Chapter Twenty-Two
Dimitris
Swift as the rising tide on a full moon, the walls around the castle fell.
Stone could not burn—or rather, it should not—but all around Dimitris, the walls were reduced to nothing more than cinder.
He ran as fast as he could, sprinting through the packed streets that wrapped around the castle.
Soldiers were placed about the streets, directing both young and old toward the bronze doors of the castle.
Once inside they would be herded to the tunnels, where they could escape through the expertly crafted tunnels to the northern shores of Skiatha.
Ships were docked there in case there was ever an attack, but that thought had seemed impossible before today—that they would actually need to use the escape plan Alexander and his men devised years before.
Thalia and Dafne would be able to protect the citizens who fled on their journey to the sea, he was sure of it.
But what if the army that attacked made it inside?
What if they found their way to the tunnels as well? More men were needed.
Howling screeches came from behind the smoke that masked out the sky.
The sound was reminiscent of Aidesian and it made Dimitris want to hurl the contents of his stomach on the dirt beneath his feet.
The last time that foul noise filled his ears, the woman he loved—because he did love Thalia, without regard for expectations or whether she felt anything close to that for him—almost died.
She would not fall again, not when he could protect her.
It wasn’t as if he needed to protect her, but Dimitris could feel it in his bones, in the tether that kept him grounded, that he had to.
He would rip the throats from every creature that dared harm her.
He hadn’t realized it that day he cut the daimon down in Aidesian, but the preternatural obsession with making any living or dead thing perish if they harmed her was so much more than loyalty.
He’d convinced himself time and time again that was all it was.
Yet here he stood, ready to face those vicious creatures—or something so much worse—all for her.
All to see her live. If he perished, then a sweet death it would be.
Dimitris headed for the stairs to the turret facing south.
From that vantage point he would be able to see above the smoke, at least he hoped so.
The echo of stomping boots mixed with the clangs of metal coming from between the outer wall and the castle itself.
Orders were shouted down from the parapet to the ground below where long bow archers hurried into formation.
Above, soldiers with cross-bows lined the inner wall walk, shooting down at whatever enemy attacked below.
The gate to the inner walls of the castle rattled as more soldiers reinforced it with wooden balusters and chains.
Sweat dripped down Dimtiris’s forehead as he raced up the stairs taking two at a time, the liquid seeping into his eyes with a sting.
His chest heaved with each step and he chastised himself for drinking so much the night before.
Battle was sobering in its own way, however, a clear head would have been better.
Voices sounded as he approached the top.
“We need larger crossbows! I will not accept no for an answer,” the first voice yelled. Dimitris recognized that ferocious tone—Amalia.
“We do not have any remaining at the castle. They were sent to the ships for when we sailed into battle,” the second responded, his voice grave. Sebastian. Although Dimitris did not particularly enjoy the man’s company, he was a fierce soldier and they needed the most gruesome of men today.
“It is the only thing large enough to shoot them down! Again, I repeat, I will not accept no for an answer, so find one!” Her command was deafening.
Shoot them down? Large enough? What were the creatures that loomed in the distance? Once again, creatures sounded from afar. The noise was still muffled, though it was louder than before.
Boots sounded and Sebastian ran directly into Dimitris. He was covered in soot and lacerations peppered his face and arms.
“May the gods be with you, Prince,” he said and just as quickly fled down the stairs to complete his task.
“May the gods be with you,” Dimitris replied, although he doubted the man had heard.
Rounding the final turn to the inner wall walk, Dimitris came to a dead halt at the sight before him.
It was the same creature he’d killed in Aidesian.Veiny, shredded ebony wings filled the sky.
Razor sharp teeth flashed in the light of flaming catapults, its fur around the middle shaggy as a mangy dog.
The daimon’s snake-like tail whipped through the air as it swooped down to the ground below, spearing a soldier with its curved talons that protruded from two front legs.
The way the soldier writhed on the talon before blood and foam began to leak from his eyes and ears and mouth turned Dimitris’s blood to ice—made worse because it wasn’t just one daimon.
Hundreds of the winged creatures soared through the air, paired with an army of five hundred men, cyclopes, and feral hounds four times the size of any horse.
Their tails were as thick as a ship’s mast and tipped with a morning star-like end, and their claws jutted out like sharpened xiphe.
Even from this distance, their blood-red eyes were nauseating.
The hounds and cyclopes pulled catapults, ladders, and battering rams along with them outside the wall.
Inside the wall, the winged beasts dropped oily, flaming boulders, fracturing turrets and the wall walk and sending soldiers to a grave of rubble below.
They were outnumbered. If it was only the army of men that prowled across the fields and out of the forest with unnatural speed they might stand a chance—Skiathans, as Dimitris had learned, were as vicious as they came, each equal to at least three men—but the beasts that roamed with Hades’ army made defeat seem imminent.
More so because of the state of the stronghold in such a short amount of time.
The ash that whipped around in the air stung Dimitris’s eyes as he made his way to Amalia. “Where do you need me, General?” he yelled over the creatures’ howls and shattering stone.
Chest heaving, Amalia ran her fingers through bloodstained brown curls.
Linen bandages were already wrapped around her left arm and midsection, both with blooming, sanguine stains seeping through.
“I…I don’t know…” Her hands slipped down her face before she took a deep inhale.
“You have powers, yes? Other than shifting.”
“I cannot aervade like my brother, nor can I summon the skies, but I have non-elemental magic from the Grechi.” He threw out a tendril of power at the soldiers stalking toward the wall.
“I can craft illusions in the minds of the living, alter the reality before them”—Dimitris swallowed a lump in his throat as his magic fizzled out—“although that will not help us now.”
Amalia turned toward him, her skin going pale. “And why is that?” she asked, voice trembling.
“Because that is no army of the living.” None of them should be surprised that Hades’ army was amassed with soldiers of the dead, and yet it caused his mouth to turn sour.
Bodies of barely more than bone and thin, maggot-ridden, gray skin clad in gold armor hid beneath onyx cloaks.
They drifted over the earth rather than walked it and their cries were more akin to a daimon than human.
Would their weapons still kill them? Did they stand a chance at all?
“Behead them,” Dimitris whispered to himself, fiddling with one of his daggers. It was a long, thin blade with an intricate vine embossed in the metal, gifted to him by Cal.
Gods, where was his uncle? They could use his keen ability for mending and masonry at the wall.
With a swish of his hand, Cal could reinforce the stone to buy them a modicum of time.
What if he was already dead? What if the creatures had pulled him into the sky, spearing him like the soldiers that lay mangled below?
No—Dimitris would have felt a thrum around him, a shift in the air as power seeped from his uncle back into the earth.
Smack! A hand flung into the back of his head. “Are you even listening?” Amalia growled. “This is not the time to daydream.”
She was right—he needed to focus, needed to think of a way they would all make it out alive. A plan that no one, even a god would see coming.
“I think we need to behead them,” he repeated, this time speaking to the general.
“The daimons can be slain like any living being, but the army of the dead cannot bleed out. I have read about them, the myths of Hades’ fiercest legion.
They still have bones—they are not ghosts.
If we can behead them, they should fall.
We will need to get close enough to drive a blade through their necks. ”
“Do you not see the creatures that lead them? The ones that torment us from above?” Her tone was sharp and laced with vitriol. “How, exactly, do you expect us to break through their ranks?”
Dimitris stared out at the fire and brimstone before him and with a twitch up of his lips he said, “Because I will act as a distraction.”
He took off running toward the end of the inner wall where the first enemy ladder was almost up.
“You are a fool, Dimitris Kirassos!” Amalia yelled after him.
Looking over his shoulder, he caught the gratitude in her eyes. “So I’ve heard. But I am a fool that always wins.”
With that he launched himself off the edge of the wall, using all his leverage to catch the ladder and send it hurling back toward the ground below.
Time.
They needed more time.
And he would give it to them.
Death be damned.
The ground barreled closer as the ladder fell through the air.
Howls of the creatures below screeched as the wooden structure pummeled them into the earth.
Several of the cyclopes were caught beneath, their blood pooling out into the grass.
A cloaked soldier on a skeletal horse stared Dimitris down as he rose from the dust, brandishing his two swords.
It screamed to the others in a language not of this world and the closest line of soldiers came running toward him.
Looking back up at the wall for only a moment, Dimitris lifted one arm in the air. “For Skiatha!” he yelled to his fellow men and women.
“For Skiatha!” his compatriots roared back, letting their flaming arrows rain down from the wall.
Time blurred and Dimitris lost count of the number of his enemy he beheaded, slicing his sharpened blade through decaying flesh.
Their skin turned to dust as heads rolled to the ground, leaving a trail of bones in Dimitris’s wake.
With every slice of his blade, Dimitris sank further into bloodlust. He would not rest until every single creature was dead.
There would be no mercy for the daimons that tormented these people, who had already overcome so much.
There had been a point, when Alexander first came to him, that Dimitris did not wish to fight, would not risk his safety and peace for others.
No longer—he would make them all burn. Not just the creatures that prowled these lands, but any that sided with the torturous Olympi, Hades.
He would bring the fight to their shores and show them what it meant to fight for something good in this world.
At some point, his fellow soldiers had made their way down from the wall and followed in his wake as they fought the line of the dead back toward the forest. A hound barreled toward him and Dimitris shifted into his wolf form, launching himself at the creature and latching on to its neck with his teeth, driving his claws into its flesh until the hound fell.
Dimitris’s eyes dilated as he licked the blood from his maw and his heart pounded, mind going black.
Without thought he launched himself into the air at another hound.
Although they were more than four times his size, his speed and inkling of power from the Grechi propelled him, fueling his ability to bring the creatures to their knees, writhing in pain.
Again and again he flew through the air, slaughtering one daimon after another.
With each kill, he sunk further into the black abyss of his sanity, becoming more wolf than man.
“Dimitris!” His name forced him out of the blood-thirsty trance he was in. “Dimitris!” Elias called once again as he sprinted toward him at full speed.
The general was covered in soot and splattered blood, but none of it looked to be from his own injuries. He halted in front of Dimitris, his hands dropping to his thighs as he bent over panting.
“I just…received word…” Elias managed to get out through heaving breaths. “The tunnels…through the mountain…were damaged. There was an attack…on the northern shores…I am not sure how many—”
Although Dimitris was glad his brother in arms was still standing, he did not let him finish his sentence. Faster than a snap of his fingers, Dimitris took off, fueling his body with every ounce of power that he had left. Thalia would not die. Not today.
On the battlefield or in the gardens of Elysium—I will find you.
Dimitris raced toward that promise, toward the bloodshed in the north, hoping he was not too late.