I Am Zeus

The second hand came through the gate, tearing through the space as if cutting along the threads that held the heavens together. Wider than boulevards, fingers smashed against the first, and the pressure, too, was immediate. What little remained of the chamber’s integrity failed altogether to resist the addition. Stone, light, and lingering chaos were all crushed beneath the newcomers’ weight, and cracks raced out and away from where the newcomers touched the ground. Through the bedrock, through the Underworld, through Olympus, through the mortal realm, and beyond, the fractures spread. Mountains cracked and oceans buckled as the sky itself split open along veins of black.

Zeus felt each one as if something sharp had scraped along his ribs.

Still, he did not look up.

The Father loomed in his grip, broken, the light in his face spilling in uneven streams, one arm dangling uselessly at his side. Zeus struck the man again, sending him into the ground with a crash of powder and stone, and chaos spilled from the blow, devouring whatever solid order the Father could still manage to manifest. "You invited this," Zeus growled, lifting the other man up by the collar only to slam him down once more, "you opened the way and called it justice."

Another hit sent the Father’s head snapping sideways, and the light shot from his mouth in ragged sprays. "This does not make you any less of a coward for looking away from it."

Zeus kept raining down short, sharp blows. There was no room for the Father to fight back, not with the power behind each strike, not with the feeling of sheer, consuming momentum that came with them. The man’s body jerked and twitched with each impact, his presence growing weaker, less certain, but still, even as his light dimmed, he did not beg for mercy. Still, his eyes held the same cold satisfaction.

Zeus halted with a fist raised, the chaos around it snarling and writhing. The Father was sprawled on the ground before him, his form barely holding together. "You lose," Zeus said quietly. "Whatever force you bade to come through that gate, you lose." He released the man’s collar, pushing him down with his palm. "You always have."

Then Zeus turned his attention to the hands.

The gods were already waging war upon them, their efforts chaotic and desperate. Athena’s spear was white-hot as she drove it into the gap between the fingers of the second hand, while Poseidon planted both hands on his trident, channeling the power of the sea into a series of towering spears that he thrust into the knuckles. Around them, Hades and Persephone worked together, twisting threads of death and rebirth around the wrist. Odin’s Gungnir pulsed with strange runes as he drove it into the bones of the nearest hand, and Sun Wukong’s staff had grown to an extraordinary size, smashing into the space between thumb and index finger with all the force of a falling star. Kratos had wrapped his chains around the same thumb, pulling it back with every ounce of his strength, his roar drowning out the ringing of his own metal.

But all of it, every effort, every attack, was in vain. The hands barely seemed to notice the punishment being rained down upon them.

Zeus moved through the maelstrom, all chaos and sky, and planted his fist into the nearest wrist. He felt the force of his blow slam into the structure of the hand, sending black-gold shockwaves across it, and knew that it had done some damage. The hand had reacted in kind, flexing its fingers against his fist. But Zeus still did not relent. He poured everything he had left into his fist, driving the force of his entire being, of his very existence as the god of Chaos, into the heart of the hand. He wanted to unmake what was not meant to be made, to unmake the limb that had no right to exist in this place, in this time.

"Together!" he heard Athena shout.

They all joined in, and Zeus felt the power behind their attacks, the power of his companions, crash into the hands with renewed strength. All of them, each and every god present, were throwing everything they had into the attempt to stop the force that had come through the gate. Lightning and chaos, sea and death, rebirth and war, cunning and carnage, all came together in a single effort against the hands and the gate from which they had come. The glow of it all lit up the chamber, the hands, the gate, in flashes of violent color, and briefly, it seemed as if their effort might be enough.

It was not.

The being beyond the gate had stopped testing the edges and was moving in proper now. A great mass followed the two hands, peaking at a head that was agony to look at directly. It did not climb through the breach, not in any true sense. It slid down, as if the world itself were a slope, and the gate stretched around it impossibly, like skin around a wound. The pressure it exerted was overwhelming, crushing, but what the gods felt was something else, something deeper. Their creations failed them utterly, one by one. Zeus saw his chaos shriek and writhe away. Poseidon’s water flashed to steam and then gone. The shadows Hades wove unraveled before his eyes. Persephone’s light guttered and died, and Athena’s spear tip cracked and split. One by one, their efforts were swallowed up by the sheer force of something that did not need to conquer to exist.

The Father, still broken on the floor, laughed. "You cannot hold a door against what was always meant to walk through it."

The being continued to slide down, closer to them with every passing moment. It settled its bulk on the space between realms, and the world shuddered under its weight. Whole stretches of the Underworld went dark as if they had simply ceased to exist, and entire districts of Olympus crumbled into ruin. In the mortal realm, the sky split in numerous places, its edges buckling in ways no man could understand. Spirits, those that had not yet been claimed by death, scattered in all directions. Mortals who had been living at the time dropped to their knees, unable to help, their tears falling without them knowing why.

Zeus pushed himself forward, feeling the power of his own existence, still furious, and delivered a final, powerful strike to the being as it entered their world. The attack, too, failed utterly, vanishing into the folds of the newcomer’s form as a drop of water would fall into an ocean. It hardly slowed the thing’s progress at all.

Athena cried out, her voice raw, as she and the others delivered a final, desperate attack. Poseidon roared as he did the same, spending every last bit of his energy. Hades and Persephone joined hands and spent whatever strength they had left binding the being in place. Odin drove his Gungnir into the earth and spent everything he had in a final effort. Sun Wukong and Kratos both fought with everything they had, their weapons threatening to snap in half.

They were not enough. Not even close.

The newcomer stopped where it was, its entire body fitting within their realms now, so large that the chamber, the mountain, and the sky beyond were only details at the end of its limbs. The two hands still held, still braced against the broken space, and beyond them, the darkness stretched up and away into the void. The silence that lasted between heartbeats was deafening.

Then, with that same feeling of overwhelming pressure, the true attack began.

Zeus looked up at the thing the Father had summoned and the war they had all fought, and with the light of his chaos still crackling at his fingertips, he realized that it was over.

Something new had come to this place, and it was only just becoming aware of their presence.

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