by Skyler Grant
When Snake was finally well and truly dead the blade of the dagger melted, streams of metal joining the Death-hand.
I also felt my muscles become usable again as the divine magic powering the poison was extinguished.
“That was a bit anti-climatic for a god fight,” Yve said.
“It wasn’t. You just aren’t clever enough to have seen the real battle,” Hubris said.
“Can I punch your daughter, Liam?” Yve asked.
“No,” I said. “So what the hell was that?”
“The God of Snakes was essentially a dead God until pumped full of power from that blade. With the connection it forged he was attempting to trade his fate with your friend Ashley,” Sara said.
“But instead of him devouring her future, I devoured his,” Walt said.
I wasn’t going to understand all that. I didn’t think it mattered.
“Do we have to call you Snake-hand now?” I asked.
“I’d rather you didn’t,” Walt said.
“And Ashley is going to be okay?”
“Instead of being tied to a Snake God trying to eat her, she is tied to this avatar of death and decay. It is likely an improvement,” Sara said noncommittally.
“It should be enough to keep her from fully manifesting as a Goddess of Light. I don’t know why that is important, but Evil Stepmom seems to think it is,” Hubris said.
That was enough for me. I supported Elsora’s schemes completely, even when I didn’t have a clue why.
Chapter 27
When we arrived back at Castle Sardonis, Ashley was already on her feet and looked the happiest I’d seen her in some time. Not happy in a high-on-mass-murder sort of way, more content.
I paused to talk with her outside the War Room where Elsora was gathering all of our allies.
“You seem to be feeling better,” I said.
“Whatever you did worked. Most of the voices screaming murder in my head are gone,” Ashley said with a weak smile.
“Is Atlantia any calmer than she used to be?” I asked.
“Atlantia is still Atlantia, but she was only ever part of the problem. It’s like things were with you and Yvera, you fed on each other and made each other even worse.”
I’d thought that once. I didn’t think so now. I’d been free of Yvera for a while and my ways hadn’t changed that much. Whatever my vices and weaknesses, they were mine alone.
“I’m glad to have you back, seriously,” I said.
“No longer a divinely powered killing machine just as you’re about to go into the biggest battle ever. You’ve a lousy sense of timing,” Ashley said, as she stepped into the war room.
What could I say, I hadn’t really had a choice. Perhaps it made me a bad friend, but if I could have had her fully powered going up into what came next, I would.
Identical faces were seated on one side of the table, Hope and her sisters. Cobalt wasn’t the only one of Ashera’s daughters present, Malachite had made it here as well. I was saddened that there was no trace of Diamond and Tiger, I knew what that meant. They had picked their side and it wasn’t mine.
Mela was there with my brother, Tommy. I hadn’t seen him since the destruction of Earth, although Mela told me that she had gotten him offworld. Their chairs were pushed together and they seemed friendly, very friendly.
My brother was dating Mela. I really didn’t want to think about that, and who was I to lecture anyone on their questionable choices in dating partners?
I took my seat at the head of the table alongside Elsora.
“Thank you for coming. You are all aware of the big picture of what we have planned. All that is left now is to make it happen,” Elsora said.
“How?” Cobalt asked, “You’ve put together an impressive force, yet it still doesn’t solve the problem of Queen Ashera. Confront her on her home ground and no matter how large an army you bring, hers will win.”
“Then we don’t confront her on her home ground,” Elsora said, gesturing to the map that showed the Silver City and its moons. “We take the moons.”
Cobalt pursed her lips. “Normally that would be suicide. Attack one and the others shall send their armies along the Silver Road. Regardless, each is far too powerful in its own right to fall easily.”
Elsora tilted her head. “And by your words you already see the plan. Yes, easily. We have eleven with the Right of War and eleven with the Right of Rule and eleven worlds in need of conquering.”
“You want to hit them all at the same time,” Cobalt said.
“Each will call for support and none shall come. Each moon shall feel itself cut off and alone in a way it has not experienced for a very long time. It should be motivation enough for the Right of Rule to take full effect,” Elsora said. “That way, we can capture the moons.”
A quick and surprising military attack leading to complete surrender and acceptance of new rule. It was bold.
“I see what you hope to accomplish, but it won’t work. You’ll cut off the Silver City from reinforcements, but it still has an army of its own,” Cobalt said.
“Do you think your mother is the type to sit back and wait patiently while all those sworn to her fall?” Elsora asked.
Cobalt stared long and hard at the table thinking. “If she does stay behind the walls, she’ll win.”
Elsora nodded just a fraction. “I’ll not dispute that. If Ashera and her army remain within the city we have no means to remove them. I ask you again, knowing her as well as any, will she hold back?”
Cobalt gave a weary sort of chuckle and shook her head, “Of course not. The most important battle ever will be happening outside her gates, she won’t be able to resist that.”
“No,” Elsora said. “No, I don’t think she will.”
“Then we bleed her,” Hubris said. “A war of attrition.”
“Individually you are no match for her, and individually your soldiers will be no match for hers. For every man she loses, I fear you’ll lose a dozen,” Elsora said. “But…”
“The Oga-Kar have no fear of death,” said a man I didn’t recognize. His words said enough, the Oga-Kar were the tribesmen that Cobalt and Hope had fought. He had no fear of death, they didn’t stay dead.
“Eleven of the twelve moons will be burning,” Elsora said. “The rising of each will count as a dawn.”
The Oga-Kar came back to life with the dawn. They were an army that would just keep coming back.
“I fought them for days without rest, and mother is better than me,” Cobalt said.
“I know. But they shall keep her army very busy,” Elsora said. “That will provide time to assure the conquest of the moons. Then we shall rely upon the forces of Olympus to take down the gates.”
“Mother won’t leave them unguarded no matter how eager she is for a fight,” Cobalt said.
“I know. It is going to be a great and terrible battle, but we only need one gate to fall,” Elsora said.
“Mother won’t ever believe that possible, so there won’t be a garrison inside. If the gates go down the interior of the city will be wide open,” Cobalt said.
“At that point King Liam and his companions, myself, and the Blood Witches will make our way within and sever the Silver Road from the city,” Elsora said.
“Just like that?” Yve asked, doubtfully.
“It is a massive metaphysical feat. It will be challenging, but we are capable,” Elsora said.
“Until my mother storms back in, because the gate fell, and cuts you all down,” Cobalt said.
“A danger, to be sure,” Elsora said.
Hubris said, “I should caution my sisters. If this does succeed, the Silver City will begin to break up at once and the shock wave hitting the moons will be severe,”
“Earthquakes, tidal waves, there will be a lot of destruction. The new Queens will also almost immediately grow far more powerful,” Elsora said.
“What about Ashera?” I asked.
“Weaker, but far from weak. Once done,
it isn’t the sort of thing she’ll be able to undo,” Elsora said.
Cobalt frowned and said, “You don’t actually have a plan to deal with her.”
“She can choose a futile war to continue fighting against her family, or take the chance to walk away and start something new. I hope she’ll make the right decision,” Elsora said.
I did as well. In a direct fight Ashera couldn’t be beaten. This, all of this, really did seem designed to win a fight around her. It was the way things had to be, but it didn’t make things simple.
“Will that work?” I asked Cobalt. Even if Elsora was some split-down-the-middle version of Ashera, the two did not think the same and I wasn’t sure Elsora truly knew her other half well—not as much as Cobalt, who had grown up with her mother, Ashera.
“You’ve met her, backing down isn’t exactly in her nature. Of course, she is also all about family. If you’re asking me what she values more, her family or winning, I truly don’t know,” Cobalt said.
I’d have to trust in Elsora’s plans then. They hadn’t failed us so far.
Chapter 28
Malachite took myself and Cobalt with her so that we could, one at a time, see our other children off. It felt strange like this, sending our children we’d just met into war.
I didn’t think either of us would be winning any parenting awards no matter how this all turned out. There are some lines you shouldn’t cross and we were crossing them. What choice did we have? Without this war now, facing Ashera and the Silver City together, our children would inevitably face them alone. Those battles might happen a thousand years from now, but they would happen and our children would lose.
Each of our daughters had mustered their own forces. Hubris had an army of battle-mages, each skilled with sorcery and blade who were the best, culled from countless worlds. A small, but elite force.
Pestilence had the Gli-ar, pale grey-skinned warriors who possessed an immune system that instantly killed any normal disease and gave them incredible strength when facing a new one. Pestilence was an endless source of new diseases and her armies were formidable.
Greed had her mercenaries, Wrath legions of Berserkers, Horror a collection of terrifying monsters straight out of the stories told around campfires. Hope had even managed to find her own band of super-powered heroes.
One by one we hugged them and sent them off to their respective wars. At last it was Cobalt and Maria’s turn to depart. Together they fielded an impressive force, Cobalt having long held an army in reserve in case she ever needed it, and as for Maria, the spiders came. From every corner of reality the spiders came. Massive ones the size of houses, tiny ones that could be mistaken for specks of dust.
“It looks like you’ll have an easy time of it,” I said.
“I saved the hardest one for myself,” Cobalt said. “They gave mother problems, back during the original conquest.”
“You are not alone,” Maria said.
Maria had so often seemed a mix of fragile and regal. Ever since finding out the plans to have her and Cobalt conquer a world together she’d seemed almost at peace. I think what Maria wanted more than anything was the family she’d always been denied.
Then they were gone, setting off on the Silver Road to their own war.
“Hell of a thing, isn’t it?” Malachite asked.
“I haven’t stopped to ask why you’re on our side. I couldn’t convince any of the others to join us,” I said.
Malachite was quiet for several long moments before she said, “One of my earliest memories is trying to master the Right of Travel. Mother had the guardsmen surround me and beat me with sticks until I could figure out how to get away.”
I hadn’t heard this story before.
“Rough way to learn.”
Malachite gave a sort of half-shrug. “It always is with Mother. The universe is a big nasty place and it is coming to kill you. Be prepared, be stronger.”
That sounded like the Ashera I knew. I loved her still, despite such stories. I didn’t exactly have a choice there given her Gifts, but I might have anyways. I admired that kind of strength.
“So it’s revenge?” I asked.
Malachite shook her head. “Nah. I mean, revenge is petty and I do love a good bit of being petty, but it isn’t really that at all. I’m with you because she succeeded. You’re the predator or you’re the prey, and that means always being on the winning side.”
That was a bit of a revelation. Malachite thought we were going to win. I knew we were going to give one massive fight, but I still wouldn’t have bet on us. We were good, but the other side was undefeated.
“What makes you think we’re going to win?” I asked. The question just slipped out.
Malachite said, “You’re some deeply flawed figment of reality from the ass-end of nowhere who somehow stumbled his way onto the throne of a world, then screwed my bitch of a sister and got an army of super-babies, and is now waging war on the center of all reality.”
Perhaps she was trying to be flattering. It made me feel more than a little insane.
“When you’ve done several amazingly improbable things, why not another?” I asked.
“You’re on a winning streak,” Malachite said.
I guess I was.
Malachite grabbed my hand. In a green shimmer we returned to Castle Sardonis.
War has a surprising amount of waiting around. Now that the plans had been set in motion we had to wait for our moment and our part in things. Before we could march on the Silver City the moons had to start falling, and Ashera’s army had to be drawn out.
I’d never actually seen the stars on the Crucible Shard. When I’d first entered this world it was in the depths of the castle and by the time we won our way free of it, Elsora had plunged it into eternal darkness.
She’d pulled back the dark mists to reveal the night sky. You could see the Silver City, the size of the moon from Earth, but notably brighter with ribbons of silver leading from it to other smaller, but still brilliant orbs.
Elsora was watching the sky when we arrived to join her.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” I said.
“Show the sky? Of course, the darkness was always something of a choice rather than a requirement,” Elsora said.
That meant she had lied about that in the past, too. It had caused problems initially with crops, but we’d gotten those cleared up in time.
“Watching is easier than using magic to find out when it is time?” Malachite asked.
Elsora pointed towards one of the moons. It had a reddish tint. “The First Moon, Hubris works fast and it is already burning.”
Elsora reached out to take my hand and I gave hers a squeeze.
“How long will it take the others?” I asked.
“Longer, and we can only wait. With the other moons being attacked none shall send forces away from its own defense, and a single moon in peril is not enough for Ashera to respond,” Elsora said. “More need to burn.”
The moment she said it, the Silver City flashed with a painfully bright light forcing me to squint my eyes.
“You called that one wrong,” Malachite said.
“I did. That was the gates of the Silver City opening,” Elsora said, straightening up. “Our forces are in position to respond once the army emerges.”
“Does this disrupt our plans?” I asked.
“It does. Each burning moon was to be a new dawn for the Oga-Kar. With only one aflame our endlessly immortal army has become less so,” Elsora said.
“The others will get things done,” I said.
“They will, provided that Ashera’s army can be contained long enough. We’ll need to join directly,” Elsora said. With a sharp gesture we were surrounded by clouds of billowing darkness.
Chapter 29
Ashera had lost her army once already. The Nine’s trap tore it to shreds in the greatest defeat the Silver City had ever known. You couldn’t tell it now. Heroes had flocked to Ashera’s banner in a seemi
ngly endless supply. Champions from a thousand worlds had taken the field in the Silver City’s name.
It made for an unusual army. There were no well-ordered ranks, no uniforms, they couldn’t have been more diverse. The Oga-Kar was just as lacking in discipline and the two forces had already joined battle. I couldn’t see Ashera, that was a blessing.
Things so far weren’t going our way. The Oga-Kar was being cut down with terrifying speed. Ashera’s army, sworn into her service, were bolstered by her Right of War and so the formidable became the unstoppable.
Hubris appeared next to us.
“Focus on your moon,” Elsora said.
“They’ve sworn to me. It’s done,” Hubris said.
“Don’t suppose you brought your army with you?” I asked.
“They’re all a bit dead,” Hubris said.
There was the scent of oil and Mela arrived with Walt and Ashley at her side.
“Where have you three been?” I asked.
“Getting the forces of Earth ready,” Walt said.
“The cyborg zombies or the Earthlings reincarnated as robots?” I asked.
“Oh, I’ve been a busy, busy Goddess,” Mela said.
I could imagine. Unfortunately I couldn’t imagine it would make a difference, not against what we were seeing. Mela surprised me.
Mela took a knee before Hubris “I am Mela, God Empress of Earth. May I join your service?”
Hubris arched a brow and asked me, “Will I regret this?”
I didn’t know if this was a short-term impulse of Mela’s or a longer term play. It didn’t matter, not at the moment. While my relationship with the Goddess of Metal had always been a bit strained, I’d always come out ahead with her aid.
“Mela has proved an invaluable ally and friend,” I said. It was a surprising truth.
“I accept your service,” Hubris said with cordial formality.
