The absence of the Four Primordial Gods had begun to intrigue Drex Valen.
Gaia's silence was strange enough.
The others were even stranger.
Besides Gaia, the remaining primordial entities rarely involved themselves in the affairs of gods or mortals. Nyx, the Goddess of Night, and Erebus, the God of Darkness, had secluded themselves in the Underworld for ages beyond counting. They had ignored wars, dynastic struggles, and divine conflicts for so long that many younger gods barely remembered they existed.
When the Celestial Court had swept through the Underworld earlier, neither of them had appeared.
Then there was Tartarus.
Not merely a place.
A being.
A primordial god.
The living embodiment of the Abyss itself.
According to ancient myth, when the world was first created, Tartarus had simply found a comfortable corner of existence and settled there. Over time, his body became the endless abyss beneath the world.
Though described as existing underground, the Underworld was actually a separate realm entirely, independent from the domains of sky, sea, and earth.
Tartarus rested at its deepest point.
Motionless.
Silent.
Gaia had once joked that if he remained inactive for much longer, he would eventually follow the path of Chaos itself and dissolve back into the world's fundamental laws.
At that point, Tartarus would cease to exist as an individual being.
The Abyss was darkness incarnate.
The end of the world.
A place where sunlight had never reached.
Nothing grew there.
Nothing lived there.
Not simply because life couldn't survive.
The darkness itself was the problem.
The energy saturating the Abyss was pure, ancient, and impossibly dense. Cold darkness filled every inch of the realm.
Weaker gods who ventured too deep risked losing themselves forever.
Eventually, the darkness would consume them completely.
Athena pressed onward through the endless blackness.
Even for a goddess of her caliber, the oppressive darkness constantly gnawed at her.
During the ten-year Titan War, Zeus had once found himself locked in a stalemate against the Titans.
Following Gaia's advice, he freed six imprisoned beings.
Three Cyclopes.
Three Hecatoncheires.
The Hundred-Handed Giants.
Grateful for their freedom, they joined Zeus's side without hesitation.
Their support had shifted the balance of the war.
It was also through the Cyclopes that Zeus had acquired one of his greatest weapons:
The Lightning Spear.
After the war ended, the Cyclopes withdrew to remote islands far from civilization.
The three Hundred-Handed Giants remained behind.
Their task was guarding the deepest prison in existence.
The prison of the Titans.
Ahead of Athena stood three massive bronze gates.
Each was over three hundred feet thick.
Layer upon layer of divine barriers sealed the passage beyond.
Fortunately, Zeus had entrusted her with his authority.
The moment she approached, the gates responded.
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
The colossal doors slowly opened.
Heavy footsteps echoed from the darkness beyond.
The entire abyss trembled.
Three enormous figures emerged.
Their forms were difficult to make out through the darkness, but each step shook the world around them.
The Hundred-Handed Giants.
The living siege engines of the Titan War.
In direct combat, each possessed strength comparable to many Titan gods.
Though in battle they had usually been deployed in a surprisingly simple role:
Throwing mountains.
Lots of mountains.
One of the giants lowered his gaze.
"Athena?"
His voice rumbled through the abyss.
"What are you doing here?"
The giants rarely concerned themselves with events on the surface. Seeing Athena appear alone, and with the authority to open the bronze gates, immediately put them on edge.
The gates only responded to Zeus's command.
Yet Zeus himself was nowhere to be seen.
Athena quickly explained the situation.
The giants listened in stunned silence.
"Zeus wants to release Cronus and the Titans?"
The disbelief in their voices was obvious.
Athena clenched her jaw.
Time was running out.
These three weren't stupid, but they weren't exactly quick thinkers either.
"If Olympus falls, none of this will matter," she snapped.
"The Celestial Court is already at our gates."
The giants exchanged glances.
After a moment, they reluctantly nodded.
Athena had opened the gates using Zeus's authority.
That much couldn't be faked.
If Zeus had issued the command, then there was no room for argument.
The giants turned and began leading her deeper into Tartarus.
Athena quietly exhaled in relief.
Had they refused, forcing her way through would have been difficult even for her.
The journey continued.
Darkness stretched endlessly in every direction.
Then blue flames appeared.
Cold, eerie fires burned atop gigantic black iron pillars.
Chains connected pillar to pillar, carrying the ghostly blue light throughout the prison.
Athena finally saw them.
The Titans.
Dozens upon dozens of colossal figures hung suspended in the darkness.
Their limbs and torsos were bound by enormous chains.
Some appeared human-sized.
Others towered hundreds of feet tall.
Most of the prisoners were second- and third-generation Titans.
Their power varied greatly.
The First Generation Titans, however, were imprisoned separately.
Their cells lay deeper within the prison.
Generally speaking, the First Generation Titans possessed the strongest bloodlines.
But bloodline wasn't everything.
Hecate, for example, was a Third Generation Titan.
Yet her strength surpassed that of many older Titans.
Likewise, among the Second Generation Titans were monsters such as Atlas and Prometheus.
Even some First Generation Titans would hesitate before challenging them.
Looking back, the Titan War had been a fascinating conflict.
Not because of military strategy.
Not because of battlefield heroics.
But because Zeus had weaponized something entirely different.
Relationships.
The future King of Gods had effectively dismantled the Titan alliance through marriage, seduction, and political maneuvering.
The Twelve Titan Lords consisted of six male Titans and six female Titans.
Two of those Titan goddesses, Themis and Mnemosyne, eventually became Zeus's second and fifth wives.
During the war itself.
One day they were members of the enemy faction.
The next, they were sharing Zeus's bed.
Naturally, their loyalties shifted.
The Titan alliance weakened.
Then came Oceanus and Tethys.
The parents of several of Zeus's wives and Poseidon's queen, Amphitrite.
Through family ties and diplomacy, Zeus convinced them to withdraw from the conflict entirely.
Just like that, four of the Twelve Titan Lords were effectively neutralized.
And Zeus wasn't finished.
He kept going.
Coeus and Phoebe had two daughters.
Leto.
And Asteria.
Leto eventually became Zeus's sixth wife and the mother of Apollo and Artemis.
Asteria married the Second Generation Titan Perses, and together they became the parents of Hecate.
That lineage made Hecate one of the purest Third Generation Titans.
As legend had it, Zeus had also pursued Asteria relentlessly.
He had wanted both sisters.
Unfortunately for him, Asteria was the Goddess of Falling Stars.
She literally fled across the heavens.
For once, Zeus failed to catch his target.
By the end of all this, the original Twelve Titan Lords had effectively been reduced by half.
Not through war.
Not through conquest.
Through Zeus's astonishing ability to turn enemies into relatives.
Looking at it from that perspective, the King of Olympus had practically defeated six Titan gods single-handedly.
No wonder he ended up ruling the pantheon.
Who else had contributed more?
Certainly not Hades.
Hades excelled at charging directly into battle and fighting until both sides were drenched in blood.
Zeus preferred dismantling alliances with words, promises, marriages, and political manipulation.
One was a battlefield commander.
The other was a king.
Their positions had been decided long before the war ended.
Then there were Hyperion and Theia.
Titans associated with sunlight and radiance.
Parents of the former Sun God Helios and the former Moon Goddess Selene.
Unlike the others, they simply refused to participate.
Neither they nor their children joined either side.
Their entire family had essentially watched the war from the sidelines until it was over.
After all the defections, withdrawals, and divided loyalties, the mighty Titan alliance had dwindled to almost nothing.
And there was one final blow.
Rhea.
The Queen of Heaven.
Mother of Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, and their siblings.
Cronus had swallowed each of her children at birth.
She had every reason to support their rebellion.
By the time the war neared its conclusion, the once-mighty Titan King found himself looking around the battlefield only to discover that almost everyone had abandoned him.
Standing beside him remained only two loyal brothers.
Crius.
And Iapetus.