As was his custom, Apollo visited the Atlantean queen whose king had died more than a year before. He came to her as a phantom and fathered his son on her while she slept dreaming of her dead husband.
It was also that year that the Atlantean gods became aware of their own destinies. For the queen of the Atlantean gods, Apollymi, found herself pregnant with Archon's child.
After all the centuries of aching for a child of her own, the Destroyer at long last had her desires granted. It was said the island of Atlantis flourished that day and knew more prosperity than ever before. The god-queen celebrated joyously as she told all the other gods of her news.
As soon as the Fates heard her announcement, they looked at Apollymi and Archon and proclaimed that Apollymi's unborn son would bring about the death of them all.
One by one, the three Fates each spoke a single line of prophecy.
"The world as we know it will end."
"All our fates will rest in his hands."
"As a god, his every whim will reign supreme."
Terrified of their prediction, Archon ordered his wife to slay the unborn infant.
Apollymi refused. She had waited too long to have her child to see him needlessly dead over the words of the jealous Fates. With the help of her sister, she birthed her son prematurely and hid him away in the mortal world. To Archon, she delivered a stone baby.
"I've had enough of your infidelities and lies, Archon. From this day forward you have hardened my heart toward you. A stone baby is all you will ever have from me."
Enraged, Archon trapped her in Kalosis, a nether realm between this world and theirs. "There you will stay until your son is dead."
And so the Atlantean gods turned on Apollymi's sister until they forced a confession from her.
"He will be born when the moon swallows the sun and Atlantis is bathed in total darkness. His queenly mother will weep in fear of his birth."
The gods went to the Atlantean queen whose son's birth was imminent. As predicted, the moon eclipsed the sun as she struggled to give birth, and when her son was born, Archon demanded the baby be slain.
The queen wept and begged for Apollo to aid her. Surely her lover wouldn't see his own son killed by the older gods.
But Apollo ignored her and she watched helplessly as her newborn son was slain before her eyes.
What the queen didn't know was that Apollo had already been told what was going to happen and it wasn't his son she bore, but another child he had switched in her womb to save his own.
With the help of his sister, Artemis, Apollo had taken his son home to Delphi where the boy was raised among Apollo's priestesses.
As the years passed and Apollo failed to return to the Atlantean queen to father another heir, her hatred of him grew. She despised the Greek god who couldn't be bothered to give her a child to replace the one she had lost.
Twenty-one years after she had witnessed the sacrifice of her only child, the queen learned of another child fathered by the Greek god Apollo.
This one was born to a Greek princess who had been given to the god as an offering in hopes of swaying the god's benediction toward the Greeks, who were at war with the Atlanteans.
As soon as the news reached the queen, her bitterness swelled deep inside until the tide of it overwhelmed her.
She summoned her own priestess to ask where the heir to her empire would be found.
"The heir to Atlantis resides in the house of Ancles."
The same house where Apollo's new infant son had been born.
The queen screamed in outrage at the proclamation, knowing Apollo had betrayed his own children. They were forgotten while he forged a new race to replace them.
Calling out her personal guards, the queen sent them off to Greece, to make sure that Apollo's mistress and child were killed. She would never allow either of them to sit on her beloved throne.
"Make sure to rip them apart so that the Greeks will believe it was done by a wild animal. I want nothing to make them look to our shores for this."
But as with all acts of vengeance, this one, too, was uncovered.