MYTHOS THE ORIGIN OF THE GODS

By A.A.

On planet Mythos, a utopia is endangered when the Mothergod mysteriously dies right after childbirth. One son was planned, but five were born. With the death of their wise leader, a perfect chance arises for a criminal organization to take form. This shakes the utopia to its foundation and breaks the peace they've known for billions of years. Dimago was chosen as heir to Mythos, placing Vikor, the firstborn, on a path of revenge. The five brothers live their lives cluelessly running into each other as their fates are forever intertwined. The planet's destiny rests in their hands, but a mysterious figure has other plans for Mythos, pulling their strings from the shadows.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9798887318677

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Prologue: A Brief History of Mythos

Chapter 1: The Quintuplets

Chapter 2: The Heir

Chapter 3: The Healer

Chapter 4: The Broker

Chapter 5: The Trickster

Chapter 6: The Usurper

Chapter 7: The Coronation

Chapter 8: A Healer's Endeavor

Chapter 9: A Troubled Mind

Chapter 10: A Change of Heart

Chapter 11: Deception

Chapter 12: Truths Revealed

Chapter 13: The Fall

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MYTHOS THE ORIGIN OF THE GODS

A.A.

Copyright © 2023 A.A.

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2023

ISBN 979-8-88731-866-0 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88731-867-7 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Prologue: A Brief History of Mythos

A story twisted by time and forgotten by the ages past is long due to be told anew. It is roughly 13.7 billion years after the big bang, or simply a.b.b. A thriving civilization lived in a utopia on planet Mythos of the star system Sol for billions of years. The Stellar family was tasked with keeping the peace and had managed to do so since the unification of Mythos. Each generation of Mythians was led by a wise and dedicated Stellar from the planet's capital city, Atlantis. The ruling Stellar, holding the title of Mothergod or Fathergod, had only one goal. It was their life's mission to further improve the utopia in which they lived. The violent and greedy history of Mythos showed the flawed ways of the past. With the help of detailed records of the planet's history, Divine Rules were set. These rules could never be changed unless the utopia was utterly destroyed. For now, there was no need to dwell on these rules except for one, the most important one—there could only be one heir to the Stellar family. He or she would be taught all that was needed to be a virtuous and benevolent leader. Their sole purpose was to improve the lifestyle of the citizens of Mythos and be better than the Stellars who came before. This all changed one day when the Mothergod gave birth to not one but five heirs to the throne, quintuplets that would forever change the course of their planet and tangle up the strings of fate of another world that would be later known as Earth.

Mythos was smaller compared to Earth; nonetheless, it was still rich in all aspects of nature. Just like Earth, it had settled from its volcanic state and overcome its harsh environments. As a smaller planet, the people themselves were much closer to each other, and once unified, they cared deeply about the future. When society became unanimous with their desires, nothing could stop them from achieving greatness. Aside from commercial teleportation and backward time travel, they had it almost all figured out, managing to access the eleven stable dimensions almost completely. This was enough to have them plan ahead but not enough to prepare them for the unexpected quintuplets.

Throughout the ages, the rise in population brought about the need to colonize other celestial objects. A catastrophic failed attempt in doing so with their advanced technology almost brought about their extinction. After that attempt, they resorted to law-enforced population control until a better option was available.

Over the millions of years of peace and a billions of years before the destiny-shaking quintuplets, five other individuals came together to change the fate of Mythos. They were the five lead scientists of Mythos who later became known as the Great Five. Although not an issue in their time, they realized that they must try again to colonize at least one new planet in order to allow future generations to have ample space and resources. Unfortunately for them, no other planet was habitable in its current state, so their only solution was to twist nature's arm into submission and have evolution do its work. They set their eyes onto the third and fourth planet of Sol. Both of these planets were within the habitable zone, a safe distance from the sun as to neither burn from extensive heat nor freeze up from the lack of it. Although these scientists knew they would never see their efforts bear fruit, they understood their situation as a whole. They sent the catalysts needed to jump-start the planets' ecosystems, forcing it to develop living conditions that Mythians needed to colonize it. For some, the process would take a blink of an eye, for others, an unfathomable amount of time. For everyday Mythians, it was a waste of time and resources. For anyone to think that far ahead was illogical, unnatural, and simply insane. But these scientists were committed to the bone and hadn't forgotten the catastrophe of the Blood Belt.

As mentioned before, this was not the first time Mythos tried to terraform another celestial object. The technology had been available to them for ages; it was most definitely doable, but the law was the law. Let us trace back a little bit to around ten billion years a.b.b. The scientists at that time had only everyone's best interest at heart; they tried to terraform several moons of the seventh planet of Sol to prevent the overpopulation of Mythos. The scientists were certain that everything was going smoothly and each moon was being terraformed one after the other. As soon as one moon was ready, it was settled by willing Mythians, and the terraforming of the next moon began. It was a process that took a decade to complete on the first moon simply because of its distance from Mythos. Once the logistics of the process was complete, the terraforming process in itself took only seven days to carry out. It was a marvel to look at—from a floating rock with nothing on it to a lush copy of Mythos within days. It was like magic straight out of a children's tale.

While examining the data for the fourth moon, the scientists had become arrogant with their success and dismissed a controversial piece of data, claiming it to be a mistake in the analysis. These couple of lines in the report were definitely not congruent to all the previously gathered data. Had the scientists not drowned in their own success, they might have humbly approached this anomaly and fixed the issue. Instead, only disaster awaited them. The next moon was not in any way to be terraformed under the current calibrations of the dimensional technology. Adjusting the calibration to the needed settings meant a massive delay in the terraforming process. Moving to a different moon was also not an option. At the same time, this change would have been enough for the moon to be able to withstand the transformation. The scientists contemplated redoing the tests, but it would have taken years for the results to get back. Had they listened to the given data, the moon would have been perfectly terraformed as all previous ones. Instead, the scientists at that time took a risk due to two major factors. The first one was the pressure of getting the project done within their lifetimes. The second, and more important factor, was that if the data was indeed faulty as they had believed, the calibration change would prove disastrous for the moon. They trusted their knowledge from previous successful terraformed moons and dismissed the data as an outlier result, not to be included in their calculations, a decision none would live long enough to regret.

Although the analysis and setup for the terraforming process took a lengthier period of time, the actual terraforming process was incredibly fast. This was thanks to the technology they used which manipulated the fourth, fifth, and sixth dimensions simultaneously. It directly affected the celestial object's time (manipulating the fourth dimension), its core (manipulating the fifth dimension) as well as surface (manipulating the sixth dimension). Three moons had been successfully terraformed, and millions of Mythians migrated to their new colonies. The fourth was supposed to be just like the others, a quick process which would further expand Mythos's reach, or so they thought, until the fourth terraforming sequence began. By that time, only a fifth of all Mythians were on Mythos; everyone else was on the new terraformed moons. Mythians who took the time to travel to the new exotic destinations were either settling down permanently or just visiting for a while. Unbeknown to them, on the second day of terraforming, the fourth moon suddenly collapsed onto itself and then violently exploded immediately after. The whole process was incredibly fast; from collapsing to exploding, it took less than a minute. The explosion was so violent that the shock wave obliterated the nearest unsettled moons and shoved the ones a bit farther off orbit. Some of them ended up crashing onto the planet they were orbiting while others became rogue moons, left to drift alone in the cold dark universe forever. The three settled moons got the thick end of the stick. The first terraformed moon was hit by a barrage of asteroids so large that it destroyed it in seconds, beginning a domino effect. The core collapsed and exploded, causing its fragments to barrage onto the next closest moon and repeat the process. The other two terraformed moons had it even worse. They were bombarded by asteroids for days. The inhabitants who survived the initial meteor strikes died when the moons finally gave out, ultimately resulting in the same fate as the rest, becoming nothing but debris rotating the planet forever. None survived, and all that was left was an asteroid belt filled with the blood of Mythians around the seventh planet. This would remain visible to all for billions of years to come, and it would remind the surviving Mythians of the catastrophe of the Blood Belt.

The citizens of Mythos unanimously decided that in honor of their fallen, they should never try to bend nature to their whim in such manner ever again. To ensure this promise would remain fulfilled by future generations, a law was passed. New laws were rarely passed on Mythos at this point. It had become a utopia long before this incident and had no need for additional legal limitations. Although this utopian lifestyle somewhat slowed down the advance in technology, it had also allowed for uninterrupted developments in many fields of science. Among these developments was ability to manipulate various dimensions, including the seventh and eighth dimensions. Later on, even the rest up to the eleventh dimension were somewhat subdued by the time the quintuplets were born.

Ever since that faithful day, no one bothered to mess around with terraforming planets or moons because the faster way of doing so was now illegal. No one wanted to waste time on such a lengthy project, so in the end, the whole idea was set aside. But in came the Great Five. Together they advanced Mythos's technology immensely. They were the ones that managed to access the manipulation of two more dimensions. This was an achievement which was completely unheard of. The previous dimension to be accessed took hundreds of years; to access two within one life span was incredible, to say the least. For their achievements, the Great Five became superstars and were treated as such. Loved far more than any previous team of scientists, their names were etched in history. Everyone grew up learning about the infamous team: Alpha, Tau, Epsilon, Rho, and Hota. They were so ridiculously dedicated to saving the future that they went beyond the line of sanity and took up the project that no one wanted—a plan to save Mythians millions of years down the line. No one cared to look into the future that far; none bothered to dive into projects that would not give fruit for ages to come.

One day the Great Five organized an unveiling at the main square of Atlantis, which was broadcast live around the world. They came on stage and gave out the destiny-changing announcement to all the citizens of Mythos. They exclaimed in unison, We give you projects Earth and Heart! In honor of the hearts we lost in the Blood Belt and the earth we destroyed, we will terraform these two planets, but not by bending nature to our whim but by working with it to create a future for all our children!

The crowd answered with loud cheers and thunderous applause! The Great Five were renowned for their exemplary work, and everyone became thrilled instantaneously. To inform the people of the start of a new project on any topic would be cause for mass hysteria of happiness, let alone two projects about creating new hospitable planets!

As they concluded the announcement with all the details regarding the project, the aforementioned hysteria was nowhere to be seen; the world went dead silent. The people were told that new hospitable worlds would be terraformed, worlds that would allow people to travel to new, never-seen-before places, that these new worlds would save the citizens from future problems regarding resources and overpopulation. And they were told that they, their children, and hundreds of future generations to come would never experience it.

The silence only lasted a few seconds after that statement was made, but these few seconds seemed like hours in the minds of the scientists. The crowd was split between the ones fearing past mistakes and the ones coming to terms with never witnessing the completion of these projects. In the end, the silence was broken by the clapping hands of a courageous few, which then spread to a steady and supporting applause by everyone present. The scientists had everyone's unwavering trust and confidence. The people were aware that if the lead scientists made the effort to create projects Earth and Heart as well as come out to the public to share it, it was a worthy cause that deserved their full attention and support.

When the Great Five passed away, monuments were erected in each city in their honor; city streets, boulevards, and squares took on their names. This would help people remember them and the vision they had, as well as make sure that their effort was never in vain or forgotten.

Throughout the ages and millennia, Mythos looked over the development of the third and fourth planet renamed Earth and Heart. The looking over part meant that they would intervene when necessary to help guide the planet to a hospitable and stable environment. Alas, faith in the projects faded throughout the ages. For the generations that came long after its start and long yet before its completion, these projects were still a worthy cause but at an unreasonable cost. A decision had come to pass: one of the two projects had to be terminated. They weren't planning on destroying the planet or anything similar, but rather cease spending resources to develop it further.

Despite all their scientific knowledge and advanced technology, nobody could see millions of years into the future. Without ample forecast data, how could anyone expect to make a logical decision about which project to continue and which to terminate? Sure, there were obvious differences between the planets which would make it easier to decide. For one, Heart had one-third the gravity of Earth, a slightly longer day, but once terraformed, the scientists expected it to have a climate almost identical to Mythos. On the other hand, Earth was much larger, it had the same length year as Mythos, and once terraformed, it would most likely have a higher average temperature than Mythos but nothing significant. These facts among many more would make it easy to decide which planet to terraform if this were something that they planned to do immediately with their advanced technology. But because it was now illegal to do so, the scientists that speculated these facts would not dare choose one of the two. How would they know which planet had a better chance of being terraformed successfully over the course of millions of years? Imagine being one of the scientists that chose the planet and after millions of years, have that project fail because of an unforeseen event that could not be even imagined at the time…a disconcerting thought, to say the least.

A new method to decide had to be implemented; a vote was held with the best suggestions to see which method was best. Mythians almost unanimously agreed that no single person should carry the weight of such a choice alone and that destiny should choose in their stead. Since there were only two choices, a coin did the trick. In the end, one could travel across the universe, from galaxy to galaxy, from the beginning of time till its end, and no one would willingly wish to be responsible for a mistake of such magnitude. A special coin was cast and engraved in honor of this decision, each side having the name of the planet written on it.

Heart! stated the speaker. The coin has landed in favor of Heart! That will be the project we will continue to work on!

This moment was later on written down in Mythian history as Destiny's Bluff, and what a marvelous bluff it was. Generation after generation, Mythian scientists worked on guiding the planet to the vision of the Great Five, but unbeknown to them, Heart just wasn't going to cooperate.

As each individual intervention into the evolution of the planet took ages to show results, it was easily overlooked in the grand scheme of project Heart. Scientists would keep detailed records of how they contributed to the project. With so much work being done on it, many of these reports fell on blind eyes and deaf ears. There would simply be too much data to keep up with and not enough time to go through it all. As an example, imagine a project that was to last ten million years beginning to end (and Heart's time line was even longer). A fresh scientist that came along on the project with only three million years until completion would have seven million years' worth of work done on the same project they were just starting. One could see how this scientist would miss out on a lot of important information. This overflowing amount of data led the scientists to make mistakes that ruined project Heart as a whole. Little did they know that each amazing idea they implemented on the project only further cemented it into its inevitable grave.

As time had passed and project Heart was on its way toward completion, scientists could see that it was not going as planned. By the Great Five's prediction, the planet should have been somewhat habitable by now, and yet it was nothing of the sort. Sure, it had water, but what good was it when it was poisoned by the toxic atmosphere it was under. Meanwhile, a scientist, unlike the rest, was insanely in love with the idea that destiny fooled them when the coin was flipped. The scientist kept asking the heads of the project to invest some time and resources into looking at the state of project Earth, deeming destiny had tricked them, but they would hear nothing of it. The poor scientist kept begging but ultimately was taken off the project as a whole due to his stubbornness. In a drastic effort to prove his belief, he snuck one night into the main research building and secretly changed the coordinates of the next recon probe set to depart for Heart. The new destination? Earth. The probe was launched successfully and would return back to Mythos once its mission was completed, only to be recovered by the next generation of scientists. Only later did the team responsible for the launch of the probe find out that it strayed off course. It was ultimately too late to do anything about it, and they had no clue where it was bound now. Unfortunately, our poor scientist never lived to see what happened to the probe and the data it brought back. But he would definitely not enjoy the outcome of his decision as it led to the planet being obliterated of almost all life.

Years had passed. The sneaky scientist was forgotten by all except for his family. The probe was making its return to Mythos with data that no one believed was possible.

What's this? We don't have a scheduled return for a probe! noted a worker from the aerial command center while looking at his station's monitors.

Quick, dispatch a team to collect the data and gather the head scientists, ordered the supervisor of the command center.

Once the team came to the landing site, they examined the probe on-site to make sure it was safe to bring it back to the laboratory.

Sir, we have recovered the probe and with it the data it has gathered. It looks to be in decent condition, said a member of the recovery unit as it reported from the landing site.

Excellent! Take the probe back to the lab. Let us immediately see what this is all about, exclaimed one of the head scientists of the project as the rest in the room nodded in agreeance.

As the probe arrived at the lab, an investigation began immediately on its data.

How did this happen? asked one of the scientists with a perplexed look on his face. We haven't touched that planet in millions of years!

What are we looking at here, sir? the member of the retrieving unit inquired.

By looking at the probe's travel data, this…this is…Earth, the scientist answered with a shocked look on his face, as if he'd seen a ghost.

No way that's Earth! We abandoned that project millennia ago, and yet here we see giant lizards roaming the planet…and look at that volcanic activity! How can they even live under those conditions? a scientist blurted out in excitement of what the probe showed.

The head scientist began to dissect the data in front of them. These images do paint a gruesome picture, but as we can see, the wildlife has manifested on its own over the millions of years we have neglected it. It appears as they are able to live normally under conditions that we see as too harsh. The true question is, what do we do about it? asked the head scientist.

There don't seem to be many options. We either intervene or we let it be, commented another scientist, as the rest nod in accordance.

Heart isn't going according to plan, and the citizens will never agree now to switch onto Earth after so much has been invested into Heart, a third scientist pointed out.

A day passed since the probe brought the surprising news, and the head scientists had dwelled on the matter, going over all realistic solutions and the costs of each. They had concluded that the people would simply not budge on the idea of investing time and resources into Earth at such a late stage. But considering the fact that Heart was not doing too well, they could try and convince the citizens to have a onetime intervention. They calculated that this intervention would not cost much, but if fruitful, it could save project Heart. And so they gathered up, stepped onto the stage as the Great Five had done millennia before them, and with a humble tone asked for a favor from the citizens, to hear them out with an open mind. They explained the situation to the world. The speech was broadcast to every household and screen in Mythos.

The probe brought us a lifeline we simply cannot disregard or ignore. Our current status at terraforming Heart is not where we would like it to be. There is still a chance to succeed, but we would be insane not to try and use this opportunity to create a backup plan, the head scientist argued.

After a second of silence, she gathered her thoughts and courage and continued, Currently, Earth's terraforming process is at a much better point than Heart's, but at the same time, it is heavily infested with giant hostile reptiles. These creatures whose size can be compared to houses cannot be ignored should we ever wish to go there ourselves. Our proposal is simple—redirect a meteor from the outskirts of Sol towards Earth. Hurling a meteor just the right size could create an environmental cataclysm that will kill off the wildlife without any danger of destroying the planet as a whole. If you let us do this, we promise not to invest any more resources or time into Earth. Instead, we will keep working even harder on Heart. At the same time, we hope Earth will spawn a more manageable species of wildlife as a contingency plan, one that we can easily submit to our control once we arrive if the need arises. The head scientist humbly bowed her head while keeping her eyes closed after asking a great deal of the people of Mythos.

The public in front of the scientists was definitely unsettled and divided. Unlike the reaction of the audience at the time of the Great Five, this was the polar opposite of a crowd unanimously wishing to go one way.

The Stellar family decided it was time to intervene. It was in these times that the leader of the planet was needed the most, for he or she had been taught since birth how to approach such situations with utmost care and wisdom. It was not an easy choice to make, but it was a necessary one nonetheless. The current Fathergod understood both sides and all their angles. He was aware of the costs from their side and the cost of the innocent lives on Earth; to him, their reptilian origin did not matter. The Fathergod also knew that in this case, he would be playing the role of a divine judge and jury by deciding whether the creatures on Earth would live or die. But when it came to securing the future of the whole planet, the choice became much easier.

After contemplating for some time, the Fathergod