This Mount Olympus in the Greek world was far larger than the Mount Olympus on Earth—larger by more than just a little.
Yet no matter how vast, it couldn't withstand Titans hundreds of meters tall running amok.
"Rumble rumble rumble!"
After a bout of fierce fighting, the magnificent temples that had taken years to build were trampled to paste beneath Titan feet; it was hard to find even a few intact columns. Sand and stones flew everywhere, and swaths of trees toppled across the slopes.
Not all Twelve God-Kings were crammed onto Mytikas, the highest peak; only Zeus's great hall stood there. The temples of the other god-kings and deities were scattered across different summits.
When Zeus ordered a retreat, the Olympians scattered like birds and beasts.
Seeing streaks of different-colored radiance shoot away from various sides of the holy mountain, and a bunch of Titans bellowing as they gave chase, Thor finally broke into a bright grin.
"We split into three groups and cut off the Olympians. Avoid direct clashes with the Titans, and let Zeus and his two brothers go. The rest—take them if you can." Thor paused. "Spare Queen Hera and the war god Ares."
After years of being lectured at the Æsir's core councils by his old man Thalos, and immersing in those talks, Thor understood his father's strategy.
Those two troublemakers should be left alive to torment Zeus to the very end.
"Oooooh—" The Æsir roared and thrust their artifacts high, howling with excitement.
C'mon—who doesn't love kicking a foe when he's down?
If you can still botch this, go die.
It wasn't that Zeus didn't notice the damned Æsir bursting through the space barrier to enter for real—it was that he didn't dare stop.
For the Olympians, this was the perfect time for "the pot calling the kettle black."
Daddy Kronos was gleefully chasing him with a scythe; if Zeus paused, he'd get a "loving, brutal lesson" from that blade.
No exaggeration—when it came to cutting off a man's pride, Kronos was the professional.
Who knew if, after gelding his own father, he wouldn't, in a fit of rage, geld his fine eldest son Zeus as well?
Say what you will about Zeus being a "switch," he still didn't want to lose most of his happiness in one sudden swipe.
In this rout, how could Zeus dare linger? He gritted his teeth—and became the fastest runner of them all.
To his credit, Zeus actually remembered to scoop up Queen Hera. That was as much decency as he'd shown in ages.
As for the others, he couldn't worry about them.
He even barked at his eldest, Hermes, to find a way to lure off more Titans.
With the "emperor" fleeing first, the remaining Olympians could only rely on their own devices.
Fortunate—and unfortunate—many deities had chariots. Poseidon, for example, summoned his golden chariot drawn by white horses and was gone in a flash.
Oh, and sentimental Poseidon even managed, at the last moment, to seize the agriculture goddess Demeter.
Back in the day, taking Zeus as his "role model," Poseidon fell for his sister Demeter. Demeter turned herself into a mare and hid among Ogyges's herds. Poseidon turned into a stallion and forcibly mounted the mare Demeter had become.
Demeter had been furious and never truly forgave him.
But now, in this chaos—when even unreliable Zeus was leading the retreat—having a powerful deity grab you at the critical moment was something Demeter simply couldn't refuse. Even when Poseidon's hands immediately began to rove after scooping her up—Demeter flush with anger—she still didn't scold him.
Two god-kings together made an obvious target; luckily Poseidon's chariot was fast enough to avoid a Titan beatdown.
Not far off, sensing disaster, Aphrodite knew her husband Hephaestus was right there, but she still cried, "Ares, save me—"
In the life-or-death chase by Titans, clearly the war god was more reassuring than her dull and not especially formidable smith-god husband.
Hephaestus, hearing this, stared in disbelief, then his eyes dimmed as Ares wheeled his chariot in a handsome sweep and whisked away his beautiful wife…
Hephaestus had nearly despaired when, at that moment, Athena arrived with Heracles and Apollo, fighting as they fell back—and picked up Hephaestus on the way.
Four god-kings huddled together made a big target, so five Titans chased them.
Unable to shake the pursuit, they withdrew north from the mountain, passed the major northern Greek port of Thessaloniki—only for that city to be stomped to rubble by Titans—and, still covering one another, they crossed the ten-thousand-square-kilometer region of Thessaly to finally escape.
On paper, most of Zeus's god-kings had gotten out safely.
Most.
The unlucky ones who fell behind didn't.
Hermes, "the divine messenger," was absolutely loyal to Zeus.
Zeus told him to draw fire—so he did, even using the divine art of Deception to disguise himself briefly as Zeus and pull the Titans Crius and Coeus onto his tail.
That sent him down a dead-end road.
With two Titans pinching him, he was already in dire straits, relying purely on his winged boots to dodge at high speed.
And then, just as he focused on breaking through and was about to escape—he ran headlong into Thor.
"Don't even think about it!"
The chaotic Mount Olympus was no longer under Zeus's suppressive aura, so the difficulty for Thor to wield lightning here had dropped by countless notches.
The muscle in Thor's right arm bunched. The sky for several kilometers around split with webbed seams of blue-violet lightning. A gale whipped mountain grit and grass into a vortex.
Under that pressure, Hermes's overly slender frame looked like a torn scrap of parchment floating in the air.
Even with his calf already smeared in golden blood from being grazed by a Titan, he kept pumping his legs among the clouds in frantic flight on those famed winged sandals.
But as sparks spat from his talaria in midair, he realized he'd strayed into the enemy thunder god's domain.
"No—" As if to answer Hermes's cry, Thor's guttural shout rolled out like a thunderclap. Mjölnir, which had been whirling faster than any windmill, slipped from his hand.
In every onlooker's vision, the raging hammer cleaved the world crosswise in two. The blocky head seemed to melt into white-hot liquid metal, and as it streaked by it casually vaporized three thunderclouds.
The hammer's shadow swelled in Hermes's pupils as he looked back, his Adam's apple bobbing violently without a sound. He didn't even manage to lift the caduceus—golden staff engraved with wings and two entwined serpents—behind him before the blow landed.
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