Mortals praying to the gods for help.
Wasn't this the perfect reason and moment for them to make their entrance?
Having watched for so long, Apollo could no longer suppress the urge to join the fray.
Especially now that these people were praying to him, the Lord of Light, seeking hope.
As the one who guided the path of radiance, he had every obligation to answer his devotees.
But just as Apollo slowly opened his eyes, that divine gaze cool and composed as he looked down at the mortal world, the beautiful god contemplating which form to appear in to best display his authority as Lord of Light.
On the other side, another figure had already moved faster than him.
"O great god!! O radiance of the sun, please guide us who have lost our way and show us the correct direction!!" The people cried out together and bowed toward the direction of the sun.
The next moment, boom!!
Thunder suddenly cracked along the shore, the sky darkened completely, and a storm came rolling in.
Then a squall tore across the sea.
This stunning phenomenon looked nothing like what one would expect from the descent of the sun god Apollo.
It looked far more like the sea god Poseidon.
The sailors went pale with fear.
They began wondering if they had prayed to the wrong god.
After all, the sea was Poseidon's domain.
Maybe because they prayed to another god out here instead of him, the lord of the ocean was going to swamp them with a storm and tsunami as punishment.
And to be honest, that did sound like something Poseidon would do.
Night was relatively calm, though.
He could feel that this wind carried the same nature as the storm that had blocked their ship earlier, and that same force had also erupted in the direction the sirens fled.
This force did not necessarily come with hostile intent.
So, better to wait and see.
And amid the crowd, standing like a lone crane among chickens, a striking and handsome figure still stood upright and unflinching in the storm.
Artemis was quite satisfied with his composure.
She personally brought down a veil of moonlight and draped it over him, carefully shielding him from the wind and rain.
The gentle radiance carried no destructive power, and Night, sensing this immediately, made no sudden moves and let the veil settle around him.
In an instant he looked as though he had a special visual effect running, his body giving off a soft, sacred, gentle moonlight.
The sight stunned the sailor, and some of them nearly thought he was a god in disguise.
Fortunately, the real one finally made her entrance.
When a gap split open in the dark clouds on the horizon, surrounded by the light of countless stars, a sacred female figure descended slowly from the clouds atop a divine golden deer.
Hair silver-white with a thread of blue like the night sky itself; a pair of pale violet eyes luminous and brilliant, like perfect purple gemstones gazing down.
Dressed in a cool white flowing gown, fair jade arms and slender hands open to the air, youthful and easy on the eyes.
The goddess descended with a bow on her back, appearing before
Night and the others.
Artemis's beauty had driven even Odysseus, who had seen the most beautiful woman in Greece,
Helen, into obsession.
He had even chosen his wife by the standard of resembling the moon goddess in appearance.
When this goddess made her entrance, that beautiful face and youthful, radiant figure immediately put almost every beautiful woman Night had ever encountered to shame.
She was just too damn beautiful.
And more than that,
She carried a nobility and divinity in her bearing that even Chryseis and Helena did not possess.
And she was a chaste goddess.
For a man, defiling something this sacred would probably be intensely exciting.
No wonder so many heroes and gods could not get this goddess out of their minds.
If not for Artemis having a clear understanding of her own beauty from a young age and requesting of Zeus, when he allowed her to make a wish as a child, that she keep her purity forever, plenty of gods and heroes would have already been unable to hold themselves back.
Putting everything else aside, that vow most effectively protected her from the greatest danger of them all...which was her father, Zeus himself.
And don't even go saying that it's too much, because that old bastard had once disguised himself as Hades, lord of the underworld, and slept with his own queen.
And Persephone, the queen of the underworld, was Zeus's own daughter with the earth mother Demeter.
But at this moment, everyone except Night, the moment the goddess descended, felt the overwhelming divine pressure and dropped their heads straight to the ground, unable to lift their knees at all.
Divine authority is like a prison!!
Yet this pressure seemed to deliberately avoid Night.
Looking at the lightning and thunder crackling around him and the air itself trembling faintly, he could imagine what kind of unbearable weight the sailors were experiencing right now.
After all, he had once felt the unintentional divine pressure leaking from Apollo's avatar at close range.
Artemis deliberately avoided him and didn't even seem annoyed by his scrutinizing gaze...
Night was a little surprised.
He didn't even know when he had actually gained this goddess's favor.
With no divine pressure bearing down on him, he instinctively looked at the goddess's face.
And because of the uniquely distinctive golden-antlered divine deer, Night figured out who this goddess was in an instant.
In all of Greece there were only five such special sacred deer.
Their speed was so great that even the great hero Heracles could not catch them.
During his twelve labors, Heracles once chased one of these divine deer for an entire year, returning ragged and filthy with bloodshot eyes, and still could not do a thing about it.
In fact, the pursuit had burned through the human side of his bloodline, and if not for his divine blood sustaining and repairing his body, he would have been run to death long before.
Heracles, who originally intended to catch the deer alive, ended up going against his own intent and shooting it in the leg with an arrow just to stop it.
Outside of the goddess Artemis herself, no other goddess had golden divine deer like these.
But that was not the main point here.
In Night's understanding of mythology, Artemis did indeed have a gentler side, but among the Greek gods she was one of the prouder ones, even if not the pettiest of the bunch.
Together with Apollo, this brother and sister rarely mingled with other gods and generally kept to themselves.
They also rarely went out of their way to scheme against anyone, but in terms of divine pride, they were not one bit behind the other principal gods.
Faced with his direct gaze, with a mortal openly looking her over, and being the kind of goddess who was blunt, said little, and had no particular fondness for men, Night wouldn't even be surprised if she put an arrow through him the very next moment.
Well, having instinctively taken in the goddess's beauty in that first glance, he simply appreciated it openly and straightforwardly.
Looking away at this point would actually be more likely to offend her.
If it led to a misunderstanding, that would be a problem.
Something like,
Why did you look away?
Am I not beautiful enough? My appearance can't even hold the attention of a mortal like you?
Women... goddesses or not were creatures whose thinking was difficult to follow.
Knowing perfectly well that no matter what he did, whether he looked or didn't look, it was wrong, Night steeled himself.
Fine. Since he'd already looked, he might as well appreciate it properly.
Take in the view first and figure out the rest later.
.
.
.
(End of the Chapter)