God Descends (1)
God Descends (1)
Deep within a cave shrouded in thick darkness.
A blue flame flickering atop a bronze vessel cast its light through the chamber.
At the entrance, a heavy iron door sealed the passage, secured by a sturdy bar.
To bar any outsider from entering.
But what outsider? This was a cavern inside the temple of Cronus, sovereign of the gods and god of agriculture.
"Ah...!"
The golden-haired woman trembled with terror.
The trembling shook the sea-haired infant cradled in her arms, and the baby scrunched up its face as if about to burst into tears.
"My child...!"
The woman held the baby close and wept.
The baby's eyes glistened at its mother's cries, yet admirably, it did not cry out.
Even the child knew by instinct:
—Where is my child!
The owner of the voice booming from the cave entrance, shaking the iron door, was coming to devour it.
The man forcing his way into the cave had come to kill the baby.
Aaaagh!
Women's screams echoed from outside.
"Oh, no...!"
The golden-haired woman clasped the blue-eyed child in its swaddling cloths like a treasure.
It was her most precious child, born from her own body in pain, but now she had to send this child away forever.
Just like the children born before.
Kyaaagh, aagh!
The women's screams drew closer.
Between them, the sounds of faces being struck and fists pounding flesh reached all the way inside.
Bang!
Someone hammered roughly on the door.
The woman shook with fear and scanned her surroundings.
The cave was a dead end; no matter where she looked, she saw no way out.
There was no escape.
If there had been a way out before, the children born earlier would not have met their fate.
Bang! Boom!
The door shook again.
The bar she had used to lock it was cast iron, but against the overwhelming strength of the one pounding on it, it might as well have been a thin sheet of metal.
"Open the door, Rhea!"
At the voice from outside, the woman, Rhea, wanted to claw out her own ears.
A voice she had once loved so deeply.
But now a voice she wanted to curse and kill, a voice thick with drink.
"Cronus...!"
Rhea's own husband, the father of her children, and the butcher who murdered them.
The moment that man entered the chamber, this blue-eyed child was as good as dead.
Was there nowhere to hide it?
Rhea looked around and then found one spot.
"...Forgive me, little one. Please... just for a moment."
Rhea pressed her lips to the baby's mouth.
Then, the child, who had merely blinked with innocent eyes, fell soundly asleep, and Rhea wrapped the baby tightly in its swaddling cloths and hid it.
Splash.
Desperately praying that Cronus would not discover it!
Crack!
The bar shattered in an instant.
The iron door built inside the cave crumpled before a Titan god's might like a plank of wood.
"Heh heh heh, congratulations. My wife. My love."
A middle-aged man with long, curling black hair, Cronus spread his arms wide toward Rhea and beamed.
"The fruit of our love, my child—where is it?"
"Gone...!"
"Gone? Haha, playing hide-and-seek again, is it? Heh heh, fine. If my child wishes to play with me, how could I refuse?"
Cronus strode over to Rhea and seized her by the throat.
"Guh, gaaak...!"
"Did you hide it in your belly again? Not there. Did you hide it between your legs? Not there, either. Or perhaps...!"
Crash!
Cronus kicked over the bed.
The large bed toppled sideways and came to rest upright against the cave wall.
"Under the bed won't work anymore. Where else? Did you hide it in the wardrobe, or...?"
Gurgle.
"!!"
Rhea despaired at the sound that reached her ears.
But she could not let go of this thread of hope.
"Ho-oh, what's that sound? Hic."
Cronus was dead drunk.
His eyes were senseless, and his legs couldn't carry him properly; his body swayed from side to side.
"I think I heard something..."
"I don't know anything. It must be... the children inside your belly, crying!"
"Urrrp."
Cronus answered Rhea's desperate cry by opening his mouth wide.
There was no courtesy or love for Rhea, his wife, in anything Cronus did.
"Where is our fifth...? Aha."
Cronus strode toward a certain spot.
Feigning composure, Rhea prayed it would not be discovered.
"A fish tank? And made of wood, at that. Tsk, did living in a cave make you miss the outside world? Or were you raising fish instead of a child to ease your loneliness?"
"..."
"No answer? Heh heh heh, whatever. It doesn't matter."
Cronus sneered at Rhea and grabbed the tub.
"N-no, don't!!"
Rhea rushed toward Cronus in a single leap.
Th-wack!
But Cronus knocked her aside with his elbow and shoved her away.
Struck in the solar plexus, Rhea collapsed, gasping, yet immediately clutched at Cronus's trousers and leg.
"Please, please...! This child at least, please!!"
"Haha, Rhea. By putting it inside a water bubble like this, are you telling me to swallow it in one gulp?"
"No! Please, no! Cronus, the curse is just a curse! Please don't do this!"
"Just a curse?"
Sneering at Rhea, Cronus clutched the water bubble he had lifted from the water with both hands.
Inside the bubble was a white swaddling cloth, and within it, the child slept with its eyes tightly closed.
"A curse. Heh heh heh. With some bastard possibly fated to cut off my cock, how could I not be cautious?"
"That would never happen!"
"Father Uranus must have thought the same before I cut off his prick. I will not let my guard down, Rhea."
Riiiip.
Cronus's mouth stretched open in an instant.
Rhea reached upward, trying to reclaim the child, but Cronus kicked her in the stomach and stamped on her neck, subduing her.
Snatch.
Cronus swallowed the child in one gulp.
"Ah, aah...!"
Rhea despaired.
The last thing she had seen was the child's face, waking from sleep and beaming brightly at her, unaware of its own fate.
"Aaaagh!!"
Rhea screamed and struck at Cronus's leg.
"You fucking bastard! You will be punished for this!!"
Hitting and clawing with hands as frail as fern fronds, Rhea poured out her curse.
Blood scattered from Cronus's leg and splattered across Rhea's face, streaming down like tears of blood.
"...Punishment?"
Cronus lifted Rhea up.
And immediately flipped her over, forcing her onto her stomach.
"You, punish me?"
Cronus seized Rhea's wrists and pinned her down.
"Well then, can you resist now?"
"You fucking bastard! Don't come inside me, you depraved monster! If you're going to kill them anyway, why do you keep doing this to me?!"
"That's obvious. Because you..."
Cronus pinned Rhea down from above and smiled savagely.
"Are the daughter of Gaia, the bitch who laid that curse on me."
"!!"
"If you're going to blame anyone, blame Gaia, your own mother."
Squelch, squelch.
Rhea was simply violated by Cronus, wetting the dirt floor with nothing but her tears.
* * *
Eight months passed.
Cronus assaulted Rhea until she became pregnant, and Rhea was shattered that she was carrying once more.
Each time her resistance grew fiercer, Cronus rendered her completely immobile, and now, going beyond simply confining her to the cave, he had finally brought manacles and chains to bind Rhea to the bed.
The goddess could only endure the meaningless passage of time as her womb swelled to full term.
As soon as her belly returned to normal, Cronus would rape Rhea again, and the child would be devoured once more.
He would repeat the violation until Rhea was retching from pregnancy, and then, while she was pregnant again, he would embrace other women and repeat the cycle.
Those atrocities too vile for even the mouth to utter.
"Hic, huu...!"
Rhea clutched her belly and wept.
She resented herself so bitterly for being able to offer no help at all to the child yet to be born.
[My daughter.]
"!!"
In a flash, Rhea started in shock at the voice that sounded right beside her ear.
The voice had definitely come from the earth.
It was so faint she would not have heard it if she hadn't been concentrating, but Rhea pricked up her ears and pressed one to the wall.
[Can you hear?]
Though startled, she managed not to make a sound, nodding in silence.
[I am sorry. That person's vigilance is so strict that only now was I barely able to reach you.]
The tears Rhea had held back poured out in a rush.
At one time she had hated Gaia, the one who laid down such a curse and caused Cronus to commit his madness, but Gaia was still her mother.
[Truly, I am sorry.]
The wicked one was Cronus, not Gaia.
"...Mother. Do you know? It's already five."
[...]
How could the Mother of Life not know the sorrow of losing a child?
And not even grown children, but newborn babies who had barely suckled more than a few times—all of them placed into their own father's belly.
"Please, just do something for this child. I beg you. If this child too is devoured... I might take my own life."
[There is a way.]
Gaia's voice was tightly constricted.
[When the child is born, you must wrap it in a white cloth. And bury it in the earth. As if you are holding a funeral. I will handle the rest.]
"Mother...!"
[Please, trust me. If you bury the child in the earth, I will stretch out my hand and receive it.]
"..."
Rhea agonized.
To bury her child in the earth!
Wouldn't that be like burying the child with her own hands?
Rhea had already lost all five of her children.
From the firstborn to the fifth, not a single one was spared as Cronus devoured them right before Rhea's eyes.
Despair, by nature, drags you to the deepest abyss precisely when hope is at its highest.
Was it truly Gaia?
What if this was Cronus pretending to be Gaia and trifling with her?
If she buried the child in the earth, would he then dig up the ground and gobble the child plucked from the dirt?
Yet there was no choice but to trust.
Resolved that this would be the last time, Rhea nodded with a heavy heart.
And then, about two months later, the labor pains began.
"Agggh...!"
* * *
Waaah.
The moment I realized I had been born again, a woman who seemed to be my mother was burying me in the ground.
"Waaah?"
"Zeus, survive...!"
"Waaah?"
Zeus?
Me?
...Well, shit. This reincarnation is a disaster.