Year 683 — The Council of Immortals
Kronos
The formal gathering where the Titan separation would be acknowledged happened in the presence of representatives from all the immortal factions: the Covenant circle, the seven Titans (or what remained of them as a coherent group), and the independent immortals who had not committed to either side.
What had become clear in the months preceding this gathering was that the separation was not going to be clean. Three of the seven Titans — Iapetus, Coeus, and Crius — had committed fully to the position that immortals should accept worship and position themselves as divine rulers. They were withdrawing from the Covenant completely.
Hyperion had taken a middle position, attempting to develop his own framework somewhere between the Covenant's autonomy and the Titan god-king model. He would establish himself independently, experimenting with an approach that was neither pure autonomy nor pure directed worship.
Mnemosyne had made the decision to remain neutral, continuing her work of documentation and historical preservation without committing to either faction.
Themis had chosen to remain with the Covenant, bringing her understanding of law and principle with her, but maintaining her specific attention to the Titan group as a way of understanding what they were actually doing.
Phoebe had also remained with the Covenant, her opposition to the god-king framework being explicit and absolute.
"I want to be clear about what we are doing," I said, at the formal gathering. "The Covenant cannot include beings who are committed to the framework of accepted worship and god-king governance. The framework is fundamentally incompatible with our commitment to the preservation of community autonomy."
"Then we are leaving," Iapetus said flatly. "We will establish ourselves in territories where we can implement the framework of divine authority without the constraint of your principles."
"And the communities you have been developing relationships with?" I asked.
"Will have the choice," Coeus said. "They can come with us, accepting the framework of worship and directed governance. Or they can remain within the Covenant's territory and accept the framework of autonomy. The choice belongs to them, as it should."
"That is not a genuine choice," I said. "You will use every mechanism of persuasion and influence to move them toward accepting the god-king framework. The choice will be made under duress."
"Any choice is made under some duress," Iapetus said. "The question is whether the duress is honest or hidden. We are offering to be honest about what we are and what we are asking from the communities that align with us. You are offering to hide your influence behind the language of autonomy while exercising dominion through subtler mechanisms."
I could not entirely deny the accusation. The conversation that had begun with Iapetus's confrontation about my thousand years of worship had not ended. It had simply been formalized. And what had been formalized was the recognition that I, too, had been exercising a form of divine authority — I had simply denied that it was divine authority while receiving all its benefits.
The separation that happened that day was not hostile. The three Titans — Iapetus, Coeus, and Crius — left the Covenant with dignity and clear intention. They carried with them the specific communities that chose to align with their framework. They established themselves in territories that were distant from the Covenant's primary sphere of influence.
What remained was a Covenant that had been forced to confront its own complicity in the exercise of power and that had chosen, despite that complicity, to maintain the commitment to autonomy as the primary principle.