First Demonic Dragon - Chapter 605 A Contract?
The Titanomachy.
A ten-year war between the greek Titans and their children, the Olympians.
It began after the children swallowed by the Titan Kronos were freed from the confines of their father’s stomach, and declared their intention to establish a new rule.
Out of all of mythology’s most infamous and detrimental battles, the titanomoachy is largely seen as one of the worst and bloodiest; coming in second only to Lucifer’s rebellion.
In the end, two important events were necessary to bring about the gods’ victory.
The first was the creation of the three weapons of the swallowed gods; those being Zeus’ lightning bolt, Poseidon’s trident, and Hades’ helm of invisibility.
And the second was the freeing of their uncles, the hundred-handed-ones, from Tartarus.
Through these combined efforts, Kronos was sealed away, most of the titans were either pardoned or locked up with him, and the reign of the Greek Olympians began.
Only now, things weren’t quite as they should have been.
With a certain sea god now toiling away in oblivion, a substantial part of the olympians victory was now resting with him.
And the titanomachy was too close of a war for even one minute piece of it to go missing without producing an almost total change in the outcome.
Instead of the gods winning the war, the titans were the ones who emerged victorious.
And their victory was a brutal one.
Two and a half years was all it took to not only crush the Olympians, but grind their spirits underfoot too.
Zeus was such a shell of who he was supposed to be after the war that his father didn’t even bother eating him or locking him away.
Instead, he kept Zeus and Hades around like dogs on leashes and had them doing all of the actual administrative work of running a faction that he himself didn’t actually feel like doing.
Kronos held him promptly underneath his thumb; everyday laughing at the prophecy he heard so long ago that promised his children would be his undoing just as he was his father’s.
–
“….”
“…”
“…”
“…?”
Abaddon sat with his head in his hands as he listened to Yesh’s full breakdown of events.
Apparently his memories were still a bit spotty, because even though he should have known about such a large change as the Titans never being defeated, he did not actually remember it until he was told about it once again.
And the headache that came with remembering was hardly worth it.
“My darling…” he finally called.
“Yes?” Lailah answered.
“If I ever try to manipulate reality again…just kill me.” He asked sincerely.
“Now why do I have to punish myself along with you?” Lailah gave her husband a small kiss on the cheek in the hopes that it would make him feel better.
…It worked a little bit, but he was still annoyed with himself.
“This is probably what Nyx was trying to text us about, huh…?” He realized.
The rest of Abaddon’s wives looked away, unable to refute the obvious plausibility of that statement.
The night goddess had been texting them a lot for the past two days, but they all unanimously decided to ignore her because they believed that she would only harass them sexually.
‘We… might owe her an apology.’ they all thought at once.
“The titans…” Abaddon finally asked. “How big of a problem do you believe they will pose in the endwar?”
Yesh rubbed his chin as if he were thinking about an answer carefully.
‘That’s… tough to say. They are lesser primordials after all.’ he shrugged.
Similarly to the living embodiments that are primordials; titans have their own concepts that they embody and lord over.
However, the only difference between them is that titans have true, physical bodies just like most gods and humans.
If they are killed, there is no period of rest that they must endure before coming back to life; nor can they just nonchalantly create copies of their bodies.
They are just dead.
‘I suppose if your soldiers are well versed in fighting those stronger than them, you can minimize your losses this way.’ Yesh finally decided. ‘Although there is one thing I must caution you about.’
“Oh? Do tell.” Abaddon was really beginning to wish he hadn’t let Erica pilfer his drink; because he was beginning to need it again.
‘His sickle. Do not let him cut off your flesh with it.’ Yesh said seriously.
“A sickle?” Lisa tilted her head in confusion. “What is so significant about that?”
Yesh didn’t have to explain, because Abaddon already knew full well what he was getting at.
“Kronos carries a scythe made from diamonds given to him by his mother Gaia. With it, he killed his father Ouranous, the original ruler of the greeks and primordial of the sky.”
“What? How?”
“Ah… Gaia planned the whole thing apparently. She told her son to wait behind a rock while she engaged in certain intimacies with her husband by the sea.
Once he was erect, Kronos leapt from behind the rock and castrated his father before tossing his nuts into the water; killing him. That is also how Aphrodite was born.”
All of the wives except Lailah looked at their husband like he was telling a dirty joke at a bad time.
“Look it’s the truth, I swear!” he professed.
*Don’t believe.*
“Would I honestly tell a joke at a time like this?”
*Doubly don’t believe.*
Lailah took it upon herself to nod discreetly to the girls in confirmation.
“Wow….”
“Unbelievable…”
“What a gross way to die…”
“Sorry hon, we thought you were playing with us again.”
A vein bulged in Abaddon’s head as he tried his best not to be offended by their disbelief.
He smiled to himself as he secretly began biding his time for tonight and planned all of the ways in which he could torture them.
The girls weren’t sure why, but they shivered uncontrollably like they were afraid without even knowing that cause.
‘For some reason I feel like I’m witnessing a sort of private moment between them…’ Yesh thought to himself.
‘While that is all true, Abaddon, there is one part of the story that you are leaving out.’ He suddenly reminded.
Now Abaddon was the one who looked lost, because he was pretty sure he had just recited everything perfectly. “Eh?”
‘After he was killed by that sickle, Ouranos never again awoke from the sleep he was forced into. For all intents and purposes, he has truly died. If he can act at all to do anything, it is only through his dreams.’
This was something that Abaddon had indeed neglected to think about.
There were no more historical mentions of Ouranos after his death at the hands of his own son.
Abaddon believed maybe he was one of those characters who became reclusive and faded into obscurity; but apparently that was not the case.
“How is it possible that he never awoke again?” He asked.
‘I’ve told you, my boy. It is the sickle. Let it take none of your flesh or you may yet share in the same fate as the sky god.’ Yesh seemed unwilling to share any deeper details about the weapon.
Abaddon solemnly nodded as he took in the old man’s words with a grain of salt.
He wasn’t particularly afraid of the titan of time, more so fascinated by the mechanics of his weapon.
If one good thing was going to come out of him screwing around with the natural order of the world, he would like it to be that he got his hands on that shiny little trinket.
Without actually having to be cut by it of course.
‘I promise not to remain in your hair for too much longer, but there is one last item on the agenda I feel we must discuss…’
“Hm?”
Yesh suddenly waved his hand and a flaming piece of parchment appeared above his palm.
‘I believe it might be best to discuss your… how do you say… recent field trip?’
Abaddon grimaced prematurely as he was sure that this conversation was going to come sooner or later.
‘I don’t need to tell you that the Norse tree is very upset about the new hole you put within it. It has been constantly asking me to repair it somehow, but even I am not able.’
Abaddon waited; unsure of where exactly this talk was going to go.
‘And then your actual battle with the gods… Those sins of yours are much more destructive than even I first thought. And I am one of the few who actually knows how they work… I can’t imagine what those in your way must have felt.’ He shuddered.
“Don’t dance around the point, old man… just rip off the bandage.” Abaddon waived his hand.
Yesh smirked helplessly to himself and passed over the parchment in his hand to the group. ‘I believe it may be best that we agree to some new terms.’
Lailah plucked the letter out of the air and began reading it with the same seriousness that a trial lawyer would right before a case. “This… a contract to renegotiate the seals on his power?”
Now, even Abaddon looked confused.
Yesh scratched the back of his head in embarrassment. ‘Well… he is in the same territory as Nyx now. I cannot just take his power, or even impose restrictions on it without the consent of both parties.’
Lailah was actually surprised to hear Yesh admit such a thing so blatantly.
But as she read over the terms of the contract, she realized that they were as bad as she thought they would be.
Instead of leaving Tehom with roughly thirty percent of his power, that number was now more like seventeen percent.
In addition, his sins, which were effectively the pinnacle of his power aside from his divinities, would all be nullified except for one, and he was forbidden from making duplicates.
Abaddon hadn’t altered the heavenly virtues yet, but there was a clause that said he would only be allowed one of those as well if he ever decided to do so.
But the biggest stipulation was that the use of oblivion, and by extension the sin of wrath; was expressly forbidden.
Because Abaddon had used the true death sword to re-forge his body and become a primordial; the weapons he created via the sin of wrath now all had the ability to destroy souls and send them to oblivion.
And as already shown, once he rested after a battle, reality would shift all over again to create an entirely new timeline filled with unpredictable circumstances and scenarios.
Lailah was only surprised that this stipulation wasn’t at the very top of the list.
Everything that Yesh was asking for was understandable.
And more importantly, it was necessary.
Lailah knew that, and was rational enough to see the value in the contract.
…But she didn’t like it.
Not one bit.
She handed the paper to her husband without saying a word or looking back at him.
Through her simple action, he already knew that something was wrong.