Netori: Stealing The Hero's Party!

A delicate silence was broken as Cassiopea popped into existence in front of Athenia. Laying in a golden bathhouse of her own creation, the goddess had her eyes covered with a warm wet towel and her legs were widely stretched across under the glistening water. Showing no dignity at the moment, Athenia could feel her inner thigh muscles finally easing up from the tension they'd gathered by sitting crossed-legged on her throne.

"What is it, fairy?" She huffed, slowly lifting the towel off her face and lifting it to look at Cassiopeia.

Anxiously hopping left and right through mid-air, the fairy kept swinging like a pendulum–her hips bouncing more than the rest. A look of worry was flashing across her face, and the apparent biting on her nails made Athenia cringe a little.

"Stop biting your nails before I kick you out," she warned and with a startled hop, the fairy hastily folded her hands behind her back.

"S-sorryy!" Covering her mouth, the fairy whirled around in the air. But upon turning back to the goddess, her hands quickly moved to her eyes as the sight of the nude goddess finally registered in her head. "M-my master sent me t-to give you…a message!"

Stuttering over her words, the fairy peeked at Athenia from between her fair fingers. However, keeping her eyes raised above the neck, the fairy ensured not to overstep and accidentally stare at the goddess' luscious body.

"What message?" Asked Athenia, tilting her head sideways.

With a deep gulp, the fairy gathered her courage and relayed the message in the same words as her grand lady.

"Another gift, the gods at the council will eat me alive if they get a whiff of it!" Slowly removing her hands, Cassiopeia regained her composure somewhat and continued to add. "My lady is in a meeting with the council, they suspect her to be a traitor but she doesn't expect them to do anything rash against her just yet."n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

"I almost forgot," leaning forward, Athenia placed her hand on the side of the massive bath and moved her head closer to the fairy. "The comforts of this prison had blinded me, but Elanaria doesn't have the security, does she?"

The fairy shook her whole body left and right, clearing the goddess' doubt. Humming to herself, Athenia shut her eyes and pondered exactly in how many ways this confrontation by the council could hurt her relationship with Elanaria.

"What is she on the council again?" She asked the fairy, unaware of the goddess's title.

"N-none, she doesn't have a title–the other gods haven't trusted her since long. I think some do think she's helping your heroes though," her response only further complicated the situation.

"And she doesn't think she'd be persecuted just yet?"

"Yes, she said so."

Given the circumstances, there were too many possibilities in front of Athenia, but with their doubts only being speculation and since no other god can peek into each other's territory on will alone, she concluded that there wasn't much that would come out of the situation.

'Besides, Elanaria won't attend the meeting if she suspected it to be a trap. She'd be safer in her heavenly realm if that was the case.'

Opening her eyes, Athenia was met with a concerned fairy inches from her face. Smiling back, she conjured a creme brulee marshmallow with a dash of strawberry cream on top. Pushing the marshmallow at the fairy with a finger, Athenia returned to her seat in the bath and watched the fairy's eyes sparkling at the sight in front.

"Elana may not be one of my sisters, but she's just as smart if not smarter," to cure her boredom as well, Athenia conjured the looking glass in front of her while the fairy began nomming on the marshmallow. "Not to mention, it'd be the stupidest decision to hurt a god who commands the stars of Stellaris while dining right under them."

Turning her head to the mirror, Athenia was met with yet another curious sight. Linkle was frantically moving around in her lab with the nail from a god stationary on the table between a pair of upright tweezers. Runes were carved underneath the object and many magic circles were being focused to draw out its power, and like an aurora burning in the winter sky, a gradient flame was burning out of the nail.

'She's burning its true potential, but maybe that's to regulate its power?'

That nail alone, if planted, could poison the entirety of the Atlarian ocean, but perhaps having recognized that Linkle was regulating its power by burning it. Although the smoke itself was being magically drawn into a massive glass bottle at the other end of the shop.

"How the hells did it land in my lap?!" Freaking out inside her shop while running all over trying to get more and more containers to store the residue exhausted from the nail, Linkle kept glancing up at the skies in recognition of just the kind of entity the nail must've belonged to.

As for Athenia, she'd already grown her nail again and this experiment by her had helped her set one of her doubts to rest.

'That nail, it's a dead part of me, then maybe if I was dead, I could walk out of here as well?'

Why was the nail allowed to leave when she couldn't? The answer was clear as day. However, to die and live through necromancy–something she wasn't versed in, would be worse than just staying in and helping her chosen in other ways.

"Again…" Looking back at Linkle, however, she couldn't help but wonder if the witch was overdoing the regulatory steps. "If you burn it like fuel, how would you kill that devi–"

A crystal-like glimmer cut her sentence short. Staring at the nail which was now forming into a thick crystal, she finally figured out what the witch was trying to do with her nail. Separating the poison from the cure, the smoke from the potential, the death from life, the witch had separated Athenia's duality.

The nail, now a thick crystal, had pure life giving potential, while the smoke and the liquids gathered from it, Linkle was preparing to crystalize them as well but inside her brewing cauldron.

"The witch didn't burn the potential…" Staring with a glimmer in her eyes, Athenia couldn't help but laugh at her initial presumptions. "That bitch just separated them to use them like a fucking bomb or a second chance at life."

Laughing like a maniac, Athenia scared Casseopia once again, but this time with the marshmallow in front, it didn't take long for her to overcome it.

'Now I can't wait to see this trip to the hells, AhAhAha~'

Just the mere thought of poisoning a named devil had the goddess of life and death giggling like a little girl.