Date: The Titanomachy – The Tenth Year: Othrys Unwarded
The silence on the plateau of the now-dormant Obsidian Spire was a fragile thing, a temporary stillness in the heart of a raging tempest. The distant roar of the main assault on Othrys's lower slopes, the earth-shaking impacts of the Hekatonkheires' fury, and the incandescent flashes of Zeus's lightning were a constant reminder that my small achievement here was but one piece of a much larger, far more brutal, endeavor.
I stood for a moment, the Tome of Attainment cool and steady in my hands, its surface now quiescent. My Achieves was processing the intricate details of the Spire's unmaking, cataloging the subtle energies, the conceptual leverage I had employed. The oppressive aura of dark magic that had clung to this part of Othrys had noticeably thinned, the air cleaner, the shadows less menacing.
Then, I felt it – a distinct shift in the psychic landscape of the mountain. From the direction where Hades had vanished, towards the chasm leading to the Cavern of Echoing Dooms, the pervasive undercurrent of amplified fear that had always emanated from Othrys seemed to… lessen. It didn't disappear entirely – the terror of this war was real enough – but the unnatural, magically magnified dread that had sought to cripple will and courage faltered, like a discordant note suddenly silenced in a symphony of terror. My truth-divinity registered it as a fundamental change: Hades had succeeded. The wellspring of manufactured despair was drying up. Another keystone of Othrys's metaphysical defenses had fallen.
A wave of grim satisfaction flowed through me. One by one, we were dismantling the pillars of Cronos's dread-fueled reign.
No sooner had that realization settled than a far more violent tremor rocked the mountain, a shockwave that had nothing to do with the Hekatonkheires' assault or Poseidon's localized earth-shaping. This was a deeper, more fundamental convulsion, a tearing in the fabric of time itself, followed by an immense surge of raw, chaotic power that briefly overwhelmed my senses. The Tome in my hands flared with a sympathetic, almost painful, light.
My Achieves struggled to process the influx. It was a maelstrom of temporal distortions snapping back into alignment, of immense energies unleashed and then abruptly ceasing. The Chronal Font. Zeus and Poseidon. They had faced the direct manifestation of Cronos's temporal power and, it seemed, had shattered it. The air itself seemed to breathe easier, the subtle, oppressive weight of warped time that had always clung to Othrys vanishing in an instant. The power of that achievement was staggering, a testament to the combined might of my two most formidable brothers.
With the Spire dark, the Cavern's dread muted, and the Font's temporal grip broken, a new quiet settled over parts of Othrys – the unsettling silence of failing enchantments. I watched as the protective shimmers that had clung to its battlements thinned, then unraveled like mist in a harsh wind, leaving the ancient stone starkly exposed. The very atmosphere of Mount Othrys felt less charged with ancient menace, its magical armor stripped away. Illusions that had cloaked entire sections of the mountain in shadow and dread dissolved, revealing stark, unprepared rock faces and confused Titan garrisons.
The effect on the main battle below was immediate and dramatic. The roars of the Hekatonkheires took on a new, triumphant note as their boulders smashed through weakened gates and crumbling ramparts. The Cyclopes' forge-fire found purchase on structures previously shielded by potent enchantments. Our Pelasgian allies, sensing the shift, pressed their attacks with renewed vigor.
My own task was now to understand the new landscape of this unwarded fortress. The Tome of Attainment, no longer focused on singular nexuses, began to paint a broader, clearer picture of Othrys's internal structure, its troop dispositions, the pathways to its heart. The mountain was still a formidable fortress, teeming with desperate Titan warriors, but its primary magical bulwarks were gone.
"The way to the inner sanctum is… clearer," I murmured, my voice relayed by a subtle amplification from the Tome to Zeus, wherever he now fought. "The primary magical defenses are down. Their command structure will be in disarray. The central citadel is now vulnerable to a direct assault, though its physical defenses remain."
A distant, crackling surge of lightning, brighter and more focused than before, was Zeus's only reply. He had heard. He understood.
I began my descent from the Spire's plateau, moving through corridors of black stone that now felt… ordinary, their earlier malevolent aura diminished to a mere unpleasant chill. The sounds of battle grew louder, fiercer. I encountered pockets of resistance – disoriented Titan guards, minor sorcerers whose power now felt frayed and uncertain – but my path was largely unimpeded. My black and gold robes, once a stark contrast to the Spire's gloom, now seemed to absorb the lesser shadows of Othrys, allowing me to move with a quiet, almost unseen purpose.
The Tome guided me, not towards the heart of the largest engagements, but along less-guarded pathways, towards points of strategic advantage. It revealed hidden sally ports now left unguarded, armories whose magical locks had failed, command posts suddenly cut off from their chains of command. My role was not to engage in direct, brutal combat like my brothers, but to be the intelligence that guided the spearhead, the understanding that unraveled the enemy's remaining cohesion.
As I reached a high, shattered parapet overlooking the main courtyard of Othrys, a scene of brutal, chaotic victory was unfolding. The Hekatonkheires were like living engines of destruction, tearing down towers, their hundred arms a whirlwind of stone and fury. The Cyclopes were methodically dismantling siege weapons and incinerating pockets of resistance with their forge-fire. In the main courtyard, Zeus moved like a blinding flash, his Keraunos not just striking but erasing Titan warriors from existence, their shields turning to ash before the impact. Further off, Poseidon's trident stabbed into the flagstones, and the very ground erupted, swallowing siege machines and sending elite Titan guards sprawling as their footing vanished. And where Hades passed, a cold stillness followed; fallen Titans did not stir, their ichor freezing on the flagstones, a grim testament to his power ensuring no enemy would fight twice.
The gates to the central citadel, Cronos's inner sanctum, were directly ahead, still barred, but the forces defending them were in disarray, their magical support gone.
The ancient enchantments that had shrouded Othrys, magics I'd thought almost eternal in their complexity, were now visibly failing. Where once there was an impenetrable aura of Titan dominance, I now perceived gaps, areas where the mountain's raw, undefended stone was laid bare to our sight. The complex enchantments that had bound Othrys were broken, not just by overwhelming might, but by taking them apart piece by piece, understanding how they worked and then... unmaking them. A deep satisfaction resonated through me from that specific kind of victory. But then my eyes found the immense, shadowed archway that led into Cronos's personal sanctum. A different cold settled in. Whatever waited beyond that threshold, I had a sinking feeling it would demand more from us than any battle fought thus far. Cronos himself awaited, and the fear of a cornered, ancient king would be a weapon more potent than any shattered ward.