Hearing this, Zeus suddenly smiled slightly and shifted his tone: "Perhaps one day you will change your minds; perhaps one day I will also change my mind and wish to release you—who can say?"
"Since that is so, go and bear the punishment you ought to bear; that is already enough."
"After all, the punishment within Tartarus is sufficient to answer for any mistake committed by any being."
Iapetus listened intently to Zeus's words, and upon his weathered face there slowly spread a heartfelt smile, one full of admiration.
He let out a deep laugh and sighed: "That His Majesty Kronos lost to you is, indeed, as it should be."
"Your mercy and breadth of heart—since existence first arose—are unmatched among the gods of this universe. It seems that perhaps it truly is the good fortune of all beings of spirit that you should be the universe's eternal sovereign."
"Great Zeus, please proceed."
Zeus nodded in salute to Iapetus.
Though their stances differed, he did not dislike Iapetus.
Iapetus kept his oath and held to the principle of loyalty. Stubborn though he was, he absolutely conformed to Zeus's Sacred Just Order.
With gods like this, the universe would be better.
Yet even though he had said so much to Iapetus, Zeus did not show the slightest leniency in his hands.
With exactly the same operation as for the other three primordial Titans, he neatly and cleanly took Iapetus's source authority.
That ancient and mighty source-law that signifies "Weaving of Death" and "Ever-Revolving Cycle" likewise came wholly into his hand.
When all this was done, Zeus waved his hand and restored their thoughts.
Iapetus's expression was calm as a dead pool of water. If you err, you admit it; winners are kings and losers are outcasts—he had accepted it.
If they had won, Zeus would only have fared worse.
Coeus and Phoebe were dispirited, with looks that said life held no more joy.
Only Kronos, the former God-King who only now truly felt that he had lost everything, let out a world-shaking roar the instant his awareness returned!
On discovering that the thunder-chains binding him were gone, Kronos—whose reason had been utterly crushed by despair and rage—furiously charged at Zeus!
But he had no chance to so much as touch Zeus.
Zeus simply broke space once more, offhand, and spoke the last words of the day to them: "Farewell, all of you."
Then, briskly and cleanly, he cast the four of them once more into the endless Tartarus!
"No—!"
The former God-King's wail of utmost bitterness still echoed in the depths of the Underworld, but beneath Zeus's pitiless thunder it was soon utterly drowned out.
The most dreadful torment in the world enshrouded them once more.
They could only wait within that endless void for the next grace and chance Zeus might someday bestow—who knew when.
Perhaps by then they would have come to see all things clearly.
Those who err must be punished.
And the punishment must be proportionate to the wrong.
The offender must truly understand his error, that he might repent and make it right; the injured must receive due redress; and all beings must be made to fear committing the same wrong.
This is the fairest and most simple truth.
Afterward, Zeus returned the four anchors to the six giants once more.
After another lively talk with them, he turned back to Olympus.
It was time to help Metis attain supreme wisdom!
Then, just as he had returned to Mount Olympus, Zeus was waylaid again.
When he had only just set foot upon Olympus's bounds, intending to seek Metis and surprise her, he found the scene around him shifting in an instant, and he was already within a special, self-contained sacred domain.
Zeus was much surprised at this, but at once grew keen to see the show; he thought Olympus must have sprung some new novelty unknown to him.
What followed made this incorrigibly amorous lord forget his beloved goddess of wisdom yet again, for the moment.
Within this sacred domain was a scene of the ultimate moonlit night. The night seemed ground from black jade, with but a full moon at mid-heaven, hanging like a shard of ice-soul.
That bright silver moon was like a little argent boat, drifting quietly atop the boundless sea of stars. Its silver gleam, cool as water, became a silent waterfall, slowly pouring down the infinite night.
Moonlight fell gently, sheathing all the wilds of flowers and grasses in a layer of sacred silver frost.
Amid these flourishing wildlands, here and there stood a few immaculate white cassia trees, congealed from pure moonglow, their trunks shimmering with holy light.
At the meadows' heart lay a broad ice lake, its surface smooth as a mirror, perfectly reflecting the bright moon above, so that the heaven and the lake answered each other with twin clear moons.
A clear breeze passed, sketching soft ripples upon the lake's face; the breeze went on, setting the endless sea of flowers as far as the eye could see to a gentle swaying.
Just then, a goddess of icy skin and jade-carved features, aloof and peerless, floated down slowly out of the bright moon.
Her bare feet—seemingly sculpted from congealed frost and purest snow—alighted lightly upon the lake's surface, tracing from the center a ring of lamplike ripples that spread softly outward.
Her bearing was chill as frost, her beauty as if carved from ice and polished jade; her face, like first-bloomed cassia steeped in an icy spring, shone with the cold luster of fine jade.
Her complexion was the mutton-fat white of the purest brightness; no trace of mortal warmth touched it. Her unworldly light-pink lips, pressed thinly together, seemed to carry a crystallized rime of frost.
Her fine brows were detached and transcendent, like distant mountains with their mists—ever so slightly knit, as if drawing together a film that could never be dispelled; her lashes, long as butterfly wings, masked all the waves in her eyes when lowered.
Yet most arresting were those eyes themselves—silver-white, holding the full beauty of the moon.
When she raised them, it was as if a half-moon of cool chill lay within. No mortal being would dare meet that gaze; otherwise even heart and soul would be eternally frozen by beauty cold to the marrow.
She was like a wisp of spirit condensed from moonlight; merely standing there in stillness, she easily stole the God-King's whole attention.
This moment, with flowers in fullest bloom and the clear moon at its height—if Zeus did not lose himself in it, it would be he who lacked all sense.
This goddess wore a plain, elegant silver gown, as if she had cut the entire moonlight down and stitched it into her dress.
Upon the hem, the silver threads woven of moonlight trembled slightly because their mistress's breath held the faintest touch of tension.
She quietly drew a deep breath, and with a light tap of her toe upon the lake—like a dewdrop falling upon bluestone at dawn, soundless—she turned to dance.
Her waist-long hair, bright white as a waterfall, unfurled in the air.
The still lake that mirrored the moon stirred in hazy rings of silver with her steps.
This mirror-lake was a stage the goddess had fashioned.
It was the stage she had paved for herself, to be shown to one god alone.
This pure and aloof goddess was the Lord of Eternal Pure Radiance, Mother of the Stars, Queen of Night, Sovereign of the Night Sky, Mistress of the Silver Diadem, Charioteer of the Lunar Disc, Wielder of the Tides, Goddess of Silver Horns, Goddess of Silver Eyes, Goddess of Icy Bloom, Lady of the Silent Night, Radiance of the Void, Guide of Dreams, Eternal Witness, the noble and cold holy brilliance of the Moon, the Face of the Frosted Moon—Selene!
She did not dance for mortals, nor for the gods' noisy banquets. No being had the qualification to see her dance.
She danced, in her cool and silent, private sacred domain, for the supreme and most beautiful of all—the God-King Zeus—offering a solo that belonged to him alone!
With her gentle steps, moon-laurel petals drifted like rain, fluttering down.
At every light touch of her toes, lotus blooms—pure and elegant, congealed from moonlight—opened upon the mirror-calm lake.
Meanwhile, a strangely cool, ethereal murmur of song rose quietly from all around.
Her dance was a voiceless poem, a supreme hymn to the eternal empty vastness.
Her form was light as the wind; each step seemed to tread along the track of turning stars; each turn gathered up the deepest blue of the cold moonlit night.
Her arms rose slowly, like silver ribbons winding through the night sky.
At the lightest touch of her fingers, she plucked with ease the invisible string named "enchantment."
Her long jade arms gathered the unseen moonlight. Holy silver gleam, accompanying each of her leaps, brushed softly, then drifted to encircle the God-King—already somewhat spellbound—before her.
Gentle motes of light flowed with her figure; her skirt swept the lake, yet took up not a drop of water.
At times, when she spun near the God-King, the thin hem might, now and then, graze his flowing robe in passing.
But with only the briefest touch, she would swiftly draw in, her back straight once more, as if that instant of closeness had been nothing but a thoughtless entanglement of moonlight.
This nearness that came and went set her at one moment leaping skyward to dance with the lunar disc, and at another drifting down again, stirring soft ripples in the night.
When she lifted her chin, her long neck traced a curve swan-graceful; when her fingertips alighted, the star-sand like a silver moon became meteors that skimmed the God-King's shoulder—while the watery moonlight deliberately brushed across his dazzling golden hair.
The goddess of the Moon—her visage was the night sky in its ultimate exaltation.
Her fair skin glowed translucent beneath the moon's gleam; her deep eyes were chillier than any cold star.
She bore not a breath of mortal warmth, yet seemed to hold within her the universe's solitude and deep feeling.
The pride and otherworldliness between her brows seemed to rebuff all approach; yet within the softness of her dance, there quietly flickered a fatal gentleness meant for one alone.
When Zeus's gaze fell upon her, her lowered lashes fluttered, almost unconsciously.
When she looked up again, the cold moon in her eyes seemed softened by a spring breeze.
Only, that softness was gone so quickly it felt an illusion—covered again in an instant by ancient pride.
Coy refusal and invitation, as if going yet staying, near yet far, words poised yet unsaid.
Without realizing it, the God-King followed the goddess's steps, drawing nearer, step by slow step.
But the lessening of the space between them was astonishingly slow.
And the God-King seemed not to mind at all.
At the dance's end, all was hushed.
The distance between the two gods was now no more than a body's length.
She closed with an elegant curtsey.
The silver gauze fell like avalanching frost.
Her noble brow was bowed a fraction, revealing a smooth forehead and a neck of utmost slender grace.
Her fingertips lightly grazed the silver threads at her skirt, as though straightening the pleats of moonlight.
Her eyes looked downward, and her voice—misty and cool—was soft as moonlight flowing: "This dance is offered to the God-King alone."
As the words fell, she slowly lifted her eyes, and her gaze met Zeus's exactly.
In that single glance were the moon's cool clarity, a goddess's pride, and also a trace—not very well hidden—of unspoken fondness.
The corners of her eyes and brows bent a half-line. The pale cherry of her lips seemed to grow a touch warmer.
Yet just as Zeus was about to speak, she quickly lowered her gaze.
At the same time, the tips of her ears, white and lustrous as jade, took on—in the moonlight—a faintest pink.
It vanished in a heartbeat.
Soon it was covered once more by the cool silver radiance.
Only the chill remained.
Zeus could not help stepping forward to take, with infinite care and gentleness, the moon goddess's slender jade hands, gazing a little dazedly at Selene's cool, flawless, frost-bright face.
For a moment, even the sweet words carved into his bones were forgotten.
This ever-aloof, proud, solitary Mistress of Pure Radiance—at her first move—had hooked the God-King like an upturned-mouthed fish.
(Supreme sorcery—Ultimate Great Enchantment, God-King-special version—The Moon Goddess's Personal Dance!)
Even the well-traveled God-King, even the battle-tested lover, under this painstaking preparation of the Mistress of Pure Radiance, was charmed then and there—completely and utterly.
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