Chapter 3: Sunset

In her short, ugly life, Adriana had seen all manners of cruelty and violence. From the small and petty child kicking a starving puppy to a gang war of dozens cutting each other down for the right to put the squeeze on a village’s dwindling resources. The gang war was her first taste of battle at large, of seeing how the strong competed. It was nothing compared to the war going on now.

Gods fought against each other in the valley, larger than life. Hessius shone so bright he alone kept the encroaching night at bay and cast his Aura of Courage all around him. With every strike of his sword against the titanic spider, his sword sparked brighter, flaring out a heat that soon overpowered the beast and allowed the God to finally cleave through where its head met its abdomen.

The creature’s remains fell to the earth, eventually burning a dark, flickering purple until all that remained was its Bestia, the monstrous equivalent to Divinity. Those who took the path of the beast became something new, something wilder and more free. They were often dangerous, and not just to their enemies.

Bestia was the most easily available source of power in the world. Once, Adriana had considered taking a small monster into herself for a boost in power. The power was appealing, but in the end she realized it would be sullying herself, tainting her future Divinity with the base nature of the beasts.

As humans and monsters converged on the spot where the spider died, the fighting rose to a crescendo over the unclaimed power.

There was a beauty to the violence, a quiet awe in seeing the Maw of Chaos twist her shadowy form into a new creature made of darkness. Those shadows would then peel off the monster underneath. The Maw’s body converged elsewhere, drawing on the souls inside her to birth another abomination.

“Shake yourself out of it,” Synto barked, cuffing Adriana on the head once more.

Her rapturous fixation was gone in an instant, replaced with a desire to hit something. Luckily, that’s why he’d been trying to get her attention. A creature with the body of a lion and the face of an angry man came at her, scorpion tail raised high in the air. It didn’t roar like a lion, it cackled like a madman, showing rows of razor sharp teeth.

The four mercenaries spread out as one. Adriana’s hand went to her javelins, pulling the cap off the quiver. She pulled one out and readied herself, getting into a crouch. Davos dashed forward, feet barely touching the ground as he ran a wide circle around the creature’s back, getting its attention. Adriana hurled the javelin at it. The missile hit the manticore’s mane, embedded right where his neck became shoulder.

The manticore hissed in irritation, yellow eyes wild and malicious. He came right for Adriana in an uneven pounce. She hurled herself forward, hitting the ground in a roll and rising as the creature went over her. Synto waited there and brought his club down on the top of the monster’s skull, stunning it. Mykos dove in, driving twin daggers into the spot where the human head met the lion's body.

They sank in, earning a garbled, terrible roar like the sound of brass horns. The tail came down as fast as a whip at Mykos, but Synto intercepted it with his club and it buried itself into the ground instead. Davos leapt into the air, showing the other part of his power, the force of fleetness that made him light and fast. He closed the last twenty feet in the air, swinging his sword down at the base of the tail, hacking halfway through.

Adriana took care of the other half, drawing her blade and throwing all of her considerable strength behind it. The tail came off, falling to the ground as the manticore screamed again. Synto was ready. He brought the club crashing down on its skull again and again. Soon all of them joined in, finishing it off with stabs and strikes of their own. Once the creature’s body burned, they backed off.

Where the monster’s body had been lay two Bestia, dim, violently throbbing lights. None of them rushed to collect it. The tail piece might have been useful, but the rest of it? No one knew how far gone the previous host had been, or if he had been created by a Maw. Plenty of people ingested Bestia for the power and health benefits, but at a certain point it wrecked the mind and made them simpler, more focused, more like the monsters they consumed.

“That wasn’t so bad,” said Mykos, wiping his blades on the grass. “You get your power, girl.”

“I’m older than you, idiot,” Adriana said, wondering if she could get away with throwing a single javelin at him. “And I’m going to be a God, not a stupid beastman. Where is my prize, Mykos?”

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The teen made a face and pointed down at the bottom of the valley. She thought she could make out a heavily armed and armored man holding his own against two three headed dogs. Just then, he swung wildly and took off two heads off one, and whirled around, blocking the attack of the other. When she had his Divinity, she’d be at least that powerful.

“Quit it you two,” Synto barked. “There’s more on the way!”

It was like a flood, a writhing mass of smaller monsters heading their way, castoffs from the greater fight going on deeper. That made no difference to Adriana, who hurled a javelin into the throat of a large snake that reared up to strike her. Davos jumped over a bull man, slicing a groove between his eyes and leaping off again before the bull could thrash him. Mykos ducked under the minotaur’s heavy blow, moving fast and low. Synto shouted and pointed and Mykos slashed its ankles.

It came crashing to the ground with a distressed moo. Adriana switched to her sword and jumped, thrusting into the bull’s head from under its jaw. She had to really push, but it gave and the creature soon died, yet its body remained. Not every monster left behind Bestia when they died.

There was no time to think about it. All around them more creatures poured in, forcing the crew to turn back to back to back to each other for safety. The sun had disappeared to the west but Hessius’ fiery glow washed over the valley, making the creatures cast long shadows while they circled.

A creature like a long, scaly wolf slinked closer to Adriana, making her snarl at it. It jumped back, licking its chops and favoring her with something almost like a smile. The others had their own predators circling, constantly moving just a bit closer. They were already in tight quarters in that last clearing before the path led down. There was nowhere to get away from the growing tide of monsters.

Fear gripped Adriana for the first time. They had planned on going after two specific people with bounties on their head and Divinity to be taken. At no point had they expected or been prepared for a major battle between a God and a titan. The horde of monsters that came with the Maw made her the greatest threat to civilization in the world.

And now it seemed like she might die to the Maw. The creatures circled in closer, and the gang moved and lashed out whenever one got too close. Then Synto laughed and pointed. “Look!”

Adriana turned to see Hessius sweep his blade from a freshly born monster the size of a house and follow through to where the Maw reappeared. The blade cut into her and the fires of the sun met shadow and burned. The high-pitched scream that came from the titan brought all of her monsters to a standstill and the gang almost to their knees.

Then the titan counterattacked. The shadows reformed around her, giving her arms for the first time in the fight. She lashed out with a spiky fist of shadows and caught the sun God across the skull, sending him sprawling backwards and into the mountain.

Right where Adriana and her gang fought the monsters.

When Hessius crashed, the earth trembled. The heat from the God’s aura washed over them and set fire to the land. The monsters took off running back downward, towards their mistress. But the humans had nowhere to go. It was either follow the monsters, run out of the basin and away from the action, or remain where even now the Maw surged forward to follow up her attack on the sun God.

Synto grabbed Mykos by the tunic and dragged him away, rushing back the way they had come. As far as they were concerned, no skin off their backs if Adriana remained a lowly mortal. Davos took off too, the coward.

Adriana coughed and backed away from the nearest fires. She watched Hessius pick himself back up and swing his mighty blade into a tendril of darkness, severing it. The darkness fell to the ground before turning into something like a claw with too many fingers. It skittered across the valley, climbing up Hessius’ legs and digging into his skin.

Neryssa, the mother of monsters, lived up to her name. As the claw tried to gouge at him and distract him, the Maw birthed more monstrosities. Hessius bellowed and struck at them as they half formed. The unformed creatures split, and became more and more of the claws. As one, they swarmed him. He was overrun in seconds.

He looked up, and Adriana saw fear in the God’s eyes. Hessius, one of the most powerful of the Gods, generally one of the most benevolent – stared into the heart of darkness itself and despaired. Adriana swallowed hard, unable to look away.

The titan drew herself up into an impossible height, a hundred feet over her foe. As the swarm of black claws covered Hessius, his glow dimmed. Darkness thickened into night, plunging the basin into an uncanny darkness. Neryssa’s cold, pale white face shone like a beacon out of the roiling void. She smiled then, terrible and triumphant.

With an unholy, bone chilling shriek, she sent the darkness toward the struggling sun God. The darkness crashed into him and carried him into the mountain. Adriana flew forward on her face, rolling along the ground and losing her sword.

The heat was incredible, and her teeth buzzed over that much power within arms reach. She looked up and saw the darkness overpower the light. Hessius gasped, cutting out at the last second, turning Adriana’s will to jelly. This was over. This was death, for her but also for him. Before she died, Adriana would witness the death of one of the Greater Gods, and a turning point in the war.

All sound vanished as the last of the sun God’s light went out. And then it came back in a roar when it pierced the God’s body and carried through into the mountain. Adriana cried out and fell, with the mountain coming down after her.