Work Text:
Inspired by this theory.
I suggest you read that before you read this.
But tl;dr, Estelle's appearance is weird, Apollo's reaction to her is even weirder, a poem by Hesiod called Works and Days said that there's five ages of mankind that also were referenced in The Lightning Thief and The Last Olympian, Zeus destroyed the different ages whenever he didn't like them anymore, we live in the iron age and the poem said that Zeus will get rid of us when people start being born with gray hair.
Basically, Estelle marks the end of the world.
When Lester saw Estelle the first time, he couldn't help but feel like there was something he was forgetting. Something important, nagging at the back of his mind.
Unfortunately, Apollo in his human form with memory issues couldn't remember some random poem that a guy wrote how many thousand years ago, so he simply subconsciously decided not to tell Zeus about Estelle.
Then Lester became Apollo again and had a panic attack when he fully remembered what this meant.
Hopefully, Zeus wouldn't notice some random mortal baby. Even if she's the little sister of Percy Jackson. Right?
Of course, that's when other signs show up.
I am basing this off of stuff I read from Works and Days, although I kind of breezed through it when I started getting a headache, so they might be completely unrelated to the whole end of the world thing.
Estelle's hair turns more and more gray as she gets older and it's not long before she lost the pepper bit and now her hair is just fully salt. Demigods start looking more and more like their godly parents, and it's most obvious in the big three children. Percy especially is basically a miniature Poseidon without the beard. He and some other demigods may or may not be ascending. Meg too, since she's close to Apollo and she's weirdly strong for a twelve-year-old child of Demeter.
Apollo, panicking, tells them about the whole poem thing, and the demigods immediately start reading Works and Days to learn all they can about it.
Well, the Athena cabin does. The others are too dyslexic to make through all of it.
On a related note, I was thinking of making the chapter titles lines from Works and Days, though you probably won't do that unless you also decide to read the poem.
Percy is really upset that the world is ending again and especially the fact that his sister's messed up in this now too. He really hates Zeus right now, and he's not the only one who does.
Percy also doesn't like how the poem is talking to some guy named Perses, whose name is only a single letter off from Perseus, but Annabeth tells him it's just a coincidence.
But their activity cannot go unnoticed by Zeus for long.
Estelle is seven.
It's 2020.
By the way, Works and Days mentioned that Zeus can make plagues.
Now, what major plague happened in 2020?
Yes, I do mean COVID.
Apollo tries using his own plague powers to lessen the impact, but he can't act too much or too openly or else Zeus will make him mortal again. At least he's not the only god on their side. There's a bunch of other gods who aren't exactly pleased with Zeus' actions. I'm pretty sure the entire pantheon hates him. Someone just has to convince them all to finally act on it.
So yeah, the demigods start a revolution against Zeus. They've been too tired of being used as cannon fodder, and now Zeus has arbitrarily decided to wipe out the Earth? Yeah, they've had enough.
Percy and whoever else is turning into a god ascends and they dethrone Zeus, tossing him into Chaos just to make sure he isn't coming back. Meg is particularly happy that she got rid of Apollo's Beast like how he got rid of hers.
Hera's kind of queen now since with Zeus gone, she's got the highest authority, but she's actually pretty happy her husband's dead now. She tried to overthrow him before, but that just ended up in Poseidon and Apollo getting turned into mortals and Hera getting chained to the sky with anvils attached to her feet. Certain demigods still don't like Hera that much, but she's a lot more chill now that there isn't a cheating husband around.