Chapter 46 Nyssa
Nyssa
It’s one thing to speculate on the art of warfare from a distance — from an outsider’s perspective.
It’s another thing entirely to be in the throes of it; to watch through the eyes of a dragon as your army loses their structure blow by blow, melding so fully into the lines of enemies that you cannot tell friend from foe.
Even in the thick of it, you’re always one second from making a fatal mistake — slashing at a gore-drenched ally, thinking them a foul-blooded enemy.
And that was how I almost killed Nike.
I wrenched Nightbreaker through the air, slashing at a hideously winged, hissing amphisbaena. One well-timed blow was all it took to cleave wing from body, and hear the whistle as it fell from the sky. I registered its shriek for all of a heartbeat before I had to slash out at the next one.
But the next one had steel of her own. My blow met resistance in the form of a slickened sword and I startled. Nothing this high up had fought back with anything other than teeth or talon.
“Whoooaaa!” a familiar voice trilled. “Same team, same team!”
I blinked beneath my ribbon, trying to place the youthful tones.
Velira, sensing my confusion, grunted, Nike, before emitting a blazing jet of fire at something coming right at us.
“Sorry!” I shouted above the din.
“My mistake,” she replied, slashing at something else I couldn’t see before swooping back around. “I should have known better than to get in the way of a blind queen on the back of a mighty dragon.”
I like her, Vel purred.
“I meant no offense, your grace!”
A rasping chuckle escaped me. “None taken.”
“It’s just that you’re magnificent — you both are” — Velira preened beneath me — “and I wanted to get a closer look at you both in action!”
Awe twisted her voice into something resembling childlike wonder.
Tell her she’s welcome to witness my magnificence any time she likes if she has more compliments to share, Vel drawled.
I snorted, relayed the message — to Nike’s eternal delight — then said aloud for her benefit: “You hoard more compliments than treasure, Vel.”
What use is treasure to a creature who can do nothing but stare at it. At least compliments are food for the soul.
True enough, I laughed, grateful for the tiny burst of joy in an otherwise monotonously violent day.
Not to rain on your parade, but we have a situation, Caelus inserted.
What is it?
Kronos’ brothers — all four of them — are here. And I’m currently squaring off with them.
Take no risks, Caelus. It’s time for Orpheus to make good on his promise.
Done. A brief pause. I don’t like this, Nightshade. It feels like a trap.
Let’s make sure it’s a trap for Titans instead then, shall we?
Yes, my queen, he growled, lethal amusement and something more insistent bursting to life in my chest.
Hardly the time, Golden.
It’s always the time when you’re around.
An enormous crash ricocheted off the clouds surrounding us, shattering the moment like a broken mirror.
Vel?
The second gigante is down. From what I can tell, it was one of the minor gods who did it.
Interesting.
Nike shot downwards, returning a minute later reeking of sweat and fresh blood, whooping. “Dionysus! Dionysus downed a giant! Can you imagine?!”
It was impossible not to share her joy. Perhaps the tide of battle was turning. Perhaps we would be able to make our stand and fend them off — and keep holding them off long enough for Aros and Evie to return.
As if summoned by the sound of falling mountains and my audacity to think we could win, a great shadow appeared from above, instantly blocking the warmth of the sun.
“What the fuck?” Nike rasped. Her dread painted the air in undertones of frost and copper.
“He’s here, isn’t he?” I murmured without turning.
“Yes,” she said hesitantly, as if admitting it made it real.
“Get out of here, Nike. That’s an order,” I barked as she made to disagree. “Warn the others. Tell them not to interfere. If you want to help, go help Apollo with the wounded or Caelus with those other mad bastards on the ground.”
Without a word, she bolted. As lithe and agile as a hummingbird, she vanished beneath the wispy cloud cover, hopefully heeding my command.
Ready? I asked my bonded dragon.
Always, she answered, pivoting sharply to face them. Images flashed through my mind of fractured sunlight in unusual shades of amethyst, mountains and armies below us in seas of writhing black, and Kronos — audacity incarnate.
He wore those same impeccable black robes as last time; the memory rushing me in staccato bursts. A bronze dagger sprouting from a chest. A bone blade, dripping gold. Two fractured, faded crowns. A depraved grin and glowing scarlet eyes.
And Charon — crumpled and unseeing — at my feet.
The pang of grief hurt almost as much as it had the first time. And the second. And the third.
But this was my chance to avenge him, whether he wanted me to or not.
I’d like to believe he would.
Velira’s head tilted up and another image shot in.
Kronos’ mount — some foul beast, part bat, part bull, part dragon — all monstrosity.
She snarled at it, snapped her teeth in its direction, but it did not cower as one would expect when a dragon came within biting distance.
No — this beast opened its eerily wide maw and grinned, bearing fangs like needles and a smile that would terrify me for years to come — if my thread was not severed today.
I don’t think I actually needed that visual, Vel.
If I have to see it, so do you.
“Surrender and we can ignore this treachery,” Kronos commanded, his icy voice carried on the rising winds. “Submit to me and I will allow your little friends to live. Those still alive,” he added, freezing the blood in my veins and stilling my thunderous heart.
Who died? I asked my bondeds. WHO DIED?
Vel snarled.
Caelus remained silent. I sensed his faint reluctance and confusion along our tether. I don’t know, he finally whispered, and that answer alone was enough to shake me. To rattle my resolve and question whether any of it was even worthwhile.
Snap out of it, Velira ordered with the force of a crashing wave. I can defeat the beast but not the god — that responsibility rests upon your shoulders. I need you, do you understand?
Yes, I answered numbly.
“You have something that I need,” Kronos continued as if we hadn’t just experienced an existential crisis before his eyes. “And you can either give it to me willingly…”
“Or?” I snapped.
“Or I can take it from you forcibly.”
“Your brother has already done that.”
“Silly girl — I don’t want your eyes, they are of no use to me.”
“What, then? My ears? My fingers? My hair?” I snarked, eager to get this over with.
I heard the smile in his voice when he eventually answered, “If I must take them as well to convince you, then so I shall. But no — I want what no other possesses. I want something you alone can give me.”
“Whatever it is, I’d rather crawl across broken glass than submit to you. But you have something I want, too.”
“Oh? And what’s that? Perhaps we could come to an… arrangement.”
“That works for me but I doubt you’d be inclined… because the thing that I want from you — is your life.”
He howled a raucous laugh, the sound muffling half way like his face was pressed against something, or carried away on a merciful breeze.
“You’re right, that won’t work for me,” he said, then clicked his fingers.
Velira snarled. They’re gone!
How can they just disappear?
You tell me and we’ll both know, she snapped as her neck twisted in every direction searching for the vanishing duo.
The winds were all that I knew, all that I could understand, as Vel twisted and soared, shrieking her frustration. They howled, tore at my skin, tried desperately to blanket the senses remaining to me.
Thunder crashed somewhere in the distance and I knew, at least distractedly, that Caelus was still okay enough to keep fighting.
The scent of ozone and ice buffeted me as it crashed again, and all at once, the clouds felt heavier — thicker than they had been moments before.
I had half a second of warning before they struck.
Half a second to grasp the change in the air — a shifting pressure, a burst of ice.
Half a second to register the materialisation of Kronos and his beast before they swooped.
Above! I roared, holding Nightbreaker aloft in the hopes that it would deter the vespertine beast.
It did not.
The creature dove at us anyway, no more hindered by my blade than by an errant toothpick. Unfortunately, it was much larger up close. More imposing and foul smelling than I’d thought possible.
Vel screeched and another flash of colour penetrated the endless haze of white: long, arrowlike claws sunk into her haunches, easily piercing the soft skin beneath her scales.
Her pain flooded the bond, so jarring I almost vomited.
Thankfully, she had enough presence of mind to twist out of its grip, sending us spiraling through the clouds with no sense of which way was up. At least not for me.
Her wings flared with an audible snap, stalling our downfall, and coasted along the currents while the world righted beneath her.
“Where are they?” I bellowed. “Can you see them?”
No, but I can smell them.
And I realised I could too. Kronos and his mount emitted a festering, fetid kind of scent, dragged along by the winds from somewhere to our right. Vel clocked it right when I did. She turned sharply, flapping her wings to regain the altitude we’d just lost.
I scoured my field of white for those souls marked to die. The ones toeing the line between death and life. The ones I could almost reach down and pluck without the necessity of my darkest power.
They were everywhere. Skyborn and grounded both — his entire army teeming with the almost-dead. But whether their deaths were imminent, or whether they were drawn out by ugly deeds and ugly minds was impossible to determine.
Perhaps Fate had marked them just for me.
Death purred at the thought.
Not yet, I told her. Not just yet.
A niggling sensation tugged at my temple — the prickle of piercing eyes and the stomach lurch that accompanied the knowledge that hunters had turned prey.
“Right,” I told her and she obeyed instantly. I clung tightly to her thick neck as she banked hard, jamming my ass so hard into the leather harness I thought it might leave a permanent imprint.
Talons snapped shut with a metallic-sounding scrape just inches from my left shoulder and had Vel not moved when she did, I’d have been skewered by them.
“Come now, little Deathbringer. There’s no need for this to get messy. Submit!” Kronos roared over the sound of leathery wings flapping to accommodate our sudden change in direction.
Vel’s head tipped up and her body followed a moment later. She ascended as fast as her great wings could carry us, rising once more above the cloud cover. We passed through them like swimming through fog; dew drops painting my face below the line of the crimson ribbon.
Without warning, she made a hairpin turn, diving sharply back toward the ground. The manoeuvre startled both gods in the vicinity — I swore while Kronos urged his mount out of the way.
The vespertine beast had a mind of its own however, and when faced with the choice to either flee or fight, it chose the latter. It inhaled with a series of syncopated clicks, and then did something neither one of us expected:
A stream of frostbitten fire jetted out of its nightmarish mouth. I felt it before I heard it: the bone aching ice, the shattering of the air as it was torn asunder. I ducked behind Vel’s neck, flattening behind her armoured scales and waited for the deluge to end.
I cried out when it buffeted me, catching my right leg as Vel twisted to avoid a direct blast to her face.
The smell hit me then. Sulphur and snow — and the agony of frostbitten flesh.
Vel responded likewise, except where Kronos’ beast was ice, Vel was fire. She was rage and heat — a living inferno barely contained by liquidious violet scales.
She roared and the sound drowned out everything else, anchoring me to her. Her whole body vibrated with the force of her fury as she barrelled a minute-long stream of molten fire at them.
The beast responded with force, snapping its teeth at her face while Kronos clicked his fingers once more.
And then we were falling. The last image Vel unwittingly sent me was of them, hovering above us, fresh blood dripping from the maw of the mount.
Velira screamed and her wings fluttered uselessly beside me, the joint broken or torn or ripped out completely. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t see. It was probably better that I couldn’t. The noise was enough. It was failure made audible; sacrifice given sound.
And then we were weightless.
Plummeting.
I’m so sorry, Golden.
Death stirred but it was too late.
Don’t you dare say that, he roared.
Life flailed but it was too late for her, too.
I’ll meet you in the after, I told him.
Turns out regret was the last thing I felt… before…
No! he roared with heart-shattering helplessness.
I’ll meet you on the Isle.
And then everything went finally, blissfully, dark.