War of the Titans (Part 3)

Cronus’s mocking and her realization that Cronus would never free the Hecatonchires sent Gaia into a state of boiling rage. She raged at the sun, and the moon, and the mountains, and the oceans, and the rivers, and the beasts, and the birds for hours on end until she broke down crying. She did the same again the next day and the next day and the day after that and so on, for months until her boiling rage became a dull anger. That dull anger eventually became a numbing despondency. Numb because she knew that there was nothing she could do to change Cronus’s mind; numb because she knew that the Titans might not survive a war among themselves if she incited a civil war to dethrone Cronus; numb because she knew she would eventually do something; she knew she had to, for she could not stop herself. Numb because she knew the consequences of whatever she would eventually do would be frightfully catastrophic.

For the next several years Gaia agonized over her desire to fee the Hecatonchires at any cost and her maternal wish to let the other Titans live in peace. There were so many occasions she found herself cursing the very decision she had just made, because it inevitably favored the Titans at the expense of the Hecatonchires, or vice versa. To let the Titans live in peace, she would have to let the Hecatonchires continue to suffer; to free the Hecatonchires, she would have to urge the Titans to fight against one another.

***

Years later Cronus asked Rhea to be his wife and she accepted. Their wedding feast was supposed to be a happy occasion for Cronus. So he invited Oceanus and Coeus, Crius and Hyperion, Iapetos and Theia, Themis and Mnemosyne, Phoebe and Tethys to his feast. Gaia was not invited, but she came anyway.

The gods sat at an oblong table eating ambrosia and drinking nectar while waiting for their turn to praise Cronus and pledge their allegiance to him.

Gaia was the last to offer her toast and when her turn came, she said, “Today is your happy day. I wish that you would share this happiness with your brothers Kottos, Briareos, and Gyges by freeing them. They have been languishing in the dark long enough. Please do what is righteous, for Father Time Chronos has told me that freeing your brothers is the only way you can avoid the fate that had fallen on Uranus.”

The festive atmosphere fell into a dead silence as soon as Gaia had uttered those words. Cronus’s face turned blood red and Rhea’s ashen. She dropped her glass and it shattered on the ground, for she knew that the peaceful bliss she had been expecting would never come.

Cronus’s mind thundered. How dare that old, miserable, murderous, manipulative woman come to my wedding uninvited and speak to me like that? How dare she make a prophecy about my fate? Has she forgotten that I am Lord of the universe? He picked up the table, broke it into two and hurled both pieces out of the hall and then he marched closer to Gaia. “My fate is what I decide it to be,” he screamed. “I would have smashed your skull if you were not my mother, you pitiful, conniving, despicable woman.”

Oceanus felt a jolt of rage as Cronus threatened Gaia. He might have let Cronus ascend to the throne--a decision he forever regretted--but he was not about to allow Cronus to harm or insult his mother. He made a show of clenching his hands into enormous fists, kicking back his chair, and striding toward Gaia while his eyes scanned the hall for anything he could use as a weapon.

The sight of Oceanus’s purposeful actions and his massive, powerfully built figure seemingly ready for a mortal combat at that very moment unnerved Cronus, who quickly reasoned to himself that it would be foolish to challenge Oceanus at the moment of his energizing anger. Why would he want to fight a battle he did not have to, especially one he was not sure he would win. So the king of gods shouted at Oceanus in an attempt to preserve his aura of absolute power and invincibility, “You’re lucky that today is my wedding day and I want to be forgiving. Otherwise you would be severely punished for your insubordination,” he spat to the ground. “Now get out of here, all of you, while you still can.”

***

No one knew whether Oceanus thought about his confrontation with Cronus afterward but it haunted Cronus ever since. Cronus kept thinking about it and how he should have reacted differently, just like a general forever preparing to fight his last battle.

The confrontation with Oceanus robbed Cronus his confidence that no one would dare to challenge him. So he resolved to spy on his mother and his brothers and sisters to make sure that they were not conspiring to usurp his position. He was especially weary of Oceanus, for Oceanus was the oldest, strongest, most courageous, and most respected of his siblings.

One day Cronus woke up in the middle of the night sweating because he saw, in his dream, many strange, grotesque creatures that he’d never seen before screaming in agony. The vision of those creatures shook him greatly. Where did his dream come from? Who or what those creatures were? Could it be a warning that the Hecatonchires on their way seeking vengeance against him? If so, there must be a conspiracy against him.

Those questions sent Cronus to a state of apprehension. His heart beat faster and faster until he could barely breathe. He had to gasp for air. When he recovered Cronus wasted no time to check on his brothers and sisters as he had done everyday since his wedding day’s confrontation with Oceanus. To his dismay, all his brothers and sisters had already left their houses.

Alarmed that a conspiracy was being hatched against him, Cronus flew up high on the sky to search for his siblings. He scanned their usual gathering places hoping to spot them before it was too late. But his siblings were nowhere to be found.

Even more alarmed than before, Cronus strained his ears for their sounds of his siblings. He almost screamed with joy when he heard murmurs from the darkest, densest part of the forest. This part of the forest was so dense and so dark that even his keen eyes were not able to penetrate. It was the perfect place to hatch a conspiracy against him, or so Cronus thought.

Convinced that they were plotting his demise, Cronus dropped like a stone down into the spot closest to the conspirators where the trees were sparse enough for him to land. He carefully covered himself and began to wade through the increasingly dense forest toward the spot where the conspiracy was being hatched.

***

Soon the murmurs gave way to recognizable laughter and Cronus began to distinguish individual laughter. They sounded more like children playing a naughty game than adults planning a rebellion.

Feeling a little more reassured, Cronus approached the sounds more deliberately.

What the Titan king saw made him question whether he was awake or dreaming. He saw the very grotesquely deformed creatures that haunted his dream: a man with a head of a wild bull and a tail of a serpent; a lion with wings of an eagle, which was the fiercest, most threatening creature; and a woman with a lower half body of a fish. These creatures, whose bodies were parts of different animals sliced and joined together in a haphazard fashion, meandered about in stiff, unnatural movements.

There were also several men and women who were not quite alive. Their skins were half decayed and peeled off in several spots of different sizes even though they were just created. They dragged their feet aimlessly from one place to another with their arms half extended, grasping futilely at living things on their paths. Their mouths half opened; their tongues, dry and dusty, lifelessly dangled from one side to the other as they limped about.

Then there were a man and a woman whose skins were as white as milk, their fangs were as sharp as those of the lion’s. Among the wretched creatures they moved the swiftest. They were just a bit less threatening than the lion but much smarter and therefore much more dangerous.

The winged lion swaggered across the circle and when it got to the man-bull’s face, it opened its mouth and bared its long, sharp teeth. The man-bull stared back defiantly. The lion roared, startled the man-bull and sent him scrambling away. Having won its first confrontation, the winged lion prowled across and around the circle looking for the next one. No a single creature seemed willing to put up a challenge.

Encouraged by the result of its show of aggression, the winged lion leaped onto Oceanus, opened its mouth to bite the Titan’s neck with its fearsome teeth. Oceanus calmly grasped the lion’s neck with his powerful right hand, yanked it off, and then casually tossed it back to the ground before him.

The winged lion landed on its back with a thud. It moaned and groaned as it rose up to its feet, but its legs wobbled as it struggled mightily to remain standing. Apparently injured, the lion meekly scanned the Titans and its fellow creatures, fear emanated from its eyes.

Sensing the winged lion’s mortal weakness and his chance for revenge, the man-bull aimed for its chest and charged. His left horn tore through the intended victim’s chest. He yanked it out, swung his head to the left and drove his right horn to the lion’s neck. Then the man-bull swung his head to the right to get his horn out of the lion’s neck.

The winged lion collapsed to the ground writhing. The man-bull turned around, his serpent tail sank its teeth to the lion’s body and tore chunks of its flesh to eat. It did not take more than one minute before the other creatures greedily joined the feast, eating the victim alive.

***

What Cronus saw washed away what remained of his sense of safety and invulnerability. He intuitively knew that those strange creatures were created from clay by his siblings, who breathed into their creations their divine essence, just as Father Time Chronos breathed accidentally his divine essence into the primal egg so long ago.

The divine essence is that which gives every living thing in the universe its life. The more divine essence a creature has, the more alive and intelligent it is. The gods had the most; those fanged humans had more than we do and so they were superior to us, in strength and in intelligence. Those half-dead men and women did not get enough of the divine essence and therefore they were neither completely dead nor fully alive.

Cronus suddenly understood that the divine essence which he, his siblings, and their parents shared was latently murderous, and he himself awoke that latent murderousness when he killed his father. Because that latent murderousness had become a plague that would not go away, every living thing contains in itself a potential to kill, and that potential murderousness is a threat to all other living things. It is, therefore, every living thing wishes to eliminate all mortal dangers it faces, especially if the source of dangers is so closed to home.

With his new understanding came the realization that Cronus himself faced in the greatest danger of being murdered for he was the king and the strongest amongst the Titans. His great power threatened their sense of safety because he could kill any of them whenever he wished. Being the greatest power had its stiff price.

Remembering why he had come to this part of the forest, Cronus became more determined than ever to protect himself from his siblings--by deceit if he could, by brute force if he must. His mind had been made up, self-preservation was paramount, brotherly love and obligations came in at a very distant second.

***

When all one searches for is a conspiracy, everyone is a suspect; when all one thinks about is survival, everything becomes an existential threat; when one does anything to avoid Fate, it’ll come as a result.

Cronus became determined to keep an even closer eye on his brothers and sisters after his discovery in the forest. Little by little he sought to commingle his life and theirs. He entertained them more often and began to organize competitive games. He was careful in designing games so that each game had a different winner.

Each month Cronus would decide which game he would hold and what the winner’s prize would be. He hinted that whoever pleased him would get to choose which game they would play and what prize would go to the winner to encourage the Titans to compete for his favor.

It was no secret that the best way to earn Cronus’s favor was to report on other Titans. At first no Titan would report anything to Cronus, so he kept increasing the games’ stakes. Soon a Titan relented and he won the prize he so wanted as a result. After that every Titan was reporting on everyone else and so Cronus’s scheme worked beautifully: It enabled Cronus to know what the other Titans were doing while sowing great resentments and distrusts among the Titans.

Cronus’s scheme helped him maintain his rule over his divided siblings who were both distrustful and resentful of one another.