Chapter 3
Sorrow
Which is why a longer, stronger, faster arrow shears in their direction. Skimming past Malice’s head, it punctures a tree trunk, narrowly missing his intestines. Shit, they couldn’t have picked a worse god to target.
With a roar, he barrels like a cannonball toward the foliage without knowing how many opponents await him.
But unlike the Satanic demon, the rest of their crew focuses on the deities launching out of the bushes, swinging from the branches, and bounding across the canopy.
With dexterity on their side, they single-handedly spiral down vines, somersault from trees, and spin around hedges.
Arrows of sapphire, mercury, and countless other elements lance across the sky. Trousers woven of moonrays. Gowns embroidered with starlight. Males and females with clips, wreaths, and beads shimmering in their hair.
Sorrow’s unacquainted with this lot. Yet that doesn’t stop them from recognizing the mutinous insubordinates who’ve defied their world and made enemies of their rulers. Despite their ability to each handle numerous combatants, their crew of eight is outnumbered by too many assailants.
Back-to-back, Malice and Wonder brawl with a stampede.
Love and Andrew dodge targets, vaulting around one another and firing.
Anger nocks three iron arrows and takes down a trio in unison, the velocity of his strike blowing them off their feet like bowling pins.
Merry combats half a dozen, taking them down with an apologetic look on her face.
Crimson splatters the grass. Howls of agony slice through the woods from where Malice had disappeared.
Fates only knows what he’s doing to his attackers, but considering the demon’s penchant for violence, his victims will be lucky to retain their cartilage when he’s finished with them.
Anyone who targets Wonder, much less the crew, automatically moves to the top of his massacre list.
The bloody montage flashes before Sorrow’s eyes. She twirls an arrow and lets it fly, then ducks a fist and rams her elbow into a male jaw, the impact crunching bone. The figure spins, several teeth popping from his mouth.
At the whistle of another arrow, she freezes. The shrill noise pierces the night, arching into the sky like… just like…
Prickles nip into Sorrow’s flesh. Unbidden visions shred through her consciousness.
A grenade soaring. Exploding fireworks. Helmeted mortals.
Howling. So much howling.
A soldier caught in a barbed net, his lifeless body misshapen like a broken puppet. A vast, smoky field pitted with mines. Another man wailing, his stomach shredded, entrails spilling from his body.
Sorrow’s pulse accelerates. It’s always the same, always the same, always the same.
Oxygen saws through her lungs. Her temple pounds. She pans her head from side to side until the flashbacks dissipate, the ethereal forest coming into sharp relief.
Amid the tumult, her muscles scream. This is too much, and there are too many of them. And in spite of a deity’s imperviousness to temperature, stress and exertion are exceptions, perspiration beading down her spine.
And Envy? He charges through a brook, his hair untethered and his clothes torn. Snatching Sorrow’s hand on the way, he ignores her outraged protest and hollers for everyone to follow him. Otherwise at this rate, they’ll run out of stamina.
Even Malice is sane enough to concur as he checks on Wonder, who scales another tree and hurdles through the woodland, racing parallel to him.
Andrew slams his mouth onto Love’s, kissing her hard and swift before shoving the female away and shouting something. In response, Love nods and spreads her wings, then rockets into the treetops, her ascent ripping a hole in the canopy.
Like a pair of tornadoes, Andrew races beside Anger, both of them crashing through the brook behind Envy.
The males exchange rapid glances, which Sorrow interprets as she yanks her hand from Envy’s viselike grip.
Their crew had plotted their course with diligence, then mapped out a clandestine route.
The journey comprises uncharted passages to their destination, which is close enough that it shouldn’t take ages to travel, but not too close that they can’t rearrange their plan in case of an emergency.
From this woodland, the next part of their quest is supposed to be the mineral caves.
Anger knows that geography, which drills through the valley bluffs to the other side.
However with an army in pursuit, the trek will get more precarious.
And while Anger would be able to lose them in the winding passages, this disarray runs the risk of their crew getting separated.
Anger nods at everyone, signaling a change of plans. Since this area is reachable via limited anonymous trails, including the one from which they’d come, as well as the one to which they’d been heading, there’s not much of a chance their assailants journeyed by way of those outlets.
So they must have come from the only other option—the river. Which means they cruised here. And whereas one god knows the mineral caves, the other knows the waterways.
“Follow the brook!” Envy growls.
Sorrow takes up the rear while targeting their chasers. Except she yelps when a hand seizes the back of her vest and hauls her around. She barely has time to glare as Envy pushes her ahead of him, taking her place.
What the fuck? What’s with the savior instincts?
She’d had backup under control, but there’s no point in arguing unless she wants to slow them down. Their crew sprints out of the wild and tracks the brook into a misty passage, the eddies pouring into a canal. Walkways ornamented with scrolls thread around waterfalls and dense ferns.
They’ve gained a few leagues from the pack.
Out of range, Envy breaks from the rear and bypasses everyone, leading them down a complex network of planks.
At the end of one expanse, the sky broadens to a starlit horizon.
The canal widens into a river, its surface reflecting constellations and moonlit cliffs.
Envy stalls at the ledge. Love lands beside Andrew, who hoists her against his chest. Wonder drops from the branches, only to gasp as Malice performs a similar alpha move. Merry skids a halt and—naturally—gets hauled into Anger’s embrace.
Moored to the walkway, a vessel bobs like a cork in the water. It’s shaped like a star, with a silver frame and a pole radiating light from its center. On the deck, a trapdoor leads to a lower compartment for weapon storage, feasibly empty since their enemies presently brandish archery.
Because most deities live on the coast, they often know how to sail, as mortals know how to drive. So yep, the opposition had coasted here. And unless they’re cognizant of the other secret trails, the enemy will have to improvise and find another way back home. Either that, or swim.
Sorrow yelps as Envy flings her into the boat like a sack of grain, then jumps in beside her and spreads his arms to the rest of the onlookers. “What the fuck are you beautiful people waiting for?”
Everyone leaps in after him. When Envy touches the pole, it shudders and emits a white flame.
Then they’re off, the river drawing them in.
The deities catch up, halting at the walkways.
Blessedly, the little ones tuck themselves out of harm’s way, having long deduced this isn’t a game.
Meanwhile, the elders draw and fire, arrows spitting into the horizon and plunging into the depths.
“Might want to hold on,” Envy amplifies, then heaves on the pole.
The boat spins like a turntable, each revolution averting strikes and throwing everybody off balance. Righting themselves, each rebel claims a position along the vessel’s circumference, nocking their bows and letting loose as they spin, every circuit blocking the attack.
Maybe it’s the remnants of their previous existence as humans, but Malice and Andrew blanch as though their latest meal churns in their guts. The water jostles, creating waves that rock the vehicle. One of the male elders dives into the river, gaining on them as fast as a tidal wave.
Despite his equilibrium, Malice throws his legs over the side and hurls himself into the abyss.
“Malice!” Anger roars. “Get back here!”
“Pointless,” Wonder shouts, ejecting a quartz arrow to defend her lover.
The devil’s gilded head emerges, his arrow braced not three feet from the swimmer.
Without pause, Malice shoots. The weapon detonates into his adversary’s face, snapping the deity’s neck with enough momentum to sever the head, pieces of his countenance exploding like shrapnel, the male’s decapitated body floating across the surface.
Screams erupt from the pack. Blood paints the water, spreading into a crimson puddle.
By the time Malice flops back into the boat with crimson speckling his manic features, the swimmer’s remains have been retrieved by one of his female companions. The vessel rounds the hip of a cliff and skims out of sight, livid bellows receding from earshot.
It’s a shitty omen instead of a relief. Deities don’t tire quickly, and after the rather messy crime Malice just committed, the legion may attempt to haul ass after the boat, purely out of rage. With enough ambition, they’ll swim until convinced there’s no chance of exacting retribution.
Or nature will randomly get in the way, as nature tends to do in any world.
After a dozen wheezing breaths, their crew slumps into a unified heap.
Longbows clatter to the floor. In the dappled light, Wonder wipes the blood from her mate’s face while he drags her onto his lap.
Merry falls into Anger’s flame-tattooed arms, which crush her to his frame.
Love opens her mouth for Andrew’s rasping kiss.
That is, until he lurches back. Keeling over the edge, the human pukes, the contents of his stomach splattering into the water.
“Andrew!” Love bleats, bending over him and rubbing his back.