Date: The Olympian Age – Year Seven: Echoes and Enigmas
Seven years had passed since Cronos was bound and the Olympian order, in its raw, nascent form, had asserted itself over the cosmos. Within my domain, the Achieves, those years had been a period of intense creation and meticulous organization. The luminous halls, anchored to that quiet cleft on a lower slope of Olympus but extending into conceptual spaces far vaster, now held the beginnings of a truly universal library. The initial chaos of information gleaned from the Titanomachy, from the void of pre-existence, and from the first stirrings of this new age, was slowly being brought into a semblance of order by myself and the three Maintainers.
I had given them names, or rather, acknowledged the names that seemed to resonate with their inherent natures as they had more fully coalesced. Thea, who managed the ever-growing archives of our past, possessed a quiet focus; her touch on ancient records seemed to draw out their clearest essence, her presence a steadying influence. Pronoia, in contrast, was a restless explorer of the unknown, her gaze always distant as if perceiving the faint trails of nascent events; she constantly brought new, unverified threads of information for the Achieves. And the Verifier of What Is True, whose gaze could dissect illusion and whose essence was anathema to falsehood, was, fittingly, Aletheia. Together, they were the heart of the Achieves, extensions of my will and my domains.
Thea oversaw the ever-expanding Great Catalogue, where the history of our war with the Titans, cross-referenced with my own memories of Alex's world and its strikingly similar myths, formed a core section. It was her task to ensure that the past, in all its terrible beauty and brutal truths, was preserved without corruption. My own memories of Alex, of that other life, that other world with its own strange gods and forgotten histories, were among the first she meticulously archived, handled with a gentle, non-judgmental curiosity.
Pronoia, meanwhile, ventured further and further afield in her conceptual explorations. She could extend her senses, her very essence, out into the cosmos, following the currents of information, a silent, divine explorer of the unknown. It was she who first began to bring back more than just the fleeting, unsettling sensations of other realities that the Tome had offered me. Now, she returned with conceptual fragments – the echo of a dragon's roar from a world built on entirely different cosmic laws, the scent of alien incense from a temple dedicated to a multi-armed deity of creation and destruction, the chillingly beautiful, crystalline structure of a spell woven by a god whose power stemmed not from elemental forces but from pure, sculpted mathematics.
Aletheia, her brow furrowed in concentration, would then take these fragments. "The resonance of their divine power is… different, Lord Telos," she'd observe, after consulting the Tome, which seemed to vibrate in sympathy with such truths. "It is not of Ouranic or Chthonic origin as we understand it. It follows different laws, different achievements of creation."
Occasionally, the Tome would offer fleeting, bizarre sensations – the taste of sun-baked sand under a sky ruled by entirely different constellations, or the biting chill of winds that whispered unknown divine names. These were disjointed impressions, not coherent knowledge, yet my Achieves filed them away. They hinted at a cosmos far wider than our current war, a thought that brought both a strange disquiet and a sharp sense of insignificance.
Olympus, in contrast, felt both incredibly near due to our shared mountain and increasingly distant in spirit. Reports reached me, sometimes through Hermes, now growing into his role as a swift, if occasionally flustered, messenger, or through the subtle analysis of Olympian pronouncements that Thea would undertake. Zeus was solidifying his kingship with a firm hand, his pronouncements taking on the weight of irrevocable law. Palaces of gleaming white stone, far grander than our initial rough-hewn fortress, were rising on the peak, their construction overseen by the Cyclopes, who seemed to revel in this new age of building rather than pure warfare.
Hera, for instance, didn't just look at the defensive lines Zeus and I discussed. I'd often see her afterwards with Zeus, jabbing a determined finger at those same maps. Her concerns, when I caught snippets, were less about chokepoints and more about, "Where the central hall might command the most impressive vista," or ensuring, "The approaches reflect our undeniable authority, not mere rustic strength." It was clear her vision for Olympus extended far beyond a simple fortress; she was already designing the capital of an empire, with an eye, no doubt, to her own place within its hierarchy. My distaste for her methods – the way she used Zeus's authority as a shield for her own ambitions, her already apparent jealousy and her quickness to condemn any perceived slight to her dignity – only deepened with each new account.
One day, Hermes arrived at the threshold of the Achieves, his winged sandals stirring the quiet air. He looked about with a mixture of awe and apprehension; few from Olympus had yet been granted entry. "Lord Telos," he began, a little too formally, "King Zeus requests your presence. Or, failing that, your insight. A dispute has arisen concerning the nymph Metis."
Metis. The Titaness of wisdom, Zeus's first wife in Alex's myths, the one he was fated to swallow to prevent a prophecy of his own overthrow. My Achieves hummed with a sudden, cold clarity. The patterns of the old stories were reasserting themselves with chilling precision.
Aletheia, who stood near a section of the Achieves dedicated to divinatory principles, met my eyes. The truth of such cyclical prophecies was her specialty; no words were needed between us on that. "And this troubles Zeus?" I asked Hermes. The young messenger shifted uncomfortably. "King Zeus seeks all relevant lore, Lord Telos. Old tales, similar fates… He wishes to understand the full scope of this… pronouncement. Lady Hera is… most concerned."
I could imagine. Hera, ever jealous of any threat to Zeus's supremacy, or, more accurately, to her own position as his queen, would be urging decisive, likely ruthless, action. "The Achieves holds all records, Hermes," I said. "Thea will find the precedents of such prophecies and their outcomes. Aletheia will discern the core truth of its current application. Pronoia will seek any… divergent futures." This was the function of my domain. "The knowledge will be provided to Zeus. But tell him this, from me: a prophecy's true danger often lies not in its words, but in the fear it engenders in those who hear it. Actions taken to avert a fate can often be the very means by which it is achieved."
Hermes nodded, clearly out of his depth but dutifully recording my words. He departed, and I was left with the heavy silence of the Achieves, the weight of truths unveiled. Zeus, barely a decade into his reign, was already facing the same cyclical paranoia that had consumed his father and his grandfather before him.
I looked at Aletheia. "The cycle… it attempts to repeat." "Truth, Lord Telos," she said, her voice calm as undisturbed water, "is that cycles are patterns. And patterns can be understood. Understood, they can, perhaps, be… re-achieved differently."
Her words offered a sliver of something that was not quite hope, but a challenge to my own ingrained cynicism, a cynicism born from Alex's memories. Could these cycles truly be altered, I wondered, if one understood their every component, every point of leverage? The thought itself was a new kind of burden, a path that led far beyond simply recording events as they had always been. The war against the Titans was indeed finished, but ensuring what came next wasn't just another verse of the same old song of fear and ambition... that felt like a far more intricate, and perhaps unwinnable, struggle. Its first major test, it seemed, was already upon us, centered on an unborn child and a prophecy of a son destined to overthrow his father. My Achieves would record the outcome, whatever it might be. But for the first time, I felt a stirring within me, a desire not just to understand, but perhaps, in my own quiet way, to influence the achievement of a different future.