ParaWars Uprising

by Caitlin Greer

  He grins, and throws me to the ground. “What a waste. Sooner or later, you’ll realize, Kendry. Humans aren’t worth it. Their lives are a blink of the eye to us. They’re pitiful, powerless. Disgusting. You and I, we’re something greater, more powerful, more deserving of this world. All they deserve is the privilege of serving us with their pitifully short lives.” He walks away without a backwards glance. “Get her up,” he snarls.

  The thunder has grown closer by the time we arrive to meet my father. Grittanus has assembled his army, brought them all together. Human soldiers stand with Rockfort at their head, guns loaded with their anti-para ammo, and aimed ahead. Behind them are the traitors to the Conclave, all snarls and smiles, aching to tear the Conclave’s forces apart.

  But they won’t go down without a fight. Because Herne, standing tall and regal astride his midnight black charger, has brought the might of the Conclave with him. The Hunter is ringed by his great white dogs, sleek and deadly. Beside him stand his family. My family. Brigid and Danu, The Dagda and The Morrigan. Others I feel like I should recognize. And beyond them, the pantheons continue, on, and on, and on. And more beyond them. Every creature and species that wished to live in peace with the humans, everyone who made the choice to stay. They dwarf Grittanus’ army.

  And in the front, next to my family, he’s there. His black leather trench coat reaches almost to the ground, stone wings flared out behind him, ready. He stands flanked by the other gargoyles that have chosen to continue their sacred duty to protect the Conclave. Two weeks ago, his face would have been unreadable to me. But not anymore. Now pain and anguish is plain to me, as is the fear. I can feel the storm around us in his eyes.

  I wish I could take away the pain in his midnight eyes, the guilt that threatens to overrun him. It’s not his fault.

  Grittanus steps over to me, to where I hang, defeated, slung between two traitorous gargoyles like a piece of drying meat. He breaks my contact with Axel, capturing my eyes with his own. They aren’t taking chances with me. My already abused arms are stretched tight, so that any struggle would mean dislocation or breakage. They’ve made sure I won’t run.

  “Let’s see how much your father loves you, shall we?”

  I look away. The electricity tingling in the air makes my arm hair stand on end. I want to lose myself in this storm, want to feel it break across me.

  Instead, I feel Grittanus’ fist slam into my stomach. i cry out as the air rushes out of me. Grittanus grins and spins.

  “Ill met, Herne.” He struts forward, like a performer who thinks he’s king. I struggle to catch my breath again. “I see you brought the entire family.”

  Dad’s stag head stares down at him, silent.

  “Nothing to say? No demands, no words for your daughter?” He spins again, to face me. “Seems he doesn’t love you as much as we both thought, eh Kendry?” His hand moves lightning fast, crashing across my face. I think it fractures my jaw. My head rockets to the side, but there’s not far it can go, held tight as I am. But my head spins like I’ve been knocked across the room.

  It’s Axel’s scream of fury that brings me back. My vision refocuses to see him struggling through his entire group of gargoyles. They’re barely holding him back. Grittanus smiles, all teeth, and chuckles as he turns.

  “I do enjoy watching you suffer, Axelrod. If you were a better guardian, she wouldn’t be here. But instead, you fell in love with her. Sickening. Allowing emotion to affect your sacred charge. You’re a disgrace to gargoyle kind.” He turns back to me again, and my clouding mind thinks, If he keeps up this turning and spinning, it’s gonna make me sick.

  His stone hand grazes my jaw where he hit me, sending lightning through my skin. His touch makes me scream with pain. His hand comes away bloody from my split lip. He inhales the smell of it and licks it off with a sigh. “Even your blood reeks of power. It’s a shame,” he says, turning back to the others and raising his voice, “that she’s going to die. She could be the most powerful demi in centuries. She’s even begun to manifest.”

  “What do you want, Grittanus?” I almost don’t recognize my father’s voice. As Herne, Master of the Hunt, with his great towering stag head and antlers, his voice is deeper, conjuring a feral feeling, the feeling of wild things and ancient deep forests. It’s both frightening and comforting.

  “Want? I want your death. I want the Conclave. I want every human to know their place.”

  “Our place?” Rockfort suddenly speaks up.

  Grittanus turns to his human ally, still grinning. “Subjugation. Servitude to the true masters of this world. You didn’t really think I’d let you run off to start killing us again, did you?”

  Rockfort bites down hard on his cigar. I catch a whiff of it, and it only adds to my nausea. “I should’ve known. Once a traitor, always a traitor. Well you can—”

  “I can what, exactly?” Rockfort’s tirade is cut off before it can even begin by Grittanus’ hand wrapped around his throat. “You humans,” he sneers. “So full of yourselves. So blind to your own weak impotence.” Rockfort is turning purple, Grittanus holds him so tight. “I think, my dear general, that you’ve outlived your usefulness.”

  A single gun cocks, and Grittanus turns to the rogue gunman with a snarl. A flick of his head, and the man goes down, ripped apart by a pale-skinned creature. Obyri, I hear the word again in the back of my mind. Danu was right. They’re terrifying. I turn my face away, squeezing my eyes tight against the sucking and growling that follows.

  “Any last words, Rockfort?” When my eyes open, Rockfort is clawing at Grittanus’ stone arms, a look of utter desperation on his face. “No? That’s good. You always talked too much, anyway.” With a heave and sick, ripping sound, the body goes flying through the air, over the assembled traitor forces, and into the dark trees. I slowly turn my attention back to Grittanus. The whole field is zoned in on him, every set of eyes. “Would anyone else like to challenge me?”

  The soldiers stiffen back up, fear written on all their faces, despite the guns in their hands.

  “You see, Herne?” He waves his hand towards the terrified humans. “They know their place. They know they’ll never match up. When push comes to shove, humans are no better than cattle.” His eyes turn back to me.

  “I’m sure you’re glad our dear general is dead, Kendry. And look, I kept a present for you.” He holds up Rockfort’s bloody head, torn off by the force of his throw. “All the best of the old gods preferred blood sacrifice. Your father included. He was great, once. Before he decided he liked humans.” Even with two gargoyles holding me stretched tight, I still do my best to get away from him, from the bloody stump of a head, from his words. They pull tighter, until I’m screaming again, because one of my shoulders is dislocated.

  Grittanus tosses the head to the side. I’m not sure if the nausea I feel is from that, or the pain from my shoulder. Either way, I have to focus on something else, or I’ll go mad. The electric tension in the air from the still building storm catches me, and I bury myself in it. Around it, I can hear Axel screaming. I wrap myself in the buzzing air, drinking it into my skin, because it’s the only escape I can find.

  “You’re not listening to me, Kendry.” He’s in my face, the pain of his hand wrenching at my dislocated shoulder bringing me back. “I’m not boring you, am I?” His hand grabs at my hair, ripping me out of his guards’ hands, and dragging me forward. The pain has hit the point where the waking world is only half here. Reality takes on a strange hollow quality, tinged by the electricity I feel pulsating through the air. I’ve never seen a storm like this, never felt one build this way. Above me, the clouds seem to condense tighter and darker, coming lower and lower, as though they want to eclipse the world.

  The wind begins to blow.

  Grittanus shakes me, forcing me to pay attention to him again. “I don’t think your father really gives a rat’s ass about you. Look at him, so stoic atop his great black charger, surrounded by his growling white hounds. So calm, so s
afe. So unwilling to help you.”

  I’m trying to form words, but they don’t come. My mouth won’t let them out. They catch there, stopping at my lips like a train wreck. A ten or twenty, or forty car pile-up. So I glare at him, as best I can, since I know half my face is swollen from being boxed around.

  “And then there’s Axelrod. I know he’d happily sacrifice himself for you. But I don’t want him to. I want him to watch your life fade out slowly in front of him, while he’s powerless to do anything about it.”

  Axel’s eyes are full of murder. They match the storm clouds above him, but I’m happy he’s stopped pulling against the six or so gargoyles holding him back. I want to tell him I’m sorry. I wish I could make it all right for him. But I can hardly move anymore. What parts of me aren’t on fire with pain have begun to tingle with the pulse of the storm around us. I can’t believe it hasn’t broken yet. I can’t believe no one else is noticing it.

  “I’ll ask again, Grittanus. What do you want?” The deep rumbling of my father’s voice seems full of the energy that sparks in the air around us, as though it were akin to it.

  “I want the world, Herne! More importantly, I want the Conclave. You, in particular.” Grittanus’ grin is wide, and harbors more than a touch of insanity. “You surrender, plain and simple, and I’ll let her live in exchange for your life.”

  Silence echoes. Thunder rumbles closer, resonating in my bones. The hard brown eyes of Herne’s stag head stare into mine.

  “The Conclave will not surrender, Grittanus. You know this.”

  My tormentor’s insane grin falls into a mask of rage. With a howl he spins, dragging me along, tripping and tumbling as he flings me into the paras behind him. “Make it last,” he growls.

  I don’t understand until the first fist falls, crashing into my dislocated shoulder. The next blow knocks me to the ground, and then they close in on me.

  “Will not surrender? And what will they do when I bring guns with anti-para ammunition blazing into their chambers? Will they run and hide, or will they die?”

  It’s hard to hold onto the conversation. Part of me wanders away from the blows that fall on me. Part of me struggles to get up, to fight back. All I see are fists and feet, bodies surrounding me, pounding down on me.

  A hound snarls, and a shot rings through the increasingly dark day. There’s a noise I can only assume is the hound, but it’s not a sound I’ve ever heard out of an animal before. It’s almost a scream. “My own creation. And as Axelrod can attest, they even harm gargoyles. The Conclave won’t stand a chance.”

  Somehow, I find myself on my feet. I don’t know how. My left arm doesn’t work, but hangs limp at my side. My feet are unsteady. But I block and dodge the hits as best I can.

  There’s still too many that land.

  “Stop this, Grittanus.”

  I can hear Grittanus grin. “No. I will not stop until all the world belongs to the us. Until every human acknowledges me as their master. Until every one of you who wants to place the humans on equal footing with us, with their gods, is subjugated beside our rightful slaves.”

  A stone fist slams into my back, and I fall again. There’s no getting back up. Feet kick out, fists fall, until I can’t do anything but cower on the ground, wrapped around myself. My body burns with pain.

  “How do you expect to rule them all, when you give them the perfect tool for destroying you, Grittanus?”

  His laugh cuts through my pain. “Those guns are pointed at you, Herne. By the time they point at me, they’ll be dead. I’m not stupid. There’s a very limited supply, and I just killed the one human who knew how to make more.”

  The pain pulls me away, now. Into the electrical air that’s so heavy with storm. It’s so close to breaking. I almost feel like it’s waiting for something, like it might even be waiting for me. My poor, broken body soaks in the electrical charge like a dying man devouring water.

  “Poor Kendry. She had such potential, your daughter. You could have saved her.”

  “I can only offer myself, Grittanus. I cannot compel the rest.”

  Thunder breaks closer, louder. I want to crawl into it.

  “They would follow if you told them!”

  “They would not. My power over them is only that of sense and reason.”

  Lightning stabs the sky, and the wind gusts. My body jerks in response, ignoring the blows that still hammer down on me. I’m on fire with the sky. The break is almost there, teetering on the edge. Maybe both of us are waiting for the right trigger.

  “Then she will die, and you will die, but not before I crush your dreams for this world in my hand and make you watch!”

  I’m sorry, Kendry. I hope you understand.

  The words that echo in my head belong not to the stern and frightening Herne, but the Herne that played with me as a child. His soft and loving side, not the hard and cruel side that rides the Hunt.

  And it’s like his words in my mind are the spark the heavy sky has been waiting for. Thunder cracks, not distant and waiting, but immediate, loud and crashing and everywhere. Lightning stabs the ground all around us, throughout both companies. The fists that have fallen on me stop, and my body thrashes along the ground, tossing and seizing with released energy.

  Feel the storm, Kendry. It is yours. It’s always been yours.

  I suddenly understand why the low rumble of Herne’s voice feels so much like the storm. It’s the same magic, the same deep, wild, ancient magic that is his. And it’s mine, too. Like this storm.

  Because I am the storm, and its voltage courses through me, blazing through my synapses and nerves, until all I see is the thunder and lightning.

  The rain comes hard, like a painful breath of release. Lightning flashes all around me.

  My eyes burst open. The world is below me, and I am the clouds, the storm, the wind, the rain, the lightning. I point, and lightning falls. I shout, and thunder crashes. The rain cleanses my skin, my aches, my pains, my broken body.

  In the storm, I am alive, like I have never been before.

  I turn my eyes to the shocked and disbelieving armies below me. Rockfort’s humans stand staring, guns lowered in awe. Looks range from confusion to anger and everything in between. I let the madness of the storm roll through me as my gaze falls on Grittanus. I can’t tell if I see fury or pure, unadulterated lust in the look he lays on me. Either way, the lightning crackles through me, and when it stabs the ground around him, chaos envelopes the world.

  Horns sound, guns fire, and every scream imaginable cries into my tempest. Grittanus laughs at the chaos I’ve released. His wings snap out, bringing him into the sky. I have a brief glimpse of Axel, his face turned upwards, hopeful, and then he’s overrun, and I have a different gargoyle to deal with.

  Grittanus’ feral grin is equal parts insanity, over-the-top rage, and lust. His eyes travel over mine as he rises, water sloughing off him. “How beautifully… Unexpected.”

  “I wasn’t kidding before, Grittanus. Go to hell.”

  “Only if you’ll come with me.”

  My answer is a lightning bolt that blasts past me into his chest. Thunder rips through the air as he tumbles backwards, but his wings catch, and in two strokes, he’s back, smiling, his eyes on fire. He reaches out, and I knock his hand aside. My limbs are charged with the storm, high-voltage hands and feet. The wind whips around us.

  “You could still join me, Kendry.”

  My fist lashes out at his face, connecting in an electric flash that tingles all the way up my arm. But Grittanus actually falters, surprise flashing across his face. And it’s my turn to grin. “Game on, Grittanus.”

  It’s probably a stupid thing to say, but I’m so full of the storm swirling around me, and so tired of him and all the trouble and pain he’s caused. The rain charges me, the wind and lightning are my fists, and the thunder is my voice. So twenty feet off the ground, in the middle of a storm so dark it rivals the deepest night, and so strong it’s like a hurricane centered over the
Appalachian Mountains, I lash out at him. Hard.

  And he hits back.

  I move with no thought, just instinct. My hands block his punches, avoid his grabs. Sidestepping takes on a whole new dimension in the air. Lightning crackles through me and over me, striking him with every touch. My foot crashes into his chest, exploding with a bolt of pure white energy. He flies backwards, and I stay with him. The smugness begins to fade from his face as it connects with my elbow.

  I am the raging tempest, and my fury belongs to it.

  But Grittanus isn’t one to go down easy. Something shifts in him. He’s suddenly faster, angrier. His next punch connects, and he doesn’t flinch at the backlash of electricity. I stumble back, shaking off the hit, and he laughs.

  “Do you really think you can beat me? I don’t care if you are a manifested demi, there’s a reason the gargoyles have always been the protectors.” Out of nothing, he pulls a sword, dark and blazing. Deep in me, I feel a pull, like a drain plug was removed. “We know all the paras’ secrets.”

  He slashes downwards at me, and I suddenly find myself fighting on two fronts. One to avoid his attack, and the second to avoid the dangerous pull of the sword he holds. But the sky isn’t mine alone. The two armies have flooded it, despite the heavy buffeting wind. I avoid his thrusting stab, but the dark sword still finds a mark. I’m relieved to see it’s one of his own gargoyles, and not mine.

  The gargoyle screams, and it’s like the sword sucks out its soul. I can only look on in horror as the stone body solidifies, until the unfortunate gargoyle is nothing but carved rock, slipping off the blade, and plummeting to the ground. Grittanus shudders, the look on his face pure ecstasy. I’m disgusted. The lightning sizzles around me, striking out at him. I can still feel his sword pulling at me, and after that display, I’m worried.