by James Hunter
Asteria had also heard the communication. She wheeled, mane fluttering like mad as we raced across the sky back toward the western wall, where we’d stopped to admire our long-neck dino-buddies.
I had a bird’s-eye view of the chaos as we cruised back into range.
The monsters attacking my Amazons defied evolution. Defied logic, even. The dinosaurs we’d seen before had been normal creatures—prehistoric and impossible, sure, but normal—but there simply wasn’t anything in the fossil record that could even remotely explain the insane beasts I saw on the ground.
Fucking Dinomythics, is what they were.
Myrina and Antiope were on the banks of the river, engaging a T. rex, except this sucker was covered in bronze scales, its teeth were made of shards of obsidian, and its claw-tipped fingers were as long as scimitars. It lunged in to bite Myrina in half, but she dove through the car-sized jaws, rolled back to her feet, and hurled her lightning javelin. The bolt of electricity struck the Rex’s snout and exploded with a blinding burst of white light that left a purple afterimage stained across my vision.
The blast shocked the dino-freak but didn’t slow it down, not even a little. Antiope danced forward, driving her spear into the side of the armored carnivore, but the bronze scales were far too thick—better than the best scale-mail—and her spear clattered uselessly aside. The lightning javelin returned to Myrina’s quiver, but she’d already drawn her xiphos and was charging in for a fresh attack. The Rex lowered its massive head, body nearly parallel to the ground, and charged, strings of viscous saliva dangling down.
Myrina feinted left, then darted right and leapt into the air, sword flashing out with deadly precision. Her gleaming blade slammed into one of the creature’s stunted arms, shearing through the limb like an overgrown branch. Golden blood spurted from the wound, but the creature kept right on fighting. And instead of going for Myrina, the dino whipped its massive head left, chomped down into Antiope, lifted her up, and ground its obsidian teeth into her thigh. She cried out, slashing at the creature’s muzzle with a curved dagger.
The Warden sliced through one of its reptilian eyes; the creature dropped her as it reared back, issuing a bloodcurdling roar.
Antiope thudded to the ground, alive, but bleeding out.
Myrina moved like the wind, darting over to help. The T. rex wheeled and smacked her into a tree with its ginormous tail.
Nearby, two stegosaurs thundered through the undergrowth, ready to join the party. Euryleia, on top of Buttercup, peppered them with arrows, as did Loxo, who loitered on the bough of a colossal oak. These weren’t run-of-the-mill dinos either. The bony, triangular plates lining their backs were green emerald and glowed with preternatural light. Both creatures opened their beaked mouths and unleashed bolts of eye-searing lightning, which slammed into Euryleia, blasting her off Buttercup’s back. The bear roared as her fur burned and skin boiled.
Loxo, concealed by her magical Shadow Cloak and Whisper Step abilities, avoided the attack. Even better, she managed to thread an arrow into the eye socket of one of the stegosaurs, dropping it where it stood; the glow of its plates dimmed and died completely as it slumped over to one side. The small victory was short-lived, however. The ground rumbled and trees parted with a snap as six triceratopses stormed through the tree line and into the open. Those bad boys were thirty feet long, ten feet tall, and sported a trio of vicious horns.
Loxo hurled herself away from the dinosaur stampede, backflipping from the tree branch, catching a length of vine, and swinging into the clear.
“Get us down there!” I thundered at Asteria, urging her into the mayhem with my heels while pulling the War Blade from its sheath. Time to see how these shitheads did against a living god …
TWELVE
Dinomythics
Asteria and I dove, her wings folded in along her ribs, me clinging tightly to her back.
Below, Ariadne on Thunderfoot rushed to meet the triceratops attack, transforming into a minotaur in mid-sprint; the woman and beast melted, shimmered, becoming one. The triceratopses stopped, dug their scaly feet into the dirt, and lowered their heads. Then—both blowing my mind and defying all known laws of biology—they shot their top horns into the oncoming minotaur.
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
Three of the bony spikes missed, but three more impaled Ariadne—shoulder, gut, thigh—sending her sliding into the dirt, blood pooling around her.
Sophia appeared over the herd of triceratopses in a puff of violet smoke, slammed her katana into the side of one, then teleported away only to reappear and slice at another one. She was as relentless as a junkyard pit bull, but her sword might as well have been a flyswatter; their skin was too thick, their bodies too big.
Suddenly, I regretted using so many Divine Essence points against the imps and their Hellhound mounts back in Stheno’s lair. That had been ridiculously easy compared to the dinomythical beasts we faced now. But thankfully, I still had a little gas in my tank—and I would need it to heal my fighters before they succumbed to their wounds. Antiope and Ariadne were already unconscious, slipping towards death, and Euryleia and Buttercup weren’t in much better shape.
I pulled up my combat interface and triggered my third-level Healing Touch just as Asteria landed on the banks of the river and shifted into a blue-skinned, five-ton war elephant beneath me. The godstone radiated light and heat, my Essence dipped from 220 down to 165, and raw power surged out of me in a wave. The massive drain left me momentarily light-headed, but Asteria kept right on trucking, picking up speed as she charged the Rex. Taking a deep breath, I triggered my Burning Aura spell next—down to 150, now—then carefully climbed to my feet, balancing on Asteria’s shifting back as though she were a massive surfboard.
I wasn’t sure if the added benefit of the Aura would do any good, but my Amazons certainly needed some kind of edge. In the corner of my eye, I watched as Sophia launched a renewed wave of attacks. This time, her golden glowing blade parted through thick hide like silk, leaving deep, bloody gashes behind. Nice! Asteria drove toward the Rex, trumpeting a fierce war cry, but I had other things to do. I leapt from her back with a howl, War Blade screaming through the air. I landed like an asteroid and drove my blade right into the blocky head of a triceratops.
These things might’ve been built like brick shithouses, but not even their armored skulls could stand against the power of my god-forged weapon.
Gleaming metal sheared deep into bone, though I didn’t have quite enough oomph to go all the way through. The beast staggered drunkenly—golden blood oozing free from the wound—somehow still alive. Time to fix that. With a vicious grin, I triggered Lightning Lance, channeling the miracle down the length of the blade and directly into dino brain matter. A plume of smoke wafted up, and a second later my Blade flew free as the creature’s head exploded in a shower of gore and bone, which flecked my face and arms.
“War God!” Phoebe screamed, urgency brimming in her voice.
I spun right as a flying horn jackknifed through my armor and into my side like a fucking prison shiv, slashing through fifteen percent of my HP. I staggered from the blow and coughed, blood dribbling from my lips. Holy shit, but that hurt.
Phoebe thundered over in her mech and returned fire, slamming crossbow bolts into my horned attacker. Quarrels bounced off the bony ridges of the thing’s head, but some rammed deep into its chest, sending gouts of blood flying. Unlike Myrina or Loxo, Phoebe seemed to ascribe to the spray and pray method of archery: put as many rounds downrange as humanly possible and hope something hit. Thankfully, enough of the arrows did find their mark to put the asshole sucker-puncher down for keeps—though there were still plenty more of those things left to go around.
With a grunt, I pulled the horn free and triggered Fury, temporarily letting the godstone off its leash as hate and rage filled me up with terrible purpose.
I turned, murder etched into the lines of my face, as trees swayed and cracked, admitting some new horror into the rumb
le. A massive ankylosaur burst past a copse of palm trees in a flash of bronze and drove its shoulder into Phoebe’s mech, spilling her to the ground. This bastard was easily the size of minivan, and looked a little like an overgrown, ’roided-out version of a house turtle with a spike-covered wrecking ball for a tail.
At least the damn thing didn’t glow.
Sabra used her Combat Growth to send vines reaching up to seize the armored dinosaur, but the thing was too big, and it ripped through the vegetation. A flick of its mace-tail sent my Forest-Witch flying. I sprinted forward and snagged Sabra from the air like a high pop fly. I set her down without a word and reversed course, tearing ass toward the turtle-saur. The wrecking ball tail lashed out; I caught the blow on my shield, but even so, the hit knocked me into next Tuesday, leaving me flat on my back, eight feet away.
Well then.
Off to my left, Myrina let out a victorious howl as she leapt from Asteria’s elephantine back, landing on the Rex’s back and driving her xiphos straight down. The Rex flailed in anger, trying to buck her free; Asteria capitalized on the distraction, driving low with her tusks, goring the dino right in the chest. Meanwhile, Myrina hacked away at the bronze armor so she could get to the vulnerable flesh underneath.
I gained my feet, shook my head, and took a quick glance around.
Despite being both outnumbered and outgunned, we were doing a damn decent job of holding our own. But this was a fight we couldn’t win—not straight up. We needed a miracle. Good thing I was in the miracle business. Raising my flashing sword, I summoned storm clouds, which boiled out of thin air above us. The stench of ozone swept through the cries and bloodshed of the dinosaur battle. I could only imagine what it would look like from above, our section of the river and the jungle covered with black, lightning-laced clouds.
“Shockwave!” I screamed into the abrupt gloom.
This badass spell was another blessing of the War Blade—a once-a-day ability that did an incredible 3 x Miracle Damage on impact, plus an additional 100 points of Electrocution Damage per second for fifteen seconds. Brutal. I was always a little reluctant to use it since I couldn’t use it again for another twenty-four hours.
But this was a dire situation if ever there was one.
Fingers of lightning reached down from the sky and struck the tip of my upraised blade. The power lit up every single one of my cells, and though I was in sheer agony, the godstone let out a scream of joy in my chest.
I lowered the sword, driving the tip into the dirt and grass, redirecting the entire power of an unleashed thunderstorm into the ground around me. The air rattled with a sizzle-crack as a hundred jagged bolts of lightning erupted like geysers, streaking impossibly upward. Palm trees burned, the river sizzled, and dinomythics died, quivering and convulsing as their flesh took hundreds of hit points of electrical damage.
At least two of the already wounded triceratopses exploded from the sheer power of the deadly Shockwave. Blue skeins of electrical power enveloped the T. rex, and it let out a roar of agony before it slumped over and toppled into the river. Myrina leapt away to safety, and due to the magical nature of my spell, she and my other Amazons were completely unharmed by the reverse thunderstorm.
Sometimes being god of war had its perks.
Two more of the triceratopses toppled, alive but paralyzed from the attack. Instantly, they found themselves entangled in the thick swaths of jungle vines, courtesy of Sabra’s Combat Growth abilities. Sophia teleported in with a flash and used her flaming katana to cut into one bestial heart and then the other, vanishing between attacks. The monsters didn’t stand a chance.
Unfortunately, the turtle-shelled ankylosaur sizzled and smoked, but simply refused to die as it thundered through the brush, coming at me fast. And trailing behind it was the last remaining electrical stegosaurus, which naturally had been immune to Shockwave.
Two triceratopses also broke from the ferns and fired their horns at me. I sidestepped the first, dove left to avoid the second and third, and caught the fourth and fifth on my shield with a meaty clang. Without missing a beat, I charged the dinomythics that had been stupid enough to single me out. They’d be regretting that poor decision for the rest of their very short lives. But my Amazons were racing me, making a game of it.
Asteria transformed into a saber-tooth tiger and streaked ahead with ease, diving low, clawing through the throat of one of the triceratopses. Boom. Dead.
Loxo dropped down on the last of the horned beasts, driving her sword into its neck while Minotaur Ariadne—her enormous battle-ax on fire from Burning Aura—roared and struck its head. With a mighty chop, the bull-woman sank her flame-covered ax into the armored skull, killing it on the spot
Phoebe surged forward on my right and launched a fresh barrage of bolts into the stegosaurus. Through the sheer number of quarrels she fired, some finally found the eye socket of the creature. It stumbled, then came to a herky-jerk halt as its brain finally realized it was dead.
That left me the turtle-shelled ankylosaur.
The fury burned in me brighter than ever, and all I wanted was to put this freak in its place. I stashed my War Blade and shot in, hands outthrust. Ol’ wrecking-ball tail was a rather squat creature, but I had no trouble slipping beneath it then jabbing my fingers into its plated underbelly. My fingers would never penetrate, of course, but that wasn’t the plan. With a groan, I stood, legs trembling, arms shaking from the strain as I lifted the monster up above my head.
Heavy, so fucking heavy … Couldn’t hold it for long.
Just long enough to do what needed doing.
With a roar of triumph, the godstone vibrating inside me, I slammed the creature forward, right down onto its neck. It was tough, sure, but not tough enough to survive a fall like that. Its neck went crack—the sound of a breaking two-by-four—the life fleeing from its eyes as it thudded into the dirt, kicking up a small plume of debris. Killed by its own weight and momentum.
I doubled over at the waist, grabbing my knees and sucking down a sweet lungful of delicious air. A wide grin broke across my face.
Somehow, we’d done it, we’d kill all those sons of—
The grin slipped and faded as metallic shrieks broke all around us, drowning out every other sound. I stood, winced, and pressed my hands against my ears as I scanned the battlefield. I’d never heard anything so loud or terrible. The sound came again, even louder. From above, dozens and dozens of pterodactyls swooped down, but like the Stymphalian birds we’d faced before, they were made of bronze.
As they drew closer, I realized they weren’t pterodactyls at all, but something worse. Quetzalcoatlus, or at least the upgraded, heavy metal version of ’em. I’d read about them online once, and the image had been so odd it had stuck in my brain even after all these years. They were monstrous things that looked like the unholy love child of a pterodactyl and a giraffe. Scales, bird feathers, and unnaturally long necks with a thirty-foot wingspan to boot. And like the lightning-wielding stegosaurs we’d just put down, these things had glowing emerald plates across their back.
Which could only mean one thing …
The storm clouds from my Shockwave spell were dissipating, but in their shadow, we saw the plates on the Quetzals glow. Like lightning-breathing dragons, the nightmare birds strafed the jungle around us with burning laser beams of raw electricity. My Amazons ducked and rolled, dodging madly as the electrical blasts carved deep trenches in the ground, leaving smoking ruins behind. For the first time, I was at a loss. We were already limping along and there were so damned many of them.
How were we gonna get out of this one?
Will you fucking look at that? Phoebe messaged in disbelief as she leapt from her mech and into my arms. We dove for cover.
THIRTEEN
Gone, Gorgon, Gone
Then the impossible happened.
First one of the Quetzals turned to stone, then another and another. Three petrified doom-birds tumbled out of the sky like falling asteroids and smash
ed into the ground in explosions of dirt and scree. I raised my shield to protect Phoebe and myself. Rocks pinged and panged off the metal; a billowing dust cloud made it damned hard to see.
The other Quetzals let out metallic shrieks and pulled out of their attacks. They swirled around and then sped upwards, toward the crystal cluster of the synthetic sun. Is that where they live? I wondered, watching them go as the debris cloud settled. Must be. Something clicked into place like the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle. When Asteria and I had flown recon, we’d heard their cries from far above. Had Asteria and I drawn them down on top of our heads?
Loxo emerged from the shadows. Glancing down at Phoebe in my arms, she offered me a lopsided smile. Oh, Jacob, are you the god of war, or the dog of war? First Asteria, then me, now Phoebe? Not that I’m judging, mind you. Personally, I’m just glad to see you’re finally coming into your own. She then melted back into the shadows. Interesting times ahead, I think, she finished.
I’d been a fool to think Loxo would keep our little encounter quiet. For her, it wasn’t a big deal. For me it was. I kinda felt annoyed.
Yeah, Loxo, not what you think, Phoebe returned, limping back to her mech and climbing in. Jacob was protecting me. He has better things to do than romance a gimp like me.
Not true. I hated when Phoebe mentioned her withered leg. I mean yeah, she wasn’t as physically perfect as the other Amazons, but she was wicked-smart and funny and easy to be around. More than that, she was important to me. Sure, I loved Asteria’s pure spirit and Loxo’s unashamed flirting, but I connected with Phoebe in a deeper way. The thought of losing her sent a bolt of hurt through my heart.
I pushed all that away for now—there just wasn’t the time for it.
Eyes closed, everyone, I sent to my crew, dropping into a low crouch as I scanned the lush forest. True, the Quetzals had fled … but that didn’t mean we were in the clear. So far as I knew, there was only one thing that could petrify the living like that. Gorgons. And I happened to know there was one loitering down here somewhere—Euryale, last of the Gorgon sisters. My Amazons wouldn’t fare any better than the Quetzals had, but because I was a god, I had some protection—at least for a short while, though it would zap my Essence Points to withstand her deadly gaze.