GROVEL

"Peftastéri", Apollo whispered and exhaled.

The moment he released the string, the arrow shot forward akin to a large, white meteor while charring the exposed seafloor. Like a snowball rolling down a mountain, it grew bigger the further it cut through the air as if absorbing light rays around it.

Herakles reacted as fast as he could. He turned around and shoved his fingers into the earth behind him. His muscles bulged as he ripped a cyclopean chunk of the island and held it above his head. Pieces of rock and earth broke off it as it dangerously balanced on his palms, inducing mini-earthquakes across the large island. It was about five kilometres in length and packs of monsters fell out of the trees of the forest.

"Hup!"

He put his back into it and hurled the landmass at the incoming projectile.

*BOOM*

The world turned white and a deafening explosion resounded. His actions negated a considerable part of the attack but he was blasted backwards into the five-kilometre crater regardless. He grunted in annoyance and sat up, finding Apollo nocking another arrow. Peftastéri was one of Apollo's signature moves and wasn't even his strongest. The Sun God could go on for days but Herakles didn't think he could. It was not a matter of stamina, if this was a normal fight he'd have charged at Apollo and fought him over the sea but this fight wasn't normal by any means.

His son was in a frighteningly vulnerable position in the middle of the island and if Apollo managed to slip past him, he didn't think he could catch the God of Light, someone who could contend with Hermes himself.

"Are you really going to stay back and fight like a little bitch?!", Herakles yelled, using his divinity to enhance his voice.

"Peftastéri"

"Fuck!", Herakles grunted and slammed his leg against the ground.

*RUMBLE*

A large part of the coast cracked and flipped, standing up like a wall.

*BOOM*

Another arrow met the landmass pushing him back even further, closer to Athos' position. Anger surged into his head and he pushed against the ground and into the air. He used his divinity to keep himself afloat as he glared at Apollo who was nocking another arrow. He knew he couldn't win this fight. He may be physically strongest among all the Gods, but Apollo's stores of Divinity far outshone his own - that was the main difference between a major and a minor God.

But would that stop him?

No.

"Peftastéri"

Herakles' eyes shone with a maniacal light as he tapped into Divinity in his body. Sounds of bones cracking echoed as he pulled back his fist and twisted his body.

Apollo's eyes constricted to pinholes when he saw what Herakles was doing and his hands inadvertently trembled, He tightened them soon enough but it showed just how much he feared his brother regardless of his title as a minor god.

There was no logical reason for him to use one of his weakest attacks. There was no logical reason for him to withhold his Divine Form. There was no logical reason for him to come alone. He could've brought the whole pantheon if he wanted to - he even told them he was going to investigate - but he didn't.

Why? It was to wash away the humiliation he experienced against Herakles when the Lion-Slayer was a mortal. It was to prove to the world and to himself that he was NOT inferior. That Herakles was but an ant that he could step on at any moment.

He grit his teeth and funnelled even more divinity into the arrow.

'No matter how strong, a minor God had no way of surviving this', Apollo told himself.

'Right?'

The person in question could care less about what Apollo was thinking. His skin breathed and his core flexed as his muscles moved with harmony - Divinity flowing through them akin to a winding river. Every twitch had such weight to it that when he moved, the world moved.

"Katastrofí"

Words such as Heaven-Rending and Sky-splitting were thrown about without much thought but the explosive punch that blasted forward embodied the true definition of those words.

The entire front half of the island shattered and the sea parted in sheer awe as Apollo's arrow fizzled out. The Sun God could only watch mournfully as his body was ripped apart by the energy released by the punch. The earth wailed as the seafloor was cut into, forming a gash thirty kilometres in length and a few kilometres in depth. The repercussions of such an event were enormous. More Tsunamis would ravage the Meditarrian coasts for a while.

Herakles wobbled for a bit before dropping like a stone and crashing into the ground, forming a large crater. He gasped for air as he cradled a broken arm covered in ichor. His obscene healing factor was attempting to stitch his arm back together but the strength he used in that last attack to put down Apollo meant it would take much longer than usual.

A few minutes passed before he managed to sit up and breathe. He immediately looked behind him to make sure that Athos was okay and sure enough, the thunderclouds in the distance were intact. He breathed a sigh of relief and turned back around as though a large weight had been lifted off his broad shoulders.

He'd managed to protect his son, his only true family, from the Olympians for the first time.

Tears welled up in his eyes but he wiped them away the moment they appeared. This was no time to be sentimental, especially when his win against Apollo was a complete fluke. Not only had Apollo not used his strongest move, which would make Herakles look like a bumbling fool but he had also underestimated him for the second time. If the Sun God wasn't so cocky and liked to play with his food, he would've lost in seconds.

Even now, Apollo still lived - albeit in pieces, but being the God of Healing, it wouldn't take all that long for him to be back on his feet. Injuries that would take most Gods months or years to heal like the one Apollo just suffered would take a mere day or two for the Sun God. He'd be at his peak form in no time.

"My back hurts...", Herakles mumbled.

"Am I hearing things? 'The' Hara-...Hmmm, no that's not it...Hera-cheese?...No, that's not it either....", a frumpish man with a large gut walked out from behind the broken trees.

Looking at his size it was impossible to believe that he'd been hiding all this while. A leopard-spotted Hawaiian shirt covered his potbelly and purple running shoes covered his feet. A scruffy beard grew on his chubby face and his watery, blood-shot, electric-blue eyes stared at Herakles. He was Dionysus, the God of Wine and Partying, Religious Ecstacy and Madness and the unwilling Director of Camp Half-Blood.

"Dionysus?", Herakles said and tried to get up but it was in vain. He looked down finding large, thick grape vines holding down his limbs.

"WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?!!!", he roared as trepidation and anger filled his gaze. He tried breaking free of his bonds but he was currently a spent force. That punch had taken far more of his energy than he'd expected. Not only that, Dionysus was also one of the Olympians. He may be the weakest, but an Olympian was an Olympian.

"Hmmm? Oh, brother, you really want an explanation? Fine, I'll humour you", Dionysus said, summoning a silver goblet filled to the brim with Diet Coke. "I was tired of babysitting those fucking brats at camp, alright. So I thought to myself, if I contribute to the war effort a bit then perhaps my sentence may be reduced.

Dad is more lenient after the Sky incident too. So, when Mr Golden boy over there announced he was going to check out an anomaly, I followed him. It wasn't easy I tell you, the bastard's almost fast as Hermes himself, but when I arrived to see you blasting him to pieces I knew it was an opportunity."

"You think I'll concede, you drunkard?!", Herakles practically snarled, fighting against the vines but it was a losing battle. No matter how many he tore, there always seemed more to replace them.

"Oh I know you'll not concede brother, but your defences are negligible at the moment so I doubt you have much of a choice", Dionysus looked at the thunderclouds that were a few tens of kilometres away. "That's your son, isn't it? I wonder how he'll feel when the father he looked up to rips him to pieces..."

Herakles' eyes widened in realisation as he began to struggle even more fiercely against his binds, so much so that the ground began to quake.

"NO! NOOOO!! YOU DRUNKEN FU-agggh!!!"

"Shhhh!!!!", Dionysus whispered, sealing Herakles' mouth with more vines as his face filled with maniacal glee.

Herakles' expression shifted from rage to pure fear as Dionysus' hand neared his forehead. It was mere minutes back that he was patting himself on the back for finally being the father he'd always wanted to be but the Fates were cruel. What could have been the best day of his life was now becoming the very same nightmare he'd been trying to rid himself of for millennia.

The Wine God was the God of Madness as well and loved messing with people in the most disturbing of ways. There was even a famous story of him tying the four limbs of a king to four different horses and making the animals charge forward in different directions.

Dionysus' eyes burned with purple fire as he reached for Herakles' brow but just before he could seal his brother's Fate, a Draconic roar, so ravening that it ripped trees into splinters tore through the air. It formed shockwaves so opaque and tangible that the vines binding Herakles slightly tore.

He frowned and looked around him finding large amounts of dust obscuring his vision. He then looked up and noticed the thunderclouds were missing. Was that normal?

At that moment, an overbearing aura permeated the area. Its Might was such that the trees that were previously spared creaked and curled into a deep bow. The susurration of the grass ceased and the broken Earth stopped creaking. The sun's light dimmed and the waves belayed smashing into the shattered shore. The wind halted and any surviving monster scattered deep into the island. The world itself seemed to halt and worship the being exuding the aura. Any mortal would've descended into madness if they were so much as nudged by its presence.

Dionysus' extended hand froze and began trembling. He forced Divinity into it but no matter what he did it refused to budge as though his body had decided to rebel. His heart immediately turned frigid as though his insides were filled with ice. The instincts which had remained dormant ever since he'd become a God were screaming at him to fall to his knees and grovel. To smash his big head against the ground and beg for forgiveness. To forgo his overinflated pride and act like a dog.

He slowly turned around spotting a dark silhouette behind the dust cloud. Its eyes glowed a deep blue and a cape billowed out behind it akin to the wings of an Angel of Death.

***

Support me on p atreon.com/Marine0IQ if you'd like. ( Psssst.....it's got extra chapters!!!)

Don't forget to remove the extra space!