by James Hunter
There was my retirement, all taken care of.
But did gods get to retire? I didn’t think so. I could worry about that later, though. For now, I had a job to do: create an army, save the world, and become the god of war. Me. Jacob Merely of Rockford, Illinois, who felt moderately guilty about shooting a harpy that had wanted to eat me. I couldn’t help but think I’d be the worst war god ever.
The thought fled as I realized I’d even lost track of the godstone that had started this whole thing.
I glanced around, but nada. That puppy was gone. What the hell had happened to the thing? Giant, fist-sized diamonds didn’t just disappear—or maybe they did. What the heck did I know? But as I concentrated on the gem, my chest began to itch, and an uncomfortable heat radiated into my muscles. I pulled back my bloodstained skivvy shirt and nearly passed out from shock. There, pulsing beneath my skin where my heart should’ve been, was the diamond. The godstone.
With a sick feeling, I dropped down onto my ass, feeling dazed as I tapped the stone with one finger. I guess that answered the retirement question.
SEVEN
Threats and Promises
I had three weeks to master this new world or Hades and his monsters would sweep through the world and kill everyone. And after meeting Ares, I had zero faith that Hades would be up for a round of civil dialogue about why mass genocide of all life was a bad idea. Which meant war was the only option on the table. This was going to be tough, but I’d spent weeks at a time immersed in video games before. Now that my life had become one, I was going to embrace it.
I picked myself up from the dusty floor and left the temple the way I had come. The sun was sinking ever lower into the white-capped waters to the west, and I wanted to get my generals created right away. Three weeks wasn’t much time, so I couldn’t afford to waste a minute. As I walked, hunger ripped through my stomach like an angry bear, but I ignored the empty void in my middle. Not like there was much I could do about it anyway, since there wasn’t an abundance of food lying around.
So instead, I beelined for the fountain, dipped my hands into the cool water, and drank my fill. Water was a poor substitute for pizza and Mountain Dew, but it was better than nothing.
“Behold the baby war god,” a silky voice floated down from above me.
Pistol in my hand, I spun and glanced upward.
The bat-thing I’d seen before sat on the shoulder of the Ares statue above the fountain. Now that it was closer, I saw that it was a she. Her feminine form was visible, even in the fading pink light of sunset. Her gown was like poured ink across her midnight skin. One breast was exposed like she was in a Renaissance painting or something. Her eyes were a bright red and striking against her dark skin.
Long straight hair framed her heart-shaped face. She was beautiful in an utterly horrible way. She stroked something at her waist, and I realized it was a snake’s head, and that the snake was a cobra, and that the cobra was her belt. Looped around her shoulder was a studded whip. Her other hand rested casually on the pommel of an obsidian dagger with a jagged blade. “You are a child playing with toys you can’t possibly understand nor control,” she hissed through a smile that never reached her eyes. “Good for me and my master.”
I didn’t have much of a snazzy comeback against that, so instead, I said, “Nice cobra belt. Way to accessorize.” Yeah, that would show her.
“So, you have come to stop us from smashing the sigil,” she replied, mercifully ignoring my idiotic comment. “I heard there was a man on the island. I thought it was impossible. But there you are, standing before me—though you’re certainly not much of a man. A pathetic opponent, unfit to battle me.”
Damn, what was with all these women busting my balls? “Keep talking shit,” I growled, the godstone in my chest growing strangely warm in my anger, “and I’ll teach you exactly how pathetic I am.”
“Do you think I fear you, freshly minted war god? I am Praxidike, demigod of vengeance. I was born from the blood of a castrated Titan. I don’t fear you, godling.” She squinted, red eyes narrowing. “No, I have come to warn you of your doom.”
It was a lot to take in. Castration and all that. I snapped my fingers. “Oh, you’re one of the Furies. Like a daughter of Hades? But that name, Praxi-whatever. Nope, I’m gonna have to call you Praxy.”
In a flash, she unwound her whip and snapped it across my face, even from thirty yards away. “I am no daughter of Hades, but I serve him. And you will not call me Praxy. I am Praxidike, and I have come to bring the justice of death to all of your mortal race. Prepare your forces, human, for we are gathering our dark armies and you will soon feel our fury. We are going to teach you the true meaning of fear and remorse.”
The pain of the whip shook me. Instead of firing on her, or throwing a quip, I clutched my cheek, wiping away the blood trailing down my jawline. Shit, I was bleeding. Apparently, being god of war didn’t mean I was invulnerable.
Praxidike offered me an arctic, feral smile, unfurled her bat wings, and soared away, her whip trailing down like a tail as she disappeared over the wall.
Ares said he thought I might have three weeks, but Praxy had just flown into the city, sat on the Ares statue, and whipped me in the fucking face. Unlike the other creatures who had paused at the walls, she didn’t seem concerned about breaking into the holy city. Obviously, the shot clock was running down.
I picked up my pace and jogged to the workshops on the south side of the temple. Entering the barn-like structure, I noticed a bulky fireplace with several dusty anvils surrounding it and at least twenty bellows—huge accordion-like contraptions—to make the central fire as hot as possible. Lying in the cold ashes of the forge was a massive hammer; one side of the hammerhead sloped into a wedge, while the other ended in a flat square of hardened steel.
I stepped up, gripped the leather-wrapped handle, and lifted it from the ashes. Damn, but it was heavy. I turned the thing this way then that, inspecting the army of intricate carvings etched into the metal. There were pictures of swords, shields, and armor, but it all orbited the faces of two beautiful women. One, with a helmet, was obviously Athena. On the other side was Aphrodite, goddess of love and the wife of Hephaestus. Since this was the hammer of Hephaestus, that sort of made sense.
Could I really be holding the hammer of a god? And not just any god, but the same one who’d fashioned Hermes’ sandals, the armor of Achilles, and Apollo’s chariot, which dragged the sun across the sky every day? Runes surrounding the two women’s faces glowed, throwing light in the gathering shadows as twilight approached. The handle quivered in my grip, a potent thrum of energy buzzing in the metal. I could sense that the hammer was ready to create—excited to get back to work after countless centuries lying in wait.
Idly, I wondered what had happened to Hephaestus, or the other Grecian deities for that matter. Were they still alive and kicking, or, like Ares, had they passed on? I had no clue, and since Ares hadn’t spilled the beans, it was possible I’d never know.
Then it all came crashing home. The idea that I was holding such an impossibly ancient artifact made me dizzy. I had to take a minute to get my bearings. I set the hammer on the ground, sat down on a low anvil, and removed the helmet. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe.
I touched my chest and felt the warmth of the gem beneath my skin, reminding me this wasn’t just some dream. After a few deep breaths, I stuck the helmet back on my head and triggered the interface. Once again, the main menu flashed before me, listing my options. I knew I needed to get busy creating, but I didn’t want to jump the gun before I knew what my stats did. I focused on my MANAGE ABILITIES feature, summoning the character screen.
If I focused my attention on the primary attributes, a tutorial box appeared:
<<< Ω >>>
Attributes and General Skills
Strength: This is the primary attribute of the hard-hitting warrior god. Adding points to Strength increases your physical size while simultaneously improving your Health, Health R
egeneration Rate, Attack Damage, and Armor Rating.
Intelligence: This is the primary attribute of the strategist god. Adding points to Intelligence will increase your control limit, allowing you to create ever greater numbers of Amazons.
Willpower: Willpower is the primary attribute of the divine god. Adding points to Willpower increases your Divine Essence Points and boosts your Miracle Damage.
Fortune: This stat represents the blessing of Lady Fortuna, goddess of luck, which factors into every skill, every battle, every decision.
Divine Essence Points: Essence Points function similar to mana and allow you to utilize the power of the godstone to transform reality to your will—at least for a time. Any use of your divine powers, including miracles and crafting, requires Divine Essence Points.
Divine Essence-Regen/Hour: This number indicates the number of Divine Essence Points you regenerate every hour at each given level. Increased Intelligence boosts both your base Divine Essence Amount and your Regeneration Rate.
Control Limit: The control limit determines how many Amazons you can create.
Attribute Points: For every level you earn, you gain five Attribute Points, which can be used to increase any of your four primary attributes.
Ability Points: For every level you earn, you gain one Ability Point, which can be used to unlock the special abilities located in your three skill trees: Path of War, Path of Miracles, Path of the Builder.
<<< Ω >>>
Okay, so I could use my Essence Points to create, alter, and upgrade the Amazons, but at my current level I could only form the three generals Ares had told me about—Myrina, Asteria, and Phoebe. As of now, I had zero experience points, or EXP, but as I leveled up, I would grow and gain access to more of the godstone’s power reverberating in my chest. At the peak levels, I would rival Ares himself. That idea made me excited and nervous all at the same time.
Part of me wanted to go back and examine the skill trees again, but at this point, it would be a waste of time since I was still a level-one god with zero Ability Points to invest. Ha. Funny. Praxidike had called me a baby god, and while I hated to admit it, she was right. The humor slipped away as the weight of the situation dropped on me. I was a baby god, and an infernal army would be here in next to no time, ready to destroy the sigil holding the God of Death at bay.
A new fear gripped me. If Ares hadn’t been able to stop Hades’ and his forces, what chance did I stand? Even a slim chance was being generous. But I couldn’t let the overwhelming pressure break me—that was the path to defeat, too. I needed to focus on what I could do. And what I could do was create three Amazonian generals to lead my armies, and hopefully give me a little guidance. That was intimidating in its own right, though. These weren’t going to be pixels and artificial intelligence, but living and breathing women.
What was that going to be like? I couldn’t even begin to guess.
With the sun slipping below the horizon, though, I had no choice but to get to work.
Big problem. I had no idea how to begin.
EIGHT
Forge of Hephaestus
How could I create people?
Well, I did have a menu option called MANAGE AMAZONS, with a ‘Create Amazon’ feature below, so duh, start there, obviously. The larger theological implications of creating a new human being would have to be put aside.
Helmet on my head, I picked up the hammer again. The runes etched into the metal flashed and glowed, lighting the room. I ignored the flare of illumination, laser-focused on my gaming display. Immediately, I noticed that when I held the hammer, a miniature hammer icon appeared in the corner interface. I concentrated on it, and the main menu shifted, bringing up a new specialty display for the forge: the temperature of the fire, the number of hammer strokes I needed to do stuff, blueprints for my three generals, things like that.
Cool, I had a Hammer of Hephaestus setting.
I exited out of the hammer menu, accessed the ‘Create Amazon’ options, and saw the various warriors, Elementalists, and crafters available to me. I figured I would create Phoebe first—Ares had said she could help me—so I selected Rune-Caster.
There at the top, spinning around slowly, was Phoebe. She was a willowy woman with brunette hair, gray-green eyes, and a definite girl-next-door vibe—snarky and brilliant. A toga hung from her shoulder, covering her, and a laurel wreath crowned her head. Sandal straps hugged her calves all the way up to her knees. Even animated, she kind of intimidated me. She looked so smart. So competent. Intimidating.
Yeah, not sure I wanted to start with the engineer, after all. She’d be crucial to my success, so I couldn’t afford to mess up on her. I needed a practice run first, I decided.
Toggling back, I thought Myrina might be a better place to start.
She would lead my main forces. I got back to the main menu and chose Battle Wardens. Like before, under the create warden option, at the top was an animation of Myrina. She couldn’t have been more different than Phoebe. She possessed a muscular, lean build, perfectly engineered for speed and violence. Her blonde hair was worked into a severe braid, showcasing her sharp facial features and flashing blue eyes. Dammit, she looked tough in her armor. A shield and spear encumbered her hands while a short sword hung from her belt.
Nope. Didn’t want to start with her either. She looked like she might kick my teeth in on principle.
I sighed at my indecision. Starting games always intimidated me because I never wanted to make the wrong choice, and the learning curve could be steep. This felt even worse since I was about to start making real people.
Phoebe would come last, I decided. I hoped Asteria, the shape-shifter and leader of the Elementalists, would prove to be a better option. When I clicked on the Beastiamancer option, she came up immediately. Asteria was totally different from the others. For one thing, she had blue-tinged skin and striking golden eyes. Her short, pixie haircut accentuated her cute face. She was also wearing a toga and sandals. Even in her animation, she was smiling in encouragement. My heart beat a little faster while at the same time I felt calmed by her.
Bingo. She was definitely the right place to start.
Feeling a bit surer, I selected her, and a blueprint popped up, listing the various components I would need to create her. First things first: sacred clay. I remembered seeing clay pits outside, near the southern wall.
Grabbing a wooden bucket off the wall, I took off immediately, working my way down a street south of the forge. The sea had swallowed the sun, and the sky flamed red as stars winked on in the darkening heavens. I felt the power in the air. The world was as ready as the hammer to create.
At the clay pit, a spade lay on the ground. I snatched it up, dug up a heap of gray clay, and loaded it into my bucket.
A flutter of feathers above me seized my attention. There, on the wall, sat the old crone harpy. She opened her fanged mouth to squawk, “Man. Dead man. Dead man in the dead city. Dead. Dead man. Dead man. Good eating. Flesh for my face. Vengeance. Flesh for my face.”
“Make up your mind, lady,” I shot back. “Am I dead? Do you want vengeance? Or do you just want to eat me?”
“All three, all three, all three!” the harpy shrieked, her feathers bristling.
“Then come on in and get me,” I offered with a wink. “Or are you too afraid that my buddy Ares might spear you and fry you up with some of the colonel’s special spices?”
She gave out a shrill caw and fluttered away, but returned a moment later with another harpy, this one young and beautiful. Both peered down, grimacing, mouths opening and closing, wings shivering while they clutched the wall with their sharp talons. Apparently, they weren’t bold enough to venture in yet, but I knew I needed to hurry. If the armies of Hades attacked me alone, all would be lost.
Once I got my generals created, it would be at least four against an evil underworld armada.
I jogged away with my bucket in tow, leaving the shouting harpies at the wall.
Back in the forg
e, I used a pack of waterproof matches from my pocket to coax a fire to life. The kindling was dry enough to make that simple, and after adding some fresh wood into the mix, my fire grew into a roaring inferno. On one wall were various tools—heavy mallets, steel tongs, grooved swages, clamps, rasps, and files—and on the other were heavy wooden shelves and drawers full of silver dust, gold flakes, animal parts, flowers, plants, and herbs.
For Asteria, I needed mouse bones, the teeth of a wolf, the feather of an eagle, the fur of a bear, the spine of a fish, and some animal fat. She also required a bit of copper, bronze, and platinum. Opening and closing drawers, I found all of the components. On an anvil near the growing fire, I fashioned a crude figurine about ten inches tall out of the clay, then mixed the precious metals into a paste made of animal fat. The concoction was rancid as hell, and I hoped that wouldn’t matter. I was amazed it was there at all and not rotted away.
Maybe it was Gorgon fat. Who knew?
Working carefully, I pressed the paste into the heart of the figurine and then decorated the body with the pieces of the other animals. By that time, the larger logs had burned to glowing coals, but when I checked the hammer menu, I found the fire still wasn’t hot enough. According to the instructions in my display, the fire needed to be two thousand degrees Fahrenheit to forge a Beastiamancer.
I headed over to one of the bellows, grabbed the leather-wrapped handles, and pushed the accordion ribs up, before pulling them down. I wasn’t strong enough to get them down all the way, but I was heavy enough. Swinging on the handles, I wiggled myself ridiculously until the bellows wheezed closed, blowing oxygen onto the fire. The flames erupted afresh, and the red coals gleamed with new life. Grunting, I got my legs under me and pushed the handles up, opening the bellows and letting the air rush in. When I swung back down, the bellows closed and oxygen gushed out again.
I did that over and over, adding more logs, even throwing in some coal. I knew the Romans had mined coal, and it seemed Ares knew about it as well. Or Phoebe had.