I Am Zeus

Chapter 289: Close To The Climax

The Tribunal moved.

That was it.

No big motion. No warning. No build-up.

Just one shift.

And suddenly everybody on that battlefield understood something ugly.

There was power.

And then there was authority.

Zeus went first anyway.

Of course he did.

He came in with both fists wrapped in black-white lightning, chaos boiling all over his arms. Hades moved with him, low and silent, bident dragging dead light behind it. Kratos came from the left, blades burning. Wukong dropped from above, his staff stretched so wide it looked like he was trying to break the whole sky in half.

Four attacks.

Four monsters.

One target.

The Tribunal raised one hand.

That was enough.

Kratos stopped in midair.

Not his body at first. Something deeper. The part of him that decided motion just... locked. The chains on his arms rattled so hard they screamed. Every muscle in him bulged, every vein stood out, rage pouring off him in waves, but forward just stopped being available. He hit one knee instead of the Tribunal.

Wukong’s staff bent.

Not snapped.

Bent.

Like the space in front of it had decided straight lines were no longer allowed. Wukong’s eyes widened and his strike curved away, burying itself uselessly in white ground far off to the side.

Hades got closest.

His bident almost made it.

Then the Tribunal looked at it.

Just looked.

And every soul inside Hades screamed.

All of them.

The force inside him lurched like it wanted out. For one bad second it felt like his eyes, his skin, his mouth were all going to split open and those stolen dead would come flooding out of him. Hades snarled through his teeth, dug in, forced them down, but the pause cost him. The bident stopped an inch short.

Only Zeus landed a hit.

His fist slammed into the Tribunal’s jaw and the sky split above them with a ring of darkness.

The Tribunal’s head moved.

A little.

Then He looked back at Zeus.

And Zeus understood the problem.

Michael had been strong. Lucifer had been monstrous. Typhon had been madness with teeth.

This was different.

This was like punching a rule.

The Tribunal touched Zeus’s chest.

Not a punch.

Not even a shove.

A correction.

Zeus folded around it. Every rib in his chest lit up in pain. Chaos flared to protect him, but the hand on him was not trying to bruise or break him. It was trying to tell his body what it was allowed to be.

His feet left the ground. He tore backward across the battlefield, smashing through gods and angels alike before he dragged himself to a stop with his fingers clawing lines into the white plain.

He spat blood.

A lot of it.

Kratos broke the hold first just because that was the kind of bastard he was.

He came in again immediately. One blade low. One high. Whole body twisted into the strike. If it had landed, it would have taken the head off almost anything alive.

The Tribunal turned one face toward him.

"Stay."

One word.

Kratos stopped again.

This time the command hit him like every chain he had ever worn. Every order. Every prophecy. Every god. Every father. Every master.

His whole body shook under it.

But he took one step.

Just one.

A furious, hateful, impossible step forward.

The Tribunal noticed.

That one step made Him notice.

Kratos used that heartbeat to roar and throw one of his blades anyway.

It flew trailing fire and rage.

The Tribunal caught it between two fingers.

The fire died.

Just died.

The chain went limp.

Kratos stared.

The Tribunal flicked the blade back at him.

It hit him in the chest like a mountain and sent him skidding across the ground in a trail of sparks.

Wukong was already back in motion.

He split.

Ten.

A hundred.

A thousand.

The whole battlefield filled with monkeys again, all laughing, all shouting, all swinging staffs and kicking halos and climbing over angels like the end of the world had hired a circus.

The Tribunal closed one eye.

Just one.

Every clone vanished.

The real Wukong popped back into existence upside down, blinking hard like his head had been slapped.

"That is some absolute nonsense," he barked.

The Tribunal didn’t even look at him.

"You are a copy pretending to be original."

Wukong’s whole face changed.

His ears flattened.

His grin went cold.

"Oh, now I’m definitely killing you."

He grew.

Not a fun little trick.

Not for style.

He became the real thing. The terror Heaven once buried under a mountain. Fur burning gold. Eyes like twin suns. Staff expanding with him until it looked less like a weapon and more like a pillar stolen from myth.

He swung with both hands.

The Tribunal caught it with one palm.

The impact shook the field so hard Athena had to plant her spear to stay upright. Thor laughed in disbelief. Hermes vanished and reappeared behind a broken ridge, clutching his side like even he hadn’t expected that.

Wukong pushed harder, teeth bared.

The Tribunal pushed back.

The staff split down the middle with a crack that made half the battlefield flinch. Not completely broken, but enough. Enough to send pain through Wukong’s arms and up into his skull. He made a very offended sound and got thrown backward clutching the damaged staff.

Thor came in to cover him.

Mjolnir in both hands.

Fury all over his face.

He swung.

The Tribunal touched the hammer with two fingers.

Mjolnir dropped.

Not from damage.

Not because Thor lost grip.

It just... stopped agreeing to be used.

Thor looked at his empty hand like somebody had murdered an old friend.

Then Shango came in from the side with a roar, axe blazing. Two thunder gods at once. Hammerless rage and African stormfire meeting at the same point.

The Tribunal opened His free hand.

Thunder went quiet.

Not scattered.

Quiet.

The clouds over the battlefield flattened. The electricity writhing around Thor and Shango just guttered out in midair like it had been told to behave.

Both of them took one step back without meaning to.

That kind of step men take when they realize they are out of their depth and hate it.

The Tribunal looked past them.

At Zeus.

Still getting up.

Still bleeding.

Still coming.

Good.

Zeus cracked his neck and spat another mouthful of blood onto the plain.

"You done?" he asked. "Or are you still warming up?"

The Tribunal answered calm as ever.

"You still think this is effort."

Zeus laughed.

It hurt like hell.

That just made him laugh harder.

"Alright," he said. "That’s actually annoying. Now I’m interested."

He vanished again.

But this time the chaos did not just coat his fists.

It wrapped his whole body.

He became a wound in the air, a jagged black-white slash cutting through the battlefield. No rhythm. No pattern. Just impact from everywhere. Side, back, above, below. Every strike carried contradiction with it. Every hit said you should not be able to stand there.

Palm to the ribs.

Elbow to the throat.

Knee to the side.

Heel to the jaw.

The white plain cracked under them in ugly spiderweb lines.

The Tribunal took every one.

Then all three hands moved.

One caught Zeus by the throat.

One caught his wrist.

One caught his face.

And the Tribunal said, "Be less."

Zeus felt it right away.

Not pain.

Reduction.

Like something was trying to shrink him conceptually. His body compressed. His power folded inward. Chaos peeled off him in strips. He felt himself getting smaller, not just in size but in presence, like the universe was trying to decide he mattered less than a second ago.

He bit down so hard on his own tongue he filled his mouth with blood.

The pain gave him one clean instant of himself.

He used it.

He headbutted the hand on his face away, ripped his wrist loose even though it tore skin and muscle with it, and blasted chaos straight out of his chest into the Tribunal at point-blank range.

The Tribunal slid.

One step.

That was all.

But everybody felt it.

Athena saw it first.

"He moved Him."

Odin, leaning on Gungnir with blood running down his face, let out a low breath.

"Then He can be hurt."

Michael heard that too.

And his stomach dropped.

Because it was true.

Not enough to win.

Not yet.

But true.

The Tribunal looked down at the black smear of chaos on His chest.

Touched it.

The chaos hissed and bit at His fingers like something alive.

Then it vanished.

Erased.

Zeus rushed in again before the last trace was gone.

Hades came with him.

And for one second they moved like brothers again. Not kings. Not rivals. Not men split apart by old wounds.

Just brothers.

Zeus high.

Hades low.

Sky and grave together.

Storm and death moving in the same breath.

The Tribunal had to turn. Really turn.

Hades’s bident pierced one side of the robe and came out carrying burning script instead of blood. Zeus’s fist buried itself in the opposite shoulder at the exact same second.

The whole plain under them collapsed.

Then the Tribunal answered.

A pulse exploded out from Him.

Not light.

Not force.

Something worse.

Reality agreeing with itself.

Hades got thrown left.

Zeus right.

The bident ripped free trailing bright, ugly symbols that sealed almost as soon as they were exposed.

Hades hit hard, one knee down, bident shaking in his grip.

Zeus landed worse. Rolled. Started to rise—

—and the Tribunal was already there.

Just a kick.

Nothing dramatic.

That was the problem.

It hit Zeus in the ribs and sent him tumbling through broken ridges and into the remains of an angelic line so hard the ground folded over him.

For one second he vanished under debris.

Then the debris exploded upward.

He came out of it half-buried in dust, blood on his teeth, one eye swelling, ribs screaming.

He was slower now.

Only a little.

The Tribunal noticed immediately.

"You are nearing your limit."

Zeus answered by hurling a spear of compressed chaos straight through one of the Tribunal’s faces.

It passed through.

The face came back.

The Tribunal looked at him with mild disappointment.

"That accomplished nothing."

Zeus bared red teeth.

"I know. Just checking if you’d say something smug."

The Tribunal actually stepped toward him.

That was bad.

Ares and Kratos hit together from opposite sides to buy Zeus breathing room. Ares roared, sword down, all fury and bad decisions. Kratos wrapped chains around one of the Tribunal’s arms, trying to drag, pin, tear, anything.

The Tribunal flexed once.

Ares got thrown backward with half his breastplate crushed in.

Kratos held longer.

Of course he did.

The chains burned against the Tribunal’s arm. The Tribunal looked down at them almost curiously.

Then He said, "You only know one shape."

Kratos frowned.

The chains around the Blades of Chaos went rigid.

Not slack.

Not shattered.

Rigid.

Every loop. Every curve. Every murderous flowing line became straight bars.

Kratos lost control instantly. One blade tore loose. The other yanked his shoulder halfway out.

Then the Tribunal took that same rigid chain and backhanded him with it.

Kratos flew so hard the plain split beneath him.

Wukong stared.

"...alright, maybe the plan should be all of us at once."

Thor, still furious about his hammer, barked, "You think?"

Athena was already moving.

"Spread out!" she shouted. "Stop feeding Him direct intention. Make Him process too many threats at once!"

Odin nodded.

"Now you’re speaking my language."

He threw Gungnir past the Tribunal instead of at Him. Hermes appeared in the same instant, caught the spear, redirected it. Apollo’s arrows came down in a six-point star. Artemis split the pattern into twelve. Hephaestus sent forged constructs from below. Ogun hit from the side. Oya bent the wind to change every angle halfway through.

For three perfect seconds the battlefield stopped being panic and became warcraft.

The Tribunal walked through all of it.

One hand caught Gungnir.

One face burned Apollo’s arrows out of existence just by looking at them.

One foot crushed Hephaestus’s constructs flat.

Oya’s winds wrapped around Him and fell dead.

Artemis’s last arrow touched His cheek.

Touched.

Then turned into moonlight and drifted away.

That was when the gods really understood.

Not hopelessness.

Worse.

Scale.

The sheer impossible scale of what stood in front of them.

Zeus felt it too.

And he hated that he did.

Good.

Fear was information.

He used it.

He straightened up. Let the pain settle. Watched the Tribunal the way a hunter watches something too big to kill in one strike.

Not untouchable.

Just above him.

For now.

The Tribunal looked back.

"You are losing."

Zeus nodded once.

"Yeah."

The Tribunal’s three faces blinked at different times.

Zeus smiled.

"But you noticed I’m still here."

He spread his arms.

Chaos roared again.

This time inward.

Compressing.

Sharpening.

No more trying to overwhelm.

No more pretending he could match the source blow for blow.

Fine.

He would become something narrower.

Meaner.

A knife.

The Tribunal saw it.

And for the first time—

the center face showed caution.

Tiny.

But there.

Zeus saw it and whispered, "There you are."

Hades rose beside him, soul-light boiling off his body now, bident dark as the end of things.

His voice came out rough and deeper than before, weighted by too many dead.

"Brother."

Zeus kept his eyes on the Tribunal.

"Yeah?"

"I can lock Him down for one hit."

Zeus finally looked at him.

It was a terrible idea.

Which usually meant it was worth trying.

"You sure?"

Hades laughed once. It sounded broken.

"No."

Zeus nodded.

"Perfect."

And somewhere under all the pain and fury and impossible light, Zeus realized something dangerous.

The Tribunal was stronger than anything he had ever faced.

By far.

And still—

He hadn’t put him down.

Not yet.

That meant the worst part of this war was still ahead.

And somehow, that made Zeus grin.