Chapter Two – The Rage of the Old One

How can they do this to me?

It was a question he had asked himself hundreds of times as the years had gone on.

Kronos still couldn't believe that Zeus had made him watch over this little land. It was cruel. It was ungodly. Kronos had been evil, so many millenia ago. He had swallowed Zeus' five older siblings alive, by the stars. And he had tried to kill Zeus many times over, during the Titanomachy – that great war that had lasted for ten years. He'd nearly succeeded most of those times, too.

Why had Kronos' forces lost the Titanomachy? His brothers and sisters, the Titans, were all-mighty beings. They should have been able to crush Zeus and Kronos' other offspring flat.

It was because of the Cyclopes and the Hecatonchires. Kronos thought that was very likely true. If he had been kinder to his non-Titanic brothers, perhaps the Cyclopes and the Hecatonchires would have joined his side instead of Zeus'. With their aid, Kronos would have wiped the Olympians out. What's more, they would have been able to do it in a day, not dragging the clash out across an entire decade.

Kronos chuckled heartlessly, and mentally corrected himself. "Whole" decade was an oxymoron. With all the time that Kronos had spent locked in Tartarus, a decade felt like a passing moment, to be registered for a tiny time and then brushed off the shoulders in anticipation of the next decade. No, a "whole" decade was definitely an inappropriate choice of words.

And it had been hideous in Tartarus, more atrocious than Kronos could find words to describe. He had been held in that dungeon, pitch-black and more solid than diamonds. He had tried often to break the walls down, but had never made so much as a dent in the unyielding surface.

Worse: though he could not break through those walls, he could easily hear through them.

He could hear the sufferings of his brothers and sisters, the other Titans, who had bravely gone down in battle with him and been imprisoned in Tartarus as well.

He had known none of them were really in pain; the Titans all shared a physical empathy and could feel each others' wounds, and he felt nothing. But he had heard their screams and sobs, and had taken pain enough from that. They had imagined they were being tortured: imagined that flames were licking their skin, and that snow was freezing them alive, and that spikes were slowly driving into their bodies and that monstrous animals were eating them over and over and that they were plunging into bottomless abysses where they fell forever.

And there Kronos had sat, visited by no hallucinations himself, but fully aware that his siblings, whose loyalty to him had been unwavering in the Titanomachy, were doomed to see and hear and feel these horrific illusions forever.

That had been his punishment. Being allowed to retain his senses.

O my family, your purgatory is naught compared to mine. For while your sufferings are all imagined, mine is real, so real.

Imagined. Illusory. Fictitious. Spurious. Chimerical. That brought him some small amusement.

He flapped his four wings momentarily.

He reflected on his companions. One of his fellow Titans had been Okeanos, the personification of water. Okeanos had had a coolly ominous aura, needing to say or do very little to inspire fear in his enemies.

There had been Hyperion, too, the Titan of observation. Hyperion could see to the ends of the earth, and he told Kronos of the actions of the Olympians during the Titanomachy. With Hyperion's vision, they formed strategies that won them many of the small skirmishes that took place during that decade.

Koios had been the most intelligent of Kronos' siblings, and his guile had been invaluable in the war, as he had provided them with plans and tactics that had nearly guided them to victory many times over. Koios' daughter, Leto, had been equally helpful, for with her power to turn invisible she had been able to walk unseen among the Olympians, and do much that the other Titans could not have managed.

Then there was Atlas, who in stark contrast to Koios was eternally rash and foolhardy. Still, this was to his advantage, as it made him nearly fearless and willing to go through with even the most far-fetched of plans. These, coupled with his mighty strength, had made him a fearsome warrior in the Titanomachy. Rather than being locked away in Tartarus, Atlas had been set to keep the earth aloft, and was forced to bear its weight on his shoulders for eternity.

Those five Titans had been most useful to Kronos in the war, but there were other Titans as well: Thaumas and Iapetos, Mnemosyne and Theia, Epimetheus the idiot and Prometheus the goody-goody, and of course—

He tried to block the thought, keep it out of his mind, but it forced its way in. There was, of course, Rheia.

That two-timing little shrew.

Kronos couldn't believe he had ever taken her as his queen. She was a traitor, by the stars. A scheming, conniving traitor.

They always stab you in the back if you give them a chance to, don't they?

He could still remember the day that Zeus had ambushed him, as he had been hunting, and made him regurgitate Zeus' siblings. He could remember it as clearly as if it had happened yesterday. In all the innumerous centuries he had spent in that loathsome pitch-black dungeon of Tartarus, he had not forgotten that day.

He had not forgotten. And it was all Rheia's fault.

Actually, he had to admit to himself, there were certain steps he could have taken to prevent what had occurred.

When he had mutilated his father Ouranos, the old god's last words had been that he felt only satisfaction, for he knew that one of Kronos' children would overthrow him just as Kronos had overthrown Ouranos. Then Ouranos' head had flown up into the sky, and vanished.

Kronos gnashed his teeth as he dwelled on that memory. Damn me for a fool! he thought. It would have been so much easier simply to refrain from bearing children with Rheia, instead of swallowing all his children upon their respective births.

But it all came down to Rheia. If she hadn't betrayed him, swallowing the children would have worked just as well as never having them. It was her fault. It was her fault.

The worst of it is, they liked her the more for it.

That sickened Kronos most of all. Rheia had shamelessly defected from the side of the Titans, but the Olympians had simply welcomed her with open arms. While the other Titans suffered, she had been free to live as any Olympian god.

The Olympians were so gullible! They percieved anyone who did a good deed for their side as being on their side. How could they have been so sure Rheia wouldn't play the triple-crosser and aid the Titans in their war? There had been plenty of opportunities.

If one of the Olympians – perhaps Hades, who seemed least-liked of them – had turned on Zeus and helped Kronos win the Titanomachy, the time-god would never have treated Hades as kindly as the Olympians treated Rheia. You couldn't trust traitors, no matter which side they appeared to be helping. Kronos would probably have spared Hades' life, and let him walk free; and that was all. For the Olympians to deal with Rheia in a kindlier way only proved their ineptitude. To think that these were the gods Kronos and his siblings had lost to!

And now.

By the stars, and now.

Now Zeus and Rheia had come back to Kronos. They had freed him.

He decided it was a matter of guilt. Zeus clearly knew that the Olympian gods were not fit to rule, and regretted that he had imprisoned his father in this way. He had released Kronos from the dungeon in Tartarus as a gesture of apology.

But that wasn't all Zeus had done.

(That, in itself, would have been torture enough; for now, not only was Kronos not to be tortured, but he was even allowed to see the light of day and breathe fresh air again – while his companions continued to bawl and writhe beneath the earth! The lack of suffering had been bad enough; the pleasures of the overworld were too much to bear. It would have been a joyous occasion if the other Titans had been freed as well. But Zeus had failed to liberate them, either out of malice or simply because he had forgotten about them… and both reasons were equally spiteful in Kronos' eyes.)

That wasn't all Zeus had done. He had also made Kronos the keeper of the Elysian Fields.

This wasn't apologetic. It was insulting.

Did he really think I wanted to be in charge of a land of little humans who call themselves heroes? Did he think that was a fair price for being returned to the overworld?

He had been mistaken. More than that. It was an act of sheer idiocy, bordering on lunacy, and breaching every last whittle of honor Kronos had still been able to cling to.

Kronos had been able to bear it for a half-dozen years or so. There was much to see in the overworld, and despite his rage, he was able to distract himself by simply taking in these surroundings, familiar and yet nearly forgotten in his millenia of absence.

But there was only so much to see. And the Old One's patience had run thin.

It was the day of Kronos' revenge.

-----

He took up his sickle, the very same weapon with which he had maimed Ouranos, and flew with it to the sky.

He could see all of Elysium from here: all the sickeningly pretty meadows and hills and forests. And he could see all the humans that lived in this realm.

"Hear me, vermin!" he cried out, and his voice echoed from one end of the Elysian Fields to the other. "Hear me, filth of filth! Hear me, wretched swine! Your time in this country is ended. I abdicate my throne. You are exiled from Elysium. May each of you find his ultimate punishment, wherever he may land."

With these words, Kronos raised the sickle above his head and slashed downward.

The heroes below surely thought it was impossible. The sickle had gone through nothing but air, but it had created a rip in the sky. Beyond the rip, a swirling mass of chaos churned and seethed. As Kronos dragged the sickle across the atmosphere above the Elysian Fields, the rip rapidly grew wider and wider.

Then, as Kronos' face split in a horrifying grin, the chaos emitted black beams that sailed down to earth and pulled the heroes through the rip. They screamed and beat at the smoke-like gas that was, inexplicably, carrying them up, but it was to no avail.

When all the heroes had been pulled in, the rip sealed up and was gone. Kronos sheathed his sickle and spoke.

"I had owed you a favor for several years, Zeus my son. Now I have repaid it."

A moment later, the Elsyian Fields were empty once more, as they had been when Zeus had first shaped them.