Chapter 36
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 36
Chapter Title: Tale of the Gods
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King of the Gods.
The mightiest of the sovereign deities.
Ruler of Olympus.
Son of Cronus, who vanquished the Titan king who commanded time itself—who could challenge such renown?
Many forget amid his characteristic frivolity and brazen philandering that infuriates Hera,
but no god of Olympus save him could withstand his thunderbolts unless the lord of the seas and the ruler of the underworld joined all their forces against him.
Zeus, ever enthroned in his lofty seat by that immense power, reigning supreme and safeguarding all of Greece.
Yet who could know?
Even the king of the gods sometimes tossed in nightmares, writhing in dream-born agony.
He thought he hid it well enough.
But when he cried out in torment, drenched in cold sweat within his bedchamber, it was Hera who stayed by his side, soothing him back into slumber.
Whenever Zeus returned from his reckless escapades outside, brazenly offering flowers and jewels as gifts, Hera felt her very ichor boiling in reverse.
Yet he was her sole companion, the king who had twice stood bodily against the world's crises for her sake.
So when Zeus, like Hermes just moments ago, cried out Typhon's name and trembled alone, Hera would slip silently from her separate quarters into his bedchamber, lulling him back to sleep before quietly departing before dawn broke.
"If Zeus ever learns of that blood in Dianes, he'd surely tremble with anxiety no less than you."
"Pardon? You mean Father?"
His father, gripped by anxiety?
Hermes could scarcely imagine it, but Hera gently shook her head, denying his words.
"That's what it means to be a king. Even setting aside threats to his own power, the mere possibility that the Olympus he built and the gods and mortals living peacefully beneath it could perish at the hands of a calamity like Typhon—that alone would be more horrific to him than anything."
His ceaseless womanizing enraged her, despite having the goddess of marriage as his wife.
But Hera endured, maintaining her role as queen even as she shouldered her divine duties, because his love and sense of responsibility toward Olympus and Greece as their king were utterly sincere.
"He is different from my father, the king of the Titans. He sits forever at Olympus's peak, ever pleased by the sight of countless beings living freely."
Sometimes, when Hera visited him at the mountain's summit, he would hold her gently in his arms and survey the whole of Greece, boasting to her like a child unveiling a treasure chest.
Yes, Hera must have been captivated by those eyes when she accepted his proposal.
Zeus, summoning a storm to claim her, transforming into an injured sparrow to be cradled in her hands and infiltrate her bedchamber.
Outraged by the outrage, Hera blazed with fury, but even as he bowed his head repeatedly in apology, Zeus poured all his passion into describing the world he envisioned.
A free world unlike the previous era under the Titan king, their father Cronus, who gripped and crushed everything in tyranny and violence—a world where gods, humans, spirits, and other races could love, fight, mingle, and cycle through existence freely.
To realize that, he insisted, he needed the most compassionate and just Hera as his partner and mediator. Despite his wandering ways, she resolved to become his wife.
"So even if you told him right now about Dianes's lineage, he wouldn't commit the atrocity of harming the boy."
But he would grow all the more anxious.
The first pure-blooded descendant of the protogenoi to appear since Typhon's death.
Clad now in mortal flesh, but judging by how he'd wielded divine power just earlier, Dianes would likely awaken to his divine duties far sooner than his body withered.
And Zeus's anxiety at such a sight would deepen, his nights haunted by Typhon's nightmares growing ever longer, just like Hermes's.
What tragedy might await at the end of it all—even Hera dared not predict.
"He couldn't dare harm the bloodkin of the ancient night mother himself. But tragedy would never cease around him."
Zeus loved the free world, but he was merciless toward any threat that might shatter it. No doubt, if Dianes were deemed a risk, Zeus would employ every means to cast him into ruin.
Hera didn't wish to see the boy she'd personally matched fall into such tragedy, either.
"Even so, it's certain that the boy could become a threat in the future. I agree we must prepare for it."
"Then consider this: how reassuring would it be if that potential threat stood with Olympus?"
A perspective Hermes, mired in the nightmare of Typhon, had failed to see.
If a mighty descendant of the protogenoi loved Greece and this world alongside them, he could prove a tremendous aid in thwarting the inevitable Gigantomachia.
"That's far too optimistic!"
"Have you forgotten what goddess I was before taking up my current divine duties?"
Hermes confronted her more fiercely than usual, but Hera smiled faintly and broached the subject.
At her words, Hermes shut his mouth, on the verge of another tirade, and slowly recalled Hera's past.
Queen of the gods, guardian of the hearth, goddess of beautiful eyes.
But the Hera of old?
"Ah...!"
Hermes swept a hand over his brow, eyes widening in realization.
Why was his usually sharp mind so sluggish today of all days!
In the early days of the new era, after vanquishing mighty Cronus in the Titanomachy, Hera—third daughter of Cronus and a born sorceress—had been a great primordial mother-goddess versed in the secret arts of earth and underworld as Gaia’s disciple, priestess to the protogenoi.
But with the new divine age, as the protogenoi gradually withdrew from the present world, Hera naturally stepped down from her priestly role.
Accepting Zeus's proposal, she passed the mantle of earth to Demeter and the ancient secrets and sorceries to Hecate, taking up instead the divine duties of queen of the gods and protector of marriage, the foundation of the world.
Thus, she shared deeper ties with the protogenoi's descendants than any current Olympian—and among them, she had communed directly with the primordial night mother, Nyx, learning all manner of ancient sorceries as her near-disciple.
"No one alive knows the ancient night mother as I do."
Hera smiled bitterly, summing up Nyx in her mind as an unpredictable trickster.
"She usually contemplates quietly in the deep Abyss, but now and then unleashes pranks so outlandish they chilled even Cronus to the bone. Yet unlike Gaia, she harbors no hatred toward us to unleash disasters like Typhon."
You know Nyx's children well enough yourself, don't you?
Hermes nodded slowly at Hera's kind addition.
Take the three Fates, Moirae, Zeus's own advisors.
Hypnos, god of sleep, who taught Hera his sorceries as she deceived Zeus in his nightmares.
Eris, the mischievous sprite of strife and discord who incites competition and conflict among all things.
Nemesis, goddess of retribution whose stern judgment and vengeance command fear and awe across Greece.
The primordial death, Thanatos, and the ferryman of the underworld, Charon, were Nyx's offspring too.
And before them? The Titan god Hyperion and Eos inherited her divine duties; even Hemera, the goddess of day from whom Hera's name derived and who has since vanished, was Nyx's daughter.
"Each one... wields immense power yet prefers to revel in their divine duties rather than covet Olympus's throne."
Especially Thanatos; as messenger of the underworld himself, Hermes crossed paths with the ancient death now and then.
With crimson wings unfurled and black hair cascading, the old death would wordlessly hand Hermes candy or sweets whenever they met.
When Hermes jested his thanks, Thanatos would flash a silent grin and vanish like mist—a peculiar god.
"They all take after Nyx's temperament."
Transcendent as deities, perhaps.
They delighted in the world's turning even more than Zeus—Nyx's descendants did.
"Only Nyx herself knows the truth of it, but for now, know that Dianes is also a child cherished by Nyx, who holds this world dear. So set your worries aside."
So saying, Hera gazed down at Dianes and Atalanta, who had just ended their passionate kiss, and smiled.
"Above all, how many children these days love the world and humanity so fiercely?"
Hermes, seeing Hera smile at the humans for the first time in ages, asked with a twinge of suspicion.
"Could it be... you foresaw this and matched the boy with a destined partner? Even knowing that Atalanta is Artemis's daughter?"
"Who knows? Not every lover falls under my protection. And Artemis..."
Zeus's bastard, born only because Hera mustered every ounce of patience at his begging to allow the Olympian throne.
Daring to harm a couple Hera herself had blessed?
The queen of the gods merely smiled, as if the mere thought were laughable.
"Should Artemis try to harm those children, just come to me. If she oversteps, I'll personally shatter that crescent wheel of hers."