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Chapter 3 - Chapter 1: The Hidden Cradle

Crete.

At this moment, the island did not yet bear that name; it was merely a nameless, tranquil place in the vast cosmos.

An infant lay peacefully in a cradle meticulously woven of gold.

Yet the situation of this tiny life was anything but ordinary.

That golden cradle had been cleverly suspended among the branches of a sturdy ash tree (white ash), the swaying shadows like gentle arms, tenderly concealing the small figure.

He was neither in the boundless sky nor upon the solid earth, neither dwelling in the nether gloom nor floating in the endless sea.

Only by means of such exquisite concealment could this child, under the protection of the greatest Earth Mother Goddess Gaia and the Lady of Night, Nyx, in her formless darkness, elude the keen and penetrating gaze of the supreme God-King who ruled all things in the universe—Kronos.

Below the cradle, a golden female goat lay quietly at rest.

Her golden fleece shone with a soft luster, exceedingly beautiful and docile. At this moment her eyes were half closed in a doze, like a sculpture of gold.

Around them, several Curetes, gripping battle-axes that flashed with cold light or sharp spears and bearing heavy bronze greatshields, kept loyal and vigilant watch.

They were born from the tears of the great goddess of flow, vitality, operation, and motion—the great queen Rhea.

Back when the goddess who would later become the greatest of all secretly bore this child in the Dikteon Cave, the crystal tears that fell from her eyes out of grief and reluctance dripped upon the earth and gave birth to these formidable demigods.

The Curetes were born formidable demigods.

Yet even with demigod bodies, in the epochal upheaval soon to come, their greatest role would be limited to this: when the child cried, to rush Him deep into the Ideon Andron on the island.

Then they would, at the cave mouth, strike their shields with great force using the weapons in their hands, leap into a wild war-dance, and bellow thundering war-songs, doing everything in their power to drown out the loud, far-carrying wails of their young lord.

For the war of the gods about to commence, the contribution these demigods could make would go no further than this.

Two ash-tree nymphs born from the blood of the great Sky-Father Uranus stood at the child's side, never leaving Him for a step.

They were true gods.

One was the gentle and charming Adrasteia; her face was like a newly opened bud, and the glimmer in her eyes was all tenderness.

The other was the beautiful, graceful Ida; her movements were light and willowy, every motion suffused with boundless patience and love.

And there was the subordinate god personally created by Mother Gaia, another true deity—the god of bees, Melisseus.

He labored without weariness, industriously gathering and refining the spiritual "honey" that only gods could partake of. This nectar, rich with the essence of the earth, he offered with loyalty and reverence to the infant deity.

Though this world was already sufficiently formed, it was still in a period of continual expansion and refinement.

At this time the world was far from its final immensity; it had not yet evolved into such an extreme expanse.

In the not-distant future, a bronze anvil (a massive bronze implement used by smiths to support metal while hammering) falling from the sky to the earth would require nine days and nights.

And to pierce the earth, pass through the underworld, and plunge into the deepest layer of Tartarus would likewise require nine days and nights.

From the highest point of the world to the lowest point was a distance of nearly 11.85 trillion kilometers.

Of course, at this moment in time, the scale of the world was far from so vast, and its development had not yet reached perfection.

At present, the distance between the upper and lower realms was a little more than 3 trillion kilometers (the Earth's diameter is about 12,700 kilometers).

Just then, this infant deity gazed straight up at the distant sky with golden eyes.

In the depths of His pupils there faintly flowed a strange, ineffable radiance, containing a mysterious rhythm.

The sky, that supreme existence, was still tirelessly climbing upward, steadily widening the distance between itself and the earth.

The sky seemed to nurse some profound "grievance" against the earth, and so it resolutely wished to draw away from the earth, and was putting that will into true and continual action, causing the space between above and below to continually grow.

At the same time, the spatial dimensions before and behind, left and right, were growing in unison; the veins of the cosmos stretched rapidly and silently in all directions.

Encircling the entire world was a mighty ocean current: Oceanus, the eldest son of the great Sky-Father Uranus and the Mother of Matter, Gaia.

He was the eldest of the Titans and the brother of the current second-generation God-King, Kronos, the father of all rivers and fresh waters in the cosmos.

This head-to-tail, self-contained, vast ocean current, like a great serpent without beginning or end, wound around and overlaid the world's rim, enfolding the earth.

In his slow, eternal rotation, he constantly opened up the chaos, converting the liminal, almost-not-there void bit by bit into real substance.

And that mountain soaring into the heavens, towering among clouds, majestic as the sky itself—Mount Othrys—grew taller in step with the sky's ascent, becoming now the eternal pillar between heaven and earth.

At this moment, what the golden-eyed child stared at was this sacred mountain that, though unimaginably distant, could still be seen by all intelligent beings in the world, a peak to which all sentient life looked up.

The grandeur of this holy mountain was beyond the power of words to describe; the spectacular sight of its range outstripped everything a mortal imagination could ever imagine.

This was the dwelling of the highest gods.

The dwelling of the supreme Titans.

The center of cosmic order.

Now the God-King dwelling upon this holy mountain had thoroughly suppressed the Mother of Matter, the Earth Mother, the creator of all things—the supreme Earth Mother Goddess Gaia.

All living beings, all intelligent life, indeed all real substance that existed in the world, and even the gods of darkness and night, and the aether itself, those formless deities—

All had to bow and submit at the feet of this second-generation God-King who had overthrown the Sky-Father, not daring the slightest disobedience.

He was the son of the supreme Sky-Father Uranus and the holy Mother of All, Gaia; the King of the Titans; the second ruler of the universe; the sovereign of the Golden Age; the forerunner to the Father of the Gods; the most exalted and mighty; the great one of courage; the cunning slayer of his father; the great god of creation; the god of growth; the god of abundance; the god of the harvest and of reaping—Kronos!

(Kronos, not Chronos; Kronos in Ancient Greek: Κρνο; romanized: Krónos; Latin: Cronus; English: Kronos; Chronos in Ancient Greek: Χρνο; English name: Chronos / Khronos).

The child's golden eyes fixed upon the sacred mountain for a moment. Then a bright, piercing cry split the woodland hush.

He was hungry.

Yet even this earth-shaking crying was only dry howling without tears; His crying was merely a reminder.

The ash-tree nymph Ida, who was standing watch, immediately snatched up the golden cradle and hurriedly flew toward the Ideon Andron; Adrasteia followed close on her heels.

The golden goat Amalthea, who had been dozing, sprang up in an instant; her lithe body flashed like a bolt of gold as she leaped and bounded toward the cave.

She moved faster than a gale; in her wake, the tempest she raised plowed deep furrows into the earth.

The several Curetes—the demigods—at once leapt into a wild war-dance; with swinging arms they hammered their greatshields until the heavens thundered.

They cried out fervent war-songs at the top of their lungs, doing all they could to overpower the shattering sound of their young lord's cries.

The shouts of these demigods rang for hundreds of miles around, and the whole island of Crete swayed to the rhythm of their steps.

Yet the racket made by these small demigods was only a surface-level disguise.

What truly concealed and protected the child were the supreme Mother Goddess Gaia and the primordial goddess Nyx.

Under the guardianship of the Earth and the shrouding law of endless darkness, the child's presence—loud enough to alarm the God-King—could be veiled.

Once within the cave, Ida moved with utmost gentleness to lift the child from the golden basket.

The golden goat Amalthea then knelt meekly before the child and offered her miraculous horn to His lips.

Sweet milk began to flow endlessly from this divine horn, filling the air with a strange, honeyed fragrance.

The bee-god Melisseus at once brought the honey he had diligently refined; under his divine power, that golden honey reserved for the gods flowed over the horn, perfectly blending with the milk and being drunk down by the infant deity.

Only after a sumptuous feeding did the child once more close His golden eyes in satisfaction and slip back into deep sleep.

This child was the embodied manifestation of law conceived by the second-generation God-King, Kronos, and the Queen of Gods, Rhea.

In siring this child, the God-King had infused his own laws: creation, agriculture, growth, harvest, abundance, reaping, courage, fertility, procreation, as well as fire, the sea, earthquakes, the nether-gloom, and shadow.

And the Queen Rhea possessed the highest foundational laws of cosmic order: flow, vitality, operation, motion.

From birth, this child possessed a power unimaginable to ordinary beings.

His cries could ring through heaven and earth; every inadvertent struggle of His was enough to kill outright those demigod Curetes standing guard.

Only the supreme Sky-Father Uranus—embodiment of the sky, the first Sky-Father, the first Lord of the Gods, the personification of the universe's most basic rules—and the ash-tree nymphs born from His blood could barely serve as His nurses, just managing to endure the terrible divine power He unconsciously radiated.

And to satisfy even the development of His flesh alone required a true deity—the bee-god Melisseus—to extract and feed Him with essences brimming with the earth's vitality.

Yet even that was not enough. It also required the goat-goddess personally created by the Earth Mother Gaia, a goddess whose rank was likewise equivalent to a deity—the golden goat Amalthea.

Only with the addition of this goat-goddess's sweet milk could the astonishing needs of the child's growth be barely met.

Since the goddess Rhea had borne this child, no one knew how much time had passed.

In this era the world was still not fully perfected; for the gods, time held almost no meaning.

Yet from the moment matter evolved out of the void and the cosmos began to turn, the formless, intangible time was already quietly revealing its power, like an unseen giant hand pushing the gears of fate.

The fated end was drawing ever closer to that incomparably mighty second-generation God-King.

For one reason only.

The will of Zeus would surely be fulfilled.

The will of Zeus was unstoppable.

All things were the will of Zeus!

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