53 The Strings of Fate
[Fates]
On the highest room of Mount Olympus, the Fates watched as the gods that had gathered discussed their announcement.
Fate had returned, and the chains that bound the future were now back in place.
The room stood divided, between those who argued in favour of fate existing again and those who argued against it. And in the middle of it all, Aphrodite was sitting down with an annoyed frown.
"First of all, I didn't even know that the girl was what was breaking fate!" she complained, doing her best to ignore the very angry stares of Hermes, Poseidon, Zeus and Hades. Oh they were mad alright, after all it is their children that were going to get the worst out of fate.
On the other side stood Hera, Ares, Athena and Apollo, who had taken Aphrodite's side. They understood the importance of fate existing... or so the Fates would like to think, in truth Hera was on Aphrodite's side because she hated Zeus' demigod children, Apollo was on her side because he hated not having his prophecy abilities and Ares was on her side because she would get mad at him otherwise. So at the end, the only one who actually understood that fate needed to exist was Athena.
The only two gods who hadn't taken a side were Artemis and Hestia, one because she wouldn't agree with unfair punishment for a maiden despite it ending up being necessary, and the other one was simply far too kind to accept it at all. Hephaestus of course was locked up, seen as he somehow ended up creating a fate-breaking thing in his bitterness, and Dionysus was still down on the Camp, punished by Zeus.
"You ignored Fate's warning," rumbled Zeus, the sky splitting at his words to show his anger.
"Oh please," said Aphrodite. "I ended up fixing fate!"
"By explicitly going against the words fo the Fates and my orders!" rumbled Zeus, who had told the other gods to listen to the Fates in case any of them was too much of an idiot not to know it already. Clearly, they were idiotic enough to do so even when he added his orders explicitly.
Meanwhile, the Fates remained silent, slightly basking in the irony of the situation. As the Fates, they obviously couldn't go against fate, so the new futures for the gods were already set in stone and they would do nothing to intervene, though they probably wouldn't either even if they could. Yes, it was ironic indeed, watching a corpse mingle with the living, but the gods were nothing if not ironic right?
.
As they already knew would happen, the meeting ended with nothing happening to Aphrodite. While Zeus and Poseidon were very much in favour of punishing, having five major gods support her was enough to escape punishment this time, for it threatened to break out a civil war. Well, that and the fact that punishing her wouldn't make their children escape fate, but it would be idiotic to think that either Zeus or Poseidon thought things rationally like that.
And so, the three sisters were left to do nothing but stare at the strings of fate once again, slightly worried by the sheer lack of control they felt in the decade that Christina was running around, and most certainly not going to admit that they were utterly thankful for Aphrodite's actions, even if they went against their orders and only helped through sheer luck.
"Hehehe," chuckled Clotho.
"How amusing -" continued Lahesis.
"For us Fates to -" said Atropos.
"Be thankful for Luck.""" finished all three at the same time.
On the reflection of their single shared eye, Christina's face aged as an entire year passed without them leaving their room.
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Author Note: 1 year time-skip next chapter. Cannon is, quite literally, right around the corner, but first we have Luke's quest, which I hope will explain better than in the books why on earth Luke would ever believe the words of Kronos, much less side with him.
