Buried deep in Tartarus, a figure shrouded in shadows fought against obsidian chains, using the last of the strength she allotted daily to that task. As usual, they remained as fixed in the walls of her prison as they had the first day she had been incarcerated by that infernal King of the Gods. When she freed herself, her first job would be to bring all of her father's might down on that fool's head. Her children swarmed around the nest. Some were as useless as the gods' pet soldiers, but a few showed promise.

She couldn't do much while the gods were still in power, but she still had some power of her own. The gods had learned their lesson from her husband's rampage during the last deo-titan war and tightened her bonds, fearing her release. It made her work significantly harder, but it was too close to completion for her to give up now. She summoned one of her children with a snap of her fangs.

The beast lumbered over. It was the latest in a long line of experiments, its predecessors stretching back to before the time of the Ancient Greeks. Each change she made bringing it closer to her ideal. She could only make the slightest of alterations now that her powers had been further constricted, but that was all she needed.

She lashed out at some others with her serpentine legs to prompt them into joining their brother before her. The small gathering put up no resistance as their mother's tentacles wrapped around them. They simply stood in a trance-like state, accepting their destruction at the hands of the creature which had created them.

At their mother's touch, flesh and bone dissolved into the golden dust known so well to all the Underworld's inhabitants. She molded the dust in her tendrils, shaping her children anew. When she was done, only the original monster remained unscathed, but not unchanged. It had grown larger, and its skin glowed in the shadows of the prison. Even the monster itself could feel the greater power that came with its new form. Nonetheless, it was unfazed by the murder of its siblings, still held in a trance-like state.

Growls were passed between the two. After a moment of contemplation, the sole survivor left, leaving its mother alone with writhing piles of sand. Knowing the process would take long enough, she sat back down to watch her creations rise, flicking some grains of sand into shape absent-mindedly, relishing in the thoughts of the chaos she was going to cause…