, and even against all of them she did not yield so much as a step. At the pressure rolling off the girl Eve—no longer here—had called Arche, he swallowed dryly.
Indeed. She is worthy of being called master of the Constellation Realm.
The divine power was immense. He had let his guard down a little at the sight of a girl who looked so fragile, but the pressure Arche was showing now was more than enough to blow that carelessness clean away. This was not an opponent he could beat by fighting halfheartedly. Give her the smallest opening through a moment's lapse, and it would be his own nape between her teeth. The numbers were on their side, of course; taking one bite to the neck would not paint the match in the colors of defeat. Even so, against an enemy of this caliber, carelessness was forbidden.
Zeus steeled himself and poured his divine power to the limit into the lightning gripped in his hand. A heartbeat later, the bolt lanced outward with a crack of thunder.
"I will make you pay for that arrogance!!"
With his cry, the lightning announced the start of a battle drawn taut to the breaking point. It flashed, and in the same instant the thrust bolt swallowed Arche before she could so much as blink. Her whole body vanished under a searing white glare. He did not believe for a moment that this alone had killed her. Zeus seized a fresh bolt at once and shouted.
"All of you, fight at full strength! It is time we show the master of the Constellation Realm the majesty of Olympus!!"
"Understood, Brother!"
"Yes, Father!"
"Of course, Father! Leave it to me!!"
Thunderous answers came back, and three of them moved first. Poseidon, Athena, and Ares. All three poured their own attacks toward Arche, who was still caged in lightning.
"Behold the power of the sea...!"
Seawater roared as Poseidon brought down a trident forged from the ocean itself.
"You will not block this!!"
"Allow me to run you straight through."
Athena and Ares hurled longspears packed to bursting with the divine power of gods of war, putting everything they had behind the throw. Even if the strikes were stopped, they were the sort that would shear away a great mass of divine power. Right on their heels, a rain of arrows steeped in the power of sun and moon hammered down on Arche.
"If it's archery, I have confidence to spare."
"There will be so many holes in that body, no one will even be able to make out the shape."
It was, as naturally as the power behind them, a baptism of arrows from Apollo and Aphrodite. The dust kicked up by the assault was already thick enough to hide Arche from sight, but the Olympians were not finished.
"Even covered, I can see exactly where you are."
"This hammer was never meant for battle, but—!"
The moment the arrow-storm let up, daggers steeped in Hermes's divine power flew true into the dust, toward where Arche had to be. On their heels, the red-hot hammer Hephaestus had thrown split the choking cloud and went for her. Then the dust collapsed inward, and a boom loud enough to hurt the ears rolled across the field.
Zeus watched it settle and allowed himself a small smile. No matter that she was master of the Constellation Realm, surviving an assault of this scale unscathed ought to have been impossible. Even if she lived, she would surely be gravely wounded. Ready to slam the lightning in his hand into her the moment he confirmed she still drew breath, he fixed his eyes on the front.
"......What?"
But when the dust he had been staring into finally cleared, Zeus could only murmur that, doubting the sight that met his eyes.
The silence held.
"Hm. Now I see why Eve was so confident."
From within the settled dust, Arche stepped forward without so much as a speck of harm on her. At the sight, Zeus felt his mouth fall open before he could stop it.
"How in the world......"
The attacks had not missed. Nor had she turned them aside with some uncanny technique. If anything, she seemed to have taken every single blow that came at her, without missing one. The proof was the arrows and daggers stuck all over her body, which she was now plucking free. And yet, where they fell away, there was not a drop of blood—not even a mark pressed into her skin. Every one of those attacks had failed to pierce the divine power cloaking her. Faced with a sight he simply could not accept, Zeus asked in a dazed voice.
"How did you come through all of that unharmed? Enduring it without a single wound shouldn't be possible..."
Arche, who had been brushing herself off, turned her gaze on him. She pulled free the last arrow, dusted her clothes with a perfectly flat expression, and answered.
She said it as if it were the simplest answer in the world. Under any other circumstance, those words would have drawn a furious roar—but neither Zeus nor the other gods could bring themselves to voice a rebuttal. How could they, when the sight she had just shown them proved every word?
Watching Zeus stand there struck dumb, Arche raised the hand that wasn't holding her sword.
"I've taken every hit I was going to take. My turn now, right?"
She asked it with the corner of her mouth ticking up. In the next moment, pure-white lightning settled into her raised hand—born roaring out a peal of thunder fiercer than Zeus's own.