A/N: To those of you joining us in the world of the HADES saga for the first time, welcome! And to those wonderful, loyal returning readers - welcome back! Due to being terribly busy with uni and various creative projects I haven't visited in a long time, and let me just take a minute to say that I missed you all, and damn, it feels bloody good to be back :)
I'm happy to share with you all now my 4th book: The Immortal Zeus: Memoirs of a 3,000 year old King. It is at once a standalone novel and companion volume to the HADES trilogy, and although chronologically it is placed between Resurrection and the as-yet-unfinished Legacy, it is essentially Zeus walking you through the happiness and heartbreaks of his life, from Ancient Greece through to the Swinging Sixties...so naturally these events take place long before Hades ever met Harusame and triggered the events of the aforementioned novels. Anyway. That's quite enough out of me; I'm going to shut up now and let my protagonist do the talking. (He's been giving me death glares and haughtily tapping his feet for the last two minutes...) Enjoy! *humbly bows*
-Miya 13/11/11
Prologue
The nightingale's crescendo is what stirred me from my dark snarl of dreams. It was only as that sweet yet outstandingly rich voice flowed into me, banishing the shadows of my unconscious as the real shadows lengthened outside, that I realised my shameful idleness and gave myself a mental slap. I fled to this space hours ago, resolute with the intention of putting pen to paper, and yet in my characteristic manner have amused myself with everything other than the undertaking itself; the last of which, and the most effective it seems, was taking a nap. But this artful dodger came here to write, and write I shall, even though twilight soaks into the sky in blacks and purples and reds, and I will soon need a candle to light my way. That's fine. If you're here with me, neither of us is alone.
My name is Zeus. Perhaps you've heard of me.
If you have you've probably heard wrong, and I categorically deny all charges unless you've got evidence. And if you heard about me from my brother Hades, well, let's just say that there are two sides to every story.
This is not only my side of the story but my story in its humble entirety, and if I'm going to explain to you who I am and why I turned out this way, I'd better start with the basics. As already stated, my name is Zeus, leader of the Olympian pantheon and King of all gods. I have many epithets (those so charitably conferred by Hades are not repeatable here) and many titles, but Zeus is what my mother named me, and Zeus is what my loved ones call me, so please, refer to me by that name. I say I am immortal. That is more or less true. In my current state as a god nothing can kill me, and few things can harm me – not physically, anyway (emotionally I'm as easily bruised as a peach). If I am wounded, my body repairs itself with magnificent and most convenient speed, and I am left with no permanent damage (there is however one thing that poses a threat to a god's immortality, even a god as powerful as myself, and that is the humble pomegranate. I've never partaken of pomegranate, nor do I ever hope to, because it can make a god most ill indeed. That matter we shall discuss later).
What do I look like? I'm glad you asked, and am only sorry I can't be there to dazzle you in person. I stand at six foot two, the minimum average height of men in my family, which is all right by god standards and pretty good by human standards. I am naturally pale-skinned but tan easily under the sun, and my white-blond hair, the colour of sheaths in a cornfield, is courtesy of my father, whose looks I inherited to a tee. My hair is wavy and I tend to leave it longish, tickling my neck, as my wife likes it that way. She says it makes me look boyish, and I like to please her. My eyes are a sparkling violet blue, the colour bequeathed upon all in my race, and framed by very long dark lashes which are all the better to bat at unsuspecting maidens. My mouth is wide and sensual and very expressive, and as my brothers will tell you, often too big for my own good. I am told to "stuff a sock in it" every other day. If you were to see me in the street in human fashions you might imagine that I was a student out for an off-campus stroll. This is my preferred stasis of age – young enough to charm, but old enough to be taken seriously. I've looked this way for as long as I can remember, and never felt the urge to change. You can write off the paintings and the ceramics and the statues you've seen of me with a Socrates beard to overactive human imagination – it gets on my wick, the way you humans make things up. I confess I grew a goatee in the sixties (we all did a lot of stupid things in the sixties) but usually I go clean-shaven.
So what is my job? Overseer of all divine life, from the smallest of the Japanese Kami deities sprinkled like hundreds and thousands over their tiny little islands, to the mightiest and strongest pagan, Egyptian and Norse gods who lie dormant all over the planet; forgotten, but not gone. A lot of deities from the Old religions aren't all that interested in human relations since the worship dried up and the sacrifices stopped coming in, but the Olympian pantheon prides ourselves in this area. We have many stakes in the running of the human world, in everything from politics to economy; and though I consider sitting in a boardroom to be the most tedious and difficult part of my job, my suffering is lessened a great deal by my clever and infinitely patient council. Many of us even have holiday homes in the human world, my brother Hades spending more and more of his time there these days (this came as a surprise to none of us – he took to godly life about as successfully as the dodos took to flying). While you might think that the end of worship might have caused us some setbacks (humans seem to have this absurd idea that gods shrivel up and die if you people aren't paying attention to us – quite hilarious!) if anything it enabled us to get along better, unhampered and left to do our jobs in relative peace. Of course there are rules in place for our interactions with humans. Humans are generally quite simple creatures, and can get quite upset if something as unreasonable as magic interrupts the blissfully ignorant status quo bubble in which they happily live. If we gods aren't very careful items float across rooms, things explode, earthquakes and flood occur and, in my case, thunderbolts shoot out of clear skies and zap anyone who happens to be annoying me. And then we're brought before the Moirae – two grumpy old hags that watch over fate…plus one other who was fairly nice to me, one time – and they give us a good ear-clipping, and then memory-altering spells have to be thrown about willy-nilly in order to maintain the peace.
It can all get very messy, and I'm embarrassed to say that with my weakness for human women a lot of those messes over the years have been mine.
Well! I sat down to tell you the wider story of my life, and I've already taken up so much time carrying on about myself. Perhaps already you appreciate what wonderful people my nearest and dearest must be, to tolerate several thousand years of this level of shameless narcissism. That's what I want to tell you about, actually. No, not me – although a lot of this book will have to feature me as a valid necessity.
For that I apologise.
But what I really want to tell you about is the people who shaped my life, because without them, I would not be what I am now. What am I? I am the King of the Gods, yes, but I am also a father, and a husband, a brother, a lover, and a man. And so much more. These memoirs are not my autobiography; they are my confessional, a eulogy for those I have lost, and a celebration for those I have loved, and love still. Terrible circumstances surround me and, I won't lie, are the motivation for my urge to write today. My once golden status is tarnished, and my proud heart has been blasted with misery. I desire to affirm my life because its fragility has only become apparent to me in these last twenty four hours; even as this ink dries I may yet lose those I love, and oh, how my fingers tremble at the very thought of it! But, I came here to forget my miserable present for one night, and travel back into my happy, humble beginnings. I'll probably be up all night, bent over the desk and scribbling out the inner workings of my soul until sparks fly from the pen, but this is what I need to do now, and I hope that by the time the dawn breaks I will have found some inner peace to steady myself for the rocky road ahead. Are you ready to take a long journey without ever leaving the room?
Hold my hand now, and turn the page. Don't worry. No matter what awaits, remember that you're only reading about it.
I lived it.