Determination (33 page)

“Make a run for it, Alcadere. I gotcha covered.” Whitman gestured with his chin to their left.

A large fracture in the ground lay a good thirty yards away, but beyond that the ground looked intact. To their right stomped more monsters, along with allies attacking them.

“Come with me, sir.”

“No can do, son. I ain’t no sprinter. Now go. That’s an order.”

The ground shifted again and teetered farther away from the bulk of the battlefield, one huge slab tilting like a seesaw. The monsters began bounding closer, making the ground shake and crumble under their lumbering strides.

Whitman smiled, looking completely at peace with the situation. Roger glanced at the open stretch of terrain he had to cross, then started strafing as he fired.

Whitman shot the monsters who veered towards Roger. “Over here, you bastards! Leave the kid alone and pick on someone your own size.” One monster dropped, sending up dust, and stopped moving. Roger shot it in the head a couple of times to make sure it wouldn’t move again.

The ground tilted steeper and steeper, forcing Roger to shoulder his rifle and just run. Two men from the Swiss army waved him over, yelling at him to hurry. They stood close to the stationary edge as Roger sank lower. He broke into an all-out sprint, arms pumping, and jumped off the edge as hard as he could, but the portion of rock under his boot snapped off and he arced downwards.

Thoughts of everything but finding purchase fled his mind as he began to free fall. His forward momentum carried him across the gap and he crashed into the rock. He tried to grab hold as he bounced off, but his fists curled around dust and air. Pain filled his body and his thoughts blanked out completely, but his hands groped for purchase as he slid down the rock face.

When his body jolted from the sudden loss of downward momentum, he blinked and took in his surroundings.

His hands had found an outcrop fifty feet below the lip. They were covered in dirt and blood. He still had his rifle slung over a shoulder and his entire front side hurt like hell. Two faces peered down at him.

“Can you make it?” one shouted in a Swiss accent.

“Yes, sir!” Roger started climbing, blocking out his pain. He didn’t have time to deal with it; he had climbing to do. That and Whitman needed his cover fire.

He climbed steadily, testing each hold before committing his weight. Rock crumbled and shifted behind him, loosening up dirt, but he blinked as needed and kept climbing. The din of war got louder the higher he climbed, and once he was a few feet from the top, the two soldiers held out their arms. He latched on and felt a surge of relief as he made contact with another human being. They hoisted him to his feet and patted him on the back.

“Good job,” one said, “I thought you were a goner.”

“Thank you, sirs.” Roger armed himself and aimed in Whitman’s direction. There was only one monster left trying to kill him, a semicircle of elephant-sized corpses surrounding him. Whitman was down to one rifle and firing wildly at the last monster. Roger aimed for the head but from his angle, its shell blocked a clear shot. He glanced at the battlefield, making sure he had no imminent dangers within firing range, then watched soberly as Whitman faced off with the monster.

Whitman patted himself down for more ammo, but when he found none, he charged the monster, rifle butt held high, and bashed it in the head. The monster swiped the rifle out of his grip with its jaws and Whitman backed away, drawing his knife. Roaring, he charged back in. At the same time as he buried his knife in the monster’s scull, its jaws closed in around his neck and shoulder. Whitman went limp and the monster started thrashing.

Roger took careful aim, waiting for the right moment as the monster let go and shook out its head. It stopped shaking, presenting its head, and Roger fired one round. The monster’s legs gave out and it fell dead. The section of rock slowly broke away and joined the glass debris.

“Rest in peace, sir,” he whispered. “I’ll never forget you and your sacrifice.”

Chapter 25

Judgement

Show them her worth? After all she’d been through, what was left to prove? She’d walked away from the man she loved so both of them could do what needed to be done, embraced her role as an Aigis and pushed herself to be the warrior everyone needed her to be, overcome those six trials without giving up, and dug deep for the courage to put her life on the line for others. And these two had the nerve to tell her they still wanted her to prove herself? Fine. Whatever it took to get out of the Realm of the Dead.

Fueled by anger, Roxie opened herself to sensing what her opponents’ intentions were.

Death. Kill the Aigis. Quick and painless. Yet they wanted to be wrong. They wanted her to win. However, they wouldn’t let her win. For some reason they saw it as too cruel to just throw her at Nexus and hope for the best.

But she
wanted
to go straight to Nexus; not waste precious energy fighting them. How could they be so sure they were doing the right thing?

Thanatos and Keres split up, positioning themselves on either side, fists held ready. Roxie presented her shield to one and her sword ready for the other. She didn’t care that she was about to fight children. They
weren’t
children. Their appearance was how they’d chosen to show themselves to her. The only disconcerting thing about them was their two-colored eyes. Their serious gazes looked off-balance. She wanted to stare until she could make sense of it, along with familiarize herself with their heterochromia, but she forced herself to just accept and ignore it. They were her last barrier standing between her and Nexus.

Roxie lunged at Thanatos and swung her shield. He backed away and Roxie turned to Keres, who intended to punch her in the back of the head. Roxie swung her blade and Keres danced around, redirecting her attack on any opening she could find. Roxie held her back with both sword and shield, and willed the goddess to stop fighting. Keres’s movements slowed but she willed herself to keep moving, urging Roxie to really prove herself.

Roxie sensed Thanatos’s attack and swung her sword just in time to block the kick to her spine. The kick sent a jolt up her arm and she grew angrier when the blade didn’t even cut his pants. Keres tried to get around her shield but Roxie whirled in place and faced her again, forcing the goddess back.

If she was to get out, she had to beat them, but how was she supposed to accomplish that without inadvertently killing them? If she held back, they’d probably kill her, but if she didn’t hold back, she might kill one or both of them.

Both deities came at her from opposite sides. Roxie dodged out of their path and swung her arms like she was about to clap her hands, willing her opponents to bash into each other. Their mismatching eyes widened, but their bodies grew transparent and they passed through each other unscathed. They found their footing and faced Roxie, fists ready, then attacked her at the same time again.

They weren’t holding back. They were honest to goodness trying to kill her, yet Roxie found herself holding back in order to not kill the very beings that could send her back to the living side. However, in a way, those two were holding back a bit as well. They were waiting for her to outmaneuver them, to force them to yield. They trusted themselves to stop the fight before they were killed.

Roxie trusted her self-control enough to work with that. She began fighting all-out, nonverbally exerting her will as they double-teamed her.

It was difficult fighting two opponents at once, but her fight with Nero had prepared her for this. The hardest part was keeping track of whose intentions were whose. Despite the difference in the gods’ voices, it was like trying to listen to two conversations at once, ones that moved with thinking-on-feet speed. She caught snippets of each of their intentions, just enough to keep up and keep her sword and shield between them.

Their fight became a dance. Thanatos and Keres attacked from opposite sides, and Roxie spun and countered their blows. The three of them moved with superhuman speed and Roxie constantly tried to break their rhythm, but they seemed indifferent to her enhanced strength. She didn’t let this daunt her, though. She would find a way to beat them.

Thanatos and Keres jumped back and closed their eyes. Replicas of them fanned out and faced Roxie with fists raised and serious gazes fixed on her. Dear god, how was she supposed to fend off dozens at once?

Closing her eyes as well, she took a deep breath. It didn’t matter how many there were. She’d defeat every last one of them.

Roxie spread her mind vision in all directions but white outlines of only two children showed up. She snapped her eyes open. She was surrounded by a circle of dozens of children, but her mind vision saw only the real two, who hadn’t moved. Roxie dropped into a defensive stance. Let them waste her energy trying to fool her.

The real Thanatos and Keres remained stationary while their doppelgängers launched into the offensive like a volley of arrows. Roxie braced herself but made no move to fight or block all their attacks. They kicked and punched, making Roxie stagger and flinch, but she held her ground, clenching her teeth with every blow and keeping her awareness on the real two. Thanatos and Keres were trying to distract her into not paying attention to them.

Roxie split part of her concentration on her shield, imagining it protecting her like a full-bodied magic barrier. She willed their fists and feet to fall harmlessly away, and they thunked against air, allowing her mind to absorb all the blows. The doppelgängers came at her in greater numbers, pounding her mental shield with the ferocity of a predator trying to rob its prey of its last scrap of safety. She could sense their murderous intentions through the doppelgängers. The fact that they were willing to try and kill her without their own fists fueled Roxie’s anger all the more. To her, they were fighting like cowards.

Nero was right. Gods were selfish when it came to preserving their own lives.

Closing her eyes, Roxie brought her shield hand to her forehead and spread her awareness to every last doppelgänger, along with keeping part of her attention on the two originals. The fakes surrounded her like an angry swarm of bees but they couldn’t break her will and land a blow. Thanatos and Keres were indifferent to her contempt. If Roxie couldn’t overpower their doppelgängers with the attack she was preparing, then it’d only confirm their assumption that they were better off not throwing her at Nexus.

Fine. Let them think what they wanted. Her need to be the Aigis everyone needed her to be outweighed any god’s opinion of her.

Roxie swung her shield arm. “Stop!” The ground shook and all the doppelgängers froze in place. They stood unmoving in a fighting stance, mid-stride, and even midair, as if someone had taken a snapshot of that instant. Their serious gazes went wide-eyed and they grunted and struggled to break free, but Roxie swung her sword at the nearest ones. They flinched and disintegrated like shadow people. She marched up to the others and they tried to flee, but her hold over them allowed no more than squirming as she cut them down one by one.

As their numbers dwindled, Thanatos and Keres began winning control over those left. Roxie pressed harder to hold them in place, imagining every last one bolted to the ground. The doppelgängers flailed their arms but couldn’t move their feet. Roxie swung her sword and another vanished, then she ran instead of walked as she felt her control failing, cutting down the last ten in seconds. When it was just her and the originals, she crouched into a fighting stance and tried to think of a strategy to overpower and outmaneuver them.

Fighting head-on wasn’t going to work. Being one against two, there would always be someone in her blind spot. Eventually one of them would land a blow that’d throw her on pure defensive. From there, it’d be an uphill battle to go back on any offensive, a struggle to keep them off. She needed to find a way to incapacitate one so she could focus on the other.

Maybe she needed to kill one to prove to the other that she was worth sending off to fight Nexus. She didn’t like the idea but she conceded it might be the only way. She didn’t want to kill Nexus either, but he was shamelessly killing so many with his prophesied war. It was for the greater good that she had to try to kill him. With Thanatos and Keres in her way, part of acting for the greater good might mean killing one of them as well.

She felt her anger cooling, but latched onto it as she clenched her sword tight. She hadn’t asked to have these decisions thrown at her. Thanatos and Keres had forced them on her. For the sake of saving lives and honoring Aerigo’s memory, Roxie would make all difficult decisions she had to. There were too many people depending on her for her to go all timid. She squared off with Thanatos and charged him.

He backpedaled and Roxie sensed both their intention to avoid directly fighting with her.

“You are very dangerous,” Thanatos said plainly.

“But so was the one you love,” Keres said.

“Think us cowards all you want, Aigis.”

“You have not yet satisfied us with your worth.”

The key word there was “yet.” They saw potential in her, hope. But they were still worried that throwing her at Nexus would be a mistake. She wanted to yell at them to stop worrying and send her on her way already, but that’d be a waste of energy. She was stuck doing things their way.

Roxie raised her sword and Thanatos vanished as she cut only air. She sensed him reappear beside Keres. Both children stood side by side, watching with their serious gazes. They held out their little hands, palms up, and Roxie yelled, “Stop!”

They flinched and struggled to resume concentrating. Roxie drew closer, forcing out one step at a time, but it was like trying to plow her way through snow up to her waist. Each step required monumental effort and careful placement to keep her balance. They wanted her to stay far away.

The ceiling cracked and started falling apart. They intended to bring the mountain down on her.

Keeping a part of her awareness on the deities, Roxie scanned the hallways for the nearest exit. The sunlight lancing in overhead disappeared, as did what carried through the dozen hallways, pitching her into total darkness. Using her mind’s eye, she watched the halls collapse, starting from the outside and working inwards, and her legs felt like jelly. She had to plow through hundreds of tons of rock.

She ran for the carved hallway leading in the opposite direction of where Thanatos and Keres stood. The air rang with cracks and thuds, and the ground shook. It didn’t matter which hall she picked. Holding her shield overhead, Roxie charged into the crumbling darkness, unsure if her Aigis strength and durability would suffice to help her survive. Rock fell on and all around her, and she found herself barricaded in from all sides. Thanatos and Keres teleported out of the mountain and collapsed the main chamber. The crackling and rumbling grew muffled as Roxie found herself pinned under her shield. She held the rock at bay with strength of will, but the sheer amount pressing down on her made her gasp for breath.

Breath. Air. Come to think of it, the harder she breathed, the faster she’d run out of air.

Panic encroached on her anger. She couldn’t help but breath hard while holding up part of the mountain. Thanatos and Keres hovered hundreds of feet overhead, out in the open and watching on in silence. They weren’t certain the mountain would crush her, but they’d worry about exploring other tactics if she broke free.

Roxie struggled to grasp how determined they were to kill her. Here she was, wanting to stop Nexus, and stood a fighting chance against him, yet those two weren’t sure giving her that chance was a good idea. They owed her an explanation once she found a way out of this claustrophobic mess.

She filed through her fight with Nero and her thoughts jumped to the idea of growing. The bigger she was, the more physically strong she’d be. The stronger she was, the easier it’d be to move more rock. But if she grew, would she be crushed as she expanded, or was she durable enough to force the mountain to move for her?

Unable to think of anything else, it was a gamble she had to take.

Roxie wiggled her way to one knee as she held her shield overhead, and focused on growing all the way to her limit. She grew slowly, just in case, and felt the rocks squeeze her body as it filled up every last cubic inch of space. The air became thinner and each breath felt too small, but she concentrated on pushing the rock out of her way as she continued growing.

Her heart pounded away in her head and chest as she pushed and grew. Rock shifted as it bore its tonnage down on her, which felt like one body-sized sinus headache clamped in a vice. She grit her teeth and pushed against the mountain with her will and limbs, trying to rise to her feet. Rock shifted and rumbled, but Roxie felt herself slowly losing the battle. She stopped growing and took several deep breaths, bracing herself for one more idea.

Doing her best to not care about how heavy all the rock was, along with forget about how thin the air had become, Roxie sucked in one more dirt-tinted breath and concentrated on growing as fast as she could. She braced for the pain she might feel and envisioned herself growing to freedom. She felt the sensational whoosh of going up in an elevator, but the mountain pressed down on her, forcing her to stop. She took another deep breath and concentrated again, this time pushing against the crushing weight. Her body ached all over and bones screamed to stop being poked and jabbed by all the boulders but Roxie pushed through the agony and rumbling filled her ears.