After Athena spoke, her entire soul suddenly felt something wondrous.
An aura called fate turned into a boundless ocean and drowned her.
It drowned Athens under her protection—from the city's clean stone pavements, to the men, women, children, and elders wandering its streets and alleys, to its magnificent palaces and soaring banners—and, like smoke or mist, spread all the way up to the highest point of the Acropolis, the Temple of Athena.
The polis she loved and the mortals she sheltered all, in a single word from her, changed their stance and allegiance.
The sensation was so uncanny that Athena found herself a little enamored of it.
Once the bow is drawn, there's no taking back the arrow!
Once spoken, a horse can't catch it.
To be honest, Thor across from her was visibly startled.
Thalos's brood had long been warned by their father over and over: beneath Zeus and his two brothers, the most dangerous deity in the Olympian pantheon was Athena.
And now Athena was saying she would defect?
This wasn't an avatar; it was her true body!
Thor could hardly believe his ears. Turning, he saw the same shock on the faces of his siblings.
Never one to lack decisiveness, Thor instantly recognized the opportunity.
"Since you have such resolve, good. You're also one of the goddess-kings my Father specifically named to keep. In that case, Yekaterina will accompany you back to Ginnungagap." Thor then turned his gaze not far away to Apollo. "And you?"
"I will continue to fight for the Olympian pantheon!" Apollo gave an answer no one expected.
The Aesir: ???
Only Athena, walking on air and passing Thor shoulder to shoulder, spoke in a calm voice that all gods could hear: "Apollo is the god of light; his divine office won't let him commit so-called treachery. But if you beat him down and capture him, he won't flee and he won't resist."
Apollo: "…"
Thor brightened. "Understood!"
With the goddess of Victory at her side, Athena, just before stepping into the Rainbow's projection once more, met Apollo's eyes.
She saw the struggle, the heartache, the helplessness in Apollo's gaze. She sighed softly and left a faint murmur: "See you there."
Apollo only grew more torn, giving a gaze full of complicated feeling as he watched Athena's stately figure step into the rainbow glow.
Thor raised Mjolnir; the pure, surging might of thunder and lightning on it was truly extraordinary.
To Apollo, Thor's thunder felt very close to Zeus's; the only difference was Thor lacked the "sky" divine office, which made his divine output hard to sustain, forcing him to rely more on his father Thalos.
"Sorry, Apollo. Even though Artemis warned me, time's a bit tight, and Father told us to make sure we truly weaken the Olympians' combat strength—we can't pull our punches!"
With that, Thor stepped out, and the war god Tyr and the wealth god Gilgamesh stepped out with him.
In the void, the three gods formed a distant triangular encirclement about fifty meters from Apollo. To onlookers, this preternaturally handsome Greek light god was in for a world of hurt.
And it was of his own choosing.
As Athena's figure turned into a beam of rainbow and sped away from that patch of space, she saw several utterly mighty divine radiances blaze where she had been, making the golden glow at the center look like a firefly's light.
"Ah." Athena let out a long sigh.
Before long, in the rear hall of Asgard's Silver Palace, the good niece Artemis was carefully teaching her aunt Hestia how to maintain the weapon of mass destruction.
Hestia still couldn't perfectly settle into her new role—especially with her former attendant nymphs and valkyries all around.
She learned slowly, and badly.
And yet this very clumsiness and shyness, in Thalos's eyes, had become the rarest of treasures—and a limited-time one at that.
Just then, the rear hall's doors swung open.
"Ah?" Hestia let out an irrepressible cry. Her whole body went cold, and she even stiffened for an instant.
What did she see?
A goddess clad head to toe in gleaming golden armor, stepping with firm tread, wearing a face written full of confidence, slowly entered the grand hall.
Around her were the languorous strains played by nymph goddesses, and valkyries veiled in gauze; her presence seemed utterly at odds with this rear hall.
"Athena?" Hestia and Artemis cried out together.
Why was she here?
They couldn't understand why Athena—the wisest and, in combat power, one of the top in the Olympian pantheon—would appear here in full battle dress.
It was all so strange and abrupt that it left them both with their minds buzzing, thought suspended for a beat.
Looking at her two former colleagues frozen stiff, Athena couldn't keep up a stern face. She showed a smile full of mystery.
"Don't be afraid, Hestia, Artemis. I'm not here to threaten you—I'm here to join you." With every word Athena spoke, a piece of her gear dropped—first the god-spear forged by Hephaestus's own hands, then the Aegis, then her shoulder armor, gauntlets, breastplate…
With each step she took forward, her 'defense' went up a notch.
At last, she knelt before Thalos in a very elegant pose.
The sight left her aunt and half-sister dumbfounded.
"I'm most curious—why wouldst thou make such a choice of thine own will?"
"Because I'm in despair!" Athena lifted her head and answered with calm candor.
"Despair?"
"Yes. I see no hope at all for the Olympian pantheon to win. Especially with God-Emperor Zeus so selfish and greedy, unable to tell who his true enemy is—and even coveting me."
"Heh! I've heard of Zeus's debauchery—that he preyed on almost all his kin. But that alone?"
Thalos was genuinely curious. He stretched out his right arm and propped his head, while gesturing for Hestia and Artemis to continue attending him.
Even though he knew the two goddesses were most likely elsewhere in their thoughts.
As if blind to their motions, Athena held only Thalos's eyes in her clear, dark gaze:
"Zeus is my father—and the worst God-Emperor to me. Day to day he exalts Hera; no matter how jealous she is, he still ensures her authority. If that were merely to give the gods a figure to hate, to divert their discontent with him, I could let it go. But with a great enemy before us, he still lets Hera persecute every god-child not born of her—that is courting disaster!"
Zeus's coveting of her beauty—Athena made no attempt to hide her loathing of Zeus and her intense displeasure with Hera.
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