I Am Zeus-Chapter 273: Divine Rescue

The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. It wasn’t loud, but it cut through the angelic chorus like a knife through silk. It was cheerful, casual, and dripping with sarcasm.

"Where might you be taking my father’s most valued people off to?"

Every head, mortal and angel alike, turned.

He stood on the edge of a nearby rooftop, backlit by the setting sun so fiercely his form was a silhouette, a cut-out of shadow against the fiery orange sky. He had his arms crossed, one foot tapping impatiently.

Zadkiel’s serene smile faltered. Orias’s rotating rings of light stuttered for a millisecond. The beams of light holding Elena and Leo didn’t waver, but they seemed to... hesitate.

The being on the rooftop took a single, lazy step forward, off the edge. He didn’t fall. He walked down the air as if descending a staircase only he could see, each step bringing him out of the sun’s blinding glare.

First, they saw the winged sandals, gleaming gold. Then the tanned, athletic legs. The short chiton. The caduceus staff, twirling idly in one hand. Finally, the face—youthful, handsome, with a smirk that promised mischief and eyes that held the glint of stolen sunlight and well-kept secrets.

He landed lightly on the air in front of the two angels, directly in their path to the heavens. He gave a jaunty, two-fingered salute.

"Evening, folks. Bit of a queue for the ascension today, is there?"

The city below, which had been a sea of reverent whispers, went utterly silent. Then, a murmur began. It wasn’t the language of prayer. It was the language of recognition, slow and disbelieving.

The figure ignored the angels for a moment and looked directly at Elena and Leo, who were suspended in their golden bonds. He winked.

"Dad said you two might need a hand. Or a lift. He’s a bit tied up at the moment. Family reunion. You know how it is."

He turned back to the angels, his smirk hardening just a fraction. "So. My new celestial friends. You’ve had your fun. The light show was very pretty. Very ’holy.’ Now, if you’d be so kind, unhand the mortals. They’ve got a prior engagement. With, you know, their lives."

Zadkiel found its voice, the honeyed tone now edged with frost. "You interfere with a divine mandate. Step aside, spirit. You are out of your jurisdiction."

"Spirit?" The figure laughed, a clear, bright sound. "Oh, that’s adorable. You think I’m a local nature sprite? A will-o-the-wisp?" He spun his caduceus, and the twin serpents entwined around it seemed to hiss, though no sound was made. "Let’s do introductions. I’m Hermes. Messenger of the Gods. Guide of Souls. Patron of travelers, thieves, and clever bastards. Son of Zeus."

The name ’Hermes’ didn’t just ripple through the crowd. It detonated.

In a city like Athens, the name was buried in the bedrock. It was on street signs, in museum plaques, in the DNA of the language itself. It was a story. And the story was now standing in the sky, arguing with angels.

A man in the street below, an old professor of classics, dropped his phone. He didn’t even notice it shatter. He pointed a trembling finger. "Hermes... O Psychopompos... it’s... it’s him!"

A woman, a tour guide, fell to her knees, but not in the same way she had for the angels. This was different. This was shock, awe, and a dawning, terrifying connection. "The god of my city..."

The murmur became a roar. The name was shouted, whispered, cried. "Hermes! HERMES!"

The angelic spectacle of peaceful rapture was utterly shattered. Now it was a confrontation.

Orias spoke, its mountain-voice booming with disapproval. "A pagan relic. A dismissed concept. You have no authority here. The old paradigms are revoked."

"Revoked?" Hermes tilted his head, his smirk turning sharp. "By who? That old fossil in the sky who’s so scared of a little competition he has to send you two to kidnap archaeologists? How very ’almighty’ of him."

He floated a little closer, his voice dropping to a conversational tone, though it carried to every ear. "Look at you. All ’divine mandate’ and ’holy purpose.’ You’re just errand boys. I should know—I invented the job."

Zadkiel’s compassionate facade finally cracked, revealing the steel beneath. "You will not obstruct us. Release yourself from this folly, or be removed."

"Removed?" Hermes chuckled. "You think I’m here to fight you? With what? Lightning bolts? I leave the flashy stuff to Dad and Uncle Poseidon."

He twirled his caduceus again, and this time, the air around the beams of light holding Elena and Leo began to... glitch. The solid golden light shimmered, its edges becoming unclear, as if it were a broadcast suffering interference.

"You see," Hermes said, his eyes gleaming with ancient cunning, "everyone makes a mistake. They see the winged sandals, the quick tongue, the jokes. They think ’messenger.’ They think ’trickster.’"

He raised his free hand, palm open. "They forget what a message is."

The glitching around the beams intensified. It wasn’t an attack on the light itself. It was an attack on the information of the light. The command that told it to hold, to lift, to ascend. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

"It’s data," Hermes said, his voice taking on a lecturer’s tone. "A divine command is just a very loud, very old piece of data. And data..." He clenched his open hand into a fist.

The beams of light holding Elena and Leo fuzzed, pixelated for a split second, and then simply dissolved. The two mortals dropped a foot before Hermes zipped behind them in a blur, catching them both by the collars and setting them down, standing on the air as if it were solid ground.

"...data can be corrupted," Hermes finished, landing lightly beside them, facing the stunned angels.

The crowd below erupted. It wasn’t a prayerful awe anymore. It was a roar of pure, elated triumph. Their god—their god, from their stories—had just outwitted the glorious, terrifying strangers from the white sky.

A young man, a courier on his scooter, punched the air. "HERMES! THE SPEED! THE TRICK!"

An old woman wept, clutching a pendant of the caduceus she wore for safe travel. "He never left! He was always here!"

Zadkiel and Orias exchanged a look—the first hint of true uncertainty. This was not in the parameters. The anomaly was spawning more anomalies. A god of messages and thieves was subverting divine code.

"You cannot keep them," Orias intoned, gathering its light, preparing for a less gentle retrieval. "The order stands."

"Ah, but the order has a flaw," Hermes said, stepping in front of Elena and Leo, his playful demeanor gone, replaced by something older and far more dangerous. "It assumes you can get to them."

He snapped his fingers.

The air between the angels and the three mortals didn’t solidify. It multiplied. Space itself seemed to fold, to stretch, to create a labyrinthine, impossible distance in the span of a few yards. One moment they were face-to-face; the next, the angels seemed to be looking at them from the wrong end of a telescope, their figures small and distant despite not having moved.

"He’s the god of boundaries!" someone from the crowd screamed, the knowledge a weapon. "Of the space between! You can’t cross where he doesn’t want you to!"

Hermes grinned over his shoulder at the mortals. "See? They remember." He looked back at the frustrated angels, now trapped in a pocket of twisted space. "Tell your boss this: The old king is back. And he’s got a new postmaster. Any further deliveries to these two... will be lost in transit."

He placed a hand on Elena and Leo’s shoulders. "Now, if you’ll excuse us. Places to be. Dad’s expecting a report."

With a wink and a gust of wind that smelled of ozone and distant roads, Hermes, Elena, and Leo vanished.

Not in a beam of light. Not in a glorious ascent.

They simply weren’t there anymore.

The folded space snapped back to normal with a soft pop. Zadkiel and Orias hovered, their glorious mission a very public, very humiliating failure. Below, the city of Athens was in an uproar—not of holy fear, but of resurrected pride and chaotic, defiant joy.

High above, Metatron observed the entire event. The anomaly had not just persisted.

It had learned.

And it was starting to fight back on its own terms. The report to the Father would not be good.