In the Depths of the Earth

It has been three days, since we were first cast into this hole.

We would have been left in complete darkness if not for Phoebe who emanated a constant glow, and Hyperion who was perpetually aflame. Arges tried to contribute, but his flashes of light were as equally blinding as being left in the darkness.

Most complained, and soon after he began he was forced to stop.

The Titans didn't take long until they began to discuss amongst themselves. Deliberating what they should do. The stress seemed to be getting to them as well, It wasn't long until fights broke out amongst them.

I decided that i would help my malformed brothers in handling themselves, with the added stress of the situation, and no clear goal in sight, they were beginning to break down. They were doing good for the time being, but the dilated eyes and twitching arms were not good signs.

"Hey guys." I got their attention. "Don't think too hard, just keep busy... Here, follow my lead."

I shoved my hands into the stone, pulling out several boulders. My hands were hard like iron, and my nails were rigid like diamond, and so i used them like chisels. I began to work my hands like tools of cold steel, and shaped the stone into blocks, cubes, rectangles and spheres, anything to distract myself would be enough for them as well.

My fingers drew lines as they clawed against the stone, and the lines disappeared as I went over them again, the rough faces of the stones smoothed out as they rubbed against my grindstone like palms.

I looked over at my brothers, Briareus and Cottus went to work as well, shaping stones to calm their nerves. The Cyclopes' joined as well, they worked together at a slower pace, but they moved like a well oiled machine.

Hours passed and us six seemed calmer than before, Briareus and Cottus were focused, piles of stone cubes and bricks beside them. The Cyclopes' made fewer works with the stone, but they held much more refined forms.

This was nice, and though it was dark and cramped, this was enough to still my nerves.

While carving these stones was relaxing, I wouldn't be able to continue like this forever. And thankfully, i wouldn't need to. With how the story goes, Gaia would not stand for the actions of Ouranos, the imprisonment of her children and the violation of herself. She would soon act.

And act she did. On the ninth day in the pit was when she finally showed herself. The earth on the wall furthest from myself shook and changed shape. The stone slithered around itself like a liquid mass, forming the shape of a giant woman. Towering three times the size of the titans, twice the height of the cyclopes, and just barely reaching the height of myself.

She looked at us, her eyes and kind face showing her feelings of love towards us. This brought comfort to my siblings, knowing they weren't forgotten, to spend eternity in the earth.

But i believe that I saw something that they had missed. The love in her eyes did not look like the love of a mother, but closer to the love one has for an art piece they had created.

They missed the meaning behind her gaze, not because they lacked perception, but because they lacked the experience to know the difference, as she was the only mother they have ever known.

"My children, my beautiful children, I have not abandoned you." She said, her voice like wind through a cave, leaving her lips with a dreamy smile that made her feel cold and distant to me.

She wasn't ugly, in fact, she was beautiful. Her hair was black like tilled earth, her eyes so green it was as if all of nature was condensed into them. She wore no clothes, none of us did either, leaving her body visible enough that i could provide another five paragraphs of description. I won't though, as that is a creepy was to talk of one's own mother. Not that my brothers seemed to care based on their gazes. Creepy fuckers.

" You are my children, and I am immensely proud of you. You were meant to rule the world above, to be sovereigns of all that walks the lands. But your father cares nothing for you, and wants all between me and him to be his own." Her grief and fury was hard to miss, her voice held a tremble as her broad shoulders shook in rage.

She reached her hand back into the stone, and pulled from it a weapon. The handle held the pale appearance of bone, and affixed atop was a curved blade of adamant (diamond).

" For as long as Ouranos' will controls the sky, there will be no place that you can exist freely on the world above." She extended the scythe in her arms, hoping to relinquish the blade onto one of us. If the meaning of this action wasn't clear, her next words made it so.

"Which of you will help me kill your father, and remove his will form the sky?" The question came with it a weight. While most of us wished him dead, and would love little more than to do the dead with our own hands, there was a doubt. We are strong certainly, even the weakest of us are capable of shaking mountains. But he had already dealt with us. all of us, at the same time.

In two hands he manhandled us, with no room for resisting. The idea of competing against that weight class could make even us fear for our immortal lives.

I wasn't the only one to think this, as not a minute later, one of my brothers spoke.

"And how are we supposed to to that? With some twinkly stick?" said Koios. When looking at him, it you could tell he had asked, not out of curiosity, but fear. " He took all of us down, while we were unable to even touch him. What's your plan?"

Gaia's smile lost its strength and fell, her gaze showing disappointment, but not surprise.

" Your father is strongest in his domain, while he is there only the likes of chaos would even be able to harm him. But he is not always in his domain. When he steps down from the heavens all of his will steps down with him. His command over the skies loses strength as he is outside of his body, and even the weakest of you could harm him in that state.

But he only steps out of the sky when coming down to embrace me, and that is only when I too step out of the earth, losing most of my powers as well. This is why I need one of you to aid me in his death."

The myth goes from here, that Cronus takes the scythe, and leads his brothers in dispatching Ouranos. His initiative making him the king of the Titans, he would then leave the Hecatoncheires and Cyclopes imprisoned on the edge of Tartarus.

I'm already familiar with that story, and I have no intention of spending the next several millennium living it.

I wanted to see something new.

"" I'll do it. ""

I looked down, as i heard another voice.

Standing closest to our mother, at just above knee height, with black curly hair, and narrowed ambitious eyes, was the youngest of the Titans.

Cronus.