Uranus's roaring went on: "We are all offspring of Chaos! However we fight among ourselves, it is still a victory for Chaos's children. And you're happy to let Thalos Borson, an outer god, snatch the God-Emperor's throne? Look into my eyes and answer me—"
On the sky thick with the reek of disorder, two colossal eyes appeared. One glance told you each pupil spanned at least ten kilometers, and both were full of indignation—pity for misfortune, fury at failure to fight.
As the founder of the entire Olympian pantheon, Uranus's words still carried some weight.
Even second-generation god-king Kronos, who always feared his old father might settle accounts with him, would listen to what had to be heard—at most talking back: "Old thing! This isn't like the you of old!"
You've got a lot of nerve saying that.
Uranus almost choked on a mouthful of old rage.
In the past he was brutality itself, forcing every dissenter to bend to his will, or be utterly annihilated.
He was the embodiment of all that was male.
But his hardness and might evaporated with that one act of castration.
Rolling back into the sky, he was no longer firm, stripped of his old rudeness and swagger.
All this, damn it, was Kronos's fault.
And yet now Uranus couldn't very well keep raging at this unfilial son—what he needed was to bridge the split, not widen it.
"The Uranus of old—you may consider him fallen! The Uranus now only wants to preserve this world, and this sky. Do you want 'Sky'—me—to be utterly destroyed, the whole world laid bare to the chaos of the cosmos, and in the end you take the Mutant Star Region as your home—is that what would satisfy you?"
Uranus's words left Zeus and Kronos both silent.
From their vantage, they certainly didn't want Uranus back to reoccupy divine authority; but neither did they want the sky god to drop the load.
Whether the sky collapsed or vanished, the price was the mortal world's ruin.
What sense was there in ruling a world without life and missing one of the four elements—some so-called small plane the size of Crete?
Power is interesting because the powerful can press and enslave those below.
It's that command over wind and rain, that mastery of heaven and earth, that intoxicates kings and emperors.
Turn the world into rotten fruit, and Zeus would be the first to refuse.
On the other side, Kronos too sensed something was off. In his age, the Greek world had just emerged from chaos, barely had the concept of sun, moon, and time. Though the land was barren and the laws of the world incomplete, at least the four elements were whole. The Twelve Titans held different divine offices and further ordered the world.
In any case, Uranus's tongue-lashing did sober father and son a bit.
Zeus spoke first, to Kronos: "Old man, I don't regret toppling your rule one bit. You ate all my brothers and sisters—I was bound to resist. But Uranus is right. However we fight, we can't let that beast Thalos profit! He… he took my daughter, and he took Hestia!"
Kronos had no feeling for Zeus's sons and daughters; he did at least remember his own daughter Hestia. Though as the old prophecy hung over him, he had harbored great malice toward his children back then—those days were past.
He hated the chief culprit Zeus; that didn't mean he hated his daughter as well.
Kronos could not dissolve his hatred for Zeus, but he couldn't ignore Thalos's threat either. He glanced at Zeus, then at the "old mom" in the sky—Uranus. Then he heard a distant sigh from deep within the earth.
It was Gaia's helpless lament.
Back then Gaia had been unable to accept Uranus's brutality and tyranny and urged her children to rebel against him. She raised Kronos up, only to have Zeus usurp power and strip away much of her divine offices too. Gaia hated Zeus as well.
But fate was cruel and fickle. At long last, seeing her beloved Kronos out of Tartarus, on the verge of revival—who knew the foreign foe would be so fierce.
Her sigh was also a hint for Kronos to yield.
The second-generation Titan king's massive eyes spun a few circles, and at last he carved out a path: "United against the outside, is it? Fine. But I want at least half the world back. And your sun god and light god are gone, right? Then hand the Sun and Light offices over to Hyperion and Theia!"
Strictly speaking, that Titan couple were the original sun and light gods, the ones who bore Helios the sun and Selene the moon. It's just that the Titan father's "forging of light" was too crude—more instinct than wielding a divine office.
Why is Hyperion the sun god who flies across the high sky?
Because the guy takes one big jump—up into the upper atmosphere—and lights the earth with the heat of his own god-body…
Hard to keep a straight face.
By the time it got to his son Helios, it was driving the sun chariot across the sky—hence the Greeks only recognized Helios as the first true sun god.
…
Kronos asked for those two offices, and Zeus had no grounds to object.
Without sunlight and light, the current ecosystem would collapse.
Zeus could only pinch his nose and accept it.
Next came the lip work.
After a round of "friendly consultations"—flexing, spitting, now and then flashing some divine arts—Zeus and his father reluctantly reached a preliminary understanding: roughly, Greater Greece would be returned to Zeus; Kronos and the Titans would take Asia Minor (around Turkey) and Alexandria in Egypt.
It amounted to slant-cutting the Aegean in two: Zeus taking the upper left, his father the lower right.
Neither was to invade the other's turf. If the Aesir attacked, each would meet them on their own ground—each house sweeping snow from its own doorstep.
Their behavior perfectly confirmed the old line: "Politics is the art of compromise."
Since neither could swallow the other and both were fought out, they could only compromise—choose a coexistence model that satisfied no one but had to be accepted.
Thalos didn't learn of the two great camps' talks at the first moment.
It was Heimdall who, through his Space Eye, saw the "sun" reappear above the Greek world.
Thalos had been plunging away at Athena till she was crying out; when he received the news, it finally let her catch her breath.
"Another sun god?" Thalos frowned slightly.
Lifting her head with effort, Athena said with certainty, "Not Helios—his fall was confirmed by me and Apollo. Your Majesty's brother Odin can confirm it too."
Thalos wasn't annoyed. "Oh, so Zeus and the Titans have come to terms. At least they're not completely stupid."
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