Chapter Text
The Fates were bored.
Their current tapestries main characters had aged out of their prime questing age and They hadn't planned to start the next era of demigods just yet.
They didn't have an idea for where to continue Their current tapestry, maybe a small hiatus from weaving the world should be in order.
Or perhaps a stroll through the storage of Their old stories? Picking up an unfinished tapestry would bring back Their fading creativity. It would also be good to get to finalizing Their old tapestries, They had a great lot of incomplete ones.
The zombie apocalypse AU? No, They still didn't have an ending for that one. They lost the plot a long while ago, on to the next one.
The magicless one? No. If They wanted to mess with powerless, boring humans They would just continue Their current story in the mortal realm.
The musical? No. They do not speak of that one.
The cursed pantheon story? N- actually, that one caught Their eye.
A universe where the Titan King laid a curse upon the Kronides with his dying breath, a petty act They found humorous while weaving. Using his final words to plague the Gods' eternal lives. An enchantment to ensure their cradles lay empty and wombs barren, leaving them fruitless with no way to expand their reign as the new rulers of domains.
And to add to the horror, even the attempts of conception would seep power from both sires, causing unending, excruciating pain until either a miscarriage occurs or the date of birth arrives, only for a new type of pain to wash over as they were forced to watch their kin to perish in their arms time and time again.
Thousands of infants died from the curse, it wrecked through their small bodies, tearing them up from the inside out. By the time their parents could hold them, the corpse was already cold. Disintegrating into golden dust before their eyes.
Out of the myriad of bereavements their family had faced, there were a few lucky little mercies They had given them.
The first was Zeus' eldest, Athena, whose birth would become the blueprint that was necessary for even hoping for a second generation of gods.
After Metis' death, Zeus turned her into a fly and ate her in an act to keep her wisdom in himself to remember her. All of Olympus mourn the late queen, but their somber was replaced with shock when something happened when their King experienced a mind-splitting headache.
An infant burst out of his skull, weak and frail, but... alive...
The Kronides scrambled to get the feeble babe to care. Checking her vitals to see just how she didn't pass like every other godling in their pantheon.
She had a domain.
Wisdom.
Metis' domain.
It was the invisible chains of duty that kept her alive, tied around her soul so tightly that it kept the shattered pieces together.
Giving a domain to a mere infant was unimaginable. Their soft bodies and fragile souls would burn as they ascended, ichor flooded their thin veins too fast and ripped through them, breaking brittle bone and tearing muscles.
But obtaining one while in the womb... having their soul and body adapt around it, living because of it... it was so insane it would be something They would make work because They found it funny.
And it did work. For some, at least.
Through many trials, lots of tribulations, and countless failures... they had children.
Ares came long after Athena, the first success after the testings of the theory. Though they didn't think he'd survive, the domains of strength and war got him through. So many tears were shed, so many smiles were shared, so much joy was in the air. And so much more to come.
A short while after him came the twins. Artemis was a godling of the wild, the hunt, the moonlight, and childbirth. Another theory they tested, if one domain let a godling survive birth, even as weakened and frail as they were, would many make them strong? Her brother, Apollo was supposed to just have archery, music, poetry, and prophecy, but complications during labor forced their hand to give him another of healing, while he was already alive. He lived, but watching him in agony was a cruel reminder that all of this was simply experimental. Poor thing.
It was a miracle itself for a godling to be conceived, but the word was an absolute understatement when it came to Hephaestus. The infant was already impaired from a difficult labor, but his postpartum adventure gave every god on Olympus a collective heart attack. The babe was unwatched for just a moment, and somehow fell off the sky-kingdom and through the clouds. He wasn't hard to find, thankfully, the volcano he landed in served as a cushion for the god of fire and forge. But the fall from such an altitude gave him partial hearing loss and rugged scars littered across his flesh from the jagged stone that he got marked by during his descent.
Hermes was the easiest out of all of them, minus Aphrodite, as she came from seafoam and was adopted into their family. He was much younger than all his siblings because the King and Queen were so shaken from the Heph incident. His birth was as swift as his domain with all the aid his mother had in form of his step-mother and half-sister. A breath of fresh air for the Olympians.
And finally, the last of the Sky-King's children was Dionysus, whose mother couldn't survive his gestation period while he did. He was sewn into the King's thigh to some-what replicate Athena's birth, the first and last of the King's offspring surviving the same way. Given the domains of wine and madness.
While Zeus was blessed with an abundance of wondrous offspring, his siblings didn't get such a luxury.
Poseidon only had sired one heir of the sea, Prince Triton. Born with deformed lungs, he relied on his gills to breathe most of the time, meaning he had to remain in his father's waters at practically all times. Save for short increments where he could attend the celebration banquets or divine meetings, as long as he had his father present of course, before retiring to Atlantis. Staying too long would leave his organs to the mercy of dry air, shriveling up and suffocating him from the inside out.
Demeter had but one daughter, a girl named Persephone who wilted like a delicate bloom far too early. Before her soul was truly taken by the Underworld, its ruler found her before it. He didn't know who she was, she didn't know who he was, for her mother sheltered and hid her from the world in efforts to protect her only child.
Hades and Persephone fell for one another, Persephone thought the King to be another wandering soul, Hades assumed she was a deceased mortal. He took her as his bride and made her his Queen.
When his siblings came down to congratulate him on his new marriage that's when he discovered who the love his life actually the dead goddess of spring. The reason Demeter was too overcome with sorrow to complete her duties, creating the first winter.
Then the Great Seasons Agreement was made. Persephone could stay half the year with her mother, and needed to retreat to the Underworld for the rest of the year, or her soul would fade into nothing without going back to the realm she belonged to.
Hades and her never consummated to make an heir, as she was half-deceased and could not bear children, no mater how hard they tried.
Hestia swore herself to eternal maidenhood, seeing the horrors of the curse as something she would have no part of. Her nieces, Athena and Artemis, would follow in her footsteps.
It had a good plotline, nice format, but They had run out of ideas for it once They were done with the backstory. No actual main characters to mess around with or traumatize. The gods here were so weak, too easy to break. They didn't even add any of Their favorite greek tragedies! Their specialty!
What were They to do with this one? Actually...
They had quite the idea...
They placed the old tapestry back down, going over to Their loom to look over the menagerie of characters They had to play with. Their current tapestry had so many to choose from, so many demigods and the gods here were still ungrateful brats. Surely a few missing strings of heroes past their prime wouldn't be too missed.
They plucked three threads from the tapestry. Shades of sea-green, deathly-black, and electric-blue dotted with silver. Perseus Jackson, Thalia Grace, and Niccolo Di Angelo. Ages ranging from 16 to 21, mentally at least with the girl's immortality.
Three young adults, done with the terror of questing and serving the gods.
Three demigods in a world that didn't need them, about to face a world that wanted them.
How fun.