Date: The Titanomachy – Year Seven: The Olympian Bastion
A year of our presence, and Olympus was no longer just an untamed peak. Crude ramparts now traced its ridges, carved by Hekatonkheirean might, a clear sign of our intent to stay, to fight. Our power, our will, was slowly etching itself onto the ancient stone. From our highest watchtowers, Othrys was a brooding shadow on the horizon, a constant, silent reminder of our father's dominion and his inevitable, gathering fury. News of our successful claiming of this peak, followed by our earlier victories, had undoubtedly reached him. My Achieves, sifting through the subtle currents of divine intent that flowed even here, registered a change in the atmosphere emanating from the Titan capital – less shock, now, and more a cold, simmering rage, a promise of calculated retribution. Titan patrols, once rare in these northern territories, were now sighted more frequently along the foothills, testing, probing.
My part in this shaping of Olympus was quieter. While Zeus issued commands, his Keraunos a near-constant hum of authority, and Poseidon directed the reshaping of waterways and the raising of earthworks with our giant uncles, I took the Tome of Attainment into the mountain's hidden folds. The Tome led me to fissures deep within Olympus, where the bare rock hummed with a power that felt far older than any Titan. In these places, the stone itself seemed to hold faint, worn carvings, patterns unlike any Titan script, hinting at a past so deep it was almost erased. I realized then that Olympus wasn't just a mountain; it was a structure built by forces that had shaped the cosmos long before our father's reign.
Occasionally, the Tome would offer fleeting, bizarre sensations – the taste of sun-baked sand under a sky ruled by entirely different constellations, or the biting chill of winds that whispered unknown divine names. These were disjointed impressions, not coherent knowledge, yet my Achieves filed them away. They hinted at a cosmos far wider than our current war, a thought that brought both a strange disquiet and a sharp sense of insignificance.
One evening, as I was attempting to decipher a particularly ancient set of warding symbols the Tome had revealed near a hidden fissure on Olympus's northern face – a potential weak point – Zeus approached. "Still at your books, brother?" he asked, though it wasn't truly a question. The Keraunos was absent from his hand, a rare sight. "This new fissure needs understanding before we can secure it, Zeus," I said, tracing a symbol on the Tome's illuminated page. "If we know why it formed, we know how to truly seal it. That understanding itself is a fortification." He watched me, his head tilted. "Curious," Zeus admitted. "Not Poseidon's earth-shattering, nor Hades' way of vanishing threats. But your quiet looking seems to find answers others miss. That has its uses."
He paced the overlook, then turned, his gaze sweeping the horizon. "Olympus will be our declaration," he stated, his voice hard. "Not just a place to fight from, but a symbol that our victory is coming. Every new wall, every ward, will shout to Othrys that their time is ending, and ours is beginning." That word again – ours. His vision, I realized with a familiar internal chill, wasn't just about freedom; it was about replacing one dominion with another.
The other siblings were carving out their own niches in this new, vertical world. Hades, surprisingly, found a certain grim satisfaction in the deep caverns and lightless abysses of Olympus, claiming its underbelly as his own. He spoke of mapping its Tartarean roots, of sensing ancient, chthonic powers that even Cronos had overlooked. Poseidon, when not directing the Hekatonkheires in carving out reservoirs or diverting mountain streams for our use, would often stand on the western cliffs, his gaze fixed on the distant shimmer of the sea, his trident humming with a restless energy. Demeter, with Hestia now having joined us from Ida, began the arduous task of coaxing life from Olympus's rocky soil, establishing small, fiercely protected gardens that were a defiant splash of green against the grey stone and looming storm clouds. Hestia, of course, established the central hearth, a point of calm and unwavering warmth that quickly became the true heart of our growing fortress.
Hera, for instance, didn't just look at the defensive lines Zeus and I discussed. I'd often see her afterwards with Zeus, jabbing a determined finger at those same maps. Her concerns, when I caught snippets, were less about chokepoints and more about, "Where the central hall might command the most impressive vista," or ensuring, "The approaches reflect our undeniable authority, not mere rustic strength." It was clear her vision for Olympus extended far beyond a simple fortress; she was already designing the capital of an empire, with an eye, no doubt, to her own place within its hierarchy.
The bastion of Olympus was rising, stone by stone, ward by ward. It was a monumental achievement, a testament to our collective will. But as I looked out at the darkening world, I couldn't shake the feeling that we were not just building a fortress against the Titans, but also, perhaps, the foundations of a new kind of prison, one gilded with power and defined by the very ambitions I had come to distrust. The Achieves in my mind recorded it all, the triumphs and the growing unease, with cold, impartial clarity.