Opticon

Chapter 1-2

Zeus finally relented and he saw the weapons closing in from all sides. Somehow, in a matter of minutes, they had repositioned themselves and hardly anyone had noticed what was going on.

This mistake was going to get them all killed. Victory over the Titans, the price had been too high. Zeus couldn’t put the power back where he found it. The nasty taste of something was forming in his brain for the first time, the taste of regret.

“Sound the retreat, I have a plan. Also, I know it’s not your job but can you get this to Hephaestus, tell him to build it as fast as he can,” Zeus said and a scroll appeared in his hand, he handed it to her. Athena took it and started to open it. “No, do not open it. It’s not for you. Please hurry, we don’t have much time, find him,” Zeus said and turned back only to face the leader of the weapons approaching him.

“You gave us life. You made us for a purpose, we are the powerful among you. This universe and everything in it, is ours,” the leader projected its wicked voice into his mind, the voice was painful to hear. “I created you to help take down the primordial Titans. You did, now stand down. You belong to me Yokaiju, you always have,” Zeus said out loud. The beast tilted his burning skull in confusion.

“You call us that. I will take the name for myself, it is the only thing you ever gave to me,” the beast responded to him.

Zeus stood at one hundred and fifty meters tall, but in front of this colossal thing, he was barely as big as Yokaiju’s massive, empty eye socket. “Well. I have regrets, lots of them. Most of all I regret not giving you an off switch,” Zeus said as he swallowed his pride. “I imagine you do. Thank you for bringing all of the resistance, most of it, here to one spot. We will hunt down the other celestials for as long as it takes,” Yokaiju replied to him.

Athena flew through the chaos, and to her surprise, finding the blacksmith was easy. He was building warriors made out of shining metal by slamming his forge hammer into the ground with one strike, creating them out of nothing. “Heph, I need you,” Athena shouted and he stopped in mid swing. “Oh, now you need me. Mother throws me out, once they learn I can make stuff then I’m special again,” he said under his breath. She ignored him and got to the point.

“Dad says you need to build this, I don’t know what it is but we are all going to die here so it better be special,” she said and threw the scroll to him. He caught it with his left hand and opened it. The minute he saw what was on the shining scroll he gasped. “I couldn’t,” he said to himself in shock.

“What, what can’t you do?” Athena asked him as the ground shook beneath their feet. “Zeus, I, it’s too complicated to explain, just know I’m sorry,” he replied to her and threw the scroll to the ground, he had memorized the plans in an instant. Athena was confused and walked to the sparking scroll on the black earth, but as she picked it up it crumbled to dust.

The cosmic blacksmith raised his forge hammer high above his head and a strange stone appeared on the ground, it was glowing bright gold and green. Athena had no understanding of any of this, she stood back as the massive hammer was slammed against the mystical stone, she watched it change shape under the force and become something incredibly useless for the situation they were in. Hephaestus picked up the glowing blue hot arm brace.

As he did it cooled and turned into a dull golden piece of jewelry. He held it as if the thing would bite him. “Our father is desperate,” he said and handed it to her. Another explosion in the distance lit the green sky up in the distance.

“What good is a bracelet in this mess?” she asked him and her grey eyes flared with anger and confusion. He smiled as if all hope had finally been lost along with her father’s mind. “Sister, this is the beginning of the end. Give it to him while there is still time,” he said and held it out carefully. Her spear disappeared and she took it in her hand. The second she grasped it, it stung her skin as she held it. She winced in pain but held on.

He smashed his hammer into the ground to create yet another golem half his size that ran into battle. “I would have brought a whole army but I was f*******n to do so,” he said in annoyance. He had questions, but there were no answers. Where were the hundred handed warriors, the cyclops that helped in the war with the Titans? None of this made any sense, was this the plan all along?

Athena sped into the air to return to her father but was horrified to see that Yokaiju held him in his left hand as if he were nothing more than one of her tiny statues.

“And now the time of the Gods is as short as it was useless, it is our turn” the burning skeletal dragon said into his mind and started to squeeze the life out of him. “Prometheus, now!” Zeus screamed with his last breath for help to his last Titan ally who still stood at his side in the war who remained free. He’d hoped that he wouldn’t have to do this.

“A titan, here?” Yokaiju asked and looked to his right a towering figure dressed in dark green armor appeared in a flash of bright light. Prometheus smashed his right fist into the burning dragon’s skull and knocked him away. The impact the fist made was enough to make Athena raise her shield to protect herself from the shockwave. Zeus used this chance to escape. “Thanks,” he said as he made some distance in-between him and the living weapon.

Prometheus stood just as tall as the weapon designed to fight him and he tried to press the attack when from behind another weapon wrapped its black tentacles around his arms to hold him back.

“Damn you Lysis,” Zeus shouted and launched twin thunderbolts into Lysis’s black skin, but to his horror they did nothing but spread out harmlessly. The titan struggled to get free but a red blast of flame struck him in the chest and knocked him to his knees. The shockwave of the collapse caused any god still standing to lose their balance if they didn’t prepare for it.

“Father, I have this, whatever it is,” Athena rushed to him and threw the thing to him. Zeus caught it. “I knew I could depend on you. The craftsmanship is perfect as usual,” he said as he put the thing on, wincing in pain. “What is that thing?” she asked him and he winced. “The last resort,” he replied and shot up into the air.

“Forgive me,” he said quietly to himself and raised his arm to the sky, the bracelet set on fire and shot several hundred golden beams down into the crowd below, one for each god. Zeus summoned all of the strength he had and used the weapon to pull the spark of their life out of their bodies. The whole process only took a few seconds. Zeus watched as all of his family, all of the other gods fell dead to the ground.

“You killed all of them for me. I guess you’re more afraid than I thought you were, thanks,” Yokaiju said to him. Zeus floated back down to stare them in the face. “I have all of their powers now. I am the ultimate,” he said. Now his skin was glowing bright blue, his eyes were pure white and electricity crackled around him constantly. He pointed at Yokaiju and knocked him to the ground. The burning beast hit the ground so hard that its bones cracked to pieces.

“You will all be dismantled, you have no purpose. I will tear you all apart,” Zeus shouted, but he turned around to see Zimri approaching the fallen Gods, his breath of fire ready to be unleashed.

“No,” he said and his eyes widened. There was no time to lose, this power was going to be used up very fast. “Your souls are mine,” Zeus said the only thing he could think of and raised his left fist up. The bracelet burned with power and shot out twelve dark red beams of power into the weapons immediately.

“What are you doing, this isn’t possible,” Yokaiju screamed in pain. A second later the red beams retracted. At the end of those twelve beams were the souls of the weapons. The bodies of the monsters fell to the ground, and in order to protect the ones he stole from he blasted Zimri and the others away so they didn’t fall and crush them all into oblivion.

“This war is over,” Zeus said and sighed in relief. He used the arm bracelet to return the sparks of life to the fallen gods. One by one they began to awaken, and about the same time they realized what must have happened. All they could see around them were fallen giants; the war with the Yokaiju was over and no one was quite sure how.

“What did you do?” Odin asked as he used his spear to stand up. “I realized we couldn’t win, so I used a plan, the plan I should have used to begin with to avoid all of this,” he replied and Ra shook his head. “Answers, now,” Ra demanded.

“I had the Opticon constructed. I had to borrow all of your energy to make it work, sorry about that, but as long as this thing remains intact the souls of the Yokaiju will remain trapped within. However, the price of victory was high. I know you can all feel it. Our energy, once eternal, is already beginning to fade. I had to use the strongest part of our celestial sparks to trap them forever,” Zeus explained to them and a low murmur began to spread over the gods.

Prometheus lumbered over to the crowd and shrank down to their size as he did so. “I have a plan, I’ve been working on something that my brethren laughed at. However, I think you lot will be much more understanding,” he said to them. “What do you know, Titan. You should be banished with the rest of your kind,” Hades said angrily towards him.

“Stay your hand my emotional friend, perhaps he has a solution to our problem,” Thor replied, still out of breath. Hades looked at him. “Fine,” he agreed, at least for now.

The Titan’s armor disappeared, revealing white clothing, and he held out his hand. “I present to you something I call humanity,” he said and he opened his hand revealing two clay, featureless figures. No one who was close enough to see was impressed at the figures.

“What good are such tiny things to us?” Loki asked, finally speaking up holding his left arm that had been burned in the battle. “They are not much to look at now, but my plan is to for us to make this barren, wasted place into a living world. All of us can work together and create, control our own regions for these humans. We can take care of them and in return they will worship you. They will be our new power source. As long as they know about us, we will never fade from this world,” Prometheus said, and no one was quite sure how that was going to work.

“Very well, I think this is the best course of action; what could go wrong? But we’d better hurry because after all, our power is running out and this world isn’t going to build itself,” Zeus said to them all. No one seemed that enthusiastic about the plan, or about working. But all they had ever known up to this point was pain and being the playthings at the whims of the Titans. It would be good to create something for a change. The future looked bright from here, even if the Gods had to forge a world from, how they saw it, next to nothing.