[Sunset]
[Children, which throne do you wish to ascend?]
Father Zeus had asked this while standing the twins side by side. It was the golden sun that raced through the heavens, shining brilliantly even when they were held in their mother Leto’s arms, fleeing from Python, or suffering the indignities of being mistreated by lowly humans. The boy remembered this well.
His small finger pointed toward the sun in the sky, and the charioteer who had held the reins handed them over to the boy’s small hands.
Thus, the boy became the god of the sun, a god without precedent who encompassed countless divine works, and that radiance never dimmed wherever he went.
For the sun is always brilliant, always looking down, and always noble. Because the sun is supposed to be that way.
The little child who rolled on the ground in his mother’s arms, bowing his head to avoid the contempt of humans, no longer existed. And the giant Python that had insulted and mocked him with its wicked tongue, along with the humans who had insulted his mother and the twins, were all rotting in Tartarus.
In this eternal, immortal Olympus, the name Apollo would shine forever, without a single speck of dimming.
But.
What is this ugly sound of weeping?
"Waaaaah! Hwaaaaaah! I’m telling you, he’s our father Zeus!"
Stop it. I said stop it.
"Aaaak! Python, it’s Python! Artemis! Run! Aaaaak!"
Shut up! Enough!
I am Apollo now. The brilliant god who drives the sun, the most respected and beautiful Apollo in all of Greece. A dirty little brat who crawled on the ground and begged humans... a brat like that...
[Ah, how boring.]
?!
The giant serpent, Python. The massive snake, with the small, dirty brat before it, blinked its enormous eyes and let out a sigh.
[What is this? This kind of cliché tragedy? I’m telling you, I’m right. If you can just suffer a few times in childhood and then spend thousands of years playing god, receiving offerings, having sex, and going on hunts, it’s a damn profitable business. Some people were kidnapped right before they died and were tortured to the brink of death by twelve demons...]
....?
Python, which had always glared with wicked eyes, targeting the twins and their mother, began to complain as if it were dissatisfied with something.
[Sure, looking at it this way, it seems I was a pretty majestic snake... but honestly, the spirit of the serpent that slept in the Great Mountain Secret Realm was more threatening.]
Python looked down at Apollo, who had become a shabby little child trembling in fear, as if he were pathetic.
[What should I really do with this?]
"Hiiik!"
[...Should I just eat him? He doesn't even seem useful.]
Coming this far, this Python was different from the one that had greedily opened its maw to toy with them until now. Clearly, in appearance, it was his old nightmare, the Python he had killed with his own hands. But to glare with such indifference, like an audience member disappointed after going to see a play they expected to be great, only to find it a mediocre failure?
[Sigh, that nameless immortal of the Kunlun Sect wouldn't even have counted this kind of thought-projection as an attack. You pathetic creature.]
"Y-yes?"
[Forget it. Just get up.]
"Just take another beating."
"Huh?"
-Thwack!
Suddenly, with a flash of light, Apollo’s mind snapped back to reality due to the pain colliding with his face.
"Gah!"
The throbbing back of his head, the painful breathing, the chilling cold. Everything pierced his consciousness like arrows, and finally, along with the hand gripping his collar, his most recent memory—the memory of the disgraceful display he had just shown—came flooding back.
"Oh, you awake?"
"Y-you, you, yoooou...!"
Not only had the charioteer of the sun fallen from the sun chariot and rolled on the ground like a lowly mortal, but he had been slammed into the earth by the hand of a wandering demigod of unknown origin. The moment Apollo tried to rise again, fueled by rage and humiliation that reached the top of his head, he had to change his mind as a fist was raised once more.
"Hiiik?!"
-Boom!
A single strike that shook the earth and made the ground cave in. Apollo shuddered at the fist, knowing that even he could not guarantee his future if he were hit squarely. But thanks to Zeus’s protection, the most beautiful god in Greece was not crushed by that reckless fist.
"Haa... haa..."
-Clap! Clap! Clap!
Apollo, who had instantly transformed into golden sunlight, managed to narrowly escape the trajectory of the fist. Seeing this, the black-haired demigod suddenly clapped his hands.
"Whoa, I know everything else, but I really don't get that teleportation trick. As expected of a god, amazing!"
"...."
Apollo could no longer open his mouth to say anything. His tongue, which could weave ten poems upon seeing a falling leaf, was frozen solid. His clairvoyance, which could observe even the downy feathers of a flying bird, trembled pitifully.
A terrible sense of humiliation and dizzying despair began to gnaw at Apollo bit by bit. Judging by the divine power that had knocked him from the chariot earlier and the strength that had slammed him into the ground in an instant, that evil enemy could surely have attacked Apollo directly.
Yet, the fact that he stood still, clapping and mocking him, was a sign of confidence and arrogance—that there was no need to do so, and that no matter what trick Apollo used, he could just slam him back down.
-Grind!
"Yes, you. You must be that snake...!"
Though his sunlight shone brightly in all directions, behind Dianes, who wore a crooked smile as if the light didn't even dazzle him, a giant snake flicking its tongue was visible. His eternal nightmare, Hera’s serpent that always slithered to swallow the sun, was still watching him and mocking him.
["Oh Apollo, you are nothing but a frightened little brat."]
"Shut up!!"
A snake. It was a snake. That was a snake. It was all the snake’s whispering, the snake’s trickery. Hera’s black viper, sent to drive away his mother and torment and insult them. Instead of the giant snake that swept through the mountain ranges, a viper that seeped into the shadows to mock the sun and ridicule the great god was once again mocking and toying with Apollo.
[If so, I shall make you a sacrifice to my great feat once again!]
The golden bow and brilliant sunlight, faithful to his call, were grasped in his hands. Three brilliant arrows, heightened by his divine status, were nocked to the string, their tips aimed precisely at the black snake’s head and heart.
Even facing the golden arrows, which had never missed their prey since being forged by Hephaestus and placed in his hands, Hera’s assassin—the snake—did not cease its mockery.
"Yeah, now this is getting interesting."
Instead, it licked its lips, summoned divine power to its hands, and manifested a spear to aim at him.
"You... are you insane?"
Until just a moment ago, the arrows he had loosed were merely intended to lightly bestow death while lecturing a foolish demigod. But the bowstring now drawn in Apollo’s hand was infused with the power of the sun and the authority of the hunt, a state he had not shown even once since facing Python in the past.
"You have already been pierced by my arrow. No matter how much talent you have for flying or leaping, do you think you can dodge an arrow that is the very sunlight of the sun itself!"
Even if he had possessed a handful of divine power earlier to survive being hit by his arrows, or had dodged them—the moment this arrow left the bowstring, no matter what power he had, even like Zeus, it was a fate where his heart would be pierced and his head shattered, leading to his death.
However, Dianes, who was examining the spear in his hand without a care, shook his head as if Apollo were pathetic.
"How many times do I have to tell you? That’s not how you fight. When there’s an opportunity, don't give them a gap; you have to blow their head off and crush their heart immediately!"
Apollo’s anger flared once more at the insult from Dianes, who shouted as if he were frustrated, not at all like a mortal aimed at by Apollo’s arrows.
[Nonsense! You lowly bloodline that lives for a mere hundred years dares to lecture me, who has lived through thousands of years of hunting, about fighting?!]
"Haa... this is why these noble-born brats..."
Dianes, having shaken his head as if words were useless, aimed the spear, which was as pitch-black as his hair, at him.
"Hick!"
The sight reminded him of the snake that used to raise its head toward him in the past, and his hand holding the bowstring shook.
-Whoosh!
Leaving only a faint golden afterimage, the arrows flew instantly toward the black snake’s head and heart. Apollo rejoiced as he watched the sunlight fly to end the enemy’s life, not even having time to feel the humiliation of being frightened by a mere spear.
'It’s over!'
It was a coincidental shot that one would not think could be fired by Apollo, the god of archery and a master marksman, but because of that, there were no signs, so the enemy would not be able to notice.
'In the end, the snake is destined to be stepped on by the god’s feet and die!'
Just as Python, who had persistently tormented him, Artemis, and his mother Rhea, had done. Just as Typhon, who had pushed father Zeus but was eventually crushed under the mountain and reduced to lighting the embers of a cripple, had done.
That black viper, too, was destined to be pierced by his arrows and die today.
"Yes, that is the natural order!"
The moment Apollo was about to burst into wild laughter, confident of his victory.
"Ah, the natural order?"
"?!"
-Thwack!
At the same time as a hot yet cold sensation pierced his chest, the giant snake had approached his face, right to his ear.
-Crunch!
"U-uh, uh...?"
The venomous fangs that pierced him, the eyes that looked at him. All those illusions vanished with the morning sun. Only then could Apollo properly see his own appearance and the appearance of his surroundings.
What pierced his chest was not Python’s venomous fangs, but a pitch-black spear. And the one wearing a bitter smile while looking at him was not Hera’s viper, but Dianes, who had brought the darkness. A new god who hid himself and waited for his time.
"Natural order, heavenly mandate. Breaking down the grand things you have established. That is the divine work of the Cheonjam-ma (Heavenly Demon)."
With that arrogant and cruel whisper as his final moment, Apollo slowly fell into the darkness.
Like the ugly, dirty little brat who was helplessly tossed about long ago.
Slowly.
Distantly.