EoM Bk 1: The Gift of Fire
Copyright© 2026 by Carlos Santiago
Chapter 1: The Impermanent World
“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose / The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
— Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr dit Alphonse Karr; French critic, journalist, and novelist). Originally published in the January 1849 issue of Les Guêpes, a satirical journal founded and edited by Karr. © Public domain.
They all had marveled at the new organisms.
What had seemed like a little experiment from Zeus had quickly taken hold to be one of the most successful ventures of all time.
The gods of Olympus cheered on these little beings. They were not smart, nor were they particularly strong or even skillful, but what they lacked in the fortitude of mind and body, they more than made up for in heart.
This was the single most powerful reason why the gods on the mountaintop liked the little mortal playthings.
However, there was one on Olympus who was not pleased by their existence.
For Zeus, a walk seldom began in anger.
This day was no different, for the rage came later.
The city itself was quiet, which some might consider to be a blessing. Noise on Olympus meant that there was disruption or disorder that would lead to chaotic change. A king should be glad for routine because this standard of the ordinary allowed for a predictive repetitiveness to his day to day.
However, at the far edges of Olympus Zeus paused and looked down to see what his people were staring at.
Once more, a crowd had gathered in loose clusters to watch Zeus and Prometheus’ creation of humanity...
Some laughed. Some frowned. A few said nothing at all. There was a certain air of amusement in their observations of the small creatures. Regardless of whatever individual evaluation they had formed, none were bored.
Entertainment was necessary for the divine as any sense of tedium could result in conflict like the Great War or Hera’s little coup. Gods were prone to filling their own time, after all.
Yet, as they watched humanity, Zeus felt unsure.
Humanity had not been supposed to proliferate. Somehow, against Zeus’ intention for the species, they had succeeded in multiplying.
The others watching a small, hunched gathering of figures pressed together in caves and crude shelters made Zeus realize that his gift had been a mistake. Men with narrow shoulders and blunt hands clung to furs and shivered in their cold nights and reveled in Helios’ warm sunlight.
Their children were born screaming into cold and darkness. The women (which were not much to look at) were covered in leaves and furs. Zeus noticed that this was humanity’s way of separating themselves.
The families with the brave men had fur for clothes because those courageous men killed bears and goats and the womanfolk made crude coverings out of the dead animals.
It was not much of a life, yet nonetheless a living for these beings.
Zeus felt the first stir of irritation moment by moment. Those beings should not still be there. The first generation of humanity was meant to be the last, yet there they were ... existing.
He had been precisely careful with Prometheus when humans were being made. They were a gift to the eccentric advisor.
He had shaped men—only men— to make the species deliberately incomplete.
No continuation should have been possible. A quiet beginning and ending for them, which would have been reward enough for the son of Iapetus.
Fifty thousand years had passed since the little coup of Hera and the origin of the toys.
They were not immortal, but given Hera’s act of rebellion, Zeus’ focus had been on monitoring the gods that surrounded him rather than the tiny beings beneath him.
How foolish he had been to ignore the cave-dwelling and hut-having beings that were little more than animals. They had been beneath his notice for thousands of years; by which time, they had proliferated.
Zeus turned away from the crowd without a word. Their notice was for those pathetic parasites that should not have existed. He started back toward his palace.
He observed all of Olympus in its ordered splendor. There were streets of white stone, flowing fountains, and beautiful groves of flowers and trees. Never could anyone ask for more.
This was his victory: Order.
From the Great War to Gaia’s manipulations to Typhon to Hera’s little tantrum, this was his prize.
Try as he might, he could not get the niggling issue of humanity out of his mind. It was as though a pebble had lodged itself between his heel and his sandal and would not come free.
By the time Zeus reached the great doors of his throne room, the irritation had matured into a simmering anger.
He did not hear the doors close behind him.
He began pacing the room.
“How?” he whispered. “How do you still exist?”
It could not have been Prometheus. Cratus and his siblings had been watching him. Athena had been assisting Zeus in uncovering the traitors that had dared attack him. It might have been Hera if she had not been strung up and being worshiped by the moronic public.
His vexed outrage was not the frothing rage of those lesser gods. His anger was powered by a might greater than the Titans themselves, so when he could think, his ire was colder and sharper than his contemporaries.
They should have been temporary.
This was the problem. No. It was not. It was a problem, but not the problem. With a word, he could kill humanity with a storm. He could reduce their numbers to nothing, but the problem was the other gods watched humanity.
In some cases, there was a fondness for the little being. For others, it was simple curiosity. Apollo had lived among them for a time as per Zeus’ punishment, so some could be like him and have a fond admiration for the species.
Regardless of what their feelings, those little beings were watched. To erase mankind outright would invite the other gods to get angry at Zeus. While outright rebellion was likely out of the question, such an act might get Zeus compared to his father, and that was how thrones were lost.
Zeus had not torn the cosmos from Cronos’ grasp only to lose everything he had gained. No. He would be keeping his throne and the city he had won.
Humanity was a problem to be handled, but he could not wipe them out...
Not yet anyway.
If they persisted, there must have been a way for them to circumvent his intention.
There were those he could talk to about this.
Prometheus had been a steadfast advisor, but he loved humanity. He saw himself similar to something of a father. There was Gaia. She would not love individuals destroying her trees and plants. Consulting with her would be problematic though. She had been tricky in the past and trying to remove him from power, so going to her would be a mistake.
Chaos was always an option.
He shook his head. No. No, they could not be a solution to this issue. There was a price to visit the Progenitor in that of ichor, and the supposed-creator of all the divine was a recluse. They ruled nothing.
Zeus ruled.
But he could not be recognized doing what he was doing, so then, he would need to use Metis’ shape-changing powers. He could disguise himself as one of the grubby little humans.
Then, he could investigate matters himself. That was a simple enough solution. From there, he would find out how they had been multiplying.
He was sure the answer was boringly banal, but this would be a better use of his time than allowing his anger to get the better of him by stomping around his palace back and forth.
A laugh almost escaped his lips for how silly he had been only a moment for. Soon, he would have his answers. What he would be required to do next, he could not know.
The Flame of Olympus was a unique piece of existence, for the fire did not burn as most believed. The ethereal blue conflagration had qualities closer to enduring and consuming than burning per se.
Like all fire, it gave off heat, but there was no smoke that emanated from the contained inferno. This was because of some facet bestowed upon this blessing; Hyperion’s burning illumination had combined beautifully with Chaos’ incomprehensible will to blend into this terribly empyrean substance.
This was not the first flame in the lands of Greece. No. Fire existed before. Hyperion had wielded such flames when battling his father besides his Titanic brothers.
However, where this piece of art was unique was that the blaze was the essence of fire distilled down to its most pure form. No flame would become idyllic as to return to this perfect specimen; on the other hand, this tinder could give off lesser heat to spread to become like the flames of Hyperion.
Potential was another word for this wonder. It was the promise of warmth and destruction both, yet also simply contained within a brazier of glass and star-metal known simply as the Hearth of Olympus.
There had been a container before, but Hestia had felt that while the Primordial fire was allowed, any stain of Titan magic that was not completely necessary was to be removed, and so, both she and Prometheus replaced one receptacle with another.
Prometheus stood before the conflagration and his creation. His hands were clasped behind his back as he was lost in thought. Outwardly, he was smiling with a quiet satisfaction.
Humanity had continue to prosper without any interference on his part when they should not have. Zeus had wanted them to wither away and fade into the memory of the gods.
Nevertheless, the little beings shivered in caves. While they huddled together beneath hides and stone, Prometheus admired them. It was survival, not living, but life was about incremental steps. He had the perspective to appreciate the fact that mortals did exist.
Prometheus’ smile deepened at that notion.
It was not the joyful existence that he had wanted for them, but it was a step in the right direction. For that alone, those little people deserved recognition.
There could be those that disagreed, but they were wrong because his creation was not surviving because of the gods but in spite of them.
The populace of Olympus watched the mortal beings, but they did not help them. Zeus had intentionally planned for them to not succeed in multiplying, yet they had found their way. And with the powers of the elements controlled by the gods, there was a petty joyfulness with a village being wiped out by a storm or a hurricane or flood.
The gods enjoyed their toys. That is all humans were, and Prometheus could not interfere. Rather, he had to trust in the ingenuity and heart of his distant children, and they pushed onward. They persisted.
His gaze lingered on the Flame when those thoughts crossed his mind. He wondered how events might change for all, including his creation, so slowly—inevitably—his thoughts turned forward to the future.
In the past, he had sought out Chaos for advice on his prescient ability of recognizing events that had not come to pass. He was not one to lean heavily in one direction or another. When one limited themselves to a single interpretation or path, they ruined the possibility of all they could become.
His dealing with Athena had taught him as such when she foolishly tried to overthrow Zeus. Chaos had compounded this issue when he planned to reach out to them, and he had not been allowed into their realm.
This led Prometheus to leaning on his own understanding more and more. He was not a child, looking for approval from a parent. He had been such an infant once with Iapetus. Time had altered him. In the path ahead, he would need to stand even more on his own two feet.
In the early days, before Zeus’ throne had settled, he might have not been so isolated, but after Hera and Athena’s coup, Prometheus realized the safest hands to use were his own. The others around him were accountable to no one and nothing. Prometheus was held responsible by his ethical conscience. That was more than most.
All of these thoughts might be seen as unrelated to a lesser mind or even one with a different focus than the son of Iapetus.
For him though, they were links both in a chain and a net. All of life was connected. Every action and every reaction led to choices, which in turn led to more actions and reactions. As he stared at fulgurating fire, he understood that every piece of this puzzle only led to a bigger puzzle.
Those pieces of the past led to the present, and that present could lead to a whole host of decisions to create a future.
The time to come was not something to be told or even understood like a memory, but rather It was something to be chosen.
Prometheus exhaled slowly. He needed to calm his mind before he began his look ahead. Events as they were would not last, and they would not do for how he wanted circumstances to be moving forward.
The Flame responded by swaying arrhythmically. Life within that light wanted to coax more from the lesser titan.
Prometheus let his gaze fall fully into the blue and white light.
The results were not immediate. Rather, he stared at one piece of the illumination where the central white piece met with the blue and there was a shade of something of the two. That quality had him honing into the blinding heat until the world fell away.
Visions surged before him without sequence or sense as others might understand them. Further still, there was an overwhelming totality to what he was allowed to see. One after another, sights fell over him like a cacophony of shattered glass falling from the sky in a cuttingly dazzling brilliance that felt impossible to behold, yet nonetheless, Prometheus did just that.
He saw the powerful being that others called Typhon.
The monster roared free from his volcanic prison. Fire and ruin followed in his wake, but this version was more monster than warrior, and Prometheus recalled the Typhon had received powers comparable to Zeus, so this alteration was startling to say the least.
Behind and beside this individual, there stood Cronos with his scythe of adamantine and diamond.
They were marching upon a Mount Olympus that was besieged by tiny beings. Soon enough, the city of the gods would burn. One did not need the gift of foresight to know that the outcome would be that Olympus would be in flaming shambles soon enough.
Prometheus flinched at that thought, but when he did, what he saw altered. By moving, the pictures moved on in response.
There was Zeus at the focal point of the new imagery. Prometheus almost scoffed as he was certain Zeus saw himself at the center of creation.
He was not as he was in reality. Before Prometheus’ eyes, there was a despot wrapped in thunder and clothed in lightning. There were children at his feet that were not wholly divine that were little more than scattered weapons over a landscape.
The fundamental difference between what he had seen a moment ago and what was before him was that Olympus stood unchallenged in this version of events, and existence suffered for that security.
There were battles raging. Ares was excitedly celebrating the outcome. Athena shook her head but made no move against her father. The advisor stared in horrified wonder, unsure as to what events could have led to such an outcome.
Another shift occurred when he lowered his head in sadness.
A prouder version of Hera was before him.
Her crown was heavy upon her head and her face showed a loathing that came from the chain of a marriage she was trapped in. Her sorrow soaked the very foundation of the godly city, yet still it went unanswered and unseen by the others.
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