"Ahhh?!"
"Impossible! Absolutely impossible!"
"How could the goddess Athena betray His Majesty Zeus—she's the God-Emperor's own daughter!"
The murmurs in the crowd swelled into an uproar; countless Athenians jumped out to curse at the more than a thousand Amazons opposite them.
They'd thought the Amazon warriors would glare back in anger and trade insults. Unexpectedly, they showed no intention of attacking at all.
Instead, Penthesilea pointed at Athena's priestesses and said with a wicked smile, "Just ask them."
The priestesses, who moments ago had been lofty while saving people, now wore rather ugly expressions.
"My believers! After bitter battle, I was helplessly captured. Persuaded by the great God-Emperor Thalos Borson, I at last understood the truth of the universe…"
"Shameless Olympian god-king Zeus not only covets me, but along with Hera persecutes me…"
"His Majesty Borson guarantees your safety…"
"…"
Athena still had some face; she led by saying she'd been overpowered and captured, then denounced Zeus's depravity—placing herself on moral high ground—and ended with a veiled threat based on present circumstances.
She wasn't speaking for her own priestesses and "saints." Those were fanatics devoted to her; even if Athena declared herself a villain who butchered fathers and bullied grandsires, they'd still charge on her command.
What Athena needed was for them to persuade—or physically persuade—the Athenians.
New to the scene as she was, she didn't dare beg Thalos for any divine office. For now, the only thing she could secure were these hard-pressed Greek believers.
Her priestesses and saints conferred, weighed their phrasing, and made the announcement.
As expected, it caused a huge stir.
Almost every Athenian felt they'd boarded a pirate ship.
What, you're Athena, and you pull a "bait and switch" like this? How is that honorable?
Yet a very real problem lay before them: by the time they were transferred, most of Greece's city-states had already been destroyed. Those without Olympian protection—Sparta, Corinth, and the like—had all become ruins.
Seeing they'd escaped with their lives, most Athenians knew how to read the times.
Of course, there were believers of other deities who protested on the spot, even cursing Athena's betrayal.
To that, Athena's priestesses tried reason and feeling; when that failed… they made them slaves.
Unless someone made a particularly outrageous scene, they seldom killed.
Athena didn't stop at Athenians either—she moved on Greek slaves.
Priestesses in great number shuttled through the camps where many Greek slaves were penned, preaching: "That's how it is. Any who will worship the goddess Athena can immediately shed slavery and be raised to freemen—just pay taxes to the kings or nobles loyal to His Majesty the Aesir God-Emperor."
The whip-weary Greeks signed on readily—even former Mycenaean king Agamemnon among them.
No one mocked him for lacking backbone.
If the goddess Athena had defected, what was a mere mortal king?
The most ironic thing: from the very first night after Athena defected—when she was, shall we say, enthusiastically "busy" with Thalos—till dawn and beyond, for a full three days Zeus still hadn't discovered Athena's switch.
Perhaps Zeus was hard to blame; his dear old dad had been hunting him for three days straight.
In truth, the battle of Syracuse wasn't so much evenly matched between Olympians and Titans as it was dynamically balanced.
Compared to the last Titanomachy, Zeus's roster was roughly the same—Ares and Hephaestus added, Hestia subtracted. The key difference from back then was that the three brothers held the divine offices.
But their domains had all taken heavy hits; divine power was in short supply—more than a little like the days before they'd seized sky, sea, and underworld.
Only a little like, though.
Prosperous Syracuse had long since become rubble under the Titans' assault.
They didn't even need to try. Giants a hundred stories tall trampling the earth at random easily reduced this beautiful polis, built by Greek craftsmen over countless years, to dust.
"Damned Kronos! Do you know what you're doing? Attacking me only benefits those damned Aesir!"
Thunder split the chaotic sky, arcs of lightning lighting up the hate-twisted immensity of Kronos's face.
The second-generation god-king lifted his right hand and cleaved a blazing white thunderball; the current bursting from his fingers sprayed starfire across the obsidian blade of his sickle.
So what?
Even with seawater rushing ashore swirling into vortices at his feet, and death-breath from the underworld surging at him like a pack of sharks, the old king didn't halt his steps.
Bearing the world's sharpest thunder, gritting his teeth, nostrils huffing like bellows, Kronos rushed Zeus at a speed mortals couldn't imagine.
After so long, Zeus knew his father's style: a neat lean-back to slip, at the last instant, the scythe-shadow sharp enough to shear space; the power of sky ground under his heels suddenly turned into a piercing spear of wind that stabbed back into those seemingly trivial wounds on Kronos's vast body.
For a Titan so immense, a cut a meter or two long was only a scratch. But wind and thunder stirring in those small cuts could, over time, widen the Titan god's injuries.
To think Kronos was just a mad bull charging mindlessly at Zeus and missing would be to underestimate the former god-king.
Strange divine light flared in the Titan's pupils; his gaze was like a pair of ultra-massive scepters that could cleave mountains, striking heavily in the void—his power in fact piercing the sky and bursting into an uncanny green rain.
Threads of divine power shaped like blades of spring-bathed grass speared through Zeus's scalp; in an instant, countless almost-invisible vine buds sprouted from the follicles on his head.
"Ah?!"
A tributary of the long river of time coiling above Syracuse suddenly congealed.
Zeus saw his head "turning green" under Kronos the harvest god's power.
This force of nature clearly interfered with Zeus's control of thunder, making him falter for an instant.
That fleeting opening was seized by the world's deadliest reaper—Kronos. His massive black stone sickle chopped down; as it smashed into Zeus's thunderbolt, Kronos followed with a brutally savage shoulder check.
With raw, extreme strength, he broke three of Zeus's ribs.
And that was why Zeus hadn't discovered Athena's situation at the first moment.
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