Pantheon

When we were given the choice of worship or war, we gladly chose the latter.

For an entire year, I had gathered a group of people that I could trust with my life, with the secret and the power of the ship that I had found in Greece. As we knew them, the Gods were not Gods at all but rather men and women armed with such technology that it was simply indistinguishable from magic. I wore the armor that granted me the power of the King of the Gods himself: Zeus. Although I didn't think that I was worthy to lead the new Pantheon, all of my comrades were in agreement; they wouldn’t have had it any other way. For the past year, hundreds of false Gods had risen from the woodwork seemingly one day to the next demanding worship and power.

My comrades and I had taken it upon ourselves to wipe these false deities from the face of the world in order to restore peace once more.

Our current destination was a simple one: Cairo Egypt, where the man who had called himself Ra had single-handedly taken over and declared himself God.

My new Pantheon would quickly rectify him.

The ship descended carefully and it landed on top of the gilded pyramid that belonged to the man who had declared himself Ra. It was gaudy and showed so much grander that it made my blood boil. No one was meant to rule like this, no one person should have such a crazy amount of power to do this. Even us with the power of the Greek Gods were overseen by the American Government and save for the rare case we didn’t really act of our own accord.

Hades and Poseidon sat at either side of me, and they were the two people who I trusted the most to have joined me on this ship, to claim the power of the Gods. If something ever happened to me, I would want one of them to take my place.

The ship whirred as I looked over at the display and the scan of the building told me that within the building there was only Ra.

We got off the cloaked vessel, for this I decided that I would only bring Poseidon and Hades. We walked out onto limestone and stepped quietly as I looked over at Hades and Poseidon and I looked up at the elegant set of doors that led into this portion of the Pyramid. My brothers in arms both looked at me with masked faces and nodded to me. For the time being we had the powers of Gods, and they did not do anything quietly.

Laying my right hand against the stone, electricity sparked and cracked between my fingertips and with just a thought, it surged forwards and blasted the stone to nothing. The room was empty save for a massive gilded throne; something that seemed almost out of place in the room of someone who considered himself a God.

The God in question sat at his throne, his eyes watching the three of us almost comically as the corners of pale lips tugged upwards into a smile. He stood from his gilded throne and extended his arms as if presenting us with the bare room and he laughed.

“Welcome! To the palace of Ra!”

“We’re not here to gawk at your palace,” Poseidon answered as he brought up his hands and the water in the air condensed and became a spear of liquid. “We’re here to stop you,”

“Stop me?”

“That’s right,” I told the false God as lightning crackled between my fingers as I opened my hand “No more Gods.”

Ra’s face twisted in anger as he launched himself forwards from the throne much faster than I was sure Poseidon or Hades were going to be able to react to. Pushing off my right foot, I lunged forwards and caught him mid tackle. Wrapping my arms around his waist, I turned as I lifted him and slammed him into the cobblestone at our feet, the brown rock cracking beneath the force. My arms were already much warmer than I expected them to be and that was even through the armor, as I quickly released my hold on Ra and leapt to my feet.

The heat in the room continued to rise however, and it took me a second to realize that the heat was coming from Ra as he rose to his feet and brushed the dust from his shoulders as he fixed his gaze on us once more as the faceplate of his armor sealed it completely.

“You shall now face my judgment!” his voice was warped by the faceplate “I shall send you to the halls of Anubis!”

He reached out with his hands and flames shot forth from his hands in a powerful beam of fire. Poseidon was fast as well as he extended his hand as well and I could nearly see the humidity in the air condense at his fingertips and a high pressure jet of water met with the flame and it all erupted into a column of steam. But as the room continued to heat, I knew that there would be no water in the air for him to command. Hades looked over to me and nodded as he leaned back against the wall and I watched as the shadows seemed to swallow him. It was always strange to me to see his power, and watch the shadows come to life and consume him; for them to make him a shadow in his entirety. We had all been working together more than enough time for silent plans to be made and for the need to voice our ideas to one another be rendered pointless.

I knew very well what it was that Hades was trying to do now, I just had to make it easier for him to achieve this. Quickly, I reached out and called upon my own powers and I could feel the air in front of me shift and become ionized. In between my hands a lance made of lightning took form and I could hear the crackle of the lighting as I spun the newly created weapon and pointed it at the false God. There was something in his golden eyes as he grinned at me and I could hear the insanity and the joy within his tone.

“You have power! Power that the others would not possibly wish to match! Why not take the world as your own? Who could hold a candle to your might?”

Ignoring him, I simply kicked off my right foot and lunged towards Ra and brought down the weapon in a wide arc. The suit that I wore augmented my power more so than any of the others and this was what made me such a capable single fighter. Ra was almost too slow to avoid the swing and I saw it knick his face as he avoided the blow; the lightning burning his face as it touched him. Unrelenting, I changed the trajectory of my swing, turning all the downwards momentum sideways and this time it caught. Ra was sent flying as my lighting spear connected with the left hand side of his body and he crashed against the stone. Before he could recover, I saw as all the shadows of the room seemed to congregate in the spot where he had crashed and they came to life and leapt from the wall. The shadows bound him, holding tightly to his arms and legs and around his throat and I watched as Hades was made solid once more and he dropped from the ceiling.

Ra bellowed angrily, and I could feel as the heat in the room seemed to drop to more normal temperatures once more. I tilted my head as I examined the suit that he wore, and it’s bright red and golden color seemed to shift and fade: from brilliant red and gold to orange and gray. I was not as well versed in Egyptian mythology as I was with the Greek and the armor that I wore but I could recall something about Ra having more than one form. This suit must have reflected that.

Ra had melted from one of his most powerful forms into a weaker one. One of the waning sun.

“I shall have your heads for this!” spat out with venom and I shook my head and glanced over to Hades and Poseidon.

“You can keep him there?” I asked Hades who nodded slowly.

“I can, are you going to call him in? Or should we try to strip him of his armor now?”

The process of stripping one of these false Gods from their armor was a dangerous one. It was not something that we would be able to achieve here, at the very least not without killing him. We could kill of course, but that was only as a last resort per US orders. Carefully I reached up and placed a hand on the side of my helmet. It was almost instant, but considering that the suit was woven into my nervous system it could practically read and act upon my thoughts. The call was made and connected in the span of a breath.

“Zeus,” the man on the line said and I could practically see the smile on his face even though I could not really see him. “You have apprehended Ra?”

“Yes sir. He’s here in the pyramids, we’re currently in Cairo,”

“Knock him out and leave him there. An extraction in already on their way. In the meantime, there’s another God causing a ruckus. Some guy is claiming to be Thor, he’s already taken ownership of a large part of the Netherlands. Rectify this,”

“Of course sir,”

“Godspeed.”

Ending the call, I turned to face Hades and Poseidon and they both nodded to me as I could see the shadows tighten around Ra’s throat. It took only a few seconds, but he was unconscious. There was a weight that seemed to be lifted from my shoulders and Poseidon laughed.

“Another God?”

“It never ends.”

As we left the pyramid, I watched the three jets arriving as I boarded onto our own vessel and it cloaked once more as it flew off through the air. It would not take our ship long to reach the Netherlands and the home of this false God Thor but I knew what would be the result when we reached it.

My new Pantheon would rectify him.