Chapter 4: Prologue: Prometheus
A year earlier, in a small town carved into Mount Vesuvius.
There was a house built entirely out of white marble, it's style closely resembling an ancient Greek temple with the exception that it had no roof and instead of it, there was a large open room with twelve people sitting around a table.
Each of them was wearing a pendant around their neck, and each of the pendants had a different symbol on them. The table itself was semi-circular in shape, with two seats at the head of the table and the rest around the edge.
Only one of the two seats at the head of the table was occupied, by a man with a stern face and silver-streaked hair that reached to his shoulder blades. He was around 6'11" tall when standing, with narrow shoulders. The pendant on his neck depicted three lightning bolts held in a hand.
He spoke: "Excellent work with keeping ICW's department of international logistics and operations of global scale off our backs, Dionysus. You should have your people on the inside to put forward a motion to change their name, it's way too long. Ask Hephaestos to make you anything you want, as long as it's actually useful for the cause."
A man that was around 5'4" tall, apparently in his mid-twenties, with short black hair and burn scars covering the right side of his face slammed his fist on the table, causing a small explosion, shouted: "Not fair, Zeus! I worked so hard and all I get is a promise with a lot of rules on it! You know I hate rules! Do you want me to blow you up, huh?"
A woman around 5'8" tall, seemingly in her early thirties, with a helmet and spear depicted on her pendant spoke: "There's no need to get worked up over a small matter. I'm sure Hephaestos will make you something personal if you ask nicely enough and pay a little extra."
A young man around 6'7" tall, giving off a scholarly look despite his bulging muscles said: "Athena, don't go making any promises for me. If he's a dick and tries to blow up my stuff like the last time he'll get nothing."
Zeus slammed his fist on the table, causing a few sparks of lightning within a black cloud to streak across it and said: "Enough! We have gathered here for a reason, and it's not bickering!
Sorcerer Chronos has copied the final Keystone while Dionysos was making a mess by nearly exposing the magical part of the world to Muggles.
From today onwards, all our efforts will go towards opening the Gate to the Underworld. I'm sure everyone of us has something they would like to learn from Prometheus, as per our agreement with him.
For the brighter future of the Wizardkind!"
After the meeting ended and everyone else left the house, Zeus walked down the stairs into a room with a small cell in it, locked the door behind himself, then threw the key outside.
'Finally, I can let loose. Even if a powerful wizard makes the best meat suit, they're still so restrictive!'
Black smoke billowed out of Zeus' eyes, ears, mouth and nose and condensed into a red-haired man, 6'3" tall, wearing coarse robes that couldn't easily be seen in any robes store these days.
While picking up the key by making his hand stretch to the floor, connected to his body only by a wisp of smoke, he thought: 'That's so much better. I wish I could use magic in my own body.'
He walks to a nearby room that is filled with what looks like the children and grandchildren of the man that Zeus had been wearing until recently, except they all have the exact same appearance in their age group.
'Transferring the soul from one body to another is really bothersome, but it looks like the time will come once more in ten or so years. I'll have to ask Prometheus for a better way after he comes to this side.'
A few weeks later.
Chronos saw Athena carving the final runes for the array Prometheus had told them to make.
The Array itself was carved into the central square of Pantheon town, the little settlement that had been carved into Mount Vesuvius millennia earlier.
There were a few hundred buildings in total in the town, all of them with two floors at most. There was a wide gap between each of the buildings, with trees and flowerbeds dotted here and there, dirt placed into hollows carved in the volcanic rock.
"Bring the disposable batteries!", Athena told a nearby guard patrolling the area.
After a while, twenty-one people were escorted to the area.
"Wait, those can't be the batteries, right?", Chronos asked, a puzzled look on his face.
Athena rose from the ground she had been working on and replied: "What do you mean? We've been paying a soul each time Prometheus was contacted, you didn't think it was for a small amount of magic, did you?"
'In the end, a few sacrifices need to be made to further our knowledge and understanding.'
He kept a straight face and said: "Honestly, it doesn't matter much to me. You already know that the only reason I'm lending you my services is to ask Prometheus how I can expand my knowledge and influence over Time after creating my Sorcery."
"Just stay out of the way when I get started with the ritual.", Athena warned. She wasn't sure why Chronos had decided to observe it in the first place.
In a Universe far-far away, on a gloomy planet where green mist covered most of the surface.
There was a small town built out of local stone, home to a race who had been named as Titans on a world they had long since left. Their skin tone varied from green to navy-blue. Even though there wasn't any light coming from any celestial bodies, the green fog gave off enough radiance to make everything around clearly visible.
In one of those crude-looking houses, a rather small-framed, blue-skinned member of that race, known as Prometheus approached another. His hands were hidden behind his back as he fidgeted with his fingers, his three 'eyes' were glowing with excitement.
'Father, I would like to borrow the Aether Needle for a while. I would like to conduct an experiment that should give me greater insights into Space.', he 'said', his magic fluctuations just a bit unsteady and more intense than they needed to be from that distance.
Titans didn't speak in the conventional way, they communicated purely through magic fluctuations, similar to how humans communicate through sound waves.
Iapetus, the father of Prometheus, took out a thin needle that was the length of Prometheus' forearm.
'You'll get it after I've received the delivery and I want it back by the next delivery time, or you'll have a lot of hungry neighbors to deal with.'
Iapetus walked over to a large ring, twice as tall as he was and placed the needle into a pillar next to it and some of the green aura covering his body flowed into the needle. Suddenly, a shimmering circle appeared inside the ring.
A few moments later, strange levitating crafts flew out, driven by creatures that looked as if they were wearing thick capes, except the capes were fused to their emaciated, almost skeletal bodies. The crafts were about as wide as Prometheus' two feet in front of each other and three times as long, but they were suitably sized for the ones driving them and the cage attached to the craft's back.
The cages were filled with 'people', furry humanoids with bipedal cat-like physiques.
One after the other, ten such craft came through the Gate and dispersed to the surrounding area. Finally, only one remained. With a wave of Iapetus' hand, the cage's door opened and five of the humanoids floated out. The cage's door closed again, and that craft left as well, to continue the deliveries.
Iapetus stored most of the miniature humanoids in a small box next to the house's entrance. He left only one outside and levitated it in front of his face.
The knees on the humanoid in front of Iapestus were shaking so badly that they were producing engine noises by striking together, yet it still gathered its courage and tried: "Kha-Khajiit has wares, if you- if you have coin."
Shadowy tendrils came out from Iapetus' body and attached to the creature in front of him.
The Kahjiit's eyes widened and they started struggling, trying to break free from the invisible bindings, or at least get away those dark tentacles – things like that never meant anything good. "N- no! Kahjiit can ba- barter!"
A few moments later, dust scattered into the wind and was spread onto the rough landscape.
While Iopetus was taking out the Needle from the pillar, he commented: 'I wish we found another species, this one has already become too stale for my taste.'
As he handed the Needle to Prometheus, he said: 'Just don't go too far with it. You're still under house arrest for the next two millennia for getting our entire race exiled from our home world.'
'Yes, father. I won't cause any trouble for you.', Prometheus promised. Internally, he thought: 'Don't worry, father. If everything goes well, by the next delivery time, you'll have new and much more delectable dishes to choose from. Your son is an excellent cook.
Damn monkeys, I underestimated you for just once and I've been locked up for over five millennia already.'
Prometheus returned to the house – he wasn't hungry enough to eat those things. Besides, everything was already lined up for the next step.
After making sure his father wasn't peeking on what he was planning to do, he thrust the Needle into the center of the array carved into his room over the centuries. The complexity of the Array was mind-boggling, but his father had given him quite a few tips on things related to the Space aspect.
As Prometheus sent a tendril of his aura through the Needle, the Array became visible. There were threads of pure magic criss-crossing the entire room and three-dimensional runes attached to them by hair-thin threads.
Suddenly, the space warped and a round screen appeared that displayed the view to a completely different room, with a ceiling even higher than his own, with small houses littered here and there.
'Yes! This is it! Finally, I'll be free of the house arrest! Once I've connected that place to our world, I'll be heralded as the greatest genius in the world! That'll show all of them!'
Suddenly, strong magic fluctuations came from the outside, with the message: 'Son, what are you doing? Stop right this instant!'
Prometheus replied: 'Sorry, dad! You'll thank me later!', then stepped through the 'window', failing to notice a small ripple travelling across its surface.
As soon as Prometheus was inside, he realized that something had gone wrong – he felt powerful forces tearing at him, his protective layer of aura dimming at a rapid pace. Fortunately for him, before the protective cloak disappeared completely, he was spat out on the other side.
Prometheus felt extremely weak and the aura cloak around him seemed to have disappeared completely, leaving him naked and vulnerable, something that rarely ever happened to their kind.
'I should get a meal and fast! I must not remain in this state, who knows, there might be a few of those scary powerful Sorcerers still around that drove us out.'
He saw the bodies of around twenty humanoids lying atop the anchor portion of the Array, one that could be carved with primitive means in two dimensions, at the cost of some efficiency.
'I'm not foolish enough to teach them true three-dimensional arrays.', Prometheus thought to himself.
Only then did he notice that there was something hard held in his hand. He looked down and saw the Aether-piercing Needle.
'Oh, shit! My father's so going to kill me for that! No, wait, it should still be fine. I'll just have to figure out a way to open a Gate from this side. It should even be much easier with father's Sorcery manifestation. I should be able to use my own Array as an anchor, I just have to get the coordinates right.'
Prometheus looked around once more, noticing that he was in a settlement of these primitives. 'What is this? The ones I contacted said they were among the strongest in magic? They look pathetic, there's only one Sorcerer among them. Even that one has so little magic that it's a wonder how it even managed to reach this point.'
Suddenly, Prometheus was surprised by the Sorcerer trying to talk to him, even if his magic fluctuations could barely be sensed: 'Honorable Lord Prometheus, I would like to get some guidance about the aspect of Time. I have only managed to create a Sorcery, but I believe there is still much to learn.'
Prometheus replied with magic waves that were strong enough to be considered shouting among his own kind: 'I'm tired from the trip. I'll give you guidance once I've rested and researched the peculiarities of the magic in this world. I would rather not give you tips that don't work right in this world.'
###
Chronos was pacing in front of the door to Prometheus' house. On the ground next to him, there was a man in black robes, a Snatcher, or former snatcher, considering the reason he had been brought.
After half an hour of waiting, Prometheus finally graced Chronos with his titanic presence, giving a swift demise to the 'payment'.
Chronos noticed that Prometheus' aura that hadn't been there at all when he first saw the Titan, had thickened a lot in the past month.
Finally, as per their agreement, Prometheus gave Chronos some tips about the Time aspect, unbeknownst to Chronos revealing only something his own kind would learn during the first year of elementary studies.
Chronos wandered around the area while pondering over the insights Prometheus had offered, trying to integrate them with his already existing knowledge, but just as he felt like he was about to get a flash of inspiration, he felt an extremely terrifying magic fluctuation.
Chronos looked around and discovered that he wasn't too far from Prometheus' house. He begrudgingly turned around and left the area, sitting down in his own chambers to avoid any more such interruptions. However, internally, he decided to keep a closer eye on Prometheus – that Titan was up to something, he just knew it.
Once the appearance of the 'cracks' was no longer contained by DILOGS, Chronos noticed that the instances of the cracks appearing were correlating with the surges of magic coming from Prometheus' residence.
---
A few weeks after the appearance of cracks was made public, another Pantheon meeting took place.
After other, more mundane matters, Zeus brought up the main topic: "Athena, I believe your expertise overlaps with the cracks. What have you learned about them?"
"I only know that they connect our world to others. DILOGS keeps closing them soon after they open. Hephaestos has built me a device to track them down."
Zeus smiled at that and said: "That's good progress. I hope that in a few months, you'll find a way to replicate the process. There are many worlds out there, and we have yet to make use of their resources."
That was when Chronos spoke up: "I believe I know the reason behind the cracks. Prometheus has been doing some kind of an experiment and around half of the cracks that have been opening up occur around the same time there's a surge of magic from his residence."
Zeus' face got extremely serious as he said: "Sorcerer Chronos, you shall not meddle in Prometheus' affairs. I will ask him about it myself."
The meeting ended soon after and the Pantheon dispersed to their own tasks, mostly magic research or setting new trends and starting a few minor conflicts and pandemics in both the Muggle and Wizarding worlds, as the sheep needed to be kept distracted – it was about time to make a few changes in the world now that a Titan was backing them.
A few months passed after that, with Chronos finding more and more correlations between the cracks appearing and whatever Prometheus was doing. Until, one day, Chronos was finally able to catch a glimpse what exactly that was. Still, he wasn't quite sure what he was seeing – there were lines and runes like in an array, but they were unlike anything he had seen before.
The lines were forming true three-dimensional patterns in the air while the runes were even stranger – they seemed to have one shape from one angle and a completely different shape from another angle, as if they were three-dimensional as well.
Even if Chronos had no idea what the array was about, he had a bad feeling about it. However, he already knew he wouldn't get any help from the Pantheon members. So, instead, he tried something that had eluded him so far – travelling into the future.
With the help of his Sorcery made manifest, the Hourglass of Time, he created a device more complex than any of the time-turners he had made so far. He also reworked the hour-reversal charm to the point where it functioned in reverse to it's original purpose, and after a few tests with time-turners and time-skippers as he had taken to calling them, he had made sure that the concept actually worked.
Then, he had gone to the future, by a month each time, to see if there had been any drastic changes.
At first, he only noticed the crack problem worsening, but eventually, he ended up in a point where there were numerous Titans in the world, and it looked like most of humanity had been enslaved.
At first, Chronos wanted to go back to the point where Prometheus hadn't arrived yet and deal with the Pantheon himself, but he found out that no matter what he tried, even after attempting to use his Sorcery, he was unable to go past the point where Prometheus had started with his strange experiment. It was as if the past had already been solidified or locked away from all means.
It was then that Chronos had decided to get rid of the root of the problem as soon as possible, but when he returned to the past and tried to assassinate Prometheus with a killing curse, it had no effect whatsoever. Instead, Prometheus had used his shadow against Chronos.
He had survived only thanks to the Hourglass of Time, managing to send himself a few months into the future. At least so he thought at first, yet, he discovered that something that had never occurred before, happened – the sand in the hourglass had started falling down, no matter the position it was held in. It was only then that Chronos realized: he was already dead, only the Sorcery still extending his life by a little.
Chronos spent his remaining months trying to find the Titans' weakness, only to stumble upon a news article about one Harry Potter managing to wound one of them with an extreme spell.
###
After Chronos finished his story, Harry contemplated for a few minutes and finally spoke: "I guess I'll just have to go back and kill Prometheus. I already have a spell that'll work on him, anyway."
Chronos looked at Harry with a pitiful expression and said: "That's not possible. I've tried everything. The time is already sealed up to the point where the rest of the Titans came through."
"I'll have to inform the ICW. I think there will be more of their kind coming, I saw one of them creating a strange array as well, but it was destroyed when I tried out that spell on a Titan.
I'll need you to give your testimony as well, so don't go anywhere for the next few days."
Chronos moved his left hand slowly under his robes and took out an hourglass. He then said: "I'm afraid my Time is running out. I won't be able to help you anymore."
Just as he finished speaking, the last grain of sand fell down and, starting from his feet, Chronos began crumbling into dust.
He held the hourglass out towards Harry and said: "Take this. It is my Sorcery, my Hallow. You can never have enough of those."
Harry carefully took the hourglass only a moment before the hand holding it crumbled.
'Could've at least told me what a Sorcery is, or what this thing does.', Harry thought.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone