by James Hunter
Except the blow wasn’t aimed at me, it was aimed at Myrina, who stood a handful of feet away from me. I knew Myrina was fast, but Praxidike had proven herself to be just as capable as my generals. Perhaps more so.
I only had a second to make up my mind.
It didn’t even take me that long to decide. My training as a Marine kicked in, and I moved on instinct. I bolted right and threw myself into a dive, my shoulder slamming into the Battle Warden. Myrina went flying, out of harm’s way. I’d saved her, but I’d been half a step too slow to save myself. The javelin slammed into my chest with the force of a shotgun blast, lodging itself just above my heart. I landed hard on the ground, the pain blinding me. I grabbed the javelin, to tear it out, and felt the crust of dried bird droppings covering the wood. Praxidike had used Stymphalian bird dung to poison her javelin. That bitch!
I glanced up, my eyes blurry, and saw Praxidike retreating into the night. Good riddance. Suddenly, Myrina was looming over me, her eyes chips of blue diamond as she shouted at me, but all of her words were jumbled and oddly distorted in my head. It was like listening to someone while underwater.
Nearby, someone else was weeping. They were weeping for me, I knew.
My hit points ticked away, and I was positive my death was imminent.
Dimly, as black invaded my vision, I wondered if I would re-spawn.
But if Ares hadn’t been able to pull off that trick, what chance did I have?
TWENTY-SIX
Recovery
I can’t say I was surprised that I woke up in my bed in the palace. I’d woken up there before, so it was kind of same old same old. I was, however, surprised to be waking up at all. I figured the poisonous bird poo would’ve killed me. That or the javelin wound itself.
But here I was. Alive and breathing, though admittedly, it felt like someone had flattened me with an industrial steamroller. Everything hurt. Hell, even my fucking hair seemed to ache and throb. Man did Praxidike have some serious payback coming her way next time we tangled. As I pushed myself up with a groan and propped my back against the headboard I swore under my breath I was going to put her down like the rabid dog she was.
With a grimace, I reached out and plucked my helmet off the nightstand to my right. Some part of me wanted to sleep and recover until the pain was only a distant memory, but I had work to do. Assuming Praxidike hadn’t been lying through her teeth, the forces of Hades had raided my city, and it was time I tallied the damage. I slipped the helmet on, and was immediately inundated with notifications informing me I’d leveled up not once, but twice as a result of my dust-up with the centaurs and the shit-birds.
It made sense, considering how many I’d killed. Now I had twenty Attribute Points and two Ability Points to dish out, but that could wait for later. Right now, my Amazons were the primary focus. Quickly, I toggled over to my MANAGE AMAZONS tab and pulled up my active troop roster.
My stomach dropped. Holy crap.
The damage was even worse than I’d feared. Seriously. Absolutely devastating. Hippolyta hovered at one single hit point. A few of my other Wardens were only marginally better off. Not a single Amazon in my army was at a hundred percent. Not one. Even Phoebe had been pulled from the forge to fight. Her life hovered just below twenty-five percent. Searching the map of the city, I saw that most of my forces were clustered in the barns near the forge. Probably, Phoebe had turned the building into an impromptu infirmary.
I searched for Asteria, Euryleia, Antiope, and Loxo, but I couldn’t find them on the city grounds, though they were all alive, which was a small miracle.
Next, I checked for Myrina and saw her right away. Mostly because she walked into my room at that exact moment. Well, she didn’t walk really. She thundered into my room, shouting, “Have you no sense, Jacob Merely? Have you no mind? Do your parents wail over their moronic child? Do you often look into the mirror and marvel that you have the intellect to keep your own heart beating, or does someone have to remind you to breathe?”
She paced back and forth at the foot of my bed. I wasn’t sure if she got the word moronic from ancient Greece or from our time messaging. But she used that word, the word buffoon and several others. She even went as far as to refer to my brains as American cheese.
“Cheese heads?” I asked. “Those would be people from Wisconsin, I think.”
She stopped talking, crossed her arms, and simply glared at me. I was actually grateful for the abrupt silent treatment since all the yelling was making my head hurt, and I felt awful. I needed a bit of healing, so I figured I’d use a little Essence to put myself right. The only problem? I had no menu option to heal myself. That surprised me. It seemed I could upgrade my attributes, but I couldn’t fix my wounds. That was unfortunate, to say the least.
“Look, Myrina,” I said after the silence had dragged on for a few minutes, “I made a command decision, okay? I didn’t want to lose you. Despite being at odds with me, you’re the best fighter we have, a natural leader, and a helluva teammate. I’m still new to being god of war, but I know I won’t be able to hack it without you, Asteria, and Phoebe in my corner.”
Then she completely lost her shit. “IF YOU DIE, WE ALL DIE! I MEAN NOTHING! EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON YOUR SURVIVAL, YOU MORONIC CHEESE-HEADED BUFFOONISH ASSHAT!”
That last word, I know she got from me.
I pulled the blanket aside, swung my legs over the edge of the bed, and gained my feet. Once again, I found myself naked, though my wounds had been carefully bandaged. I ignored my nakedness—if it didn’t bother her, I wasn’t going to let it bother me, dammit. Besides, we had bigger problems to deal with. We needed to hash out whatever baggage she was carting around. I needed her firmly in my corner, and that wasn’t going to happen until we got everything out in the open.
“What is your problem?” I asked, folding my arms. “Seriously, why do you have such a colossal chip on your shoulder, huh?”
“It is nothing,” she snapped, looking away, refusing to meet my eye. “The only thing you need to know is that we Amazons mean nothing in the end. Nothing.” A single tear rolled down her cheek. “Only you matter, Jacob Merely. And you must swear on the River Styx you will never sacrifice yourself to save one of us. Swear it.”
“Nope,” I said, shaking my head. “I won’t swear until you tell me what in the hell your deal is. Something happened between you and Ares—Phoebe told me that much. If you want me to swear to you, you need to talk first. That’s my condition. Now what did Ares do to you?”
Myrina shuddered. “No, I cannot speak of that day. Kill me if you must. Craft a new general. But this is not for you to know.” She stood there, shaking, shifting on nervous feet, unwilling to look at me.
Slowly, I moved closer, reaching out to her, holding her hands in mine. She didn’t punch me in the teeth, which I thought was a good sign. “Tell me, Myrina. Tell me what happened.”
“I will not,” she said, and yet, part of her wanted to. I could feel it.
“Then let me see if I can guess,” I whispered, my mind fitting the pieces together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. “After I formed a mind link with you for the first time, you panicked, Myrina. You asked me not to take control of you—you pleaded with me, which is entirely out of character for you. And when Praxidike called you a puppet, outside of Stheno’s lair? That set you off. That’s what Ares did to you, didn’t he? He took control of you. He made you his puppet.”
Myrina dropped her head, golden hair falling over her face as quiet sobs wracked her body. “I begged him to stay and finish the sigil,” she mumbled after a time. She looked up at me, her eyes red-rimmed, and obliterated the tears on her cheek with the back of one hand. “I told him we could hold the walls,” she continued, voice stronger. Resolute. “He did not listen. Ares never listened. Not to anyone. So, I stepped in front of him to stop him. Better I die than for the sigil to remain unfinished.” Her voice was steel now, forged in the fires of hardship and hurt.
“I didn’t know Ares well,”
I replied, “but I’ve known plenty of guys like him. I imagine he didn’t take it well. You standing up to him, I mean.”
Myrina clenched her jaw. “No. Not well at all. He took control of me—usurped my will. Turned me into a puppet and there was nothing I could do to stop him. I could not fight. I could not move. I was powerless. And to add insult to injury, he kept me frozen in the temple. I watched many of my sisters die, while frozen as a statue. He finally freed me from the spell when the Amazons fell back to the temple to defend the sigil, but by then it was too late. We were defeated. I was cut down, killed. Killed because of his pride.”
I squeezed her hand. “I get it, Myrina. I get why you have such a hard time with me. It’s like you want me to be Ares, and at the same time you don’t. But I promise you, I will not control you, ever. And I will listen to you. You are right. What I did back at the waterfalls was stupid. But I couldn’t bear to see you hurt. At that moment, I wasn’t thinking about the sigil, the war with Hades, none of that. All I wanted was to save my friend from dying. In the Marine Corps, we fight for the Marine to our left and right, because we value them. I value you, so I jumped in front of the javelin.”
Myrina flung my hands away, and I thought she was going to either punch me or yell at me some more. Instead, she did the last thing in the world I would’ve expected. She hugged me close to her, pulling me in tight. Myrina was a high-level Warden, tough, quick, and really fucking strong. I felt my ribs crack, and I thought my wounds might be spurting blood.
But I didn’t pull away.
She turned her head and whispered into my ear. “I cannot be with you like I want, Jacob Merely. Not yet. I still feel conflicted deep inside because you are not Ares, but know this, War God, I do love you. And though you are not Ares, I think you are a better man than he was. A better man than he could ever hope to be. And I thank you for saving my life.” She leaned in, her lips pressing into mine.
The kiss lasted only an instant, but it also felt like it lasted for a perfect lifetime. At last, she pulled away and held me at arm’s length. “Thank you, but don’t ever do it again!” The words were harsh, but her gentle smile took the sting out. “We barely saved you. Asteria flew us back here just in time for Phoebe to administer an antidote to the Stymphalian poison. It was a near thing.”
I grinned in return. “I learned my lesson. Promise.”
“Good!” Myrina let out a long breath and suddenly I knew things would be okay between us. Maybe our relationship would still be complicated, but it wouldn’t be openly hostile—not anymore.
“Since I have you here and you’re not in a terrible mood,” I said, rubbing at the back of my neck, “mind if I ask another question?”
Her eyes squinted in suspicion, but she nodded.
“Okay, back during the fight. The godstone”—I tapped at the glowing rock lodged beneath my breastbone—“started burning like crazy, and I felt myself …” I paused, searching for the right word. “I don’t know, going temporarily insane. I got mad. Furious, even. And the more furious I got, the more I wanted to fight and kill. I lost myself, and found myself making decisions I would never normally make. Charging centaurs? Decapitating monsters? Yeah, that’s totally not me. Any idea what happened?”
She frowned, lips pressed into a tight, thoughtful line. “Perhaps that partly explains your carelessness in saving me,” she muttered, though more for herself than for me. “I suspect you experienced god’s rage for the first time. Though you may not be Ares, the godstone inside you is very much a part of him, and Ares loved battle. He was an angry god, and fighting could cause him to go quite mad at times.
“Though you have not invested any points into the Path of War, all of those abilities revolve around the god’s rage. Those skills allow you to harness god’s rage—to temporarily become better, faster, stronger. Even invulnerable for a time. They are powerful abilities, but I will give you this warning. They are dangerous as well. You can lose yourself to the battle. To the fury and the bloodlust. I suspect it is that which caused Ares to fail in the end. But you, you are better than him, Jacob Merely.”
“Thanks,” I said. This time it was my turn to glance away. “Anyway, enough of all this touchy-feely stuff. We have work to do—care to fill me in on what happened to the city while we were away?”
“Disaster is what happened, Jacob Merely,” she said, tone suddenly somber and grave. “Praxidike is a conniving, evil monster, but she was honest—at least about the attack. She sent a sizeable raiding force to ambush the city while we were away, but our warriors managed to salvage the battle. But at a steep cost, I fear. Get dressed and come. It is best if you see the extent of the damage for yourself, though I warn you, things are dire.”
“Alright,” I replied, moving over to a nearby table littered with my gear. “Oh, and where in the heck is Asteria?” I asked, gingerly slipping on my underwear. “You said she flew us back? I was surprised she wasn’t with me when I woke up. She’s like my personal guard, I guess.”
A deep frown bloomed on Myrina’s face. “She blames herself for your injuries. If she and Loxo had not been playing their games, we might have been better prepared for Praxidike’s ambush. And Asteria also thinks she should have fared better against Praxidike. She was surprised her spider venom did not bring the Fury down, but I reminded her that Praxidike is an ancient creature, twisted and evil. As Amazons, we might not be able to slay her. That task may fall to you, Jacob Merely.”
Yesterday, I might have trembled at the idea of squaring off against Praxidike, but today? Today I wanted to rip her heart from her chest.
I felt terrible about Asteria, though. I didn’t blame her at all for what had happened. We’d all miscalculated Praxidike’s power and the extent of her forces. But that was part of the game play during the build stage. A sneak attack always kept the tension in the game. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a game, and real people had gotten hurt. My people had gotten hurt, and that was squarely on me—I was the war god, after all, so I needed to own the setbacks and the victories.
Hippolyta was still at a single hit point. I had to get over to the infirmary and heal her and the rest of my Amazons. After that, I could deal with the damage to the city defenses and smooth things out with my shape-shifting general.
A cold sweat broke out across my brow as I struggled to put on my linen armor.
Damn, but I was sore. I swear, it felt like someone had shoved my legs into a meat grinder. Myrina—graciously saying nothing—came over and offered me a steadying hand, then helped me strap on my breastplate. Even with her aid, I was left dizzy and nauseous. Slipping on my combat boots was even worse, though I managed to do it after a couple of tries and a bunch of short rest breaks. Finally, I was suited up and ready to go.
But as I made to leave, Myrina stopped me short with a gentle hand to my forearm.
“There is one more piece of business I need to discuss with you, War God. Some bad news.” The Warden reached into a pouch on her belt and fished out a piece of cloth. “While looting the corpses after our last battle, we found this on one of the sea centaurs.”
I took the cloth and unfolded it. On one side was a circle with a cross underneath it. At the top of the cross was an arch that supported the circle. A closer look, and the arch appeared to be horns.
“That is the symbol of Hades,” Myrina said, noting my gaze. “On the other side are hash marks. We believe it is a count of the forces under Praxidike’s command and a timeline.”
Reversing it, I saw the hash marks, scores of them—hundreds, if not thousands. And underneath, the phases of the moon. The final troop count corresponded to the full moon.
Myrina said what I was thinking. “Praxidike will attack in three days, not three weeks. If she can sufficiently damage, or destroy, the sigil, Hades will walk again.”
That made me chuckle. “The goddess of revenge and torture wasn’t as truthful as she should’ve been? I’m shocked and appalled.”
“I am not finding any hil
arity in our situation,” the Warden said. “We face hundreds of monsters. You have twenty Amazons, and soon, you will have nineteen.”
Hippolyta.
I blew out a nervous breath. “Let me see if I can stop that from happening.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Hippolyta
I headed out of the palace with Myrina, though I needed her support to walk without it feeling like someone was jabbing hot coals into my muscles. Walking with Myrina, I couldn’t help but think about what she had said—about loving me. Wanting me. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t interested in her. She wasn’t exactly my type, but she was gorgeous and competent. Any man would be crazy to reject her. But Ares had hurt the Warden badly, and I wasn’t going to be like that dickhead. I was going to be better.
The last thing we needed was any kind of romantic drama.
I blinked against the bright midmorning light as we made our way down the marble steps to the wide cobblestone boulevard. A stiff breeze kicked up, brushing against my skin. What caught my eye, however, was a column of tar-black smoke curling upward from the south.
Myrina noticed my gaze. “The ruins of the southern gate,” she said in explanation to my unasked question. “Centaurs, arachnaswine, and naga attacked from the north while two cyclopes and a score of other monsters smashed through the southern gate—though your repairs helped hold them at bay for a little while. A small miracle. But we didn’t have the numbers to defend both entrances. It was… Hippolyta, she …” The Warden paused, searching for the words to say. “She saved us all. But come, you will see soon enough.”
We entered the barn, which Phoebe had indeed turned into a makeshift infirmary. Eight of my Amazons lay on soft beds of hay in various states of consciousness. All had been severely wounded and most lingered near death. Hippolyta—the one I’d power leveled—was the worst off by far. Myrina shot me a grim, tight-lipped smile, then moved on to help nurse the injured, offering words of encouragement and sympathy.