Freya surged through the castle, her pace brisk, until she arrived at Apollo's chambers. Her ire seethed, a visceral fury coiling in her chest, ready to snuff out his existence; yet, she knew the five Supreme Gods couldn't slay one another, even if one committed a grievously heinous act. Every minute detail required the Universe's sanction to be ratified.
Freya pounded on Apollo's door stridently; one could sense the rage coursing from her knuckles to the wood, her knock a jarring pulse of wrath. She lingered, waiting through a protracted silence, then rapped again, but nothing.
Silence.
Then she struck once more, harder still; the blow reverberated, a tremor that rattled the entirety of High Heaven, dust and faint light quaking loose from the ancient seams.
Apollo wrenched open his door, shirtless, clad only in flimsy trousers so sheer they barely concealed the contours beneath, the fabric clinging to his skin like a faint, gossamer veil. Freya averted her gaze, her face contorting in a grimace of disgust, her eyes reluctantly climbing to the sight of two naked women sprawled across Apollo's bed.
The women lay exposed, no blankets to shield them, their bodies bared in the dim, flickering light of the chamber. Freya's vision caught every detail: the sheen of sweat on their skin, the subtle flex of muscle as they shifted. It was a debauched revelry within Apollo's quarters, the air thick with the musky scent of indulgence and the low hum of unrestrained excess. One woman, pale as alabaster, her skin almost luminescent against the rumpled sheets, locked lips with the other, whose rich, ebony complexion glistened with a gritty sheen, their kiss a slow, brazen dance of tongues and breath, hands roaming with reckless abandon.
Apollo stepped in front of Freya, his broad frame obstructing her view, shielding the lurid scene within his chambers. His skin, slick with a faint sheen of sweat, gleamed in the muted light, his stance brazen and unapologetic.
"What do you want?" he demanded, his tone sharp, eyes glinting with a careless challenge.
Freya cleared her throat, her chest heaving with barely restrained fury; then, in a voice laced with venom, she spat: "Did you break the invisible barrier, knowing that Nova's mortal life was in danger?"
Apollo let out a high, mocking giggle, then clapped a hand over his mouth, his eyes dancing with derision. In a guttural, cold snarl, he retorted: "And what if I did? What are you going to do about it?"
"You little—"
Before Freya could finish, her words a rising torrent of rage, Apollo cut her off.
"Before you shout whatever shit you're going to spout, I didn't do such a thing. I wasn't involved this time around, but in the future, I'll make sure to kill him properly. So, now take your little bitch of a child away from me, before I break that little fetus inside of you, slu—"
Before he could finish, Nova and Elesch surged forward. Nova's hand shot out, seizing Apollo by the throat, his grip ironclad; he hoisted him effortlessly, Apollo's feet dangling, his breath a choked rasp as Nova's eyes blazed with a raw, unyielding wrath, the air thick with the grit of imminent violence.
"What the fuck did you say to my wife, the mother of my child, you little piece of shit?" Nova roared, his voice a seething inferno, fury etched in the taut cords of his neck and the blazing glare that pinned Apollo, his fingers tightening around the god's throat with a visceral, unrelenting force.
Before Apollo could choke out a reply, Drael and Orin emerged from their chambers, celestial weapons poised at Nova's neck. Drael's scythe, a jagged arc of shadow and bone, hummed with a lethal chill, while Orin's twin blades, pulsating with temporal distortions, grazed Nova's skin. But Nova dismissed them, his gaze unwavering, as if their threats were mere whispers in the wind, inconsequential against his towering wrath.
Orin, the God of Time and Space, stood resolute, his lithe frame draped in robes that shimmered like a fractured cosmos, stars and voids swirling in the fabric. His eyes, twin orbs of liquid silver, flickered with the weight of eons, capable of bending chronology and distance with a mere thought, unraveling reality's threads to his will. Drael, the God of Death and Void, loomed beside him, his presence a suffocating pall; his gaunt, ashen face was half-hidden by a hood of writhing darkness, his hands gripping the scythe that drank light and life, exuding a cold, yawning hunger for oblivion.
The battle ignited with a brutal clash. Apollo, wrenched free from Nova's grip, summoned a bow of searing light, loosing arrows that burned with solar ferocity, streaking through the air like comets. Drael swung his scythe in a wide, vicious arc, a wave of void energy ripping forward, rending the ground with a sickening crunch, the essence of death trailing in its wake. Orin gestured sharply, time stuttering as space warped; a barrage of distorted, jagged pockets of reality hurtled toward Nova, meant to shred him across dimensions.
Nova, however, stood underwhelmed, a faint, sardonic smirk curling his lips. He toyed with them, sidestepping Apollo's blazing arrows with a languid grace, their heat singeing the air but never touching his flesh. He batted away Drael's void wave with a casual flick of his hand, the energy dissipating into a harmless wisp, as if swatting a fly.
Orin's warped assaults bent around him, Nova's form blurring briefly, then reappearing unscathed; he countered with a lazy, backhanded strike, sending a shockwave that staggered Orin, the Supreme God of Time and Space, stumbling as the castle's stones groaned beneath the force. Nova's eyes glinted with a bored, predatory amusement, his power a deep, unassailable well, toying with the trio as a lion might paw at cornered prey, their efforts futile against his nonchalant might.
"Do you think you three can even stand a thread of a chance against me? I can single-handedly destroy the entire Universe and the four realms with just fifty percent of my power, killing nearly everyone, Father being the exception, of course," Nova declared, his voice a low, resonant growl, eyes blazing with a fierce, unyielding confidence as he loomed over them, the air crackling with the raw weight of his might.
"You're so fucking arrogant; it makes me wanna kill you even more, even if I have to die," Apollo spat, his teeth grinding, jaw clenched tight, fury igniting his gaze as spittle flecked his lips, his hands trembling with a violent, pent-up rage.
Then, in the blink of an eye, Nova stood before Apollo, a blur of motion too swift to track. Apollo couldn't even react to Nova's speed. Gods alone surpassed light, traveling at tenfold its pace, with some higher gods in Low Heaven reaching fiftyfold. But Supreme Gods existed in a wholly different echelon. Drael, the weakest among the five, could move at a trillion times the speed of light at his baseline. Supreme Gods were forged as the pinnacle of existence, second only to the Universe, the Father.
Apollo, second in might after Freya, who still held primacy among the quintet, couldn't counter Nova. Nova, the first child wrought by the Universe, preceded Freya, then Apollo, then Orin, and finally Drael.
Though the five Supreme Gods were progeny of the Universe, the sentient entity beyond the mere physical expanse of existence, they shared no kinship. They weren't brothers or sisters, their blood overlapping by less than two percent. Thus, it wasn't incest for Freya and Nova to sire a child, unbound by any sibling tie.
"Father always treated you like the golden child, as if you are better than us," Apollo snarled, his voice thick with rancor, eyes burning with a bitter, festering grudge as he glared up at Nova's imposing form.
"I'm better. I'm superior in every facet of the word better. I clawed my way to this zenith because I honed and mastered my powers, embracing my mantle as the God of Destruction. You still haven't. So, it isn't my fault you failed to recognize the being you're meant to be," Nova retorted, his tone cutting, steady, and unsparing, his gaze piercing through Apollo with a cold, unrelenting truth, the air heavy with the grit of his dominance.
"You know what, I don't even care. I hate you," Apollo spat, jabbing a finger at Nova, who merely grinned, his lips curling with a wry, unperturbed amusement. Then Apollo pivoted toward Freya. "I hate you." He thrust his finger toward the ceiling, his voice a venomous roar: "And I fucking, absolutely motherfucking hate you, Fat—"
"Thou shalt not utter such vile speech," Freya cut in, her voice ringing with an archaic, olden English cadence, stern and resolute, her eyes flashing with a quiet, steely reprimand.
Nova turned his head, awestruck, his jaw practically unhinged, dangling in disbelief at her commanding tone. A primal urge flared within him to whisk her to her chambers, but he wrenched his focus back to the fraught scene before him.
The other three gods, including Elesch, who lingered behind Freya, shrank back, wary of drawing the scrutiny of the other three Supreme Gods, perplexed by the exchange. Elesch stifled a giggle, her childish mirth bubbling silently, her shoulders quaking as she bit her lip.
Freya's lips twitched, a smile tugging at the corners as she fought to suppress her own laughter, lest it reach Apollo's ears.
Apollo then snarled at Freya, his tone dripping with cruelty: "Go kill yourself."
Nova's blood surged, a scalding fury igniting at Apollo's words. With a snap of his fingers, a sharp, resonant crack, he teleported Apollo elsewhere, the air shuddering with the abrupt rift. The others—froze, eyes wide, baffled by the Apollo's sudden vanishment, the silence thick with the grit of uncertainty and the echo of Nova's unyielding power.