Forge of the Gods 2

by Simon Archer

  “I’m so sorry, Beth,” I muttered, low enough so she couldn’t hear me.

  Then I slammed my fist down on the back of her head, knocking my friend unconscious. She collapsed into my arms like a rag doll, and I struggled to keep her up. I maneuvered her limp body into a fireman’s carry over my shoulder. With a grunt, I hoisted her up in the air and ventured out of the art building.

  By the blessing of Tyche, we made it to the med bay without being spotted. Or if people did see us, they didn’t say anything of it, letting us pass by without comment.

  I kicked open one of the double doors leading to the lobby of the med bay. One of my least favorite people in the world sat at the counter. Marcy was one of those brown-nosing students who took her job way too seriously. She pretended that guarding the entrance to the med bay was the ultimate responsibility and liked to follow protocol to a tee. The one time I managed to talk her out of her rigid rules was when I had Khryseos and Argyreos with me because Marcy was afraid of dogs.

  “Cameron, oh, what’s happened?” Marcy asked as she stood up from her chair.

  “Bethany fell and hit her head,” I made up on the spot. “I think she has a concussion, so I brought her to see Daniella and get all healed up.”

  “Let me call her, and we can get a gurney down here for her,” Marcy said as she reached for her office phone.

  “No worries,” I said, “I’ll just take her back there. I’m already carrying her.” I didn’t want them to admit Beth without me giving some sort of explanation beyond “She fell,” which any real healer would know in an instant wasn’t true.

  “I can’t let you do that,” Marcy shook her head. “I know you’re concerned about your friend, but we’ll take good care of her, I promise.” She tacked on a not-so-reassuring smile for good measure.

  “Fine,” I relented. I dumped Beth’s unconscious body in one of the waiting room chairs. “Call Daniella and tell her something’s wrong with Beth.”

  “That’s not how it--” Marcy began, but I was fed up with people feeding me excuses. I was already in a go-mode, and I decided to roll with it.

  “If you don’t call Daniella down here right now, I will call Khryseos and Argyreos and have them wait with me,” I said as I crossed my arms in front of me, giving her the ultimatum. “Your choice.”

  “You… you wouldn’t do that,” Marcy said, though the doubt was already planted in his mind.

  “All it takes is a whistle, and then they teleport right to me,” I bluffed. I had no idea if I could command them anywhere. I made a mental note to test that later.

  As if in slow motion, I raised my fingers to my lips, pointer finger and thumb connected. My fingertips just grazed my bottom lip when Marcy scrambled for the phone. I heard her press a series of buttons before she held the phone to her ear with a grimace. Her eyes never left me, keeping them trained on my fingers.

  “Uh, hi, Daniella? Yeah, it’s Marcy… Uh-huh, I know I’m supposed to call the nurses, but it’s Cameron… Yes, he says something’s wrong with Bethany… yep, they’re up here at the front… Okay, good, thank you. Bye-bye.”

  Marcy nervously dropped the phone before placing it back in its cradle. I smiled at her sweetly when she met my eyes again.

  “Thank you,” I said with a cheeky grin.

  Marcy didn’t say anything and instead sat back down at her desk with a grumble.

  It only took Daniella a couple of minutes to get down to us. She burst through the doors that led to the rest of the med bay and searched around the room before spotting the pair of us by the front doors. She wore her white healer’s coat and pushed her glasses up her nose before reaching us.

  “Cameron,” Daniella said with shock in her voice. “What happened to Beth? Is she okay?”

  Daniella went to check Beth’s pulse, and as she leaned down, I leaned over to speak in her ear. “Something’s wrong with her, but I can’t tell you here.”

  Instantly understanding, Daniella adjusted her stethoscope around her neck and coughed nervously. “I’ll get a gurney.”

  Together, we loaded Beth onto the gurney all the while Marcy watched, never offering to help. I felt bad about threatening her, but I couldn’t risk going through protocols with this weird ailment. Daniella and I pushed her through the hallways, me acting like the concerned friend when anyone passed us. We managed to get her into a private room, but we didn’t unload her from the mobile bed.

  Immediately, Daniella set to examining her once we knew we were alone. “Start talking, Cameron.”

  “It was bonkers, Daniella, I’m telling you,” I said, not even really knowing where to start. “And you’re going to think I’m crazy.”

  “I’m already starting to,” Daniella said wearily as she lifted Beth’s eyelids and shined a light in them. “Gods, she’s out cold. What happened to her?”

  “I punched her,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “You what?” Daniella gawked. “What the hell?”

  “Daniella, just listen,” I assured her, holding out my hands urgently. “I think she’s under some kind of love spell.”

  The healer’s body froze, hovering over Beth, mid examination. She straightened up, slow and deliberate. I waited for her to speak first, but Daniella couldn’t seem to find the words as she opened and shut her mouth several times. When I realized that nothing was coming out, I decided to step in.

  “Hear me out,” I started. “I caught her fraternizing with Bella, the new Eda leader.”

  “Fraternizing?” Daniella asked, sounding out the word as if she didn’t know what it meant.

  “Yeah, you know,” I said. Then I added a crude hand gesture to clarify.

  Daniella’s eyes grew almost as wide as the rims of her glasses. She took them off her face and then rubbed them on her coat, mouth hanging slightly open. I nodded slowly at her. “Yep. They were going to ask me to keep quiet. Bribery...blackmail...expulsion.”

  “I just can’t believe Beth would jeopardize her spot in the Academy like that, especially after all of us..” Daniella said as she adjusted her glasses back on her face.

  “That’s what I said,” I agreed, encouraged by the fact that we were on the same page. “But when she wakes up, you can ask her. She believes she’s in love with Bella.”

  “Love?” Daniella gawked. “It’s been, like, twenty-four hours.”

  “Less than that, I think,” I continued, the thrill of being on a roll propelling me forward. “But what really threw me off was that she said the exact same words that Karen and Rachel did when they were defending their relationship.”

  “Hold on.” Daniella stopped me by holding out her hands. She came closer to me and lowered her voice. “You also caught Karen sleeping with an officer?”

  “Yes,” I said, drawing out the word. I was vindicated that Daniella was picking up what I was putting down. I could see it in her eyes that while this whole situation was crazy, my friend believed me. “The same words. Something about connection. But it was bonkers, the whole thing. And here’s the really crazy part.”

  “It gets crazier?” Daniella asked, her tone unsure if she wanted to hear any more.

  “Irema, the fourth year? Daughter of Hypnos?”

  Daniella nodded and waved her hand forward, telling me she knew her and should continue.

  “She just got kicked out, get this.” I leaned in, my thumbs and pointer fingers pressing into each other urgently. “For blackmailing an officer with sex.”

  Daniella leaned back her head and exhaled deeply. She pushed her coat back with a swift movement and put her hands on her hips. My friend reached under her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose as she glanced down at the white-tiled floor.

  “If what you’re saying is true,” Daniella started.

  “It is true!” I insisted. Daniella held up her hand, and I swallowed my words, letting her finish.

  “Then something seriously powerful must be affecting them,” Daniella concluded. “There’s no way this many aff
airs that people are wanting to keep secret are happening like this. Especially when they are using the same excuses when you talk to them.”

  “Can’t you test her?” I grabbed for something to do, some sort of solution. “Do anything in order to see if I’m right?”

  “I wouldn’t even know where to begin testing for something like this, or why you and I aren’t affected since we were together with her recently,” Daniella admitted. The confusion was apparent in her eyes. It was almost as though I could hear her thoughts whirring at warp speed to think of something that might work.

  “Can’t you do that scanning thing?” I held out my hands, mimicking how Daniella used her powers. “Wave them over her and diagnose what’s wrong with her?”

  Daniella looked disapprovingly at my impression of her. I lowered my hands and put them behind my back. I rolled my lips over my teeth and waited for her to finish.

  “I work with the body,” Daniella said firmly, “not the mind. This is definitely a mental thing.”

  I exhaled and went to sit down in the empty chair in the small patient room. However, Daniella reached out and gently grabbed my arm, preventing me from sitting down.

  “Why don’t we let her be and head out here?” Daniella suggested. “I have the feeling she’s going to be out for a bit.”

  “I didn’t hit her that hard, did I?” I winced.

  Daniella tilted her head back and forth in a noncommittal way as she opened the door for me.

  I rubbed my hands up and down my face, elongating my cheeks and massaging them. We walked out together, and Daniella shut the door behind us, so we huddled in the hallway. As I watched my friend shut the door, a sense of hopelessness struck my chest and made it hard to breathe.

  “What are we going to do, Daniella?” I asked, looking up at my friend with wide eyes.

  The hopelessness deepened when Daniella met me with the same doubtful look. It hurt to think that we might not be able to solve this together. We’d been through so much, the pair of us. Since we were the ones who snuck off-campus, borrowed a pair of pegasus, and saved a group of Enka third years. Daniella had trusted me then, and I knew that was a bond that would forever be in my life. It didn’t hurt that we kissed and began seeing each other more often.

  So when we both confronted the fact that we were in over our heads, out of resources, it was a weight I didn’t want to bear.

  “I’m scared they aren’t the only ones,” I said, voicing my biggest fear aloud.

  “What makes you think that?” Daniella scratched the side of her head.

  “Just that it’s too big of a coincidence,” I murmured. “Three love-struck couples on the first day of the school year? I bet if we looked, we’d find others hooking up.”

  “Well,” Daniella released the word with a heavy sigh. “We can’t do anything until she wakes up. I’ll do some research in the meantime and see if there’s something I’m not thinking of.”

  “Or maybe I’m wrong,” I ventured, unable to leave the possibility unsaid.

  “Or maybe you’re wrong,” Daniella said, giving the option valid weight. “But we’ll find out soon.”

  I matched Daniella’s heavy sigh as I leaned back against the wall and tipped the back of my head against the cool stone. As I looked up at the ceiling tiles, I reran the events of the last day over in my mind.

  “Hey Cameron,” Daniella said, her tone changing to something lighter as if she weren’t sure of what she wanted to say.

  “Yeah?”

  “What happened to Bella when you took Beth away?”

  As if the healer had summoned the woman herself, Bella burst through the double doors from the waiting room and into the main hallway of the med bay. She wore an expression of murder on her face as she charged towards me. To my horror, the Stratego and other Elemental Officials followed in the wake of the Eda soldier. Suddenly, Bella’s finger was in my face with an accusing point.

  “There he is!” Bella shouted. “There’s the boy that attacked me.”

  12

  I flattened myself against the wall as if I were trying to slip through it. Daniella got between the Eda soldier and me and shielded me from the onslaught of Bella’s anger.

  “You bastard! You broke my wrist, do you know that? Do you know what that means for you? They’re going to kick you out of here so fast that you won’t know what hit you. Blink and then all your memories will be gone,” Bella snapped her fingers, the click echoing in the hallway. “Just like that.”

  My own surge of anger fueled me forward, and I pushed myself off the wall. “Not if all your fucking and secrecy gets you kicked out of here first.”

  Daniella turned to me and pulled me out of Bella’s range while Officers Brea and Ashley dragged Bella to the opposite wall. Some other med bay staff peeked out from other patient rooms and around corners to get a look at the commotion. The Stratego stood between the two opposing packs, his arms stretched out all the way, palms facing each of us.

  “There has been enough fighting,” the Stratego announced.

  My chest heaved with heavy breaths at Bella’s comments. Unfortunately, the Stratego’s presence didn’t do anything to calm me down. I pushed the air out of my nose like a bull, ready to charge. Daniella strong-armed me, pinning me against the wall. She didn’t budge, and I noticed a physical strength I hadn’t ever seen in my lover before. Only under the weight of her arm did I calm down. The protectiveness of her touch reassured me that I wasn’t alone in this.

  “Cameron,” the Stratego addressed me in his gruff, but authoritative voice. “Isabella tells us that you struck her.”

  “I had to,” I defended, my voice weaker than I wanted it to be.

  The Stratego’s salt and pepper eyebrows raised at my response. “You had to?”

  “Yeah, she wouldn’t let Beth…” I swallowed the rest of my words, uncomfortable with the number of eyes on me.

  “Ah yes,” the Stratego said with an amount of smugness that I didn’t appreciate. “She also told us that you threatened the daughter of Demeter’s life?”

  “Again, only because I had to,” I said, the words coming out sharp. I leaned forward, urgency propelling me onward. But my body slammed into Daniella’s arm, which still held me back.

  “You didn’t have to do anything,” Bella cried from across the way, where the other two officers were still keeping her at bay. “You just came into the art studio, waving a knife around out of nowhere.”

  “It wasn’t even my knife,” I argued back, pushing myself against Daniella even harder. My thrusts caused Daniella to teeter a bit, but she held her ground. “You pulled it on me first.”

  “Stratego,” Brea interrupted. “Maybe we can take this somewhere more private?”

  For the first time, the Stratego seemed to notice the observers to our situation. He glanced about, his eyes shifting from the onlookers to Bella and then to me. I narrowed my gaze, making sure to harden my eyes as much as I could.

  “Daniella,” the Stratego said, not once looking away from me. “Is there somewhere we can go?”

  “There’s a conference room just down the hall,” Daniella replied. For the first time since Bella and the Officers charged in, my friend released me. I exhaled in time with her arm as it lowered.

  Bella shrugged off Brea and Ashley with an unnecessarily violent jerk as she traipsed down the hall. She cradled her wrist as she tucked her arm under her elbow and lifted it above her head to let gravity help with the swelling. A flash of pride sparked through me as I saw the bruise that was already forming beneath her skin.

  As the group of us walked down the med bay hall, the nurses and other staff members skittered away like mice. The effect the Stratego had rippled like a rock thrown into a lake. He didn’t even have to say a word, and everyone listened to him as if his mere presence was enough to make everyone follow orders. It was as impressive as it was intimidating.

  Before one of the nurses had the chance to get away completely, Daniella called out
to her. “Alix, there is a patient in room 105. Can you please check on her and let me know when she’s awake?”

  “Absolutely Daniella,” Alix said, though she wouldn’t catch her eye.

  Daniella scurried ahead so she could unlock the conference room door. We entered a white-washed room with a long rectangular table that had eight chairs around it, like a dining room table. There was a wall of windows, all with the shades drawn down to block out the afternoon light.

  The seven of us spread out, no one choosing to sit next to one another. Bella wanted to stand, but Brea forced the soldier to take a chair.

  I sat as far away from the soldier as I could. I didn’t know how genuine her anger was or if it was just a result of whatever love-struck spell she was under. While my theory was still just that, a theory, I clung to it like a life preserver. Because if it wasn’t true, then I didn’t know what to think.

  My leg jiggled with an onslaught of nerves. I wasn’t the only one who was filled with anticipation. Daniella tapped her fingers to a random rhythm on the table while Bella popped her lips against one another like she was chewing a rather large piece of gum. The daughter of Athena slapped her palm on the table at Bella, and the soldier stopped her annoying movement.

  The Stratego stood at the head of the table, the only one of us to not take a seat. “Cameron, I’m sure you know about our strict policy regarding violence against your fellow students.”

  “I do,” I growled. “However, that policy isn’t valid when the violence is out of self-defense.”

  “Was your attack on Bella out of self-defense?” the Stratego asked, keeping surprisingly calm during the interrogation.

  “He’s lying,” Bella interjected passionately. “I didn’t lay a hand on him.”

  “Enough,” Ashley scolded. “We know your side of the story, Isabella. That’s why we are here. Let him speak.”

  Bella’s throat constricted as she swallowed hard, as she tried to keep her comments at bay. I still wasn’t sure she could keep his mouth shut while I offered my defense, but I continued anyway.