The Time of Zeus Book 5: the Coup
Copyright© 2025 by Carlos Santiago
Chapter 17: Aftermath
“Besides, what will posterity think we were? Demigods? We’re men ... no more, no less ... trying to get a nation started ... against greater odds than a more generous God would have allowed. First things first, John. Independence ... If we don’t secure that, what difference will the rest make?”
— Benjamin Franklin (as portrayed by Howard Da Silva), 1776 (1972). Screenplay by Peter Stone, adapted from the stage musical 1776 (1969) with book by Peter Stone and music and lyrics by Sherman Edwards. Directed by Peter H. Hunt. Produced by Columbia Pictures. Copyright © 1972 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All rights reserved.
The skies over Olympus were calm for all that had transpired in terms of deplicity and deceit. However, in its more relaxed state, there was a small, rarely defined facet of the sky that was missing. For the first time since the reign of Cronos, the air carried no charge of its prolific Zeus.
Within the confines of Hera’s palace, five gods gathered in celebration. For one such as Hera, This was a rare occasion. To drink ambrosia with one’s heart unguarded was a privilege she had not had in centuries.
What was rarer still was to celebrate not only a victory in a ichor-less war, but also to see the end of an era.
Battles had not needed to take place. Cratus and his siblings had not needed to be murdered, only distracted. Prometheus still was allowed his pet experiment in that of humanity. Zeus was not even dead, but asleep ... Though, Hera would not admit her part in striking him.
A rising sun’s light swam through the pillared halls of Hera’s garden-palace. Momentarily, Hera wondered how many times had Apollo returned the responsibility to Helios.
Poseidon leaned back on a marble bench. His crown of coral sat on his head while salt clung to his beard.
“I can’t believe that worked!” he boomed. There was some mild slodhing to his voice from being excited. “Cratus spent hours asking me about what we were doing, and I thought for hours that he would catch on, but he spent the whole time talking about Zeus and how Prometheus would bring down Olympus. He had no clue what was really going on!”
Apollo laughed, leaning into Poseidon’s shoulder.
“I can’t believe Zelus thought I cared about competing in archery,” Apollo cried. “My sister and I far outstrip that moron!”
Athena watched the interaction with crossed arms and analyzing eyes. The way the two who did the very least celebrating the hardest did not sit right with her.
“We should focus on the matters at hand. The work is not done,” Athena said with quiet dignity. “My father slumbers, but until he is safely relocated to a place where his allies could not find him, we are all in danger.”
“Darling,” said Hestia softly, “for now, your father does not stir. Learn to rejoice in the moment.”
Athena stared blankly at Hestia. She was not sure what to do when confronted with such mundane and trivial advice.
“We have all made a choice,” Hestia said. “We will live with it, but first, we need to breathe. If we act in haste or without thought, we will make a poor decision. I would think you, as the daughter of Metis, would know that.”
“Regardless of haste, we have all made the choice,” Hera said.
There was no great volume to her words. Nevertheless, each syllable spoken carried a great weight because of Hera’s experience with Zeus and as queen.
“But what about Olympus?” Poseidon asked, straightening a little now. His mirth gave way to that old gleam of opportunity. “We all cheered, yes, we raised our cups, but Olympus does not run on toasts and memories. Who’s steering the storm now that big brother’s chained to his own damn bedpost? Nike? The ambrosia jug? I must’ve missed the part where someone actually claimed the throne.”
The question fell like a stone into still water.
“If you recall, we agreed to have a vote,” Athena remarked.
“Given that there are five of us,” Hera said, “there should scarcely be a reason for a tie. Whomever gets the most votes will rule by day’s end. Agreed?”
The answer was sensible, and everyone nodded.
Poseidon’s gaze flicked to Athena after the two goddesses spoke.
Athena looked back at him, wondering why he would give her such scrutiny.
“We are five,” she said. “Each of us has a claim because of our heritage and history. I do not think any on Olympus would be upset if we were to appear tomorrow as the ruler of Olympus.”
Apollo scoffed.
“That’s just a poetic way of saying ‘there is no king.’ Are you saying you wish to stay on as queen but rule alone?”
“Whether god, titan, these new mortals, dead, or even nymph, all beings on and below Olympus look up to the Throne of Olympus. I am saying that we need to settle this sooner rather than later and without conflict... young Apollo.”
Apollo flinched at the words spoken to him. He did not have an easy answer. He lowered his gaze at Hera’s admonishment.
Neither Athena Hestia could say anything either, but they had not just been reprimanded by Hera.
“As for me, I do not seek the throne,” Hera said. “I want little to nothing to do with the politics and maneuverings of Mount Olympus. When I am sure my husband is safely locked away, I intend to carve out a part of Greece for myself and live far away from this place.”
Hestia looked at her youngest sister and thought of Demeter. She completely agreed with the sentiment for her. Olympus seemed to have drained that generation of female divinities. It might be best if they stepped away to observe whether or not the godly mount would mellow in temperament towards their kind.
“I am in agreement,” Hestia remarked. “I believe it is time for new rulership.”
“Well, well, Sister!” Poseidon said in a mix of exuberance and suspicion. “I hear the shadow of our younger brother in you. Will you be spouting lightning bolts with royal decrees next?”
“No,” Hestia said coolly. “I sound like me. If I were like him, I would have tried to seize that position by now.”
She shook her head at the thought. With such an accusation laid at her feet, her sweet and kindly demeanor dropped.
“Like Hera, I have no interest in ruling,” she went on. “This is between you three, I should think.”
A long pause stretched in the room. Poseidon, Athena, and Apollo looked at one another. The realization that it would be one of them that might be the next ruler of the gods.
It was Apollo who broke the hush.
“Maybe the throne should remain empty. Maybe Olympus doesn’t need a king or queen for now. We have the Olympians. Perhaps what we need right now is for all of us to come together and rule as a council. After Zeus is gone and the Realm is stable, we could vote between the twelve of us.”
“Twelve?” Athena wondered.
“Well, yes,” said Apollo. “Would it not make sense to extend a position to Hades?
Hera blinked in shock at Apollo’s offer. Such magnanimity was not a quality she had expected to see in the sun god.
“Ha!” Poseidon remarked with derision. “Apollo, you’re clearer than water in a still lagoon! You only mean to be kind so as to earn favor with the other gods. And by extending goodwill toward Hades, you might earn enough popularity to win that vote and have Hades indebted to you, unlike my brother.”
A silence broke out once more. The throne remained empty, but it was clear that Olympus would not wait long for a new ruler. Moment by moment, these gods were drawing nearer to the end of their allyship. The problem remained...
Would Olympus break down into war? Would they be able to contain themselves? Could a peaceful transition of power take place? Or were they doomed to falter and lose all that had been built upon that great mountain?
The bedchamber was sealed shut. Of course it would be; Hera would not have risked her treachery becoming uncovered. She had risked everything to put Zeus in such a position.
The candlelight fluttered in its half-life. While it was still laced with the poppy seed dust, it was clear that Athena had used magic to allow the wax to last longer. The kiss of slumbering oblivion had worked well on the King of Olympus even if he tossed and turned beneath the golden-threaded sheets.
Sweat pooled at the nape of his neck. His hair had once been a ruddy brown shot with sparks of silver, but after consuming Metis, it had become more and more white like a cloud, but after the chain had done its work, none of the reddish brown remained. The work had been done to complete this king, and as his fingers twitched, trying to strike, it was clear that he was not done with reality.
The adamantine chain continued to operate as it was designed without fanfare. It pulsed faintly at each heartbeat of the ruler. Strength was sapped with the slow certainty of centuries passing. What remained of his immense power was only sufficient to hold back the rot of mortality. No one was there to analyze him or to be sure, but in that moment, Zeus might not have been entirely divine anymore as the power to the thunder and lightning he loved was absent, and he did not feel especially connected to Chaos.
Regardless if he was or not still a god, his body slept and his mind screamed, railing against the injustice done to him by Hera.
He was certain that she had cohorts, but he also knew that (some way, some how) she was the one responsible for his captivity.
While his body could do nothing, his mind churned in his slumber.
There was Olympus, he saw. Not as it was under his guidance, but as it might be.
The throne gleamed as it usually did, but it was Apollo that sat atop the seat of power. Youthful, radiant splendor was for him. The sun haloed behind his head like a golden crown. His voice lifted with musical poetry. The Muses surrounded him to sing, praise, and fawn over him.
The mortals that Zeus had made were worshipping him in admiration. They called him the New Light, and Zeus was nowhere in sight, but the Thunderer floated above the scene to see a mural depicting him chained up and thrown into a pit to be forgotten and only brought up as an anecdote at harvest feasts.
But then ... Olympus shifted, swirling. He saw a familiar, taller shape than his son. The swagger of one who loved the sea.
It was Poseidon on Zeus’ throne now. He raised his trident in salute to an adoring public.
He held court in the palace of Olympus, and beside him stood Hera. She wore queenly raiment, but Amphitrite stood on his other side. They both seemed to caress, fawn, and love Poseidon. Another, unseen god, toasted to Poseidon’s conquest of the Sea and Olympus; No one questioned this statement, which only sickened Zeus more.
He roared in rage, but no one heard him or cared if they did.
Then the skies changed once more.
The clouds bent, and foreign banners flapped in the wind.
A great green eye opened in the heavens.
A green-headed god stepped forward with his curvaceous wife. Zeus knew him to be Osiris. It had been centuries since he had seen him, but he knew who he was.
Artemis clasped Osiris’ hand as a friend and then sovereign as Osiris walked to the Throne of Olympus and sat down as ruler.
Once more, the Realm altered and a cloaked wanderer was taking the throne without any opposition. He had a spear in hand and only one burning eye.
This was Odin, Zeus knew. That was disgusting to witness, and Zeus shook and screamed to no avail.
A new vision followed. A boy, barely more than a man, with dark curls, scars along his body and on his right brow carried a perfect sword of unknown material in hand.
There was a trickle of lightning around his hand, but Zeus saw a cut on this new king’s hand, and he was bleeding red blood, not golded ichor of the gods.
A mortal-born was becoming king. He sat on the throne. There was this ambiance of gentle, forgiving justice reigning. The audience of gods were smiling and kneeling. Once more, Zeus was nowhere to see.
Hera smiled in pride at this king, but Zeus could not know why. None of this made any sense.
And through it all, Zeus was nowhere to be seen.
Then came the final vision.
The throne stood as it always had, but it was Hera that sat upon it alone. No god shared her reign with anyone.
The hall was not empty. Ares, Demeter, Hermes, Apollo, Artemis, Hephaestus, Poseidon, and Hestia were all bowing their heads to her.
None asked where Zeus had gone, and for all of that, this is what stabbed at his heart the most.
He screamed in the dark of his mind. The dream world of sleep was his private hellacious prison. Hera did not devise such a plan to punish him. How could she? She did not know much of the Realm of Dreams, but there, Zeus suffered so.
A malevolent laughter rang in his mind, mocking him in his weakness. This was to be his end, the silent, untriumphant defeat meant for this pathetic, failing son of Cronos and Rhea.
The dreams pressed in tighter, thick and cloying. He was being attacked, lashed at by the images, clawed at by the imagery, stabbed by the realities he witnessed.
He lashed out as best he could, but neither his hands nor his thunder answered his call. The candle still burned, and the chain held.
The great fear told him that he was asleep and trapped. The dark part of his mind made him twitch in fear that he would never wake nor escape his binding, and then the darker, most frightful terror gripped him by the throat and the heart: They do not need him. Neither the gods nor the mountain of Olympus itself needed her.
He was every bit his father’s son. Perhaps he was more charming and wielded far more power, but in the end, he too would be discarded to the annals of history. He was a small blip in the history of Mount Olympus. No one would care nor recall him, and he was to suffer for not understanding this exactitude.
The dreams rolled on and he weakly tossed and turned, consumed by the idea of an existence that was without him, and the most terrifying truth of all: He did not matter to the others.
“I am the natural choice!” Poseidon declared by way of exclamation... “I am one of the three sons of Cronos! I have ruled a Realm longer than either of you have been alive! Who among us has known the pressure of a crown longer?”
“And yet, brother of my father, you are not him! Your judgment is too quick, impatient, entitled, and Olympus needs vision, not tide-swells of pride.”
“Oh? You are vision incarnate?” Poseidon laughed bitterly. “You’re barely out of boyhood! You’re far more entitled than I have ever been!”
“Pulling the sun grants me perspective someone like you could never appreciate,” Apollo snapped. “Gods need inspiration. They need me! You’re washed up, at best!”
“Stop it!” Hera’s voice rang. “This is not how we do this. We will put it to a vote tomorrow. As it should be!”
“A vote?” Poseidon turned to her, incredulous. “Aha! Oh sure! Shall we all take turns? Maybe Apollo will get a say, then you, then me! Come on, Hera! A vote was never going to work!”
“This is what we agreed to!” Hera shot back. “We must build anew, not bicker!”
“You want new?”
Apollo threw an energy blast to destroy a goblet.
“Then stop pretending votes are even needed! Poseidon is part of the old guard responsibility for putting Zeus into power!”
Apollo scoffed and shook his head...
“Giving Olympus to this Sea King is just handing my father’s lightning bolt to the ocean and thinking that’s peace!”
Athena stood motionless. She had her arms crossed and looked at her half-brother. To be seen as such a non-entity by those two would have been the highest affront to her thought process.
“This is the best we could do?” Hestia asked, shaking her head. “I did this, giving you all the benefit of the doubt, but here we are, clawing at each other worse than the Titans.”
She turned on her heel.
“Hestia, wait!” Hera exclaimed.
“No,” the elder goddess snapped. “I will not sit here while we fight over Zeus’ scraps. I thought we did this with noble intentions. I should never have believed it.”
The doors closed with a soft, definitive boom when Hestia walked out. She would have none of it, and it was clear she was fed up with Hera’s failed experiment.
Athena stood there and whispered, “This is what we made.”
Apollo and Poseidon continued arguing and their voices raised until they were shouting. Hera started pacing, wondering what she should do, and Athena knew the real battle was not removing Zeus, it was whether or not they would survive installing a new ruler.
Athena did not speak or move, but her mind was working this out. There had to be answers to this infighting problem; she knew that much of it. The problem was who could she ask, what could be done?
Deposing Zeus should have been the hard part, but the emptiness he left behind was the true conundrum. If they were not careful, they may have pulled a displacement without death, but a war may break out to seat his successor.
And as she stared out at the company she kept, Athena began to wonder if Hestia was right, and somehow this had all been a mistake.
Briareus sat in the mountains, listening to the wind. It had been so very long since his brothers were stolen away from him by servants of Zeus.
There was much that the hundred handed, fifty headed being wished he might do, but he could not. If servants could take his brothers from him, what could he do against the king himself? He would have been better to be obedient and supplicated himself to Zeus.
As the wind made a haunting noise, the gigantic being wished with all his heart that he might be able to do something, but there were no answers. He could stay away from Olympus and hope one day that Zeus’ favor might return to him.
If that honor came his way, Briareus could leave his mountains or maybe he might, if he was lucky, be allowed to see his brothers again.
In his lonely, longing solitude, every head of the ancient being began to weep. There would be no reprieve for him. There was no answer. There was only isolating seclusion away from the happiness and joy of others.
Those on Olympus could party and be merry and gay for all of time. He would have none of their light, but to have a drop of that might return all he had lost back to him.
If only.
“I am the light that guides Olympus now!” Apollo declared, voice rising.
“Oh spare! Helios has been picking up your slack as of lately!” Poseidon snapped, slamming his trident-end to the marble. “You play at being king! I’ve ruled after fighting real wars. The only reason you went along with Athena was because you could not defeat Zeus in a fair fight. You’re nothing butt a prince; I am a king!”
“That’s just it,” Apollo sneered. “You’re a king. Not the king. I am the prince of Zeus’ line, just as he was a son of Cronos’ line, and Cronos was of Ouranos!”
“Lines in the sand can be wiped away!” Poseidon shouted back
“The throne is for gods who inspire, not drown,” Apollo snipped
“Do they want war?” Athena asked, looking to Hera.
“They might,” Hera replied. “And there may be no stopping them.
Hestia had left in a huff and for good reason. There was no plan, no heir chosen, and no vision of rule or ever for the future. That room contained a queen that wanted to leave, a stalwart daughter, but the rest was an ambitious ego that did nothing but create noise.
What good did that do for others? Without some selflessness or order, Olympus would crumble. It would serve the mountain right with the way the gods, especially Zeus, had mistreated Demeter. The host of Olympus was no better. They shunned Demeter after she left the mountain. She was a pariah even if she was an Olympian and a daughter of Rhea and Cronos.
Some of the gods started saying that Hestia, Demeter, and Hera were the daughters of Rhea but not Cronos or in the dumbest opinion, somehow the three goddesses were the children of Hyperion and Theia.
More and more, they disregarded their history and tradition. The masses mocked what they did not know and filled in the gaps of their knowledge with whatever brought them joy. The infighting between Poseidon and Apollo was just a symptom of this greater problem.
Hestia had feared this to a degree. Suspecting this outcome was not difficult from her perspective because she had lived away from Olympus and saw it for its faults. By contrast, Hera, for all her poise and cunning, could not have planned for this to fall apart because she could not expect her plans to fall apart.
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