The sky above the Central Park reservoir lit up.
Hyperion's physical form dissolved, the golden armor melting into the roaring torrent of his own essence. He expanded, a vertical column of white hot violence that stretched twenty feet into the smog. He wasn't a man anymore.
He was a pillar of screaming solar flares. It was like a sentient star trapped in the shape of a man. All remaining water in the reservoir vanished, turned to a wall of dry steam.
The Titan stepped forward. The asphalt beneath his feet started to bubble from the heat he radiated.
"You stand in the shadow of the dawn," Hyperion's voice echoed, shaking the very air itself. "I am the Pillar of the East. I am the progenitor of the light that gave your kind sight. You, lesser creature."
Harry stood in the center of the melting pavement, his boots smoking. He didn't move. He didn't even squint against the radiance that would have blinded even a god. He simply tilted his head, watching the twenty foot giant of fire with interest.
"So that the 'True Form' everyone talks about," Harry asked. "A bit much to be honest, isn't it? You're like a high wattage desk lamp with an ego problem."
Hyperion roared. He lunged, moving at the speed of a sunbeam. Chrysafenios, now a blade of solidified light thirty feet long, swept down in a shimmering arc. It was a strike designed to cleave through everything in its way.
Harry didn't dodge. He opened his mouth.
"O, primal hunger of the Final Hour, which swallows the sun and the stars!" Harry's voice cut through the roar of the fire. "Let all forms of hostile magic become naught but a feast for my flesh! I am the Wolf at the End of the Chain!"
The solar strike hit him. The explosion should have leveled three city blocks. Instead, the white hot fire swirled, funneled, and narrowed into a spiraling vortex. It poured directly into Harry's open mouth. The heat, the light, the divine fury, it all vanished into his throat like water down a drain.
Harry swallowed. A small burp escaped his lips, followed by a puff of golden smoke.
"Is that it?" Harry remarked, wiping his mouth with the back of a hand. Harry was already at the level that something like this won't really affect him much, the titan seemed ot still be holding back.
"The flavor is a little... off. Too much ego in the seasoning," he smirked at the titan.
The pillar of fire that was Hyperion recoiled. The flames that made up his face flickered, darkening to a bruised purple for a split second.
"Impossible," the Titan hissed.
"And who decided that," Harry said, stepping onto the liquid asphalt as if it were still solid and not melting as they fought.
Hyperion's golden eyes burned with intensity as he growled, his flames rising in intensity, it seemed like the titan was upping his power.
"Pesky thing you are, aren't you," Hyperion spoke, light seemed to bend around as beams of light started to shoot down at Harry at impossible speed. Harry dodged them, and the ones he couldn't, he'd summon shield to block them as he made sure the distance between the two never really changed all that much to keep the titan close by as he toyed with him to get him to really give it his all.
Harry smiled.
"So much for the so called lord of light," Harry said, his voice dropping an octave. "Honestly, if this is all you can do, then I'm very disappointed. I'm sure you can...."
Hyperion didn't wait for the end of the sentence. He surged forward, his entire body becoming a living supernova. He slammed his fist into the ground, and the earth responded.
A wave of liquid fire and molten rock erupted from the crust, a tidal wave of destruction fifty feet high, rushing toward Harry with the weight of a mountain.
Harry raised a hand, his fingers splayed.
"Hear me, O Father of the Silent Stone! The ribs of the world are mine to own. Let the mountains tremble, and the valleys weep, Wake the titan from his ancient sleep! Under my stride, the earth bows," Harry murmured. summoning his authority over the earth.
The tidal wave of fire and molten rock met a wave of dirt as the earth rose for Harry and crashed onto the coming wave, stopping it before the molten rock solidified, turning back into cold, grey granite in a heartbeat. The fire was smothered by the sudden earth, forming a wall of stone between them.
Hyperion smashed through the stone barrier, his golden sword glowing with a light that threatened to tear reality apart as He swung wildly, a flurry of strikes that left trails of white heat in the air.
It really was a funny sight to the spirits and demigods that could see the fight from far away, where they had ran to when Hyperion had taken on his true form. A Giant of a being, a literal Titan against what was an ant in his eyes, yet it looked like it was the titan that was having trouble in the fight.
Harry moved as Hyperion came rushing at him. He came in instead of moving back as he controlled the very earth beneath his feet to help him sense the movement of the titan before he made them and dodge. He stepped left, tilted his head right, and bent back as the light sword passed him.
"You're swinging like a drunk," Harry teased. Truthfully, the titan was fast and strong, hell harry was using his authority of Geb and Njorun to keep the area safe and protect the humans and demigods that would have been killed from just the heat around the titan.
Hyperion was releasing enough power to turn the city to ash. Real titans were no joke, Harry thought, unlike those Hercules ones. But the fool was too egotistical, and he still wasn't taking Harry seriously even now.
Was it just pride that he'd have to be serious against a mere mortal that made him keep holding back? Well, it didn't matter if he kept going like this, Harry would get bored of waiting and just kill him.
"Be silent!" Hyperion screamed.
The Titan threw his sword aside and clapped his hands together. A sphere of pure solar energy formed between his palms, a miniature sun that sucked the oxygen out of the park. The pressure became immense, the gravity around the reservoir warping.
"If I cannot burn you," Hyperion bellowed, "I will crush you under the weight of the heavens!"
He threw the sun.
The sphere traveled the distance in a fraction of a second, expanding as it moved until it was a roaring orb of annihilation.
Harry's eyes flared green. He didn't reach for the sun; he reached for the strings.
"From the hidden realm of slumber and the deep weave of the earth, I decree the shadow to be the substance! The world shall bend to the lie that I have witnessed! Let the fleeting image of my desire be born, solid and undeniable! Manifest!" Harry whispered
He pulled forth a dream from his mind as he imposed it upon reality as threads manifested like worms, all bright and red as they rushed towards the sun.
The air around the sphere shimmered as the threads, surrounding the sun, started to change color from red to silver, wrapping around the miniature sun.
Harry flicked his wrist. The sphere slowed, its momentum stolen as the threads started to glow, the light of the sun seemed to be flowing into it as it hung in the air, spinning harmlessly, bound by the threads.
Harry walked up to the bound sun and poked it. It hissed, but didn't explode.
"You're trying so hard," Harry said, looking over the orb at the panting Titan. "It's almost cute. You're still looking down on me, but I'm getting bored now, Hyperion. And when I get bored, I get messy."
Hyperion stepped back, taking his time to look at this mortal. How was this possible? Hyperion was already using more power than some minor gods had, yet this mortal wasn't fazed at all. Yes, he was holding back, but the mere thought of going all out on a mere human was incomprehensible.
"What are you, boy," Hyperion spoke, his voice sounding like the crackling of flames. "You can not be mortal, I don't believe it."
"Oh, and why is that?" Harry asked in a mocking tone. "Is it because you're having trouble killing a mere mortal like me. Oh, I see, before I was just some unimpressive mortal, but the moment you couldn't kill me, I now have to be something special to have been able to survive you. Is that it. How pathetic. I expected more from you, but now I see you're nothing more than a glorified bonfire."
Harry laughed, a cold, sharp sound that echoed off the empty area.
Then he sighed and looked at the titan. He wanted to see the titan's powers, but he was done with this shit, time to end this nonsense.
Harry raised his right hand. A wand, dark and ancient, snapped into his grip. At the same time, his shadow began to stretch, darkening the ground even beneath Hyperion's radiance.
"I think it's time to end this," Harry said. "I have a war to get to, proper deities to kill, not like your fraud ass, and you're just a distraction now."
"I am the East!" Hyperion screamed, his form expanding as he grew bigger than before. He drew deep from the very concept of the sun, his body glowing more brilliantly than before, the very sun above then now started to shine brighter as the world was drowned in its radiant light, blinding people all around. "I am the light that will never—"
"I am the Defiance that cannot be broken!" Harry's voice drowned out the Titan's roar. "Though iron chains may hold the beast, the Will remains unsnap! I cast aside the weakness of flesh!"
Harry lunged.
He moved like a spear thrown forward.
Hyperion tried to bring his hands down to incinerate the space between them, but Harry was already there. He was inside the Titan's guard, standing on the bubbling asphalt right beneath the giant's chest as the Titan slammed onto the ground, burning buildings and everything in front of him, the trees, the rock, everything.
"The decree is final, the verdict is cast," Harry chanted, the Wand of Elder glowing with white light. "No armor of the divine, no lie of the past, shall stand before the Supreme Will!"
The Wand slashed through the air.
"Sever!"
A line of absolute nothingness cut through the center of Hyperion's true form. The Authority of Judgment tore through the Titan's divinity, severing his connection to the sun, to his light.
Hyperion's scream was the sound of a star going nova. Harry could only guess how it felt for him. Even in Tartarus, the titan was still connected to his domain and divinity, so this was the first time he was cut off like this, it must hurt like hell.
The white light shattered. The fire died instantly, leaving behind a twenty foot tall husk of grey shaped man. The Titan stumbled back, his form shrinking, collapsing back into the shape of a man, a man with a jagged, vertical line carved through his chest. He wasn't cut physically, but the line was where judgment hit him.
He fell to his knees, his eyes wide. The area around them was a smoking ruin, the silence of the aftermath heavier than the noise of the battle far away from them.
Harry stood over him, the Wand disappearing back into his sleeve. He looked down at the Titan with an expression of mild annoyance.
"You really were just a disappointment. You didn't even make me have my power," Harry muttered.
Hyperion looked up, his breath a rattling hiss. "monster... what are you...?"
"monster ehn," Harry said, looking at the titan, then scoffed, "just die already, you disappointment.
Harry reached out and gripped Hyperion's shoulder as he raised the titan to look at him properly, before his right hand speared into the titan's chest.
Hyperion's eyes bulged. He didn't even have time to gasp before his heart simply stopped beating.
The Titan of the East slumped forward, his forehead hitting the scorched earth. His body began to dissolve into golden dust, drifting away.
Harry stood in the center of the devastation, his clothes remarkably uncharred despite the nuclear level heat he'd just stood in. He looked toward the Empire State Building.
"One down," Harry said, his voice light.
Harry stretched, his joints popping. He looked at the reservoir, or what remained at least, now a dry, cracked crater.
He turned his back on the site and began to walk, already feeling the call to Pandora's realm.
As he reached the edge of the park, a group of dracaenae emerged from the smoke, their spears leveled. They saw a lone man walking toward them, looking bored and slightly messy.
"Get him!" the lead serpentwoman hissed.
Harry didn't even stop walking. He didn't look at them.
He snapped his fingers.
The ground beneath the dracaenae opened as massive jaws of stone and shadow erupted from the pavement, snapping shut over the monsters before they could even scream. A second later, the ground was smooth again, as if they had never existed.
Harry kept walking.
Hyperion really better be worth that boring, disappointing fight.
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