Athena

Chapter 1: The fall of Olympus

From the blow of wind gifting oxygen to the breathless, to the very soil housing all earthling creatures. From the fires of hell to the waves of the ocean gently lapsing on our shores. All is good, all is bad and both. Fire is our enemy, yet our friend in the cold. Light leads the way, yet we pray for darkness when the light shines too bright. Earth is our home and the home of the creatures we fear most. Water can save us from dehydration, yet one small ripple in a calm sea can create a whole tsunami. A human can love, a human can kill. We can love and hate. In all there is balance. All is all powerful yet powerless. All is all knowing and knows nothing. For mankind is created to find a way to unlock their power and knowledge. We are made to fear the fearless yet be fearless before the fearful. After all manipulation is in our biological make-up. We are taught that we are not perfect, but nothing is. Even perfection is imperfection. The world as we know it is a beautiful paradox, built on the bond of its most powerful elements.

Four children find themselves in black emptiness. Older than time itself, if time were to exist. The four couldn't be more different in their existence. Nova, the giver of light. Power itself, guardian and protector. Her hair is made of night and skin is made of day. Her eyes of the skies yet to exist and lips of the blood yet to be lost. Her sister, Tera, kindness in the flesh. A touch of her right palm gifts life and the touch of her left takes it. Like her sister, her eyes are blue. But this blue is deep, a result of the sadness caused by the millions of children she has yet to lose. The deep blue of her eyes hides the secrets to existence. One tear can both heal the dead and destroy the living. Her hair is brown like the soil she will create and cherish. The soil that will bear her children and feed them. The very soil that will separate brother from brother. Mother from child. Husband from wife. That is her burden. The third child, not a brother but a dear friend, Igneous. His eyes, sparks of burning ambers. With one blow, he will ignite a portion of the world he helped co-create, to claim it as his kingdom. His brother Storm, a beautiful, scary, loving mess. He is thought to be the weakest of the four, but he is the only one that can calm his brother. Storm is loved and despised. He will drown his very own creations yet end their thirst and near death. He will end the suffering of humans and be the one creating their suffering. Nothing is perfect.

The children learn to co-exist. They learn to love the darkness, since it is all they know. They spend millennials growing, learning to love their imperfections and powers. Their immortality, however, doesn't stop their aging, in fact aging is one of their remarkable abilities. To humans it is a flaw, but to them, it is a gift. As they become more mature, they decide it is time to test the limits of their powers. They have spent their whole existence getting to know their abilities.

In their quest of creation, the four sit in harmony. Nova claps her palms to release a surge of energy, strong enough to perish the darkness. The darkness would then return (as a reminder of their home) and remain to replace the light and then it would perish again. They named this night and day. Tera raises both her hands to create a base for all life. Something resembling the darkness they grew up in, something new to call home. Storm lets out three tears. One ocean, one sea, one river. These travel the land, splitting apart and reuniting. He blows to gift the land with a cool relaxing breeze. An enjoyable aspect that will make their land paradise. Igneous then turns his back to his brother to blow a breeze of warmth, which will dominate one side of their land as the four decide that in all existence, there will be balance.

They continue to develop their land and call it Eden. They build a sanctuary, where the four can continue to create all they love. They build a white marble palace at the top of a mass of rock. Here they will find peace and unity, they thought, but they could not be more wrong. The palace on the top of the mountain becomes a house of law and creation. This is where the four must consult each other before any creations take place. Tera's desire for gifting the world with love grows more and more every day but giving this love to the other three slowly becomes dull. Her inner emptiness grows louder and echoes inside her. She falls into a depression until the day she consults her sister with an idea. The idea of creating creatures to resemble them. Creatures for them to guide and care for. The idea is debated by the four over and over until they all come to the agreement of creating life. By this time, Eden was filled with treasures. It had beaches, plants, flowers, fruit, mountains, waterfalls, volcanoes, caves, anything the humans could ask for. Before bringing any creatures – which they decided to call humans – to Eden, the council of four decided on a system of life. Something which will guide their humans and take care of their needs. They decided that all things must end, including life and therefore created death. A dark tragedy which stabbed Tera in her heart every time it took one of her children, but she had to agree to this in order to create them, due to their rule of 'In all there will be balance'.