by James Hunter
I followed the goddess into a room out of a damaged fairy tale. The water was deeper here, and though the vines continued to sprout from the walls—creating convenient handholds—they could no longer serve as a rudimentary walkway, which left me trudging through frigid, thigh-high water. Persephone, on the other, had no such problems. She trekked on, walking on summoned lily pads, which she used like stepping stones. I was tempted to climb up onto the lily pads, but, unfortunately, they withered behind her—dead the moment she lifted her foot into the air.
The chamber was square, a hundred feet by a hundred feet, at least. The underground river gushed into the room but then poured out from the other side in a torrent. Hundreds of feet above, warm light shined down. Was that the sun of another world? Or maybe some bit of magical crystal? The last underground kingdom I’d been in had crystals reflecting the sun. Had it been my sun, though? No way to know, and no way to find out since the entrance to Nyx had been sealed off forever.
A thought struck me out of left field.
What if Nyx hadn’t been completely lost? What if the Stair had a landing that led there? What if Entomo, Euryale the Gorgon, or Cronos had beat feet into another galaxy? Fun with worlds. The multiverse was a big place. It was an interesting notion for sure, but one that didn’t really help me at the moment.
The walls of the secret library were lined with bookshelves and nooks for scrolls, all carved into the rock of the chamber. Everything not a bookcase or a scroll nook was lost in waterfalls that tumbled from high above. In the middle of the room was a pile of wreckage, the leftovers of a battle it seemed—the ruins of a chariot, damaged armor, shattered spears, broken swords, and skeletons showing off cleft skulls.
“Yes, I remember this place,” Persephone said as she swished forward, dancing from pad to pad. “The entrance to the Submerged Labyrinth is through there.” She pointed to the exit on the other side of the room.
Straight ahead, Loxo clung to the wall next to a waterfall. She plucked a scroll out of one of its spots and threw it to me with a flick of her wrist. She didn’t make a single joke about the holes in the walls. Or about the possibility of Homerian pornography being stashed away there. Deeply concerning.
I caught the scroll and opened it up. Most of it was so water damaged, I couldn’t make anything out. But I did see some jagged bits of text and an image of two bearded men, one with a lightning bolt in his hand, the other with a trident, fighting. That trident looked damned familiar. I’d see Antiope wielding it at the battle for the western beach. No wonder she’d been able to bend the water to her will. If she’d been more clever, she might’ve lured me into the waves. However, I hadn’t taken the bait.
I read through the Greek—what I could make out of it, anyway. By that time, Phoebe came into the room on her mech, followed by a long blue snake, swimming across the surface of the water with matchless ease. Serpent Asteria carved through the room, circling around and around the wreckage in the middle, her tongue flicking in and out like mad.
I tossed the scroll to Phoebe. Hey, we can read it at the same time, if you don’t mind me looking over your shoulder. And by that, I mean, looking through your eyes.
Don’t mind a bit. I’m used to having you in me. Phoebe winked.
Glad you are making sex jokes. Loxo is all gloomy. And while we’re talking about Huntresses ... Bambi? Really? No way I approved that.
Phoebe’s eyes widened as she offered me her best shit-eating grin. What can I say? When you give us Rune-Casters free rein, you’re liable to wind up with all sorts of unexpected wonderfulness. Bambi is one such example, my friend. Now, get in me and let’s do some reading.
In the gaming display, I was able to look through her eyes and even control her body. That had been how Ares had kept Myrina paralyzed during his one on one with Hades all those millennia ago. My chief general had made it clear in no uncertain terms that I was not to possess her. Ever. It had scarred her like nothing else.
Phoebe and I read the scrap of text:
And lo, Phoebus Apollo was felled by a blow delivered by the hands of the Chthonic god. The shining one’s father wailed in grief. And yet the fists of the salty ocean would not give respite and thus the battle waged on as the thunderous sky father, lord of the wind, engaged in a pugilistic contest against the master of tides and storms. Brothers no more, the contest was bitter, until the might of ... something ... smote .... someone ... and another Olympian was laid low by an errant blow ordained by the cruel Fates who cut the lives of all short and ended worlds and decided the outcomes of battles and affected the harvest and altered the rolling of the dice for kings, gods, peasants, and beggars alike.
A little long-winded if you ask me, Phoebe sent. Must’ve been paid by the word. Or they were trying to hit their daily word count for NaNoWriMo.
I splashed over to the pile of battle trash in the middle, toeing at things with my sandal. How do you know about National Novel Writing Month? Even I’m not too up on that.
I keep putting my Attribute Points to Intelligence. Duh. And I find the modern society on your alien world fascinating. So many writers. And these interwebs. So. Much. Porn.
You do know it’s the internet, not webs, right?
I heard her grunt of annoyance in my head. Interweb, internet, potato, potatoe. Anyway, my dude, back to the past. If I’m reading this right, the Chthonic God is Hades, and he killed Apollo. Zeus is all kinds of torn up about that, but then he can’t really give in to a good cry because Poseidon comes storming in. Boom. They throw down. And then someone else is hurt because of, and I quote, an “errant blow.” You can probably find an “errant blow” for cheap in Vegas.
“Funny,” I said.
Loxo was digging through other scrolls, but the water damage had destroyed most of the texts. Persephone rose on branches she created, ascending toward the light far above. She wasn’t a part of our messaging system, so I couldn’t exactly ask what she was doing. Hopefully, she wasn’t sounding the alarm and bringing in Olympians who hadn’t been killed in the war.
Keep an eye on her, will you? I said to Phoebe while I mulled over what the scroll had said, what I already knew about the god wars, and what the possible implications might be. So now we knew at least seven of the gods had fought each other: Zeus, Hades, Poseidon, Apollo, Ares, and Hephaestus. Persephone had been out of the action. However, her mother, Demeter, had sided with Zeus. For obvious reasons.
I thought back to what Ares had said, but now I wasn’t sure I could trust it. He’d claimed he’d wanted to fight Hades himself, not to save the humans, but for the glory of battle and for victory. He’d said the other gods didn’t care. Maybe they had. Or maybe he was talking about the fight after the fact. Maybe the Olympians had grown tired of war. That made a certain sense. I still didn’t know enough to put the whole picture together, but a few things were starting to click into place.
Slowly, I approached the chariot.
Thanks to the godstone, I knew exactly who it belonged too. The two large wheels were made from silver and iron. Serrated knives protruded from the axles. Very Ben Hur. On the side, carved into the gold, was a picture of a sunrise. I went around to the front and saw a golden sun outlined with diamonds. On the other side was a picture of a sunset. The platform of the chariot was big enough for two people, maybe three if they really squished into the back. I’d been doing this whole War God gig for long enough to know this thing positively screamed magic.
I touched it and my suspicions were confirmed.
<<<>>>
<<<>>>
I DISMISSED THE DESCRIPTION with a wave of my hand.
Unfortunately, the minute my hand left the chariot, the skeletons littering the room shifted, bones grating, water sloshing. Crap. I pulled the War Blade free, preparing myself. As I looked on, I realized the skeletons themselves weren’t actually moving—there was something inside them wriggling around.
From above, I heard Persephone shriek. She came plunging through her vines, snapping them as she fell. Some
thing was climbing down after her. Something big.
But my eyes were drawn to the bony bastards around me. Six-inch-long centipedes writhed inside the skulls of the skeletons. The red-and-gold insects unraveled their segmented bodies from inside the heads and rib cages of the long dead. They then raced out across the bones, creeping out of mouths or crawling out of eye sockets. What the hell?
I stepped back, raising the crackling War Blade. I thought about using Lightning Lance, but I was standing in water. Not a good idea. I had the Crystal Scythe on my back, but that seemed like overkill for a few skeletons full of bugs. More restless movement stirred the waters.
Correction. Make that a dozen.
Before and behind me, gates rose from the waters, blocking the entrance and exit, ensuring there was no easy way out. Both of the crude portcullises were cobbled together from silver cables and endless bits of bones—femurs, humeri, ribs, spinal columns—all meticulously strung together. The thick cables hoisting the gates into place ran into a series of honeycombed holes, manned by more of the freakish centipedes. But on closer inspection, it was clear these centipedes weren’t your normal, run-of-the-mill insects.
Through the smoky-red glass of their carapaces, bronze gears whirred and pistons fired. The little assholes were clockwork critters, scurrying about on clacking bronze legs. Well, this was certainly something you didn’t see every day. I watched, frozen in fascination as the skeleton-bound centipedes vomited gossamer, micro-thin filament from their metal jaws, creating sinew and muscles. The filament allowed the steampunk nightmares to control the skeletal bodies like grisly, undead puppets.
Myrina and the bulk of my army were stuck behind the portcullis blocking the entrance. Myrina gripped the bone bars, but even with her prodigious strength, she couldn’t break through.
I couldn’t worry about her, though. I needed to worry about me for the time being.
The centipede-driven skeletons were on their feet now and shambling toward me. One of the undead horrors reached into the waters, fishing out a rusty spear, which it hurled at me. I slapped the incoming weapon away with the Sower’s Glass shield. But in that split second, two more skeletons with short swords and shields had closed the distance.
Phoebe’s buzz saw roared to life. She hacked into the steel muscles of the skeletons and through the bones underneath. Miniature gears from dying centipedes rained into the murky water.
Loxo fired arrows from her perch on the wall, but those were going to do fuck all against what we were fighting.
I slashed an arm off a skeleton, but the centipede inside it merely puked out more steel fiber and pulled the limb back into place. In retaliation, I cleaved through a skull, bashing the bug inside to pieces, spilling more clockwork guts in the process. Another centipede wriggled inside to take control without missing a beat. More skeletons had joined the fray, hemming me in on all sides. I feinted left, then drove right, slicing a skeleton in half at the waist. The torso toppled with a splash, but the legs kept right on coming.
I spun, narrowly avoiding a wicked thrust from a silver-tipped harpoon, but caught a sword blade across my left arm for my trouble.
I ignored the bright line of red carved across my tricep, booted the offending asshole in the chest, and battled on.
Meanwhile, Phoebe fired crossbow bolts, quarrel after quarrel, pushing a skeleton back until she literally pinned it to the wall with feathered shafts. The whole time, her buzz saw screamed, slashing apart any skeleton ballsy enough to get inside her range. The problem was, the damned clockwork creatures just kept stitching the undead creatures back together. And worst of all, even when we managed to destroy the mechanical centipedes, the pieces were quickly pulled away by collector centipedes and reformed into new metal monsters.
I blocked an incoming strike with one bracer before cutting the skeleton down like a diseased tree. I backpedaled a step, scanning the room and doing a quick count. Thirty-six of the skeletons against the five of us, though I couldn’t find Asteria anywhere. Wait, make that six. Sophia teleported in with a flash of purple. She fought with a blessed katana that glimmered silver with enchantments. She cut off a head, disappeared in a cloud of smoke, then reappeared across the room, slashing through an insect. Those things were our real targets. Maybe if we could kill enough of the centipedes, we’d be able to destroy their puppets.
But, damn, there sure were a lot of the bugs.
Crawling down from above us were two dozen more of the skeletons, similar to the ones we were currently fighting. And what I thought was sunlight? Nope. Not even close. It was a circlet around the head of one of the skeletons, glowing with a blinding light.
This skeleton was different than the others. Bigger. Badder. Meaner. And he didn’t have centipedes calling the shots. It seemed his limbs were animated by bad old-fashioned necromancy. The skeleton wore a rotting leather jerkin and carried two sickles, both of which glowed a sickly green. Screw Kermit the Frog. Green meant death magic.
That was the alpha skeleton, all right. Good. I was in the mood for some smiting.
A Tasty Little Snack
MYRINA CONTINUED TO pound on the steel-covered bones blocking her way into the secret library. She managed to bash through one section with her xiphos, but then the centipede machines spun more steel thread and repaired the damaged portcullis. They were industrious little suckers, no doubt about that.
So, for the moment, Loxo, Phoebe, Persephone, Sophia, and I fought the skeletons. There was still no sign of Asteria, which was no bueno since we needed all the help we could get. With a frantic thought, I messaged her on the fly. Asteria, we need you! Priority One. 911. Hurry the hell back!
It was getting so hard to see—that fucking circlet around the undead warrior’s head was blinding. Well, I was going to add to the light. First things first, I lit up Loxo, Phoebe, Persephone, Sophia, and myself with Burning Aura. It was a measly fifteen Divine Essence Points. I hardly felt the pinch. But the skeletons who faced me and my crew would feel it, since they would now take an additional seventy-five points worth of fire damage. Instantly, I saw some of the centipedes begin to smoke and smolder from the heat, the delicate gears unable to handle the rising temperatures.
With a whisper of will and a touch of Divine Essence, I triggered Defender, transforming my skin to steel. The rusted weapons of the skeletons clanged against my arms and chest and slid away without leaving so much as a scratch. I wouldn’t want to try that against circlet boy, though. His dual sickles looked like they were packing some potent magic, which meant they’d probably be able to pierce my skin. Magic tended to defy physics and even common sense, so it always paid to play things safe when the arcane was involved.
Loxo was still on the wall, staying out of the reach of the skeletons as she fired arrow after arrow.
Sophia bounced around the room, first one of her, then two, as she accessed her Temporal Form ability. Two Sophias for the price of one.
Phoebe, Persephone, and I were right in the thick of things. Phoebe used her buzz saw to slice, dice, and power chop the bone warriors, while Persephone tangled them up in layers of roots or ripped their arms and legs off with slithering vines.
I hurled the War Blade into the air, letting it fight on its own; it seemed to really like the idea. The blade immediately went after the geared-up centipedes, hacking them apart with uncanny precision while ignoring the bones completely. Smart sword.
While the War Blade fought without me, I raised my hands, palms up, fingers splayed wide. A cloud of three-inch-long emerald-colored insects exploded outward. Wings buzzed from their green backs as the upper portion of the library filled with enough locusts to overwhelm a subway car. My bugs were hungry and didn’t discriminate too much. They immediately set upon Persephone’s plants—chomping through stalks and leaves—then moved on to the skeletons and their clockwork passengers. The skeletons were stopped in their tracks as the preternatural locusts devoured steel muscles or ate through centipede carapaces. Even circlet boy had
to pause as my bug buddies nibbled on his joints.
Meanwhile ...
Loxo had finally entered the fray directly. She had her xiphos and Snow Claw out, and while she parried blows with her short sword, she slashed with the magical dagger. The wet filament and bones froze solid, as did the centipedes. The centipedes were resilient against straight physical damage, but they didn’t handle elemental attacks well.
Off to my right, there was a splash and a roar as Asteria finally appeared in answer to my distress call. She emerged in a spray of glory and turned into a blue velociraptor. She let out a ferocious, reptilian shriek and launched herself through the air, slamming into the nearest skeleton and bearing the creature to the ground. She laid into the undead minion with powerful, crunching jaws—it sounded exactly like my friend’s golden retriever chomping on dog bones. Crunch, crunch, crunch.
If she didn’t break a tooth, her choppers would be bright, shiny, and clean.
One of the Sophias teleported into the hallway, only to pop back in an eyeblink later, this time with Myrina in tow. The ornery Battle Warden hit the ground running, carving a path of absolute carnage with her blessed xiphos. Skeleton limbs flew, centipedes died. Finally, she was able to take her rage out on the monsters around us, and she wasn’t holding back.
Bones and bits of centipedes tumbled down on us from the damage my locusts were doing. Circlet boy, though, had somehow turned his bones into solid steel. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he’d cast Defender, though I couldn’t begin to fathom how that worked. The skeleton let out a war cry of defiant challenge and charged me, sickles raised high in ossified fists.
“He’s mine!” I growled.
I wasn’t taking any chances. We didn’t have time to dick around, and I wasn’t going to be taken down by some Ray Harryhausen extra dipped in steel sauce.
I dropped the Sower’s Glass shield, and it dangled from my armor by a leather thong. Then, without a second thought, I seized the Crystal Scythe from the housing on my back.
