Hera: "…"
First, she hadn't expected a mere mortal envoy to get so far out of line; second, Odin being this craven truly caught her off guard.
Her God-Emperor husband Zeus losing the imperial mandate was already a foregone conclusion. Even if he still wore the title in name, who privately would recognize Zeus as God-Emperor?
A God-Emperor, the absolute power above the god-kings, ought to be unique.
When two emperors meet, one must fall.
Now that so many subordinate worlds were gone, the Olympian god-kings left didn't even deserve their crowns and were fit only to be Major Gods. They'd all been demoted—let alone Zeus above them. Zeus should likewise fall to god-king. By the same token, she, the Queen of Heaven, had been demoted from exalted God-Empress to queen of a god-king.
How could Hera possibly accept that?
In her view, Athena running off was certainly good, but without god-kings like Athena, Apollo, and Artemis to command, they'd have no choice but to take the field themselves if they were to punish a rebel god like Odin.
Hera was just as displeased.
And now, the troublemaker who had put Zeus in such a bind, Odin, had actually latched onto Kronos's thigh.
Kronos might not have the will to go out and truly subdue Odin, his nominal underling, and be a real God-Emperor. But if it meant raiding Zeus's lair while Zeus was away, that god-father would be delighted.
Hera nearly went mad with anger.
At last she felt a twinge of regret for smearing Artemis lately and forcing Athena to attack three days early.
Had she sent Athena out only today, when the spatial corridor was severed, there would have been no ambush and disappearance.
The Queen of Heaven was pride incarnate.
In her mind, her loss of authority had to be her husband Zeus's incompetence…
That was her: the more things went wrong, the more extreme she became.
"You…" She could have killed the envoy then and there.
The envoy had grit, though.
"Great Queen of Heaven. I am on a mission by order of His Majesty Kronos. Kill me, and it will be as if His Majesty Zeus tears up the non-aggression pact with the Titans."
That line choked Hera on the spot.
She craved vanity and singular honor. The Titans had torn down her temple on Mount Olympus—though the Titans were her parents and kin—she couldn't stomach it.
And yet the Titans' wanton destruction had left a shadow too deep on her heart.
For a moment, she truly didn't dare lay a hand on the envoy.
"Begone!" Hera's voice carried heavy divine might; this time, the talisman Odin had given the envoy couldn't withstand the surge of power and cracked.
"Ah?!" The envoy was genuinely terrified, tumbling away in disgrace, dragged off by the rest of the mission.
Bullying a mortal at least brought Hera a sliver of comfort.
For such a weighty matter, she had no choice but to inform Zeus.
When the news reached Zeus and his brothers, the three fell silent again.
They had indeed planned to exploit the window in which the Aesir couldn't send god-kings to interfere, and strike Odin's old and new lairs. Now the plan was stillborn—leaving them seething.
Poseidon spat hard. "What a cunning Odin."
Hades: "Is he trying to smother us to death?"
Zeus: "No. We have to find a way to break the game."
How?
Zeus blurted out by instinct, "Ath—"
He regretted it the moment the first syllable left his lips. With his wits, how could he not understand that Athena's disappearance likely contained an element of her surrendering by choice? With Athena's brains and strength, even facing a few more Aesir god-kings, at worst she'd take wounds—she could still return.
Her not returning most likely meant she had sensed the base lust her good-for-nothing father had directed at her.
Back when she served him, one of their covenants had been that he would never lay hands on her.
He broke it; of course Athena had grounds to run—never mind that the goddess of jealousy, Hera, at his side had been fanning the flames.
Sigh.
Only after losing do you cherish.
When Athena had been around, whenever the three brothers couldn't reach a conclusion, Athena would often offer a sound suggestion.
Now the goddess was "gone."
When Zeus thought how the three virgin goddesses he most desired had all been taken by that bastard Thalos, he nearly went mad with hate.
Could it be… that I really have to bow my head to that beast of a father, Kronos?
The awful thought rose in Zeus's mind and he strangled it at once.
Once again, Zeus found himself painfully jammed.
That feeling of being pinned in the river by a chain across it—neither up nor down—made Zeus sick.
"I should've slit that despicable Odin's throat at the start!"
Alas, however Zeus vented his fury with violent thunder, it didn't change the situation.
No one expected that, over with Odin, the attitude toward this stratagem would be…
Death-god Ah Puch was dumbfounded. "Your Majesty, you mean all that talk about recognizing Kronos as God-Emperor was fake?"
"Hahaha! Kronos's big head is stuffed full of grass. That fool is fit for me to 'revere' him as God-Emperor? The guy isn't even worthy to be my big brother's mount." Odin boasted with pride. "I am the Aesir's god-king, not that idiot of the Third Generation's dog!"
In one breath, he cursed Uranus, Kronos, and Zeus—three generations—top to bottom.
Macaria, the Goddess of Rest, trailing behind Ah Puch, was like a punching bag—she didn't dare let out so much as a squeak.
Ah Puch sidled up and spoke directly by divine thought: "Your Majesty, promising to serve as a god-king under someone else—that's best not done."
Odin put on a stern face. "I never promised anything of the sort. It must have been that damned mortal envoy who misreported my intent. If Kronos takes offense, I'll kill that envoy as atonement."
Ah Puch: "…"
The poor Maya death-god had his eyes opened at last. Having followed Odin this long, it was the first time he'd truly felt Odin's craftiness—and his habit of denying his word.
Promise something, then later renounce it, and sacrifice the messenger or the doer instead.
Such a classless move—hard to imagine from a dignified god-king.
And yet Odin's achievements in this life were too many—especially his bragging that Thalos would cover him and such. All that bluster had, thanks to Thalos's cooperation and various contingencies, somehow been patched into truth.
The old Maya gods now thought Odin was truly formidable.
Little did they know, shamelessness was Odin's true nature.
For a moment, Ah Puch felt his three views shaken.
But what could Ah Puch say or do?
Anyone with eyes knew that if they just held out the last month, when the cosmic currents slammed the two world clusters together and that final war broke out, it would be the day of glory for Odin and the Maya gods. On the strength of their behind-the-lines work, they'd become great meritorious subjects of the Aesir.
It wasn't worth butting heads now with Zeus, the doomed, fallen God-Emperor.
A little scheming at a time like this seemed… tolerable.
"By the way, Ah Puch, what's that mortal envoy's name?"
"Paris—the Trojan prince Paris."
"Oh."