Prologue
The endless
fields of heaven burned for days on end, blades of grass stubbornly refusing to
turn to ash, fires fed by the boundless energies locked within the celestial
plain. At one time, the heavens had been populated by a great many spirits.
Spirits of fire and of water, of forests and trees, of the wind and the sky.
Now, all was consumed by the wrath of the lesser gods. Monsters and giants had
driven the spirits away, leaving nothing but simple grassy fields behind, where
once great forests and seas and mountains once dwelt. The heavens were
abandoned, and what little life was left behind now burned in a fire
unquenchable.
I know this,
because I watched God try to put the fires out, and fail.
The lesser
gods, the Titans and their Olympian children, had turned their full thought on
the destruction of God and his heavenly home. I was among them, a foolish child
hoping to please her parents, not realizing the weight her actions carried.
Power flowed out of us in boundless waves of unchecked and unchallenged energy,
blazing the earth black and the sky red. Still the grass held its form, life
protected by the might of The Father, a God who could do so little to stop the
destruction his own creations were bringing against him.
I marched
with the Titans across the whole length of heaven, burning everything in my
sight, coming finally before the great throne of God, protected by the pillar
of marble and light that rose high above our heads. My eyes glistened with
youthful pride as Cronus and Zeus hammered on the doors of the great tower
themselves, calling to the so-called King of Kings to come forward and answer
for his crimes. He'd withheld the Earth from us, denied us the birthright of
the world we'd helped create. He would pay for his selfishness and pride. We
would have what was ours.
One last
laborious strike, and the great marble doors of the tower burst from from their
hinges, white light streaming out from the inside. I shielded my eyes at the
brightness, and for the first time, doubted our cause. Could a being so pure as
The Father truly be as evil as the Titans say? Was he keeping the Earth to
himself, or did he understand some greater purpose that my creators did not?
But look,
I thought. How he trembles in his tower, alone and defenseless. He hides his
shame in the light.
What a fool
I was.
“Come out
and face us!” Cronus called from outside the bare doorway. “Come out and meet
the judgment of your children!”
A few
moments of silence passed, where even the Titans themselves held their breath
awaiting the answer of the greatest being in the heavens.
“Judgment
belongs to me alone,” came a voice from within, weak and labored, tired from
resisting our power as we matched across the heavens to reach his throne.
“Judgment
belongs to the strong!” Cronus called. “And you have revealed your weakness.
Against the combined power of the gods, you are nothing!”
“Maybe...”
the voice answered, more pained. “But would children truly turn against their
father so easily, for a cause they do not fully understand?”
“You call
yourself the King of heaven, the creator of all,” Cronus responded. “And yet it
is we who aided you in your labors of creation, who helped fashion the heavens
and the Earth, and the spirits who now hide on the outer reaches of the
heavens, where our fires will soon reach. Who are we, if not your co-creators?
Who are we, if not your successors?”
As I
listened to Cronus's challenge, and to the weakened voice of the God I once
loved, my heart was stirred to pity. How the mighty had fallen. God, brought to
his knees by his own children, and Cronus, leading his own son Zeus in
rebellion against a dying king. Would the heavens truly benefit from such a
loss? Could there not be peace between us? In my heart, I prayed for mercy, but
I did not know to whom my prayer was directed.
“What would
you do with the Earth, were I to turn it over to you?” the voice from within
the tower asked, at almost a whisper.
Cronus
laughed.
“We would
shape it as we please and reserve no place for your baseless, weak, feeble
creations to come,” he said. “We could craft a world in our image, according to
our vision, and its splendor would endure for all eternity.”
“Such is not
my will...” the Father said sadly, my ears straining to hear his last, quiet words.
“Such is the
will of the gods,” Cronus said, and all the army of the Titans shouted out
their agreement. My voice alone did not join in the chorus.
Just then
the great fires that surrounded us roared into the new life, growing taller and
burning hotter than ever before. The blades of grass, which for so long had
clung to life by the Father's power, vanished in a blaze of ash and heat,
extinguished by the flames of our zeal. He protected them no more. He was
defeated.
Or so I
feared.
Suddenly the
light from within the tower flashed with an intensity I never imagined, and I
was forced to divert my eyes for fear of being blinded.
“My will
cannot be turned by any one's power,” the Father's voice roared, far louder and
far angrier than I had ever heard. “You claim to be gods! You claim to be
immortal! Then see, see what your immortality has given you!”
Suddenly a
great tear appeared in the sky above us, a great streak of black stretching
across the blood-red sky. A rushing wind howled in our ears, pulled us upward,
threatening to take us off our feet. The Titans were the first to lose their
grip on the soil, pulled by an unseen force into the tear above. Their forms
disappeared in the cloud of black, their screaming voices heard no more. Ahead
of me, I saw Zeus clinging to what little earth he could get his hands on, a
look of terror and guilt upon his face.
“Mercy!” I
found myself screaming above the winds. “Have mercy on your misguided
children!”
For a
moment, I believed that even the Father's mercy had run out, that we would be
sent into oblivion with our forebears. But then the wind settled and the great
tear above us disappeared. The sky was dark, and the light from the tower, once
so bright, was now little more than a faint glimmer. Finding my feet, I walked
alongside my Olympian brothers and sisters towards the broken door, peering
inside with trepidation. The broken form of an old man lay kneeling in the
center of a great hall, breathing harshly.
“They are
dead?” Zeus asked, looking up at the clear sky outside, his voice a mixture of
guilt and fear.
“No,” the
Father said, straining to stand to his feet. “Only banished. If you wish to
redeem yourselves for the damages you have caused, you must make ready for war
again. My plans cannot be halted, but they may be forestalled. There is much
work to be done.”
- The testimony of
Artemis, god of the wild, on the last day of the First War of Heaven.
