I have chosen to change the myth a bit here. Instead of Chronos eating his children he imprisoned them in the Tartarus along with other defeated foes. And Rhea was kept in what is to become Hades...
A journey to Tartarus
About a decade after the event with Hera, Zeus entered the realms down under, to retrieve his lost mother and siblings. It was Metis who provided him with the tools to acquire that. Most important was the secret of transcending the time-dimension, which enabled him to leave and return at almost the same instant. This meant that Zeus didn't have to give up command over his divine forces.
"But while they only saw me disappear and then return the next moment with a band of miserable gods in tow, I spent an eternity down in these lover levels. That sure was the worst thing I'd ever done. And I hope it'll take a long time before I have to venture down there again. "
Zeus sat in front of me in my common room. On the coaches around the low table sat and laid the others. Shadows of Gods. Scared, bent and hurt all of them. Pale-looking and withdrawn. They were not physically wounded anymore, their injuries had healed when they had been returned to the world of the living again, yet their souls were still in tatters.
There was Rhea of course, Zeus' mother. But she was a far cry from her wonderful self, of her golden hair only bleak strands remained, her skin was ash-like and her looks haunted. It was like she feared being sent back under again any moment. First she hadn't even recognised me, she was afraid to be led into the cave-home. But after a while she remembered her old maid and then she seemed to relax a bit.
Now Rhea was sitting with a little girl in her arms. A girl called Demeter.
" I don't know if she's one of mine. I only found her, and I couldn't leave her down there, she whispered."
The others were two women and two men. The apparently sturdiest one was a fully grown man called Poseidon. He looked battered and bruised but at the same time like he couldn't care less.
" So Cronos is the one who locked us up?" he said to Zeus. "Then take us to him, I sure want to kick his teeth up his nose. "
The second man - more a boy to be true - was worse off on the other hand. He had no name, Zeus simply called him Hadesboy, and he was constantly hiding his eyes for the light, sniffing and gasping for breath. First I thought he was crying, but then I learned that he had problems breathing the air here. He was the one who had been down under for the longest time.
Then there was Hestia, she was freezing, so she went over to the fireplace and took some flames with her and spent the rest of the evening cuddling them to her chest, warming herself, sinking her face down into the flaring green of Divine Light. She said almost nothing.
Cybele on the other hand was definitely a daughter of Rhea, she looked like a female version of Zeus. She was the most talkative of the group, asking questions about me and my place and the war and Cronos and all kind of things.
" So what happened, Zeus?" I asked as soon as Cybele stopped to catch her breath. "How was it down under? "
" Terrible", Zeus stated. "Miserable."
¤¤Zeus' tale ¤¤
The first thing you do if you want to go under is creating what is called an interconnection. It is like a 'gate' between our realm and the realms below, the dominion of the dead and countless of others. Metis helped me opening the first ones, and from them I only ventured down a bit to get the hang of it.
Yesterday evening - or seven months ago on my time line - I opened up the final interconnection to the primary sub-level and travelled down through this strange cataract. It was like a spiral-shaped, meandering pipe, with bluish black, somehow scaled walls; pulsating slowly like affected by a big, alien heart.
No, down was not the direction since no such things as up and down exist in these 'pipes', it was only out of old habit I termed my direction as 'down'. To keep my sanity I guess. Down towards the green light at the end I flew. And I was not alone, the pipe was filled with the dead souls of mortals who had not regained their shape, but were flowing like vapour down the hole, sometimes congealing into a face or a hand, sometimes letting out unearthly sounds as if these people were trying to cry sans vocal cords.
Then I entered this territory of otherness. This place which is not dark nor light, where there's little oxygen and other known gases, but where the wisping and howling winds carry the strangest fumes. This place where you have no shadow, where there's no temperature and yet you are freezing although sweat is soaking you, and where you feel like you're withering away in spite of being immortal. This place where no hunger and thirst exist, and where you feel tired but can not go to sleep because your body don't work the way it does above.
In fact you don't really have your normal immortal body with you in the underworld, it's being suspended in 'meantime' just inside the interconnection, and you are travelling with an extended soul, a pseudobody manufactured just for this trip.
This is Hades, the land where the dead mortals' souls go. Where they forget their lives above, so that they can have their karma values restored and eventually be returned into a new body. Because for them there's only one way in the big Circle of life/death. They can not control the paths down there and return like we can, travel backwards on the Circle, retrieving our bodies.
There, in Hades, I found my mother. My Rhea who I had never known save from when I was a little baby, before my first conscious memories. I didn't know what to look for, had no idea how I should find someone in those vast expanses. But just as light and temperature is not an issue down there, distance is irrelevant. I only had to recall these faint traces of memories of dear mama, and I was standing next to her.
Around her were dead mortals and imprisoned immortals. All of them reaching out for me, because as soon as I spotted mama, I let myself be spotted to. These condemned existences were trying to touch this being of light, this being of above, to gain some of my strength. I was scared of them and pitied them at the same time.
She sat - or rested in that mist of lost souls, naked and with closed eyes, tears striking her face. I held out my hands, called her name, don't ask me how I knew it was her. And she opened her eyes, they had became as grey as everything down here, devoid of the sparkle of immortal life.
Mother, wake up! I soundlessly begged her. Wake up, it's me, your Zeus. I have come to take you home again.
She didn't answer with words. She had forgotten the speech, the expressions, being so long where language does not work the way we know it. She only lifted her spirit, tried to move it towards me, held out her hand, which didn't look like a hand from the start, more like another formless tear. Nevertheless I took it, warmed it and soon I could hold her close to me, softly whisper her name, waking up those long unused parts of her brain again, having her to remember who she was and that I was her son; her son who had come for her.
Later we were walking hand in hand over to that place where my nameless brother was dwelling. The little boy who in fact was older than me. Or would have been since he had been born years before me. But this is the place where even time works different, sometimes even going backwards, growth hardly exist. This boy of Hades held no age at all. It was only upon bringing him up in the light again I realised he's something like twelve. On the border of puberty.
I helped Rhea and Hadesboy to the down-end of the interconnection, showed them how to venture up, assured them that I would come right after, even if it might feel like years and years to me. Mama was crying again, didn't want to leave me down here, but I assured her that I would be all right, that I was going to get Poseidon and all the others.
Look at my aura, I told her. Look at its light, its too strong for anything to hold me down here. Still I have to get the others.
Who's Poseidon?
I don't know. My brother perhaps? Only thing I know is that I have to save him too.
So I returned down, last thing I saw was Rhea picking up another immortal child, a girl who seemed to be in a similar condition as Hadesboy.
Not long after that I was going further down. Here is where you loose all sense of time and direction. I was walking for days, for months; crossing endless black waters and surfaces of plasmas hotter than anything that exists above. Sometimes there were wandering mists, and sometimes I saw thing resembling plants and even animal life, big jelly-fish-like things with intelligence enough to try to communicate, try to find out what kind of being I was who trespassed their land.
A life-form from above. A transcender, a true immortal, the only being who can come down here by free will and return upon will too.
At one moment during my yourney I met a being of hot, burning plasma. 'He' called 'himself' Pyriphlegethon and appeared to be omni-present in these strange regions, like a river of fire. He acknowledged my name and paid me respect, and even if he appeared scary he assured me he was benign. He called himself 'the never-tiring observer' who's business was making sure this place was kept in order and functioned the way it was supposed to.
He had been worried by the fact that there was beings here that did not belong, and was glad when I told him I was here to take them away; because, he told me, their precense and plentitude disrupted the balance of delicate energies.
I was tired and yet not, I was weak and strong at the same time, and I was following that distant call from souls similar to mine, souls who were my sisters and brothers.
Walls of stone I willed away, or I found myself squeezing through narrow cataracts in what appeared to be pseudo-flesh of living beings. I navigated trough colourless mists and passed beckoning places almost looking like paradises we only see in our dreams. And even stranger places, hard to describe. Until...
There it was. Tartarus. The end and the centre of it all where no time and no space exist the way we know it. The place where the Universe bends and starts all over again. No up or down, no future nor a past, no dimensions - just an endless here/now. A singularity so closed and tight that not even light can emerge. And in that terrible place was the prison of my family. My beloved ones who I had never got to know.
But I am Zeus. I am the Ultimate Transcender. I have been born to do these kind of things. I have been born to set things straight again. I am here to let out these unjustly imprisoned. So I opened the singularity with one stroke of my Endless LifeForce, breaking it apart, restarting time again.
Out they came, immortals with pain in their eyes. Hundred Handeds, Cyclopes, Nyx, Erebus and all of the rest. Styx and Hecate and Charon old already at birth. The boy Poseidon and the girls Hestia and Cybele. So fragile, so hurt. I cried in my heart upon beholding them. This was the work of Cronos, the beast who people called my father.
Although he's no father of mine. I deny him that right just as he rejected me once. Destiny I call my father. Destiny who sampled power from the endless beat of the universe and gave it to this young god who's known as Zeus. Destiny who let Rhea give birth to me as the final one in a long line of abused children. Destiny who helped Rhea to get away with me, so I could save her and the others years and years later.
I carried them back, they were too small, too weak, too scared to walk. Holding Poseidon, Hestia and Cybele in my hands I traversed back through liquid fire and burning ice and up those endless, spiralling stairs of slimy matter where you feel like you are falling off all the time because up/down is not what it's supposed to be, here where gravity is in constant flux.
Poseidon, I knew your name from dreams I had had as a child. Dreams of a brother under the sea. Hestia and Cybele, I gave you your names upon the walk up. Hestia who reached for the flame and Cybele who knew my name even before I was born, who had told the others about me, and thus giving them hope that they would one day be liberated.
The Hundred Handeds and the Cyclopes reached daylight again, but Hecate, Charon, Nyx and Erebus had been down too long, they could not go back. Sure, they are immortal, but what good does it do them when they fear the sun and the oxygen. So I left them down there, told them I would send them whatever they needed, help them in any way I could.
Little Styx had melted, she became a river, as did her brothers Acheron and Eridanos. They ended up closing Hades in, the only one able to help the mortals over in the future became the bald man Charon.
This river that had been the woman-child Styx was black, and with such a blackness that not the slightest light emerged, even the foam that patted the banks was black. Yet there was an eerie shine emerging from the waters, like it was glittering in this ambient, greyish green light that passes for day down here. Sometimes I thought that shine to be a musky purple, other times a dirty blue, then dark amethyst, but never reflecting anything even if the water was almost completely still, never making any sounds.
It was indeed the time of Changes, even my footprints were transforming the world down under. And not always to my liking. There was nothing I could do for Styx and her brothers, but bless their poor souls and promise them that if I ever found a way to save them, to turn them back into human beings, I would do so.
I felt it as I finally left, like a shiver in my neck, ice traversing down my spine, how Tartarus closed up again, sealing itself around an empty space, turning into a singularity again. Without its prisoners this time. But in my heart I swore that it was going to hold a prisoner once more. It was going to hold Cronos when I finally got him.
It seemed strange to actually return at the very same instance as Rhea, Hadesboy and the little girl, even if I intellectually knew it was going to happen that way, since I had showed them the same interconnection as I was using.
But as soon as I pushed aside the strands of time-space and rearranged the patterns of nowness, I saw mother Rhea beside me carrying the children the same way as I was carrying my brother and sisters.
Zeus darling, she was 'saying'. I knew it. I knew you were going to come. My little boy. My little Fair Sky, who has become a God of Eternal Light.
Seeing myself in the timewarp as we finally went trough the interconnection and up Above I understood what she meant. I had changed down under too, but while my sisters and brothers had grown weaker, I had become stronger. I was shining with an almost unbelievable power. At that moment I knew my time had really come. The wanderings I had undertaken had turned me powerful beyond previous limits. From now on I was invincible, I wouldn't even need Adamantine to finish Cronos.
¤¤ Zeus' tale ends¤¤
" So you're ready for the final battle now?" I asked Zeus when he had finished. He grabbed yet another honey-cake from the large plate and nodded.
" Any day now. With the destruction of Atlantis I felt like we were loosing and that I had to at least try to save my family before it all became too late. Little did I know that it was the venture down under which was the final key to victory, the real battery-charge for me. "
" But how... what happened? What gave you all that power? "
" Honestly, Thea, I do no know. Perhaps the ability to overcome my fears released something inside of me which had been there all the time. I did what I had to do even if I was scared beyond reason. "
" It was there - all the time, my boy", Rhea said. "I know you, you're such a magnificent soul, and I am so proud of you, of having the honour to be your mother. "
At those words Zeus was actually blushing, holding his half-eaten honey-cake like he didn't know what to do with it. Then he turned to me:
" Thea, I'll leave my family in your good hands from now on. I'm returning to the battle and I'm sure going to kick some rear ends. I'll..."
" Can I come with you?" Poseidon said and stood up, saluting Zeus.
" You think - you can manage a combat?" Zeus asked.
" Yes, didn't you teach us everything on the long way up? It was years for me, I saw all your training, I even was you from time to time. I know how to do it. "
" So do I", Hestia said. "You can not deny us our right to partake in revenge, big brother!"
" Actually little brother, since we're really older than you!" Poseidon said.
" All right fellows", Zeus smiled. "Come on then! Anyone else? Cybele? Hadesboy!"
" You bet!" Cybele screamed, but Hadesboy only nodded, still covering his eyes. So in the end it was only Rhea and the girl she had named Demeter who stayed with me. Once again I became Rhea's servant, but not in the chambermaid way this time, but more as a medic. I helped her bathe and tucked her in for the night and did the same for little Demi. And most of all I made sure that they ate even if they had little appetite.
In the days to come I brought Rhea out in the sun again, oiled her greyish pale skin and gave her massage, and slowly but steadily she regained her strength and colours, her laughter returned and her hair grew back. We watched Demi making the same progress: rising on her legs, walking and then running. We saw her finding a loose twig and putting it down in the soil, and the next thing it was a living plant, sprouting new leaves. The girl was laughing and clapping her hands at the new little tree. Life was returning to these semi-dead souls in more ways than one.