Tyche
EIGHTEEN
But this wasn’t the first time he’d done this.
Yet, with an enraged Kaes in front of him and a wounded dragon behind him, remaining small was not an option any longer.
Kaes couldn’t get his hands on Yesuntei’s powers. Giving them to the God of Storms felt no safer than handing them over to the mad Goddess of Dreams.
Whispering voices filled his brain. Doubts. Fears. Suspicious thoughts. He wadded them all into a ball and shoved them aside. If this darkness was part of being the new God of Nightmares, he planned to use it to his advantage. It would not use him.
Thunder boomed like a cannon firing, shaking the city.
Kaes shook his sledgehammer and roared. The god raced toward him, his feet hitting the ground so hard that the pavement shattered.
Tyche waved his hand, selecting a chunk of bad luck that floated through the air.
He tossed it at Kaes, and the god tripped on a ball of dirt.
He stumbled, keeping upright, but it was enough to allow nightmarish roots to shoot up and wind around his legs.
Kaes grunted and seized a handful of roots with his left hand. He ripped them off his legs only to have new ones capture his waist. He did this repeatedly, making no progress as the roots trapped him, thickening and pulling him into the dirt.
Tyche gritted his teeth, trying to sort through his old powers and new, learning what he could in a flash.
Deep down, he knew he didn’t have enough power to take on a major god and survive.
He’d doubled his powers, but he was still a minor god with stolen powers.
But he just had to wear Kaes out, right?
Like that fake God of Wind on the Isle of Stone.
Lightning streaked from the sky and slammed into Kaes.
Tyche winced and held up his hands against the blinding flash of white light.
When he lowered his hands and blinked his eyes into focus, he found the roots had been reduced to blackened ash and where the grizzled old man had stood was now a young man with flowing brown hair and glowing white eyes, as if they were made of lightning.
Fuck.
Kaes had other monikers that had been lost to time.
Names like the Two-Faced God and the God of Rage.
Usually, the calmer and more playful version of the god was the old man who pretended to be the fisherman.
However, after being pushed to the point of losing his temper, Kaes embraced his rage and turned into the out-of-control youth.
The young man lifted both of his hands above his head and roared.
Wind whooshed through the city, and lightning slammed into the ground, pummeling the world.
Tyche dove and rolled, darting about while snatching up any bit of good luck he could find.
He alternated between using it on himself and throwing it at Haru.
He didn’t dare glance in the dragon’s direction.
There was only a faint sense of his presence; his magic was a gentle reassurance. Until the dragon roared.
Double fuck.
Tyche peeked in Haru’s direction. The pale man in bloody robes was gone.
In his place was a very pissed-off, sunset-colored dragon.
Tyche’s stomach sank to his knees. His one hope had been to keep Kaes distracted, so he didn’t take his rage out on the very injured Haru.
Why couldn’t Haru follow the plan he knew nothing about?
Before Tyche could shout at Haru to fly and find the others, the dragon opened his mouth and blasted Kaes with a geyser of fire.
The God of Storms stumbled back two steps and lifted his arms to protect his face.
Tyche took advantage of the momentary distraction to run and crawl over the rubble to the dragon’s side.
As he was about to reach Haru, lightning slammed right in front of Tyche, throwing him away from the dragon.
He clenched his teeth as electrified pain ripped through every nerve ending.
His brain shorted out, the world going white.
“Haru!”
No, he couldn’t have heard that. The nightmares must have gotten through his defenses, because there was no way his luck was this bad.
“Haru!” Adrian shouted a second time, freezing the blood in Tyche’s veins.
Still gritting his teeth against the pain, Tyche fought to sit up and look in the direction of the voice.
Adrian and Shey were running toward them, both appearing battered and bloody.
Adrian’s eyes were locked on the dragon, but Shey was staring at the new and improved Kaes with a look of fear and horror.
All Tyche saw were three more victims for Kaes to target.
He couldn’t allow that. They were his friends. Shey was…
No. Nothing was going to happen to Shey. Or Haru. Or Adrian.
But to take on Kaes and live, he needed more power.
It meant doing the one thing he’d sworn he’d never do, but his friends were worth the risk.
After regaining his feet, Tyche pressed his left hand to his head and started knocking down old barriers he’d erected, tearing through magic protections he’d taken years to set up and perfect.
“Hey Kaes!” he shouted as soon as the god took one menacing step toward the dragon.
“Let me give you a riddle. What do you get when you combine the God of Luck and the Goddess of Nightmares with…” A scream of pain broke from his throat and the entire world wavered.
Consciousness condensed into a fine thread, but Tyche held on as he pulled a glowing white sarira straight from where he’d hidden it… in his brain.
“What…” Kaes exhaled in wonder.
“With…” Tyche panted, pushing above the pain as he lifted the orb high in the air in his left hand. “With the God of Accidents?”
Kaes’s eyes widened to bright-white beams of light, and he lurched forward. “No!”
But it was too late.
“I’m the new God of Chaos!” Tyche slammed the third orb into his chest and screamed as the power ripped through him. Centuries of waiting to be set free, incubating and imprisoned within Tyche but left untouched. It was as if the magic had a mind of its own, and it wanted to break loose at last.
The world fractured, breaking into a million pieces.
Or maybe it was just his mind. Nothing made sense.
Only energy and darkness. There were fleeting impressions.
Shouts. A sense of urgency. There was something he needed to do.
Someone he needed to save. But before he could get the thought to solidify, he was washed away on another wave of pain.
Suddenly, arms wrapped around him, holding him tight. A wide chest pressed against his back and a deep voice whispered in his ear.
“I’ve got you.”
Shey.
Shey had found him.
Pieces of his fragmented mind snapped into place.
The swirling shadows shrank, and the pain flowed from him, allowing him to breathe and think.
He blinked and found Adrian throwing daggers as fast as he could conjure them as he stood beside an absolutely feral Haru bellowing fire hot enough to melt stone.
Tyche reached up a shaking hand and covered one of Shey’s, squeezing it. “I’m okay. You can let me go.”
“Only if you promise to never cry tears of blood again.”
Well, wasn’t that attractive? Tyche almost released a sigh pulled from the very bottom of his soul, but he held it in.
“Agreed.”
Shey let him go and took a tiny step away but kept one hand touching Tyche’s shoulder as the god wobbled like a newborn fawn taking its first steps. Tyche waved a hand at Shey. “Go. Get Adrian and Haru out of here.”
“There’s no way in hell we’re leaving you alone to face…”
“That’s Kaes.”
Shey’s eyes widened, and he shook his head. “No.”
Tyche didn’t have time to explain the many complicated faces to the God of Storms. He could see Haru was slowing and Adrian was barely more than a fly buzzing around the god’s head. Any second now, Kaes was going to lash out and destroy them both.
The only problem was that he didn’t understand two of the three powers that were now threatening to overflow from his body. All he knew was manipulating luck, so he put all his focus into that.
Tyche rushed toward the God of Storms as he roared.
Thunder crashed in response, and the wind howled through the city.
Rain slashed in a thick gray veil, blurring Tyche’s vision and chilling him to the bone, but he didn’t stop.
He swept together all the bad luck he could find and shoved it in Kaes’s direction.
The God of Storms lifted his hammer above his head, and the handle snapped. The heavy metal head tumbled to slam into Kaes’s shoulder. With a shout, the god stumbled under the unexpected blow. As his foot came down, the rubble under his feet crumbled and broke, sending him crashing to his ass.
“Bastard!”
Tyche ignored his shouts and continued to hit him.
Walls of buildings toppled on top of him.
Vines shot up to grasp him again. Nightmarish spiders the size of elephants crawled from rooftops and covered him in thick webbing.
Millipedes, the size of trains, stomped through the chaos to devour him.
It was a quick lesson that one of them had a deep-seated fear of bugs, but Tyche wasn’t sure if it was him or Kaes.
But each time, Kaes broke free and directed more lightning at Tyche. The storm strengthened. Rain turned to hail that battered his sore and tired body. Despite all the new powers, Tyche was running low on energy. He couldn’t outlast Kaes no matter what he threw at the man.
He could see it as clearly as if he’d tossed his old bones. The God of Storms was going to kill him, steal the powers tucked away inside his body, and then he was going to kill Tyche’s friends. He was out of luck.
Pain exploded in Tyche’s back, and he fell forward to his knees. He blinked and looked up to find a ball of ice the size of his fist resting nearby. His skull was going to get bashed in by fucking hail. Freaking bastard.
“Enough!” Shey’s voice rose above the chaos, and suddenly, the feeling of being hit by rain and ice stopped. There was only a sudden chill and the sound of something hitting a barrier.
Tyche winced as he twisted to see that a broad arch of ice surrounded him, Shey, Adrian, and Haru. The dragon had shifted to his human form and was half reclining in Adrian’s arms, appearing worse for wear. Shey had used his gift from Kaes to form a protective cave of ice.
“You dare use the gift I have given you against my will!” Kaes shouted. Tyche blinked, surprised to find that the out-of-control youth was gone and the grizzled, bare-chested man had returned. This was an excellent development. Maybe Kaes was wearing out.
Shey took a step in front of Tyche. “You gave me these powers to protect the people I love. Even if it means protecting them from you.” He’d barely finished speaking when Shey brought his right arm around as if swinging a sword.
Magic lashed out, and a spike of ice sliced through the air to bury itself deep into Kaes’s chest.
Tyche threw his head back and let loose a laugh that was all madness. “He doesn’t belong to you anymore!” His words and laughter echoed off the icy walls before flying loose into the world.
Tyche fell over, his vision growing blurry with tears, or maybe it was blood. He didn’t know. His entire body hurt, and his brain felt as if it were little more than mush, but he couldn’t bring himself to care as he watched Kaes disappear with a scowl on his ugly face.
“He doesn’t belong to you anymore. He’s free!”
Tyche laughed as the world faded away into darkness.