by Thomas Green
Why did I hate the thought so much? I guess being imprisoned made me value freedom a lot more than I used to. And with that thought, I remembered my insider. I smiled at Amarendra. “I heard your wife is pregnant. Congratulations.”
Amarendra’s eyes shot wide. Sora bolted forward, stabbing at my chest. I withdrew my aether in a split-second burst, draining out Amarendra’s spell. I slid from Sora’s strike and pushed my aether into him. He didn’t stop. As he stepped by me, I grabbed his collar, diffused the aether bomb by absorbing the aether, and tore the collar off his neck.
In fluid motion, he continued forward, and stabbed through Persephone’s shield, sinking his blade into her chest. The goddess stared, breathless.
Hades stood petrified.
Sora whirled and severed Persephone’s head. A fountain of blood erupted into the air.
Mina spun and slashed after Sora. He bolted away through the door. Mina stepped to follow him while Amarendra reached out with his aether, fuelling a torrent after Sora.
Like I would let that happen. I blended my aether with Amarendra’s, and absorbed the spell, sucking all aether he released into me. Power swelled in my veins.
Yes, Sora has been my insider ever since we made this escape plan half a year ago.
I formed a blast of aether and shot at Mina. The shockwave, strong enough to kill a normal man, bounced from her aether defenses.
But she turned back to me, ignoring Sora, who was running away. Sora and I weren’t nice people. We were willing to do anything to regain our freedom, to return to those we loved. If mass murder, deception, and large-scale destruction was necessary, we were both ready to do our part.
Now, Sora would run back to the Upper Prison, secure the statue for Lucielle that Hades had so nicely made for me, and remove the collars of all our allied prisoners. His ability to see a few seconds into the future meant he could see all possible ways to cut a collar and choose the one where it wouldn’t explode.
He would succeed with his part. And what was left for me was to kill Hades, incapacitate Mina and destroy the engine to send Tul Sar Naar into oblivion.
Hades roared in pain and despair. He spent over two millennia living with Persephone. Now, he watched her die. And he would soon join her in Hell.
He and Mina attacked at the same time. He funneled his aether toward me to catch me in an illusion while Mina swung wide at my midsection. I absorbed Hades’s spell with ease and slid past Mina’s strike.
“Ranged spells don’t work on him,” Mina shouted and whirled to slash with her second hand.
This attack was far too similar to an exchange we had earlier. I made half a step back, formed rotating spheres in my palms, and unleashed them both at her.
She covered her face with her arms, but the blast forced her backward and tore a hole into the wall behind her. Cold wind burst into the room. Hades shaped a great axe from his darkness and charged me from my side, swinging wide.
I ducked and spun, kicking at his knee. He rammed into me. The impact was like that of a speeding train. I flew from him as if I weighed nothing. Mid-flight, I became heavier, stopping my fall. But the gravity’s pull stopped the next second, allowing me to land normally.
Amarendra glared at me, brows furrowed. He didn’t want to help me. But Sora threatened his wife and the threat was more than sufficient to make Amarendra cooperate. This wasn’t nice of us, I knew.
Mina and Hades both rushed toward me. I glanced at Amarendra, motioning up with my right hand and down with my left. He nodded and his aether filled the room. I formed two aether blasts in my palms.
Hades, coming from my right, suddenly slowed down. Only now, he realized Amarendra had betrayed him. Too late. Mina, on the other hand, lost traction on the floor, floating up as Amarendra made her weightless. I leapt backward to get Mina and the hole in the wall in line and aimed one arm at the glass column holding the engine and the other one at Mina.
I unleashed the spells. Mina got caught mid-air. The force blew her out through the hole in the wall, making her disappear in the mist surrounding the island.
The second blast hit the glass column. To my shock, the glass only cracked. What the hell was that made of?
Hades suddenly sped up, slashing at my chest. I weaved away, but the axe cut my flesh. Blood burst out. Hades finished the spin and kicked me. My stomach felt as if it exploded.
I flew away, hitting the wall with my back. My shields were good, but Hades was more than strong enough to get through.
Amarendra stared blankly into space, apparently caught in Hades’s illusion. I peeled myself from the wall and waited for the next charge.
My vision caught a red taint and my chest seared with pain. While the wound was flesh only, I still bled out my power with the blood. If Hades chose a slow approach from this point, I would have no chance to succeed. But he watched his wife die a mere minute ago. I was the man he had to kill to avenge her. He would not have the patience for a slow approach.
Roaring, Hades dashed toward me, as expected. He swung wide. I slid by the countermovement, making it impossible for him to ram into me, and sprinted toward Amarendra. Hades whirled and followed.
I reached out with my aether. But Amarendra had Hades’s aether all over his mind. Odds were, I would sooner kill Amarendra than free him from the spell. I spun past Amarendra, prying the maces from his hands. First, I would deal with Hades, and then I would solve the glass casing around the engine.
Hades kept charging head on, this time into an overhead swing. I waited for when he put weight behind the strike, making sure the attack wasn’t a feint. I parried the axe with the mace and slipped to the side. Predictably, he tried to ram into me, but passed by me as I dodged. I hit his stomach with the other mace.
He grunted with pain and whirled. I leapt backward to get out of his reach. He followed, trying to catch me. I suddenly broke, and bolted toward him, swinging sideways at his head. Instinctively, he raised his axe to parry both maces.
I let go of the maces, dove low, and grabbed his leg. I pulled up and pressed my shoulder against his chest, lifting him up. Hades knew enough about wrestling to let go of the axe. Too late. I slammed him on the ground, moved up his body. He stopped me in half-guard with only one my leg above his hip. I still pinned him down under me and pushed my aether into him.
His shield held, too dense for me to pierce. I had to do this the mundane way and moved up, pressing my shoulder against his head. That forced his back flat on the ground. From the way he distributed his weight when trying to free his head, I could tell he had done his share of wrestling. Well, Greco-Roman wrestling came from Greece, after all. But Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu was a lot newer than that.
I passed his guard into a full mount, wrapped my arm around his head and pulled off his helmet. His eyes flared with hatred. I postured up and rained punches on his head. His nose broke and blood spilled out.
Stabbing pain exploded from my back. By instinct alone, I hunkered down and then rolled from him. While he lay on the ground, Hades slipped out a tendril of darkness, got it up the wall, and then stabbed me with it in the back when I postured up.
Blood flooded from the wound, gluing the jumpsuit to my skin.
We both rose and I started forming a spinning globe of aether in my palm. I didn’t have the strength for more than a couple of attacks.
Hades smirked, forming a new great axe from his darkness. “You got close.”
I pushed more aether into the spinning globe, much more than ever before. The air sucked into the sphere in my palm, compressing. Yes, this was my best move.
Hades shut up and narrowed his eyes. He spread his aether through the room, turning the floor and walls into pure darkness. I compressed the spinning globe. It turned from a sphere of rotating wind into a tiny orb of darkness. Light bent around me, drawing into the miniature black hole in my palm. My arm screamed with pain.
I stretched out the limb, aimed, and let go. A world-shattering blast thundered through the dome. Ha
des slipped from the shockwave. The glass tube covering the engine cracked further but held. The wall behind it shattered into nothing, together with the maze of tubes beyond.
Hades charged, faster than before. With gritted teeth, I slipped under his strike to get behind him. He spun for a follow-up. I didn’t have the speed to avoid this one. And so, I gathered aether into my shield and blocked the axe with my arms. The blade slashed my forearms, but my bones held. The impact threw me backward.
I hit the glass tube with my back. The glass shattered and I slammed into the engine-powering crystal.
I stretched out my aether. With wide eyes, Hades rushed toward me. Too slow. I drew in the aether from the crystal, filling my heart with power and killing the engine.
Tul Sar Naar started falling. With the floor descending, Hades floated into the air. I kicked the engine and rammed into him mid-air. We flew out through the missing wall section. He punched my ribs. I spun by him, getting on his back.
He grabbed my arm as if that would matter. I locked my legs around his midsection, pulled back his head and forced my forearm under his chin. I clenched my muscles and tightened the choke.
Seconds later, his body went limp as he lost consciousness. I loosened the choke, grabbed his chin and the back of his head. I snapped his neck, ending his life.
I let go, falling freely. Amarendra was falling with the fortress, floating inside the nearly destroyed dome, still held motionless by Hades’s spell.
A wave of tiredness washed over me and my consciousness almost slipped from my grasp. I bit my lip, focusing on the pain. I straightened my arms by my sides and stretched my legs, aiming for Amarendra.
I wasn’t going to make it before we hit the ground.
I forced aether into my arms, made small spinning globes as that was all I could do, and let go. The blast propelled me forward. I grabbed Amarendra by the leg and flew out of the dome with him. He was still unconscious.
As we flew toward the mist wreathing the prison, I turned, and shouted. “Wukong!”
No answer.
A golden cudgel stretched through the mist toward us, extending at a blinding speed. With the last of my strength, I grabbed the cudgel and held.
The cudgel started withdrawing back, pulling us up.
My body wanted to file its resignation. But we weren’t out yet, and so I held on. The cudgel drew us up toward Wukong. Collarless, he stood on a small cloud that floated in the sky.
“I wonder how much I’ll regret not letting you fall,” he said with a smirk.
“Very.” I rolled onto the cloud, which had the consistency of a mattress, and placed Amarendra next to me. “Do we have the statue?”
Wukong moved his hand, and the cloud rose further into the air. We flew out of the mist and into the clear sky. My entire body started trembling with cold, teeth clattering. At least the cold slowed down the bleeding.
Slightly above our level flew a wide cloud that stretched downward with hundreds tentacle-like tendrils. They were all retracting into it, each holding a prisoner. We floated to the cloud’s level and landed. As we got onto the cloud, the air got warmer and wind stopped slapping us, apparently stopped by a barrier surrounding this larger cloud.
In the cloud’s center stood Zeus, un-collared with what looked like a staff made of pure lightning in his hand, fully focused on getting as many prisoners from the falling fortress as possible.
Back inside his box in the detection corridor, I prepared three papers for Zeus. The first one instructed him to prepare to create a cloud on which we would fly away. The second one told him how to act as if he was betraying us and the third one was the fake paper to give Hades while doing so.
Gathered around him were over a hundred prisoners. I glimpsed Sora, his friends, Jasika, Loki, Rhonrohak, Ares, and Sophia. Good. Loki stood by a tall, wooden case, apparently the statue’s container.
An ear-breaking boom deafened our ears. Tul Sar Naar landed on the ground. Zeus made the cloud less transparent, so we could see through. The mist around the prison began to disperse, revealing the destroyed complex. The cloud Zeus made held about two hundred souls. Everyone else in the prison died.
I sighed. I planned to save a lot more prisoners.
Amarendra groaned, awakening.
“Morning,” I said with a sour smile.
As he recognized my voice, he bolted upward. “Where’s Jasika?”
“Over there.” I pointed across the cloud. “She should be unharmed.”
He scanned that direction. Jasika sat on a provisory seat made from the cloud, wrapped in a thick fur they must have taken from the prison. Sora’s friends stood nearby, chatting with her.
With wobbly legs, Amarendra rose.
I left him to his business and edged my way toward Zeus.
The other prisoners made space without me needing to say anything. Oh, I so wanted to call it a day and fall unconscious. But we weren’t done yet.
I limped my way to Zeus. “How high can you fly with this?”
He arched an eyebrow. “This is the highest that I can shield us from the wind.”
“Then get this thing moving.” I motioned toward southeast. “We need to run, now.”
“From what?”
A deep growl echoed through the air, originating from the dispersing mist.
“Her.”
Lucas 13
ZEUS made the cloud move, but it wasn’t very fast. Apparently, maintaining the anti-wind bubble took a lot of strength and he didn’t have much left for the actual flying.
That was bad.
Me shooting Mina out of Tul Sar Naar worked for as long as the prison remained intact. Once the complex was destroyed, she didn’t need to bother with not causing collateral damage.
Thundering steps filled the air and a wolf ran out of the mist, heading toward us. Okay, calling this form of Mina a wolf wasn’t precise. Sure, she had the head, fur, paws, tail, eyes, and teeth of a regular, white wolf. But from the ground to shoulders, she was about six to seven hundred feet tall. Her steps were like an earthquake, and she leapt over the entire ruined prison in one jump, rushing toward us.
Everyone on the cloud stared at her, breathless.
My lips tightened into a line. This was why Mina was the Devil’s right hand.
“Amarendra!” I shouted. “Tell me you can turn off her gravity or something.”
Amarendra couldn’t speak, staring at the enormous monster chasing our cloud. Jasika nudged him with her elbow. He snapped back into reality. “The largest gravity well I can make wouldn’t be enough for one paw.”
No, I was not going to surrender. I made it all the way here on a cloud and all I needed to do was to fly away. No way in hell I would sign myself to Lucielle at this point.
Sora stepped next to me. “Lucas, forget your pride, and concede.”
I shook my head. “I am not surrendering.”
“Remember I can see the future?” Sora asked rhetorically. “Out of all the hundreds of paths I can see, the only one where we survive is the one where you shout you accept the deal.”
I turned away from him. Maybe Mina couldn’t reach the cloud. She sped up and jumped. Her three hundred thousand tons of living weight flew into the air, straight toward us, as if we were a thrown ball that the wolf leapt to catch.
I looked over the prisoners. Every single one of them was looking at me. Sora wasn’t telling me the exact truth. Sure, most would die if I didn’t surrender. But I could survive jumping from the cloud and then I could try to escape Mina from there. Sora would also survive, and so would Wukong and perhaps a few others.
Mina was almost at the cloud, mouth open wide.
I caught the glimpse of Amarendra and Jasika, holding each other tight. A tired sigh escaped me. I closed my eyes and shouted, “I’ll sign the contract!”
White aether flashed around the wolf, and Mina landed on the cloud in her human form. Or well, as human as she was with her seven feet of height, and hair reaching to her knees. She
blessed me with a victorious smirk. “You were always a slow learner.”
Yeah, sure. I scowled and looked away.
Over my shoulder, Mina handed me the contract and a pencil.
With a grunt, I took them, signed the contract and gave it back to her.
She braced her elbow on my shoulder. “Now, you work for me. What about the rest?”
“We fly to Russia since it’s the closest land,” I said, loud enough for Zeus to hear.
“Luci won’t like that.” Mina stretched her shoulders.
“I’ll talk to her about it.”
“She’s pissed.”
“And?” I glanced at Sora. “Did you get me the suit?”
He nodded. “You also need a haircut.”
Adrenaline flushed out of me and my head spun. Sora caught me and placed me on the ground. Things became a blur afterward. I didn’t even register who they brought as a barber. Someone shaved me and cut my hair.
Sora undressed me, used the cloth to scrub the dried blood off my skin, and then forced me into a white suit. I didn’t resist, saving my strength. Lucielle was coming and I would need every bit of energy to deal with her. Once done, they let me lie on the cloud.
Minutes later, Mina towered above me. “Luci’s almost here.”
I grunted and raised my hand. Instead of grabbing me to help me get up, Mina kicked me in the ribs. Ouch. I got the point and hauled myself to my feet.
Sora stepped next to me. “I’ll prepare the statue.”
“Go.” I limped across the cloud to get to its front. Mina trailed me lips sealed tight.
The sky turned black. The sun became a faint shade against the pure darkness.
Adrenaline rushed into my veins, clearing my mind. “We need to talk,” I shouted.
Darkness rained down. Droplets of pure, black aether descended onto us, so dense they could be seen with bare eyes. Lucielle loved to make a spectacle. Nervous murmuring passed through the prisoners. They undoubtedly wanted to run but being on a flying cloud didn’t offer many options to do so.
When the droplets fell, they converged onto a spot before me. The darkness rose, bubbling, and formed the shape of a woman. Black turned to white and Lucielle stood before me. She wore a business-formal costume with pumps and a jacket, all white. Cross-shaped earrings hung next to her emerald eyes and her black lips were drawn into a tight line. Loose robes hung over her shoulders and a pointy, witch hat sat on her head. She held a wooden staff with three black nails striking from the upper part. She glared at me. “You are right that we need to talk. But first…” She turned her gaze toward Mina. “What the hell happened to my factory?”
