Chapter 7 #2
“Volcano sound off.” Even he heard the emotion in his voice. He’d seen them. He’d counted his brothers. But he needed the confirmation of their voices, too.
“One, two, three, four, five,” Juice counted off. “We’re good. All accounted for.”
“Here,” Reaper confirmed.
“Let’s not do that again,” Zero called. “Voodoo shit is Reaper’s domain, not mine.”
“Damn straight,” Kaze agreed. “Never again. I think my insides still think they are in a washer.”
“Sutherland, sound off.”
“H—here.” Ward scrambled to his feet. “Roll call like we’re in school?”
“It tells me everyone is solid.” Viper pushed upright, his knees aching, but his spine locked straight. “Where the hell are we?”
“I don’t think it’s hell,” Ward said faintly. He clutched his pack like it was the only thing anchoring him to reality.
Bran huffed out a long breath, then stalked toward a ridge beyond a low rise of boulders. His head tilted, and even from here, Viper could see his ears twitching. Something out there had his attention.
“Trace?” Juice called, stepping into his wake.
The wolf stopped, and moments later, Trace stood naked and bruised, feet braced, staring out over whatever lay beyond the ridge. His voice shook when he spoke, raw and reverent. “I think… I think this is what’s left of Tír na nóg.”
“What the hell is Tír na nóg?” Was that heaven? Or some ancient version of it? Viper didn’t believe in heaven. But for a second—just one—he let himself hope they’d outrun the hell that had stalked them using a volcano as its weapon.
The wind shifted and rippled in the still air, like this new land exhaled in warning.
Then a horn blew—deep, raw, and full of ancient wrath.
Used to the mechanical screech of modern warfare, Viper froze for a second at the call that sounded like it had been dredged up from the marrow of forgotten battlefields.
It shivered through the trees, echoed across the ridgeline, and snapped his head up before the mist parted.
A surge of warriors crested over the hill like the tide of rage and battle lust filled humanity.
Chariots with bronze-rimmed wheels thundered at the front, pulled by horses armored in scales and leather, their eyes rolling wild and their mouths frothing.
Warriors sprinted alongside the chariots, their skin streaked with blue symbols, looking like extras from The Battle of Helm’s Deep.
They screamed toward the SEALs with their weapons raised—blades and spears and axes, crude and brutal, designed for one purpose. Killing.
I didn’t sign up for Lord of the Rings.
What the ever-loving fuckery is this?
“Contact front.” His voice cracked through the rising chaos like a whip, already pivoting as his team exploded into motion.
Reaper dropped into a low crouch, his rifle up and tracking, while Kaze barked a curse and unleashed the first burst of fire.
Muzzle flashed and bullets tore through the first rank, but the warriors didn’t fall like men.
They screamed like demons, clawing forward even as blood sprayed from ruptured chests.
The chariots didn’t slow; they kept racing toward them.
Give me Taliban or ISIS any day over these.
There was something more terrifying about this enemy than any he’d ever faced before. Out of the corner of his eye, someone moved past him, and Viper paused for a second. “Get down. Fionn, what the hell, man? Get down.”
He was too far forward, too exposed. The High King of the Fianna didn’t flinch. He turned toward the enemy with nothing more than the weight of legend in his spine and fire in his eyes. His bare hands glowed with magic, a slow build of heat and light, but too slow. Too fucking slow.
“Move.” Viper didn’t hesitate. His boots tore into the grass and mud as he lunged across the battlefield toward Fionn, weapon up, tracking the warrior bearing down on them with a war axe big enough to split a horse in half.
The world narrowed to the roar of gunfire, the hiss of arrows, and the shriek of war cries.
But all Viper saw was the arc of that blade, already mid-swing toward the man he didn’t understand but would bleed to protect, because he’d given his men a chance at survival when there should have been no chance of it at all.
He threw himself into the path of the axe, shoulder-first.
The impact jarred through his body like a sledgehammer.
The edge scraped across his plate carrier, glancing off with a scream of metal, and Viper twisted, dropped to one knee, and drove his K-Bar blade straight through the bastard’s side.
The man howled, gurgled, and fell, and another rushed in to take his place.
Fionn raised his palm, power crackling, but Viper didn’t give him the chance. He pivoted low, kicked out the warrior’s knee, and shot him twice in the chest before rising to his full height, smoke curling off his barrel.
Behind him, Trace shifted mid-charge—wolf to man in a blink—and tackled a spearman off a chariot, bare-handed, bloodied, and feral. Another warrior leapt from the fray, his dirk aimed straight for Fionn’s spine.
Viper turned and met him mid-air, catching him by the throat and slamming him into the ground so hard the crack echoed louder than the battle. The man didn’t rise again.
Fionn stepped back, turned to face him fully, and placed one bloodstained hand flat over Viper’s heart. “You do not kneel, yet you protect me as if you were sworn to my banners. You do not call me king, yet you stand before me like a shield.”
A flare of light shot from Fionn’s palm into Viper’s chest. Fire bloomed beneath his skin—hot, electric, and ancient.
It burned down his arms, up his neck, and wrapped around his spine.
Tattoos surged to life beneath the surface of his skin as if they had been waiting for this moment.
Viper grunted. His jaw tightened in pain, but he refused to back down or flinch.
He’d figure out what it all meant later, after they’d survived.
“You are Fianna,” Fionn declared. Then the earth cracked with a sound like thunder tearing the world apart, and all hell followed it through.
The ground shook beneath their boots, as the thunder of hooves not yet visible through the haze filtered through—the pulse of a cavalry born not of this age but of blood oaths and legends.
Viper didn’t have time to register what was happening, not with another wave of warriors closing in.
Not with Trace barely holding the line to his left, teeth bared and body gleaming with blood—none of it looked to be his own.
Not with Zero down to his last mag and Kaze bleeding from a gash across his ribs, but still firing like death owed him money.
“Hold the fucking line!” Viper roared. He spun and brought a charging spearman down with a precise double tap.
Another vaulted toward him—Viper ducked low, twisted under the swing of a pike, and jammed his blade between ribs with ruthless efficiency.
But there were too many. Even with superior weaponry, they were being overrun by sheer numbers.
Fionn had turned, cloak torn and arm braced tight to his side from an arrow he’d pulled free moments earlier.
He stood shoulder to shoulder with Juice on one side and Trace, now back to his human form, on the other, the three of them a wall of myth and fury.
Trace was laughing—god help them, he was laughing like this was the best damn day of his life.
Then the horn blew again. This one was deeper and wilder than the last. It rolled through the battlefield like a wave from a sonic blast. The enemy froze mid-charge, heads turning, expressions twisting from bloodlust to sudden, gut-deep dread.
Viper lifted his eyes to the northern ridge and saw them.
Another tidal wave of warriors on horseback, banners streaming in the wind that hadn’t been there a heartbeat before.
The chariot wheels scarred the earth as they raced forward.
The war cry was a chorus of righteous fury as they crested the rise.
At their front—tall and proud—rode a golden-haired warrior.
“Oisín, my son.” Fionn threw his fist in the air and screamed a battle cry that was echoed by Trace.
That’s Fionn’s son?
Holy shit.
His son means reinforcements.
Maybe we don’t die after all.
The moment the portal had torn open, the Fianna across the veil had felt it. The bond that tied them to their king had blazed back to life with a fury that had dragged them from their refuge like a lodestone.
Diarmuid’s chariot split the flank with thunder, a pike raised high in one hand, bloodlust in his howl. Caílte mac Rónáin leapt from horseback before it even stopped moving, his twin blades singing as he landed in the midst of the enemy with the fury of a god.
The SEALs and Ward could only stare as the battlefield shifted. What they had been certain was death moments before now cracked apart under the momentum of old gods returning to war. The enemy faltered, panic taking root in their formation, and their ranks shattered.
“Trace,” Juice shouted. “Is it them? The Fianna?”
Bran, in his wolf form again, let loose a howl that shook the marrow of every man present.
It rose in answer to the cavalry charge like an ancient drumbeat of belonging.
The High King of Fianna and his Hound, Cú Chulainn, were home with their brothers, and the invaders retreated in terror.
What they faced now wasn’t mortal. It was legends reborn.