“I WILL NOT stand for it.” My voice thunders across the plain at the base of Mount Olympus and sends the satyrs that had been making a game of chasing one another scrambling into the stands of fir trees that line the slopes of the mountain. The original temples to each of the Twelve, built when Osteria first formed, dot the Olympian Plain like massive marble daisies scattered in a meadow of green. I would love to grab the boastful structures and pluck them from the ground.
“You’ll just have to. What’s done is done,” Zeus says tossing a fir cone between his hands and showing not even a hint of fear. He will learn fear. I will goad him into fighting me and I will win, the titans will win. His calm irritates me. I make a flicking gesture with my right hand. The cone flies up and hits Zeus on the center of his brow.
“Your son killed not one but two of my children.”
Zeus snatches up the cone, but does not resume his game of feigned boredom. Instead, he stares levelly at me.
“Children?” Zeus scoffs. “That lion you called your son was threatening the people of the Nemea district in Portaceae. Killing children.”
“Mortals.” I let out a condescending snort. “Why should I care about mortals regardless of how few years they’ve seen? And what’s your excuse for the hydra. My daughter had ceased to be a threat to your precious mortals decades ago.”
“At the cost of Portaceae’s trade route. Herc Dion had every right to kill both of your monsters.”
I clench my jaw so tightly I crack my molars. Before the sound leaves my ears, the teeth have healed themselves. The anger, the frustration at Zeus’s short-sightedness bursts within me swelling my body to three times its normal size. I storm across the plain in five strides hitting my head with massive fists trying to sort out how to make the god understand, to listen to reason. When I turn around Zeus has not backed down, nor changed the arrogant expression of privilege on his face. Instead, the head of the Twelve has made himself just as large as me as if trying to meet my challenge. Good. At least he is finally reacting. I come to a stop in front of Zeus, nearly bumping chests with the god.
“Mortals, always mortals. They abandoned you once, you know? They won’t hesitate to do it again.” I force myself to calm my voice. “Why do you defend their actions? Why give them leave to kill the creatures of my blood? To kill any creatures? You know why the satyrs play here? Because the humans have hunted them out of all but the wildest areas of Osteria. Olympus is their refuge.”
“And I suppose you have the solution?”
“Rid Osteria, rid the entire world of mortals,” I say as if this notion isn’t as clear as the cloudless sky above us.
“And what? Live as the titans do, on the edge of existence, merely forces of nature? No thanks. There are too many pleasures to be had in this world. Besides, even if the humans abandoned the gods before, they found us once again. That’s all that matters. They worship us. What god could argue with that? Perhaps if you offered them something besides your monstrous offspring, they would worship you as well. Look at Prometheus. He gave them fire when all their technology had been lost in the worst times after the Disaster. Now he is respected, honored. You? You only give them trouble.”
My hand trembles with the urge to slap Zeus. Prometheus? Prometheus is a traitor. The near extinction of the humans after the Disaster had been the titans’ most powerful era in centuries. After too long of humans arrogantly believing in their conquest over the natural world, nature’s chaos – titanic chaos - ripped its way through and snatched the world from them. It was a delightful time of watching mortals suffer, of watching them die from things they had thought so clever, of watching their devastation at the hands of the mutants their inventions had created. It was a good time to be a titan.
The gods had been weakened by the absence of mortals. Without mortals, gods can’t exist, or not as they prefer to exist: amongst pomp and riches and power. It had come so close to the gods being gone for good, to the gods being nothing more than vapor on the winds blown from titan breath. Both gods and humans had been on the verge of extinction until Prometheus took pity on the mortals and gave each of the small bands of people scattered around what would become Osteria the knowledge of how to make fire. I still cannot fathom how mortals had become so reliant on their technology to have lost the knowledge of fire making – one of their earliest and most primitive of skills. From Prometheus’s treacherous gift of fire, it had only been a short leap to forming larger groups, creating towns, and rediscovering the gods. And rediscovering their lost technology. How long until they begin their battle against nature once more?
“Can you not see they’re heading down the same path as before? They will gain more knowledge, they will increase their technology for better or for worse, they will think themselves above such nonsense as the Twelve and they will forget you.”
Zeus apparently thinks it is his turn to give a condescending laugh.
“They have already figured out how to harness electricity from the sun, how to grow and tend crops and how to power trains for transport, and yet they do not worship us less. These are different humans. This time will be different.”
“You are a fool. What of the kingdoms? They were once part of the twelve poli, but they broke away. And when they did, they didn’t hesitate to abandon their belief in you. And what of the Council? I don’t see them offering you homage.”
“The kingdoms make up only a small portion of Osteria. And the Osteria Council is manned by people from the poli. There is no threat.”
I squeeze my hands so fiercely in frustration the bones of my fingers crack into pieces. It’s as if every drop of logic I try to drip into the jug of Zeus’s mind dribbles out of some unseen hole.
“Mortals are getting too numerous. If you allow them to keep expanding, they will try to find their way against the natural order and there will be another Disaster. I don’t want to see the wanton destruction of the land and its creatures happen yet again at the hands of mortals. If you don’t rein them in, the titans will.”
“You wouldn’t dare. It would be war again. A war we won once before, remember?” He resumes his cone tossing as if this somehow proves his point.
“Do you think we didn’t learn from that last war? That’s the difference between gods and titans. We learn. We see mortals for what they are: animals that can be used and then disposed of, not beings to boost our own egos.”
“Your threats are nothing more than the breeze rustling the tops of those fir trees. You should learn to appreciate the mortals; they can be quite enjoyable. Take for instance my most recent sampling, Io.” Zeus sighs longingly as he says the name. “One taste has left me wanting more ever since. Mortals do have much to offer. They are wonderfully distracting playthings.”
“Are they? Let’s see.” I make two strong thumps against the ground with my already-healed fists. In the distance, the satyrs bleat in fright. Being so near to me, the earth rumbling knocks Zeus off his feet. The cone he has been toying with rolls my way. When the shaking stops, Zeus stands up and brushes down his tunic before fixing his eyes on me.
“Control yourself, Typhon. You can’t win this.”
The god waves a hand and disappears in a white flash. Just as I swing my foot to kick Zeus’s fir cone I’m blinded by another flash, this time a red one. A dark-haired god with even darker eyes catches the cone as it takes flight. Compared to my inflated size, my infuriated size, this god is a speck. Something about him, his wry, conspiratorial look sparks my curiosity. I shrink down to stand only two heads taller than him.
“I heard what you said to Zeus. Actually, I think the whole plain did.”
“What do you want, Ares?”
“To help you. You want rid of the gods, right?”
“I want rid of mortals,” I respond. Although he is a god, I do like Ares. The wars and invasions his people have instigated have killed off many humans.
“What if there were simply fewer mortals. You know my Areans have always regulated their breeding and that we do not encourage technology.”
Indeed Osteria could use Aryana as an example. Breeding is allowed only by specific people who are granted no more than two children. One becomes a fighter in their vigiles and the other becomes a raider to forage, hunt and steal the food the Areans do not grow. Like their god they are a tough people ready to fight at a moment’s notice. They live frugally, staying lean and strong. And as he says, they do not encourage the curiosity that spawns the development of technology.
“Think of an Osteria that is ruled as Aryana. With your help, we can make that happen.”
“And the other gods?’
“What other gods?” he asks with a knowing grin.
Something strange happens then, something so rare that at first I don’t recognize it. I reach my fingers to my face wondering what’s happening. Only when I feel the crinkle at my eyes and the corners of my lips pushing up my cheeks, do I realize Ares has made me smile.