by Gene Stiles
“Free me,” it bellowed at him through a crimson mouth lined with rows of razor-sharp teeth. It was incensed he had the audacity to hold it back. “Free me to feed!”
The beast had a name. It was Excalibur.
Something faint inside Zeus knew what was happening. The more he restrained the power of the blade, the more it backlashed into his body. His bulging sinews struggled to contain the raw, untamed energy. It coursed through his veins like hot liquid mercury, pulsing with burning desire. The pain was excruciating and erotic at the same time. It was barbarous and savage, brutally sensuous and it called to him as no lover ever had. “Let me free,” it whispered seductively. “Let me free and you will have the revenge you desire.”
“No,” Zeus answered the odious craving inside him, biting his lip hard enough to draw blood. “Not vengeance! Justice!”
A flickering, white light glimmered in deep within his brain. A flash of memory tickled his mind. “The energy must go somewhere,” the First Children had warned him. “Release it into the sky.”
Fighting the sword that squirmed in his grip like a living thing, Zeus held it heavenward with both quivering hands and unleashed its pent up power. A single, massive bolt of silver-blue lightning erupted from the tip of Excalibur. When it hit the fluffy white clouds above, it spread out in blazing flower petals that opened to the sun. Like flashing fireflies, it dissipated harmlessly over the frightened, fleeing Atlantean legions. The peel of deep, deafening thunder which shook the very earth accompanied the blast and added a terrified urgency to the frenzied flight the retreating army.
Zeus stumbled, his body bathed in a feverish sweat, and fell to his knees on the bloody grass at his feet. He barely noticed the almost-headless body of Enyalius staring at him in sightless wonder. He dropped Excalibur on the trampled ground. His hands felt scorched and seared and Zeus was amazed to see they were completely unscathed. His broad, powerful chest heaved with its attempt to suck in lungfuls of cooling air and the fiery fog lifted from his eyes.
Hera and Hades rushed to plant themselves between Zeus and any enemy soldiers who might attack in his moment of weakness. They need not have bothered. The entire center of the Atlantean horde was already a mile away running as fast as their shaky legs could take them. What was left the Lord Father’s army was a huge crescent curving around Zeus and Poseidon, the outer tips locked in the berserk bloodlust of mortal combat. Unable or unwilling to escape, the Olympians tore them apart.
“Holy Creator,” they heard Zeus mumble softly, his hair plastered around his skull like a fire-red helmet. “Holy Creator.”
Chapter XXVI
“You cannot do this!” Themis shouted, her verdant eyes narrowed and crackling with white-hot sparks. “You cannot activate the entire Grid! You will slaughter thousands!”
The twins stood before Cronus in the near-empty council chambers, their stances defiant, with their fists planted firmly on their hips. Both wore midnight-blue breeches tucked into black leather, calf-high boots and long-sleeved, white blouses in lieu of the soft linen dresses they usually wore. A sheathed long-knife and a CL pistol were belted around their narrow waists and their shimmering, honey-blond hair was banded from their brows with tooled, leather circlets. Knowing the city was about to be attacked, they were prepared for a fight, not a ballroom. What they did not know was the greatest battle would begin within these chambers long before the Olympian legions reached the city’s outskirts.
“Tens of thousands converge on our city as we speak,” Cronus responded coldly. He raised his slitted, chipped malachite eyes and glared dangerously at the duo. “They have already killed thousands of our people and they would burn Atlantis to the ground. I will do what I must to protect it.”
“To protect yourself, you mean,” Thea snapped back, her ruby-red lips trembling with anger. “You could have stopped this before it began simply by stepping down from the throne. Your empire is lost.”
Themis softened her tone as she stared at the man she had once admired with all her soul and pleaded, “Do what is right for the People as you once did, Lord Father. Save them once again from death and destruction.”
She used the title on purpose, hoping to get through the steely shield he had enclosing his stone-hard heart. Themis might just as well have tossed pebbles at a granite cliff.
“I am saving them,” Cronus replied, his huge arms bulging as he leaned forward against the table. “I am saving them from an invading army that seeks to take from them all we have built together. I am serving justice upon an enemy that has burned their homes, their cities and murdered those they love.”
“This is not justice, Cronus,” Themis responded bluntly, seeing on his shadowed face there was no chance of reasoning with him. “This is insanity.”
“Insanity?” Cronus rose to his full height, his tree-trunk legs rippling with corded muscle. His entire body vibrated beneath the tight, ebony leathers he wore. His sinews coiled like a viper and his tendons looked like braided steel. For a moment, the twins thought he might leap across the table and throttle them. “Insanity would be to do nothing and let foreigners sit upon our throne.”
“But they are not foreigners,” Thea reminded him, her words harsh and cutting. “They are Atlanteans. They are of the People. They are your own children. Your own flesh and blood.”
“Ra and the Nillians are not my kin,” Cronus said, his voice as frozen as a block of ice. “The corrupted flesh of the Izon is not my flesh. The Nephilim are not my blood. Those who were my children have been perverted by the hatred of their mother.” He slammed his fist upon the hard mahogany table and said bitterly, “I will not allow them to reach these hallowed halls! Never!”
“There is a more portentous consideration,” a gravelly voice interrupted, diverting their attention before Cronus exploded. Coeus raised his long, pointy-chinned face from the charts and graphs scattered before him. His old, hazel eyes looked eternally weary and the pallid, wrinkled skin hung exhaustedly on his sunken, dark-shadowed cheeks.
Cronus stared at him, the irritation plain on his face. He was tired of the constant predictions of doom and destruction from the old man. With the legions of Olympus on his doorstep, Cronus had more important matters to attend to than to waste time on his gloom-filled fantasies.
Phoebe was an incredible contrast to Coeus, standing at his stoop-shouldered side, her alabaster skin shining like polished porcelain. Even among the Atlanteans, she stood out for not for just her astounding beauty, knee-length, platinum blond hair and scarlet lips, but for her uncanny gift of prophecy and razor-sharp intellect. As much as it galled Cronus to admit it, to ignore her insights was to invite disaster.
“I strongly suggest you listen to my husband this time,” she said sternly, her pale blue eyes narrowed and hard beneath her knitted brow. Phoebe saw the annoyance in Cronus’ tightly drawn lips, but she would not allow Coeus to be dismissed outright. Not when more than just the fate of Atlantis was at stake. “I have verified his conclusions with extensive research of my own. Using the full power of the Grid at this time could have dire consequences to us all.”
“Fine,” Cronus said, a deep sigh making his exasperation evident to all. “Say your piece and get it over with.” He waved his hand toward the chamber windows. “In case you have forgotten, I have a war to win.”
The old man looked up at his lovely wife from his chair at the table. A tiny smile of thanks touched his lips before his countenance clouded once again. Coeus ran his gnarled, slender fingers through his bedraggled mop of cinnamon hair, his tone grave as he glanced around the room. Centering his gaze on Cronus, he spoke carefully and concisely.
“I have been warning you for years that our planet is wobbling more than usual,” Coeus said, nodding toward the documents and images spread out before him. “You have seen it yourself in the longer, harsher seasons.”
“And what has that to do with the Grid?” Cronus barked at him.
“You are well aware of the power of the weapon
s Zeus now controls,” Coeus replied, not waiting for a response. “His sword feeds on electricity as does Nillian armor on energy. Remember what happened in Sirenum. Rumor has it that Raet destroyed the complex. Her armor absorbed the nuclear blasts and returned it tenfold. It destroyed her, but not before the resulting release of energy cracked the earth beneath her feet. There is nothing left out there but chasms and canyons.”
“Are you suggesting…?” Thea began, suddenly understanding where he was going with this.
“Yes,” Coeus said, his voice quivering slightly at the horror in his mind’s eye. He stared hard at the Lord Father, hoping beyond hope the man would listen. “We are nearing the apex of a southern wobble. You are intending to send the power of a Proto-Sun through the Grid. You might…and I say might…kill every single Olympian standing on it including Zeus and Poseidon, but if their weapons are as akin to Nillian armor as they appear to be, the backlash could make what happened in Sirenum seem like a minor tremor.”
Coeus could not make his words severe enough. The tremble of his shoulders and the foreboding on his face said it all and cast a dark, ghastly pallor over the room. “You could conceivably knock the world off its axis.”
“We cannot allow Cronus to take such a dangerous chance,” Themis said angrily, punctuating her words with the stomp of her feet on the dimly lit sidewalk. Her long, blond braid whipped across her stiffened spine with the haste in her stride and her bright green eyes flickered with fire. “He scoffs at Coeus’ warning saying nothing can affect an entire planet. He would not even concede he might level Atlantis! What a fool!”
“He believes he can control how much power is fed into the Grid,” Thea said, her words barbed and bitter. “If Coeus is right – and I believe him – Zeus could pull all the energy to him regardless of what settings Cronus uses. The question is would he?”
“I do not think he would do so intentionally,” Phoebe replied, struggling to keep up with the twins. “This is if he knew what the result might be. However, I doubt Raet intended to cause what happened in the desert either. I do not think Zeus even knows of the Grid’s existence.”
The city seemed to share their mood. The twilight was somber without a single star shining in the velvet sky. The streets were empty and eerily quiet. A gloomy shroud of tension filled the warm, stagnant air like a thick, choking fog. Doors were locked and windows shuttered, the People huddling fearfully together in darkened rooms. Even the squads of black-clad Aam who patrolled the silent boulevards and shadowed alleyways were noiseless, their footfalls muted on the smoothed stone.
“We must get word to Zeus,” Themis said, her voice hushed and hard. She opened the door to her quarters, ushering her friends inside. “Or we must stop him from turning on the Grid.”
“How?” Thea said with a low growl. “There are legions between us and the Olympians. The Black Guard surround the pyramid. It would take an army to get past them. We would have no chance.”
“Perhaps we can help with that,” came a soft voice from the shadows.
Startled, the trio drew their knives, suddenly sensing others hidden in the lightless living room. Thea reached for a lamp, but hesitated when Adrasteia stepped from the gloom, threw back the hood of her ebony cloak and said gently, “Please do not.”
Thea smiled warmly for the first time this dreary day and threw her arms around the eldest daughter of Haleah. “Adrasteia! How are you here?”
“We can speak of that later,” Adrasteia replied, reaching out in greeting to Themis and Phoebe. She waved the others forward and said quietly, “I believe you know my sisters, Chalandra and Celessa.” After the women embraced each other, she continued. “We do not come alone. Now, why do you need an army?”
Adrasteia sat on the lushly padded sofa, her hands clenched between her knees. Her obsidian eyes glittered dangerously in the dim lights. After telling her friends how they had slipped into Atlantis from the north across the Gaia, she listened grimly to the current situation and the threat of the Grid.
“Is there any way we can get word to Zeus?” Themis asked, serving hot tea and refreshments to her guests. They kept the lights and their voices low not out of concern they would be overheard, but because of the gravity of their discourse. “He should know he is walking into a trap.”
“I am afraid not,” Adrasteia replied, shaking her head. Her quick mind was clicking through the options, wondering if they dared to send a runner through the Atlantean ranks. “Our coms died the moment we entered the city. Cronus must have some kind of signal jammer in place. I doubt it possible to get someone through to him in time.”
“But you managed to get five hundred troops into Atlantis undetected,” Thea said, somewhat surprised at Adrasteia’s reluctance. “One person should be an easy task.”
“Not so,” Chalandra said from the other end of the couch. She tossed her long, blond braid back over her shoulder and leaned against the armrest, her blue eyes glittering like gems in the lamplight. “The city is dark and almost deserted. No one was expecting a force to invade from the north. There are few Aam patrols in that direction. Evading them was simple. We split up into small squads and slipped through the shadows. There are many empty, unguarded warehouses near the docks. Our warriors await us there.”
“What lies between us and Zeus is another matter entirely,” Celessa continued for her twin. “There are two armies on high alert. Getting through that would be nigh impossible.”
“It would seem our mission to take the Central Pyramid is more important than ever. You say the controls for the Grid are housed there,” Adrasteia said stiffly, glancing at Phoebe. “If we can reach them before Zeus arrives, perhaps we can stop Cronus from using it. But we will be taking on a sizeable force in and around the pyramid. Our orders were to wait until the true battle began then attack during the distraction.”
Adrasteia sighed heavily, looking toward her sisters for agreement. “It seems we do not have such a choice. If Raet was truly the cause of the devastation in Sirenum, what Cronus is not realizing is he faces not one, but such two weapons.” Her ruby lips drew a hard line across her jawline. “The destruction could be ten-fold. We must try.”
“This will get bloody,” Chalandra said matter-of-factly, her face clouding darkly. “Very bloody.”
Zeus stood in the deep darkness on the edge of the encampment, well away from the pavilions and tents and the flickering flames of countless campfires. A thick blanket of high clouds covered the moonless night sky from horizon to horizon, blocking out even the tiniest twinkle of starlight. The air was heavy and still, devoid of the slightest breeze as if the very earth held its breath. Zeus could not hear a single cricket nor the rustling of nightlife within the flattened grasslands. They had all fled, hiding in their burrows and dens, waiting for the storms above them to pass.
A faint, barely discernable wavy glow hovered over the utterly black landscape far to the east marking the position of the enemy army. Zeus had fought the retreating army for three long days, driving them back to within fifty miles of Atlantis. The battles were more compendious and constrained than he would have expected from those defending their homes. The Lord Father’s forces seemed more interested in running than in fighting. They only fought when they absolutely had to or to stop for a moment and let fly with aeros from a safe distance. On the surface, it seemed like a distinct advantage for the Olympians, especially since the Nephilim archers had twice the range of the Atlanteans, but something about their tactics troubled Zeus greatly.
“Strange, is it not?” Hades said at his side, startling Zeus from his reverie. His brother moved as quietly as a mountain cat and so lost in his thoughts was he, Zeus was unaware of his presence until Hades spoke.
“To which of many strange things do you refer, brother?” Zeus asked, his low voice seeming loud and harsh in the stillness of the night.
“Atlantis is huge,” Hades responded softly. He crossed his corded arms over his massive, V-shaped torso and stared out over the vast
plains before him. “The terrain is extremely flat here. We should see the glow of lights above the city even at this distance. There are none.”
“Perhaps the One Tree blots out most of it,” Zeus replied, surprised he did not notice the oddity himself. “You have not seen it yet, but it is gigantic, almost as wide as the city itself.” He shook his head, remembering the awe he felt in its presence. “It is majestic beyond belief, the last remnant of a long lost world.”
“Legend says it was grown from a single shoot of the One Tree of Atlan and is millions of years old,” Hades said, having never laid eyes on it. “The alien composition has protected it from the ravages of time on this planet.”
“This is no legend,” Zeus told him. “It is true. The One Tree was planted by Iasion while the People slept for an eternity in their borithium tombs. It is the tree of two worlds, the tree of life. It links us to our past and to our future. It is the symbol and memory of all that was Atlan and the promise of all Atlantis should be. And all it will be again,” he added firmly.
“Then I hope it survives,” Hades said sadly. “By tomorrow we should be on the city outskirts. We will be facing all the might Cronus has left and he will be backed into a corner. He is insane with his foolish fear of us and with his lust for power. What he will do is beyond reckoning.”
Zeus fingered the hilt of his sword unconsciously in the dark. “Let us hope the First Children have given us the means to defeat him. I only pray he does not force us to fight in the city streets. I have no desire to reduce Atlantis to ashes, but I will do what I must to end this tragic, senseless war.”
“As will we all,” Hades said softly, placing a firm hand on his brother’s broad shoulder. “As will we all.”
