“What have you done!” Zeus turned to see Apollo approaching him. “Do you even realize what you’ve just done, father!”
Zeus stretched to his full height and looked back at his son. “I’ve done a lot of things for our benefit. I’m sorry that you don’t understand that what I do is necessary, but very bad things are happening, and I am the one the mortals expect to keep them in check. What is it that you think I’ve done wrong?”
“You’ve replaced the successors of my son, the greatest doctor the world has ever known, with that woman I rejected. And she’s telling them to avoid doing the protocols that stop them from being sick, endorsing medical practices that my son showed were phony. You are destroying his legacy!”
“Your son’s time was long ago,” Zeus replied, not changing his tone. “The world has changed, and many of his practices don’t work anymore. We need a different way of looking at it. And she was ideal for the job.”
Apollo shook with rage, then looked away. “Why are they even believing her, I made sure she would never be believed again after she rejected me.”
Zeus responded in a voice that sounded as though he was taking credit for a brilliant idea. “Prometheus emphasized how right she was about Troy, and that if the mortals had listened to her then, a lot more people may have still been alive. They were willing to listen to her after that.” He smiled. “Especially when I told Ares to get Phobos and Deimos to back her words up.” Apollo looked back at his father, the rage returning to his eyes, as the king of the gods continued. “You were the one who told us that regardless of what Paris did, it didn’t justify what the people he wronged did to his entire home. Like I said, the world has changed.”
“That may not be for the better,” Apollo replied glumly.
Apollo looked down as his son’s work was undone. Before long, an outbreak of a disease eradicated in his son’s time occurred in Apollo watched with concern, and knew he had to fight back. He went behind his father’s back to have Hermes send his own messages to the mortals, and the truth of what was happening spread faster than the disease could.
“Outbreak could be perilous for Cassandra”
“Some experts question Cassandra calling outbreak ‘not unusual’”