The Forest Gods' Fight

by Alexandria Hook

  Athena just gave me a ghost of a smile in return, her skin losing that amazing golden tone and becoming slightly gray in color right before my eyes. The other gods were suffering the same symptoms, and their skin appeared to sag slightly, their faces sunken in. They were still the inexplicably gorgeous figures everyone pictures in their heads when thinking of Greek gods, but now they looked tired and defeated, lacking the energy to live on.

  Sniffling, I quickly took a glance around the tent just in time to see a flash of light a few cots over and a small pile of dust where the handsome Hermes had been lying not a moment earlier. Six gods left, I thought hopelessly.

  My attention was brought back to Athena when she suddenly gasped in pain, her eyes still locked on Hermes’s cot as if she was searching for something. But she obviously didn’t see whatever she was looking for, because her eyes only darted back and forth across the tent, and her breathing quickened. She whimpered. Was that fear, sadness, pity, or pain in her voice? I couldn’t tell. Admittedly, I had never seen her truly afraid, but there was something different about her in this moment. She just looked back at me, eyes watering, shaking her head, as if to silently apologize for something I didn’t know about.

  It was all four of those emotions, I decided. And it meant bad news, bad news that must have had something to do with me.

  Worrying even more than before, I held on to her hands to try to stop her from quaking, but it wasn’t really helping much. “Breathe,” I ordered in a low voice, carefully undoing her signature ponytail and running my fingers through her long, wavy, dark hair.

  Next, I lifted Athena’s head up so she might be able to breathe a bit easier and slipped one arm around her slim waist, pulling her closer to me. Our wet, bronze breastplates were the only tangible things separating us, and I could still feel her rising body heat radiating through her armor, which highlighted the shape of her small breasts and the athletic curve in her sides. She had never let me hold her at all before and I knew that even if she had survived the war, she probably never would have let me hold her so intimately again. She preferred punches to hugs, indifference to love, and I was okay with that. In fact, I was usually the same way, but for some reason I wanted her more than anything.

  Savoring the once-in-a-lifetime moment, I breathed in the pungent scents of sweat, blood, and pine trees. She smelled like home. I wanted to stay there forever.

  “See you on the other side, everyone,” Poseidon’s voice suddenly called out from behind me, interrupting my thoughts, and I whirled around in my seat, meeting his sea green eyes only a second before I was blinded by another flash of white light.

  “No,” I croaked helplessly, knowing that his death would hurt the remaining gods even worse because he was one of the more powerful and most prominent in this generation.

  Sure enough, Hera started to violently cough up blood from a cot across the tent. “Zeus, are you ready to go?” the queen asked in a scratchy voice, clutching her pained stomach.

  “Go without me, love. It will be fine,” Zeus responded between coughs, and Hera was gone seconds later, her soul fading away into thin air too fast for me to follow its path. I found myself wondering if she had known he had cheated on her only the day before.

  Meanwhile, next to Apollo, Artemis was groaning in agony, trying to hang on to her life just a little longer. I glanced back down at Athena, who was biting her lip so hard that it had started to bleed, and a single golden bead of blood rested on her pale lips. They were all on the brink of death.

  “You have to let go now, Alec,” Zeus whispered. “Our time has come.”

  I shook my head stubbornly, in denial. The Oracle, however, left the tent calmly. I had to admit that sometimes her indifferent actions angered me, even though she was just obeying orders this time.

  “I won’t get to see you again,” I told them all sadly, although I kept my eyes solely on Athena. You see, even though the gods would be immediately reincarnated once again, they would be babies, probably reborn somewhere far away. It would be many years before they would discover their powers. Most likely, I would die before I found them again, and even if I did somehow manage to find them, there was no telling whether or not they would remember me. The next Athena might have flashes of good memories, but she would be a different Athena (if that makes any sense to you), so I wasn’t sure if I would be able to love her in the same way again and vice versa.

  “Alec, you’ll always remember us. You can see us in your head and in your dreams whenever you want. I promise I’ll be there,” Athena told me softly, letting out a shaky breath. I opened my mouth to retort, but Athena answered my question before I could even ask it. “Alec, you’ll be fine. You lived without the gods once and you’ll do it again now.”

  “But I don’t want to live without you guys,” I protested, blinking away the tears. “You’re all I have left.”

  And it was true; I would be alone after their deaths. No family, no friends left in the Knowing. There were a few nymphs and satyrs I liked well enough, but no one could compare to the gods. No matter what I did, those thoughts would always be at the back of my mind, preventing me from getting close to anyone ever again.

  Plus, my late father already seemed to be forgotten; upon my return with Athena, no one at the Knowing base camp had even bothered to ask about what had happened to him. None of the gods had even mentioned him after the day we’d met, except for one time during training with Athena when I admitted that I wasn’t as saddened by his death as I expected to be. Beforehand, I had felt guilty about his death, but later I felt nothing toward him at all. To be honest, I had found much better company, people who actually wanted to support and be friends with me without a different motive. After all, the only reason my father had come to the Woods with me was to meet the gods.

  I didn’t really care about my mother at that moment; she could do absolutely nothing to help or comfort me. She never could, nor did she really want to. My mother could’ve gone straight to Tartarus, the worst part of the Underworld, and I wouldn’t have given a damn after her actions during my whipping. The rest of the Knowing could go as well. They never cared either. Their supposedly selfless motto was valuing the gods over family, but they really valued their own sorry lives over anything else.

  Then again, the Knowing members couldn’t all die at once, and I was only one person. Better me than them.

  Athena knew my thoughts on all of this, of course, and she tightened her grip on my hands. “Alec, promise me you won’t commit suicide,” she begged, shaking her head. I hesitated. How did she always manage to see straight through me? “Please, Alec. Please. I know you didn’t really want to be considered a hero for your people because you thought they didn’t deserve one, but you’re the best hope they have for change. And they desperately need to change their ways. I didn’t have enough time with them, but you do. This war is finished now, but I know there will be plenty of battles left to fight back at the base camp, battles only you can win. So please, Alec, don’t kill yourself. This isn’t over yet. We aren’t over yet.”

  “Okay, okay. I promise I won’t,” I finally told her, wondering what the hell her last sentence meant, and her tears slowed to a stop. Studying her face carefully, I asked, “What do you want me to do then? Go back to the Knowing camp?”

  “Do what you think is right. I believe I trained you well—not just as a fighter, but also as a leader—so here’s your chance to really prove it. Even though you can’t be a hero for the gods anymore, you can still be a hero in memory of all of them,” Athena said firmly, meeting my eyes as if giving me an unspoken message as well. When she exchanged a quiet nod with Zeus, I could tell for certain that I was losing her. With every second, she slipped further and further away from me. Her body, her voice, everything about her was shaking as she looked deep into my eyes for the last time. “Sir Alec, first official hero of Mount Olympus of the twenty-first century and unofficial knight of the Woods, I probably should’ve told you this earlier, but I j
ust want to say that I love—”

  Her voice stopped, and I could see panic suddenly flash through her stormy eyes like a lightning bolt. You, I thought, desperately hoping she would be able to finish her sentence. I wanted to hear the words I’d always dreamed of her saying to me come from her own mouth. Come on, you can do it, babe. Just say the word. Come on!

  But she couldn’t finish. We both needed more time, even if it was only a few seconds. Unfortunately, the Fates wouldn’t give it to us.

  A flash of white light so bright that it blinded me suddenly emanated from all around me, not just from where Athena lay, so I knew all of the other gods would be gone by the time I opened my eyes. Sure enough, when I regained the ability to see, Athena was just dust in my hands and the other gods were piles of tiny gray particles on their own respective cots. I hadn’t even gotten to see their souls float away from me.

  “NO!” I screamed as if it would help somehow. Out of frustration, I sank to my knees and punched the ground as hard as I could, scraping the skin off my knuckles. Damn the Fates! Tears were streaming down my face and I couldn’t stop them. I gave up. But, collapsed on the grass, I caught sight of Athena’s black pocketknife a few inches away. She must have dropped it while I was carrying her into the tent.

  Without really thinking, I grabbed her knife and opened it. I thought the blade was shiny, beautiful even, just like the gods, and I had made three long slits on my left wrist before I truly realized what I was doing. “No, no,” I repeated to myself angrily, my voice shaky. I was such an idiot. “You have to stay alive, Alec. Live for the gods. Live.”

  I stuffed the knife into my pocket. A keepsake to help me remember her.

  Now what? I asked myself once I had calmed down as much as I possibly could, but I knew the answer immediately. Ignoring the blood that dribbled down my left arm, I rose from the ground and went to the middle of the tent where a small table full of medical supplies stood. I quickly dumped the bandages out of a large glass jar then collected all of the gods’ ashes, pile by pile. In a rush, I wiped my eyes and headed out of the tent. I didn’t even think of bandaging my wrist.

  “ATTENTION!” I shouted at the top of my lungs as soon as I stepped outside, and at least a hundred centaurs, nymphs, satyrs, and Knowing members instantly whirled around to face me. It was dead quiet until I continued, “The gods are dead. They are being reincarnated somewhere else as we speak.”

  Gasps and sobs from the crowd momentarily distracted me, but I still searched the sea of faces until I found a satyr and centaur I recognized. “You two, tell any remaining troops on the battlefield to retreat. All Knowing members, start packing up because you’ll leave for Kentucky tonight. Centaurs, prepare to go back to your own territory. No stalling.”

  There were a few unhappy murmurs from the crowd, but everyone dispersed for the most part. I didn’t know what else there was to say. So, without wasting another second, I started sprinting east toward Main Street with Athena’s letter and the jar of ashes in hand. I ran about forty-five minutes before I came to the edge of the woods, but even though the light hadn’t really changed, the forest felt much darker than normal—even darker than it had seemed during the actual war. Perhaps it was just that I no longer felt empowered or excited to fight. I had nothing worth fighting for anymore.

  Therefore, I guessed the one lucky part of my frantic sprint was that I didn’t come across any monsters. Since their leader had died, the mythical beasts were probably retreating into the Underworld and trying to sort themselves out.

  I poked my head out from under the thick tree cover by Main Street to find that it was still raining a little bit and that the street was more like a rushing river, with dirty rainwater flowing along the slippery pavement. Anxiously, I sat down on the damp grass behind a tree and waited for the rain to stop so I could post the letter without it being ruined. With nothing else to do, I reluctantly pulled the folded piece of paper out of my pocket and started to read it.

  Two hours later, I was still numb and in shock, feeling empty and alone. But the rain had stopped temporarily and I decided to post the letter. With shaking hands, I made my way to the red and white DANGER, DO NOT ENTER sign, after looking both ways to make sure no one was watching me. A random guy dressed in Greek armor would seem pretty suspicious so I waited until I was fully hidden by foliage again before I yelled in English, “HEY! Look over here! There’s a message on the sign!”

  My heart raced faster and faster as I waited for someone to emerge from one of the tiny shops. What was only a minute seemed like an eternity, but when I saw Athena’s human father, Henry, emerge from the Fire Pit first, I wished time had passed even slower. Feeling even more awful than before, I fell to my knees.

  I was supposed to protect his daughter, after all, and I hadn’t. I knew he would never forgive me, never even think of me as more than a measly monster after this. I was not sure why his opinion mattered to me so much since he was always drunk and I’d only ever talked to him for five minutes. But I still cared. I really did. Maybe it was just because he knew Athena and loved her too.

  Taking deep breaths, I tried to force myself to watch as the town slowly gathered to read the note, but I couldn’t do it. Instead, I just sat in the long grass with my eyes shut, clutching the glass jar full of ashes as if my life depended on it. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop rereading the letter in my mind; I had subconsciously memorized the damned thing. This is what it said:

  Dear humble citizens of the Woods,

  If you are reading this, Alicia, Maddie, Matt, Jack, Josh, Rebecca, Camille, Haley, Shane, and the Monster Watch (Zach, Luke, Connor, and I, Ashley) are dead. This is not a joke, although I wish it were.

  To answer the questions I know everyone is currently wondering, yes, we were killed in the forest—ironically, I’d like to think, since we were the first to survive the terrible things in there. (So, yes, your suspicions were correct if you thought that the Monster Watch might have occasionally brought friends along on its journeys.) Why then, after all of these years, did we die now, you ask? Well, it’s hard to explain, but I suppose we had cheated Death for far too long and he finally caught up to us. That being said, our tired bodies will soon be disposed of, if they haven’t been already, so do not go into the forest to look for them. You will only get yourselves killed as well, and we definitely wouldn’t want that.

  I truly wish I could tell you more about what happened in our beloved yet horrifying woods, but I cannot bring myself to place the burden of this knowledge upon you. It would be quite cruel of me, to tell the truth, for Zach once observed that if you knew about the things in the forest, you would probably wish you didn’t. You should understand, however, that although the Monster Watch had many great times gallivanting throughout the haunted forest, I regret that we grew up much too fast as a result of the things we saw. We were thousands of years old in mind, yet we acted like regular teenaged fools. We partied, dated (admittedly, some of us more than others), and played our own versions of childish games just to try to feel young again—this I do not regret, although thinking of it now saddens me greatly.

  In conclusion, you must realize that if you can help it, you should never go into the forest, whether it is the physical one in front of you or the metaphorical one, which might not even be a forest at all in your case. Why not? Firstly, the physical one is simply too dangerous and deadly, but the metaphorical one will steal something from you that is arguably far more valuable than a short spell of bravery: your innocence and immaturity, which must not be taken for granted. I cannot stress this enough.

  Overall, I had a wonderful life in the town of the Woods, and I know my friends would agree. I can only hope that you realize what you have here is amazing—a stable economy, friendly relations, a beautiful setting, et cetera—and I do not want you to leave it all behind just because a bunch of people died here. After all, people die everywhere and people die every day. We just happened to die here, on this day.

 
So, if you still feel the need to take some sort of action as a result of our deaths, you may as well fulfill our last wish: Stay here and keep the town of the Woods alive, but do not tear down the forest, for it really does share a home with you, whether you like it or not. As long as people don’t disturb it, the creatures inside won’t disturb you. Hopefully, you still have many more years left to live, and those years should not be wasted fretting over the fate of a natural habitat, a fate which may very well be intertwined with yours.

  Lastly, I want to thank you, every single one of you, for the Woods would not have been so wonderful without you. I must go now, but I wish you good luck in all of your adventures to come.

  —Ashley

  How she managed to write in a tone that was so emotionless but sorrowful at the same time was beyond me. That girl was a genius.

  Suddenly determined to get away from all the sadness in the town so as to keep from breaking down again, I pushed myself off the ground and headed west. I planned on returning to Main Street later to see how the townspeople were faring, but I had something else I needed to do now.

  I knew the gods had loved the Woods—the forest in particular—and I knew that if they had survived the war, they would’ve wanted to stay in their isolated hometown as long as possible. This is why I had collected their ashes.

  For Poseidon, I threw some in the river. For Pan, a handful of ashes was placed on his small throne of rock and moss, and for Hestia, ashes were added to the fire pit in the center of the army camp. For Persephone and Demeter, I threw two handfuls over the large boulder, the entrance to the Underworld where mother and daughter were first reunited in this generation. For Artemis, I spread some ashes around her preferred part of the forest for hunting, near the Oracle’s camp to the northwest, and for Apollo, I dumped dust around the small meadow, his favorite place in the forest, one of the few spots you could actually see the sky. Finally, for the great Zeus and Hera, I threw ashes into the air, and the wind carried them up into the silvery clouds floating around their heavens.