It was one of those days where I couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed. Thankfully, I wasn’t alone. I looked at the woman sleeping soundly beside me.
“Helena?”
It didn’t matter that much, so I’d just call her that. Her skin was bronzed and glowing, her long blonde hair shimmering in the rays of sunshine that found their way into my chambers. Her small chest rose with each breath.
The woman had one arm outstretched above her head, the other under her head, and she covered my leg with hers just as I closed my eyes again. With a slow hand, she started to trace my leg with her finger.
I wasn’t fully awake yet, but I could feel her breath on my neck. Just as I was beginning to liven up, the door to my chambers slammed open and one of the servants appointed to my chambers rushed in. She let the slightest hint of surprise escape her before she straightened her face and looked up at the ceiling.
“Master Zeus?” she said, with the tiniest of shivers betraying her discomfort. “You are terribly late.”
“Late for what?” I said turning toward her, trying to remember if I had any obligations on that day.
“Sire,” the woman said, suppressed frustration creeping into her voice, “you were to meet with your father at dawn. Master Cronus demanded you and your siblings appear before him.”
“Crows be damned.”
I pulled myself out of Helenas embrace and headed straight into the small pool to wash my body.
“I’ll be there as fast as I can!” I shouted, but quickly realized she had already left.
I couldn’t blame her. I knew I wasn’t your average type of god when it came to my behavior, and she understandably didn’t want to have to deal with my angry father either.
I hastily scrubbed myself in the magically heated pool and rushed out to rub my body on a soft linen towel. All the while, Helena just watched me. I wasn’t sure if she was hoping I’d return to bed with her or if she just wasn’t a morning person. I had no choice but to leave. If there was one thing father liked, it was punctuality and order, and he was going to have none of that today because of me. I could only hope this wasn’t about another of his paranoid notions.
I looked at my options and decided to wear a full-body set of white robes. It made the most sense in terms of efficiency considering it’d make me look as formal as death but was also quick to put on. As much as I wanted to sport my battle gear and show off to my siblings, this wasn’t going to be that kind of day.
I slipped into my formal wear and went to kiss the woman still laying in my bed.
“I’m sorry, Helena, love” I said and moved in for a kiss just in time to feel her furrow her brows.
“My name’s not Helena,” she said, tensing up.
“I... fuck,” I said and looked at her awkwardly.
* * *
Name: Semeli of Argyros
Race: Human
Class: Mage
Level: 11
* * *
I hadn’t even considered scanning her.
“I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry, Semeli, but I need to leave. I promise I’ll make it up to you as soon as I’m done with my father.”
I stepped away and saw her face come to rest in an expression of anger by the time I reached the double doors of my chamber.
“I’m just gonna close these to give you some privacy,” I said, pulling the doors shut behind me just in time to hear the shattering of a glass on the other side of them.
I really couldn’t blame her. I probably would have reacted the same way.
Making my way through the corridors of my palace at this time of day felt more like walking through a dead city. Everyone was still sleeping off last night’s feast. Life as a god on Mount Orthys was great, but it would only ever be as good as the company you kept. Which was exactly why I had hand-picked the mortals working in my palace to be able to keep up with this lifestyle. And if it meant refreshing them every few years, so be it. Nobody was made for eternal partying. Well, almost nobody.
The entrance to my palace stood at the base of the mountain’s peak, with the palaces of my siblings much closer to the top where, of course, father and mother’s lavish residence stood. Being the youngest son had its advantages in that people didn’t have too many expectations of me—not too much hunting of mythical beasts or appearing at formal dinners—but the biggest bitch was that every time I was summoned by father, I had to climb up the mountain’s nine hundred and ninety-nine steps.
Begrudgingly, I put one foot in front of the other and started the long journey up. I’d always hated climbing these stairs growing up, even though I knew they presented a great exercise for my then mortal body. However, since my ascension, I no longer needed to spend any time training to maintain my physique. It was forever sealed in the peak condition I had when I finished my godhood quest. Which meant I hated climbing the stairs even more now that they didn’t offer me anything.
There were plenty of magical means that would float people up to the top in no time but father would never allow such a thing, and I knew just the reason why. It wasn’t about keeping us in shape or remembering what we had done to reach our immortal state. None of that horse shit was true. It was simply that forcing everyone, including his other immortal guests, to climb almost a thousand steps before reaching him was a stark reminder that he was the ruler of this place. He was so important that others had to go through this small ordeal just to lay eyes on him.
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Halfway up the stairs, I’d built enough anger inside me for the ludicrousness of my father’s demand to significantly slow my pace. He was going to give me shit either way so there was no reason to run like a headless chicken. At least I could take some pride in my small act of personal rebellion. I just hoped at least one of my siblings had forgotten about the meeting as well, though I sincerely doubted that.
Poseidon had just returned from a hunting trip in the elemental plane of water the day before and even though I hadn’t seen him for months, he chose to retreat to his palace as soon as he arrived in order to rest rather than joining me. In retrospect, that made a lot of sense since we were now going to meet father at dawn. I couldn’t wait to get this stupid thing over with and sit down with him and listen to his stories over a cup of wine. He always had tales of great hunts to share whenever he came back from his travels.
Hades on the other hand was always the most perfect son my father could ever hope to have, the prime example of what a firstborn should be and act like. He was always punctual, his hair and clothing always clean and perfect, and his fighting record impeccable. I was glad he was doing great for himself but sometimes I just wished he’d take the stick out of his ass and learn to enjoy the simpler pleasures of immortality. He was all ‘Yes, sire’ this and ‘Yes, sire’ that, he barely took care of his own needs. I had no doubt he hadn’t gotten laid for ages. All that was to say that he definitely wouldn’t be late to this meeting.
I turned back to look at the seven hundred or so spiraling steps and see whether my sister, Demeter, was following me, but I didn’t see her anywhere. If there was anyone else that might be late to our father calling us, it would have been her. What’s more, Demeter wouldn’t even be late because she forgot. She was too good for that. No, she would be late on purpose.
Demeter was probably the strongest among the four of us, as she’d continued training hard to level up even after she gained her immortality, though Hades would often contest her power. What none of us contested was how independent and free she was. She didn’t care for niceties and she wouldn’t take orders from anyone, including our father, something that had gotten us into hot water on more than a few occasions. And by hot water, I meant we were brought close to zero HP repeatedly before our father allowed a healer to replenish us. Nevertheless, it seemed that my sister had decided against ignoring our father’s call today.
I reached the top of the stairs and stretched my limbs, allowing my father’s guards to shower me with salutes and urge me to make haste and enter his audience chamber. To my surprise, there was nobody waiting for me in the hallways of the palace. In fact, there was nobody there at all. The gates to the audience chamber were open and I could hear my father’s voice shouting, but there was no sign of anyone else. I could only hope he didn’t take his anger out on them.
Moving closer, I started to be able to make out what my father was shouting.
“...the ungrateful little bitch of a son,” he said. “He will get it worse than all of you.”
“Zeus is a man of his own!” my sister Demeter shouted back at him. “You can’t force him to do anything. I would leave this place immediately too had you not tied us up.”
He’d tied them up?
Instantly, I turned my swift pace directly toward the audience chamber’s large gates into a quiet walk over to one of the open windows.
“It matters not,” Father continued. “I will deal with him afterward. However, he won’t get to know why his life ended.”
What the fuck?
I stepped on the elevated back of the wooden chairs in order to better see what was happening in there.
* * *
Name: Cronus
Race: Titan
Class: King of Titans
Level: 64
* * *
Father was standing on the top of the dais where his throne towered over everything else in the huge room. A few steps below him, all three of my siblings were looking up at him, thick metal rings around their necks, wrists, and ankles, connected by chains to the ground. None of my father’s guards would ever be able to chain all three of them, which could only mean one thing. This was a trap. I felt worried for the first time since I’d gained my immortality and stopped adventuring.
Father had always been paranoid and had raised his hands against us many times but he would never dare kill us. He could hide the beatings from our mother, Rhea, but he would not be able to hide our deaths. What could possibly have taken place for him to suddenly change his mind?
“How have we wronged you, father?” Hades asked.
“Get a hold of yourself, man,” Poseidon said. “I just arrived yesterday before being summoned here. We haven’t wronged him. He’s just lost it.”
“Silence, impudent pups!” Cronus said, and hit the butt of his enchanted lance on the marble steps of the dais. “Your hubris is not of your making, but dealt to you by the hands of fate. For I have been warned of your treachery by an oracle of the highest powers of divination.”
“Treachery?” Hades gasped. “Father, I would never—”
A stroke of red light hit my brother’s shoulder, cutting his sentence short and replacing it with an agonized scream.
“You will not speak unless addressed,” Father said, and took a step closer to them. “The oracle has revealed to me that a fate similar to that of my own father is to befall me. Just as I overturned Uranus, so will my children try to seize my power. But I will not make the mistake he did. I will not allow you to live long enough to even think of it.”
“We would never do such a thing!” Hades shouted.
“Fuck,” Demeter said, pulling hard on the chains binding her to the ground.
I would have expected my father to order them to shut up again, but he just continued stepping closer. Lightning crackled in my arms as I prepared to attack him. There was nothing more I could do. I would not let him kill my siblings, even if I had no chance of beating him myself. However, if I could manage to free Demeter, perhaps she could hold him long enough for me to free the others and escape.
I raised my hand to strike at Demeter’s chains but was left stunned at what my father did next.
His whole body underwent a transformation, as horrible as it was swift. His skin ripped as his muscles flexed and swelled at an incredible rate. Those muscles ripped in turn and a beast emerged from them, its flesh a deep red color. The head resembled that of a ram, with gigantic, curled horns that glistened in the sun, shining through the glass ceiling above.
I had heard of titans transforming while fighting the primordial deities that preceded them, but I had never seen my father’s true form. The beast before me forced fear into to all who dared look at it. Its body resembled that of a bear in terms of muscle mass and it now stood at least eighty feet tall. Its ram’s head was large enough to bring a building down with a single strike.
* * *
My father’s real form barely fit in the immense audience chamber, which now looked like it had shrunk around him. Not wasting any more time and pushing myself beyond the irrational fear that was still holding me tightly, I sent a lightning bolt at the ground that held my sister’s chains.
The chains rattled and the ground beneath them exploded, but to my disappointment, they did not break. Instead, the power of my attack was absorbed into them and traveled through her body. Before she was even able to turn around and look for the source of the attack, the beast leaned forward and devoured her whole.