I Am Zeus

Zeus spat blood on the floor and raised his hands for the second time.

This time there was no speech, no orders, because the others understood. Poseidon pulled himself up off the wall, one hand still gripping his trident. Hades tore himself away from Persephone’s side, letting black-green flame lick up around his arms until it was painful to look at. Athena cleaned the blood from her mouth and dropped her spear. Odin planted Gungnir. Sun Wukong twirled his staff in one hand, the boyish grin gone. Kratos shrugged off his chains and let them dig into his skin.

They hit the Father at once.

Lightning, seawater, death, spring, war, wisdom, and unbridled murder rained down on him in a single overwhelming wave. The chamber groaned and keened under the strain. Stone pillars snapped like twigs. The floor itself seemed to buckle and pitch downward. For the first time since the battle had begun, the Father was forced to his knees, driven backward over the mosaic floor until he slammed painfully into the base of the doorway.

Zeus wasted no time.

He surged forward, one hand grasping the other, and drove both fists into the older god’s chest. Bone, and something deeper and darker, gave way beneath his touch. The Father bared his teeth in a silent snarl as whiteness poured from the wound in rivers. Hades was close behind him, driving a blade of raw death into the same place, twisting, trying to tear out whatever beat in that broad chest. Persephone followed right behind him, her magic chasing after Hades’s, a river of green fire running through the rents in the Father’s side.

The Father roared.

The sound was a physical blow. It sent Poseidon stumbling backward and sent Athena to her knees. Sun Wukong slid across the floor in a spray of sparks. Even Kratos had to dig his heels in to keep from being pushed back completely.

But the wounds persisted.

For the first time, the Father drew blood and did not mend it at once.

"Good," he growled, almost laughing. "Finally."

He backhanded Hades hard enough to send the dark lord skidding across the floor, then caught Zeus by the throat and lifted him clean off his feet. Lightning danced all over the Father in random bursts, wasted effort, as he glared down at the young god in his grasp. There was something almost fond in the older god’s expression, something like pride, but more closely allied to contempt.

"You could have been perfect," the Father said, his voice rough with emotion. "All of you. And this is what you chose, huh?"

Zeus threw a knee into the Father’s gut and forced him backward just long enough to clear the older god’s grip. He landed hard on his backside, gasping. Before the Father could finish him off, Odin drove Gungnir into the older man’s shoulder and held him there, forcing him to present his front to the light spilling from the doorway. Sun Wukong took his turn, driving his staff into the Father’s skull with all the strength he could muster. The impact rang out like the tolling of a temple bell.

The Father reeled, but the doorway pulsed.

The mass that had already begun to pass through it twitched and flexed. Something else, thicker and more substantial, was beginning to follow along behind it, pushing and crowding past the first mass. The air in the chamber grew heavier, almost cold, but it wasn’t winter. Veins in people’s eyes burst. Souls all over the Underworld shrieked at once. Across the mortal world, animals dropped dead in the fields, and birds fell from the sky.

Athena shouted something, but the words were lost in the din. She and Hermes both turned their attention to the doorway, focusing every shred of their power on trying to narrow the gap, to constrict the light, to stop what was coming. The light widened. Hermes fumbled uselessly at the edges, searching for a weakness the battle said wasn’t there, and received a shallow burn along one arm for his trouble.

Poseidon and Kratos wasted no time in launching themselves at the Father again, trying to keep him from interfering. Poseidon’s trident carved a deep furrow in the older god’s side. Kratos’s blades opened a similar wound in the Father’s abdomen. The wounds had no effect on him whatsoever. He moved as if wading through weeds, catching Kratos by the chains and driving him backward into Poseidon with enough force to send both men to their knees.

Hades and Persephone tried one last time to pin the Father down with their powers, to keep him from meddling with the doorway. Vines and tendrils of dark, life-giving energy wrapped around the older god’s waist. For a glorious, heart-piercing moment, it looked as if it might work. Then the Father simply bent his knees and tore the growths from his person, sending Hades sprawling on his back. His nose and ears bled bright green blood, and Persephone was nearly overcome trying to hold him upright.

Zeus forced himself back to his feet yet again.

His left arm refused to obey him. Lightning responded when he called for it, but it was weak, all color bled out of it, run dry from the well of power beneath his ribs. Around him, he saw that the others were all in similar states. They’d hurt the Father. They’d drained him. It wasn’t enough. Not by a long shot.

The second mass continued to push its way through the doorway, and the shape of it was beginning to take form. Something that might have been a head, or a crown, or a mouth loomed just beyond the reach of the light spilling from the opening. The ceiling split overhead, and huge slabs of rock fell, only to be unmade before they touched the floor.

The Father turned his head and regarded what was coming with something like hunger.

"You can’t stop this by killing me," the Father said, his voice strangely stretched, almost human in sound. "I’m only the key. They’re the door. And the door is already open."

Zeus stared at the Father, then at the light, then back again.

And he understood.

They would cut the Father down, waste him, hurt him, but it wouldn’t be enough. Every second they spent doing so was a second the thing at the end of the passage used to get closer. They could cripple him, maybe even kill him, if they pooled every shred of their power together. It wouldn’t be enough to stop the doorway. That thought sat like lead in his belly as he met Athena’s eyes across the room. She, too, had realized it.

The Father looked down at the blood streaking his lips and smiled.

"Yes," he said softly, almost tenderly. "Now you see it."

Another pulse, another wave of pressure, rolled out from the doorway to either side. The second mass forced its way into the chamber fully, towering and wrong, and the first splintered bits of whatever it was had begun to follow in its wake.

Zeus clenched his fist around the remains of his lightning.

Around him, the others did the same.

The Father stood between them and their fate, bruised but unbowed.

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