Artemis…
It was now finally time for her match to begin, yet she could hardly focus on it at all with the conflicting thoughts surrounding her daughter.
Both Marcus and Ruvick had urged her to reconnect with Selene, but she was too afraid of how she will react. Artemis was too afraid of whether or not her daughter would shun her for being absent so long.
Its been on the very center of her thoughts lately that she could hardly focus on anything else.
When Artemis stepped onto the arena floor and scanned the audience, she sensed that Selene was not present to watch her fight.
Naturally, it could be due to the fact that she was resting from going to Forrosa with Marcus. However, it could be because of the harsh words that she had spat in her daughter’s face. Words that she felt about herself but never should have spoken aloud.
Knowing that Selene was not here to watch her fight play out made her feel disappointed. Yet for some reason, she also somewhat relieved in the sense that she didn’t have to watch Artemis while she was unfocused and lacking in discipline.
Just as she was trying to come to terms with the situation and focus on what was in front of her, a harsh voice interrupted her thoughts and addressed her directly.
“ARTEMIS! Step forward and die beneath my feet!” the voice shouted in rage, bringing up familiar and horrible memories.
She knew who’s voice it was, but she didn’t want to look at their ugly appearance. Yet she was forced to as her gaze drifted up to watch as her opponent, the Goddess Kali, approached her.
“So its you...I had thought you died during the last days of Terra, so that my eyes would never have to be cursed by your hideous presence,” Artemis said in a disgusted tone.
Kali, with her charcoal black skin, six arms, and long protruding tongue dangling from her mouth, walked forward. In the old days, she would have been almost completely naked save for a long necklace of human skulls and a skirt made of severed limbs.
Only now, she wore chest armor made of ribs of some unknown creature and thin gold chains wrapping around her waist.
It had been what she had always worn ever sense she had given her with an unrepairable scar that stretched from her right shoulder, down to her left hip.
Artemis knew that Kali wore such armor only to hide the shame that brought upon her when she received that hideous scar.
Seeing Kali confront her in this manner, and at this very point in time, left her with no other reaction but to smile and sigh in relief.
If it were any other circumstance, then perhaps she would have taken a fight between Kali more seriously.
However, Artemis simply felt grateful that she now had a reasonable excuse to take her mind off of Selene and focus on the battle.
She pulled her sword from its sheathe and locked eyes with Kali, to which she also pulled out her various weapons and starred back daggers.
Selene…
Several minutes before Artemis’s fight began, she was resting in her bed while thinking of how much she enjoyed spending time with Marcus in Alken.
She was holding one of her pillows close to her chest as she thought of how he looked when the morning light of the sun hit his face as she woke up next to him. She groaned in embarrassment as she shoved her face into the fluff, but also sort of enjoyed the thought of him greeting her when she woke up.
That line of thought was interrupted however as there a knock at the door.
She tried to sense who it was but for some reason, their presence was unrecognizable, yet she knew there was someone there.
Then she heard Ruvick’s voice calling out to her from the other side, “Selene? Are you really still huddled in your apartment resting?”
Annoyed, she got out of bed, got dressed, and opened the door.
“What do you want Ruvick?” she asked, making her annoyed and exasperated tone plenty audible.
“I’ve just come to ask why you are not at the arena watching the battles play out. Artemis should be starting her battle fairly soon in fact,” he said.
Hearing Artemis’s name being said put her in a sour mood.
“I don’t really care that much about her fight to be honest. I would rather wait until Marcus’s fight comes up in the next few days,” she said.
He smirked when he heard that as he said, “Oh yes, I’m sure. However, I find it paramount that you attend to watch her fight. There are parts of her history that I believe would be very important for you to learn.”
He then held his hand out to her in a respectful act of invitation as he asked, “So I ask, would you attend her fight with me?”
Selene looked down at his hand and sighed, “Very well…”
Within moments, the two of them appeared among the audience in the arena, startling a few around them but otherwise not making a panic at their arrival.
“Do you see Artemis down there?” he asked.
Selene squinted her eyes as she spotted her pulling out her sword while facing off against a black, six armed woman.
“Yes, I see her. Although, what’s unnerving is that woman fighting her. Who is she?”
“That is Kali. Another goddess from Terra belonging to a nearly extinct pantheon. One of many pantheons that Artemis had slaughtered in the past,” he said in a grim tone.
Hearing that, Selene’s head turned abruptly to face him.
“What did you say? She used to...kill pantheons? What does that mean?”
“Well, on Erebus there is only one major pantheon, but to call it that would be over selling it. Ordovis, Nyx, and Dagon made up the elder gods of the past and will end up succeeded by the three unnamed gods. However, there are hundreds of gods roaming Erebus that are not connected to this planet’s pantheon at all. On Terra, there were numerous pantheons of gods that you could hardly name them all. To list a few, the Greek, Norse, Egyptian, Shinto, Hindu, Aztec, Buddhist, and many others all existed on Terra at one point or another. Even now, from what I have learned, the idolization of these gods, in some form or another, has not completely died out.”
“So...what exactly did Artemis do to Kali and her pantheon?”
“She killed nearly all of them, or cursed them. There power was far too great. The concepts that they had the potential to dominate was so incomprehensibly terrifying that Artemis was tasked with killing them and reducing their strength to less than that of Malthael. As for Kali herself...Kali was a goddess capable of destroying the entirety of Terra’s universe. A goddess manifested by her many numerous followers as a near-primordial being of life and death, creation and destruction, as well as the cycles of time. But Artemis was tasked with either killing her, or reducing her strength to such insignificance that it would no longer be a threat.”
Selene could not fathom the depths of power that would be required for someone to take down a goddess of Kali’s caliber.
“Artemis is...capable of such a thing?” Selene asks.
“If she decides that such a thing is necessary, then yes. Artemis can very easily kill gods of such strength, and has done so hundreds of times. The large scar upon Kali’s chest is the result of Artemis fracturing her soul and reducing it to a frail and tiny thing compared to its former glory.”
Just as the announcer’s voice called for the start of the match and the spatial arena expanded so the two could fight, Selene was reeling from what she heard.
“Why...why are you telling me this? Why did you bring me here to learn all of this?” She asked.
Ruvick then turned to face her and said, “Because I believe it is very important that you learn her history as it will impact your own life significantly. Now there is more to be learned, so stay here and watch how things play out.”
With those last few words, he vanished and left her among the cheering audience.
Artemis…
“Begin!” the announcer’s voice echoed throughout the arena and the match began.
Hearing those words, Artemis’s eyes widened as she glared deep into Kali’s soul, as if engraving death into her very being. Her eyes flashed with moonlight and were reflected back at her in Kali’s hate filled eyes.
However, before the spatial battlefield could finish unveiling itself around them, Kali had vanished from time and space from where she was before and instantly reappeared above her.
The six armed goddess pulled back two of her right arms, both of which held a curved scimitar in hand, and swung them with enough force to cleave a man in two.
Artemis effortlessly parried them away before planting her foot in Kali’s face as she kicked the goddess away.
She did not bother using her moonlight magic and defaulted on using just her brute strength as Kali flew back hundreds of feet in a manner of seconds.
As she skidded against the ground and struggled to get back to her feet, the dark goddess realized that two of her teeth had been knocked out.
She spat them out and used her tongue to lap up the blood leaking from her mouth.
Kali then continued to attack as she tried to vanish in and out of existence in an attempt to catch Artemis off guard. Try as she might however, Artemis did not bother to look in her direction as she deflected each strike. She did not even bother moving from where she stood as she waited for Kali to swing her blade.
After parrying over a thousand strikes in the span of a few minutes, she began to sigh in boredom.
As Kali once again tried to split her head open from the front, Artemis used her moonlight magic to quickly dismember the goddess before she could blink before catching her by the throat.
She then brought Kali’s body close to hers and met her eyes as she said, “Come on now...I remember you being far more powerful than this at one point. Has your soul really whittled down in strength so much that you can’t so much as make me budge from where I stand? If you don’t put more effort into this then you’ll force me to end it myself.”
Artemis then pulled her sword arm back and stabbed Kali in the heart before kicking her away.
Armless and legless, Kali bounced off of the ground before coming to an abrupt halt as she started coughing up blood.
Kali…
Battered, bruised, bloody, and exhausted, Kali was enraged by how easily Artemis was fending off her attacks and tearing her apart.
As infuriating as it was to admit, Kali’s fractured soul has been getting weaker for the last several thousand years.
If not for her many followers remaining in Terra, whose faith may transcend all barriers of creation to manifest her strength into reality, then her soul would have faded out of existence a long time ago.
Yet even in spite of that fact, even if her soul hadn’t been fractured and her power reduced to the walking corpse that it has become, Kali still doubted if she would ever win in a direct confrontation with Artemis.
She knew that she would never win against her.
And yet...there was no other person’s blood that she thirsted for more than the horrifying Goddess Artemis.
Kali’s husband Shiva was not here to calm her lust for blood any longer as he had fallen at Artemis’ hands.
Her one and only mate, Shiva, who would lie in the path of Kali’s slaughter to calm down her lust for blood and battle, has been long dead. This left Kali cursed to wander this horrid world, forever searching for Artemis so that her blood would quench Kali’s thirst.
She rose her head just in time to see Artemis walking towards her, barely a fraction of her true strength leaking out of her as she came to finish her off.
I will not yield so swiftly to you wretch… she thought to herself as she focused her energy on repairing one of her remaining arms.
She then dragged her fingers through the dirt in front of her and scooped out a bowl in the ground. She then cupped her hand to her mouth and coughed her blood into it.
“Arise Raktabija,” she whispered over the blood before she plunged her hand into the dug out bowl of dirt.
As her blood soaked into the dirt, smoke began to rise from the ground and the around around her blackened as it burned and became molten rock.
Seconds passed until a demonic clawed hand erupted from the ground and pulled its torso free.
The demon that crawled itself free had blood red skin, two long tusks poking out from its mouth among its serrated teeth, two spiraled horns poking from its head, dragon like legs, and a lion’s tail.
“Kill her,” Kali ordered and the demon Raktabija charged towards Artemis, wielding a shield in one hand and a mace in the other.
Without hesitation, Artemis swept her sword through the demon’s neck and slit its throat.
She walked passed the demon dismissively and paid it no mind as she continued walking.
Looking up at her, Kali smiled through blood stained teeth.
Seeing her expression, Artemis turned around in time to see five more clones of Raktabija rise up from the spilled blood along with its original body.
She looked upon the six bodies of the red demon in disgust and annoyance as she said, “What kind of god resorts to using such petty tricks like these in battle?”
In a flash of light, she severed the heads of each of the six that remained. She watched as their bodies fell to the ground only to see five more clones rise for each one that died.
“For those that die, five more take their place and the one who falls rises again from its blood anyways. Interesting…,” she said in an amused tone as she faced thirty six clones of the demon all around her.
For the next ten minutes, Artemis continued to kill Raktabija over and over and over until there were tens of millions of copies of him surrounding her on all sides.
Seeing this, Kali could do nothing but stare at the spectacle of slaughter. She was dumbstruck as to why Artemis would continue to kill the demon even after knowing that it cloned itself upon death from its blood.
Why…?
Raktabija still raged on, unbothered by its own repeated death as it charged past Kali lying on the ground to fulfill its master’s wish.
Arrows flew past her in all directions, throwing knives cut through the many bodies as they flew at the speed of light, and Artemis’s sword passed through them as if they weren’t even there. It was if watching a toddler crushing ants beneath one’s heel.
Artemis did not stop killing the demon until the number of them reached over a billion.
“It took a little while to count them all but I think that should be enough…,” Artemis said as she paused her assault and looked Kali in the eyes.
The numerous clones of Raktabija stopped their charge as well as they seemed to have sensed that something was wrong.
“What...what are you doing…?” Kali asked, bewildered by the odd behavior.
Artemis did not break eye contact as she said, “Drink.”
Frozen like a fool, Kali could not understand why she would say that word.
“W-what…?”
“I said, ‘Drink’. You get stronger the more blood you consume yes? So drink this demon’s blood and face me yourself.”
“I…” she could hardly form a sentence in response to Artemis’s words.
Seeing Kali act unresponsive to her words, she sighed and held her palm up against the edge of her sword.
What is she doing now…?
With a quick pull of her blade, Artemis cut open her palm and blood began to drip down her arm.
She then turned her hand and showed the flat of her palm to Kali as she said, “Isn’t this what you want?”
Hearing this, Kali watched as Artemis’s blood dripped down her arm, reached her elbow, and fell to the ground.
It was the first time that she had ever seen Artemis bleed and she wanted it.
She wanted that blood...she craved it.
“Give me your-”
“If you want my blood…,” Artemis started to say as she cut her off while raising her right foot above the ground.
“-Then drink,” she said as she slammed her foot back into the dirt. As she did, all the clones of Raktabija surrounding them were instantly crushed as if an invisible mountain had been dropped onto them.
Their flesh had been rendered to bloody stains upon the ground and as they tried to reform and become new clones, the constant force being applied to them kept them trapped.
Yet, despite the mysterious force being applied to them, Kali was left unaffected.
Even still, Artemis did not break eye contact with her.
“What...how...what did you do?” Kali asked in a demanding tone.
“Oh? You don’t know about this…? I am simply crushing them under the weight of the moon, for I am the moon,” she said as she stared Kali in the eyes with the same level of blood lust that she had when the battle started. Yet Kali looked back at her in fear and terror.
No matter what Kali did, all of her past strength was lost. No matter what she did now, she could not hope to reach the heights that Artemis had risen to.
“Stop lying on the ground like a gaping fool and lap up the blood so you may regain your strength and gain even more so. If you truly are still a god, then act like one. Fight like one. And die like one,” Artemis said as she squeezed her hand into a fist and held it out to her.
Kali watched as droplets of blood fell off of her fingers and down onto the blood soaked ground beneath her.
“Now drink,” Artemis ordered. The last word coming out of her mouth holding such weight and power of its own that Kali’s tongue moved almost involuntarily as it reached towards the ground and lapped up the blood.
Once it reached her lips and down her throat, she became intoxicated by the metallic flavor of it and poured her soul into drinking up every last drop.
As if being pulled in by the current of a maelstrom, all the blood swirled around Kali’s body. The more blood she drank, the faster her limbs grew back.
Even after her body was fully healed, she continued to drink and drink and drink it all. The veins running throughout her body began to pulsate with energy and power.
When all of Raktabija’s blood had been consumed, Kali opened her eyes and gasped.
For the first time in many thousands of years...she could feel the presence of Parvati, her true self. The one that Artemis had killed so long ago before reducing Kali to a fragmented ruin.
Kali could sense the echoes of Parvati’s presence as well as...Shiva’s.
“Sh-Shiva...my beloved…,” she said softly as she could feel her connection to him grow with the power flowing through her.
Seeing his face flash across her thoughts reminded her of his strength as her arms caught fire and manifested his power.
Shiva the Destroyer, and his flames that could bring ruin to the universe, burned upon her flesh. Though now it was but a pale imitation, yet surely it might be enough to take her down.
Taking in a deep breath through her nose, she looked back at Artemis who was smiling at her with narrow eyes.
Despite the blood lust that Kali still harbored towards her, she felt incredibly calm. Shiva’s power kept her mind and ease and focused on her goal.
Seeing that she was ready to fight again, Artemis unclenched her fist and turned it over as she beckoned Kali to her.
“Come on now and die like a god,” Artemis said.
“You first!” Kali shouted as she appeared a few steps away from her and threw a punch with two of her right hands.
Her fists clashed against Artemis’s blade as she poured the weight of the moon against Kali, yet for once, she failed to push her back as the two of them were stuck pressing against one another.
For the first time since their battle started, Artemis was forced to hold her blade with two hands to keep it steady.
“Release 20 percent” Artemis said as she poured more of her soul into her sword whilst also manifesting the crushing gravity of ‘moon’.
The immense force released between the clash of the two goddesses caused shockwaves to ripple beneath their feet and shattering the ground all around them.
As they pushed back against each other, a massive crack formed between them. As they drove their feet into the ground, they began to change the landscape around them.
The tectonic plates beneath their feet shifted so much from the energy of their strike that the lithosphere of the continent they fought upon crumpled and plumes of lava erupted from all volcanoes and magma fissures all around them.
Gripping her sword tight, she pushed Kali back and slashed her sword through one of her arms before she disappeared.
When Kali reappeared, she tried to punch Artemis from behind only to be met by her sword once again.
With every clash, the ground shook and trembled.
With every punch and slash of the sword, the earth was rendered into an apocalyptic wasteland.
Super volcanoes that would have otherwise been dormant, erupted all around the world one after the other, and their mushroom clouds and shockwaves that followed after barely affected the two goddesses as they fought.
Even as ash started to blot out the sun and the air turned cold, and ash fell to coat their skin, they did not stop.
Kali herself refused to stop fighting.
Even as Artemis split apart the world ending flames burning along her flesh, even as her arms were being cut off one one by one, grown back and then cut off again, she did not stop.
She felt her power waning as Artemis continued to push her back and continued to dismember and weaken her with every slash, and yet she remained focused.
And yet…
Kali pulled back one of her left arms in an attempt to punch Artemis once again only to find that it had barely repaired itself up to the wrist.
Realizing this too late, she hesitated and gave Artemis the opportunity to swing her sword at her neck.
Kali pulled her head back just in time to avoid a lethal blow as it grazed her. Yet the nature of Artemis’s magic was that of power flowing at the speed of light, that which split all things apart, even matter itself.
If not for Shiva’s flames manifested upon Kali’s flesh, she would have died instantly. Yet she was forced to use over half of the power she had left to defend against such an attack.
Nearly all of her arms, save for one, had been severed and were struggling to grow back. She knew that she wouldn’t be able to win in an honest clash, but perhaps she could bait Artemis’s honor.
“I do not have much strength left in me, so let us end this fight with one last attack?” she said, phrasing it as an invitation.
Smirking, Artemis readied her sword and said, “Very well. Do not disappoint me.”
Kali readied her right arm and held her last remaining fist burning with Shiva’s power.
Artemis stared back at her down the length of her sword and Kali could see her own reflection in its metal.
Her eyes widened as she charged after Kali, with the tip of her sword dragging against the ground and splitting it apart.
Before Artemis could reach her though, Kali stopped time all around them to a crawl.
Everything fell still as Kali pulled back her arm and ran towards her.
As she came within a hairsbreadth away from punching her fist through her chest, Artemis’s eyes moved to watch as Kali’s fist approached her.
Her mouth then opened only to say a few words.
“You are a coward…,” she said, before she effortlessly stepped to the side and avoided the path of her punch.
Unable to halt her moment, Kali stumbled forward and tried to recover, but Artemis kicked at her right leg and forced her to her knees. She then grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled her head back.
The last thing Kali saw before she died was Artemis looking down on her while raising the point of her sword above her throat.
In one swift motion, she pierced her sword through Kali’s skull.