Time on Mount Ida became a daily routine.
For the next few weeks, the training was brutal, but effective.
My sisters were no longer the helpless, weak creatures they once were; their bodies had begun to harden, their divinities were no longer static, but flowed like torrents, ready to be directed by their thoughts.
What a good teacher I am.
Meanwhile, Metis and Amalthea were the very image of my success.
They walked through the cave with an almost unnatural serenity.
With their permanently swollen bellies, their faces radiated constant happiness, the calm of those who have found their ultimate purpose.
Sometimes I saw them together, caressing each other’s bellies, sharing a complicity that only those “filled” by the King of the Gods could understand.
One day, I decided it was time for the birds to leave the nest.
“It’s been weeks of absolute protection,” I said, gathering Hestia, Demeter, and Hera at the entrance.
The safety of this mountain is a cage if they don’t know how to hunt for themselves.
Tomorrow they will explore the surrounding area.
I gave each of them a small amulet, a stone carved with an energy circuit that I myself had forged with my electricity.
“If danger overwhelms you,” I warned them, looking Hera in the eye, “break this. I will appear before the enemy can blink. But try to make it unnecessary. The world outside will show no mercy to those who doubt their own power.”
The next day, as they departed for the primeval forest, I set out to visit my siblings.
It had been some time since they left, and it was time to see what kind of gods they were becoming.
First, I descended to the deepest recesses, where sunlight never reached.
He was in an immense chamber, surrounded by a deathly silence.
He wasn’t meditating; he was surrounded by the remains of beasts that I myself had defeated, but which he was manipulating with a strange, dark energy.
He was stitching bones and souls together, creating a kind of necro-army of shadows.
His eyes, once empty, now burned with an icy glow.
He looked more like a necromancer than a god, and the atmosphere in that place was so thick it made even my hair stand on end.
“You’ve been busy, brother,” I said, emerging from the shadows.
Hades didn’t even flinch.
“You seek the lightning and the power, Zeus.
I seek what no one else wants: control of what remains when life ends.
This…” he gestured to his creations, “…will be the wall no one can breach.”
I left him in his darkness; he was already choosing his realm.
Then I climbed to the shore, where the waves crashed furiously against the rocks.
There was Poseidon.
I found him on a natural promontory, surrounded by a dozen sea nymphs.
He was in his element, laughing, showing off his control over the tides to impress them, creating water sculptures and pearl jewels with a snap of his fingers.
He wasn’t training for war; he was seeking allies—or rather, courtesans—among the creatures of the ocean.
His divinity was immense, but he was squandering it on games of seduction and underwater revelry.
“Is this how you plan to defeat a Titan?” I asked, leaning against a rock.
Poseidon turned, a smug smile spreading across his face, and draped an arm around the shoulders of a beautiful nymph.
“The Titans have the armies, Zeus. I have the loyalty of the depths. What good is a spear if you don’t have someone to worship you as you throw it?”
I shook my head, amused but wary.
Hades was creating an army of nightmares, and Poseidon a harem of nymphs.
Each was forging his own madness.
I returned to Mount Ida with a clear idea: my siblings were powerful, but they were wasting time on their own obsessions.
I had to be the one to unite them when war broke out, but to do that, I would have to be much more than their brother; I would have to be their authority.
As I walked back, I felt a pulsing in my pocket: one of the amulets had activated.
My sisters had found trouble much faster than expected.
I smiled.
The true test of their power had just begun.