In Asgard's Golden Palace, it was as splendid as ever, but with many battle-type deities having long since gone to the Bifrost terminus hall to stand by—or already having deployed—the vast palace now felt a touch empty.
Most who remained were noncombat deities—mostly goddesses.
Athena and Artemis were excited; beside them, Hestia wore a complicated look, and farther to the right of the throne, Apollo's face was just as conflicted.
They had seen the mind-projection of Odin confronting Hera.
It was not a fight worth boasting about.
Nominally it was god-king versus god-king; anyone with a brain knew how hollow Hera's god-king title was.
A household goddess, and a noncombatant whose mortal believers were nearly wiped out, Hera's divine power had already bottomed out days ago—never mind that the small world belonging to her fief had been seized by Odin.
At present, Hera had only the title of god-king in name; as for combat power, she wasn't even solidly at proper-goddess level, much less a major god.
How could she be a match for a wolfish Odin?
For all his faults, Odin was a bona fide god-king carved from mountains of corpses; after returning to the Aesir, Thalos had supplied him with god-king-grade power.
In just one exchange, Hera and her two daughters were all pinned by Odin and his men.
"Zeus! Save me! Ares—Hephaestus—save me!" Hera's heart-rending divine voice rang far out, startling her two sons, but it seemed not to reach Zeus.
To Athena, Hera could be unimportant.
Because Hera's absence was what mattered most to her!
As a main general who had followed Zeus in conquering so many small worlds, Athena knew best what fate awaited captured goddesses.
Unless one slew all who would not submit and climbed to the pinnacle of the chaotic cosmos, fate was only a cycle.
Had she not been standing at Thalos's side, Athena wouldn't have minded listening to Hera's pained wails—even her desperate pleas. But doing so in front of Thalos would cost her points.
Athena drew back her gaze and focused on the projections of battlefields sliced apart by the World Tree's roots.
As expected, Hela had matched up with Hades, and Thor was locked in a fierce fight with Poseidon.
Between the two pantheons, over a thousand deities apiece had found opponents and begun to clash.
Only Zeus was deliberately let through; he had passed almost unimpeded through Ginnungagap's lower space and was about to reach the middle layer—the battlefield Thalos had prepared.
At that moment, Thalos finally rose from his Supreme Throne.
He spoke lightly to the goddesses at his side.
"I'll be right back."
Freyja, at their head, bowed first and said, "May Your Majesty return in triumph, as always."
Gullveig, Frigg, Ishtar, Hathor, Maeve, Athena, Artemis, Hestia, and the others each offered their blessings.
All prosper together; all suffer together.
Perhaps they had once possessed their own splendor and lofty stations; whether they had yielded to Thalos willingly or not, after all that had passed, now they shared a single identity: consorts.
Only the victories of Thalos and the Aesir could guarantee their honor endured; all else was illusion.
Gazing upon those peerless faces, hearing voices like different birds in song, Thalos truly felt there was no higher treatment under heaven.
But to reach the eternal dream in his heart, Zeus was the last hurdle he had to cross.
Even if that hurdle had already been blasted ragged by his planning and might, the final step still had to be taken by him personally.
"Let's go." Thalos gave a call—not to any deity, but purely to the World-Swords hovering around him.
He thought back to when Ginnungagap had only nine realms—how small and provincial that had been.
Look at it now?
Each forged World-Sword was proof of valor.
The last small desire in his heart was to obtain the "Sword of Olympus."
No one was more fitting than Zeus to be that divine blade's sword-soul!
Thalos's towering frame—three men tall—strode at an even pace through the great hall. Behind him marched ranks of Valkyries in twin files; before him to either side, the gods remaining on duty parted like waves to offer deep bows one after another.
War drums echoed in his ears, perfectly in time with his steps.
One step, two… ten… a hundred!
Those were the footsteps of victory!
And the footsteps of the end!
Mounting the sky-horse "Asgard," the thundering whinny of the winged steed rang to the heavens.
Outside the hall, more attendants and golden-armored guards knelt in salute—a field of glittering gold.
Over the resplendent city, across the rainbow, across half a world, Thalos finally alighted with poise upon the middle layer—on the vast desolate continent specially made in southern Midgard.
There, Zeus, piloting a "Thousand-Armed Giant" and accompanied by a host of nymph goddesses, had long been waiting.
Though Zeus towered high, he gazed calmly at Thalos mounted on the pegasus in the sky.
King does not meet king.
Emperor does not meet emperor!
If emperor meets emperor, only one emperor is destined to remain!
"You've come."
"I've come."
A plain beginning; a plain greeting.
The two God-Emperors who had led their pantheons to crush mighty foes and conquer countless worlds finally met at the very center of this chaotic cosmos.
The first time—and the last.
After the simple opening came three full minutes of silence.
In this realm sealed off from all other continents by divine power and the World Tree's branches and leaves, there was only the wind and the steady whoosh of pegasus wings beating as it hovered.
Terribly still!
At last Zeus opened his mouth. "Thalos Borson. Before seeing you, I wished I could hack you into ten thousand pieces."
Thalos shrugged. "And now?"
"I thought about it. Ten thousand pieces might not be enough."
Thalos quipped, "Oh? I'm honored to be on Your Majesty Zeus's mind."
"Don't you have anything you want to say to me?"
"No." Thalos curled his lip. "I assembled every factor for victory before the war began. I'm just here to harvest the fruit."
Offhand, by the book.
It was precisely Thalos's ease that stung Zeus the most.
The best at war have no vaunted exploits!
On the surface Thalos had taken no risks at all; fighting and fighting, he had simply led his enemy Zeus into a dead end.
Did Zeus not know he was at an absolute disadvantage?
No—he knew very well.
That was what made him most conflicted, most torn.
Zeus didn't even ask after Hera, because he knew that if he couldn't defeat Thalos, nothing else mattered.
Several times, Zeus looked like he wanted to speak but stopped.
"Zeus, if you want to ask, then ask."
"No. After we decide the winner, we'll have all the time in the world."
It was a face-saving line, and a way for Zeus to steel himself.