"Heh heh! How can that warm little mouth say such cold words? Hera is your father's queen, you know." Teasing Athena, Thalos slid his right index finger into her mouth and stirred at will.
Athena slowly sank to her knees, looked up at Thalos, twining her clove-soft tongue around his finger as she answered in god-voice, "I, Artemis, Apollo, and even the dead Heracles won't forget what Hera did to us and to our mothers."
Thalos smiled wryly.
In Greek myth, two-thirds is Zeus's libertine history, and half of that is Hera the jealous persecuting Zeus's lovers and their children.
If killing any one deity would win the loyalty of the most Olympians across four generations, the name would surely be Hera.
It seemed Athena had no intention of simply killing Hera.
Since Thalos and Zeus were fated that only one could live, and Athena had been forced to defect to Thalos, she could only grit her teeth and give up that old father who had set his sights on her.
If she could abandon her own father, then that vicious "mother" Hera certainly couldn't be spared.
Athena knew perfectly well her suggestion would likely lower Thalos's opinion of her, but compared to making him wary, she would rather bare her ambition and her cunning.
She was very clever, and not lacking in calculation.
A goddess who could take a serpent as her totem was no soft touch.
Unnoticed, the index finger had already been replaced by a weapon of mass destruction.
Looking down at Athena—at that dignified, beautiful face laced with hatred and wisdom—and thinking of Odin paired with Hera, a scumbag matched with a viperess, Thalos suddenly felt being God-Emperor was truly entertaining.
"If Hera is really as venomous and gorgeous as you say, pairing her with my foolish but somewhat sly little brother will be a headache," Thalos said with playful relish.
A headache, not a big one, not even a real problem.
That choice of words made Thalos's attitude plain.
To his mild surprise, at some point Artemis had arrived as well.
She joined in.
Two dignified, pure goddess faces pressed together were a sight for sore eyes.
Without a word, her joining was an attitude in itself.
Better still, Hestia had also appeared without him noticing, hugging Thalos from behind and swaying her body with sultry grace.
Pfft!
Thalos burst out laughing.
Hera! In the Olympian pantheon, how bad—no, how god-awful—did your relations have to be for your own elder sister and two stepdaughters to target you like this?
"All right then, Odin plus Hera is a pretty amusing combo." Thalos didn't say it was settled, but he had already drawn a blazing response from the three goddesses.
Dozens of thousands of kilometers away, Odin still had no idea he'd been neatly arranged.
He was merely grateful Zeus hadn't bull-rushed straight at the five small worlds.
Self-destructing small worlds might indeed make Zeus choke hard—if you could pull it off. Not every small world was as easy to handle as the Dogon world. This was a play that required a former god-king to grit his teeth and lead with self-destruction; let the heart go soft and it wouldn't happen.
Human hearts are unfathomable; so are the hearts of gods.
Those who've been slaves too long—if they saw Zeus coming, what if their spines suddenly went limp?
If, just his luck, the very first small world Zeus struck belonged to a jelly-spined god-king who led in surrender?
Odin never wanted to test his subordinates' "divine nature."
All he could do was stick a wrench in Zeus's gears.
If it came to a real fight, sprinting flat-out along the cosmic current was Odin's only way out.
Zeus had captured him once; there would never be a second time.
If he fell back into Zeus's hands, that would be a fate worse than death.
Luckily for him, Zeus didn't come.
Ah Puch the death-god, on the other hand, wasn't idle—riding Macaria every day, muttering, "Your father Hades didn't come to save you."
The Goddess of Rest's eyes grew ever grayer.
In any case, with his handful of followers and at the cost of a massive amount of elemental stock from five small worlds, Odin finally broke free of the current's constraints, reaching the inevitable confluence ahead of time, and he let out a long breath.
Next, he would shift the five worlds to the Ginnungagap side of the cosmic current's outlet, and his work would be done.
"Thanks to your cooperation, once my Ginnungagap world arrives, you'll all become part of the Aesir." Odin wasn't greedy; he knew he couldn't be. In the face of two pantheons that each fielded forces in the thousands, his few dozen ragtag gods couldn't even pretend to neutrality.
Odin certainly knew his big brother's hand was black; from the moment his remnant soul fled, he'd been driven as cannon fodder, a vanguard, a chaos-stirrer. He might not have caught on at first, but after so long—midnight after midnight—thinking it over with his wits, how could he not guess?
A century and more later, Odin had likewise taken his brother's measure—knew the limits of his tolerance—and this was how they managed this arm's-length cooperation.
Odin also knew his big brother valued face; now that the "traitor" was earning merit for the Aesir, his brother would not deliberately trip him.
His self-styled god-king title would likely be formalized after this war.
How much autonomy he would have after—that would depend on Thalos's mood.
Sigh! A rebel god has no divine mandate!
Forget it—that didn't matter now. He had done all he could; the rest was up to his big brother to vent his spleen.
Somewhat unexpected, yet not entirely: Odin awaited the Aesir "vanguard."
When his senses picked up those massive soul-husks of giant beasts, he couldn't help a low curse. "Still holding a grudge, huh!"
Wasn't it just so?
First to arrive were Nidhogg and other refitted soul-husks—basically the "Ten Great Beasts" Odin had used as rebel vanguard in the last Ragnarok; Thalos had brought them out, every one, as his vanguard now.
While Ah Puch and the rest were innocently praising the Aesir's awe-inspiring might, they had no idea the brothers had already begun their play.
Those great-beast souls had long since lost any self-will. Stuffed with Thalos's divine power, they were nothing more than probes—and, when needed, self-destruct troops. As for actual fighting strength, there wasn't much left.
Ah Puch and those former Greek slave-gods didn't know that.
Instead, they all burst into hymns of praise.
"No wonder they're the Aesir—look how mighty even their divine beasts are!"
"Ten thousand years to His Majesty God-Emperor Thalos Borson!"
…
Willing or not, Odin eventually had to grit his teeth, projecting a five-kilometer-tall phantom outside one small world. He bowed slightly to the oncoming Soul of the Kraken and lowered his head in grudging respect.
"Your divine younger brother Odin… welcomes Your Majesty!"