"Uh, that was quite something. I almost forgot what air smells like ... quite refreshing, wouldn't you say?"
Vandar looks back to see Hecate floating in the air. Her prison was destroyed, and now she was free. She was supposed to be free years ago; millennia have passed since she found out about Hades dropping her and getting another bride, and she has found another person. Someone who was special to her.
A human.
The irony was thick in this case and not lost to her. She had matured over the millennia she was together with Vandar, grown to learn from him as much as he learnt from her. She didn't just grow older, but she matured in the way a human would if he grows to reach 80 years of age, after having witnessed a war of some kind and knowing how trivial most problems truly are. Vandar was by no means your usual human being. He was, strictly speaking, not even fully human. But he was human at heart, at least mostly. His great wish for growth was not something all-encompassing that swallowed him whole and forced him to forget about everything else. It was something that followed him that he would pick up every once in a while if he had nothing else to do. He was in control.
It was that control and seeming freedom that Hecate was impressed with and came to love about him. He might have been inside a magical prison and torture chamber, but he never once acted like he was. On the contrary, he saw torture as another way to grow stronger. To pass his previous limit and break another barrier that was thought to be impassable. He saw himself as the centre of his experiments, which he wanted to mould and enjoy. And he did.
There was one time that Vandar created a special 'parkour course', as he called it, out of magical energy. It was made up of hundreds of thousands of magical constructs at its base, which he used to create a path for him to cross and weapons and traps of all kinds which would and could harm him and even kill him. Then he added runes he came up with of great variety. Most of those were to throw off his balance and increase gravity to unimaginable degrees. He simulated entire stars and black holes. There were sequences he 'coded' using magic that would transform into meteors and volcanoes or cause the stars to go supernova. Storms of solar system proportions that he played with and forced himself to travel through while carrying millions of weights.
Hecate was against him doing that, but he didn't care. He called it breaking his limits or surpassing his limits. And he would usually yell it whenever he said it and laugh, aware of how stupid he was. And he always passed. He never once gave up until he made it through.
"Hecate? Are you alright?"
"I'm thinking."
"About the humans? Do you want to take revenge on them?"
"Not all of them."
"Heh, I know. If you want, I can do it for you. It wouldn't take too long, depending on who you want to kill, that is. I heard that there are now two groups. The Lords of Order and the Lords of Chaos. That prick who hurt you, Mordru, he's a member of the Lords of Chaos. I could go over there, punch him in the nuts and then make him eat it and fold him into a tiny box for you to have fun with. What do you say?"
Hecate looks at Vandar in thought. She knows his personality well by now. While he didn't fundamentally change over the long time they spent together, he did 'grow up' in a weird sense. His mentality was a bit strange. On the one hand, he wouldn't bother with those who hurt him or even did terrible things to him, as he was the one who did the worst things to himself. But if it concerned others he was close to, he would change, and all his relaxed nature would burn away in one moment. Vandar didn't have such a person before, but now ... things were different.
"No. They already have their punishment, and in the future, they will pay for what they did."
"So, Hades?"
Hecate once again thought back to when it all started, how she gifted the humans with some magic. The men and women who recognised her greater power and sought to supplant themselves as beings capable of enforcing their own version of order. Their mimicking of the incantations witnessed from her visits; how they managed to summon and bind her, torturing her with their demands. Hecate hoped that her adopted pantheon would come to rescue her.
Hecate also thinks back to her betrayal; she was betrayed when Hades came to give a simple message: he had found a new bride in the form of Persephone, and the Gods of Olympus no longer recognised her as one of their own.
She was cast out and left to rot on her own. And while she would have broken out through the anger at their betrayal, something else happened. Vandar appeared in her prison, compressed and shot through many millions of universes.
"Hecate? Are you still with me?"
Hecate nods her head.
"Listen, Vandar. There is something I must do, and I don't want you to get mixed up in all of it. So you may leave now, and there won't be any hard feelings between us. I truly enjoyed our time and-"
"Bah, bah, bah, bah. None of that nonesense with me, please. Do you think you can just end things here? I just got used to you, and besides, I can't leave a damsel as smoking hot as you when she is in distress."
It was true. Vandar hadn't realised it when it happened, but Hecate looked like a bombshell in his book. She was his walking wet dream, and she knew it. He has already lived far too long to be ashamed of admitting it.
"Heh, is that so? Smoking hot. Very well, then try to keep up."
"Please, I am so fas-"
*POP*
Hecate teleports away, leaving Vandar on his own.
"Teleportation ... smart."
.
Hecate appears in her home, where she came from all those many years ago. It has since gotten another name, the Sphere of Gods. Humanity's belief affected the Sphere of Gods and created the Pantheons. And now she is back, back in the special location where she had chosen to join the Greek Pantheon. She had fallen in love with Hades, the God of the Underworld, and they wanted to marry. But then she was betrayed and imprisoned. Instead of helping his love, he chose another one for himself.
Mount Olympus
The place where the Greek Pantheon resided. There at the gates stood a god, a new god. One who hadn't started out as a god but as a half-god. Herakles, the God of Strength. Son of Zeus and a mortal woman, he had done what was asked of him and was elevated to the position of godhood by Zeus himself, and now ... he was guarding the gates of Olympus.
*Pop*
"Phew, it worked."
Vandar appears behind Hecate and looks around. Herakles, who was sitting in a pensive position in front of the gate, stands up and looks at them. His expression is hard and stern, like that of a veteran soldier or a general who was forced to make hard decisions.
"No one enters here. These are the gates of Olympus, and I am their keeper. If you want to pass, you must pass through me."
"It seems like the famous child of the philandered has been made into a guard dog. How fitting. A dog will always create dog offspring."
"You have quite the mouth on you, boy." Herakles says and then disappears from his position, only to appear in front of Vandar, "For someone so weak."
*BOOOOO---OOOOOOOOOMMMMM*
Herakles punches Vandar with strength only a God of Strength could possibly produce. Well, there are others, but for now ... never mind. Vandar had put himself through a lot in the millennia he was alive up to this point, but even the gravitational pull of a giant star, or the other things he went through, couldn't compare to this one punch. Herakles' fist zoomed through space-time and almost warped it like a blanket, making his fist appear faster than it should have.
The force unleashed in that singular punch was unbelievable, hitting his skin and blowing it to bits. His blood vessels, muscles, fibres and bones ... it was all at the mercy of the punch, and it was all disintegrated. Nothing remained of Vandar, absolutely nothing, and the few bits and pieces of his charred, disintegrated corpse fell to the ground.
"Now to you."
Herakles turns to Hecate, who has a furious expression on her face. She didn't like it when Vandar hurt himself under the guise of 'training', and she absolutely loathes it when someone else harms him. So seeing him disintegrate due to a punch brought about her rawest fury, and she would have killed him where he stood, the infant that he was, if a voice hadn't stopped her.
"BAH! tiho htsi, saw niensa! ..."
His speech was all mixed up, and he scrambled the letters as they came out of his mouth. He shakes his head and moves his mouth.
(+ 2077% -> 29'799.85)
He looks up at Hecate and smiles.
"Go, Hecate. I'll deal with the guard dog."
Hecate calms down again and channels her anger. She nods and then waves her hand. The massive amount of magical energy she unleashes shoots the Gates out of their hinges. Then she enters.
*Crack*
Vandar cracks his head and his shoulders. He starts to jump in one place as if he is getting warm for sparring. He smiles, thinking about the first time he punched Conquest. That was so long ago, and how pitiful he was back then. Now, he's in the DC Universe, about to get his ass kicked by the God of Strength, Herakles himself. Life had a weird way of going about it. And he was here for it all.
"This will be a bloodfest, b*ch. BRING IT ON!"
Vandar shoots forward, trying to punch Herakles. But the man just stands there with his arms crossed and moves his head to the side. Then he uppercuts Vandar, blowing a massive hole into his chest.
*BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMM*
"PWAAAHHH!"
Vandar spits out blood, but the hole in his body is so large that only his head, as well as hands and feet, survive. It falls to the ground in front of Herakles' feet. The God of Strength looks at his fist in surprise.
"I could swear I used the same amount of strength as I did before."
"Hmm?"
Herakles looks at Vandar, who is in front of him again and receives the punch.
*BOOM*
The punch does absolutely nothing to him. He pulls back his fist and punches Vandar again, hitting his head and blowing it away as if it were nothing. Something strange happens this time, though, the body of Vandar doesn't fall to the ground, and a moment later, his head is back where it belongs.
(+3182% -> 948'204)
"Come on!"
Vandar tries to punch Herakles again but doesn't manage to do so as he grabs his fist and crushes it like a small rubber. The hand breaks into pieces of bone and a puddle of blood, but he doesn't care. He tries to hit him with the other hand, and the same thing happens. Herakles, who has both of Vandar's hands trapped, suddenly pulls hard, rips both of his arms off and starts using them to hit Vandar with them.
*SPLAT BOOM*
It is an ugly sight, as Vandar is beaten to a literal bloody pulp with his own two hands.
(+4253% -> 40'327'116)
Herakles looks at Vandar and furrows his brows. He doesn't like what is happening. Neither the front nor the back, where he hears the destruction and shouts taking place. This worm in front of him is tenacious but not powerful. Having had enough, Herakles starts to use his divinity. He fills his fist with divine energy and pulls it back, preparing for the most brutal punch yet. Vandar hadn't even moved one meter when all of this happened, and then the fist hit its mark.
*BOOOO-----------OOOOOMMM*
Space cracked, time seemed to dilate for a second, and a rush of divine energy exploded out, causing a quake unlike anything the mortal world had ever experienced on Earth.
...
Herakles looks to the front and then turns around. He feels the danger behind him on Mount Olympus and wants to help.
"Oi! Where are you going?"
(+10'340% -> 4'046'422'819)
"What is it with you? You're starting to both-"
*BOOOOM*
Vandar's fist lands on Herakles face. It wasn't that he couldn't block or dodge; it was just that he was too surprised to do that. His body is pushed back for the first time, and his mood drops considerably. He zooms forward and punches Vandar again. But he doesn't stop there and punches him again, delivering a series of attacks, all severing pieces of his body and doing more and more damage. It turns into a true bloodfest, and Herakles gets angry. But before their fight can be concluded, a massive amount of energy gathered above Olympus.
Hecate floats above the defeated Greek Pantheon. Her eyes are glowing with sheer power, and the air pulsates with her authority.
"Please ... Lady Hecate ... Mercy."
"Mercy? Now you ask for my mercy, but when I needed a hero to save me, who came? No one! None of you bothered with me. After all, you had your domains in the Sphere and didn't need me anymore, isn't that right? You are all a bunch of hypocrites that don't deserve anything!"
Hecate let out all her frustrations, which, to her surprise, weren't many. When she asks herself whether or not she should kill them all, she can't seem to focus, and only the picture of Vandar appears in her mind. She looks down and sees all that blood around the area and on Herakles fists and shakes her head. She manages to smile at that moment.
"Ha! To think that a human could do what all of you couldn't. I shall grant you mercy. But you will forever remember that it was not a deity that made me choose this path, but a human, and you will live with that. Should you ever dare to rechallenge me or mine, I will destroy you entirely and make you suffer. MARK MY WORDS!!"
Then Hecate disappears from her spot, only to reappear next to Vandar. He has blood all over him and scratches his head.
"So ... you done? I suppose that's farewel- UMPF"
"Hehe, not so fast, love."
Hecate takes Vandar's head and presses it against her large chest, stopping him from talking. Then, she teleports them away.
_______________________________________
FWI, I purposefully stopped the fight between Herakles and Vandar. I love growth stories, but that would have been far too fast.
And just so you know, he still isn't close to Herakles yet. The percentages will now also stop. I wanted to showcase that he grows and not turn this into a power scaling novel.