Chapter 9 #2
Three Zver and their riders broke through the clouds, sweeping down toward us.
For the first time, since awakening in this strange new world, I felt the disadvantage.
We were a small unit, meant only for scouting, most of us ordinary soldiers without magic.
And we were up against three vicious, snarling beasts with dagger-like claws, venomous saliva, and the ability to fly.
Not to mention the riders atop them which were armed far more heavily than the dead boy’s brother had claimed.
Each of them possessed a bow and a quiver of arrows on their backs, perfect for a ranged assault from their beast’s back, something we had little defense against. They carried daggers at their hips and a long, gleaming sword strapped to their chests as well.
Yet they rode as if unencumbered, their bodies shifting and rising on the back of their mounts as if they were moving upon the ground.
“Shields!” Valin cried and we all obeyed, lifting our heavy metal plates into the air just as an onslaught of arrows fell upon us. They clattered against our iron and fell to the sand.
The soldier on my left was shaking. The one on my right was gripping his shield with a fist so tight his knuckles were turning white.
I could hear Valin issuing commands but his words were drowned out by the fierce beating of wings as one of the beasts swooped low enough for its rider, a woman with fiery red hair tied into a braid, to roll onto the ground below.
She was back on her feet in an instant and charging our line with the battle cry of a true warrior.
She hit the line of our shields directly to my left and the shaking soldier’s arm gave out, his shield falling away long enough for her to slice her blade right through the meat of his belly.
He fell to the ground, holding in his intestines, and choking in agony. My gaze fell to him briefly, my first instinct crying out for me to drop to my knees and heal him. I could. I knew I could. But she seemed to sense that as well.
Her gaze narrowed, braid whipping around her shoulder, as she turned her blade on me.
I raised my shield just in time, letting out a hiss of pain as her steel clanged against my iron.
She thrust forward again and again. I was able to raise my blade to parry her attacks, even land some of my own, but I didn’t gather my wits about me enough to remember my magic until she'd drawn me somewhat away from the rest of my party.
They were facing a brutal assault of their own, I noticed in a split second over her shoulder as she swung at me again.
Another rider, a man around my age, had landed on the sand on the other side of the group and was hacking through the ranks as well as she had.
Already, two men laid dead on his side and now he was engaging Valin.
The last rider was still circling above, swooping from time to time so her beast could swipe its lethal claws down onto us, peeling away the last of our shields and leaving us bare.
Aigeus, who'd been busy defending against the onslaught, let out a guttural scream and raised his palm. A blast of light shot from his hand and struck the beast right in the chest. It dropped from the sky, tumbling end over end before hitting the sand with a shuddering crash. Its rider fought to scramble away from the creature’s body, pulling her mangled leg out from under it and reaching for her blade.
But it was too late. Aigeus was already there, glowing against the desert sand.
Her head flew from her shoulders a minute later.
“Kaia,” the woman fighting me muttered as she stared back at her fallen comrade, her attacks shuttering and then halting altogether.
Aigeus looked up then, blood covering him from head to toe, and his gaze narrowed to a glare as he strode forward, toward us.
To the warrior’s credit, she didn't back away.
Instead, she took a few steps from me, making sure to keep me in her peripheral vision, and flipped her blade, squaring her shoulders in preparation to battle a god.
“Selim,” she barked and the man who'd been fighting Valin glanced up.
He gave a grim nod and then turned from Valin and ran. Valin whirled around to face us before stalking forward, blade out. I did the same until all three of us were converging upon the remaining rider.
“Who sent you?” Aigeus barked, murder clear in his eyes as he approached. “How did you know we would be here?”
Instead of running like her friend, instead of backing down or begging for her life, she simply smiled. Then she lifted her fingers to her lips and let out a short, quick whistle.
Aigeus seemed to know what it meant. He whirled around to face the threat from the sky, the girl’s Zver, who was now swooping toward us, jaw open, claws out, while Valin leapt on the girl who met his sword the first time but had no hope against his enhanced speed and strength the second time.
She fell to the sand as well, throat slit from ear to ear.
Aigeus raised his palms again, undoubtedly to utilize that strange light cannon he was capable of summoning to defeat his newest foe. But his focus was entirely on one beast, Valin’s on the rider. Neither of them saw the trick, the real plan for what it was.
“No!” I screamed, shooting forward with my enhanced speed, spear angled up.
But I was too late.
Aigeus’ blood sprayed onto me as the rider Selim crashed his beast into a god, claws tearing through flesh as if there were nothing holy about him at all.
Aigeus slumped to the ground, already dead, claw marks shredded into his torso so deep his organs were visible.
Selim let out another whistle and then flew off in the direction opposite to Pavos, the fallen rider’s surviving Zver following in his wake.
Valin ran after them for a minute but then, seeing the hopelessness of chasing after a flying target on foot, he returned.
I fell to my knees beside Aigeus’ body, staring in slack-jawed awe at the body of a god fallen before my very eyes.
They bled as we did. Crimson red rivulets ran down onto the coarse sand below.
They died like we did, eyes open, lips parted slightly in some macabre expression of surprise.
I stared at his palm, now hanging limp on the ground beside him, as if expecting that light to erupt from him once more, expecting him to rise again, to return.
Because how could death triumph over a god? How could a deity die?
“I’ll find the one who ran,” Valin muttered as he approached, voice gruff and furious.
He bent to gather an unbent shield and a new weapon since his had been broken or lost in the scuffle, completely unaware of the existential crisis I was having on the sand below.
“He’ll be branded a deserter and banished to the sands. It’s a fate worse than death. Viper?”
“He just…died,” I said.
The words sounded foolish aloud, stupid. But Valin approached anyway, frowning down at Aigeus’ body.
“Immortality doesn't mean eternal life, Viper,” he told me. “An immortal man can still be slain by sword or arrow just as well as a mortal one.”
“But he wasn’t just immortal. He was…”
“A god?”
I didn’t answer but Valin knew what I meant.
“There are no gods here,” Valin said then, his voice low as he laid a hand on my shoulder in the first sign of comfort he’d ever given me. “Not anymore.”