Prometheus Wakes

Hope died in him, but something else grew, something black and powerful that he let roam uncaged within him.

He was a trickster and a Titan. 

He was deemed small and weak, and when the Usurper Zeus cast out the other Titans, he was allowed to stay. And so he walked the heavens and marveled at the stars and when the jeers and taunts of the new Gods became too much, he walked the planets. He walked what would later be named Roc, Damain, Ar Bastion, Vkaa, Charys, Amorath. Even the world called Janus he walked. 

But he grew tired of the hills and rivers and valleys that were dark and cold and lifeless beneath bright stars. And then the Gods shaped humanity and Prometheus walked on Earth. He found them strange—small and helpless and mortal. They found him large and towering and breathing power and life. He liked them. He wanted to help them. So he thought. And walked. He walked far, past every world and planet he had ever visited. He was gone so long they thought he was dead, both Gods and men. But then, one day, he came back. 

He went to the Mountain, where They lived and ruled from their sunny golden hill. He went quietly, and deep in the Heart of the Mountain he found himself, deep in the dark and the heat. He made his way to the anvil and felt it with his hands. He touched every hammer, every tool, every weapon on the wall, drinking in the knowledge. Finally, he found what he was looking for. 

Prometheus cupped the tiny, liquid flame in his hand and felt its warmth and life. He carried it down, through rows of cold stars and cold worlds. He breathed knowledge and wisdom and hope, and mankind took the Gift and was glad. Light bloomed, cities rose, and civilization was born. Prometheus went away, far away, to the little world Janus, his favorite world, and began to think. 

After a while, he began to shape. 

He took the clay and mud from the riverbanks and shaped man-like things that were not man at all. And then he breathed fire and life into them and made them his own. Then he went to the heart of his planet and began to forge. 

But then the Gods saw the Gift. Hephaestus, the Smith, crashed his hammer against his anvil in fury, and Prometheus heard Zeus shake the heavens from worlds away. Ares donned his blood red armor and rode out to war and the whole Universe thundered with his riders’ hooves. 

Hope died in him, but something else grew, something black and powerful that he let roam uncaged within him.

Prometheus faced him there, above Janus, with the fierce warriors he had created. Fire bloomed from his fingertips, and his long sword spit blinding light as he whirled it above his head. He cut down half of Ares’ crimson bodyguard with that sword. But Ares only smiled and drew his sword, a sword that was dark and cold and drank all light. 

Prometheus was bound and dragged away, his fire extinguished, many of his people turned to dust. Zeus chained him on a rocky finger of mountain where the sun did not reach. 

But Prometheus hoped, and hope gave him strength and he spit defiance at the Gods day and night. And then the eagle came. It perched beside him, and eyed him with knowing eyes. Then it began to tear at his abdomen, again and again, and Prometheus writhed and shrieked and sobbed as the bird tore him open and devoured his liver. 

Prometheus thought he would die then, alone, but he did not, and his liver grew back, and the skin of his stomach was made new and smooth. The eagle came again the next day, and the day after that. Prometheus thought the pain would grow less, but it never did, and every day the mountain shook with his screams. 

Hope died in him, but something else grew, something black and powerful that he let roam uncaged within him. One day, hundreds of years later, the eagle came as usual. It began to tear. 

And then a man with a leopard skin draped around his shoulders appeared behind it, and killed it with one blow of his iron studded club. He smashed Prometheus’s chains, but Prometheus smashed his throat in with one quick blow of his fist. He took the leopard skin and the club and hurried down the mountain. He went down to Earth. Everywhere men worshiped him as ‘Heracles,’ and everywhere Prometheus killed the faithless, mortal men who he had thought were his friends. 

Prometheus escaped far away into the cold, dark stars, looking for the remainder of his people. He gathered what he could, and retreated farther and farther to where there were no stars at all. 

He hated the stars. 

He hated the sun. 

He hated light. 

He hated fire. 

But centuries passed, and suns died and men skipped worlds only to die in the next. They grew closer and closer and Prometheus retreated father and farther. Finally he stopped. He would run no longer. He prepared. He waited. He felt himself growing old. He was all that was left. His people had left long ago, to spread his Faith to other worlds. 

Now, Prometheus sleeps. He sleeps till that day when faithless men will bring their fire and life to his world, and he will stride out and kill the sun. He dreams, in vast caverns of ice. Comforting dreams of dark, dead stars and a Way unknown to man; disturbing, haunting dreams of an spread eagle and fire licking at the sky. 

One day, a shuttle landed. Many shuttles. They brought a Gift with them, something someone they did not remember had given them hundreds of thousands of centuries ago. 

Prometheus woke.