War God's Mantle- Underworld

by James Hunter

  Even as a snarl erupted from my throat, I glanced toward my generals. At least a hundred of Typhon’s arms were still swinging, but my Amazons were hanging with the best of ’em. Phoebe, now in the Helios Chariot, activated Sunfire to scorch exposed flesh. Loxo, dashing through the air, used the trident’s Create Earth function as a heavy-duty sandblaster. She blew off fingers clutching swords even as she removed skin from bone. Myrina hurled the twin Sickles of Demeter, using the Maelstrom Blades to hack Typhon apart at the fucking seams. Asteria had turned into a giant silverback gorilla, and she pounded Typhon’s snake-tail legs with the Hammer of Hephaestus, crushing scales and drawing blood with every blow.

  But the Erinyes struck back. Having escaped their plant prison, they flew in and slammed into Phoebe, spilling her out of the Helios Chariot. They lashed her, Persephone, and Asteria until all three were bloody messes. When Loxo came in for the assist, the Huntress was enveloped in fire from their demonic mouths.

  Damn, I needed to heal them, but the god of death attacking me made that impossible.

  My four paws carried me across the plain in a streak of fur. I lunged in low, taking a chunk out of Hades’ leg, and narrowly missed getting brained by his weapon. However, a bit of the club’s ichor dripped onto my fur-covered back, eating into my skin. Acid. Ouch.

  I yelped and went scrambling wide. Hades made a motion with his shield. The decayed arms of dead men exploded from the earth below, clutching at me in a frenzy. I fought to break free, but I couldn’t. Yeah, Necro Earl had done something similar to me during our battle in Nyx.

  Hades, however, had exponentially more power. As the undead hands held me fast, spirits came screaming out of the sky like hailstones to blind me, to shriek in my ears, and to claw at me with cold, cold fingers.

  I was enveloped in a whirlwind of angry specters, suddenly blind, deaf, and immobile. The ground quaked beneath me as Hades stomped forward—an unstoppable juggernaut out for blood. I braced myself, teeth clenched, muttering a silent prayer to someone, anyone, for help. Not sure the gods were in the habit of answering prayers these days, though. Hades slammed his club into my chest, cracking bones, splashing red blood across my fur. The acid ate into me, adding to the unbelievable blunt damage. My Health was stupid low, and the world felt unsteady around me. This was it ...

  I was out, done for. This was the end. I took a deep breath, steeled myself, and opened my eyes. If I was going to die, at least I’d see it coming.

  Then all went quiet.

  The next second, I found myself human again, a hundred feet from the battle. Typhon filled my field of vision. Below him, Hades wrestled with the rose bushes entangling him. The thorns scratched him even as they held him down. That was Persephone’s plant power at work. But I didn’t know where she was, what had happened, or how in the hell I’d escaped my certain death.

  Seriously. Nothing made sense. My friends, miraculously healed somehow, continued to battle both the Erinyes and the god of monsters.

  I smelled flowers. I felt a soft touch. Persephone appeared out of nowhere, bent, and kissed me on the lips. I drank in that kiss. I felt refreshed ... Well, not refreshed, but not half dead, though I was still low on Health and out of Divine Essence.

  The spring goddess had used the Sower’s Glass to save me. I guess maybe there was some power in prayer. Even better, she’d healed me just enough to move, though I still felt like someone had beaten me with a sackful of tire irons.

  I did, however, have the Crystal Scythe.

  Persephone shot me a nod, her lips pursed into a tight line, and raced back into the fray, creating a plant shield to protect Phoebe from an incoming mace the size of a Buick.

  I had a moment to myself. Damn, if only I were bigger. If only I had bit more Divine Essence. But I was out, completely and totally out. True, Persephone had just hauled my ass out of the fire, but this fight was far from won.

  With a roar, Hades tore through the rose trap. He sped toward me, his bone club ready to drive more acid into my veins. The War Blade fluttered over to stop him, but Hades bashed it aside, sending the magical sword sailing toward the horizon. Going, going, gone. Damn.

  The godstone howled in my head. See! I told you to take all the power for yourself, and you ignored me. Now, you and your friends will die! All of you will die!

  The Necklace of Asclepius vibrated on my chest, the gears whining as they fought to keep the War God’s personality in check.

  Wait ... The Necklace of Asclepius. Holy shit! That was the answer.

  I clutched the necklace and felt the Divine Essence thrumming inside it. Yes, I’d filled it up full. I could access the energy there, use it like a battery to power me back up. It had worked for Persephone back in the labyrinth, so I had no doubt it would work for me as well.

  Checking my character sheet, I saw that I was inches away from level thirty. I only needed one more kill, maybe two, to push me right over the edge. But I was in no condition to wade into battle. Still, this wasn’t the time to punk out. No, this was the time to unleash the full fury of the War God, no matter the cost.

  I laughed at the gem in chest. “Do you want me to fail, you son of a bitch? Or do you want to fight?”

  Fight! it roared.

  Yeah, that’s what I thought. I gripped the Necklace of Asclepius in my fist, squeezing down with the power of a god until it shattered. The sharp edges of the gears cut into my palm, and hot blood rushed over my skin. I didn’t care. Divine Essence flowed into me. All the times I’d charged the battery came back to me in a rush. And in the snap of my fingers, I was at full Divine Essence. Good news there.

  Bad news? The rage of Ares overwhelmed the Jacob Merely part of me. I was blinded. All thought of strategy left. All I wanted was bloodshed forever.

  Colossal Asshole

  THE GOD OF MONSTERS, Typhon, was a wounded skyscraper above me. My Amazons were fighting it and the Erinyes with hammer, spear, trident, and javelins.

  Hades flew toward me, rusted shield and acid mace at the ready.

  Still on the ground, I reached out a hand. But instead of blasting him with a Lightning Lance, I arced electricity around him and hit one of the Erinyes—her arm already broken, a huge gash in her leg, on the very precipice of death. Again. I pushed her over.

  Ding!

  What has two thumbs and is a level-thirty War God? This guy.

  I had only seconds before I experienced an encore of Hades’ acid mace.

  The godstone took over. It loaded all my points into Strength and then chose Colossus off the Path of War Skill Tree.

  I managed to pull up the Colossus miracle before the godstone had us go Hades-bashing.

  <<<>>>

  <<<>>>

  THE GODSTONE TRIGGERED the miracle immediately. Every bone in my body rattled, shaking and quaking, and my sinew and muscles stretched until they threatened to snap. I didn’t think I was capable of feeling that much torture without blacking out. I couldn’t think, couldn’t see through the pain. Had something gone wrong? Was I not ready to use Colossus?

  Half my Divine Essence drained away.

  My lungs felt scorched, every inch of my skin felt lacerated, but, holy shit, my bones were what hurt the most.

  It felt like imps had taken up residence inside my skin and were beating on my bones with ballpeen hammers. My heartbeat thundered in my head.

  My throat tore open from the screaming. I had my eyes pinched closed. Hades was coming. I had to open them, but the pain was so much. Too much.

  When I finally cracked my lids and glanced down, he was the size of a toddler. Typhon was still mind-bogglingly big and awful above me, but as for Hades? Who was this little kid coming to mess with me?

  Whatever. I kicked him away. The god of death went flipping ass over teakettle—a punk-ass rag doll who could never go toe to toe with me. Not in a million years.

  It took a second for me to realize that while I had been in mind-breaking agony, I’d grown a hundred feet. My Inferno Shield had grown
to match. And my armor. And the Crystal Scythe. Below, my Amazons looked tiny, like scuttling roaches that I could squish with my pinky finger. Though I knew that wasn’t true. They might’ve been tiny, but Typhon was five times my size and my Amazons were still kicking his ass. I grinned and shook the thought away.

  I had ten minutes to end the battle and save the world. And I knew exactly where I wanted to start.

  The looming Typhon was both hurt and blind. I so wanted to add to his woes. I was level thirty now, and that meant I could use the Weapon’s Master component of the Crystal Scythe. Without looking at the stats, I activated it and leapt into the air, as high as I could. I reached back with the scythe and brought it down, adding Smite to my attack for good measure. Smite cost fifty points, but at level thirty, even after using Colossus, I had over 200 Divine Essence Points left.

  I drove the shining crystal blade into the thorax of the god of monsters. I’d opened his skin before. Now, I could hack up his innards.

  Five other scythes appeared in unison to strike at the same time.

  That’s right. Five. My attacks were already tripled because of my size. And they were doubled because of Smite. The base damage of the scythe was 250, but with five of the weapons striking the monster in unison—each the size of a Ford F-150, no less—that meant I’d dealt 1,250 just as base damage. Oh, don’t forget the frost damage, and since this Typhon liked to spit lava, well, I don’t think it liked the cold very much. Boom. 1,750 in raw DPS. Then double it. Then triple it. I brought over ten thousand points of hard-hitting power to bear, and I brought all of it right to Typhon’s scaly belly.

  Even the Erinyes took around 2,500 points, since they were fluttering a tad too close to the attack.

  Thank gods for splash damage.

  Typhon couldn’t even roar. Blood flowed down from its mouth, popping and spitting, half full of lava that erupted from his esophagus after I’d ruined his innards. Most of his thousand arms were gone, and his abdominal cavity was now laid open like a cadaver on a medical examiner’s table. More magma drooled down his front in great rivers of red and orange and gold.

  I landed on the ground, the Crystal Scythes—all five of them—whirling around me, shifting in and out of space and time. Maybe that was what Weapon’s Master did, phasing the blades out of sync so I could strike seconds apart, kind of like Sophia’s Temporal Form. I didn’t look to see if I was right, or if there were any other abilities. No time.

  The god of monsters hunched over me in pain.

  The Erinyes swarmed, but now they were like sparrows compared to my gargantuan size. Dropping the Crystal Scythe and the Inferno Shield, I grabbed one Fury, then the other, in my fist and squeezed. Their bones popped and their wings snapped, but I knew that wouldn’t put them down for good. So I shoved them into the molten-rock intestines of the god of monsters. Maybe they would survive the crushed bones and the inferno blaze, but even if they did, it would take them a long while to crawl their asses out of the cooling magma guts of an evil Titan. I stooped, grabbed the last, headless Fury, and crammed her in with the others.

  The Erinyes wailed while I collected my weapons.

  Still hunched over, the god of monsters threatened to fall forward, which would kill my Amazons and just might kill me. So, I used Lightning Lance to blast that asshole backward. I hardly felt the nine Essence Points leave me. But to the monster, it was like a Utah thunderstorm breaking from my huge hands to race up and down the creature. Typhon spun and fell onto the plain, dead.

  Normally, when I kill something with the Crystal Scythe, I got five Divine Essence Points due to the Leech Touch feature. This time, I got all my points back. Every single one of them. I guess killing a god—or a Titan, or whatever the hell it actually was—is kind of a big thing.

  My Amazons let out cries of victory, their voices like tiny bird chirps in my ears.

  I’d ended Typhon, murdered him with my god-killing weapon, but I wasn’t done. I had another divinity to remove from the world. I whirled about, careful where my feet fell—I wouldn’t want to smash one of my ’Zons by mistake.

  Hades had recovered and now stood on the edges of the Underworld’s version of Rockford, Illinois. The last of his forces had abandoned the city, instead rallying to the call of their master. They were losing and they knew it, so they were taking the fight to me. If they could kill me, my Amazons would crumble. A sea of enemies rushed me, snarling, screaming, hungry for the blood of a divine being. My Amazons at Highland Park had taken out half of his forces, but half of 150,000 was still 75,000 troops.

  Loxo raced into my field of vision. “Got a present for you,” she yelled, holding out Athena’s Spear.

  Of course. I was level thirty now, which meant I could use the spear’s Immortal Hoplite ability.

  I slung the Crystal Scythe into the custom holder on my back and picked the tiny little spear out of Loxo’s hand. Before I touched it, the spear was only about the size of a toothpick. It grew into the size of a tree in my hand.

  I grinned and activated the new spell feature. A horde of shining ghostly warriors appeared on the ground before me, arrayed in a semicircle of interlocked shields and raised spears. There were only a hundred of the ethereal warriors, but the vanguard of faceless nightmares hit the Hoplite shield wall like a sledgehammer ... And the shield wall didn’t give an inch. Damn.

  I hurled a shadow spear at Hades, who blocked it with his rusted shield. I then let go of the spear. The weapon returned to its normal size so Loxo could catch it. Pulling the Crystal Scythe from my back, I stepped over the implacable line of Immortal Hoplites and stomped through faceless soldiers with my sandals. The crunch of bone was strangely satisfying. Every horror I killed was one less creature that could threaten my Amazons or the human world.

  From above, I activated Lightning Lance and visited another lightning storm on the enemy army. The electricity fried whole swaths of troops, killing hundreds, if not thousands, at a time. And it only cost me nine points a strike.

  Then I had an idea.

  Normally, when I used Plague Locust, my little insect friends were two inches long. That was when I was around six feet tall. If I was about sixteen times taller, that meant, in theory, the locusts I could create would be about two and a half feet from their flesh-eating mandible to their deadly stingers.

  It would cost me, sure, but I couldn’t help myself. I cast Plague Locust on Hell’s army. Thousands of the insects materialized in the air and descended on the encroaching horde, and sure enough, those suckers were the size of small coyotes. And a thousand times more vicious. They chewed through driders, werewolves, and faceless foot soldiers. Bit off heads. Snapped off arms. Decimating the forces—killing at least one in ten.

  But still, Hades’ forces came. The bulk of the army had finally caught up to the infernal vanguard, and the Immortal Hoplite shield wall was starting to bow under the sheer numbers, though they were making Hades’ army pay for every inch in blood.

  Thankfully my demigoddesses had fallen in behind them, buttressing their ranks.

  Asteria had given up on the trident and was eating driders as a T. rex. Persephone rode through the ranks in the Helios Chariot, whirling her sickles. Myrina never looked happier as she flung her magical javelins along with shadow spears. Phoebe, in her mech, was next to her, the third arm on her contraption holding Poseidon’s Trident. She first power washed her enemies with high-velocity water that removed skin and muscle, then she sandblasted what was left. All the while, her automatic crossbow sprayed out an endless stream of quarrels.

  She messaged me. Don’t worry about the ground troops, Godzilla. Get to Hades. And stick that scythe up his nasty undead ass!

  I stopped stomping and started sprinting. Hades stood in the first row of houses on the edge of Rockford. He wasn’t as big as me, but he’d grown since I’d kicked his teeth in a few minutes ago; now he stood at a measly seventy-five feet tall.

  He wasn’t talking shit now.

  The minute I got clos
e to the houses, they burst into flame from the Inferno Shield, glowing like a sun on my arm. Hades stood in the flames, unmoving.

  The Amazons who’d been in the city now raced across the plain: bears, bulls, Pegasi, my Battle Wardens, my Elementalists. The brave one hundred that faced down the hosts of Hell and won. They were going to hit the dregs of Hades’ army in the flank. They would go through the Underworld’s army like a razor through paper.

  Hades saw it. Saw it all. Still, he said nothing. His waxy skin, full of sores, was slashed and bruised. He was weak. Dying.

  I walked through a house with a lopsided grin on my face. That grin morphed into a snarl as I brought the Crystal Scythe down in an overhead strike powerful enough to split the earth. He deflected it with his shield, the clang reverberating over the battle, and whipped his mace around in a vicious arc, trying to cave my head in. I sidestepped, faster than he was, and batted the incoming weapon away with the haft of the scythe. I lunged in, brought my leg up, and kicked him square in the chest. At seventy-five feet tall, he staggered back, caving in the ceiling of a house, but managed to keep his feet. But as he reeled from the blow, I shot in and backhanded the shield off his arm.

  The enormous metal disk went spinning away like a hubcap dropping from a car on the freeway, slicing an apartment complex in half.

  Suddenly, Hades was down to his club. He hammered at my Inferno Shield, but it took every blow. The spikes on his club glowed from the heat, and the weapon smoldering in his hand, but still he fought on, refusing to drop it. He stank like rotting meat on a grill.

  With his free arm, he grabbed the shield and tore it off my arm. He then rammed a glowing green hand at my chest. Feel my death magic, War God. Feel my fury!