"Athena!" howls Molech. "I would give you the galaxy! Grant me victory and I will dedicate every temple to your honour!"

Arrows pierce him in a dozen places. Blood-gold sap drips, a litany of wounds frozen in time.

"Athena!" cries Molech. "I would give you Olympus! Slay my enemies and I would face mighty Zeus with sword in hand!"

His body dangles on the spears of a dozen Coherent. He flexes and shatters them, the wood of their shafts merging with the wood of his body.

"Athena!" screams Molech. "I would murder your brother Ares! Help me survive this day and I would cut his throat in your name!"

The axe comes down upon his back. This is no longer a battle, this is the felling of a tree, and the blows have settled into a rhythm.

"Athena!" rasps Molech. "Grant me a kiss! Grant me a smile! Grant me any sign of your love and I will find the strength to go on!"

The execution drags on. Slashing talons threaten axemen but briefly. A new set of warriors has to be rotated out to deal blows to the increasingly miserable figure who, despite everything, still refuses to die.

"Athena!" croaks Molech in between the swinging axe blows. "Athena! Please! Tell me what it is you want!"

And there she is at last, and she is utterly unrecognizable. You were told you were made in her image, Alexa, but looking at her now you can scarcely believe it. You have never looked less like anyone. Her eyes are the colour of the stormclouds that drench the desert in rain, and there are poppies woven into hair slashed with blue and violet streaks. She is armed and armoured for war, but it is of no manner of war you might recognize: not bronze and steel but leathers and hoods and a gas mask with one broken eye lens.

She leaned down over him.

"Next time," she said, "try leading with that one."

And then she crushed his skull with a stop sign.

"Asshole," she said.
"Mm," said Aphrodite, coming up next to her. "Pity."
"I was talking about you," said Athena.
"I," said Aphrodite, hurt, "have been given a very difficult task, you know."
"Nobody gave you shit," said Athena.
"It is a turn of phrase," said Aphrodite. "Look, every other god in Olympus has found if not a wife then at [i]least[/i] had a fling or two."
"And you thought [i]this[/i] was the guy to do it?" said Aphrodite, heaving her bloody stop sign up over her shoulders. 
"Look, he had a plan to at least get a kid out of you!" said Aphrodite. "Honestly, this [i]is[/i] me taking your feelings into account. Entirely platonic, respectful, distant cerebral love from someone who'd never make an inappropriate advance, and who could help you reproduce without any of the things that you've already ruled out. And isn't that what you're all about?"
"You still have no fucking idea," sighed Athena. She pointed at Alexa. "Does she [i]look[/i] like my daughter?"
"Well..."
"Does this [i]look[/i] like my idea of a good time?"
"It's a war, isn't it?" shrugged Aphrodite. "One is much the same as another, surely? War never changes, after all."
"War changes all the time," said Athena. "It's love that stays the same. This man built a monument to a single fleeting instant, a mechanical simulacrum of me made of gears and cogs and sorcery. He thought it would [i]"perfect"[/i] warfare. It was obsolete by the time he finished [i]and he lost[/i]. And here I find the damn thing has survived on this side of the Rift."

She snaps a hand wearing a fingerless glove, and the sky changes. Above is the planet of Baradissar. Huge sections of it are crackling and aflame, enormous rents opening in the barren sands to reveal colossal grinding and tearing gears and machines. Upon its surface stands Athena as you know her, the four-armed and cold-faced goddess, the splitting image of Alexa in whose image Alexa was carved. She looks up into the sky, grim faced, and raises her shield.

"Look at this shit," said the true Athena. Then she hefted her stop sign up into a javelin thrower's stance - and hurled it.

Across the gulf of space it soared. A bolt of blinding light seen across all the galaxy, crossing the distance between Sahar and Baradissar in an instant. It punches right through the simulacrum's shield, through her neck, and out and down into the planet below. It crashes through the earth shattering gears and machines, driving through into the bloody and mad heart of Baradissar. Finally, slowly, it grinds to a halt in the planet's core. The red and white word STOP is still plainly visible as the gears grind to a final close all about it. 

And then, the planet Baradissar and its enormous god machine finally and mercifully dies.

"You are [i]impossible[/i] to please, you know that?" huffed Aphrodite.
"Shut up," she said, turning away. Instead she walked over to Alexa.

"Hey," she said. "I'm Athena. We haven't met. I don't come out this way much." she glances around at the battlefield. "Fuck, this is [i]archaic[/i]. Cavemen hitting each other with clubs. I can't even remember who I'm supposed to root for in this situation. Anyway," she snaps her fingers again, conjuring a massive industrial hammer, more like a tool than a weapon of war, with a glowing force projection array in its head. She hands it off to you. "Here. You look like you've had a shit day, and you're the side that needs to break something massive and ungodly, and that's good enough for now."