Chapter Text

Chapter 1

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From Hestia’s hearth a child shall rise,
Born of flame, with ember eyes.
He shall not suckle at mortal breast,
But drink the heat from Hestia’s chest;
With a crown of smoke and eyes of red,
The world shall burn, or rise instead.

                                                                                                                                                                                          ~~

Hestia

Hestia looked at her little boy, the one for whom she had broken her oaths. A child born out of flames…

Her son’s eyes burned red as ambers, crowned with hair the colour of smoke.

His face, oh, the boy’s face looked exactly like hers… just a far younger version of hers.

She chuckled. For millennia, she had always taken the form of a young girl, but now she was a mother, and she had a son to nurse.   

Her form shifted, and she took on the form of her adult self.

“Goo-he”

Her little boy wiggled in her arms, trying to reach out for her. She grinned and blew a raspberry for him. She might not have raised children of her own, but she had raised children of her sisters and brothers.

Her boy giggled. And for the first time ever, Hestia felt a connection, a connection with something of her own. She knew instantly that she would give her life for the little child. HER little child.

She felt her arms tighten just a bit more around Perseus. A perfect name. Name of a hero that had resounded through the millennia that had come and gone.

She lowered the cloth covering her breasts and allowed her milk to be suckled out by her son.

He was a child of Hearth, a child of flames.

While her nephew Hephaestus might be the force ruling the fire, she was the very incarnation of flames and anything to do with heat. She was synonymous with fire. She was quite like the primordial, who were their own domains. Her father had seen the power in her; she was not quite a titan, but she also wasn’t exactly a god. She was the shift that represented the qualities of the two generations.

She was lost in her thoughts, lost in the beauty of her son. And for the first time, she didn’t appear to mediate, to calm the gods when, like always, her family squabbled.  

She didn’t care because gods were eternal, and her boy was not.

Her flames protected her, enclosed her, but they were also her home, one of the reasons why she was the goddess of home, of hospitality, of community.

And no god could pry on her and these moments, which she would cherish for millennia to come.

Her son, her brilliant son, she could feel the power radiating from him, she knew that he was going to be the most powerful demigod to ever live… though was he really a demigod? She didn’t know, for all said she hadn’t really lain with any man who had led to her son’s conceiving. He had been born by flames, by her domain aspect. But it didn’t make her any less of a mother to her son.  

Though sadly, she knew that power came at a price. Her son was so close to the godly side that he would be one of the few major threads that Morai played with to shape the history. Alas, Heroes didn’t often get happy endings.

But she would not allow Hades to take her boy. No, that would never happen. Her son would take his rightful place as a god when his time was up in the mortal plane.

She whispered the blessings of immortality, binding the powers of god into the soul of her son. When he would breathe his last breath, her blessings would flare and turn him into a god.  

Why she didn’t immediately turn her son into a god, well, the answer was simple, she could never take away the joys of being mortal, she wished she had been able to experience what it felt like to cherish every day, to know that the next day might be the last. It would also teach her son the value of a mortal life, the pain and suffering that a mortal went through, and it would make sure that her son turned into one of the better gods when it was his time to ascend.

Artemis

It was weird when, after millennia of her aunt acting as a peace keeper in the family, that when like always Poseidon and Zeus came almost to blows, that the hearth did not flare up like always and establish peace among the halls of Olympus.

She was distracted by how calm the hearth seemed, almost like the arms of Leto, her mother.

“You have no right to tell me what to do or not to do in my own kingdom”, Poseidon roared

“You will calm your waves and stop sending monsters after my daughter.”, Zeus fired back.

“Why? Why shall I do anything after you broke your oaths, which you forsake, but forced onto myself and Hades?”  

“I admit my wrongdoing, but the child has no part in it”, Zeus fired back

Realizing that her aunt was not going to appear, she had to calm down her father and her uncle, lest they spend all their time arguing and forget about other important matters.

“Athena, I am sure by now that you have realized that our aunt is not going to appear”, she said to Athena, who was looking at her father and uncle with loathing.  

“Indeed, surprising as this is, I think we need to diffuse the tension.”

“Father, Uncle, I think this matter can come to an end pretty quickly. Let the girl join Artemis’s hunt; this will cure any reservations held by the council over the prophecy. My cousin will live as you wish, and Uncle Poseidon will hold a minor favor over you.”, Athena suggested.

Artemis knew this was her cue

“And as you may have noticed, Aunt Hestia has not been seen in a long time, and after such a long break today, she hasn’t even appeared to calm the council and give her inputs.”

“Monsters are rising, father, monsters which have not been seen in a very long time, now have surfaced again from Tartarus. And my hunters have hunted a chimera”, she said, letting the news sink in.

“And let me remind you all that Camp is without borders.”

And thankfully, this led to another argument, but at least this was productive.