Chapter 55: Everything
Hades had seen enough, and it was time for him to go back to Olympus.
In the end, the silence of the halls of Olympus was more than that of an empty house.
It was as though the Lesser Gods did not even dare to be present in the Throne Room whilst the three brothers were engaged in a most significant discussion.
So, of course, none of them were there at all.
Both of Hades’s brothers looked his way as he stepped into the great hall of Olympus. Zeus sat upon his throne and Poseidon was standing near the large balcony that overlooked the clouds and the sea of them that stretched on forever.
Zeus’s face remained calm. "Is it done?"
Hades, his sullen expression a stark contrast to the grandeur of the room, ceased his approach to the throne before him.
"Yes, it is done. Amon and the First Refusal are fighting each other. The creature from another world has finally entered this one, using my kin as a gate."
Poseidon’s brow furrowed. "Then why do you look like that?"
His face had grown increasingly dark and foreboding. "Just exhausted, brother, just exhausted."
Hades shook his head at once. "Let’s not worry about me. I feel like even the First Refusal is not enough. He will turn on us before we can accomplish anything.
Once he realizes we are trying to contain him, he will turn against Olympus, Hell, and Heaven. He is still too powerful for us to face right now."
Zeus snickered. "Let the Second World burn, then...that will be enough. Let them fight each other into asunder."
Poseidon turned sharply. "Zeus..."
"We still have six other worlds, brother," Zeus went on to say. "And in each of them there are gods ruling over their domains, with their temples and their armies.
And we have the might to conquer them and dethrone those feeble gods. We would break their temples and destroy their armies. And we would go on to rebuild their civilizations in our own image."
"We conquered the whole of six worlds, and two worlds for each of us," Hades muttered, as his head lowered slightly, as if to acknowledge Zeus’s agreement with him.
Meanwhile, Poseidon still argued. "And if Amon kills the First Refusal? Zeus? What then?"
Zeus’s expression turned grave and for a moment, the god of the skies didn’t look like he was made of stars anymore. Then the smile returned.
"Then we learn something valuable," he said. He strode off, leaving Poseidon and Hades to ponder the meaning of his words.
Poseidon still frowned. "I still think what we are doing is wrong here..."
"Don’t worry, brother, we are Olympians. Fate is with us. The world is with us. As long as the people of the First World worship us, nothing can ever come in our way," he muttered.
Meanwhile, Zeus continued before lying back in his own room. Divine pressure continued to roll through Olympus in slow, heavy waves.
He fell silent once again, staring off into the horizon of the sky, without so much as a flicker of emotion in his gaze.
"Let them fight, for then we shall find out everything that has been hidden for thousands of years. When the dust has settled, we shall then pick up the remnants and build up from there."
****
The Golden City was silent.
It was not a quiet night or day of prayer. There was silence, but it was the silence of something having been brought to a close. All around the Golden City of Amon, thousands of his followers had been put down in the battle for its control.
They lay scattered in the temples, in the homes, in the streets of the Golden City, old and young, men and women, having spent all their lives worshiping the Golden Guardian or having heard of him by word of mouth from their parents and grandparents.
Their eyes were open but there was nothing in them. Their memories had been taken from them so completely that even their souls were affected.
The golden threads that had connected them to Amon were floating about in the air like cut wires, and then they too would disappear into the darkness.
Liliana lay at the center of the Golden City. Half her body had been torn away by the darkness that had entered her through the wounds. She had used herself as the last door for the First Refusal to enter the world of men.
Golden light streamed from the cracks in her body. Her one remaining eye locked onto Amon’s form. There was no anger in it, only a deep tiredness, a tired smile that seemed peaceful.
"Master..." she whispered.
Then the darkness took the rest of her.
The First Refusal had finally entered the known world.
As the moment of its presence in Creation reached the boundary of Heaven, every single angel felt the same weight upon them.
The ringing of the highest towers of Heaven was palpable.
Innumerable barriers, set by the very hands of God to define the limits of Heaven and Creation from the very inception, began to crack.
Then, in quick succession, they would shatter. Deep in the hells of Hell, the burning, racing rivers slowly came to a halt.
Lucifer, seated upon his own throne in the farthest reaches of the First Hell, fixed his sight upward in shock. On the other side of the realm, Michael also felt the weight of its presence.
In the center of the Second World, Amon slowly rose up from the ruins of the Golden City, among his followers and what was left of the city he had made for a group of people he would never expect to find. His grey eyes, now turned golden and burning with an intense light, seemed to look beyond the Second World.
His voice rolled across Creation.
"Michael."
Heaven went still.
"Lucifer."
Hell stopped.
The two names resonated across Heaven and Hell alike. "Michael. Lucifer. You both know what is happening. Unlock them." His hands clenched into fists.
Michael stared at the Second World. The hard lines of his face did not change. Lucifer’s eyes narrowed. But neither of them moved.
Amon’s voice dropped lower. "Unlock my restrictions."
Michael slowly said, "Amon, if we remove your locks then we might not be able to stop you."
His golden eyes locked onto the First Refusal and then onto the ruined remains of the Golden City that he had worked so hard to create for people he would never expect to meet. His fists clenched together as he declared, "You won’t need to stop me. You’ll need to survive me."
Seconds ticked by as neither Heaven nor Hell answered. It wasn’t until two ancient authorities stirred at the same time that the silence was broken.
The voice of Michael, the Seraphim of Heaven, carried down from above, while the voice of Lucifer, the Morning Star and fallen Archangel of Hell, rumbled up from below. The locks on Amon, created in a long-forgotten age, creaked and groaned as they finally began to relax.
A system notice appeared before him in a golden cascade of notifications.
[Key of Michael recognized.]
[Authority restriction removed.]
[Tier 5 authority conditions fulfilled.]
[Unlocking Tier 5.]
His body began to convulse as the Tier 5 Authority flowed through him like a deluge of water; the ground began to fracture under his feet, not from any physical impact but from the fact that Amon had reached a level where even he was unable to comprehend the full nature of reality, and thus it would constantly alter and shift around him in an unpredictable fashion.
[Tier 5 Universal Authority unlocked.]
[Universal Authority active.]
For the first time in five thousand years, Amon was able to perceive the world other than as a series of lines and spaces extending out from his center in all directions. The laws of the world extended out from him in all directions: gravity, space, time, distance, matter, and so on.
There were the laws of divinity, of memory, of causality. And he perceived them all as a series of threads extending out from his center in all directions, each thread that he could pull or cut at will.
The First Refusal, which had now turned to face Amon, was amassing its humongous form with enormous dark limbs and an enormous eye in the middle.
Amon looked up at the creature and said quietly, "Now we’ll see what you’re really like."
The First Refusal’s eye stayed fixed on him.
"You have used others enough, used my student, used my city, used me. But no more."
The First Refusal said nothing.
As Amon continued to speak, he raised his hands slowly. The sky behind him began to fold in on itself.
"I’ll destroy everything you used to reach this world."
For the first time, the First Refusal seemed almost amused.
"Including yourself?"
Amon stopped and then continued.
"Everything, and I mean....Everything."