Lord Shadow

1844 The Ugly God

As for the attack, as he fights, he learns and he learns quickly.

He counters Athena with divine spells and symbols of power. And as moment passes by, he becomes more proficient in dodging and attacking

The few times that Athena managed to hit him; Thoth has some kind of protection formation around his entire being.

To hurt him is to hurt him faster than his spell could protect him. And when he sees an opening, he would attack.

Armed with his ibis headed staff, he weaves intricate glyphs into the air, each one unleashing a burst of energy or summoning some kind of beast and darkly thing from the chaos to overwhelm Athena attack.

Thoth fight like a mage, Athena fight like a brave general!

These two battling each other would take some time.

It maybe would even take days or weeks.

Smart people sometimes are cautious. And Athena and Thoth is really the kind of people that would be cautious. Athena is in a bad position right now

Thoth is fighting in foreign land. In normal conventional war, the disadvantage would be on the Eternal Horizon side.

But there are situations where this kind of thing is actually more of an advantage for the invading party.

If anyone suspected that Eternal Horizon would attack, they could block them in the Barrier of Stars.

But they were first surprised attacked by Qayali. Then suddenly they were attacked by Ra and his children and his subordinates.

Pouring out from the Qarthan worlds are the Erthen, Demonic creatures that brings havoc and disaster.

As for the Eternal Horizon, they brought out the creatures of the Darkly Chaos and these Chaos creatures is now tearing through the seams of reality and messing up with the barriers between worlds, making more darkly creatures to pour out into Olympus. Then in the early hours of the battle, Horus defeated two Olympians.

This alone crushed the morale of the Olympians. Apollo and Artemis when they combined their powers together, there is rarely an enemy that they could not defeat

Clearly Horus has learned from his defeat in the past and today, he defeated Apollo and Artemis in one go.

As for Demeter, she is fighting with Isis and even though Athena did not know the result of this battle, the fact that Demeter is still entangled with Isis shows that Isis had also improved.

Athena needs more time.

But time does not wait for her.

That alone is weakening the power of the Olympians. So, one could understand why she is being so impatient right now.

If Zeus falls, then the Olympians would crumble and the war would be over in these part of galaxy.

It would take more effort to regain back the main world.

While everyone is just thinking about fighting the battle that is in front of them, Athena had to think about what would happen next

She is already formulate a plan of what to do, which galaxy should they go to mount a counterattack, how to minimize damage and how to expel these deities from the Eternal Horizon and the Qarthan back to their world

Thoth on the other hand is calm.

The calmer he is, the more opportunity would present itself to him. One has the capacity to be at leisure while the others did not

Hence, the fight between these two is really tragic.

The world of Athenia is breaking and by the time these two finished fighting the entire small cluster of the galaxy that they are in probably would collapse unto itself.

In another planet, filled with volcanoes and smoke, there is fire all over the entire planet. This is another planet belonging to an Olympian

Most of the planet that belongs to an Olympians would have cities, kingdoms ,empires. But this one is empty

Empty of people. Empty of mortals

This is a place only reserved for this one god.

A god that does not like the hustle and bustle of mortals.

A god that is more comfortable with the silence. The kind of person that could focus on one thing and could not focus on other things.

Focus on the only things he likes

There is two beings that is fighting near a molten river that flows endlessly

When these two strikes each other, sparks fly in a battle of creation and destruction that causes more fire, more storms, and more destruction

In this place, there is a gigantic Volcanic forge. This forge belongs to one of the Olympian Gods

It is Hephaestus Forge.

The Lonely God, the Misshapen God, the Ugly God.

But he is also the god that forge the weapons of Olympus, and one of the most powerful gods in Olympus.

His friends are the Cyclops and at times he would also go to the Underworld to meet some of the giants

He is friend with the outcast, with the misfits

And he is a god that likes to keep it to himself.

He has a forge and that forge is where he geos every time he felt bored. It is the place he goes to when he is mad.

When he is angry.

When he is lonely.

When he is at the forge, hammering new weapons, or thinking of weapon to create, he could let all the worries, the anger to flow out. That is how easy it is for him

But that forge is now destroyed.

Only bits and pieces of it remains.

When Olympus was being attacked, Hephaestus did not even bother to go to Olympus.

He just sighed looking at this but eh did not move away from his forge.

A cold indifference

When he saw Zeus and Hera being attacked, he also did not bother and did not care.

He spends his time inside his forge and he rarely cares about what happen whether Olympus would fall or not.

And Hephaestus planet itself is like some kind of defensive planet. But someone comes knocking and so Hephaestus has to respond in kind.

While Zeus was fighting Ra, while Isis and Demeter going wild on the mortal realm of Olympus, while Apollo and Artemis is fighting Horus, Athena and Thoth fighting while Athena world is crumbling, while all of the pantheon of these two great divine civilization descended into a slugfest, only Hephaestus alone was not attacked

It was not really that he was not attacked. It was more like the fact that the god of Eternal Horizon that comes attacking take some time before they could dismantle all the defense that Hephaestus has laid down on his planet

And the one that is attacking Hephaestus right now is none other than Ptah. Ptah is not subservient to Ra

And this is not the real Ptah.

But merely an incarnation of him, of one of his Aspect

Ra called for a Sun Parade and he must have a reason and Ptah knew the reason.

To add credibility and legitimacy for Ra to summons all the gods and goddesses of the celestial, mortal and underworld realm, Ptah sent one of his Aspect to follow into battle

This incarnation took the Aspect of the God of craft.

And Ptah instead of fighting Zeus, goes on to fight Hephaestus.

This choice is probably fuelled by Ptah desire to take the domain of Hephaestus into his own

When they fight, one might expect Ptah would easily defeat Hephaestus. It is undeniable that the chances favoured Ptah.

But, that is if only Ptah come with his full power

He only sent an incarnation of himself, an Avatar that has one aspect of his Divinity.

When Hephaestus greeted Ptah in the heavens of his planet, Ptah was already at a disadvantage.

The God of fire and forge, he commands the flames of the world and his hammer strikes upon Ptah sending out waves of molten lave into Ptah body.

Millions of mechanical constructs, android, robots, and battleships flew out from the ground and secret dimension bombing Ptah with everything it got.

Even though Ptah tries to counter, the resistance was meaningless as Hephaestus then quickly eliminated Ptah

Ptah dies and his incarnation dissipated.

From the beginning of the battle, this is the first major victory of Olympus against the Eternal Horizon.

If Hephaestus was the kind of a loyal minister he would help Zeus.

If he is a filial son, he would help Hera.

But after defeating Ptah, he simply waves his hand, recreating back the defense around his planet and his soldiers of robots and battleships all returns to their position. Hephaestus itself returns to his forge

The world of Hephaestus return to calmness

He doesnʼt seem eager to go to Olympus to help Olympus, Zeus or Hera

This probably has something to do with his history with Hera and Zeus.

Hephaestus did not mingle much with the Olympians

But no one could bring him down from the Olympus Council.

Because he supplied weapons to almost all of the eleven realms of the Olympians. He could be called the arms dealer of Olympus

And he is also very strong. And this loner has mastered the essence of intimidating people without even being there.

When Ares was cut off his supplies from weapons, Ares realm suffers from being weak. Ares had to kneel in front of Hephaestus and give him a few concession before Hephaestus allow back the sale of his weapons

Hephaestus just look at Olympus crumbling and he doesnʼt seem to care.

Only the sound of hammering could be heard in this lonely realm