"Your hall?" Loki laughed, the sound sharp and mocking, cutting through divine posturing like acid through steel. "Zeus, you arrogant fool. Do you think this is about territorial pride? Do you think we care about your posturing?"
"Then what is it about?" Zeus demanded.
"Family," Thor said simply. The word carried weight, certainty, conviction that couldn't be faked. "The goddess of Knowledge is Odin's... she matters to him. And Meltiy is her daughter. That makes her family. We protect family."
"How touching." Hera's voice dripped with sarcasm from her throne, venom wrapped in silk. "The Norse pantheon, famous for fratricide and betrayal, suddenly concerned with family values."
"Careful, Hera." Hela's voice dropped to a whisper that somehow carried across the entire hall, reaching into every corner, every shadow. "You might want to check how many of your husband's bastards are fighting in this room before you question anyone else's family dynamics."
Several gods choked on suppressed laughter. Even some of the Greek gods struggled to maintain composure. Zeus's infidelities were legendary, a constant source of tension between him and Hera, fuel for countless divine conflicts.
Hera's face went rigid with fury, her knuckles white where they gripped her throne's armrests.
"You dare..." she began, power gathering around her like a storm of pure rage.
"I dare everything," Hela interrupted, her smile cold as the grave. "I'm death. What are you going to do, kill me?"
"ENOUGH." Zeus's voice shattered the moment of levity like glass under a hammer. Lightning exploded outward from his body, striking pillars, ceiling, floor. Everywhere except the Norse warriors, as if daring them to make the first move, to give him justification for what he wanted to do. "This is my hall. My domain. And I will not be mocked by children playing at war."
"Children?" Thor's voice went dangerously quiet. The kind of quiet that preceded violence. "You call us children?"
"What else would I call gods barely four thousand years old?" Zeus's form expanded further, twenty feet becoming thirty, forty, filling the hall with presence that made even supreme gods feel insignificant. "Swinging hammers and playing with shadows, thinking you understand power? I fought in the Titan War. I overthrew Kronos himself. I've unmade galaxies and rewritten reality. What have you done, Thor Odinson, besides kill giants and drink yourself stupid in Valhalla?"
The insult was calculated, designed to provoke. Tony recognized the strategy—push the opponent into emotional response, force them to make the first aggressive move, claim self-defense afterward.
Thor's eyes blazed with fury. "I've protected the Nine Realms while you sat on your throne playing politics."
"Protected them from what?" Zeus laughed, the sound carrying genuine amusement. "From frost giants? From dark elves? Please. The threats you face are insects compared to what I've fought. What I've survived."
"Then why," Loki said, his voice cutting through the posturing like a surgical strike, "are you so afraid of the goddess of Knowledge?"
Silence fell.
Zeus's laughter died instantly.
"Afraid?" His voice was ice wrapped in lightning. "I fear nothing."
"Don't you?" Loki circled slowly, hands clasped behind his back, looking for all the world like a lecturer addressing students. "Think about it. The goddess of Knowledge births children over decades. Sends them to lower dimensions. They radiate knowledge, inspire mortals, and you... ignore it. Forty-seven reports from the Watchmen over four decades, and you do nothing. Until now. Until the eighteenth child."
Zeus's eyes narrowed to slits. "Your point?"
"My point," Loki said, stopping his circuit directly in line with Zeus's throne, "is that you didn't act when there were five children. Or ten. Or fifteen. You acted when there were eighteen. When the goddess of Knowledge completed her work. When it was too late to stop her." He smiled, and it was terrible. "You're not afraid of what she did. You're afraid of what she accomplished. You're afraid that mortals might not need gods anymore."
"Mortals will always need gods," Zeus said, but there was less certainty in his voice now. A hairline crack in absolute confidence.
"Will they?" Loki gestured toward the images still floating in the air, courtesy of Elerie's earlier demonstration. Mortal civilizations with gleaming towers reaching toward stars, machines that thought faster than gods, ships that crossed galaxies. "Look at them. Building. Creating. Innovating. How long before they look up at Mount Olympus and ask themselves why they're worshipping beings who've given them nothing in centuries?"
In the present, Marcus's voice narrated quietly. "That was the moment. When Loki articulated what Zeus had been afraid to admit even to himself. That the age of gods was ending. That we were becoming obsolete."
The golden scene showed Zeus's face, and for just a fraction of a second, fear flickered across it. Not fear of Thor. Not fear of war.
Fear of irrelevance.
Then it was gone, buried under layers of divine authority and political necessity.
"It doesn't matter what mortals want," Zeus said finally. "It matters what they can handle. Power without wisdom. Knowledge without understanding. They'll burn themselves out. Tear their worlds apart. Create weapons that unmake reality itself."
"Maybe," Loki admitted with a shrug. "Or maybe they'll surprise you. Maybe they'll prove that mortality, that limitation, that brief flicker of existence... maybe that's enough to create something beautiful. Something even gods can't achieve."
"Philosophy." Ares spat the word like a curse, rising from his position near Meltiy. "This is war talk, not debate. Zeus says the girl stays. The Norse say she goes. Someone's going to bleed. Everything else is just noise."
"For once," Hela said, and shadows surged around her like living things, "I agree with the Greek war god. We've talked enough."
She raised one hand, and darkness flooded the hall.
"Wait." Meltiy's voice cut through the rising tension, clear and desperate. She stood, the crow pendant swinging at her throat. "Please. All of you. This doesn't have to end in violence."
The golden Hermes spoke for the first time since the Norse arrived, his voice soft but carrying across the hall. "Meltiy..."
She looked at him, and something passed between them in that glance. Understanding. Love. Goodbye.
Zeus noticed. Of course he noticed.
"Interesting," Zeus murmured, his eyes moving between Hermes and Meltiy with terrible comprehension. "Hermes. Do you have something to declare?"
The golden Hermes froze, caught. "I... no, Father."
"No?" Zeus's smile was cruel, predatory, satisfied. "You look at her with such concern. Such... familiarity. Tell me, my son. How long have you been bedding the daughter of my enemy?"
The hall went completely silent.
Every god, Greek and Norse alike, turned to stare.
The golden Hermes felt the weight of Zeus's accusation pressing down like gravity itself. "I..."
"Don't bother denying it," Zeus said, walking toward them with measured steps. "I've known for months. Watched you sneak away to meet her. Watched you play at romance like mortals, thinking yourselves clever. Thinking I wouldn't notice." He turned to Meltiy. "And you. Did you seduce my son as part of your mother's plan? Was he supposed to be another source of information? Another pawn in her game?"
"No," Meltiy said, her voice shaking but firm. "It wasn't... we didn't..."
"It doesn't matter," Zeus interrupted with a wave of his hand, dismissing her protest as irrelevant. "What matters is that you, daughter of Knowledge, have been embedded in my pantheon for years. Gathering information. Building relationships. Positioning yourself for exactly this moment." He looked at Thor. "And now the Norse come to rescue you, their spy, their tool, thinking I'll just let you walk away?"
"She's not a spy," the golden Hermes said, finding his voice. Standing despite the divine compulsion pressing down on him. "She came in good faith. As emissary. Whatever her mother did, Meltiy isn't responsible for it."
"Isn't she?" Zeus's gaze was pitiless, absolute. "She wore the crow. Transmitted our secrets to Odin. Seduced my son to gain access to information. How is that not espionage?"
"I didn't know about the crow," Meltiy insisted, touching it with trembling fingers. "I thought it was just a gift. Protection. I never meant to betray anyone's trust."
"Intent is irrelevant," Zeus said, his voice carrying the finality of divine judgment. "Effect is what matters. And the effect is that Asgard has been spying on Olympus for who knows how long. That's an act of war, regardless of your personal feelings. The only question is whether Odin planned it, or whether the goddess of Knowledge manipulated him as easily as she manipulated the rest of us."
The logic was inescapable even if it was twisted. Even if Zeus was weaponizing truth into political necessity. The assembled gods shifted, murmuring, doubt spreading through the Greek ranks like infection.
Maybe Meltiy was a spy. Maybe the goddess of Knowledge had planned this all along. Maybe the Norse were as guilty as Zeus claimed.
The golden Hermes saw the trap closing around them. Saw how Zeus had transformed a simple hostage situation into justified imprisonment. How he'd painted Meltiy as the aggressor and himself as the victim defending divine order.
Political genius, even as the world prepared to burn.
"Last chance," Thor said, raising Mjölnir. The hammer blazed with lightning, thunder rolling through the hall despite the absence of clouds or sky. Pure elemental force responding to divine will. "Release her. Now."
"No," Zeus said simply. One word. Absolute.
"Then you choose war."
"I choose justice." Zeus gathered lightning in both hands, the power building until the air itself screamed with potential energy. "You invaded my hall. Threatened my authority. Demanded I release a confirmed spy. And now you threaten violence?" He laughed, and it was terrible. "You're not declaring war, Thor Odinson. You're justifying everything I'm about to do to you."
For a heartbeat, no one moved.
No one breathed.
The moment stretched, crystallized, became eternal.
And then Thor smiled. Wild. Fierce. Free.
"I was hoping you'd say that."
Mjölnir rose.
Zeus's lightning gathered.
And the golden memory showed reality itself prepare to shatter.
Marcus's voice in the present was quiet. "This is where everything went wrong. Where talking ended and killing began."
The memory froze on that moment. Thor and Zeus, powers gathered, about to collide.
Tony stared at the frozen scene. At the gods who thought their power made them wise. At the political games that turned people into pawns. At the inevitability of violence when pride met pride and neither would bend.
"Show us the rest," Tony said.
Marcus nodded.
The golden light pulsed.
And the war began.