Demiurge (a Poseidon self-insert in Percy Jackson)

 

Since that day, the drive that I had lacked, the drive that had gone, the desire to be better was back. Due to Rhea's actions, the thoughts and the worries plaguing my mind had disappeared. Maybe I would fail, maybe nothing in the end mattered and all of my actions were doomed to be forgotten.

 

The only thing I could be sure and should worry about was the present. Whatever would happen would happen.

 

Time passed and brought changes with it. My siblings more than contributing to our realm found companionship in each other. Tethys, ruler and the dominant deity of Pontus chose as her consort our eldest brother, Oceanus.

 

 

The relationship between Oceanus and us, his siblings had been since the fall of our father something that could only be called complicated. On one side, He was our brother, so we loved and cared about him.

 

On the other side, Oceanus had been a coward. He had refused to follow us, to help us against our father when he was the eldest. He had refused to fight not only for himself but for his family because he was scared.

 

When we had won and had been crowned by our mother as rulers of the cosmos, Oceanus hadn't been included. He was Oceanus, brother of the Titans and Rhea and lord of nothing.

 

When he had seen us after our coronation, shame had appeared on his face. We had told him that nothing had changed, that even though he wasn't officially crowned, he was still a ruler of their realm.

 

Those words had proven themselves to be false. No creature in our kingdom respected Oceanus. Whispers and sneers followed in his wake. Coward, he was dubbed behind his back. His authority was one that only existed not because of himself but because of us, his younger siblings, the siblings that he chose not to protect in self-preservation.

 

 

Amongst us, distance appeared. Visits from my other siblings and me to him became fewer and fewer. Always an excuse on the tongue to mask the newly formed apathy toward our kin. Always a new responsibility to justify an irritation, always a new problem to mask an ever-growing hatred.

 

In all of them, Only one still cared maybe more than before for Oceanus and that was Tethys. Her grasp and the deepening of her link with Pontus had changed her almost completely. The thing that remained intact was her love for us, her siblings but even though we loved her as much as she did for us, we would never truly be able to understand her plights and accept her changes from from what she was before.

 

She was like a new creature almost alien. Maybe this was why the embers she had for Oceanus in her frozen heart erupted into a bonfire. Oceanus shared the same domain as her. He was also linked to the ocean. Even though his link with the sea wasn't as deep as the one Tethys had, it still was something that he shared with her that the rest of us didn't.

 

 

She was alien to us but not to him and she noticed it. I didn't exactly know what she told Oceanus, what she proposed to him to make him come live with her under the ocean and become hers.

 

Maybe she promised a crown of his own. Maybe she promised him respect and worship and not disgust and contempt.

 

Nevertheless, Oceanus accepted and left the surface world behind. I watched him go with my other siblings from our thrones. Before he entered the oceans, he gazed at us, at Othrys a last time as if he could see us. Maybe he wished for us to stop him, maybe he wanted to apologize, maybe he at that moment wanted to curse at them.

 

 

When the waves swallowed him, I could only think good riddance as if a weight had been lifted from my foot.

 

Oceanus and Tethys weren't the only ones of my siblings to get together.

 

It had been the same with Hyperion and Theia. They were wedded dressed in gold and surrounded by only their siblings under the light of Sol at one of the temples of Hyperion on the east side of our realm.

 

Together they would bring three immortals into the world. From their union came first the twins Selene and Helios and afterwards came their youngest rosy finger Eos.

 

The twins were both identical as twins were and at the same time so different yet their differences paralleled each other. Selene, the oldest of them was born with an unmatched size, bigger than all of us Uranides. She looked like a mini version of Gaia. Unlike our mother though, her body was cold and devoid of life. Most of the time, she liked to drift around the body of Gaia in the nothingness of Khaos.

 

When she wasn't doing such, she would always take a mortal disguise to stay with her twin brother.

 

 

Their subjects would come to call her body, which floated above the sky, heralding the darkness of night, and sometimes hid the light of Phanes, the Moon.

 

Helios unlike his sister wasn't born with a gigantic body. At first, we had thought that he was ordinary and that he was just a titan of the second generation, that he was nothing special.

 

 

We had been wrong to think such. Hyperion had been born connected directly to Phanes. He could control the sun of Gaia. If the young Titan wished to, he could set the whole world aflame in a way not even his parent would be able to.

 

Helios when and where the light of Phanes would shine. He decided when the rays of Phanes were gentle or when they were harsh. He decided when plants grew or didn't.

 

He was the deity who saw and heard everything under the light of Phanes. He liked to rise in the east, in the domain of his father from his undersea palace, up into heaven, where he would reach the highest point at noon time, and then descend arriving in the evening in the darkness of the west where he would dine with his uncle Lapetus and repeat the cycle.

 

 

Helios and his sister accepted our demand to create a cycle of light and dark, a facsimile of Hemera and Nyx. They accepted and thus were known as bringers of day and evening, deities of the sun and the moon.

 

The twins more than their contrasting yet complimentary domains were identical appearance-wise when they weren't in their true forms. Even though they were born of different genders, they gravitated toward androgynous appearances with platinum blonde hairs and pale Electrum-colored eyes. They seemed to know every thought the other had with just one look. They sometimes acted more like a creature with two bodies than different individuals. Anyone, not an Uranide and not one of them seemed to be non-existing for the Hyperionides.

 

They were helped by their winged sister Eos who rose into the sky at the start of each day, and with her rays of light dispersed the mists of night thus earning the moniker goddess of the thing she was named after, Titan of the Dawn. Eos with all her light shone upon all that are on earth and upon the deathless Gods who live in the wide heaven.

 

Her only flaw was her unquenchable desire for handsome young men. A lust that even for an immortal was considered a little too much, a little too overflowing. When she wasn't doing her duty, she was passing her time with her harem of handsome divine and non-divine men in one of the castles her parents had built for her.

 

 

Oceanus and Tethys Brought numerous sea divinities into existence, they were as whimsical and wild as the ocean they dwelled in. Their children were called Oceanids and Potemois. They were divine beings both lesser and superior to their sires.

 

Their divinities were like wisps, malleable, lesser and more prone to change and that was what made them less. What made them more was that, unlike their parents who were connected to Pontus, they were born as extensions of the primordial. They could be called false primordials, agents of something beyond them probably due to the link between Tethys and the primordial of the depths.

 

 

Clymene was one of the elder Oceanides and the Titan of fame and renown. She could make songs sung in glory for eternity. She could turn successes into miracles forever heard or unknown footnotes for all eternity.

 

 

She would be sought by Lapetus, Lord of the West and my older brother who would marry her. They would give me three nephews in Atlas, Prometheus and Epimetheus.

 

In my opinion, the only interesting and actually useful child they had would be Atlas. Prometheus and Epimetheus preferred the company of non-divine beings and animals over their Kin.

 

 

Atlas unlike his brothers was born with everything, kings wished in generals. Atlas was absurdly strong being physically stronger than all the Titans both from the first and second generation. Atlas was also born with an unbreakable will. He could endure any kind of punishment. Something as simple as pain would never stop Atlas.

 

 

More important than all those previously mentioned qualities, what made me choose him as the general of Othrys with an authority just second to my siblings and me sometimes superior to ours in case of conflict was his loyalty.

 

Atlas was fiercely loyal to our family and loved it as much as the children of Ouranos loved each other. Atlas crushed any dissent with Zeal, went to foreign realms and conquered them in the name of Othrys. When he wasn't fighting for our family, he was either teaching lesser beings the art of astronomy or staying with the most important thing in the world after Othrys in his eyes, his numerous daughters.

 

 

Phoebe and Koios, rulers of the north of the kingdom of Othrys would have three children Leta, Asteria, and Lelantos. Unfortunately, none of the children inherited much or were born with a totally different domain of their own other than Lelantos, who was born with the domain of the Hunt. None of them could see through the plays and threads of fate as their mother and father could so they weren't given duties in the preservation of Othrys. Nevertheless, They lived a life filled with riches and joy because even though they were not as strong or useful as the other members of their family, their worth wasn't lowered at all because they were still my nieces and nephews, they were still my blood and were proof that my siblings and I did something right in building a world that could accept kindness and weakness instead of only cruelty and strength.

 

 

I didn't know how but Krios had been able to woo a daughter of Pontus and Gaia named Eurybia to be his wife. Fortunately, she wasn't like Rhea who inherited a lot from both her progenitors. Eurybia was a deity that I knew an elder Titan could have a good chance of winning against her individually.

 

With her, Krios had three children, Astraios that had his divinity lean towards the stars like a lot of his cousins and uncles, Pallas, the the second-born of Atlas who was born as a deity with the domains of battle and warcraft and Perses, deity of destruction that joined his sibling in the armies of Atlas.

 

 

On my side, I became closer to Rhea. Since her whisking me away from Othrys and our kiss, things had changed between us. Touches lasted longer. Smiles were exchanged. Understanding between us grew.

 

I would not be able to accurately label our relationship. The only thing I was sure of was that I knew that I was Rhea's and vice versa.

 

 

Sometimes we would leave Gaia when possible and peer at foreign stars and cosmic phenomena. We would talk of a unique future conjoined for both of us.

 

 

We would talk of Titans with my hair and Rhea's mesmerizing eyes.

 

When Rhea asked me one day if I would accept to live through eternity with her until our inevitable end, I accepted.

 

No wedding took place. No one was invited or informed. Nothing was formalized because our love was one that had a place only for the two of us and no one. We didn't need ceremonies, or tradition to swear to stay together forever and ever because our love was a chain strong enough to bind us with mannacles of molten stars.

 

Everything went well. Everything was perfect until it wasn't anymore. One day, my siblings, rulers of the north of the kingdom of Othrys came to him with ill tidings.

 

They had seen the future of Othrys and had glimpsed the end of Othrys. They had seen my end, cut up in unnumerable pieces by divine beings calling me Father. One of them had the eyes of Rhea. Around the vision of horror of what was to come, Othrys laid in ruin devoid of its splendour.

 

I remembered the curse of my father, of the prophecy uttered promising me the loss of everything I held dear.

 

At that moment, I felt in my heart fear like I never did before. "It won't happen," I spoke. "I won't let this future come" I said looking into the void of Khaos.

 

"It's Ananke, Brother. No one can escape it even us" Phoebe said softly.

 

"Ananke can go fuck itself! I won't let our future, what we built destroyed because of the will of a Primordial!"

 

 

I turned towards my siblings "We fought against our father and won. We are more now, we are stronger than ever. I know that if we're together, nothing in this world can stop us. I believe in us. Do you still believe the same?" I asked my siblings.

 

Their gazes met min unwavering "We do Kronos" Koios answered. "We came from nothing together and together, we will go back to it. We'll follow you anywhere Kronos."

 

 

His wife, our sister nodded as if to agree at his flank. "So how do we proceed, Brother? Who shall we inform?"

 

"Inform Atlas and only the Uranides except for Oceanus." my gaze turned back to the cosmos.

 

 

"There is something else brother," Koios told me.

 

"What?" I asked him.

 

"In our visions, we saw some of the allies of your children. It was…the Cyclops and the Hecatoncheires. I saw them fight against us, build mighty weapons for our enemies".

 

 

"After all we did for them, after saving them from the pit, they would still betray us" The laugh that escaped me was an ugly one full of sadness and anger.

 

 

"It seems that it was an error to remove them from the pits. Phoebe, informs Atlas and Lapetus of the future betrayal of the Cyclops and the Hecatoncheires. He can use any means he thinks best. I want the Cyclops and the Hecatoncheires imprisoned in the pit and given a warden who would make sure that thinking about escaping would never cross their minds. While they're imprisoned, I'll try to find a way to dispose of them definitely without Mother knowing it."

 

 

"It will be done, brother" spoke Koios. They shimmered as if underwater and disappeared.

 

 

I wasn't perfect. There were probably thousands of stronger divine beings than me in the cosmos. I also would never see myself as the perfect ruler. I had committed atrocities both inside and outside my kingdom. Due to my actions, oceans of blood were created. I despoiled the most sacred things. I killed children before their parents to break them. I made siblings fight against each other because it would help my kingdom. All those atrocious, heinous things that I hated, I did and would do them again without any hesitation if that meant that my family and my siblings would thrive.

 

I would bear the hatred of the world if I needed to, I would face the most abominable beings for them. Numerous creatures both mortal and immortal called me a monster as if that wasn't the definition of a deity.

 

 

In the end, for me, only the other Uranides and Rhea mattered. Nothing else did.

 

 

That night when I would see Rhea, she would inform me that she was bearing a child of ours. I would kiss her and express joy in a future, a family that I knew he could never have and if Rhea saw golden tears in my eyes, she would never know that they were of sadness and not joy.