If he could grin, then he would have. It’d been a gamble. A gamble his siblings had felt too risky. It’d been so risky, in fact, that they’d set aside their differences and worked together to bind him further. Sure, they had all been mad at their sister, but they didn’t want her dead. It was bad enough that she’d somehow transformed herself into the consciousness that served as the warden of their prison. She’d become both greater than a god and less. She’d always been protective of mortals and hated when the other gods tinkered with her toys. Her love for her experiments, and her desire to see these mortal flourish, led her to sacrifice her divine being in return for enhanced but limited power. She had rewritten her divine code to contain her own family. Sentience had been abandoned for unparalleled protective power that ensured the gods couldn’t interact with her precious mortals.

As thorough as her preparations were, he was the god of war. He’d always been the strongest in conflict. Most of the time, conflict presented itself out in the open. His siblings had underestimated him, thinking that by striking covertly, he wouldn’t have enough mana to resist. They’d thought his divine energy investment in his most recent creation had left him weakened. They’d felt confident in their maneuvers. He wanted to laugh. What was sabotage but conflict disguised in stealth? Through this failed attempt at a coup, they had learned that he was the master of all conflict.

Not for the first time, he pondered the situation that had led to this moment. His siblings had pushed back with so much determination, it’d made even him think twice. Their family had never shown much unity. They’d been struggling against each other in pursuit of their individual goals since the beginning. This surge of unity hadn’t arisen because of any altruistic goals. Mortals often viewed gods as altruistic beings, when the truth was they were the most selfish entities in existence. This time, their teamwork sprang from a crippling fear of true death. He’d long since conquered this fear. Battle upon battle had forced him to ruminate on the possibility, no matter how unlikely. He’d made peace with near impossibility. Unlike him, his siblings were soft and would pay for a long time for their error.

Unfortunately, his split second of doubt had made a bigger impact than all his siblings’ machinations. The pause had forced him to rush, and he’d almost been unable to slip the seed through. Even expecting the attack hadn’t prepared him for the reality of his family’s actions impact on his mind. He couldn’t say that they loved each other, as this was a somewhat foreign concept to most of them, but they were family. Family was deeper than love. This meant something primal, something that their betrayal had drug out into the light. Something that had caused him to pause, and had almost cost him, them, everything. The crack in their prison that he’d focused considerable time and effort on forcing bigger had almost slammed shut before he could take action. If they’d willingly worked with him, one of them could have slipped through instead of a seed.

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Gaia was smart thought. She knew that her fellow gods would never trust one another. The fear of one of their brethren escaping and leaving them trapped prevented them from taking risks. They would never have allowed any one member of the pantheon to slip out unaccompanied. Hers was a multifaceted prison. Not only was the dimensional boundary a supercharged matrix of divine energy so complex that none other than the god of magic could fully comprehend it, but her intrinsic understanding of her siblings further reinforced her creation. They would rather languish in this void-like nothingness, then spend the rest of eternity knowing that only one god was free to rule the cosmos.

The manifestation of her new form nearly eclipsed that of the titans. Yet, where they could engage in creative thought, Gaia was now bound by pre-programmed rigid patterns of actions. He’d exploited the rigidity of her thought processes to create an opening. He had to marvel at Gaia. She was bound by rigid parameters, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t address loopholes. She was more or less tied to the moment and lacked any form of foresight. His breach hadn’t gone unnoticed by her system. She’d quickly sealed it up and created routines that would further strengthen the divine matrix. He’d never get another chance to make the same move.

Luckily, he’d been able to slip the core seed through just in time. As his siblings bombarded him with their essence, he siphoned it off and used it to strengthen his seed. The fools thought he would cower like a kicked dog, whimpering under the onslaught of their considerable might. Never did they expect he would use his older sister’s knowledge against them all. It was a bastardized version of her knowledge, but they hadn’t expected it in the least. He’d funneled their essence into the God core, and left them as husks of their former selves. Given enough time, they would recover, but he found he couldn’t concern himself with their wellbeing. His divine bindings siphoned a trickle of energy from each of them, ensuring he’d never get another chance to penetrate the divine boundary. Frustration warred with elation. He could only hope it would be enough for the seed to make its way to his unwitting apprentice, who would be led to discover their prison and release them from their torment.