Date: The Titanomachy – The Cusp of the Tenth Year
Our return from the dimmed East to the peak of Olympus was met with a mixture of relief and a new, more sober respect. The Pelasgian elders, now firmly, if cautiously, allied with our cause, sent emissaries bearing offerings of ancient earth-lore and promises of support along the eastern front. Even Hera, who had watched my proposed strategy against Hyperion with a skeptical eye, offered a curt nod of acknowledgment. "A victory is a victory, brother Telos," she'd conceded, "however… unorthodox its means." Her focus, as always, was on the consolidation of Olympian power, and any effective tool, even one wielded by a quiet, bookish god like myself, was to be utilized.
Zeus, naturally, claimed the lion's share of the glory, his narrative of the campaign painting a vivid picture of Olympian might subduing the Titan of Light. He conveniently downplayed the crucial role of the Hekatonkheirean mists and my conceptual nullifications, framing them more as clever support for his own decisive blows. I recorded this in my Achieves with a familiar, weary resignation. Truth, in the courts of power, was often the first casualty.
The war, as it ground its way towards what I knew from Alex's memories was its tenth and historically final year, had changed. After our victories at Ida and in the East, the Titans shifted. Othrys no longer just hurled brute force at us; their probing attacks became feints, their deployments designed to confuse. Our captured Titan servitors spoke of new, intricate plans. In our war councils, the Tome of Attainment was now frequently consulted, its ability to sift truth from Titan boasts or analyze the underpinnings of their new magical assaults proving vital.
It was through the Tome that we learned of Oceanus's new gambit. The old Titan of the World-Encircling River, humiliated by his failure to breach Olympus's walls with direct assault, had apparently brooded long in his deep, submarine palaces. He was not mustering another army of sea-beasts or lesser water-Titans. Instead, the Tome pieced together fragmented whispers from naiads and nereids, analyzed anomalous tidal surges in distant coastal regions, and cross-referenced them with ancient lore about Oceanus's deepest, most primal powers.
"He intends to unmake the land itself," I announced gravely at our next war council, the shifting symbols on the Tome's pages painting a chilling picture in my mind. "Not a direct assault on Olympus, but a… a drowning of our nascent alliances. He plans to invoke the primal flood, the memory of the world before the lands were fully separated from the seas, to submerge the territories of the Pelasgian earth gods, to cut off our supply lines from the coastal regions where some minor sea deities have begun to favor us."
A stunned silence greeted my words. Even Zeus, for all his bluster, looked taken aback. "The primal flood?" Poseidon rumbled, his sea-green eyes wide with a mixture of awe and alarm. "That is power from the very dawn of creation, Uncle Oceanus playing with forces even he cannot fully control." As the god whose domain would one day encompass the seas, he understood the terrifying implications.
"Can he truly achieve such a thing?" Hera demanded, her usual composure shaken. "To drown entire lands?"
"The Tome indicates he possesses the knowledge of the necessary rituals, the deep elemental connections," I replied. "And his desperation, his need to reclaim his authority after his defeat here, might provide the necessary will. It would be a catastrophic achievement, devastating not just to our allies, but to the very balance of the world."
"Then we must stop him before he begins," Zeus declared, his knuckles white on the Keraunos. "Where is he? Where will this ritual take place?"
I focused on the Tome, its symbols swirling. It was not a map it offered, but a convergence of probabilities, a reading of intent. "He will seek a place where the veil between the primal waters and the land is thinnest, a place of ancient oceanic memory. The westernmost capes, where the land gives way to his boundless domain. He will need time, and immense concentration."
"Then time and concentration are what we will deny him," Zeus said, his eyes blazing. "Hades, your shadows can convey us swiftly and unseen. Poseidon, your own command of the waters will be our shield and our spear against his. Telos, your Tome will be our eyes against his deceptions and the key to unraveling his ritual. I will bring the fury of the sky." He paused. "Hestia, Demeter, Hera – you will remain. Olympus must be held, its sanctity a beacon against the despair this news will undoubtedly spread if it reaches Othrys prematurely."
Hera looked poised to object, her desire to be at the center of decisive action clear, but a sharp glance from Zeus silenced her. My own silent Achieves noted this subtle assertion of his kingly authority, and Hera's reluctant, resentful compliance. The dynamics of Olympus were indeed solidifying.
Our journey to the westernmost edge of the world was a grim, silent passage through Hades' manipulated shadows, a disorienting rush that left me feeling as though the very substance of my divine form had been stretched thin. We arrived on a desolate, windswept headland, the vast, turbulent expanse of Oceanus's domain stretching to an infinite horizon. The air was thick with salt and an ancient, brooding power.
And there, on a jagged promontory overlooking a churning vortex where the sea seemed to claw at the land, was Oceanus. He was not alone. Several powerful Nereids and ancient sea-daimones formed a protective circle around him as he stood before a crude altar of black, wave-worn stone, his voice a deep, resonant chant that pulled at the very tides of our divine essences. The sea around the vortex was darkening, swelling, the first signs of the catastrophic ritual already taking hold.
"He has begun!" Poseidon roared, his trident already crackling with his own oceanic power, eager to meet his grand-uncle in a contest of elemental wills.
"His guardians first," Zeus commanded. "Telos, the ritual! What is its anchor? Its weakness?"
The Tome was a blaze of frantic symbols. "The Heart of the Vortex – The Unmaking of the Ancient Current – Requires Conceptual Severance." "The vortex itself is the focal point, Zeus!" I called out over the rising howl of the wind and waves. "His chant draws upon a primal current from the deepest trenches. If that current can be… interrupted, conceptually severed from his will, the ritual will fail!"
Conceptual severance. Another abstract challenge. As Zeus and Poseidon launched themselves at Oceanus's guardians, a maelstrom of lightning and roiling water erupting on the promontory, and as Hades melted into the shadows to pick off the chanters one by one, I focused on the raging vortex. It was more than just swirling water; it was a conduit, a siphon drawing upon an ancient, almost sentient power.
I held the Tome aloft. I voiced the syllables the Tome provided, a quiet sequence aimed not at overwhelming the vortex, but at introducing a fundamental flaw in its magical structure. I projected the concept, a focused thought shaped by the Tome's logic, directly into the churning energies. It wasn't a shout against a storm, but a precisely placed wedge.
The effect was not immediate, but I felt a subtle discord begin within the vortex. A moment later, the massive column of water itself seemed to stutter, its powerful, rhythmic ingestion of the sea below losing its steady cadence. Oceanus, in the midst of his chant, cried out, clutching his head as if struck by an invisible blow. The swelling seas around the headland hesitated, their momentum lost.
The battle raged around me, Zeus's lightning tearing through the Nereid ranks, Poseidon wrestling with colossal water elementals conjured by Oceanus's failing ritual, Hades a fleeting terror amongst the remaining chanters. But the heart of the Titan's desperate gambit had been broken. The primal flood was unachieved.
Oceanus, seeing his grand design unravel, let out a roar of pure, thwarted fury. He was still immensely powerful, but his ultimate weapon had been denied him. Now, he faced only the raw, vengeful power of his grand-nephews.
The cusp of the tenth year of the war had arrived, and with it, another desperate Titan strategy undone. My Achieves recorded it all – the terrifying power of the primal sea, the focused fury of my brothers, and the quiet, almost surgical precision with which understanding, applied at the right fulcrum, could avert a catastrophe. The war, I knew, was far from over, but the pendulum, with each such victory, swung ever so slightly further in our favor. And the Tome in my hands felt less like a mere book, and more like a scalpel, capable of dissecting the very fabric of our enemies' grandest designs.