by Bill Hiatt
For hours I’d been trapped inside this horror-movie parody of life, surrounded by people who acted like they weren’t afraid at all.
Now we were about to face what I got the impression was something like the end boss in a role-playing game, and I was the only one who wasn’t handicapped by partially healed wounds—but I was a twelve-year-old who couldn’t seem to handle a sword decently. I didn’t see how we could win.
I glanced back, hoping Tal and Magnus had figured out what they were doing. No such luck, and Tal had an expression close to panic.
The ground had been shaking like an earthquake, but I still found myself cringing when I heard the sound of metal crunching, and those two big doors got tossed aside with a loud crash that shook the floor again.
What started pushing through the doorway looked like something that would have frightened the worst monsters in my nightmares.
The head and upper body were that of a gigantic woman, but with a mass of poison-spitting snakes for hair—like Medusa but with a long-range attack. Her hands were clawlike, with fingers that ended in nails curved like the sword I’d been given.
As if all of that wasn’t bad enough, at least fifty animal heads were sticking out from her waistline. Lions roared, wolves howled, and bears bellowed, all working together to look and sound like a zoo from hell.
Below the waist her body was all scales, with legs ending in even bigger masses of snakes that, despite being walked on, somehow seemed almost poised to strike.
Tal still wasn’t ready.
Lucas, or whoever he was, hit the creature with a blast of electricity, but the thing shook it off and sprayed poison in his direction. Hermes managed to deflect the poison, which rose to the ceiling in a huge cloud.
As Lucas scored his second hit, the archers started firing, but most of their arrows just bounced off, despite being magical. Even the explosions from Khalid’s seemed to have much less effect on Campe than on anyone who had been hit with them before.
Hercules charged at Campe, swinging his club, but he was slower than he had been, and the monster skewered him with her left claw, lifted him, and tossed him screaming across the room. I thanked God he couldn’t die, but he wasn’t going to do anything else this battle.
Campe was beginning to burn from Lucas’s lightning, and she threw everything she had at him. Some of the poison got through despite Hermes’s effort to shield Lucas, but Lucas dodged. Unfortunately, his legs, still not in great shape, caused him to stumble, and I think he twisted an ankle or something as he went down. He wasn’t out, but he couldn’t move out of the way when Campe sprayed poison again. Lucas got hit in the back, and the stuff seemed to burn him like acid.
Apollo stopped firing arrows and tried to come to Lucas’s aid. He, too, got skewered and met the same kind of defeat Hercules had. Hermes flew down and got Lucas out of the way, but Lucas was in bad shape, and our best healer was now down.
Hades, who had Poseidon’s trident in his left hand, struck the ground in an effort to knock the monster off her feet. The strategy backfired, knocking most of us off-balance, and before we could recover, Campe sliced through Dionysus’s throat with one stroke. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. The Olympian’s ichor sprayed all over everybody around him, shaking them up and allowing Campe to stab Persephone through the chest before she could recover.
Tal still wasn’t ready.
Hades howled in rage and hurled himself at the monster, managing to get one blow in before Campe swatted him like a gnat. He hit the ground, and I could swear I heard bones breaking.
Campe was doing way better than our side. Lucas had damaged her a little, and it looked as if Hades had as well, but her injuries were like minor scratches or bruises compared to what she was dishing out.
I tried not to think about the fact that we were going to run out of Olympians pretty soon, and that my friends and I, who could die, would have to face the monster alone.
Then I heard a battle cry, and a thunderbolt so intense it almost blinded me hit Campe full force. The creature screamed, and I could smell burned flesh, but she did not go down.
The transformed Tal charged forward. If the fake had been Dark Zeus, Tal was now like Light Zeus, glowing with power. Just looking at him made me feel better.
A second thunderbolt produced visible burns, but Campe was still coming, now spraying poison in all directions. The attack wasn’t very well focused, but it did take out Aphrodite and came way too close to several others.
I realized Campe was probably trying to force us to pull back so she could face Tal all by himself.
If so, the beast was doing too little too—
I heard a creaking sound behind us and turned around, almost eager to be able to look at something else.
A skeleton bigger than any of the others had come from somewhere and was moving on us rapidly, its sword raised. Despite its size, attacking us seemed like a stupid move. Then I noticed the skeleton wasn’t made out of bones like the others. It was made out of that other stuff, or at least it looked like it. What was it called?
Oh, yeah, it was adamantine.
Tal must have spotted the new threat as well, because he shot a thunderbolt at it as he prepared for the next attack against Campe. The skeleton took a hit, but it seemed not much damaged by it.
Then the thing charged. Since the Olympians were between us and Campe, and the skeleton was coming at us from the opposite direction, we were fully exposed to it.
I swore I would have run as fast as I could away from that thing—except for the fact that Eva was standing right next to me. I couldn’t just let her die. I sucked as a fighter, though. I moved between her and the supercharged skeleton, figuring it would probably chop off my arm or something before I could do anything.
However, Alex had seen the thing coming, too, and he sprang at it, crashing his sword against its rib cage.
The sword didn’t even leave a mark. I had been right about the adamantine.
The skeleton brought its sword down hard on Alex’s, but Alex was a strong guy and managed to hold on to his own weapon. By now some of the other guys were rushing to help, and I actually thought maybe we were out of danger. After all, all the guys needed to do was hold back the skeleton thing until Tal was done with Campe, at which point he would find some way to beat the skeleton.
I risked turning around, then froze.
A random glob of poison was heading right at us—right at Eva.
Move, damn it!
But I couldn’t move at first, and Eva didn’t look as if she was going to get out of the way, either.
I had just started moving again, hoping I could push her out of the way before it was too late, when Tal flew in front of her, letting the poison splash across his chest.
Campe looked in bad shape. Most of her visible flesh was burned black, and ichor oozed from big gaps in it. She was, however, still moving, though slowly.
Even in Zeus form, Tal was apparently not immune to the poison, and he fell to the floor, writhing in agony. He seemed to be struggling to get one more thunderbolt out, but if so, he couldn’t.
If I hadn’t frozen, I could have knocked Eva out of the way, and Tal would never have had to put himself in the poison’s path.
Had I just lost us the battle?
Now Athena, almost the only Olympian left who was any good in combat, was charging the monster, but she was utterly without backup. Hephaestus was moving to assist her, but too slowly. The remaining archers still weren’t having much effect, and all of our guys still standing were trying to beat the adamantine skeleton, with limited success—except for me.
My heart was beating so fast I felt like it was going to explode. I felt embarrassing tears on my cheeks, and my hands shook on my sword.
But I had been the one who screwed up. I had to fix this.
Eva had bent to help Tal, but she couldn’t really do much, and, anyway, he ordered her back to avoid her getting contaminated by the poison. Still, she looked distracte
d enough that I knew she couldn’t defend herself well, especially considering her arrows hadn’t done much to Campe.
I knew my little weapon wasn’t going to do much to Campe, either, even if I could have used it well. I needed to find something bigger.
Athena must have thought the same thing about her usual spear, because she had grabbed Poseidon’s trident and took a couple good jabs at the monster, who was slow enough now that Athena dodged her claw strikes successfully.
“Michael!” Tal called out to me, his voice barely audible.
“What can I do?” I asked.
“Maybe…maybe I can…borrow…some of your strength.”
“You can have mine, too,” said Eva, “but does Zeus have healing ability?”
Tal closed his eyes as another wave of pain hit him. “Not enough…but Magnus does…and he can shield himself…from the effects…of the poison…but he needs power to do that…and heal…at the same time.”
“Because of the way your body tries to maintain the same state, your ability to supply power may be more formidable than we realized,” added Magnus.
Hephaestus had fallen, though Athena was still jabbing Campe with the trident and scoring some good hits. Behind us the clash of swords was becoming almost deafening, but the best the guys seemed to be able to do was avoid getting wounded. Their blows weren’t damaging the skeleton at all, as far as I could tell.
The last thing I wanted to do was throw myself at Campe or the skeleton, but somehow it didn’t seem very masculine just sitting around being a human battery while other people were risking their lives.
“Don’t be an idiot,” thought Magnus, obviously reading my mind. “You have an important job to do. Get your butt over here and do it!”
“What do I do?” I asked.
“Sit down…next to us,” whispered Tal.
Poison missed Athena by inches.
I sat down, and Tal took my hand.
Because I had been fighting earlier, no one had been trying to draw strength from me, so this was my first experience. It wasn’t unpleasant. I did feel weaker, but only for a moment. Then my strength came again. Magnus must have been right about the way my body would handle having power siphoned off.
Campe finally hit Athena, knocking her halfway across the room. There was no one left between her and us except combat-unready people like the Muses and Hestia.
“How’s it going?” I asked. Then I immediately felt stupid for asking, and Magnus was concentrating so intensely that no one responded at first.
“I’m healing,” said Tal, “but I feel as if I can barely stand.”
The lesser Olympians were running in our general direction. Unfortunately, that drew Campe’s attention our way as well. She just needed to move a little to be in poison spitting range.
“Michael, we need some thunderbolts, but the network is down, and the poison damage is still bad enough to prevent the Zeus body from generating the power on its own. We need to draw on you much harder,” said Magnus. “I can’t be sure of the effect.”
“Do it!” I thought back.
Tal raised the hand that wasn’t holding mine. Suddenly I felt almost too weak to keep my head up. My heart seemed to be skipping beats.
A thunderbolt lanced across the room, striking Campe with a satisfying crackle and throwing her back a little bit.
Before I was completely recovered, Tal launched another thunderbolt, this one strong enough to almost blast one of her arms off. My heart seemed to stop altogether, and I lost consciousness.
When I opened my eyes again, Eva was yelling.
“Stop it! You’re killing him!”
“Would you rather we all died?” asked Magnus.
“I’m OK,” I managed, though my voice sounded very weak.
I might have been new to all this, but I was smart enough to know Tal and Magnus had to draw power from me faster than my body could renew it.
I should have been as scared as I was before. I could die. Somehow, this part wasn’t as scary.
Maybe I wasn’t scared because I wasn’t meant to exist in the first place. Maybe things were about to work out the way they were supposed to.
“What can I do?” asked Hermes, suddenly beside us. I hoped he was there because Lucas was stable, not because Lucas was dead.
“Keep the poison from hitting us again,” said Tal. “Even this body apparently can’t take direct hits from it.
Campe had recovered from the last thunderbolt enough to lumber unsteadily in our direction. Hermes did what he could with magic. We would have to hope it would be enough this time.
“Can you take a couple more bolts?” Tal asked me.
Campe did indeed spray poison again, but Hermes’s magic shield held, at least for now.
“No, he can’t!” insisted Eva. “I wasn’t getting a pulse for a few seconds.”
“Do what you need,” I said.
Poison splashed against the shield again, and Hermes winced. He looked tired, too, I guessed from keeping Lucas alive.
“Where’s the lyre?” asked Tal.
“Way over where Apollo was at first,” thought Magnus. “There’s no way we can get to it.”
Tal sat up. “Keep healing us, Magnus. I’m going to try to pull less on Michael and see if we can get through this without any of us dying. Eva, holler if Michael is in trouble.”
Another poison spray, this one heavier than the last, shot in our direction, and Hermes moaned with the effort of holding it back.
Tal managed to get to his feet unsteadily, took my hand again, and raised the other one.
I felt dizzy, and then a small thunderbolt struck Campe, who screeched but kept on coming.
Tal gripped my hand harder and fired again. Everything went dark for a few seconds.
“He can’t take it!” said Eva.
“I’m fine,” I insisted, knowing damn well I wasn’t. I had to do what I could. I just had to.
Campe sprayed poison again, and this time the shield Hermes had gotten up went down. The Olympian tried frantically to get something up between us and her, but she appeared ready to spray again.
The remaining Olympians, knowing they could not die, formed a line in front of us. If Campe kept going, however, they would all be down pretty quickly.
Tal fired one more thunderbolt, and again I passed out. When I revived, which must only have taken a few seconds, Eva had her arms around me, which made near death almost worthwhile.
Tal was no longer holding my hand. I reached out for him, but he brushed me aside.
“I can’t risk it,” he said.
Already feeling better, I tore away from Eva. “I can take it!”
Hestia stepped back and took Tal’s hand, so he started drawing on her and sent another thunderbolt Campe’s way. Again the blast wounded Campe, but she was still upright and moving.
She could try the poison attack again at any moment. Tal was healing too slowly, Hestia would drain soon, and almost everyone else in fighting condition was still tied up with the skeleton.
I felt useless. Even my specialty, regeneration, hadn’t been enough to save the day. There had to be something else.
There was one other possibility: the sword of chaos.
Looking back, I could see Alex was using a more regular sword against the skeleton. I remembered Tal’s concern about injuries from flying adamantine chips. Well, if he couldn’t use it against the skeleton, maybe I could use it against Campe.
I ran back and grabbed its handle.
“Alex, I need this,” I said, grabbing the sword and pulling it out of its special scabbard.
“Michael, no!” he said, but he couldn’t turn his back on the skeleton to try to stop me. None of the other guys wanted to risk coming after me, either. It was taking all of them just to keep one another from getting hurt.
As carefully as I could, I ran off to one side. If I took the most direct route, Eva or maybe even Tal would try to stop me. This way they might not even see me.
&nb
sp; Campe was already badly wounded, mostly from the thunderbolts. If I could bury the sword of chaos in her, it might rip her apart before she could get it out, but it would at least do more damage, maybe enough to stop her.
Tal hit the monster with three thunderbolts in rapid succession, then stopped. I didn’t dare look, but I figured Hestia must be pretty far gone.
Campe was now so charred I could hardly recognize her, and her blood was everywhere, but she was still moving forward.
I started running toward her. By now Eva and some of the others must have seen me, but it was too late for them to stop me.
Campe noticed me as I got closer, and she tried to spray poison at me. What came out was more like a dribble, but it was still moving pretty fast, and my effort to block with the sword might not have stopped it all. At the last possible moment, however, Khalid grabbed me by one arm, Eros by the other, and flew me out of the way.
“What are you doing? I have to—”
“We’re not stopping you—we’re helping,” said Khalid quickly. “Quit squirming!”
Campe, confused by the rapid movement, was taking time to focus on us. Tal managed one very feeble thunderbolt. The creature shook but was not distracted from its desire to attack us.
“Campe’s mouth seems to be sagging open,” said Eros. “Wait until we’re close enough, then throw with all your strength into that open mouth.”
Eros and Khalid were zigzagging to prevent Campe from hitting us with poison at close range. Unfortunately, there were no thunderbolts, either, because Tal couldn’t come up with enough power to generate them or because we had gotten our stupid selves in the way. As a result, Campe managed to spit poison again, and Khalid and Eros almost dropped me in their desperate effort to evade the attack.
I was feeling sick from all the movement, but finally we got close enough, and I threw for all I was worth.
If I missed, we would probably all have died. I wasn’t used to throwing something like a sword, but I aimed as well as I could and let it go with all the force I could manage.
Into the creature’s mouth the sword flew, and I saw an explosion where it hit Campe’s throat. The creature convulsed at that point, and my buddies pulled me away as fast as they could.