It was an uneventful spring night when Cattleya and the hooded god marked the five-thousandth anniversary of their first meeting at the Golden Glass.
After winning so much that several casino managers had to invite them into a private game, the two eventually returned to their respective homes, intending to meet again soon.
That was how their friendship began. A few centuries later, they could easily be considered the best of friends.
There were times they won so much money at the Golden Glass from certain people who did not enjoy losing that they ended up being attacked more times than they could count. However, considering both of them were beings who could potentially rule over entire pantheons, dealing with a few assassins was hardly even a warm-up.
Once, they sparred in Bracken and unintentionally ended up dwarfing a few star systems, which prompted the dwarven deities governing that galaxy to descend and put a stop to their fight.
Normally, this would've been the moment they called it quits, but the ever-mischievous Cattleya suggested they beat up the dwarf deity, along with Bracken's main entity, who had shown up as backup. This ended with the two becoming wanted fugitives in nearly half of Bracken.
Unfortunately, since they were both in disguise, the dwarves were unable to identify them.
The two quickly hit it off and began spending more and more time together, embarking on adventures across random universes, often leaving trails of destruction in their wake, only to return later and pose as heroes to those affected by their earlier chaos.
They ended up having quite a few small to mid-tier Pantheon Masters indebted to them. When they weren't busy deceiving unfortunate Universal Masters who couldn't stand up to them, they could be found drinking in various bars.
Dwarven-made liquor was strong enough that even high-level existences like superior gods and Archdevils such as Cattleya could get drunk despite their naturally high resistances.
Eventually, the two decided to acquire multiple houses and mansions near their favourite bars, so that if one of them passed out from drinking, the other could quickly carry them home.
This decision was partly due to an incident where Cattleya, in a drunken stupor, blew up a planet.
Thankfully, it was uninhabited.
◇ ◇ ◇
On the day Cattleya and her hooded best friend went out drinking to celebrate the five-thousandth anniversary of their first meeting, Cattleya, visibly intoxicated and growing more unruly, eventually had her drinking put to an end by her friend, who decided it was best they return to their shared penthouse.
Once there, he attempted to lay the passed-out Cattleya on the sofa, only for her to unexpectedly kiss him. Though initially flustered and attempting to stop her, she insisted it wasn't the alcohol influencing her actions and kissed him again, this time more assertively.
Caught off guard and struggling to restrain himself, especially in his own mildly inebriated state, he found his resistance weakening.
As things escalated physically, they both gave in to the moment, letting their feelings and desires take over.
When Cattleya woke up the next morning, she was just about to get out of bed when she realised two things.
First, she was completely naked, with her clothes scattered across the floor. Second, there was someone else in the bed with her—someone she knew very well.
As she spotted the familiar black hair and round eyes that slowly blinked open to reveal a pair of obsidian pupils, the memories of everything she'd done the previous night came rushing back all at once.
'Cattleya! Why did you let your intrusive thoughts win?!'
Her face turned bright red with embarrassment as she unknowingly began twirling a lock of her hair around her finger while deliberately avoiding eye contact.
"Wow, so you do have a sense of shame. Colour me surprised."
He threw in the comment as he got up from the bed, walked over to the closet, and pulled out a bathrobe. Turning around, he tossed it toward Cattleya, who caught it reflexively.
"Um... I'm not usually like that. I mean, sure, I had those thoughts, but I didn't plan to act on them—or maybe I did, and I'd been thinking about it for a while, and I already did, but—!"
"I know. You told me everything last night."
Cattleya's face flushed an even deeper shade of red as she pulled the blanket up over herself.
Having a clear memory of the previous night's events, she knew she'd told him everything, perhaps even a bit too much.
Her dark-haired best friend only chuckled and said,
"What's done is done and can't be undone. Well, it could, but that sounds like a lot of effort, and I'm not exactly in the mood for that. Let's just act like we always do around each other… though that might take a while."
"Yeah, I get that, but… let's get dressed first, shall we?"
Cattleya replied, her voice noticeably smaller than usual, before the two proceeded to properly dress.
Just as he said, they didn't see each other for a while, not because of any major fallout, but simply because both of them were far too embarrassed to look the other in the eye.
That awkward tension lasted for about a month. And when they finally met again, the news Cattleya brought with her was the absolute last thing he expected.
"So, I'm pregnant."
"Pffft—!!"
"Wow, your reaction's exactly how I pictured it."
Cattleya said casually, using magic to clean up the spilt drink, acting as though she hadn't just dropped a bombshell with the same tone one would use to order a drink at a bar.
If life were a game, then she would've unlocked an achievement for making a god-king nearly choke with just three words.
"Wait, you're serious? This isn't some kind of joke, right? You pulled something like this the last time I passed out," he said, clearly skeptical.
"Not this time. My brother confirmed it, so it's probably true," Cattleya replied with a calm expression.
"Your brother?"
She nodded, then gave a brief recount of the events that led her to the discovery.
About a day before she broke the news, Cattleya had gone to visit her elder brother, Creusery, while he was conducting experiments with one of his Authorities.
Seated in a circle of translucent red flames, the half-devil, half-phoenix paused mid-sentence when he suddenly sensed something unusual from her.
After expanding his flame circle, he turned to her with a serious look and asked why he could sense two life signs from her, one massive and destructive, and the other faint, almost like that of an unborn child.
Cattleya was stunned as Creusery concluded that she was pregnant—the only logical reason why she suddenly had two life signs coming from her.
Given his partial inheritance of Diablo's life-sensing abilities, she had no reason to doubt him.
After making him promise to keep it a secret, she left the area immediately.
◇ ◇ ◇
When she told her friend this, the man pressed his hands to his face in silence. His thoughts immediately went to his Queen, the same woman who once turned another into a flowerpot just for throwing herself at him, and he trembled lightly in fear.
'She's going to be so pissed!'
Even more so if she found out through the grapevine. His best chance was to come clean himself. Anything else, and he was finished.
He hadn't been in his Universe for a while, and it was almost time to return. He figured he might as well have his subordinates prepare a place for him, just in case his wife decided to toss him into his domain along with the souls lining up for judgment once she heard the news he was bringing back.
'But first… Cattleya… and this child.'
Looking up, he made up his mind to have a serious conversation with her and come to an agreement.
The first, non-negotiable point was that she was keeping the child.
He was unlike certain gods who held elitist views and discriminated against other races, despite frequently having affairs with women from those same races. In situations where those women conceived, such gods either forced them to abort or denied any knowledge of the child.
After this, the man decided to return home and come clean to his wife, while Cattleya spent most of her time avoiding Diablo's gaze.
Everything seemed fine until one of Diablo's aides, a Marquis of the Devildom named Drirnos, received the two prophecies concerning a 'child of destruction,' a being said to possess the power to bring an end to the gods.
Upon hearing the prophecies, Cattleya felt they bore some resemblance to her situation, but she dismissed the idea, believing such coincidences to be impossible.
Her father ordered a neutral stance to be maintained concerning the matter, but Cattleya's dark-haired best friend thought otherwise. His family had a particularly troublesome history with prophecies, which made him take them far more seriously than she ever did.
The god gathered multiple individuals with high proficiency in the laws of Fate and Destiny, as well as those with foresight, and oracle-based special abilities to investigate, but their findings were inconclusive.
That remained the case until the day he had them attempt to search for information about the child in their presence, and lo and behold, they saw everything they needed.
Not a single one of them saw a clear image, and the child appeared even blurrier. Attempting to use their abilities to learn more about the child carried the risk of severe backlash, but they could clearly see who the mother was, especially since she was right there in front of them.
Even after being told, Cattleya still refused to believe it, but once the law of causality began intervening to shield her from multiple attempts on her life, she had no choice but to accept the truth.
◇ ◇ ◇
Originally, the plan had been to keep this information secret, even after the prophecies came to light and Cattleya informed her father and elder brother of her intentions—her desire for the truth to get out, largely for the amusement of watching multiple gods march to their deaths trying to eliminate her, fully aware that causality would protect her.
However, her father managed to rein her in and stop her from doing anything reckless.
The problem was, she wasn't the one they should have been keeping a close watch on.
As mentioned earlier, the father of the child had invited multiple individuals highly proficient in the laws of fate and destiny, powers frequently involved in prophecies.
Naturally, he had sworn them to secrecy and placed binding seals on them to prevent them from revealing anything they discovered.
The issue, however, was that these kinds of individuals, being so accustomed to dealing with binding seals and similar restrictions, had eventually developed ways to circumvent them.
If they came across certain information while using their abilities for other clients, they could then use those methods to leak the information for profit.
They didn't do it all the time, and they were usually subtle about it to avoid getting caught.
Unfortunately, one of the people he had called in happened to be one of those types.
To ensure the information couldn't be easily suppressed or traced back to him, he took his time and journeyed far beyond the region of the universal sea where Hell, Olympus, and similarly powerful universes were.
There, he leaked the information to various god pantheons in that distant area who were already collaborating to form a joint force dedicated to locating the prophesied 'child of destruction'.
As a result, by the time Cattleya, Diablo, and others in the surrounding universes caught wind of the circulating rumour—that Cattleya was the mother of this prophesied 'child of destruction'—the news had already spread far too widely for them to contain it.
And the fact that Cattleya made no effort whatsoever to deny it certainly didn't help matters.
◇ ◇ ◇
"It's honestly hilarious how you can say all that without a hint of embarrassment. I'm the one hearing it and I'm over here cringing," Arthur said as he grabbed his shoulders and shook his head, while Layla nodded in agreement, her cheeks tinged with a faint blush.
"Still… to think you were the one who started it. I never took you for the aggressive ty—OW!!"
Cattleya flicked Arthur's forehead mid-sentence, cutting him off and making him yelp in pain as he clutched his head with both hands.
"I didn't expect myself to be that aggressive either. I guess the alcohol had something to do with it," she said, placing a hand on her chin as she thought back to the chain of thoughts that eventually led her to end up in bed with Arthur's father.
Meanwhile, Arthur was quietly questioning his entire existence upon realising that he might never have been born if his mother hadn't been filled with liquid courage that night.
"So, Your Highness, what happened after the rumours spread?" Layla asked, pulling Cattleya out of her thoughts.
She resumed her narration, completely ignoring the look of pure grievance Arthur was giving her.