191. The Darkest Day
The Darkest Day
As I had been taking care of my own children,
I had not come to the aid of my brothers
in some time. Zelus was older now
but Nike and Kratos were still young enough
to need their mother. To grow into godhood,
the progeny of Gods need a few years.
My children, born as they were during a war,
did not have the luxury of a peaceful upbringing,
and so, as a mother, I did all I could
to shield them from the brutality,
including keeping them in chambers
within this palace where they did not see
their uncles carrying severed heads
and limbs about, bleeding across marble floors.
My mother had only spoken to me once
when she had asked me for more help with the wounded
and I had told her, ‘I helped you birth them.
It is your turn to mother them. I have my own
children to think about and tend to.’
But now, as we gathered once again
in Oceanus’s grand hall, which was
once known for feasts and now had become
an infirmary where the River Gods healed,
I finally saw the depth and breadth of these attacks.
Once we were all within the hall,
every Oceanid, all the Potamoi,
my father raised his withered old hands.
This war had aged him. He was no longer
the God-King’s second-in-command
who threw lush feasts, but a worn father
watching his sons be felled.
His voice, once deep, rich, and vibrant,
now sounded old, ancient, the smallest
of tremors behind each of his words.
‘Children,’ he began, the word coated
with a sadness as he looked around.
I followed his gaze. All around us were
tired Potamoi, some being held up by Oceanids,
others slouched on the floor, unable to stand.
Pain, an unfamiliar feeling to most Gods,
had become a familiar refrain here.
Their weary spirits were broken.
I had heard my sisters speak of how it was now
taking longer and longer for them to heal.
Even to my own heart, which had turned cold
after the cruel treatment of my siblings,
I found the sight painful to behold.
I looked back to my father as he seemed
to struggle to find his words.
‘This has been an extensive, brutal war.
The first and only one of its kind.
For a long time, I thought
that due to our numbers alone,
we would defeat these new Gods,
that they would fall quickly.
After all, these realms have always
been Titan realms.
I have come to the realization,
after many, many nights of ichor
falling like rain from the skies,
of the cries of God after God
shrieking above us, that we…’
He paused, looking
so defeated that my heart ached for him.
Was this what mortals had to deal with every day?
Watching their parents grow old before their eyes?
What a cold and brutal fate Kronos had bestowed
upon us, whom he had named his favourites.
It was claimed that his was a golden age.
But as I thought about mortals and their suffering
and looked around this room at our own,
I wondered if there was such a thing
as a golden age at all. Even in times of peace,
Kronos had created a hierarchy, relegating
my sisters and I to nothing but brides and mothers.
My father continued his speech,
turning to Pallas and me.
Something about his gaze gave me pause.
‘It is keeping our family in mind,
particularly you, my injured children,
that I have decided the house of Oceanus…’
I felt every bone in my being tense.
‘The house of Oceanus and Tethys
will no longer participate in this war.’