Mountain of the Immortals

Over the next few hours, we split our focus between XPing and thinking about the best way to prepare our town for a potential attack. I gave Ares all of the information I had on my father's troops and generals, the monsters he had at his command, the demigods that had sworn loyalty to him, and the thousands of warriors I knew of.

I was sure my father had never been completely forthcoming with me about his fighting capabilities. I didn't even know exactly what defenses protected the mountain I had been living on my whole life. But even when I only thought about what I was absolutely sure of, things were not as good as I’d been hoping.

Our best hope was that my father would be too proud to ask for the help of any of his siblings. Ares wasn’t convinced this would be the case, but he didn't know Cronus the way I did. Pride would only be one obstacle that might prevent him from reaching out to his siblings for aid in destroying his last remaining son.

Everything my father did was in fear of being overthrown. From a throne he had been clinging on to for far too long. The truth was that none of his siblings, at least to my knowledge, wanted anything to do with being declared kings or queen of the Greek realms. Far from it.

Sitting on a throne meant you had a target on your back. You would be the one to beat, and they had all seen the effect this had on my father. Instead, what they wanted was to grow their influence, gain more followers, and expand their portfolios away from their king's reach. And my father being destroyed would create a power vacuum that would benefit each and every one of them, which was probably the reason why my uncle Hyperion had allowed us to get away with Hephaestus in the first place.

That was all to say that even if my father put his fears aside and asked for their help, he was unlikely to get it, especially since I was his last living son.

I tried to instill this confidence that we would only have to deal with the armies of one titan in Ares, but he wasn't completely convinced. Even with that out of mind though, things seemed pretty dire for us. Considering that Cronus might send all of his forces at us at once, I was very thankful for the upgrades to our defenses.

Our intelligence agents had managed to gather some additional information on the troops that were gathering under my father's command, and we soon found out that magical siege devices were being brought to the port at the base of Mount Orthys to be loaded onto ships.

We had no idea how they would manage to get them close enough to the town, since they wouldn't be able to use the portal we’d created to teleport them inside our city. What was certain, however, was that they were going to make their way through Dion. For this reason, we sent word to the small town at the base of Mount Olympus that they should be prepared in case they might soon need to evacuate.

We wouldn't send them off by ship, of course, since that would almost certainly spell disaster for them. Instead, we would bring them inside our walls, whether they wanted to fight with us or flee into the mines. The people of Dion were shaken by this announcement but promised not to spread panic further through the populace until we knew for sure that an attack was coming.

Our second order was to the miners and lumberjacks that Artemis usually led. Instead of going through their regular day, Artemis had the second shift redirected to work on the surface of Olympus, where they started setting up traps for anyone who might want to scale the dangerous mountainsides. From huge logs and boulders ready to roll down the mountainside at them, to controlled explosions that would cause landslides. The armies of Cronus would regret thinking they would just come and lay siege to our town without any resistance.

The resource converter would ensure that we didn’t run out of food, no matter how long the siege lasted though our MP would need to be the last resort in terms of feeding our people, especially since what we had stored would also be used to power the mana field around us. For this reason, Aphrodite also ordered the largest ships she could find in short order to bring food for our warehouses through the dock at the top of the mountain.

Having made dozens more moves and gone through plans in each of our breaks from XPing, we thought we were as ready as we could be for anything that might come our way. Eventually, we finished for the day and took the road back to town, where we would continue with our daily tasks and preparations for any attack.

“So what is the deal with you and your father?” Ares asked as we started making our way back. "You said he’s nothing like the Cronus described in the stories. I know what he did to your siblings, but you've never told me why he did it. Were you planning a coup?”

I sighed at the mention of my lost brothers and sister. “Far from it,” I replied.