Divine Ascension: Reborn as a God of Power-Chapter 73: Theomachy (Part 13)

Shrines were ablaze on the battlefield. The scent of ozone and blood hung in the air like incense offered to a forgotten god. Screams echoed from distant halls, drowned in the clash of steel and divinity.

But here—in what had once been the Grove of Harmony—there was only silence.

Or there had been until now.

The circle of sacred olive trees was blackened and broken, roots torn and leaves scorched. Amid the ash and wilted grass, two goddesses stood opposite each other.

One cloaked in pale green and gold, her hair like harvested wheat, her hands were curled tightly into fists.

Demeter.

And across from her, a darker shadow. The cloak of midnight. Her staff aglow with flickering blue fire. Her expression was unreadable and her eyes shiny like stars.

Hecate.

"I hoped it wasn’t true," Hecate said quietly, voice as cold as the space between stars. "That you had joined him."

Demeter’s throat tightened. She stood her ground. "It’s not betrayal, if that’s what you think. It’s... a trade Zeus offered me a good deal. If I helped hold Olympus, Persephone would no longer need to stay in the Underworld for half the year."

"And you believe him?" Hecate’s voice cracked, disbelief laced with sorrow. "You trust him after everything?"

Demeter’s hands shook. "He promised, she would be free. Not just to visit—free, entirely. You don’t know what it’s like, Hecate. To be torn aparte from your family and only being able to see her in fragments. To know she’s always going to be pulled away from you."

Hecate stepped forward. Her staff etched burning runes into the ground with every step.

"I do know," she said. "I stood with you. I helped you find her. I walked through the Underworld beside you, seeking her in every crack of the Kingdom of the Dead. I even fought for her."

Demeter flinched.

"But you were never her mother." She whispered.

Hecate stopped.

The silence that followed was unbearable. Even the fire seemed to quiet, as if waiting.

And then—softly—Hecate spoke.

"No," she said. "But I loved her too."

The flames of her staff brightened.

"I mourned with you, Demeter. And now you make a deal with the very tyrant who let Hades kidnap her and split her from you? You choose him over your own soul?"

Demeter’s eyes brimmed with tears. "I chose her."

"No," Hecate said, lifting her staff. "You chose desperation. And desperation makes you take bad choices."

With a sudden sweep, Hecate slammed her staff into the ground.

Blue fire exploded outward in a wide circle. The earth cracked because of this and their shadows twisted. From the trees, ghostly hounds emerged—three-headed and snarling, forged from moonlight and bone, their eyes were burning with ethereal light.

Demeter responded in kind.

She spread her arms wide, and the broken grove bloomed.

Golden vines burst through the ash, wrapping the ground in roots thick as chains. Flowers sprang from scorched soil. And from her hands, she summoned a scythe made of sunlight, shaped from the first harvest ever grown.

"Don’t make me fight you," Demeter said. "Please."

"You already have when you joined him." Hecate answered, and raised her staff.

The hounds leapt forward.

Demeter swung her scythe—one clean arc of divine precision—and cleaved through two of them. They burst into smoke and glowing embers.

The third lunged at her leg. She summoned a wall of brambles to intercept it—spines two feet long, glinting with venom. The hound howled, twisted away, and disappeared into the mist.

Hecate pointed her staff, and blue flame coalesced into a bolt of condensed shadow. She fired.

Demeter raised her scythe and deflected it, though the impact forced her backward, gouging a trench in the earth.

They charged at each other. The clash was fast and violent.

Scythe to staff. Fire to vine.

Demeter twisted vines around Hecate’s leg, yanking her off-balance. Hecate spun midair, her cloak trailing sparks, and unleashed a burst of lunar fire point-blank.

Demeter screamed as it scorched her shoulder, burning through cloth and skin. She retaliated with a wave of golden pollen that glowed with celestial fertility—normally used to bless fields, now weaponized into blinding spores that filled the grove.

Hecate coughed, staggered, her vision filled with gold.

Then came the scythe when Demeter slashed.

It cut across Hecate’s back, drawing divine blood.

Hecate cried out, eyes blazing now—not with sorrow, but with rage.

"I stood by you!" she snarled, whirling to counter. "I defended you when the council mocked your grief!"

Demeter stumbled, guilt flickering behind her gaze.

"I didn’t ask for this," she said, trembling. "I just want her back."

"She chose the Underworld," Hecate hissed. "She chose the balance and to be with her loved. Why you can’t accept it?!"

They clashed again—scythe and flame, root and shadow—each blow breaking the sacred grove further. Statues of Gaia and Rhea crumbled. Sacred wells boiled over. Even the wind dared not interfere now.

And as Demeter faltered, slowing under the weight of her wounds, Hecate stopped. She was breathing hard. Her wounds were bleeding gold but she kept standing tall.

"We could’ve ended this war together," she said. "But you sold our bond for false hope."

Demeter fell to her knees, clutching her burned shoulder.

Tears slipped down her cheeks.

"I miss her," she whispered.

Hecate’s voice trembled—softening, but only just.

"I do too."

For a moment, it seemed like the grove might go still again. That the war, the rebellion, even the vengeance hanging above Olympus could pause—if only for the shared grief of two goddesses who once stood side by side.

But peace did not belong in Olympus anymore.

And the wind shifted.

And Hecate’s eyes, though softened, sharpened once more as a flare of magic ignited at her feet.

The vines around the scorched grove. Nature itself, twisted by war, responded not with mercy—but with panic.

Demeter looked up, and her expression changed.

"I won’t let you stop me." She said, no longer whispering.

"I’m not here to stop you," Hecate said. "I’m here to stop what you’re becoming."

She raised her staff, and the shadows obeyed.

Demeter’s eyes flickered with golden light. "Then you leave me no choice."

She stood.

The scythe in her hands pulsed with divine fury—once a symbol of growth, now a blade honed by desperation. Golden wind spiraled around her, infused with pollen and ancient sun-energy. Her dress, woven from wheat and harvest, fluttered as divine glyphs glowed down her arms.

This time, she struck first.

A storm of golden thorns shot from her hand—barbed and spinning with the velocity of a hurricane. Hecate raised a barrier of lunar stone, conjured from a circle of moonlight beneath her feet. The thorns struck and exploded into sharp, glowing spores that stuck to the barrier and sizzled like acid.

Before they cleared, Hecate stepped sideways through shadow—reappearing behind Demeter with a flick of her staff.

The blast of raw witchfire hit Demeter square in the back, sending her stumbling forward, coughing smoke.

"You’re still holding back," Hecate called. "Even now, I know you don’t want to kill me."

Demeter twisted mid-fall, sent a whip of ivy laced with divine steel hurtling toward her.

It wrapped around Hecate’s leg and yanked.

The magic goddess crashed against a tree trunk that shattered from the force. She groaned, rolled to her feet, staff spinning into a new stance.

"I don’t want to kill you," Demeter said through gritted teeth. "But I will."

She swung her scythe in a wide arc. The air warped around it—space bending as if the blade could reap not just life, but time itself. Hecate parried with her staff, and the collision sent a shockwave spiraling out into the grove, uprooting trees, splitting the ground with hairline fractures.

Blue fire and golden bloom fought in mid-air.

Hecate whispered an incantation, and the shadows from every broken tree reached toward Demeter’s legs. But Demeter’s heel struck the earth—and life exploded outward. A pulse of growth, violent and wild, shattered the tendrils, replacing them with a wall of flowering vines thicker than buildings.

The barrier trembled—then caught flame.

Hecate soared overhead, cloak trailing stars, raining fire in a ring around Demeter. The flames burned cold—moonfire laced with soul-sapping venom.

Demeter bent low, sliced through the flames with her scythe, and absorbed the heat. The crops at her feet grew in seconds—then wilted, their life force transferring into her body.

Her wounds began to close.

"You’re feeding from the earth," Hecate realized. "Even as it dies."

"I am the earth," Demeter snapped, eyes glowing fully gold now. "And I will endure."

Hecate’s staff glowed at the tip—crescent-shaped, marked with the runes of crossroads and death.

She spun it once, calling the veil forward.

From the shadows, ghostly figures emerged—spirits of the harvest lost, children and mothers taken by famine, hands reaching for Demeter.

"Then face what you’ve let happen," Hecate said. "Feel the cost of obsession."

Demeter’s expression broke—her knees buckled as the ghosts approached, whispering names she hadn’t heard in ages, voices filled with hunger and grief. Her scythe drooped.

Hecate’s breath caught.

She could end it, she could strike now.

But then Demeter looked up—and all softness vanished.

She let out a cry that cracked the sky.

Golden energy exploded from her in all directions, scattering the ghosts like leaves, hurling Hecate backwards through the grove, into the far wall of the sacred circle.

She hit hard, coughed blood, and dropped her staff.

Demeter stood, blazing like a small sun, fury and grief woven into a divine storm.

"You think I wanted this?" she roared. "You think I wanted to choose between her and everything else? I’ve already losed too much, Hecate. I will not lose the hope of recovering my little girl too."

She raised her scythe again—both hands now, shaking with power.

And Hecate, weakened, bleeding, looked up at the goddess she once called sister.

Tears ran down both their faces.

Then Demeter moved.

And the next blow could only end one of them.

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