This time, he had witnessed again the deaths of over a thousand second-generation humans, and the parting of first-generation parents and children.
He sighed in silence.
He spread the wings of death and gently gathered into his arms the shattered, trembling souls of those children who had died in terror amid their mutations.
With the calm divinity of Death, he soothed their fear and restored their peace.
A firm resolve sprouted in his heart.
He was the god of the Underworld, the embodiment of Death, the sovereign whom all living things feared.
But as Death, he was also the kindest and most all-loving of gods.
For a purely cold and unfeeling god could never truly serve well as a Reaper.
Only one whose heart held great love and absolute Order could properly arrange the fate of every departed soul.
Even if it meant witnessing, again and again, the heart-rending parting of life and death.
He would not betray his holy and noble duty.
But he also wished to bring a ray of comfort to these innocent dead.
For his great Father was the most noble, most merciful, most generous God of Hope.
For these souls, he too must kindle a dawn of hope in the Underworld.
He sent the children's souls into the realm of the dead and entrusted them to his servants for proper care.
Then he turned; his cold yet compassionate form dissolved into a shadow and slipped away toward Olympus.
On earth, the mortals who still lived, after a brief spell of grief, gritted their teeth and rose.
Life still had to go on.
Their creator had taught them to live more stubbornly and more fully—with the portion of those who had died.
Along the road of civilization's growth, suffering was destined never to cease.
But growth itself was the continual overcoming of suffering.
The tribal leaders did not, now that the crisis had passed, cling to their homes in denial.
Without hesitation they led their people to migrate at once.
This land might well see danger return.
And it was now their land of grief.
At least for the moment, the one piece of good news was that they need not flee in wild panic.
They did not have to abandon everything and die in droves on the road.
They also had the time now to commit their dead children and kin to the Mother Earth's embrace.
Even if death could not be avoided, they could at least grant each departed one a final peace.
They could see them properly onto the road to the Underworld.
Even if their arms held unbearable desolation, they would still, in a holy rite of mourning, give the dead their last dignity.
Humankind would live on—and live better.
Because of this toughness, this endurance, this courage.
Civilization's spark would grow more vigorous in such resilience.
Because some live, some remember, and some will pass these stories and lessons down, mouth to ear.
Civilization will always have reason to go on burning.
By now Absu Naya had reached the foot of Mount Olympus.
She gazed up at the holy mass of that towering mountain—
a peak so vast and magnificent that even for true gods it defied any measure, its full contour beyond any divinity's grasp.
Looking upon the true core and center of the cosmos,
feeling upon her the highest majesty that streamed down from its summit like something tangible, pressing on the heads of all beings,
the anger that had burned in her divinity all the way there felt like it had been doused in ice-water from the ninth hell.
Reason, like a firm shuttle, wove her thoughts back out of rage.
"Was I… being a bit too impulsive?"
This mountain that bore His Majesty's majesty and authority was no simple peak.
It was a holy range beyond any words.
It was a concept.
It was the embodiment of the God-King's authority and Order.
It could even be called a separate, supreme divine world unto itself.
It joined heaven and earth, dividing gods from mortals.
Every finest blessed land in the cosmos lay under its shelter.
Nowhere was holier, grander, richer, more splendid, or more radiant.
Because the God-King was here.
The lower half of the mountain still belonged to the mortal realm,
and the upper half to the eternal God-King's own domain—Paradise.
Heaven's Gate lay on the mountain's waist.
Of course, "gate" was a loose term.
There was no visible, material structure.
It was an endless cloud of holy, Ordered radiance that fully separated gods from mortals, the heaven from the earth.
Mount Olympus was like a ruler.
And what it measured was the entire cosmos.
The lower half was the mortal world; the upper half, the celestial realm.
Flight was not forbidden in the realm of the gods.
Even in Paradise, save for certain special places, flying was not banned.
But except for a very few gods of exalted rank and closest to the God-King,
every other being—
god or mortal—
was allowed to enter His Majesty's domain only on foot.
This was the mark of absolute respect for the supreme God-King.
One had to pass through Heaven's Gate, guarded by the Goddess of Time,
or else—
the thunder of Order, hidden in the clouds and in her hands,
would teach any intruder the meaning of one thing:
Paradise can never be trespassed.
And the God-King's majesty allows no offense.
Absu Naya, the recluse, rarely left home.
As for Paradise, she had only been there once.
That was when she had gone with all the gods and nymphs to attend the All-Gods Great Assembly celebrating the God-King's coronation.
Then, her "seat" had been far to the rear.
Strictly speaking, she had had no seat at all.
She had stood too far back, head bowed the whole time, not daring to look up. She had not even clearly seen His Majesty's figure.
As a true god she was hardly unqualified to enter Paradise.
It was simply that she felt, toward its Master, the purest, most primal awe—
like a mortal before the sun, longing to draw near its warmth and greatness yet fearing its burning majesty.
Now, in the heat of her anger, she had rushed to Olympus's foot.
And yet all her fury, resentment, humiliation, even her confidence in the law—at the sight of this mountain, all of it dissolved into nothing.
In its place rose that deepest awe from the core of her divinity.
Even as a god, when she raised her head, she still could not see where the summit lay.
She had not reached the Gate, had not set foot in Paradise, and already her courage had fled.
Uneasy, she hesitated at length at the mountain's base, and began, very lamely, to think:
"Thinking about it… nothing so terrible happened today."
"It was only some foolish minions—shake my wings and I can spawn more. That's nothing."
"To lose a little face before His Majesty's daughter—nothing there either."
"After all, just who is Calliope?"
"She is the God-King's dearest Muse-eldest!"
"Do I really need to drag a matter like this up in a complaint against His Majesty's own daughter?"
"Isn't that… a little much?"
She paced back and forth at the mountain's base, unable to decide.
Her instincts as a fence-sitter set her to comparing her clan's power and backing against the other side's.
She was only the Peace of the Trench; the other was the Epic of Civilization.
Her parents were Phorcys and Ceto; the other's Father was the God-King Himself—
and Mother the all-knowing sovereign of civilization and memory, that noble, mighty Mnemosyne.
She came from the inner sea, never in the lead from beginning to end; the other was of the sky-pantheon, noble from first to last.
The other was a top-tier divine second generation, a jewel of Olympus.
She was only a little inner-sea god.
How did that compare?
They were not in the same weight class at all.
The more she thought, the more her heart shrank, the smaller she felt.
Thinking and thinking, Absu Naya found, without realizing it, that she was slinking back in the direction of the inner sea, head low.
But then she stopped short.
Her face darkened and lightened in turn.
The humiliation of having her brood wiped out before her eyes, the suffocation of being overridden by twisted logic, made her divinity ache.
She could not swallow it.
She, Absu Naya, had always kept His Majesty's Holy Just Order. She had always kept His Twelve Holy Laws.
She had always been cautious, humble—and still she had suffered such disgrace.
How could the holy, just, and mighty God-King not give her justice?
Her expression twisted on both halves of her face, beauty and beast both warping in struggle.
Finally she lashed her tentacles once, sharply.
And decided to fight.
No matter whether His Majesty proved perfectly just, by His ways the worst likely outcome was a small reprimand.
She could bear that.
But if she let this go, the knot in her heart would never loosen.
His Majesty was famed for justice; this time she would put that to the test.
If it proved true, she would go on keeping to the law.
If it did not, she would let go of all expectations.
On seeing the Olympian great gods she would simply give them a wide berth.
Just then two names flashed through her mind.
Her lips curled into a cold smile.
The inner-sea pantheon did, after all, have some of their own beside the God-King.
She would consult them first,
sound out His Majesty's mood, and take professional advice before acting.
With this in mind, she opened her God-Net friends list and looked at two cousins showing as "busy."
Her eyes narrowed as she sent a message.
"Dearest Sister, are you there?"
At that moment, in the supreme God-King's temple in Paradise,
His Majesty's happy life was, as ever, simple, unadorned, and dull.
______
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