I Am Zeus

Pressure pressed down over the ruined chamber like a second sky.

The being had arrived fully within its own universe, an expanse so vast that the mountain around the gate was little more than an inconsistency on a god’s ankle. Its body stretched up and away into the darkness, an obsidian monolith barring any further view of the "true" heavens. There was no clear distinction to be made between the entity and the space it occupied- the skin, where it could be made out at all, shifting between polished void and some complex glyphed pattern that caused the eyes to ache when attempting to focus on it. A great slab of dense material took the place of the face, save for a narrow slit running horizontally along the center, which may or may not have housed the eyes.

The thing did not move at first, making no effort to address the gods gathered in the ruined chamber.

Cracks spread outward from the space around the gate in all directions. In the Underworld, pockets of recently freed souls winked out of existence; Olympus suffered another collapse of its marble reaches; and along the surface of the mortal world, great fissures tore cleanly through the earth and the oceans simultaneously drew back in fear from the very idea of the presence that had arrived. Even the air grew heavier, forcing lesser immortals across the planes to their knees with little understanding of why such a thing should happen.

The gods that remained within the chamber, aside from those long gone in the wake of the first few moments, could do little beyond simply stare upward at the entity in silent awe.

Blood trickled down Zeus’s face from a reopened nose, the chaotic forces he was manifesting around his fists suddenly looking rather trivial against the sheer scale of the entity before them. Athena’s face was drained of color as she took in the sight, while Poseidon leaned heavily on his trident to keep himself upright. Hades and Persephone stood, their respective green and black lights reduced to little more than glimmers. Odin, Sun-Wukong, Kratos, and Hermes all simply stood in quiet, shocked agreement next to him; even as they took in the sheer impossible height and width of the thing, they somehow reached the same, resigned conclusion.

All of them had lost.

A wet, broken chuckle sounded from the floor.

The Father was alive, albeit barely, his body little more than a set of cracks in light and structure, one arm entirely absent and the other side of his face turned to glowing energy. He pushed himself upward onto his remaining elbow, looking up at the entity with something akin to reverence in his expression.

"You came," the old man rasped, his voice little more than a whisper lost in the massive chamber. The entity, if it could be said to have one, made no motion in response.

The Father’s ruined lips curved upward into something like a smile. He raised the remaining limb that was his arm to gesture at the space around the ruined gate and raised his voice, the words coming out in a strange tone- as if he had been saying this proclamation for far longer than a handful of moments.

"Behold," he declared, allowing the syllable to echo around the ruined chamber as blood ran freely down his chin, "the one who stood before the first walls were raised! The force against which all manner of order was measured and found wanting! I open the way and return to you what was kept from your reach, and I name you before these failures so that they might know the end they truly serve!"

He paused, rattling slightly as he drew in a breath.

The proclamation he gave next hardly had time to leave his lips before the entity moved, the mass of itself tilting its head slightly (or the great slab that took the place of its head tilting). The narrow slit in the middle of it narrowed, reducing in width until it appeared to be looking directly at the broken, bloodied Father on the ground.

When it finally spoke, its voice did not echo or carry in any particular fashion- it was simply there, an unwanted presence in the minds of all who had been foolish enough to be here when it arrived.

"Pale imitation of the original."

The Father’s smile did not fade.

The entity made no move to further address him; it simply observed him for another few long moments before the narrow slit in its body closed. The broken old man’s body simply folded inward on itself, dissolving into nothingness- the will, the law, the light all sucked back into whatever had been his soul before that final, foolish act. The being that had carried the name of Metatron, that had called itself Father, that had opened the sealed gate out of spite and arrogance, ceased to be in the span of only a heartbeat.

There was silence.

The entity turned its attention away from the broken and dying Father and instead looked out over the rest of the world.

Not at the gods, not solely at the crumbling Underworld or the broken reaches of Olympus, but at everything- at the free souls fleeing the fields in the direction of the nearest break in reality, at the oceans recoiling in equal parts terror and awe, at the thin lines of white that still marked the upper atmosphere from the first beam ever fired. It took in all of it with that same, consuming awareness, as if measuring every crack and fissure with careful and terrible intent.

Zeus felt the weight of it pressing on him, a physical force that made it hard to breathe for a few short moments, and he was not alone in that sensation. All across the chamber, the other gods and goddesses experienced the same slow, methodical weighing of their presence by the entity. Not hate, not malice, not even particular judgment- simply assessment.

It stopped at last.

Whatever the verdict happened to be, it was delivered in much the same fashion as the entity’s other remarks- in the minds of those present, without warning, without consent.

"This design is failed. Continuing is without value. Ending is required."

The message resonated through all manner of existence. Across the Underworld, the recently freed souls all froze mid-step or mid-motion, petrified in place by the sheer will of the being that had come to judge their existence. On Olympus, the last few intact structures split vertically from their foundations, their marble forms cracking from the lowest levels upward. And along the surface of the mortal world, living things- plants, animals, people- all felt the message wash over them in equal parts confusion and dread, the very ground itself beginning to split open in earnest.

The entity made no further move, save to observe as its words sank in and the effects of them began to take shape.

Zeus looked up at it, all the chaotic forces he had manifested around himself guttering out in useless frustration as he reached another, final conclusion.

The battle for the universe had already been lost.

It had merely been waiting for the words to come.

Destruction had been decreed.

And the thing that had decreed it had only just begun.

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