Authors Note: This was something I thought I had posted a long time ago, but apparently I hadn't. Act 3 is far from done, and won't be done for quite a long time, but heres a little something to keep you guys going until it is! Enjoy!

Walls of Bricks

Act Two: Putris

Chapter 09

Chapter Theme: Hans Zimmer- On Thin Ice

Cronus stood at the top of one of the last skyscrapers in New Olympia. A concrete beacon, standing tall and proud in a sea of rubble, even though its best days were behind it. A broad, overcast sky loomed above them. A small stretch of sun managed to penetrate the clouds, but it only struggled against the bleak, grey landscape around him. The screams that were deafened the streets had faded away into the wind. The city that was once vibrant with life was dead. The streets were silent, with occasional sound of a gunshot from a man or a woman making their last stand, or taking an easy way out. The main noise was the wind at the top of the hundred meter tall skyscraper that once belonged to some banking firm. Cronus didn't remember its name.

The mortal race had been crippled and was all but gone. The armada of spawn that Cronus had helped create had moved on to other cities and towns nearby like a horde. Their efficiency was unparalleled by anything he had ever seen. They swept in, killed every last human they saw, scavenged what they needed, and then moved on to the next location. Resistance, even by that of military, was futile. He once saw them obliterate a city of 500,000 in a single day. There always seemed to be a sufficient flow of fresh giants as well, no matter where they were or how many had fallen. It was a matter of months before they had ravaged the entire world from the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, to the Eastern most point of New Zealand and every square inch between. Billions of humans were gone, in time that seemed to flash like the blink of an eye. It was completely gone, with tiny pockets of resistance in the remotest of places, where the species could never hope to exist indefinitely.

Just like that. They were gone.

Yet, after all the times Cronus had cursed mortals, threatened their species or even killed them, he felt no sense of victory. Over the past two years, Cronus had secretly grown particularily fond of the New Olympia. He would often sneak in for a day or two to talk to the oracle, or place a trap for the teenagers. He often found himself sitting in a café on the waterfront and ordering food and coffee. He never remembered why he had started to do it, but one of the ladies at the local diner always recognized him when he came in. The young lady was very pleasant and would always laugh at the strange currency that Cronus gave her for her tip. They would often talk about what they were up to. Of course, Cronus had to meander around the truth when she asked. Cronus felt a very strange sensation when he was in that diner, like he mattered, that he made a difference to someone. Even if it was just a young college student doing her job; waiting tables to pay her tuition. It was a feeling he had never felt with gods. Gods were always concerned about them selves, and it reflected how they talked to one another and treated one another. They had an eternity to do anything they wanted, and it never really mattered because in the end, they were gods. Cronus became slightly fascinated about the mortals that he had met. He thought that perhaps it wasn't so bad to be them after all. They had short lifespans, but it sometimes gave them motivation to be beyond what was deemed possible. It seemed bizarrely bittersweet.

It lead him to thinking about the teenagers, and how they had managed to completely stall Cronus's campaign to retake his throne of the world. It seemed ridiculous how seven mortals could stop a god. He remembered how dismissive of them he was when he first escaped tartarus. They were mortals. They could be tossed aside like flies. At first, they struggled to take on his wrath, but as time progressed, they grew, they learned, and began to gain the upper hand of him. He quickly learned himself that the world had greatly changed over the past 3000 years. When Cronus was king, the gods fought the gods, while mortals stayed mostly out of the affair, but now, the gods hid from the opposing gods, and placed some mortals as meat shields. Extremely effective meat shields.

That young lady from the café was now dead, thanks to him. He knew it was so, as saw her limp body being dragged into the mass grave that the spawn made out of the gigantic sports arena downtown. Cronus knew it was his fault. He had gotten so caught up with getting revenge from the gods that he had stopped caring about who got hurt. That changed dramatically when he arrived at the aftermath of New Olympia.

Cronus had been in the front lines of the titan wars, battling with gods, beasts, and all manner of creature, but nothing prepared him for the hundreds of thousands of bodies that piled upon one another in the street, creating a foul stench that swamped the city for months after their removal. He wandered the streets two days after the city had been ravaged. Rats and crows feasted on the bounty of rotting flesh bathed in lakes of blood, and flies buzzed around everywhere. The giants took weeks to remove the bodies from the roads, but they only removed the ones that took up their main traffic routes. If you wandered into the wrong alleyway even now, you could find heaps of bones and whatever was left of the meat that hadn't been picked off by scavengers.

At first sight of the bodies, Cronus felt an unbelievable wrench in his gut that almost made him collapse to his knees. It was not something he had ever felt before, nor should he have. I'm the god of time. He would repeatedly tell himself. Not some feeble mortal.

Gods and titans were never that concerned about the mortal life. To them, they had been ants that you could squash now and then without any reprisal. Despite that, Cronus couldn't help but feel savage emotions as he saw the giants carry away rotting corpses onto large red trucks, taking them to the sports arena where they would be burned off.

I… I did this… Cronus did not understand the mortal emotions of regret and shame, but somehow, he knew it was exactly what he was feeling.

Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and Cronus was still in New Olympia. After watching the crusade across the Americas, he had had enough. Cronus stayed in New Olympia, watching as the giants that stayed dug themselves in, turning the city center into a fortress, using rubble to create massive 40-foot tall walls as colorless as the landscape around them. They almost seemed to blend in. Despite their relentless efforts to eradicate humans, their "efforts" to capture the gods always seemed to go empty handed.

Calling them efforts was pushing it. They did near nothing to fill their end of the bargain, and when Cronus confronted Harbinger about it, Harbinger basically ignored his requests. Since Cronus was unable to go hunt them himself, he eventually lost hope of ever finding them.

He spent most of his time in is homemade accommodations rather than the ones provided by Harbringer. It gave him less distance to travel when he wanted to wander, which became more frequent as he became obsessed with the strange emotions he kept feeling. Even when the bodies were gone, and the stench of corpses was mostly gone and replaced by the stale smell of concrete and weeds, the emotions remained.

On a cold November morning, Cronus took another stroll, wandering into a building he had not been in before. It was still within the walls. Cronus did not leave the compound that the giants created. Outside was still a mortal world, only more savage than the one before. Small populations still existed, and they were usually with the policy of shoot first and ask questions later. Cronus was not in a position to be shot at, even by mortal weapons.

The building he wandered into was a residential complex, about four stories high and in relatively good condition for the circumstances. The windows were blown out and a few rooms had clearly seen fire, but it was mostly intact besides the gaping hole in the penthouse. He found himself wandering up to the third floor, where he found a door still closed. The lock was broken, so Cronus had no problem opening it. It was clearly someone's home once upon a time. Stale air filled his nostrils and he heard the pitter patter of a small mouse.

The home was a one-bedroom apartment with a living space, a kitchen, a bathroom and a bedroom. There was still furniture there, untouched and dusty. A few pictures still lay on the counter. They mostly consisted of a woman, with a few of the tenant's parents and a brother. Cronus wasn't here to look at pictures however. His recent escapades had him looking for something mundane to mortal life that had become incredibly rare. After two weeks of rummaging through abandoned houses, he finally found what he was looking for in the dusty bathroom; a mirror.

All of the mirrors in New Olympia were shattered or missing. This had been the first he had actually seen intact. The reason; there were more than just bodies rotting in New Olympia.

Cronus could no longer make portals, or bring forth his scythe. He began to have naps when he felt weary, and he sometimes found himself feeling a bit hungry. He needed to see what was happening to him.

The bathroom was in darkness, so he ripped off the mirror from the wall and brought it into the living room; the only room with a window, sitting down on the couch brought up a cloud of dust, which seemed to settle midair, and Cronus examined himself.

He barely recognized himself. His hair had gone a weary grey, with little black hair left. Wrinkles had appeared under his eyes and his usually well-toned skin had gone a clammy grey. It made his heart sink. It confirmed to him what he had ben beginning to fear. He didn't need any mortal medical tests to figure it out.

I'm dying. I don't have much time left.

He wanted to panic, but he knew this was a long time in the coming. For reasons he couldn't explain, his powers had been waning and he felt weary from war. He now knew that before long, he would be a rotting corpse like the so many others that he had walked past. The harbingers knew this when they made the deal in the Himalayas. It was why they weren't fulfilling their part of the deal; it was because they didn't need to.

I deserve worse. Cronus muttered to himself. The mirror slipped from his hands, cracking as it hit the floor. Its lifetime was finite, just like Cronus'. In the past, a god could always wait for bad things to run their course, but Cronus no longer had that chance. He was a helpless old man now, wandering the city alone until he became nothing. He could do nothing to undo the damage he had done, as he no longer had the strength to do so.

"This is what it is like to be mortal then?" he asked himself, "To fade away helplessly, leaving nothing but death in my wake?"

"Somewhat," A voice muttered from the doorway. Cronus jumped at the sound. It had been so long since he heard the voice of another, that it sounded alien and frightening. Looking over, he couldn't see who it was, as they stood in the dark hallway, but he could tell they were there.

"Who are you?" he asked, startled. The figure didn't acknowledge his question.

"You aren't looking so well Cronus," Cronus stumbled into the corner of the room, expecting to be attacked.

"Come to finish me off have you?" He asked the shadow. He was half hoping the answer would be yes, so he could just die and forget all of this.

"No," it replied, "you still have a part to play Cronus. I'm here to give you a chance to redeem yourself."

Cronus couldn't recognize the voice. It had been so long that all voices seemed to sound the same.

"A chance? How could I possibly redeem myself after everything I've done? The humans are all dead, the harbingers giants control the earth, and my children are still unaccounted for. What can I possibly do to fix all of this?" The shady figure shifted its stature, still standing in the doorway. Cronus shook his head and turned his back to the figure, staring out the window. "There is nothing left."

"Don't underestimate the mortals, there are those who are still alive, you know."

Cronus sighed, "Tiny, fragmented populations scattered in remote regions, hiding from titanic brutes. What could they possibly do?"

There was a short, still silence.

"He could unite them." The figure replied.

Shivers went down Cronus's spine at the knew exactly who the figure was talking about. Cronus turned around. All of sudden, the voice seemed strangely familiar. It can't be…

"He's alive?" Cronus's voice seemed shaky, even scared. The figure walked into the light, revealing himself to Cronus. His eyes widened .

It is…

"Yes, he is alive." He said, "But it will take time for him to grow in strength. Once he is, he will not go unnoticed. When the time comes, we must all be ready."

"Ready for what?"

"War."