Colony- Olympian

by Gene Stiles

  But Excalibur was not yet done. The Grid’s energies were far greater than Cronus had imagined. They were spreading out from the buried cables using the iron and copper content of the earth as a conduit. The Olympian legions beyond the underground lines began to jerk and convulse, their skin beginning to burn and blister.

  Zeus knew even in his nightmarish rapture his warriors could not withstand much more. Power exploded all around him and anything metal sparked and glittered with the enormous electricity flowing through it. How far the devastation would spread, he did not know, but Zeus knew he must stop it.

  His blade was ravenous, craving the glorious current soaking the landscape. The pillar of power holding Zeus in the sky sank as Excalibur sought the voltage at its feet. In the maelstrom of his mind, Zeus let it happen. If he could slam the pommel of the sword into the ground to absorb the energy and direct it upward, perhaps he could drain the Grid of its electricity. He feared the feat would mean his own demise, but there were thousands dying and he had the means to do something. He turned the hilt of the blade toward the ground and let himself fall.

  Even above the booming thunder surrounding him, Zeus heard the monstrous chorus of the First Children shouting as one. He saw them running, shambling and tumbling their way toward him, waving their grotesque, misshapen arms wildly. But he had a fight of his own going on and by the time he made out their words, it was far too late. Zeus was struggling to turn the sword, but it refused. No matter his strength, the tip remained pointing at the earth. He hit the veldt hard, half the length of Excalibur sinking into the soil and mingling with the hidden cables. As the colossal surge of power blew him free of the sword, Zeus finally realized what they were yelling. Just one word over and over. “No! No! No!”

  Poseidon could not move. His body was frozen in place and awash with hideous torment. He still knelt on the battlefield, his hands locked around the throbbing shaft of his trident. To onlookers, he was a mammoth statue of stone artistically carved into the form of the perfect man, chiseled muscles and strong, ruggedly handsome features. His lionesque head was bowed as if in prayer, his stunning jade eyes tightly closed. The square, but angled line of his jaw was clenched and his full, tan lips were pulled slightly back in a grimace of incredible agony. Only his thick mane of wavy, fire-red curls and the short cascade of his beard moved at all, swirling around him and crackling with silver-blue sparks.

  An inexorable calling rippled through his arms not of his own making. Poseidon was pulled to his feet, Triton reaching into the sky. His bulging arms could not hold it down nor could he free himself from its irresistible grip.

  Above him, Zeus fell from the heavens like an avenging angel, the tip of Excalibur extending a phantom hand out for its brother. Triton turned in Poseidon’s hands, the triple tines following the sword tip on its earthly journey. He screamed as the skin of his palms tore and broke away from the pulsing, golden shaft. He was on his tiptoes when the trident slammed into the ground next to Excalibur and felt himself lifted on a tremendous tidal wave of power. Poseidon rode the current, his arms flailing helplessly as he rolled across the veldt accompanied by pebbles that were his siblings.

  There was nothing left in the world but sound and smoke, fire and fear. The ground bent and buckled, shivering like a Dire Wolf shaking off water. Fissures and cracks rippled across the earth as the twin weapons absorbed and amplified the Proto-Sun power and sent it vibrating back into the unyielding crust. The entire continent bucked and convulsed, rising up as the spine of the planet arched in agony. When it crashed back down, titanic tidal waves rippled outward like those from a stone tossed into a pond. Enormous avalanches raced down the mountain ranges and buried anything and everyone near their feet. Huge slabs of rock arose from the tortured earth like granite monoliths only to crumble as the hellish landscape opened up around them.

  The sonic oscillations from Triton hit the River Gaia like the hands of the Creator, parting them at the point of impact. The raging waters were swept from the riverbed leaving nothing behind but bedrock until they slammed into the roiling seas. The seething saltwater raced back in to fill the void, but the granite cliffs crumbled into the canyons, damming off the channel from the incursion. The sodden carcasses of the countless ships which had sunk in the Gaia in decades past saw sullen sunlight only briefly before being entombed forever under tons of stone and dirt.

  Hebis Outpost on the eastern coastline was erased from existence along with the powdered people that had inhabited it. What the massive earthquakes did not destroy, the sea swept away or sucked beneath its frothing waves.

  The combined might of the Gaia’s orphaned rapids and the angered ocean ripped into Lycus on the western shoreline. Only the fact that the city lay between the Atlantean continent and the huge Delecrete landmass kept it from the full fury of the sea. Still, waves crashed through the city streets with an unholy force, tearing down buildings already cracked and weakened by the continuing quakes. The ashen faces of the badly beaten citizens and soldiers went completely white as the saw their emanate destruction bearing down upon them. Their piteous screams echoed off the taller tumbling buildings but were lost in the thunderous noise of a dying city.

  The ferocious waves continued through the man-made canyons after gorging themselves on the corpses of ships, structures and humanity. To the south of Lycus, they washed up against the wall of the Western Mountains, stopped in their tracks by the avalanches rumbling down from the jagged, snow-capped peaks. But to the north, only the dense woodlands of the Jazairamine Forest impeded their progress. The stupendous strength of the waters was finally exhausted by distance and the deep-seated roots of the ancient trees.

  Lelantos clung to the uppermost branches of a prodigious pine, his quivering arms wrapped around the rough-barked trunk. His auburn hair looked like a tangled thistle briar filled with mud and broken twigs. A long serrated gash stretched from his left hip down to his broken kneecap. Dirt and grime packed the wound and thankfully stilled the bleeding or he would be dead by now. His breathing came in painful gasps and he knew many of his ribs were cracked. Cuts and bruises covered every square inch of his tattered body and filled his mind with unimaginable agony not only of flesh but of heart. His gold-flecked, hazel eyes grimly scanned the twisted landscape around him and he was unsure if he was grateful to be alive.

  In the high branches of other trees around him, Lelantos his razor-sharp raptor vision picked out the shadowy blotches of other wretched survivors. There were far too few. He heard the sounds of their anguish and suffering, their wailing and howls of torment and wondered how many would last the night. Lelantos looked upward at the lightning-filled storm clouds and did not know if he even cared. He leaned back into the leafy embrace of his sanctuary and allowed the light of consciousness to leave him. Through force of will, he retreated into the serenity of darkness with one terrible burning question left unanswered. If so much destruction could happen this far from the battlefield, what was happening in Atlantis?

  Every light in Atlantis blazed as bright as a shining star then exploded in a supernova of crystal slivers that showered the city in millions of sparkling diamonds. Even those that were switched off had a brief moment of glory before they became a forgotten memory. Anything electronic fell right behind them. The microscopic metals of their nano-circuits blackened, burned and melted into disjointed puddles and their molecules burst like blood vessels. Crystalline rivers of optical cables underground and within the walls of every structure in the city were blasted into nothingness by the overload of power that raced through them. Those hapless people within the war room or near any of the data centers within the city were shredded into bloody pieces as the technologies around them erupted in a deadly cyclone of crystal, glass and blazing hot metal.

  Adrasteia lay crumpled on the crimson-soaked lawn petrified and unable to rise despite her mightiest efforts. The ground beneath her rolled in mammoth swells like hurricane waves crashing upon a sandy beach. Within each deep trough and at
the peak of every crest, the earth jerked and twisted in every conceivable direction making it impossible to even make it to her knees. She had all she could do just to keep the breath in her lungs.

  With every mammoth undulation, Adrasteia was lifted like a leaf then dropped like a two-ton stone. The horrific pain was far beyond anything she had ever suffered in her centuries-long life, but it was the utter helplessness that absolutely terrified her. Her ebony pupils were specks of blackness floating in the bulging whites of her eyes. The high-cheeked face of such beauty that many a suitor was left stammering for words was now nothing but a mass of purple bruises and ripped skin. Rose-petal lips quick to smile were cracked and bleeding, twisted into a grimace of agony and fear.

  Staring up at thunderclouds boiling with bolts of blue-white lightning, Adrasteia doubted she had long to live. Atlantis bucked like some kind of mythical monster angrily awoken from a timeless sleep. Gold and silver spires swayed and toppled in ruins and rubble. Buildings of granite were reduced to heaps of crushed rock, anyone still within squashed like bugs beneath a boot. Wooden walls splintered and burned as fires erupted throughout the city, filling the air with acrid smoke and ash that left a bitter taste on her tongue.

  The first daughter of Haleah stared in stunned acceptance that her days were over. The Pyramid of Atlantis imploded, collapsing in on itself as the huge granite blocks that supported its gargantuan body simply crumbled. Adrasteia watched in open-mouthed amazement as the dead Proto-Sun at its peak sunk into the rocky abyss as its heavenly sister would sink beneath a cloudy horizon. A plume of dust, dirt and powered rock billowed upward and descended down on what was left of the city streets in a billowing, choking fog.

  The last thing Adrasteia heard was a sweet melody of music which cut through the bellowing roar of the cataclysm surrounding her. As she cowered over the corpse if her sister, Chalandra, protecting her lifeless body from the coming onslaught of stone, Adrasteia saw the sky-scraping spire of the Wind Song sway and topple to the streets, the chimes in its towers singing one last comforting rhapsody to those about to die. She smiled serenely and slipped beneath the thick shower of dirt that covered her like a warm and welcome blanket, finally at peace and no longer in pain.

  Cronus lay among the wreckage of the scaffolding, a mammoth oak log across his broken legs pinning him like a bug. His torso jerked like a fish out of water as the ground beneath him rocked violently and pounded his head on the hardened soil. The pain of the shattered bone and the beating he received was a miniscule nuisance compared to the inapprehensible anguish filling his shattered soul. His mouth was open wide in a scream of untold horror, but the wailing sound was lost in the roaring of the earth. The Creator had seen fit to leave him lying in such a way that his ripped and bleeding face was forced to stare in the direction of the city he loved. Cronus could not see her silver spires from here, but he did see the rage of the Creator and he prayed he would die before he witnessed anymore of His wrath.

  The veil of warm fog that surrounded the One Tree for eons was now a churning mass of rabid red and black, low-hanging thunderclouds. The bottomless crevasse that encircled the sacred isle glowed a deep, ugly crimson that bubbled and boiled like a fountain of fire rising from the core of the world. Cronus could hear the demonic detonations of ancient alien roots erupting far beneath the angry earth and the bellowing of blasted rock. The One Tree shuddered, its evergreen leaves wilting and igniting in the intense, incredible heat. Branches and boughs that had withstood every element of nature for millions of years burst into flame, sizzling with the sap seeping from its bark like blood from open wounds. A last rumbling roar came from the unfathomable depths and the One Tree - symbol of Atlan and the People for an eternity - slowly sank into the bowels of the earth.

  A monstrous plume of smoke, ash and fire billowed up five miles high from the hellish hole left behind, blotting out the sky and setting the landscape aflame. Yet, even in his righteous fury, the Creator bestowed a blessing. The plunging of the One Tree seemed to relieve the pressures cracking the earth and the majority of the enormous quakes shivered and died.

  From out of the dirt-filled fog, a huge, shadowy form materialized. It shambled toward Cronus dragging one leg behind it, slowly solidifying as it neared him. Iapetus was bedraggled and bleeding from a hundred slashes marring his deeply bronzed body, but his spine was stiff and his ebony eyes glittered like polished onyx jewels. He wrapped his hammer-sized hands around the log pinioning Cronus to the ground and heaved. The biceps on his tree-branch arms bulged as if they would burst and a low, pain-wracked groan rumbled from his immense, muscle-carved chest. With the last reserves of his legendary strength, Iapetus tossed the log aside. Without a single word, he fell to the earth like a toppling tree, the light in his eyes dimming to darkness.

  When he awoke unknown hours later, Iapetus was beyond exhausted. The golden aura of Healing was fading from his bone-weary body and a thick film of ash and dust covered him from head to toe. His midnight-black hair was tangled and so grayed with dirt it appeared he had aged by a hundred years. The deep-seated ache seeping through his bones and sinews made Iapetus feel much the same. Yet, it was his heart that hurt the most and prevented him from opening his tired eyes just yet. When at last he did, the mountain of a man realized he and Cronus were no longer alone. They were prisoners.

  Zeus and Poseidon stood side by side, their brother and sisters arrayed around the captives. Their filthy faces showed no joy in victory, no pleasure in triumph nor even justly deserved hatred for the men at their feet. Instead, rivers of sorrowful tears muddied the grime on every mournful cheek and filled every eye with unimaginable, haunted grief.

  Zeus slid his still-crackling blade back into its scabbard and stared at Iapetus with auric eyes glimmering with cold, silver sparks. He reached out a hand, offering to help the Atlantean regain his feet. Though he did not need it, Iapetus clasped forearms with Zeus and allowed the man to aid him. The two stood gazing at each other in stony silence. Finally, the Olympian nodded and turned his attention to Cronus.

  The Lord Father sat unmoving on the hard, rocky ground, his knees Healed and drawn up close to his slowly rising chest. His snarled, ash-covered, fire-red curls clung to his bowed head and hid his face from his children. The weight of his decisions and the devastation they had wrought crushed his spirit and tormented his soul. All he had accomplished was gone, dust in the hot winds that blew across the Aropian Veldt. He had nothing left. The ancient Prophesy had come true. Cronus had become his father. Destroyer of worlds.

  “You will come with us,” Zeus said calmly, his voice tinged with more compassion the Cronus deserved.

  The Lord of Atlantis raised his head, but could not look at the people enclosing him. He kept his eyes downcast as he lifted himself to his feet, his broad shoulders slumped and his back bent in resignation. Cronus dusted himself off absently, knowing the stains of blood and guilt could never be cleansed from his soul. He clasped his shaking hands behind his back and waited for them to be bound. Amid the thunderous rumbles of earth and sky surrounding them, no one could hear his weeping.

  Chapter XXVIII

  It took four days for the skies to clear and even then breathing was almost unbearable. On the night of the third day, a sweltering, steamy rain poured down on Atlantis. It was filled with hailstones of lava blown into the atmosphere by the demonic pit where the One Tree once stood and kept hot by the uncanny lightning rippling within the dark gray cumulous clouds. The deluge drove all the ash and smoke swirling in the air down upon the cracked continent and covered what was left of society in a thick layer of choking mud. When the blood-red sun finally did make its first feeble appearance, it was dim and sorrowful behind an altostratus mask of orange and black hues.

  Barely a third of the two massed armies survived the cataclysmic chaos of man and nature’s wrath. And most of them were wounded in ways no amount of Healing could ever repair. They shambled across the mutilated landscape like mindless wraiths, mumbling inco
herently of gods and demons. Regardless of race, humbled humanity huddled together in tattered tents on the trampled and fire-scorched plains, too afraid to enter the rubble and ruins of the once mighty Atlantis. The earth still shook and shivered, though not as violently, and buildings broken crumbled into the shattered streets making the city a dangerous, unforgiving house of horrors that none dared enter.

  Nightmarish noise tormented the terrified survivors both day and night, filling their exhausted slumber with visions of ghouls and goblins ravenous for revenge on those who had raped their world. The unholy screams of the injured faded after a day, some because Healing eased their misery, others because they succumbed to the serene sleep of the dead. Still, the city cried in ghostly wails with the uncountable trapped beneath unmovable mounds of shattered stone, crushed crystal and splintered wood.

  The earth itself added to the calliope of commotion fueling the fires of fright. The ground creaked with each quake and quivered as cracks in its skin became chasms that could suck a man into its gaping maw before he knew he was lost. The vast forests which surrounded the veldt snapped and crackled with the blazing infernos that swept unchecked across their branches and boughs. The echoes of avalanches from the mountain ranges bordering the mammoth meadow competed with the continuous thunder bellowing above and the roar of the eruption from the pit where the One Tree once stood.

  More than the reverberations of the wreckage of the world, more than the pain they inflicted and endured, this is what blighted the spirits of the people and left them mere hopeless husks of humanity. All of the technology they relied on in Atlantis was gone. Untold ages of history, science and art from Atlan and this earth was nothing but powdered crystal buried beneath mountains of rock and ruin. There was no power, no lights other than what the fires could provide. No communications beyond words and runners. Nothing left of the comforts and conveniences they once knew. Yet it was the One Tree that was the heart and soul of the People, beautiful, enduring and living and now it was gone. Its death seared the psyche and crushed their minds.