The Olympian Council watched with a grim look as the goddess in front of them wept bitterly.
Asteria, the goddess of the stars, hugged the weeping goddess to herself, trying to calm her down, yet there was no use.
After all, how can someone comfort a goddess whose domain was shrinking by the day because of the actions of the humans? The very same humans that the Olympians had helped create?
Prometheus, the Titan who came up with the design, looked ashamed of what his creations had become, while Zeus looked thoroughly enraged.
The worst reaction, however, came from the two Olympians who are usually the calmest of the group.
Hestia's warm eyes were now aflame with a rage unseen since the days of Titanomachy. Her poker now transforming into its true form, a golden scepter with its head wrapped in the sacred fire that belonged to her and her alone.
If Hestia's anger could be called a wildfire and Zeus's rage could be called thunderous, then Brolios Asterion's anger was downright apocalyptic, evident by the way the world was dyed purple under his unfathomably deep rage. A sight not seen since the end of the Titan War.
"....This farce has been allowed to continue long enough."
Prometheus instantly panicked at Brolios's words.
"My Lord-"
"Prometheus. I know what you want to say, but trust me, old friend, this version of humanity has failed us, failed you, even more so than their predecessors."
Pure power continued to ripple off of Brolios while the rest of the Olympians also started to lose control of their own powers under their unified anger, making all of the Greek realms tremble under their power.
"Their unwillingness to worship Olympus, we can accept. They are beings blessed with freedom. It is their choice if they want to worship us or not."
"Their warlike nature, I can tolerate. Because conflict is the natural part of all living beings."
"Their barbaric ways.....we chose to overlook, if only because we had faith that they would learn, that they would overcome their baser instincts and become what they were meant to be."
"Their ignorance and arrogance, we forgave. Knowing that, as a young race, they had much to learn. That is why we did not punish them when that bastard King Lycaon tried to feed us that soup made from the remains of human children and only punished him with an eternity in the fields of punishment."
"But this? This is beyond reason!!"
Brolios's Ki erupted like a volcano, instantly causing all the Greek realms to quake even more, with some chunks of land starting to levitate into the air under the sheer power that caused the laws of physics to collapse under its power.
Yet, Brolios did not care.
He turned to look at the weeping woman whom he called a friend. The Goddess of Justice, Astraea, who still had her head buried in the bosom of Asteria, the Goddess of the Stars.
His eyes flashed an ominous yellow, completely different from his normal black eyes and the intense purple that they take on when he uses his domain of destruction.
"It is one thing to ignore Justice, the laws of Xenia, and other such things. But to try and capture the Goddess of Justice herself? To try and bend justice to their will? Going so far as to capture nature spirits and hold them hostage so that she would not be able to fight back while they tried to capture her and try to turn her into their slave? That is simply not acceptable!!"
Prometheus fell silent before whispering out words that enraged the god and saddened him in equal measures.
"My Lord, do you think they would have been able to do any of this if you had not taught them the arts of life force manipulation and the arts of combat and magic?"
".....You are right, old friend. This time, I am the one most guilty."
He turned to stare at the exhausted Goddess of Justice and bowed deeply, much to everyone's shock and her panic.
"Forgive me, Astraea. It is because I was foolish enough to teach the humans the power of Ki and martial arts that they were able to do what they did to you. It is my fault that I blindly trusted my friend's words and did not wait for a few centuries to see their nature before teaching them."
Prometheus fell silent at the jab, unable to speak anymore as Astraea hurriedly sat up to stop her old friend.
"Lord Brolios! This is not your fault-"
"It is my fault, Astraea. But don't worry. I will make sure that Justice is served for what you endured and what they almost did to you by nearly defiling your vow of purity."
The most powerful god in the Greek realms turned to his brother and king and spoke as a matter of fact.
"Today, the Bronze Race dies. They whose mind is dominated by nothing but carnage, they whose people know only evil, shall no longer be allowed to sully our lands. Everyone who agrees, say Aye."
"Aye!"
"Aye!"
"Aye!"
"Aye!"
"Aye!"
"Aye!"
"Aye!"
"Aye!"
"Aye!"
Zeus looked at the unanimous vote and nodded with satisfaction towards Brolios, hiding his surprise at the fact that his son, the God of War whose strenght was the greatest in this timeperiod, right below Brolios, had also voted 'Aye' when he knew that he would loose all that boost he gets from his domain of War should they go through with this, showing just how much this version of humanity had disgusted the Olympians.
"It is an Aye from me as well, brother. The Bronze Race truly is irredeemable. They whose dark hearts prevent them from reaching even your realms are simply not worth letting live."
Brolios nodded at those words, for he knew it to be true. A truth that he learned the hard way.
For centuries, he tried to teach the Bronze Race. To try to make them better. To try and put them on the path of enlightenment, knowledge, and wisdom. Yet, they perverted all his teachings into tools of war, conflict, and inflicting pain on their fellow living beings.
Every day, his domain of the Lost would welcome many a spirit or animal that was harmed by the humans one way or another, enraging him with every instance of human brutality he witnessed.
'Truly, these things are unworthy of being called humans. Especially not the humans that I remember.'
With the decision made, Prometheus closed his eyes in pain as Brolios flew into the air above Olympus.
Meanwhile, Zeus turned to the Titan of Foresight and spoke softly.
"Tell me where your son and his wife are. I will bring them here, lest they be caught in Brolios's rage and be eradicated."
Prometheus's son, Deucalion, and his wife, Pyrrha, were one of the rare few beings in the realms of the humans that the gods were fond of for their morality and their unwillingness to follow in the footsteps of their kin.
That is why Zeus decided to save them, and maybe even use them as the template for the next iteration of humanity, should the Olympians ever decide to remake humanity in the first place.
"....He is in Arcadia."
Zeus smirked cruelly at Prometheus's words, making the titan flinch.
"I see. It would seem someone was using their power to transmit the details of this meeting to their son and warn them beforehand, hm?"
"...."
Zeus waved his hand, teleporting Deucalion and Pyrrha in front of the council, much to their panic, as they were in the middle of helping evacuate Arcadia, knowing what was coming.
Meanwhile, Brolios simply stared down at the unworthy creatures that roamed the lands and raised his hand into the air.
There was no grand proclamation, there was no speech given, nor any chance for the Bronze Race to beg for mercy.
The power of Hakai boosted by his divinity, formed above him in the form of countless balls of energy, hanging in the skies of Greece.
His divine senses, combined with his Ki senses, singled out every since human out there except the children and a rare few whose souls did not feel tainted with dark emotions and thoughts.
Then, with a twitch of his finger, they fired.
In a single instant, every single human of the Bronze Race who was judged guilty was wiped out.
There were no explosions, no grand spectacles.
Only a silent erasure from the very fabric of reality. Even their souls were obliterated, not even given the chance to go down to Hades, as the God of Destruction did not wish for their darkness to taint the realm of his brother.
Those rare few and the children too young to know what they were doing, he teleported straight to his Grove, where they would be allowed to live out the rest of their lifetimes.
And so, the Bronze Age came to a definitive end, not with a bang or a flood, but with a chilling silence.
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Author Notes: With this, we are done with the Bronze Age. We will now be moving on to the Heroic Age, where the real legends are born.
Also, Sorry for the long wait. Things have been pretty bad in the last week, so I have had no time to write. Got laid off at work thanks to 'downsizing' as they put it, which is corporate speak for making up for losses caused by idiots in power. Anyways, I just joined my new workplace, so hopefully, I will be able to update more frequently.
Incidentally, I also decided to close down all my alt accounts, so I will be updating the stories that I wrote over there here in the next few days (They won't be active stories because I haven't worked on them in more than six months at this point, but I need to put them somewhere, so why not place them in my main account, right?)
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