by Melody Rose
I only stopped when Horace forced me to. He stood directly in my path, only thirty feet from the stage. Our eyes unwittingly connected, and all of my movements slowed. I felt as though I was moving through molasses.
“You don’t want to do this, Cheyenne,” Horace said in his melodic voice. He cocked his head to the side. “You don’t want to hurt anyone else, do you? Look at what you’ve done.” The daemon, still in the shape of the soldier I knew, gestured behind me.
As much as I didn’t want to look, I felt my head turning around of its own accord. Behind me, there was a trail of bodies. Some were still breathing while others… it was impossible to tell. I was proud of the monsters lying in my wake, but in my stampede, I didn’t notice how many soldiers I’d injured as well. It was a terrifying sight, seeing the harm I had caused so easily and without a second thought.
“Enough is enough, Cheyenne,” Horace said gently. “Hand over the scythe. End this now.”
His words poked at my brain like a crown of thorns. He tapped into something deep inside of me, feeding me these lies. As much as I wanted to believe them, I resisted his pull by gripping the metal tighter. The magic metal from the scythe plucked out the lies, picking them out like ripping petals from a flower.
He lies, the metal hissed at me. End him!
I reached out my hand, as though I was about to give over the Ultimate Weapon to his daemon. Instead, I brought both of my hands back, taking one of the blades with me. I swung my body around, leading with my hips, and drove the tip of the scythe into Horace’s stomach. The daemon Horkos assumed his true form as the scythe sliced through his belly and out the side of his back.
A black humanoid figure with a sickly purple aura around the edges flashed before my eyes. The daemon screamed, leaning its head back to shout to the heavens. I twisted the scythe blade for good measure, and the daemon melted around the blade. It dissolved into a million little pieces of dust before collecting on the stone steps before me.
I looked up at the other immortal beings who all looked upon me with unmistakable horror in their eyes, save for Eris, who only showed utter loathing.
“Who’s next?” I teased as I swung the scythe in a circle. “Cause I’ve got a one-way ticket to Tartarus for all of you. On the house.”
“Get me that weapon!” Eris cried, her voice reaching banshee levels.
Ate charged at me next, his hands outstretched as if they were going to wrap around my throat. I didn’t give the daemon a chance. Instead, I sliced through his hands easily, cutting them off at the wrists. The daemon examined his new stumps in horror, not even seeing me uppercut the blade through his chin. He dissolved into dust instantly.
Neikea came at me from the other side, taking a running jump off one of the benches. She pulled out two daggers from behind her, tips pointed directly at me. I held up the scythe handle horizontally, catching her knives. We pushed against one another, a strength contest as she tried to lower her blades onto my face.
I twisted the handle of the scythe, so it broke into the two connected weapons only attached by the flexible chain. That threw Neikea off balance, and she toppled forward. I lowered myself so that the curved edge of the scythe blades faced her as she fell. Her body went limp over the blades as they sliced cleanly, from collar bones to the bottom of her rib cage.
A cloud of dust burst forth, covering my hands and blades. I wiped them off on my pants as I ran down the last of the steps meeting a daemon I didn’t recognize. He had long black hair, greasy and slicked back, looking more like a vampire than a human. His skin stuck to his bones as though a five-year-old had glued it on. It sagged in places and made the human version of this daemon rather unpleasant to look at.
He didn’t attack me like his siblings and took Horkos’s approach. The daemon stood in front of me and waved his hand as though he was trying to cast a Jedi mind trick on me.
“You don’t remember what you’re doing here,” he said, his voice gruff, like a heavy smoker’s voice. It was much less pleasant to listen to than Horkos’s lies and just as annoying.
Once again, the metal cleared my mind. It gave me something to focus on so I could cut out the bullshit these daemons were trying to infect me with. Though when I heard the daemon’s words, my Oracle powers kicked in, and I finally recognized him.
“You must be Lethe, huh?” I asked, paused just long enough to make the daemon comfortable.
“You will forget my name as well,” Lethe said with another wave of his hand.
“I don’t think so,” I said with a snarl. Before he could utter another command, I leveled the tip of the scythe into his shoulder, the soft spot between his neck and collarbone. It wasn’t a killing blow, but I’d done it on purpose to cause the most pain. Lethe crumpled to his knees under the weight of the weapon and the agony in his shoulder.
I leaned close and whispered into the daemon’s ear. “This is for Esme.”
Then I yanked out the blade, causing the daemon to gasp. But then he never uttered another word because I sliced it clean across his throat. He didn’t bleed, but instead fell forward and was dust before his body touched the stairs.
As Lethe dissolved, an unexpected quiet came over the amphitheater. The monsters were still there, but the soldiers stopped fighting one another. Many of them shook their heads or blinked rapidly as if they had just come into their bodies once again. Even the Olympic Officials regained some semblance of themselves, Officer Buck shrinking slightly in size.
“We’re under attack!” I shouted to the campus at large. “Defend the Academy!” I thrust the scythe in the air as a battle cry, and the soldiers didn’t hesitate. They followed my command and attacked the real enemies this time: the monsters and not each other.
By killing Lethe, I was able to restore some sanity back to the soldiers. They no longer forgot themselves and their oath to protect from the immortal monsters. Suddenly, the battle shifted in our favor as the demigods heavily outweighed the monsters.
“No!” Eris screamed. She clutched at her long black dress and bent her body slightly as though someone had struck her.
Eris stood before me, with wide eyes filled with fear, now that I had killed nearly all of her children. I thought Eris was about to charge at me in anger, but the goddess surprised me when she ran off the stage.
I dashed forward, climbing over the seats, meeting her step for step. I flung out the scythe like a cane and hooked the curved blade around her neck. The goddess stopped immediately before her momentum caused her to be decapitated.
“Not another move, or I’ll send you to Tartarus for the next hundred years with the rest of your children,” I threatened in a low voice. Even though the battle raged around us, it was considerably quieter as the number of monsters lessened, a sign of our impending victory.
“You forgot one,” Eris sneered, her nostrils flaring. “Algea! Attack her!”
“No, mother,” the daemon said as she backed away from Eris and me. “Can’t you see? We’ve lost. It’s not worth the time in Tartarus.”
Algea released her hold on Khryseos and Argyreos and ran off the stage. Even though I was glad the dogs were no longer under her control, there was no way I was going to let her get away that easy.
“Khryseos and Argyreos!” I commanded. “Get her!”
The two dogs shook their heads to clear them before crouching down, snarls apparent. They dashed after the daemon at breakneck speed. Once the three of them were off stage, I heard the shrill shriek of the immortal as the dogs ripped her to pieces. It was a true Greek death, happening out of sight of the audience.
“Look around you, Eris,” I said as I gestured out to the amphitheater. “You lost. You failed.”
It was true because all around us, in the seats, were nothing but demigods. They stood there, battled, bruised, and wounded, but they stood. Or sat, but the main point was that they were alive. All of the monsters were dead, sent back to the Underworld, no longer a threat to our lives or our campus.
&nbs
p; “Have mercy, demigod,” Eris begged, changing her tone instantly as her eyes roamed over the army of soldiers. “There is no need to obliterate me. I will only come back in a hundred years. I’m immortal.” The goddess shrugged. “What’s the point of that when I can give you my word that I won’t do anything to upset the Academy for the next hundred years? What about that? Would you accept my deal?”
I considered it for a moment. But as I looked on the carnage in front of me, the pain and suffering she put my comrades through, I knew what the answer was. I thought back to Calypso’s warning, more of a helpful hint than she ever intended it to be. The gods weren’t our friends, and as much as I wanted to believe Eris and trust her word, she hadn’t given me any reason to.
“I’m sorry, Eris,” I said, with more sincerity than I wanted to reveal. “But I just can’t take that chance.”
Then I pulled back on the scythe, digging the metal into her throat.
35
The dust swirled around in a soft morning breeze. The last remains of Eris blew away. She wouldn’t be a threat to me, the soldiers, or the Academy. At least for the next hundred years. Because she was immortal, and while the Ultimate Weapon couldn’t kill the gods, it was enough to put them in their place for the foreseeable future.
“Cheyenne!” Esme’s voice shouted down at me from one of the benches. “You need to stab the General!”
I thought I had misheard her. I literally cupped a hand around my ear to indicate that I hadn’t heard her. “What?”
“You need to stab the General!” Esme shouted again as she lumbered down the steps of the amphitheater. However, the other Olympic Officials heard her this time and blocked her path, Min and Maurice looping their arms around hers. They lifted her off her feet, and she kicked in midair. “Let me go!”
“You’re threatening to harm the General,” Min reported. “That’s treason, and we can’t allow that.”
“Esme,” I whimpered, my voice coming out softer than I wanted it to. “What’s going on?”
“She’s right, Shy!” Ansel called out from his spot on the other side of the theater. He, too, tried to make his way down to me, but the Olympic Officials caught on quickly. They restrained him as well. While Ansel was able to dodge the first two, he ran smack into Officer Buck, who picked the son of Apollo up by the shoulders, locking his arms at his sides.
“Stab him!” Ansel cried before Buck put a hand over his mouth.
I was so confused, and I didn’t know what they were talking about. That was the most absurd request ever. While I didn’t like the General… let’s be real, I hated him… that wasn’t enough of a reason to stab the man. He was an intolerable bastard for sure, but I wasn’t going to hurt him. That was a one-way ticket out of the Military, which, after I spent all this time saving it, was the last thing I wanted.
“We can see him with the laurel leaf,” Esme shouted, spit flying out of her mouth as her words tumbled out. “You need to free him by stabbing him with the Ultimate Weapon.”
“That’s enough out of you!” Min said as he tied a cloth around Esme’s mouth. They sat her down on a step and began to tie her hands around her back. Both Ansel and Esme struggled against their restraints, which bothered me all the more.
Free him? Now that was an entirely different matter. I could certainly do that by releasing the General from the restraints he wore, but that didn’t require stabbing him.
“Cheyenne,” came a softer voice from the other side of the stage. It was Clarissa, the daughter of Hera. She held out her hand, which had its own coating of blood and dirt on it. “There’s no need for this. You can hand over the weapon now, and no one else has to get hurt.”
Did she really think I was going to hurt the General? It hadn’t even crossed my mind, except for the urgency that my friends struggled to tell me more. I wished someone would do something, but the entire amphitheater was silent. Soldiers tended to their wounds while others watched in earnest to see what would happen between the other Olympic Officials and me.
I looked from Clarissa to Esme and to Ansel. Doubt froze my veins, and I didn’t move. All I did was clutch the Ultimate Weapon tighter, hoping that the metal would tell me something. When it didn’t, I knew that this was a decision I would have to make on my own.
I trusted Esme and Ansel with my life. This was a crazy request, but if what Esme was saying was true, that she and Ansel had the sight of the laurel leaf, which was said to bring true sight to anyone who ate it, then maybe this wasn’t as crazy as I thought.
Finally, I did something I never thought I would do. I turned to the General and looked to him for an answer.
The man couldn’t reply to me, due to the covering over his mouth, but I could see his eyes. They swirled with their normal stormy gray, but there was something different behind them, something I had never seen before.
The General was pleading to me.
And I didn’t think it was for his life. When his eyes flicked from the weapon to me and back again, it was unmistakable to me that the General wanted me to listen to Esme and Ansel. He wanted me to stab him.
I pinched my eyebrows together, still unsure. I took a deep breath and thought about how I could believe in Ansel and Esme’s words. They were honest and good and had never led me astray. Or at least they hadn’t whenever they were in control of their own actions.
I closed my eyes and swung the scythe forward.
The next few seconds seemed to happen in slow motion. Clarissa held out her hand and lunged for me, just as the blade sliced across the General’s middle. It ripped through his intestines and bled out right away. The daughter of Hera ran into me, and we both tumbled to the ground, wrestling for the Ultimate Weapon.
“You traitor!” Clarissa shouted in my face. “I knew you were nothing but a low life, conniving--”
But Clarissa didn’t get to finish her insult because there was a flash of light. It blinded the pair of us, and the boom that followed after it was like fireworks were set off five feet from my head. The blast threw the both of us backward, Clarissa tumbling into the stands. I slammed the blade into the rock floor of the stage so that I didn’t fall off in the orchestra pit.
I had an unimpeded view of the light in the center of the stage, where the General had once been. It morphed from the crumbled figure of the General’s dead body to a massive humanoid figure, the size of a cyclops. The light slowly dimmed until we could see the new being that had taken his place.
It was a man that stood at eight feet tall, with the same bushy beard as the General, though his was all white. This man’s face was free of wrinkles, and his skin a healthy golden color. He wore an eggshell colored toga, which left most of his muscular chest bare and covered his bottom half.
Lightning crackled all around him, and clouds appeared overhead out of nowhere. That was an added bonus because I had already figured out the identity of this immortal being.
“You were fucking Zeus all along!” I shouted as I got to my feet. I couldn’t help myself as the annoyance bubbled in my blood.
It was a foolish choice, I knew, but I stomped right up to the head of the gods and stuck the scythe as far up in his face as I could get it. Zeus held up his hands in surrender, even though he was tall enough to crush me like a bug.
“Alright, buddy, you better start talking,” I threatened through gritted teeth. “I want a full explanation, and I want it now.”
The other demigods were stunned by my boldness. And by the fact that arguably the most powerful god graced us with his presence. Some bowed reverently while others stared openly with their mouths open. Even a couple of soldiers fainted.
“I think we should start by letting the son of Apollo and daughter of Prometheus go,” Zeus said with a nod in the direction of my friends who were still held captive by the Olympic Officials.
“Fine,” I grumbled. I shot a quick glance over my shoulder to Min, Maurice, and Buck. “Do what the god says, let them go.”
Buck dropped Ansel in
a heap, whereas Min and Maurice set Esme down gently as if they were stepping away from a bomb. As soon as they let me know they were okay, my attention turned back to Zeus. I thrust the Ultimate Weapon up a little higher, letting him know I meant business.
“Now start talking,” I demanded. “And you better tell the whole truth because trust me, I am not afraid to send you away for the next hundred years either, no matter who you think you are.”
Zeus’s bushy eyebrows rose in surprise at my brash words. “I believe I do owe you an explanation, daughter of Hephaestus, for saving my life.”
“Damn right, you do,” I muttered but let the god continue.
“Eris’s attack on the campus is my doing,” Zeus announced to the Academy as a whole. His voice echoed nicely in the amphitheater so that everyone could hear him. “I was the one who removed her invitation. The son of Hephaestus was not to blame.”
Anger flared inside of my chest, and it took all of my self-control not to chop off his big toe with the scythe right then. I let Zeus continue speaking without interrupting him.
“We had gotten into a tiff over a mortal, and the mortal chose her,” the god of lightning said with a casual shrug. “I really didn’t think she would take the insult so seriously, but then she did. When the other Olympians got word that it had been my fault to anger the goddess of chaos, who threatened to endanger their children, let’s just say they weren’t happy.” Zeus’s rubbed his hands on his toga, suddenly uncomfortable. “Hephaestus led the charge against me. Especially when he figured out that he punished his son for something he didn’t do. The Olympians voted and decided to punish me by forcing me to be mortal until the prophecy came true.”
“Like when you punished Apollo and Poseidon when they threatened to overthrow you,” I recited, the knowledge coming to the surface unintentionally. “You stripped them of their divine powers, including their immortality.”