We had arrived at the highest point in the known world—Mount Olympus. But as I looked at my newly-liberated, shivering siblings, the brutal reality of our situation hit me.
On one hand, we have big cannibal daddy dearest and his army of colossal Titans, along with the most dangerous, diabolical apex predators of all: the Human Race. On the other hand, we have Family—Mother, Grandmother, and my half-naked siblings wearing nothing but acid-burned rags. The crisp, sub-zero mountain wind was a violent shock to a family that had spent an eon marinating in the claustrophobic, burning stench of Titan stomach acid. But hey, nothing is more powerful than Family. We would now go and defeat the evil villain that is our father, make him a deadbeat in Tartarus, and free everyone from his evil reign. Just as the myths and our designated future foretold. Everything is going according to keikaku.
Kree-ah-ree-ah!
A piercing whistle tore through my thoughts. I watched my homeboy, Aetos, descending from the clear sky. Wait, did he just nosedive straight down to ten feet above the ground, backflip, and shoot back up into the sky like a Tesla rocket? Then he made a wide circle and dropped like Kratos from the heavens, spreading his wings at the absolute last second to kill the inertia before landing perfectly on my shoulder. Where did this bird learn to farm aura?
Kreee—
I cut him off. "Yeah, I heard you the first time. And no, we are not cooked. We will cook that farmer, trust me bro."
Kreeeeee!
"Whoa, whoa, whoa buddy, no cussing." I sighed. Guess he is in his teen phase. Too many hormones, zero bitches.
Anyway, we were definitely not ready. I looked at my siblings, shivering in the freezing wind. They had spent their entire lives in the dark, only to be vomited into a vast wasteland. They possessed the raw, innate power of the cosmos, but mentally? They were terrified, feral creatures with exposed divinity.
Poseidon was the first to snap.
My casual mention of a "prison break in Tartarus" had triggered a visceral flashback to his imprisonment. He turned his back on the sheer drop of the mountain, his bare chest heaving, his dark hair plastered to his face with freezing sweat. He stared wide-eyed at the white mist of his own breath pluming in the air—a completely alien concept to a god who had never known the cold.
"I will not follow thee into another pit!" Poseidon snarled, his voice a rumbling tremor. "Thou hast freed us. For that, I owe thee my life. But thou art a stranger! I am the eldest son of the bloodline, and I will not be commanded by a glowing brat who hurls his kin off cliffs!"
Hera crossed her arms, shivering violently but holding her chin so high it looked painful. "For once, the brute speaks some truth. Thou holdest no crown over us, boy. We are not thy hounds to be ordered into the abyss. You cannot stand against all of us."
Hades said nothing, but the shadows around his feet deepened, his fathomless pale eyes watching me. He was waiting to see if I was a leader or just a loudmouth. And then he glared at Poseidon at his bold declaration of being the eldest.
Ah, I thought, letting out a long, slow breath. Poseidon was letting his ego rewrite history. Hades was technically the eldest brother since he is the first swallowed son. But I wasn't about to give a mythology lore lesson right now. The mandatory post-rescue rebellion arc was officially underway. What an unforeseeable plot twist.
Would I lose to three newly-awakened, highly traumatized proto-gods throwing a collective temper tantrum? I asked myself.
Nah, I'd win. I silently unclasped the Aegis, letting the indestructible golden fleece slip from my shoulders and fall into the snow.
"You think surviving a stomach makes you gods?" I asked softly. "You weren't warriors in there. You were Daddy Dearest's forbidden protein shake. Prove to me you're more than just a five-course meal."
Poseidon just charged toward me openly. The bedrock of Olympus screamed as he bulldozed forward, leaving a trench of pulverized stone in his wake. He had no martial stance, just the unstoppable, apocalyptic momentum of a tidal wave.
He lunged, pulling back a heavy fist. The air around his knuckles visibly fractured, humming with a terrifying, white-hot halo of raw quake energy. He swung, aiming to shatter me.
I raised my palm.
BOOM. For a split second, the colors of the world inverted. A deafening sonic boom ripped the clouds apart in a perfect ring across the horizon. A sphere of pure devastation exploded outward, stripping the mountain peak down to the glossy black ground.
Yet, my hand, wreathed in a gentle hum of azure lightning, didn't yield a single millimeter. Poseidon's world-breaking wrath was stopped dead against my palm like a child hitting a brick wall.
His eyes widened in absolute shock. I just smiled.
"That's a lot of ire to handle," I taunted with a smirk. "Your aggro is way too high right now."
"I know not this 'aggro'!" Poseidon roared, the bedrock violently splintering under his bare feet. "I am the wrath of the shifting earth! I am the crushing deep!"
Bro is really out here trying to monologue and invent his final boss title before he's even cleared the tutorial, I thought.
Poseidon pulled his fist back and unleashed a blinding barrage of high-speed strikes. Hundreds of quake-infused punches rained down in a flurry, each one carrying enough force to level Florida.
I didn't even drop my smile. I simply swayed. Left, right, leaning back by a fraction of an inch, casually swatting away his world-ending blows with the back of my hand. Every parried strike sent rogue shockwaves tearing into the sky, carving jagged canyons into the clouds above.
On the sidelines, Demeter instinctively wrapped her arms around Hestia, shielding her from the rogue shockwaves, glaring at us with absolute "do not talk to me or my sister ever again" energy.
Suddenly, the shadow cast by Poseidon's thrashing fists anomalously stretched.
Hades didn't step into the fight. Using the conceptual blind spot of Poseidon's massive frame, the hidden one materialized entirely without sound. Rising like liquid smoke directly behind my shoulder, Hades thrust a condensed, jagged lance of light-consuming darkness flawlessly aimed at the base of my skull. A perfect, lethal assassin's strike.
He really just pulled the 'teleports behind you, nothing personal, kid' move on me, I sighed internally.
But they had zero teamwork.
Poseidon, blinded by rage and completely ignoring his brother's stealth approach, unleashed a wild, sweeping roundhouse kick aimed at my ribs. The sheer seismic force of the kick prematurely shattered the ground right beneath Hades' feet.
The ground exploded. Hades lost his footing, his shadow-lance missing my neck by an inch and instead slicing a trail of biting, black frost straight across Poseidon's own shoulder.
Poseidon howled in pain. "Watch thy blade, crawler!"
"Stay out of my trajectory, brute!" Hades hissed back, scrambling to stabilize his shadows.
"You guys are really good teammates," I mocked, shedding fake tears as I remembered my old COD lobby mates.
Taking immediate advantage of their squabble, I vanished. A crack of thunder echoed, and I reappeared instantly in the space between them. I grabbed Poseidon by the face, using his own forward momentum to spin him like a massive, muscular ragdoll, and hurled him directly into Hades. The two brothers collided in a tangled heap of bruised limbs and shattered shadows, skidding violently across the jagged ice.
Then, the sky above us turned a blinding, imperious gold.
"Fools! Both of you!" Hera screamed.
She took a step forward to fight, and the atmosphere ignited. She bypassed physical combat entirely, invoking the absolute concept of Authority. A crushing, omnidirectional dome of sheer, monarchical gravity dropped from the heavens, demanding total submission from everything it touched.
But her pride lacked targeting. The golden pressure crashed down on the entire peak indiscriminately.
Poseidon and Hades, who were just pushing themselves up from the dirt, were violently slammed flat onto their faces. The ground groaned as the two brothers were pinned to the floor by their sister's untargeted command, gasping for air as the golden light forcefully burned away Hades' shadows and crushed Poseidon's breath.
I stood in the direct epicenter of her golden crush. I simply rolled my shoulders, the sheer concept of the endless Sky refusing to be suppressed by a mere Queen.
"Call an Ambulance, Hera," I said, my eyes glowing with piercing blue light as the air pressure inverted. "But not for me."
I let the leash off my aura. A towering pillar of electric-blue plasma erupted from my body, piercing straight through the golden dome like a spear of glass. The boundless, suffocating majesty of the storm flared outward, instantly swallowing the Queen's light and plunging the peak back into the terrifying, thunderous dark.
I moved at the speed of lightning.
A blur of blue motion broke the sound barrier. A pivoting, thunder-infused heel dropped squarely onto Poseidon's back, embedding the puddle manager three feet deep into the solid rock to make sure he stayed down. Without losing a fraction of a second, I dashed across the ice, catching Hades by the collar before he could sink into a desperate shadow and hurling him effortlessly into a nearby granite spire with a sickening crunch.
Finally, I walked slowly toward Hera.
The golden light in her eyes fractured as the oceanic pressure of my storm converged entirely on her. She tried to stand tall, but the absolute weight of the heavens was crashing onto her shoulders. Her knees buckled. The breath was violently driven from her lungs. She was forced to her hands and knees in the snow, her pristine hair falling into the dirt, physically unable to lift her head against the terrifying, overwhelming aura radiating from my footsteps.
The wind howled over the ruined, smoking peak. The three incredibly powerful, entirely uncoordinated gods lay bruised, gasping, and pinned to the freezing stone, completely dismantled in less than thirty seconds. Demeter was huddling near the edge of the cliff, trembling in absolute terror while Hestia looked ready to jump between us to stop the fight.
I kept my face perfectly neutral, but internally, my mana reserves were absolutely screaming. Suppressing three awakening divine domains at once took almost everything I had. I could bully them in a quick thirty-second PvP skirmish, but if big daddy Kronos and an army of a million armored Titans marched up this mountain right now, my HP would hit zero in ten minutes. I couldn't solo this server. I needed a squad.
I let my aura recede, picking up the Aegis from the snow.
"Kronos didn't rule you because he was stronger," I told them. "He ruled you because he understood how to weaponize a concept. You just tried to punch the sky. You tried to stab the light with a shadow. It's like a coughing baby picking a fight with a supernova."
Poseidon slowly pushed himself up, spitting golden ichor onto the snow. He didn't attack again. The rage in his eyes had been burned away, replaced by a grudging, furious respect.
I looked at the five of them. They were shivering, terrified, and staring at me like I was a monster.
I glanced down at the polished, glassy black ice I had just exposed with my shockwave. Staring back at me was a towering, glowing figure, pinning his own flesh and blood to the dirt with absolute, suffocating authority. I looked exactly like him. I looked like Kronos.
I let out a sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose. This isn't going to work, I realized. If I just beat them into submission, I'm no better than the Titan King. Master Shifu didn't teach Po kung fu by throwing him into a torture chamber; he realized Po was motivated by food, and he adapted. I couldn't just yell at my siblings to punch harder. I had to use their deepest traumas and turn them into their strength.
The terrifying Sky God aura melted away instantly. A massive, slightly unhinged grin spread across my face. I rubbed my hands together, the static electricity sparking joyfully between my fingers.
"Alright, family," I clapped my hands together. "The ego death is out of the way. It's time to figure out what you actually are. Welcome to boot camp."
Hades touched his bruised jaw, pulling himself up. "What madness dost thou speak now?"
"It means we learn to survive," I said, pointing at Poseidon. "You. Step up."