Scene 1
"Mother?"
I looked to Rhea, only for her to raise one hand, stopping me before I could speak any further.
A presence entered my temple.
Not walked near it. Not brushed against the border of my domain. Entered.
The scent came first.
Old time. Rotten authority. The bitter stench of my father Chronos clinging to something that should have been impossible for any child to carry without being crushed beneath it.
One glance outside told me enough.
Every young god near the temple had frozen in place.
Cupbearers stood mid-step. Lesser attendants held trays in unmoving hands. Even the flames in the braziers had stopped flickering, locked in the same crooked shape they had taken the instant time stopped flowing around them.
My eyes went to the entrance.
A teenage boy appeared there wearing the kind of suit Mother once described Hades's youngest son favoring. The top hat on his head sat lazily, almost carelessly, tilted in a way that should have looked childish if not for the eyes beneath it.
One eye watched the room with bored disinterest.
The other shone with emblems of my father's domain.
He limped forward by himself.
Each step was slow. Controlled. Painful enough that no one could mistake it, yet steady enough to make it clear he had chosen to walk instead of being carried. He entered Zeus's territory without permission, without escort, and without fear.
For the first time in a long while, I felt Zeus's attention turn fully toward my temple.
The boy carried something at his chest.
Poseidon's greatest prize from the war against our father.
Chronos's personal pendant.
A thing I had only heard of in passing, and never from anyone foolish enough to speak of it loudly.
The boy stopped before my table and removed his hat.
"Greetings, Queen Mother Rhea and Queen Hera," he said, bowing his head. "I have come to receive the approval of the Queen of Queens for myself and my elder brothers officially joining the war."
"Brothers?"
I looked to Rhea.
She gave a small nod without speaking.
The boy reached into his shadow. Darkness unfolded beneath his hand like a cabinet opening, and three crowns emerged from it one by one.
He laid them before me.
The moment they touched the table, Zeus's aura rose in fury.
Not enough to strike. Not enough to violate the temple. But enough to make every piece of gold in the room hum with suppressed lightning.
I stared at the crowns.
Three princes.
Three claims.
Three declarations that Hades's children were no longer remaining as hidden pieces behind the underworld's walls.
"Very daring of you, CuelJuris," I said.
The boy lifted his head.
"The hidden son of my brother Hades," I continued. "Prince of Hell. Destined King of Recording and Wisdom."
His expression did not change.
"I will bless the three princes," I said grimly. "But know this clearly. None of you are qualified to take part in the King's War."
The words were for Zeus as much as they were for him.
A necessary appeasement.
CuelJuris bowed his head in acceptance.
Rhea rose beside me. Her hand passed over the crowns first, her divinity settling across them with the weight of the Titan Queen. I followed after her, placing my own blessing upon each crown.
Not a coronation.
A protection.
A restriction.
A warning to any God-King who decided a falling-out gave him the right to strike at the princes through their main domains.
The crowns absorbed the blessings in silence.
CuelJuris took them back into his shadow and offered another bow. Then he placed a book on the table.
He did not explain it.
He did not ask permission.
He simply left it there and turned away.
Each step back toward the entrance looked slower than the last. The pendant on his chest pulsed once, and I felt the pull of Hades from below and Chronos from somewhere far older than this room.
Then the boy was gone.
Pulled back into the Dark Realms before Zeus could decide whether anger was worth consequence.
Only after his presence vanished did the flames move again.
Scene 2
"Polo, what just happened? I could've sworn you were right here."
Hermes caught up to me as I stepped out of the temple grounds, my grip tightening around my staff.
I had failed.
The thought tasted bitter.
I had moved the moment Juris appeared, intending to launch a trap before he could officially leave. If I could have tied even a thread of Fate to him, tracking him later would have been easier. Artemis's divine messages had proven nothing solid about the twin brothers' domains, and without a proper mark, both of them remained too slippery to read cleanly.
But I had missed my chance.
"Juris was here," I said. "Dio witnessed it as well. Or are you going to play dumb after dragging him into action earlier than we agreed?"
I pointed my staff to my left.
Dionysus materialized slowly, as if a veil had been peeled away from him one inch at a time. The end of my staff rested against his throat. His chaos-filled eyes met mine, and for a moment both of us said nothing.
Then he smiled.
"Yes," Dio said. "And quit blaming me. I've been fighting him longer than you've known Ten. Don't ruin my fun, Apollo."
There was irritation beneath the smile.
Not much.
Just enough to prove he had failed at something too.
Residual time laws clung to him like invisible chains. They were faint now, but still present, woven into his body and domain with the kind of delayed cruelty only Chronos would enjoy.
Hermes stepped back, looking between us.
"He hit you with a delayed effect from when you tried to get Father to strike?" Hermes asked. "You idiot. That's why I told you to be careful when I warned you about Chronos aiding him against Conquest."
Dio's smile thinned.
My own patience followed.
Hermes stepped farther away, wisely deciding not to remain between us. Dio and I had both wanted to kill each other more than once. Today, he had ruined one of my best chances to pull ahead of our rivals in the underworld.
Regardless of what I thought of Zeus, benefiting the most was the goal shared by all of us Fateless.
That was why I had slowly shifted Hermes toward Heaven alongside me. His motion, pathways, and refusal to remain where Fate placed him could influence his ability to shed her grip.
But Dio's interference had given Juris another chance to move first.
"It's over with now," I said, lowering the staff slightly. "He made his entrance known by sealing every god under Major rank, including you at Mid Major rank, Dio."
His eyes narrowed.
"You better think my offer over," I continued. "Or Tenebris will devour you before you finish laughing."
I turned away and pulled Hermes with me.
He did not argue as I handed him my staff.
"Cleanse yourself," I said. "I'm not letting any residual effect from our grandfather linger inside you before the next fight."
Hermes took the staff with both hands, his earlier humor fading as the weight of the warning settled in.
Behind us, Dionysus remained where he was, smiling like a fool and watching like a snake.
Scene 3
"I'll kill you!"
Ares's sword crashed down toward me.
I caught it on my spear.
The force behind the strike was impressive for his age, but his balance was awful. Rage poured through his laws behind me, missing entirely as I shifted the angle of my spear and let his own weight drag him forward.
Ayin and Eli moved on either side of me.
Ayin's sky laws cut through the air in delicate arcs while Eli's nature laws spread beneath the battlefield like patient roots. Together, they tore apart Ares's followers with a precision his younger war gods could not match.
Most of them had not even lived half a million years.
Ayin and Eli had been born from Gaia's natural races — fairy and elf — and their affinity to her domain ran deeper than many divine children understood. Their mortal origins were not weaknesses. They were foundations.
Bale, the leader of the three, remained inside Gaia's abode, training her protector.
Which meant today, Ayin and Eli were my sword and shield.
"Cousin," I said, chuckling as Ares tried to rip his sword free, "you can't even swing without losing your footing. You'd have better luck killing a tree than a rabbit."
I swept his legs out from under him.
Before he could hit the ground, I stomped down, sending a pulse through the earth that bounced his body back upward. My hand caught his hair, and with a low-powered Sun-enhanced punch, I drove him into the ground hard enough to leave a crater.
The earth groaned.
Ares roared.
I grabbed him by the hair again and threw him through a line of trees.
He came charging out a moment later like a raging bull, flames bursting from his nose. Eli flicked one finger.
A small vine rose in his path.
Ares tripped.
His followers froze.
The difference was too clear to ignore.
My mortal Minor Gods, armed and trained by the underworld's greatest, were humiliating his War Gods on land he had thought he could conquer.
Their path through Gaia's domain had led them here, to the original home where I first met Ayin.
The homeland she had been born in.
The place Eli had escaped to.
Long before I awakened from meditation and transported them to a safer home like I promised over one and a half million years ago.
Ayin wielded the Sword of Discord.
Eli carried the Whip of Styx.
Their teachers had crafted those artifacts personally, just as Bale had received his Reaper's scythe. At some point, without me noticing, the Big Four had turned the education of my mortal followers into an arms race.
Thanatos, Eris, Styx, and the others all blessing students, all shaping weapons, all quietly preparing those who would follow me into war.
My father had titled Ayin and Eli himself when he pulled their True Souls out of Fate.
The Demon of the Damned.
The Angel of Life.
I placed my foot on Ares's chest and pressed him into the soil.
"So, cousin," I said, lowering Death laws into him, "now that you have lost, will you hold up your promise and never return here?"
He fought against my laws with his War domain, but the difference in concept and rank was too wide. His War could rage all it wanted. My Death pressed down with the inevitability of an ending.
He sat in the Mid Minor rank.
My Death had already reached Peak Minor.
His artificial birth began to show beneath the decay. Crimson bone revealed itself under the surface of his divine flesh.
"I will!" Ares shouted. "Just let me go, you bastard!"
I removed my foot.
Then I kicked him.
He flew out of my followers' homeland and tore a trench through the forest before vanishing beyond the border.
His followers stopped fighting.
Fear spread across their faces as they looked at Ayin and Eli.
Then they ran.
As fast as their divine bodies allowed.
Scene 5 — Hermes
"Damn, Ares. Ten did a number on you."
I zipped around him while his sword failed to touch even a strand of my hair.
Ares's anger kept rising, his flames puffing from his nose with every breath. Polo and Dio watched quietly from the side while our sisters bandaged Ares beneath the shade of Hera's garden.
Hebe played music softly nearby, the melody settling over the garden like a thin blanket trying to smother the tension.
It did not work.
"Just stop for one second, you bastard!"
Ares lunged.
His sword stabbed into the ground.
I stepped onto the handle and crouched, locking eyes with him.
There was shame there.
Buried under the rage. Under the fire. Under the bull-headed pride.
Before I could say anything, a hand grabbed the back of my clothes and lifted me off Ares's sword.
"That's enough, Hermes."
Apollo set me down beside him, then looked at Ares.
"Ten is more dangerous than you've given him credit for," Apollo said. "He is the same one who took down Father's greatest enforcer, Aether. He did that when he was only ten thousand years old."
Ares's jaw clenched.
"Granted," Apollo continued, "he allowed his domain to run wild in madness after the siege wore him down. But do not forget why that happened."
The garden quieted.
Even Dio stopped smiling for a moment.
"Father accepted many of the Minor Gods who are now part of your faction," Apollo said. "Some of them took part in the hunt for a young Death God's Grotto Heart. Others joined the siege that pushed him so far Uncle Hades had to step in or risk a war."
Ares looked away.
"That is why I only brought Hermes with me to fight Ten," Apollo said. "But you refused to listen. I told you he was connected to the deeper portions of Gaia's lands."
He shook his head and pointed to the chair beside him.
"Sit."
Ares hesitated.
Then he sat down next to Apollo and Hebe with a huff, flames puffing from his nose as he tried to think of a way to recover his pride.
"I'll win next time for sure," he muttered.
I laughed under my breath.
Polo did not.
Dio only smiled wider, as if the next disaster had already become entertaining.