“We should be at the mouth of Meletis Harbor within the hour,” the curly-haired boy assured them. “I think we’re safe. There’s no one set sail behind us. Are you injured, Lady Takis?”
Nikka didn’t answer. She stared at the storm clouds on the horizon.
“Are you injured?” Elspeth asked. Nikka shook her head almost imperceptibly. Tears ran down her cheeks. The girl knew she had just gotten Beta killed, and maybe more people at the caravan, but Elspeth wasn’t going to press her for details. Not yet, anyway.
“She’s all right,” Elspeth assured the young man, even though that was far from the truth.
The tritons followed at a safe distance, the wind blew harder, and the seas grew choppier with every passing minute. Finally, on the horizon, two massive statues loomed from the coastline.
“Is that Meletis?” she called to the young men. “What are those statues?”
“Those are two of the Guardians,” said the gray-eyed boy. “They’re monuments of great heroes that protect Meletis from the east and from the west.”
“And Meletis is just beyond the statues?” Elspeth asked.
“Not quite, they’re at the mouth of the river,” the boy explained. “We have to pass the Four Winds Plateau. Then, it’s just a short sail to the sea gate of the city.”
“Why is there no wind?” Nikka interrupted.
The young man looked up to where the clouds had darkened the skies directly above them. The clouds were like a tower for roiling darkness that could hide multitudes within it. A god could be watching, plotting, from its depths. Elspeth realized how little she knew about the beings that held dominion over this world.
“Something’s wrong,” the young man muttered. He leaned over the side and dipped his fingers into the flat water and began speaking a prayer to Thassa.
“I think Thassa is listening,” Nikka whispered to Elspeth. “But not to him.”
“What do you mean?” Elspeth asked
“The wind was silenced so Thassa can hear the words of Erebos,” Nikka said. “He’s told her where to find us.”
Elspeth felt a chill of dread. “Why would she care? Does she want oracles, too?”
“No,” Nikka said. “I can’t imagine that she would want me. This isn’t about me anymore.”
Nikka turned on her bench and pointed to the southwest out into the vastness of the ocean. A giant wall of water had risen on the horizon. The young men craned their necks and saw it, too. They sprang into action, yelling out commands to each other as they frantically rowed for shore.
“What is it about?” Elspeth cried.
Nikka reached out and took Elspeth’s hand in her clammy fingers. “It’s about you.”
Though still a great distance away, the wave swept across the flat sea. With the speed it traveled, the boat would soon be engulfed. There was no way they would make it to shore in time. Elspeth thought desperately of what spell might save them all from drowning.
“I can help us,” Nikka said, still clutching Elspeth’s hand.
The flat water rose up around the gunwales of the boat. The water churned into the shapes of horses’ heads, and white foam rose to their chests. The elemental horses lifted the vessel on their backs and carried the boat to shore faster than the wave approached them. They thundered onto shore and deposited the boat high above the sandy beach on a rocky ledge. The watery horses quickly transformed back into mundane waves and flowed back into the sea, leaving the boat fifty feet above the ocean.
The young men jumped over the sides, shouting with joy. The curly-haired boy raised his arms to the sky and yelled, “Thank you, kind deliverer!”
Elspeth helped Nikka out of the boat. The girl shook with exhaustion. “He should be thanking you,” she said softly.
“No, don’t say anything,” Nikka said. “I don’t want anyone to know.”
Elspeth nodded. There were few who understood that sentiment better than she. She looked out over the ocean. The titanic wave still raced for shore and seemed to be gathering height and speed. Thassa wasn’t going to stop just because they were on dry ground.
“Does that make up for what I did before in the glade?” Nikka asked, but Elspeth was too distracted by the sight of the accelerating wave to respond. It was as if the entire ocean had risen up to flood the world.
“Are we high enough?” Elspeth asked.
“I’ve made an enemy of Thassa now,” Nikka said sadly. “And of all the gods, it’s always been her voice that I hear the loudest of all.”
Elspeth scanned the landscape behind them. The boat had come to rest on a wide ledge halfway up a rocky slope with small trees clinging to it. Over the top of the slope, she could see the two stone swords of the Guardians. If the statues were on the other side of this slope, then they weren’t that far from the safety of Meletis.
“Come on, let’s get to higher ground,” Elspeth urged the young men who stood at the cliff’s edge transfixed by the spectacle.
“Thassa can’t reach us up here,” the curly-haired boy said.
Elspeth wasn’t so sure. She grabbed Nikka’s elbow, and the two of them scrambled up the rocky slope. They were nearly to the top when the wave hit the shore. It slammed into the cliff face under the boys, but it traveled upward unnaturally. It arced over the boys, devouring them and dragging them down. The water headed straight for Elspeth and Nikka. At the crest of the wave, the ocean had become like grasping hands, reaching out to claim them for the sea.
“Climb!” Elspeth screamed. They struggled over the sharp rocks as the waves roared in their ears and battered against their legs. Elspeth felt the watery hands tugging at her. She shoved Nikka up the slope ahead of her. The girl managed to break free of the water and pulled herself onto the trunk of a dead tree with its roots barely clinging to the slope. Nikka reached down and tried to grab Elspeth.
“Take my hand!” Nikka called. Unexpectedly, the girl’s eyes rolled back in her head and she spoke in a god-voice that was not her own. “I am Thassa, and you are a thief. I claim your blade in the name of the God of the Forge. I claim your life in the name of mine.”
“Fight her!” Elspeth cried to the girl. “You are Nikka. Claimed by no one! Beholden to none but yourself!”
Desperately, Elspeth drove her spear-blade between the roots of the tree and clung to it while the sea tore at her. It felt like she was being stretched on a torture rack. Pain addled her mind as she desperately cast a spell to free Nikka. But the girl wasn’t afflicted by control magic. Thassa was using Nikka as a mouthpiece, not a puppet. Like a hand brushing away cobwebs, Elspeth skillfully swept the magic from the girl’s mind. Nikka’s eyes returned to normal, and she glared angrily at the sea. The water receded, and Elspeth climbed up beside Nikka and worked her blade free from the tangle of wet roots. A gray rain began to fall around them. Nikka held out her hand to catch the drops, and they saw it wasn’t rain at all. It was gray ash, as fine as powder. The sound of a distant explosion jostled the slope beneath them.
“Are they gone?” Nikka cried. The placid sea lapped the shoreline below them, once again an uncomprehending force of nature. The boys from the caravan were nowhere to be seen.
“We’re almost to the top,” Elspeth said. “Let’s get to the city.”
The Four Winds Plateau was no stranger to destruction. A bone-white tableland overlooking Meletis and the sea, it had been the scene of countless battles through the ages. The Archons of Trax met their end on this battlefield. The legions of the dead were destroyed, and the Titan Pillars once cried out for mercy. Nykthos the Divine Artisan was murdered here. So many people had bled and died on this very ground that the gods had consecrated it. They declared it to be a temenos, a sacred land set apart from the rest of the mortal realm. No one was allowed to ever build on it again, and only the four winds were allowed to call it their home. Even the Guardians, the stone soldiers who watched over the inland route to the city, had been constructed just beyond the edge of the plateau.
Daxo
s and his small contingent of Meletian soldiers left by Hinter Gate and spurred their horses toward the plateau. Theros was restless to its core. The seas churned and smoke leaked from the mountaintops. The air was choked with omens and with the fury of the gods. Daxos wished for a clear sky and silence like a blind man wished for sight. None of his companions could see the frenetic energy welling up from the land, or the rain of stars from the cracks in the Nyx, or the brewing battle between the gods. Daxos tried to brush away the curtain of noise to get a sense of Nylea, but her presence was nowhere he could grasp. She made him feel safe even from afar, something that Heliod never did. Heliod relied on Daxos for any necessary compassion, not the other way around.
As they ascended the road onto the plateau, the Meletis River churned below them. The water flowed backward from its normal course. It was as if it was being sucked back into the sea. Stelanos spurred his horse and rode alongside Daxos. Daxos felt a twinge of guilt whenever he saw his friend, but he reminded himself that it was days like today that justified his actions. The world was at a tipping point, and Heliod needed men like Stelanos.
“What is happening?” Stelanos asked.
“Thassa is preparing a second wave to inundate the land,” Daxos said.
They had just crested the slope and ridden onto the Four Winds Plateau when the top of Mt. Velus exploded into a massive fireball. Clouds of gray smoke rippled across the land and ash billowed into the sky. Crackling threads of fire stretched across the horizon until the eastern sky became a massive inferno.
“O great Heliod, protect us,” Stelanos said in terror at the sight. “That is not the work of Thassa.”
“No, Purphoros is attacking Heliod,” Daxos said. His men dismounted at the sight of the inferno. They readied themselves for battle, though how they intended to fight the forces of nature, Daxos wasn’t sure. The men formed into a defensive formation as a second epic wave appeared over the ocean.
“Where is Heliod?” Stelanos shouted. And all the men except Daxos fell to their knees and shouted for deliverance from their god. Daxos crouched down and placed his fingertips on the smooth rock of the plateau. He let the mortal realm fade away and focused on the intricacies of the god realm. His god-senses exploded inside his mind, and for an instant he perceived the totality of the pantheon.
Heliod had become like a fog bank over the sea. To punish Thassa for attacking his champion, he drove the heat of the sun deep into her waves. The surface heated until all the fish died, and the larger creatures swam deeper to escape the Sun God’s wrath. As Thassa screamed in fury, her wave rose even higher. Heliod burned brighter, and all the dolphins in the midsea perished. The tritons fled to the darkness of the deepest ocean where the primordial monsters felt the waters warm and began to stir.
Even the gods who had not taken sides in this escalating conflict between Heliod and Purphoros felt the danger of the situation. Thassa’s deluge threatened Setessa, so Karametra retaliated with the fury of a mother lion protecting her cub. Keranos incited a vicious storm in support of his favorite sister, Thassa, and lightning struck Meletis again and again. Erebos sensed that soon there would be many dead walking toward the Underworld, and he sent his agents to witness carnage. Only Nylea was absent from this spectacle of destruction.
The weight of his vision nearly crushed Daxos, and he fled back to the mortal realm. The gods had lost all reason. The mortal realm had become just a stepping stone in the quest for domination. What stood between them and the untimely end of civilization? Daxos struggled to his feet as the apocalyptic winds raged around him. He felt a surge of hope. Maybe today he would be set free.
Just moments before the wave crashed against the coast and the firestorm reached Meletis, Elspeth and Nikka climbed onto the plateau. As Elspeth stepped onto the sacred ground, her transformed blade flashed with divine light. Elspeth saw a small group of soldiers kneeling on the far side of the open expanse. The sky was a terrifying tapestry of roiling clouds, banks of ash, and fire. She glimpsed Meletis in the distance as it was lashed by lightning and winds. Compared to the divine furor around it, the city looked like an ant about to be crushed from existence.
Come to Meletis. Come now.
Why? Elspeth thought. So I could witness its destruction?
There was no spell, no salvation she could offer this world. All was lost. She turned in a slow circle, surrounded by the vista of destruction, and the spear-blade slipped from her fingers and fell to the ground.
In his temple at the edge of the world, Kruphix heard the divine blade fall from Elspeth’s fingers. As it fell, it heralded the death of thousands of souls, and Kruphix could not let that happen. He had cautioned Heliod and Purphoros not to threaten mortal existence. Now he must intervene.
Kruphix drew in his breath. Time seemed to slow, and the gods looked closely at utter destruction about to befall the mortal realm. In the space between the minutes passing, Kruphix spoke to his brothers and sisters.
“I warned you about such madness.” His message filled the mind of each god, and it was like grains of sand falling in an hourglass. Measured. Inevitable. Undeniable.
“The world is too precious to destroy. I am enacting Silence. I am threading you back into the fabric of Nyx.”
Only Nylea responded. She rattled her forest like an earthquake as she tried to capture the attention of the elder god.
“No, Kruphix!” she warned. “The mortal realm is afflicted by a mortal enemy. He threatens the pantheon itself! If you remove us from the world, he will have free reign.”
But Kruphix did not heed her warning. The deluge, the inferno, and the searing wrath of Heliod were weapons of the gods who couldn’t think on a small enough scale to comprehend the devastation. Kruphix appreciated each and every life now threatened by their battle—their pain and grief would be his burden for as long as time existed. As he had in ages past, Kruphix carved the names of the gods upon his tree. As was his power, he forced the gods to convene in Nyx. They were removed from the mortals, no longer free to meddle in the affairs of humans. It was their punishment to cease their battle and contemplate the fundamentals of creation. Only Nylea spoke, and she screamed for him to stop.
“No! The mortals will be lost without us. They will have to face the enemy alone!” She paced along the edge of the sea like a trapped animal.
But despite her warnings, each god-name was mystically emblazoned on the tree at the edge of the world. The destructive forces evaporated from the mortal realm before their carnage was realized. Purphoros’s fire dwindled. Thassa’s sea calmed, and the storms of Keranos ceased. The sun retreated to its place high in the sky. Under Kruphix’s bidding, Nylea unwillingly joined her brothers and sisters in Nyx. As the Silence engulfed the world, the mortals felt their gods retreat, and their absence was profound. And from the heart of his ruined valley, Xenagos smiled. He stood up and stretched like a lion, awake from its slumber and ready for a night of hunting. He made a gesture of mock deference to the Kruphix, who had just made the way clear for him, King Stranger, to finally complete his scheme.
On the Four Winds Plateau, the inferno dispersed and the storms dissolved into clear skies. Daxos heard the call of seagulls and felt the tranquil breeze of a summer day. It was as if a metal clamp had been removed from his brain and iron plates lifted from his shoulders. He felt as if he could leap off the edge and fly like a bird above the grateful earth. He threw his arms out wide, gazed up at the heavens, and smiled with pure joy.
Stelanos grabbed his arm. “What’s happened?”
“The gods have gone to Nyx,” he told his friend. “I can’t hear them in my head anymore!”
The air felt lighter somehow, as if the world wasn’t quite so infused with magic. Stelanos and the other soldiers cheered and cried at the miraculous deliverance of their city.
Two women approached them cautiously from the far side of the plateau. The soldiers stopped their celebration and watched as the two strangers, who appeared from nowhere, closed the dist
ance between them. One was dressed in Akroan fashions and the other in strangely nondescript traveling clothes, but both were bedraggled and muddy. Daxos greeted them with a wide smile. He stopped abruptly when he saw Heliod’s divine spear-blade, and the smile faded from his face. In response to his change of demeanor, the woman lifted her weapon defensively. The Meletian soldiers raised their sarissas in return and readied their attack.
Daxos was dumbstruck by the sight of the woman who held Heliod’s blade. Even without the weapon, he would have recognized her. He knew the color of her hair, the shape of her face, the ethereal otherness that was invisible to everyone else. This was the broken girl who had grown to be Heliod’s Champion. This was the stranger that Heliod had ordered him to kill if things went awry. Well, Heliod could smite him from his new lodgings in Nyx if such a thing were possible. Daxos would never hurt this woman. He opened his arms wide as if to embrace her.
“I know you,” he said. He touched the glass amulet hanging around his neck, and she seemed to remember him. “You led me up the mountain.”
Before the woman could answer, a great rumbling shook the ground beneath their feet. An ear-splitting roar blasted across the plateau.
Polukranos had arrived.
As the hydra thundered onto the plateau, the soldiers recoiled with terror. At least forty feet long and twenty feet tall at the shoulder, Polukranos rivaled anything Elspeth had seen before on any plane. She counted at least ten massive heads with brightly colored crests. The long necks and black eyes moved in precise coordination with its four gargantuan legs. His long, heavy tail swung back and forth in rapid rhythm, as if propelling him forward. With each step of his clawed feet, the ground liquefied and then rehardened, leaving permanent impressions on the stone base of the plateau.
Polukranos fixed his many black eyes on them, and all ten heads roared at once. The soldiers covered their ears in pain. A trail of blood ran from Daxos’s ear down his neck, and Elspeth felt disoriented until the sound retreated. Several of the horses bolted for the city, and the soldiers looked as though they wanted to do the same.
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