Still a bit naive for the moment, Hecate naturally did not know what more important matters her Father and Mother had, but she obediently heeded her Mother's words.
Reluctantly, she hugged Nyx and Zeus once more, offered a dutiful bow, then turned into a cool beam of moonlight and returned to Aitheron.
No sooner had Hecate's figure vanished than the stately divine robe upon Nyx shifted in an instant back into that artful, body-revealing ensemble that could set even gods' blood racing.
Like a lovely serpent, the goddess of Night once more, boneless-supple, threw herself into her beloved God-King's arms.
With her pearly teeth she toyed at his earlobe, clinging and coquettish, a hint of bone-melting grievance in her tone: "Zeus… my love… I've waited far, far too long for you to come and claim me. My love, how I long, how I long to be wholly one with you…"
"Look—our child is so adorable, so well-behaved. Yet we have only this one child. But you—you have so, so many children with those other goddesses…"
"I'm so envious~ I love children so much~ Let's conceive children just as adorable together too, shall we?"
"And more than Mnemosyne bore, all right?"
Zeus was already so bewitched he felt lightheaded, yet at this he still blinked in astonishment, gaining a fresh understanding of Night's "greed."
Well now! Just how hard would he have to work to conceive that many children with Night?!
And Nyx herself was a primordial great goddess, one of the four prime sources that constitute all existence of the universe. Her station was far too high.
If he truly had a dozen children with her, then as for the children he might later have with those other beloved goddesses—what powerful authorities would be left for them to hold?
Zeus brushed soft kisses over the smooth, radiant curve of the goddess of Night's cheek and, in a slightly evasive murmur, said: "My dear Nyx, my beloved goddess—how could I not want to have you? Of course, of course I want to bear the loveliest children with you."
Such a clear deflection could never fool the goddess of Night, whose wits were, for the moment, squarely in command.
On the matter of children, Lady Night was very earnest.
Union with the God-King, and bearing direct children, was critical to whether the Night lineage could fully integrate into the world.
Hecate, after all, was not conceived by the most intimate union; in essence she was a relatively independent world-incarnate supreme goddess.
Moreover, the goddess of Night had her primordial pride.
She would never allow her children with the God-King to be inferior to any other goddess's children!
Neither in number nor in authority!
On this, there could be no compromise!
Night's "greed" was to have it both ways—and more.
Her cool-white, jade-fine hands, slim as spring shoots, began to roam over the God-King's hot, solid chest.
With newly stolen "knowledge" from her rival, she teased the God-King with a touch of shyness—yet uncanny precision.
All the while she cooed her sweetest entreaties, breath sweet as orchids: "Zeus~ my God-King, my Sovereign~ tell me—toward what kind of law-authority should we shape our child, hmm?"
Not waiting for Zeus to answer, she gave her own: "My love~ I think that though our Heavenly Order is already tended by your six adorable children—each a mighty great goddess—that still isn't quite complete."
"And it's too tiring for them. Dear heart, I think we can absolutely add a few more capable brothers and sisters for them, to handle those many complex affairs together. That way our dear Themis will have far fewer worries."
Zeus decided fewer words were best—and that he should first, with practical action, stop that silver tongue of Night's.
Without hesitation he pressed the attack. Nyx had hoped to draw a definite answer from Zeus's lips; in the end, under the God-King's matchless arts—and the storm of "combined arms" from above and below—she soon forgot everything.
Though she did not get the answer she wanted from his mouth, she did get other things.
Dizzied and adrift, she sank utterly into the God-King's blazing, storming passion.
Children mattered, of course.
But to revel in the God-King's love mattered more!
For the first time, the primordial sovereign goddess of Night felt what it was to be utterly veiled by her own darkness.
It was as if she hung neither in heaven nor on earth, her divinity sunk into endless void—nothing seen in any direction, nothing heard at any point—absolute haze and surrender.
Yet within that haze, a supreme, world-cleaving, sacred and mighty thunder wandered wantonly through her world.
With irresistible power, it split every ancient bastion and inborn barrier of her divinity, bringing a never-before-known, supremely glorious rapture.
Night's divinity rocked beneath the tempest raised by that highest thunder.
Waves forged of love and divine power thundered one atop another, layer on layer, crashing through her essence without cease.
At the apex of this ultimate shock and mingling, Night's soft, amber-twilight arms finally interlaced ten fingers tight with Zeus's great, lightning-bright hands.
The supreme lord of the sky and the primordial source of Night, in that moment, merged perfectly and completely.
The eternal God-King—already nigh absolutely all-knowing—having taken Darkness before, once more drew true "Night" into his embrace today.
When Zeus advanced the Heavenly Order fully, he had already, with his awakened spirit, fused the authority of Darkness into that of gloom, dusky shadow—"Hades."
And now, this ageless "Night" finally and utterly fused into the world of material existence.
The sky received Night.
Thus, dark matter and dark energy fell wholly under the God-King's dominion.
Between the origin and the end of the cosmos, the ancient stillness was utterly broken by this sacred union.
At dusk's final breath the vault shed the cerulean mantle that signifies day.
It was no surrender to darkness, but the unfurling of a colossal canopy woven with billions of thunderbolts.
In the name of the sky, to wed the ageless Night!
Heaven began to sink slowly, its hue no longer the limpid blue of day, but gently washing into the deep of black jade, bearing endless stars.
Thunder's roar shed intimidation and destruction, turning into a low and sacred wedding hymn, perfectly resonant with the murmur-hum sung by turning nebulae within Night.
The wind, bearing the universe's low breath from its source, tangled thick cloud and deep Night wholly together: you within me, I within you—no longer to be told apart.
Endless bolts of lightning became billions of dazzling golden cords, flowing liquid starlight, and with an unprecedented tenderness slipped slowly, gently through the night.
Each flash spread, as it entered the dark, in a ring of wave-light like a vortex in the Milky Way, tinting pure Night into a pale roseate firmament inlaid with billions of stars.
The boundary between day and night dissolved utterly.
Cloud became the crucible that tempers light and dark into one.
Above, the eternal, glittering starry dome; below, a tranquil world smelling faintly of dusk's perfume.
The supreme God-King Zeus—of thunder, omniscience, and spirit—his golden sky of light, order, and soul poured down like a radiant river across the universe into that endless void of Night.
Every peal of his thunder shook the foundations of the stars; every flash of his lightning brought new life to the eternal dark.
The primordial great Mother of creation, the goddess Nyx—her beginningless, endless veil of night—was as the deepest sea of the cosmos, within which flowed the mysteries of chaos and the origin of all beings' dreams.
Her presence is the cradle of all forms and every possibility of the universe, a source more ancient than any god.
When the supreme Heavenly Lord of all beings and the absolute source of Night mingled—there began the deepest evolution in the universe, called "Perfection."
From this moment, light and shadow were forever twin-born.
The sky, with absolute embrace, received Night's eternal being.
Material existence and dark existence, for the first time, truly and perfectly joined.
The heavens and Night became utterly indistinguishable.
Zeus's thunder became Night's pulse; Nyx's veil became the sky's warm bed.
Henceforth, the world would no longer be a simple alternation of day and night, but day settling in Night's arms; Night stretching beneath Day's gaze.
Each rotation of day and night would bear the marks of evolution; each flash of thunder would shake with joyous tremor.
This was the creative union of the supreme God-King and primordial Night!
It was also the most sacred beginning of the cosmos's long "division" turning at last toward "wholeness"!
Upon the marriage-bed laid by Night and Sky, the universe once more welcomed a complete, all-round evolution!
Deep Night—the veil that signifies mystery, chaos, and infinite possibility—unfolded itself, for the first time unguarded and alluring, toward the sovereign of the sky.
Night's sovereign opened her ageless arms and released the primal substance of chaos that nurtured all things.
Night was no longer a byword for the void, but became the richest bed to nourish life, fate, and order.
Night's mantle was no mere hazy realm, but the broadest sea of stars; she pressed herself into the sky's immensity.
The All-Father's thunder was no annihilating blow, but with gentleness granted Night an eternal glow, so that each star in Night shone more mild, more splendid, more radiant than before.
The Heavenly Lord's world and Night's realm mingled in deepest union.
The contours of all things grew clearer and truer in the interweaving of lightning and dark.
At the heart of this sacred mingling the universe resounded in exultation; stars, in cheering, cast light never seen before; galaxies blossomed gorgeously like flowers blooming a hundred million years.
At the core of this holy union, the entire cosmos rang with fervent resonance!
In cheers, unnumbered stars shone as never before!
Endless galaxies blossomed in splendor like flowers opened for eons!
Gaia's earth, bathed in this endless sacred radiance, saw mountains and rivers awaken with new life; all beings found unprecedented peace in this most harmonious air!
This vast, holy omen of the cosmos was the world's formal acceptance of Night; it was also the truest delight and response of all beings to this great union!
And within the perfect union of sky and Night, of radiance and darkness, of order and chaos, of civilization and ignorance, two new great deities—masters of supreme cosmic laws—were born in due course!
First, the God-Father of Fate's thunder, soaked in the deep hue of night, derived a grand web that signifies cause-and-effect and balance.
It was like an invisible net that covered all beings.
Thunder became the anvil that tempers causality; lightning became the rule that measures guilt.
And the deepest undercurrent of Night's dominion crystallized under the flash of thunder into a shadow of scales that weighed all good and evil; the quiet veil spun lines of balance, and every strand of dark wove a net to correct the excesses of fate.
Upon the fate threads of the Heavenly Order there slowly appeared one "measure-line" after another—formless and unseen—lying between every destiny-strand to nudge any that were tilted back to true.
This was the universe's most natural correction of all that is "excess."
The breath of the two supreme deities' union condensed into a sacred embryo, pounding fiercely in the womb of thundercloud and star-dust. From perfect balance and harmony shone the universe's intent to self-correct.
At last, a goddess, fierce and upright, with spirit like a rainbow's sweep, descended from the vortex of thunder and shadow!
A solemn new-matron goddess—sacred and inviolable.
She wore a night-dark robe woven of those "measure-lines," its hem flowing with silver ripples like turning rivers of stars. Her eyes were frozen thunderstorms; whomever she fixed within her gaze saw the inescapable reflection of their deserved consequences.
In her left hand she bore a bronze scale that flashed with brilliant thunder-light.
One pan held a clutch of thorns—a severe warning against all excess; the other held a palmful of dawn's dew, the Heavenly Father's and Night-Mother's will in absolute clarity within the cycle of cause-and-effect.
In her right hand she gripped a blade dark beyond dark. Along its length ran numberless fine, ever-shifting arcane lines.
The hilt was "cause," the blade "effect."
In the name of the God-King's sacred justice, she would punish all sin and mete out its merited retribution!
She stood for sacred causality and retribution!
She would forever uphold the universe's balance and measure!
In the abyss she would execute the most natural judgments upon all the arrogant!
She was the universe's most natural force correcting all excess!
She was the sacred goddess of retribution and causality—Nemesis!
After this solemn goddess's birth, another flicker of dazzling, unsteady star-dust sprang, quiet and quick, from the hazy depths of Night.
It followed no set track—now bright, now dim; now here, now gone.
At times it gathered to a dew-like point; at times it scattered into a streamer's tail.
She was a maiden goddess born amid the entwining of thunder and Night, in the fierce collision of photons and dark matter, in the suddenly bursting spray of randomness from Night's deepest deeps.
Gold-haired and bare-footed, she sparkled with spirit and wit—lithe and lively.
In her palm she bore a strange die that never ceased to turn.
This die was pure gold; along its edges, half were inlaid with lapis lazuli, half with jet-black jade. Under light it refracted rainbow-lush halos—ten thousand colors, impossible to fix.
Its six faces, six sigils, six hues: thundercloud, mountain, blade, water-wave, star—plus one blank.
The six colors: gold, orange, black, blue, purple, white.
This was the random die of fate.
Barefoot, she skipped across Night's vault, dancing the gladdest dance as whimsy took her.
Among her golden tresses flickered and died innumerable bubbles, each reflecting a "possible" future; as she danced, boundless possibilities rose and popped in turn.
She kneaded chaos into the wagers of all beings and sprinkled unforeseen turns and coincidences along the paths of the multitudes.
With carefree tosses of the die that decided luck and chance, she giggled, and upon the mortal world scattered the gold dust called "opportunity" and the gray haze called "misfortune."
A lethal sword would, by a hair's margin, shift life and death's trajectory.
An unmeant encounter might determine a love that walks together to the end, unshaken unto death.
A hero, by stooping to pick up a shell she dropped in passing, might turn the course of his life entire.
A great dynasty might, from a single grain of sand slipped unheeded from her fingertips, collapse in an instant!
This was the goddess of luck, chance, and randomness—Tyche!
She was luck's very form.
Her birth was no accident.
It was the gentle randomness the merciful All-Father—beyond absolute balance—deliberately left.
For the All-Father who signifies all "hope" and "future" sowed the seed of hope into Night's chaos.
She was the infinite possibility that Night nurtured, given the body of "opportunity" by the power of thunder.
She would bring to all destinies those unpredictable variables.
All beings, at her slightly impish laughter, would shiver—and rejoice.
For it was this randomness that freed the universe entirely from cold, rigid fate!
At this moment, every fate-thread discreetly split in two.
Entwined together, they wove the whole of all beings' being!
Upon these new destiny-threads shone both "determined necessity" and "random contingency."
From now on, fate would no longer be only the cold and pitiless necessary.
It would also hold a living, hopeful caprice that could self-adjust.
This sacred union not only birthed two new deities—it also thrust the universe into a brand-new, more perfect era!
From this moment, the world's fundamental law would no longer be merely bright order, nor dark chaos!
But the grandest, most magnificent symphony, written together by "cause-and-effect" and "randomness," by "necessity" and "chance"—full of mercy and compassion, hope and future, infinity and splendor!
Nemesis's scales and Tyche's die would hang forever aloft in this interwoven cosmos.
One preserved the universe's unshakable causal balance; the other sowed for the cosmos the randomness of boundless possibility and boundless hope.
When beings overreached their bounds, Nemesis's scales would restore the measure; when all fell into ossified fate, Tyche's die would inject fresh variables.
And all of this would run perfect beneath the supreme sacred order—of balance and dynamism both—that the Heavenly All-Father and Night-Mother together forged!
Praise this sacred union!
It has given the sacred just order a fathomless depth to cover all!
It has preserved, within fate that covers all, surprise called "chance" within icy necessity!
This is the supreme All-Father once more, more generously bestowing upon all beings the most precious thing—freedom of spirit.
And that other freedom they may choose for themselves—the freedom of fate!
Praise Zeus!
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