Inside a Secret Chess Club in Britain, 2011
Athena sat across from Hikaru Nakamura in a quiet London chess club. Her opponent was a modern master—young, sharp, and well-praised by mortals—but to her, it was a refreshing challenge more than a true contest. The evening had gone pleasantly. Had she not possessed centuries of experience—and had she not played chaturanga back when it was first conceived—she might have been forced into a draw.
But now, in the endgame, with victory close at hand, her mind drifted.
Her thoughts turned to Annabeth.
A daughter she genuinely adored.
Athena wasn't fond of having children. As a maiden goddess, she never truly had them in the traditional sense. Yet she had sired many over the ages. Few, like Annabeth, held a special place in her heart. Most were forgotten, scattered across time and history.
One might wonder—why did the gods even have children at all? Why so many?
It all came down to Divinity.
There were two main paths to attaining Divinity. The first was to directly control the fundamental forces or laws of the universe—using them as anchors to ascend. The second was to gather the Faith of mortals, binding their belief into divine power.
Some, like the older Asgardians—Odin and his ilk—did both.
Even the Titans before the Olympians had wielded fragments of the laws they were bound to. But for the Olympians, such paths were closed. Their power came not from law or structure, but from inheritance. Their Divinity was passed down from the Titans—but they had never learned to wield the laws themselves.
Without the support of Rhea and the divine structure of Olympus, they might never have risen at all.
When the Age of Faith began, the Titans were cast in shadow. The hatred of mortals toward them was immense—and Olympus had cleverly redirected that hate into belief in the Olympians. For a time, it worked.
Then, inevitably, the faith waned.
Desperate, they rebranded—new identities crafted for Rome. Jupiter, Minerva, Mars… masks to wear, hoping to hold onto belief a little longer. It mostly backfired. Still, it bought them time.
Then came the real blow.
Yahweh left. And in his absence, Michael and the Host rose to power, sweeping across Earth like a flood, reshaping faith in their image.
Unlike the Asgardians, who had eight other worlds feeding them belief, the Olympians had only Earth. Yes, Earth was cosmically significant—capable of producing true Divinity—but it was also their only source. And now, even that had been taken.
They could not afford to war with the Angels. Yahweh was gone—but not dead. Who knew what wrath he might unleash if the Olympians harmed his children? That was not a being to trifle with. He had faced Celestials—and made them retreat.
Olympus needed another way.
And that's when they discovered the loophole.
Demigods.
Their children—half-divine, half-mortal—could generate faith. Immense amounts, in fact. Tragic, heroic lives, filled with suffering and triumph—those were the kinds of stories mortals clung to, prayed to. When in pain, when desperate, people reached out to something greater.
And those children, those heroes, returned that belief tenfold.
So, the gods did what gods rarely liked to do.
They had children.
Hera, ever the hypocrite, got out of it. She claimed her Divinity—goddess of marriage and fidelity—could not permit such a compromise. Hestia declined outright. She was the eldest, the most powerful of the goddesses, and the quiet heart of Olympus itself. None questioned her.
Artemis and Athena both objected, citing their maidenhood.
Artemis got away with it by relying on her Hunters—a flawed solution, but functional.
Athena was a different case entirely.
She could have children without breaking her vow. Her mind alone was enough—her Divinity allowed her to conceive from thought, not flesh. No mortal touch. No mortal need.
Some Olympians even came to care for their offspring. A few loved them. Others, at least, tried not to doom them.
But ultimately, it wasn't left to love or chance.
That's where the Fates came in.
The Moirai wove the destinies of these demigods—twisting tragedy and glory together, balancing joy with grief. All to maximize the belief they could produce. All to keep Olympus alive.
Athena manipulated the Mist, letting it cloud mortal perception as she vanished from the chess club and reappeared on her throne atop Olympus. Her gaze turned inward—toward the sudden disturbance unraveling in her daughter's fate.
Annabeth.
She observed her traveling alongside Poseidon's boy—the so-called hero of this generation. Their journey had led them to encounter a strange entity… a sea monster, or perhaps something more. But the moment they crossed paths with him, everything changed.
Their fates shifted—radically.
The destinies of demigods were always obscured, even from the gods themselves. Only the Moirai held true knowledge of such threads, and even then, Fate was no fixed road. There were countless variables. The Moirai were powerful, yes—but not omniscient.
This time, however, something was wrong.
Upon encountering the boy, their threads hadn't merely twisted—they had been cut. Severed. She could see it clearly: they had been fated to live. Now, death clung to them like a shadow.
Athena was the goddess of wisdom, yet even she could not fully decipher fate. She chose, instead, to watch.
And that's when she discovered the truth.
The boy was a wielder of the Omnitrix.
One of the most powerful devices in the known universe.
Olympus might have been anchored to Earth due to its dimensional tether, but that didn't mean the gods were ignorant of the greater cosmos. Athena herself had once spoken with a Galvan. That encounter had shaken her—she, a being of pure intellect and divine reason, had felt like a candle flickering before a roaring bonfire.
She knew what the Omnitrix was. More importantly, she knew who it was connected to.
And so, she let the boy be.
Until everything went too far.
When Annabeth was imprisoned in the Underworld by Hades himself, Athena knew—this was it. Her daughter was doomed.
Fury overtook her.
She divined the boy's future location, appeared before him, and struck.
The first blow came just as he reached for his transformation. The second followed quickly—but was blocked by a massive slab of metal that rose to protect him. What happened next… she had not anticipated.
The boy transformed.
Not into a beast or alien, but into a being of raw, godlike power—a force of nature wrapped in mortal skin. He retaliated with unrelenting violence, launching her into the upper atmosphere. If her life had not been bound to Olympus itself, she would have perished.
He beat her to the moon.
And then—he did something even more unexpected.
He rescued the four mortals Hades had imprisoned.
But what mattered most came after.
Annabeth and Percy—once marked by the Moirai, once tethered to Olympus and their divine heritage—were now utterly severed. Their fates had been cut. Their connection to their godly parents, to Olympus itself, was gone.
This enraged Zeus.
In a rare act of direct intervention, he declared the boy an enemy of Olympus and ordered all demigods to hunt him down.
Only when Athena explained the boy's power—what he had done to her—did Zeus hesitate, retreating from rash vengeance.
Athena had taken the strange metal slab with her. Not out of spite, but curiosity. She intended to study it.
From that slab of alien metal, Athena discovered something that shattered her worldview.
It took her three days without rest to decipher the technique—an esoteric flow carved into the surface, a breathing method not written in language but etched in structure. Order Dragon's Breathing Style.
It took her four months to practice it.
Four months of agony.
Of bleeding divine ichor.
Of tearing her own essence apart and rebuilding it. Not just a martial art—no, this was alchemy. A conversion. It didn't just increase defiance or stamina; it refined one's very being. From chaos to order. From faith-bound to self-defined.
Her divinity, once wild and moored to Olympus by ancient covenants, now began to crystallize into something singular—hers.
The very principles of Wisdom that once defined her domain began to dissolve and reconfigure. The laws she had once embodied... she now commanded. Her essence was no longer shaped by Olympus.
She was becoming something closer to a Titan—but colder. Sharper. Wiser.
Months passed.
Zeus, proud fool that he was, saw an opportunity.
His daughter—Thalia—had raised her hand to call a lightning bolt in battle near the boy. Just a simple invocation to clear out monsters.
Zeus altered its trajectory. Just slightly.
The bolt struck the Omnitrix wielder dead on.
The next day, Olympus fell.
He came—transformed into the same godlike entity that had once flung Athena to the moon—and walked straight through Olympus's golden gates.
The sky tore open behind him, splitting with a sound like the cracking of heaven's bones. Divine fire rained. Thunder peeled like the laughter of vengeful stars.
All the gods attacked.
All failed.
When Zeus hurled his Master Bolt at the intruder again, it struck true. For a heartbeat, they thought he might fall.
He didn't.
He stood—the bolt arcing across his skin like a curious spark—and then unleashed something horrifying. A force they had never seen before. He didn't just fight them.
He imprisoned their divinity.
He reached into the core of Olympus itself—into the Heart of Faith, the wellspring that fed their existence—and attacked it. The altar cracked. Sacred marble split. Hymns turned to static. The gods' bodies bled golden ichor, their powers unraveling like spider silk in the wind.
All of Olympus trembled.
All were weakened.
All... except one.
Athena.
She remained standing—taller, calmer, untouched.
Because she no longer needed Olympus.
She devoured it.
As soon as the boy vanished, she acted. She extended her hand—not in prayer, but in command—and seized control of the Olympus Core.
It obeyed.
The Throne of Thunder cracked.
The sky turned silver.
With a single thought, she made Olympus hers.
The Queen of Olympus.
The gods turned to her, confused and staggering.
And then they kneeled—not out of loyalty, but because their knees were forced to buckle. She stood cloaked in Wisdom's true form: a burning, silver aura that twisted through time itself, her eyes two orbs of calculating storm. Her war helm had grown horns, and behind her floated concentric rings of pure order, like a celestial machine humming with judgment.
The authority over Wisdom and Warfare—the Wisdom Force—no longer flowed through her.
It emanated from her.
Zeus snarled, forced to the marble floor, hair crackling, beard singed.
"Athena, have you lost your mind?! Will you overthrow your father for being weak once?"
Hera spat blood. "Release us now, before you doom us all. This is treason."
Ares, bruised and amused, chuckled. "Heh. I'll back you, sis. Olympus needs new blood. I'll be your King. Let's toss out the fossils."
Athena looked at him as one might look at rot on fruit.
She didn't respond.
She walked up to Zeus.
And kicked him in the head.
Bone cracked. A molar flew from his mouth, trailing golden ichor. He howled.
She leaned down with a wicked grin.
"Didn't you once eat me because you feared I'd take your throne?" Her voice echoed with something far older than Olympus—something final. "Congratulations, father... Your paranoia came true."
This wasn't vengeance.
This was a correction.
Zeus had ruled with lust, not reason. He had endangered their very existence out of pride. Athena had followed his orders for eons, biting her tongue as Olympus spiraled into irrelevance.
No more.
She was done birthing children to prop up a broken pantheon. Done obeying a fool-King's decrees. Done waiting for a future that never came.
Athena would not let Olympus decline any further.
She would rebuild it. Smarter. Sharper. Ordered.
And she would rule it.
As Queen.
Olympus, Day Three of the New Reign
The throne room was quieter now.
The golden walls once sang with divine hymns and whispered prayers. Now they stood silent—cracked, bloodstained, and dim. The great pillars were scorched with lightning scars, and fragments of statues littered the floor like fallen idols.
Zeus was gone.
So was Hera, still shrieking as she was dragged into Tartarus.
Poseidon's trident had melted in his hands before he vanished screaming into the abyss.
Ares had tried to laugh to the very end, until Athena silenced him with a thought and cast him into the black.
Their thrones were shattered—burned out of the pantheon itself.
Only a few gods remained.
Apollo, pale and sweating, held his hands behind his back like a nervous schoolboy. Artemis stood beside him, eyes wary, bow unstrung. Hermes didn't even wear his usual smile, instead sitting faced down near the edge, twitching. Demeter wept softly in her seat of vines, which had grown brittle and wilted under Athena's new reign.
And in the center of it all—Hestia.
The eldest.
The hearth goddess.
The eldest among them.
She sat still in her place, flame burning gently in her hands. She did not cower, nor did she bow. But her gaze was fixed on Athena.
Hopeful.
As though the old ways might still be reborn through something new.
---
Athena entered without announcement.
No guards.
She didn't need any.
Her armor was no longer bronze, but a seamless gleaming silver, humming faintly with cosmic symmetry. Her eyes glowed like twin stars—cold and unblinking. The air grew heavier as she walked, not from malice, but from pressure, as though reality itself bent slightly beneath her will.
She took no throne.
She stood.
Her voice, when it came, echoed like iron scraping marble.
"Olympus stands… barely."
None dared reply.
She turned slowly, letting her gaze sweep across the ruined hall. The silence deepened. Some gods lowered their heads. Others looked away. The broken remains of divinity shimmered faintly in the distance—faded relics of an age of chaos and indulgence.
"I did not come here to rule. I do not need Olympus."
Her voice was calm, yet the weight behind it made even Apollo flinch.
"I have severed my dependence. My power no longer flows from these halls. I walk not as one fed by Olympus, but as one who has transcended it."
"If I wished to leave, I could vanish from this plane entirely—unchained, untouched."
She stepped closer to the Heart of Olympus, where the divine core pulsed like a slowly beating heart, fractured but alive. Its rhythm now matched hers.
"But I stayed."
"Not for nostalgia. Not for you."
"I stayed to fix what was broken."
Lightning flickered far outside. Thunder didn't follow. The storms had gone silent—Zeus's absence made certain of that.
Athena extended a hand to the Heart, and tendrils of silver light snaked around it.
"From this day forward, no Olympian shall be forced to birth mortal children to maintain power. No more demi-gods to die in our stead. No more cursed offspring. No more manipulation of bloodlines to keep this empire alive."
Demeter gasped.
Apollo swallowed hard.
Artemis narrowed her eyes, but said nothing.
Athena continued.
"Through the Core of Olympus, I will purify your divinities. Reshape the way you process faith. You will no longer need so much of it to survive. The chaos within you will be refined."
"You will still be divine—but stable. Contained. Controlled."
"You will learn to exist without bleeding your essence into temples and statues, without clawing for prayers like starving dogs."
Hermes whispered, barely audible, "You'll be controlling us via our Divinity?"
Athena turned her head. Just a little.
"I'm turning you into gods worth remembering."
He looked away.
She paused in front of Hestia.
The hearth goddess stared into her flame, then looked up at Athena. No fear in her eyes. Just weary, ancient patience.
Athena nodded—once.
It was the only show of respect she had offered anyone since taking the throne.
She turned to the room again.
"You are not prisoners."
"You may leave Olympus."
"But defy me, and you will join your former king in Tartarus."
Her words landed like chains.
"Olympus will not fade. It will evolve. Slowly. Carefully. We will rebuild our influence, not through domination, but through relevance. No more orgies in golden halls while Rome burns. No more posing as gods of war when mortals fight their own."
"We will watch. We will whisper. And where needed—we will guide."
She raised her hand, and the throne room responded. Broken marble reknit. Light returned, not warm gold, but cold silver. The entire structure began to shift—becoming not a palace of excess, but a sanctum of function.
A temple of order.
She looked at them one final time.
"You are no longer children of chaos. You are children of Wisdom."
And with that, she turned and vanished into the silver light.
Leaving behind silence.
And fear.
And hope.
Later that day
The marble gates of Olympus shimmered open with a flourish of rose petals and golden mist.
Aphrodite strolled in barefoot, humming an ancient lullaby, her hair tousled like she'd just gotten out of a week-long massage—because, well, she basically had. Draped in a silk gown that barely tried to obey gravity, she radiated the kind of post-orgasmic glow that could blind a mortal.
"Sweet Chaos, what happened to the place?" she said aloud, blinking at the scorch marks along the columns, the cracked statues of Zeus, and the heavy stillness in the air.
She twirled once, looking for familiar divine energy. "Hello? Hephaestus? Hermes? My pretty little war puppy—Ares?" She pouted. "No one's here to flirt with me?"
From the shadows, a low-ranking minor wind god whispered, "Lady Aphrodite… uh… Athena took over. Banished Zeus, Hera, Ares, Poseidon… to Tartarus. It happened days ago."
Aphrodite tilted her head. "She did what?"
"Total coup. We're under new management."
A beat passed.
Then Aphrodite burst into laughter so musical it made the statues weep. "Oh, that owl-faced virgin actually did it! And I missed the whole thing because I was oil wrestling nymphs on Lesbos. Ugh! I told them no interruptions!"
She floated toward the throne hall. "Fine, fine. Let's go see what happens when wisdom gets a taste of power. Maybe she's mellowed out. Maybe she'll let me redecorate."
She paused.
"…Wait. Is Ares actually in Tartarus?" she asked, blinking.
The wind god nodded, pale.
"Oh." She smiled. "Well. Guess someone else will have to help me unwind tonight."
And with that, she winked, blew a kiss that made the stone arch melt slightly, and sashayed into the new Olympus, utterly unbothered.
A/n: I've updated the Auxiliary Chapter Information and added another Auxiliary Chapter, please check that out as well.