Hephaestus began to peel away from the Constellar Palace in his horseless sky chariot, but glanced back to see Hestia standing at the edge of platform gamma, looking down off the precipice. Hephaestus had been willing to leave his aunt behind, putting himself and his wife first, but seeing her there now, alone and not knowing of the treachery that had transpired at the meeting she’d left, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He turned the chariot around and dove towards the platform.
When Hestia saw him she began shouting trying to wave him away, and Hephaestus shouted back for her to jump on his chariot. They shouted over each other for several seconds before Hestia finally caught what Hephaestus was saying.
“A coup?!” Hestia said, “Athena’s taken control?”
“It was our plan,” Hephaestus confessed, “We didn’t like the cavalier way that Zeus abused the humans, so Apollo, Artemis, and I agreed to help Athena. She convinced Hera and Poseidon that the three of them together could overthrow Zeus at this peace summit, but it was a trap to eliminate all three – Apollo and Artemis took care of Poseidon, and I betrayed my mother.”
“But you’re running, aren’t you? What happened?”
“Hera decided to torture our father for good measure. Apollo tried to stop her, and thanks to Athena, Artemis ended up dead. Then Hera turned on Apollo and… mutilated him.”
A deep rumbling came from beneath the palace, and the platform Hestia was standing on shook.
“What’s going on?” Hephaestus asked, “Was that an earthquake?”
“No…” Hestia said, “I set the quantum generator that powers the palace to overload, and that rumble was probably it reaching critical singularity.”
“What… you created a black hole?!”
“Just a small one, a temporary one,” Hestia said as an explosion somewhere in the palace echoed down the mountainside.
“Why?!”
“I’ve been unhappy with the humans’ treatment longer than you’ve been alive, nephew. I’ve thought about outright ending it all for over a hundred years. Today was the day. I figured, better to let the humans slog it out a little longer than to wipe out the entirety of Troy with some awful plague. Eventually, everything on top of this mountain will be swallowed by the quantum generator’s space-time breach, but for good measure I disabled the fail-safes on the supplemental fusion reactors. When the singularity rips away their shielding and exposes them to the cold air, they’ll explode. Violently.”
Hephaestus looked at her incredulously, “It’s always the quiet ones.”
“You should know,” Hestia said, “I can’t reverse it Hephaestus. Athena’s reign on Mt. Olympus is going to be short.”
Hephaestus shook his head, and finally reached out of the chariot and yanked her in. None too soon, either, as another explosion blew out the wall beneath the platform and caused it to plummet down the mountainside.
“Honestly, I think it’s for the best,” Hephaestus said as he piloted the chariot away from the mountain.
They travelled in silence, Hephaestus pushing the ancient machine to its limit. At last they came to Mt. Mosycholos; Hephaestus activated the large utility doors of his workshop and guided his levitating chariot in. Hestia climbed out as the doors shut behind them, and the blacksmith began directing a trio of hulking one-eyed machine men to begin moving things around and turning things on.
“What should I do?” Hestia asked, “If Athena survives the explosion, she’ll be furious, and I can’t stand up to her in a fight!”
“Artemis and Apollo felt that things might go badly, so they came up with a contingency plan. They passed their spirits into human servants and sent them far away.”
“They gave their legacies away to humans?” Hestia asked, “I didn’t think you kids knew about them.”
“Athena knew, because she received hers later in life. Athena told Apollo and Artemis, and then Artemis figured out how to separate herself from her power. She taught Apollo, and I got the gist of it, more or less.”
“So Apollo and Artemis are alive out there, somewhere, in human bodies?”
“A part of them lives on, yes.”
“Are you going to try to do the same?”
“After a fashion. If I give up my legacy, Athena won’t see me as a threat, and since she’s not a vindictive person by nature, I think she’ll leave me and mine alone. Unfortunately, I received my legacy in utero – there’s a chance that separating it from my mind will leave me a vegetable, so if I want to have any chance of surviving with my mind intact, I’m going to have to do things differently from the others.” Hephaestus began hooking himself up to one of the machines in his workshop.
“What should I do?”
“Get upstairs and tell Charis to lockdown the mountain, and not to let Athena in under any circumstances. Tell her I’m igniting Vulcan.”
“Vulcan?”
“She’ll know what it means.”
Hestia rushed up to the main level and began shouting for Charis. She found her in the receiving room.
With Athena.
“Hestia!” Charis said, “Another unexpected visitor. If I’d known we were going to be so popular today, I would have had the servitors prepare a cake or something.”
“Athena,” Hestia nodded.
“Dear aunt, imagine finding you here!” Athena said, “It’s such a relief to see you. A terrible thing has happened at the Constellar Palace. Zeus and Poseidon turned on each other after you left, and now the whole palace has been destroyed.”
“Yes… I saw the destruction. I’m so lucky I left when I did. Is everyone alright?”
“No Hestia. Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, Artemis, and Apollo are all dead. Likely Hermes and Demeter too. It’s a relief to see you here; I assume your presence in Hephaestus's home means that he is also well?”
“Uh, yes,” Hestia didn’t think she could sell the lie that he wasn’t there, “We came in through the utility doors. Charis, he asked me to tell you he was igniting Vulcan.”
“He is?” Charis pitched her voice as if she were excited, but Hestia could see something in her expression that said that was not good news.
“What is Vulcan?” Athena asked.
“A pet project Hephaestus has been working on," Charis smiled, "It’ll be very exciting to see it finally working.”
“But what is it?”
“A surprise, Athena,” Charis said, “Don’t you like surprises?”
“I loathe surprises,” Athena said, glaring at Hestia.
“And I loathe liars,” Hestia glared back at her.
Athena pulled out Pandora’s Box, “I assume you know what this is?”
“Very well,” Hestia said.
“I have to rebuild it all,” Athena said, “I’m going to make it better than before. I’m going to create a just and good pantheon to reign over humanity. I’d welcome your insight and knowledge, but with the palace gone my plans have all become very precarious. I can’t afford to have other legacy bearers running around creating chaos while I try to rebuild.. We’re too… mercurial.”
“So if I sacrifice my Legacy, you’ll spare the life of my mortal body.”
“I only ask you to sacrifice a bit of power for the greater peace,” Athena said, “That’s the foundation of civilization.”
“True,” Hephaestus said as he staggered into the room and collapsed onto Charis’s shoulder, “but taken to the extreme it’s also the foundation of tyranny, isn’t it? I suppose you’ll be wanting to box me up in there, too.”
“No, no, no,” Athena produced a smaller container, a silver phial, “Like Morgania, Mbomxolodur is still uncorrupted. If I want to keep him that way, I have to store him separately.”
“Why? Why bother?” Hestia said, “Why not put them all in the box and toss it into the sea?”
“Despite what you might think, I never intended to rule alone. But as Persephone would say, I needed to weed the garden and replant a few of the nicer flowers. Unfortunately, between Apollo and Artemis relinquishing their legacies to random humans, and you blowing up my palace, I’m having – once again – to throw out decades of planning in favor of improvisation.”
“My heart bleeds for you,” Hestia said.
Athena smiled coldly, “That’s one option.” The war goddess shifted to her true form. Before becoming Morgania’s host, Athena had spent years passing as a human in Athens. When Pandora had changed her life all those decades ago, she’d decided to continue using a variation on that form to put others like Zeus at ease. Beneath that illusion, though, she looked much more like a true Titan. She grew taller, her skin turned marble white, and her blue eyes became blood red. With a glimmer of light, her armor shifted with her to match her size, and thin spikes emerged from the shoulders and her right vambrace. A forked tongue flicked from behind sharp fangs.
She held the phial out to Hephaestus, “The time has come, firebearer.”
Hephaestus leaned over and spit into the phial without protest.
Nothing happened.
Athena glared down at him, “You’ve relinquished yours as well. You realize, nothing will stop me from finding the person you passed it to, and crushing the air from their lungs to wring it out of them.”
“Well, that assumes they have lungs.” Hephaestus shouted, “Vulcan, you powered up yet?”
“Affirmative, brother,” a strange voice came from the hallway behind Hephaestus, and the wooden door blew into the room in a hail of splinters. An armored man – it looked like a man, anyway – came charging through it and tackled Athena, throwing her into a case filled with scrolls.
“Hestia!” Hephaestus shouted as Charis dragged him away from the fight, “Back to my workshop! Let’s go!”
Hestia watched the brawl briefly and then followed after them.
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