Centaurian Ch. 07

CENTAURIAN

All Rights Reserved © 2022, Rick Haydn Horst

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Among humans, the occasional dethroning of a monarch has happened repeatedly for as long as monarchs have existed, and whether they happen by murder, forced abdication, civil war, or military coup, the removal of a monarch is usually a messy business, depending on the strength of the opposition. In the case of divine royals, the Greek gods have had a line of rulers, but one might consider only three of them real kings, and the stories from ancient humans of how the first two lost their thrones are—to put it mildly—bizarre.

According to the stories, Uranus, the first king, despised his children and kept them inside their mother Gaia (Earth) and wouldn't allow their birth. Gaia called upon her unborn—fully formed—children to seek vengeance on their father, so Cronus used the adamantine sickle given to him by his mother while still in the womb and castrated his father Uranus when he came to lie with Gaia and tossed his testicles into the ocean, which allowed the Titans to be born, and Cronus assumed the throne.

In retaliation, Uranus placed a curse upon his son Cronus so that one of his children would dethrone him. To prevent this, Cronus swallowed his children when they were born. Rhea, the mother of Cronus's fully divine children, hid her youngest son Zeus at birth to prevent Cronus from swallowing him. The goddess Metis mixed wine and mustard for the adult Zeus to feed Cronus which caused him to vomit up his—now fully formed—children. Afterward, there came the rebellion and the war, resulting in the removal of Cronus from the throne in favor of Zeus, the god of the sky.

Zeus reigned as King-of-the-Gods for many millennia. He withstood prophecies as well as rebellious children and siblings who attempted to overthrow him, so he had a proven mastery of his extensive powers, and he used them to intimidate until he had no opposition to his supremacy. For millennia, he had the luxury of considering his throne secure, but then came Ronan the Centaurian and Prometheus's prescient vision.

Without witnessing it, he wouldn't believe Ronan had as much or more power than himself. Apart from his capacity to vaporize a god and his immunity to Zeus's attempt to remove his power, the Centaurian had demonstrated no ability he found noteworthy. Ronan's claims of fearing these much talked about but unseen powers, might prove nothing more than an attempt to conceal a profound inadequacy, so Zeus wanted certainty over how much danger he presented.

He knew from lifelong experience; one should never reveal personal desires to an enemy. He found it better to simply take a thing—usually by force—to avoid anyone manipulating him over it. In Ronan telling Zeus what he wanted, it revealed his weaknesses. To Zeus's mind, if Ronan wanted his peace, he should simply go after Zeus and destroy him, taking his peace by force with the strength of his power, just as Zeus tried to remove Ronan as a threat the moment he learned of his dethroning.

Figuring to test the Centaurian, he made a careful selection of asteroids. He hadn't wanted to utterly devastate the ship by sending one too large. He sought a more tactical strike, so the Centaurian would either rise to the occasion or prove himself impotent.

The smaller meteors made of a two-inch shard of metal struck the superstructure from behind. The seismic-like event that had shaken the vessel down to its keel, however, came from above, a strategically aimed meteor the size of an anvil whose supersonic speed, odd shape, and composition allowed it to rip through the steel ship like a bullet through a tin can.

Ronan had raced up the staircase in search of Liam where he met the captain in the process of evacuation. The engine had stopped, the general alarm had sounded, and smoke began pouring through the hatchway from the bowels of the ship as men ran onto the deck in panic.

The moment the captain used the word meteor, Ronan knew Zeus had caused it, and if the meteors alone hadn't proven his villainy, he also stripped them of their only means of escape by taking their lifeboats.

It came down to Ronan doing or men dying, and he would need the power he feared. He stood paralyzed for a moment upon the staircase, knowing that to act upon one need would delay acting upon others, perhaps with deadly consequences. The ship had just begun sinking beneath the water, the engine room had men trapped, he could hear calls for help from above and below him, crewmen raced past them on the staircase in urgency, and he still hadn't seen Liam.

"Are you just going to stand there?" asked the captain. "You wanted to help people, so help them!"

The situation had Ronan pulled too many directions and pushed too far. His second and triple guessing himself caused a lapse in his ability to think or decide, and in an unreasonable fit of momentary madness, he squinted his eyes, clenched his fists, and with a voice erupting from deep inside him, he shook as he cried, "STOP!"

Faster than he could blink, Ronan thought he had gone completely blind, coupled to a silence so profound it would have driven most anyone insane. He felt no vibration, no sensation of temperature, or even direction. As though disconnected from his body, he felt nothing. He tried to touch whatever lay before him in the darkness, but he found himself trapped as though he had petrified in Medusa's gaze and with a growing sense of terror, he thought, "What have I done?"

The answer came from someone else inside his head, a deep masculine voice that would have resonated in a man's chest. "You've gotten yourself into a pickle. That's what you've done." The man chuckled to himself in amusement.

Ronan hadn't recognized the voice. With Chiron and his former human self fully combined, it could be neither as individuals. It sounded like no one he knew.

"It's true," said the man in his measured, casual tone, "you and I have never met."

"You can hear my thoughts?" asked Ronan in his mind.

"Yes, but only here," he said. "This is my domain. Do you know where you are?

"No, where?"

The man was enjoying this. "That's right, you're nowhere."

"Nowhere? How can I be nowhere?"

"I suspect most people wonder how they came to be nowhere, especially when in the middle of it; with its popularity, one might think to find a tourist attraction. However, unlike other people's experiences, you have willed yourself to the most nowhere of all nowheres. I come here when I need some time to myself—which sounds funny for me to say.

"I've never been here with anyone before, and I now realize that I know nothing of the future here. Having no knowledge of what you will say next is fascinating. So, welcome to my nowhere."

"Who are you?"

"I am one of the two oldest beings in this universe and the only other person capable of coming here. Except, when I come here, I avoid the pickle you're in."

"And what precisely is this pickle?"

"You willed everything to stop, so it stopped...except your mind, probably as a defense mechanism...and me, of course, because I can live both in and outside of time."

"You're Chronos, the god of time."

"Only to the gods who aren't my close friends, my children, and my ex-wife Ananke (the goddess of necessity and inevitability. I'm proud to say that she and I fucked this universe into existence, and it came to be at the birth of our son Chaos. You may know that event as The Big Bang). For everyone else, what they call me, depends on who they are. You know, humans too often confuse me with your Titan father, Cronus. That's why they mistakenly depict me as carrying a scythe—he was a god of the harvest—but I've no need for such an implement and talk about insulting... Cronus swallowed his own children for goodness's sake! No one wants to get mistaken for that monster."

"Hadn't you created the Chronosian blade for Aquila to kill me?"

"No, I created the blade because Zeus told me to. He never makes requests of anyone except to his brothers and Athena his favorite daughter. To everyone else, he makes demands, and we must comply. So, I apologize that I had to create it, but I already knew it would cause you no danger. It's a shame about Felix Raposo. He was a magnificent young man. I also mourn his loss. His destruction should never have happened, but I could not say the same of that garish and horrid Kakia. Good riddance."

"Well, if Zeus ordered you to make the blade, I understand. So, why can't I move?"

"All movement requires time, so by stopping time, you eliminated the possibility of space. Except for myself, apart from your mind, you have locked your physical self and the entire universe—to its farthest reaches and from the highest point on Olympus to the deepest pit of Tartarus, everything, down to the last quark—into a state not unlike a solid block of concrete."

"I hadn't meant to do that," said Ronan.

"Well, you have."

"I hope you're not angry with me over it; it was an accident, and unfortunately, it has me stuck. Could you get me out of this?"

The man gave a deep chuckle. "Oh no...no, I couldn't do that," he said. "It would deprive you of the opportunity to learn to use your abilities. You do want to learn, right?"

"I do," said Ronan in hesitation, "but...I have a fear of the power within me."

"And just why is that?"

"Well—for one example—because getting stuck in time is apparently a thing, but the power is too much. Everyone keeps telling me that I have more power than anyone else, and someone just today said that I could be virtually omnipotent. And I happen to know that virtual omnipotence is as close to true omnipotence that anyone can logically get. Why would anyone want that much power?"

"For you, that's a sensible, if naive, question," said Chronos, "and the answer is easy—they want control. Someone will always have more power than others but combine that with an overzealous willingness to wield it for their own benefit, and typically, they rule. Unfortunately, when someone threatens their reign, they make the most dangerous of enemies. They will do anything to maintain their control. I see both a lesson there and a warning, don't you?"

"Message received," said Ronan. "I had no idea about this power when I agreed to take Henri's place, and I get why he couldn't tell me about it, but it appears Prometheus intended that I should be the final Stallion, so I guess the question is, why me?"

"With that question, you've asked the right god. Prometheus has prescience and a knowingness of future events, but I am the god of Time. I have an intrinsic connection to the timeline with the knowledge of all events. So, let me ask you, just before Henri passed the eternal flame to you, what did he say?"

"Remember to keep the love in your heart and the image in your mind," said Ronan.

"Well, surely you comprehend the importance of the image, it's part of your appearance, but Henri hadn't told you to hold the love in your heart just to express some flowery sentiment. Henri and Prometheus chose you, due to your loving nature because almost anyone can acquire knowledge and experience, but someone either has a loving nature or they haven't. And the fact that you agreed to replace Henri demonstrated bravery and a willingness to commit. Holding the love in your heart—which you did—has kept you a fundamentally loving person during your transition. You couldn't let that love go now even if you wanted to, and while people too often view love as a weak emotion, it has aspects that many people rarely consider.

"Kratos never made idle threats, and him threatening the people you care for and love made you understandably angry. He pushed you into a corner to force you to fight him—and make no mistake, he would have fought to the death. He intended to kill someone that night, but you had no obligation, so you simply destroyed him, and no one who knew Kratos could reasonably blame you. It seems to slip the mind of many people that Love isn't always kind and gentle. Sometimes it's fiercely protective, but that's okay, sometimes it needs to be. So, why you? Search inside yourself, Ronan, you know why they chose you, and you've known it all along, you just have difficulty believing it."

"Sometimes it puzzles me why I care so much," he said.

"It's a result of your experiences as Chiron, and especially as a human, which you knew were best forgotten. I have nothing further to say on that topic."

"I knew I would forget my past, so I must agree with that."

"It's fortuitous that you should wind up here, you have the chance to learn to wield your power, and with that, I will help you. You need it to dethrone Zeus. Besides, if you will muck about in my domain, I insist that you know what you're doing. But don't worry, now that you've stopped time, you have an eternity to learn this, but I suspect it won't take that long. The movement of matter and energy requires Time, so if you want to move, you must separate your material self from it with a time-field. Your mind is still functioning, so already, you create a field there as a means of self-preservation, just expand it."

"What does a time-field look like?"

"Your body should fill with a white light and in its glow, you expose everything your light touches—or you touch physically—to the time-field. It unlocks the matter around you, so you can move."

Ronan concentrated, but nothing happened. "I'm using my imagination, but it's not working."

"If imagination alone made things manifest, your every thought would require extreme caution. Manifesting requires intentionality, and this is no different than manifesting your wings. But whether you manifest internally or externally, you create, and to create is to act with intention."

"Why does external manifesting seem harder? What's the trick?"

"The trick is deciding it isn't harder," he said. "If you have trouble with that, we will be here a while. Some people might call this a watershed moment for you and this nowhere the perfect proving ground. I will help you as best I can, and together, we will fix this. Zeus deserves no satisfaction from his actions here, and you will discover that he has caused more damage than you realize."

"Is Liam okay?"

"Blood has splattered the wall of the room in which you will find him."

"No!" In Ronan's need to reach Liam, he focused, and from his body emerged a light, and it grew brighter as it expanded. He began to feel his limbs again, and his eyes could see the wall of the staircase and the captain who remained temporally locked beside him.

At the top of the stairs, on the floor that held the room he shared with Liam, he could see a figure that glowed with an eerie light like his own, that together, illuminated the staircase. The shirtless, ruggedly handsome Chronos had the size of an enormous bear with huge, rounded muscles with enormous pecs like his own, and while his abdominals remained visible, they hadn't appeared deeply chiseled. He had some slight graying in the dark hair on his head, his beard, and profuse body hair. He wore black-leather boots and a wide belt of the same material. His beefy thighs packed a pair of faded blue jeans, and Ronan noted the thick horizontal bulge in his pants that lay far across his hip.

Chronos spoke with his lips, warning Ronan in a deep rumble, "Don't touch the captain. I must caution you against touching anyone accidentally. The light of your time-field affects them superficially, but to touch them for only a moment would cause them an unpleasant, rapid temporal disruption."

"We can talk to one another?"

"The light of our time-field unlocks the air around us. As the light dims farther away from us, the speed of time slows to a gradual stop, but while our lights mingle, it creates a shared pocket of time that will carry sound." He waved Ronan up the staircase.

Due to his sizable body, Ronan had difficulty skirting around the captain on the staircase without touching him.

Once he reached the top of the stairs, Ronan said to him, "Am I reading into it, or do you and I have things in common?"

Chronos smiled. "I haven't always had this appearance, just the last thirty years, and I intend to keep it, but we have much in common. You, Liam, and I should talk one day,"—he raked his eyes over Ronan's body—"and you are one fine-looking Stallion." He jerked his head toward the hallway. "Liam's this way."

Ronan hurried down the hall and reached for the door handle to his cabin.

"Not there, he's in this one." Chronos opened the door to Emma's cabin, and Ronan hadn't expected what he found.

The room held four people, and Ronan discovered someone hurt but not Liam. The blood splatter on the wall came from William. As he stood packing a bag, a small shard-like metallic meteor pierced the outer wall. It left a ragged and oddly shaped, golf-ball-sized hole. It matched the one through William's belly and the hole through the interior wall to the corridor where the meteorite lay embedded in a metal stud on the opposite side.

William lay on the floor between Liam and Emma, who apparently had teleported herself there before Ronan had stopped time. Their features had frozen in a look of horror and concern, but from the angle of Emma's head and the position of her mouth, she was—most likely—calling for Ronan's help. The other person in the room, Ronan never wanted to see again, the winged figure of Thanatos.

"I told him not to mess with my friends and loved ones," said Ronan.

"I will ask you to temper your anger at Death," said Chronos, "no one likes to see him due to what his presence could mean, but he has not caused this. He came to fulfill his purpose. It's not personal."

Ronan thought about it for a moment and nodded. "You're right. I will keep that in mind."

"I would like you to look at this scene. What do you see?"

Ronan looked around and at the people. "William isn't dead. His eyes are open, his face shows he's in pain, and Emma is still calling for help."

"Good. Also, Death heads toward William, not moving away, so this is great timing. Once Death has someone, we would have difficulty bringing them back, and if they were in the underworld, it would be impossible to bring them back without Hades agreeing to it, and he would insist that we pay a heavy price."

"Could Emma not heal him?"

"Emma is Dolos, and his powers are bound to his nature of deception, lies, and trickery. He has made an amazing evolution over the millennia and found a means to help others by getting around his limitations through plotting, but he isn't a powerful god, and he hasn't the time to circumvent his nature. For now, he can barely think. He just knows he loves William and cannot bear the thought of losing him."

"What does William want?"

"Not to die, obviously. He is a good man who admires you and trusts that you will save him. When the captain asked you to leave the ship, he stood up for you. He wishes he could remain with the three of you when you leave, and Emma wants him to. He loves Emma, but that's a problem because he thinks she is the goddess Erastís, the lover. He would dearly love to be with her forever, but he knows that cannot happen because he's just a mortal, and helping people like him is what she does. He thinks she will move on to someone else, leaving him just another man in her past."

"I see," said Ronan. "Can I just heal William, or should I just rewind time and undo everything Zeus has done here in one go?"