"You monsters of the old age—if you won't stay put in hell, you actually have the gall to crawl out? Seems it's time you remembered what thunder tastes like." Zeus's wrathful thunder-voice rolled across all of Mount Olympus.
In the sky, clouds gathered once more. Zeus unfurled his divinity, calling up a canopy of storm, ready to let these damned "traitors" who'd colluded with outside enemies savor the fury of a God-Emperor.
Frankly, the feud between the second-generation Titans and Zeus's third-generation gods is explosive even by mythic standards.
Cronus, the second-generation God-King, was a bastard; Zeus, the third-generation God-King (Emperor), was a brute. They may each perch on a moral high ground, speaking all righteousness, but from Thalos's vantage, they're cut from the same filthy cloth—trash, the lot of them.
Since Odin, for once, helped Thalos by going deep behind enemy lines and successfully stoking the fire, Thalos wasn't about to waste his dear little brother's efforts.
He rose from the supreme throne; as he moved, the gods below the steps hurried to their feet.
"That is Cronus, former God-King of Olympus, who bears a mortal grudge against Zeus. It was his 'good son' Zeus who overthrew his rule." With a single sentence he laid out the cause and effect, then added, "But the fellow is a bit weak. I'll send a projection over—come, all of you, with me."
"Yes, Your Majesty!" In the great hall, over a thousand deities bowed as one, shouting Thalos's holy name.
The spatial corridors now could only bear limited divine power; Thalos's true body could not pass. But a God-King–grade avatar could. Even if not the true God-Emperor, it was plenty awe-inspiring.
Unlike last time, when he tidied up Artemis after she came knocking, this was Thalos's first true move.
Every god felt their blood surge, a sense of destiny—of witnessing history—rising unbidden.
To war!
Watching that figure radiating gentle majesty, the gods in the hall, from highest rank to lowest, fell into marching order, forming a sweeping dragon of gods (and men) that streamed grandly toward the Rainbow Bridge.
On the other side, the Olympians were facing their greatest crisis.
Cronus's sudden prison-break dealt the sharpest possible blow to the authority of the reigning God-Emperor, Zeus.
Even knowing Thalos likely wouldn't personally descend to bear down on him, Zeus felt crushing pressure.
He wanted to force back the Æsir God-Kings first—only to find they ignored him and focused their formidable divine arts on covering Cronus as he climbed the mountain.
"Begone—!" A kilometer-high phantom of Zeus appeared atop the peak, and with a casual strike sent a thunderbolt down that made the ground at the mountain's foot feel on the verge of collapse.
In that instant, Cronus—who'd been beaten savagely in years past—instinctively hunched his neck, only for the little Nuwa in the distance to throw out an outrageous vortex of death that yanked the bolt aside.
Cronus watched with his own eyes as lightning that had fallen nearly straight was wrenched midair into a forty-five-degree swerve; a blast that could have dealt a Titan a grievous wound was wrapped in death-aether and turned into a chaotic eddy of energy. Even the eddy's aftershock shattered dramatic fissures across the solid rock of the holy mountain.
"Shameless Æsir!" Zeus roared, his bellow shattering the hundred-mile sheet of death-cloud Hel had drawn in from her homeland.
But no sooner had he driven Hel back than Freyr's solar domain detonated open, becoming an ever-brilliant light that devoured the thunder.
"Annoying—"
Zeus shouted again; his lightning speared through Freyr's sunburst gold, only to find—unexpectedly—a majestic, heavy-armored knightly god-phantom blocking what was left of his might.
He held the upper hand against every Æsir he faced, and yet advantage did not translate to carnage.
As the corridor spewed forth an underworld black tide, the other two Æsir death-goddesses hurled long-range strikes from afar yet again.
This time it was Apollo who stepped in, his light clashing head-on with the arts of Ereshkigal and Scathach. The final shock wave blasted a hundred-meter-deep crater out of a swath of ground fully the size of Athens beneath their feet.
But even as the Æsir laid into Zeus with relentless harassment, the fastest of them—Cronus—had already clambered to the summit where Zeus's temple crowned Mount Olympus.
"Hahaha! My good son! Your father has finally fought his way back—" The former God-King laughed wildly.
A God-King off the holy mountain and a God-King on it are two different orders of being.
Never mind that Cronus had been an agriculture god, his weapon nothing but a "broken sickle."
His battle power was anything but poor. At bottom, he held the writ of world-power.
Once he returned to this holy mountain at the center of the Greek world, proclaiming his legitimacy anew, the world duly fell into turmoil.
The Greek world has never been a one-god system.
Sure, the sky god Uranus and the earth mother Gaia are its most vital components. But many divine offices aren't under either's purview.
Because the last two Greek sky kings took their thrones by usurpation, not abdication, no handover ever existed.
Thus, a former God-King leaving a few backdoors in the laws of the world became only natural.
Zeus hurled thunder again. This time Cronus no longer flinched; he charged straight into the bolt, the ugly black-rock sickle in his hand suddenly flaring with a dazzling green radiance.
Boom!
A single shaft of lightning as thick as the Parthenon itself crashed into the Titan god that was Cronus—and failed to inflict decisive harm.
Though his whole body shuddered violently under the strike, though he was scorched black in places and stank like roasted meat, Zeus knew his dear old father hadn't taken nearly as much damage as his surface showed.
Vast portions of the lightning's force were being guided into the earth—more than half of it bled off by Mount Olympus.
Zeus blurted in shock, "Gaia?!"
"Hahaha! Zeus, you didn't think I'd fail and then sit quietly as a good prisoner, did you?" Cronus laughed without end.
Yes—Gaia the earth mother hadn't given up. She was secretly assisting her dear son again.
She couldn't make Cronus entirely immune to thunder, but she could shoulder the brunt of it, reducing the damage that Cronus and the Titans suffered.
On that side, Hera threw back her head and screamed with divine power, "Protect His Majesty! Protect His Majesty!"
This time, whether it was Poseidon bracing in the forward corridor against other powerful Æsir, or the Major Gods already in their temples on Olympus, they all had to grit their teeth, rush back, and brawl with the Titans who'd scaled the holy mountain.
Here, any casual exchange could smash a splendid temple to powder, send blood-rain mixed with shattered god-armor showering down on the mortal realm, and even heave up crimson waves on the Aegean that swallowed islands whole.
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