Chapter 38 #2
By contrast, Envy doesn’t arm himself yet. He inspects the ground, which remains motionless. Nor does the wind carry the pounding echo of footsteps.
Ever since they aired Sorrow’s dirty laundry to this legion, each warrior has been on edge for days, depleting their energy in anticipation of a siege. Perhaps that was The Court’s intention. Nevertheless, these troops haven’t let their guard down.
The Dark Gods who’ve remained loyal to The Court know where the rebels are, so their arrival is imminent. Moreover, their sovereigns maintain thousands of allies. Their approach won’t be a quiet one. Or rather, it shouldn’t be.
With his bow poised, Anger gives voice to everyone’s thoughts. “Something is off.”
“They can’t be here yet,” Merry says, her neon arrow set toward the northern cliffs. “We would have heard them.”
“The scouts would have returned,” Wonder adds from beside Malice, the pair kneeling and angling their weapons.
Voices multiply and overlap in hushed but rapid tones.
There might be routes they haven’t covered.
Or perhaps the scouts were overrun, provided their crew hadn't plotted for every contingency in advance. It’s unlikely, but stranger things have happened.
Every plan has its limits, even among the wisest.
In war, nothing is a guarantee. Nothing except blood, death, and loss.
Out of nowhere, a steady howling sound reverberates through the landscape. One might call it lilting. That is, until it covers additional ground, building to a shrill lament reminiscent of wind instruments.
Arguments cease. Throughout the battlements, deities tighten their grips, uncertain where to aim.
Once more, Andrew inspects the sky, his fingers locking on his bow. “Motifs,” he seethes. “Fuck, I hate being right.”
Drawing on their weapons, the crew follows his lead and appraises the vista. It’s a radiant night. The glowing motes settle like dew upon the grass, the hyacinths sway, and firepits brim with flames.
“Might want to elaborate right fucking now, mate,” Malice growls, his raspy tone liable to saw through metal.
As usual, Andrew isn’t fazed by the threat. “What I said back in the valley, when that first group of shitheads attacked us,” he reminds everyone. “In fiction, there are foreshadowing clues. The repetitive motifs might mean nothing.”
“Or everything,” Love adds, her wings bristling.
Her mate expands on that. “Legends, tokens, phrases. Details about the setting like legends, constellations, or… fuck.”
As he cuts his gaze to Love, she finishes his thought. “Herons.”
“Meaning?” Anger queries.
Lunar herons like the one that filtered through the trees in the sylvan valley during that initial skirmish.
Sacred avians like the ones in a hallowed cove, located in the waterfall enclave.
Fauna, which sometimes grow larger, such as the creature a detestable ruler and traitorous goddess sat astride as they abandoned this mountain.
Envy’s head snaps toward the firmament. “Meaning they’re not coming on foot.”
Heads swerve. Weapons shift. Both of which land on a cluster of silhouettes getting bigger, crying louder. A throng of pearlescent wings swat the air, the motions reflecting on the lake’s surface.
Herons. Thousands of them.
Riding atop the fauna sit five armored sovereigns and an army of Guides, including those who’ve come before them. Millennia worth of leaders and mentors.
The moment freezes. Of all the strategies Envy’s crew had anticipated, this hadn’t been one of them. This is the only contingency they neglected to see coming.
Apart from a certain goddess’s betrayal.
Anger bellows, “Arms!” as the first arrow cleaves through the distance.
The projectile rents the air, a clean shot flying toward a head covered in sage green tresses. The target zooms in Harmony’s direction, fast enough to snap her in half, even as she aims to dismantle it.
A length of quartz gets there before the strike, splintering the attack. Light detonates on impact, hurling brilliant threads into the atmosphere like a firework. The weapons cancel each other out, vanishing at the point of collision.
Harmony ducks beneath the illumination. Rising again, she glances at Wonder, who lowers her weapon, her quartz arrow reappearing in her quiver.
Weapons rain from the canopy. Gods and goddesses straddle the herons, some kneeling with impeccable balance, their crossbows and longbows spitting arrows.
The Fate Court wields five sets of archery. Green, gold, blue, white, and silver moonstone. Their capes flap around them, and their expressions display conviction over rancor. Leaders, protecting the ancient pantheon of their world, warring in the name of destiny.
Envy recalls a million declarations, denials, excuses, and affirmations the monarch made over the generations, a bunch of shit he grew up believing. Some true, others false. The mudslide of memories avalanches into his mind, suffocating him.
Anger’s next commanding shout plows through Envy’s consciousness. He raises his weapon alongside the immortals flanking him.
Merry. Love. Andrew. Wonder. Malice.
Despite their differences, and despite this unexpected means of attack, their features mirror one another for once. Fierce, stunning, focused. This is what they’ve been training for.
In one unified movement, they nock target and shoot. The projectiles harpoon into the air, blasting down a row of deities. There’s no respite from the visual of his kin plummeting, those with whom Envy had once bantered.
Blood coats the air and drenches the terrain. Herons whiz overhead, then split and veer around the stargazer’s circumference, slingshotting in and out of the fortification.
Then comes the army on foot. With the rebels’ attention diverted toward the canopy, thousands of hollering deities spill across the landscape, flooding the jagged horizon of trees and boulders.
Anarchy ensues. Arrows forged of countless materials lance the hemisphere, half rocketing upward, the other half parachuting downward, all of them colliding. The universe ignites, bodies capsizing from above and below.
As the mounted herons dive, a cavalry of assailants leap into the fortification and land on the grass, where they trade blows with the rebels. Someone’s back hits a wall, cracking into the stone. Envy’s arrow spears a Guide off their mount.
Flares of light remind Envy of an evening when he listened to a goddess speak about mortal minefields and screaming soldiers.
You don’t want to know that side of pain, Envy.
A fist swings in his periphery. Envy’s forearm rams against the incoming set of knuckles, and his free hand slices his weapon across the archer’s throat, cleaving deeply enough to loosen the enemy’s head.
The ally to Envy’s right screeches as a white moonstone weapon plows through her stomach, its owner—the reigning monarch in snowy lace—soaring past them on a lunar heron, her attention already fixed elsewhere.
Envy wants to aid the downed female, but Pride and Spite charge at him. He dives, tumbles, lurches upright, and targets them with two arrows at once.
Where the fuck are his comrades?
Frantic, Envy skewers his gaze across the perimeter. The world is a gritty, shaky montage, figments shifting in and out of the picture.
For a minute, he gets a clear window. Merry slides down an incline on her hip, a rapid succession of arrows hitting focal points that impair opponents’ vision long enough for her allies to thwart them.
Anger provides backup from the building’s highest tier. He alternates, raging against anyone who gets near Merry, then pitting his iron arrows at anyone who targets his crew.
Covered in gashes, Malice tramples a deity jetting for Anger. The two gods scowl at one another, then spin and fight back-to-back.
Love spreads her wings, the panels launching a dozen figures across the range. Then she rockets into the firmament, shaving a path around the herons while firing.
Wonder scales one of the trees, bounding with dexterity from branch to branch. Flitting between the leaves, she dodges arrows while nocking her bow.
No longer needed by Anger’s side, Malice licks his bloody teeth and bungee-jumps sideways over the parapet’s ledge, dumping himself into the fray, crashing into a group of deities.
Lunging upright, the demon flashes a psychotic leer, his hickory bow pumping arrow after arrow.
Lack of direction aside, he bulldozes everyone out of the way, leaving body parts and puddles of red in his wake.
Yet even for this god, Malice’s bloodlust is too zealous, his velocity uncoordinated. Envy ducks an incoming arrow, then squints beyond the crenellations to follow the demon’s trajectory, homing in on the cloaked ruler who shot Malice months ago in The Archives.
The more ground the devil covers, the more violent his speed. The court member doesn’t see Malice pounding his way until the demon god slams into him with the force of a sledgehammer. They roll in a flurry of arms and limbs, firepits snuffing beneath their weight.
When the ruler identifies his adversary, the god’s brows pitch in shock, then slant in defensiveness. Fuck. Malice has muscles and calculation on his side, but from the looks of it, he isn’t about to use either trait wisely. He’s too amped up on vengeance to think straight.
“Wonder!” Envy roars, but she’s already got Malice in her line of sight.
Jumping from the tree, she races across the ground—“Malice!” she shrieks—and reaches the brawl as her mate cracks the ruler’s face in two, crimson splashing Malice’s countenance as he pounds in, and in, and in like a wrecking ball, his fury running on automatic.
The monarch bellows, his features reducing to pulp. Though, he’s already done a number on the demon as well, both of them covered in gashes.
When Malice staples the male to the field, he steals one of the ruler’s gold moonstone arrows and raises it, ready to plunge the tip into his victim’s heart. Just like that same victim had once done to Malice.
Wonder scrambles to his side and seizes the demon’s tattooed bicep, the words Dearest Wayward Star inked on his skin.
“Malice!” Wonder shouts. “No!”
No. Not like this.
At her frantic voice, Malice freezes while snarling down at the ruler.
Envy is too far to confirm, but he imagines the devil fighting to leash himself.
Eventually, Malice drops the arrow and drives his fist into the male’s visage three more times, blood coating his knuckles, rendering the monarch unconscious and disfigured.
Wonder hauls Malice to his feet. The pair launches into one another, the demon seizing his mate by the ass and hauling her mouth to his, commencing in the bloodiest, most vicious kiss in history.
Wonder claws through Malice’s hair, the demon’s red-soaked mouth prying her wide open, their tongues wrapping around one another.
Well, fuck. Not as graphic as Envy would like—for war reasons. However, he’ll take whatever battle palate cleanser he can get, even if it lasts mere seconds.
The instant Malice and Wonder’s lips detach, they race into the scrimmage while keeping close to one another.
Envy dices his gaze around, assessing the devastation.
Piloted by deities, the fleet of herons veer around the stargazer, its telescope craning to the hemisphere.
Flames erupt higher from the firepits, blazes slithering across the underbrush.
The fortification walls crumble in numerous places, masonry toppling down the edifice.
Andrew and Love are a magnetic pair. The former shoots a rainstorm of arrows, his mortal prowess disorienting Love’s opponents, enabling the goddess to dive from the sky, her wings mowing through a line of archers.
Although Love has regained the power to infuse her arrows with her root emotion, she curtails the magic.
And Anger, who forsook his iron wings to the sun yet recouped the rest of his power, operates with the same restraint.
Although he could defuse his assailants’ tempers, he refuses to take such advantage.
That would only mark him as a hypocrite.
As iron projectiles fly from his bow, the god dilutes his magic, relying instead on aim, velocity, and fatal arrowheads. He fights steadily, with wrathful concentration.
Until another deity targets Merry. At which point, hysteria pulls across Anger’s profile. Roaring, he cuts his longbow toward the archer.
At the same instant, a heron lowers itself before the rage god, commanded by a feminine silhouette wielding a silver moonstone arrow—which punctures Anger’s stomach.