Sitting atop a throne is a lonely place. You watch the king with his stormy eyes, fists crashing onto his dusty, golden crested armrests as his voice echoes into the chill, empty hall.
"They will not forget!" he bellows, and the throne room quivers, and you are not sure if it is from the intensity of his ferocity or from the thunder that follows in the dark clouds around. Electricity sparks off of him, and had it been in the Golden Age before, the hall itself would have ignited. Yet now, it would have been surprising had it even caused one's hair to stand on end. You look at him with pity, undeserving of the King of the Sky, yet all too fitting for this fading shell of a god.
Another crack of thunder resounds, and Zeus snaps out of his chair to pace, his footsteps landing on the cracked marble with heavy thuds. Your eyes follow him, but the destruction of a man is an intimate thing to behold, more so than if he was laid bare upon an altar for all to see, and you quickly avert your eyes to give him privacy at the end. They come to rest on the decaying steps to the temple on Olympus. You idly wonder when the whole structure will come crumbling down, knowing there will be no one left to mourn its loss.
There is a sudden roar, and you rip your eyes from the steps back to the god of gods, who is now teetering near the edge of the temple, overlooking grey storm clouds below. Even this close to the end, he makes for a menacing sight, towering over the heavens and the earth below, one final stand.
"You do not forget the gods," he seethes. "We breathed life into this miserable earth, into these creations now roaming the planet, claiming it as their own. They are nothing without us. Nothing!" His words have the full force of his wrath, but you know better than to trust words. He is trembling slightly, and his knuckles have gone white around the lightning bolt clenched in his giant fist. Just as you looked away before, you overlook the error in his words-that the gods did not give the earth, and that those who did had their time as well, and that man's creator had long ago withered against the rock to which Zeus himself had chained him millennia ago.
He stands perfectly still for the briefest of moments, looking out over all of creation, then abruptly lets loose his bolt out into the aether, and lighting explodes in one final dazzling array of sheer, brilliant power onto the earth. But the storm is already coming to an end; the sun is peaking out to shed faint light onto a world that has already forgotten the rain.
Lord Zeus, we all have our time, you say, and you tighten your grip on the scythe in your hands. His eyes flare at your words, and without turning, he gives one last, wretched cry.
"I am immortal."
