She sucked in a loud breath before shoving me away to my astonishment. “You need to go, now, before you get hurt.”
“You need to stop this madness!”
“We can’t! Atlas summoned the demons, and he is the God that rules Gehenna. They have to do as he says! We can do nothing but watch!” Elias boomed, though he, too, was ashamed of what he was allowing to take place.
I panted on adrenaline and tried to think of a solution. “This has gone way too far!” I clapped my hands together before moving them rapidly in the pattern to close and open the gates of Gehenna. My eyes fizzled black smoke from how much energy I forced through the ritual, but as soon as I breathed the last syllable, the massive rift began to screech.
The demons escaping it howled as they were slowly sucked backwards back into the Realm, their nails dragging the ground as they tried to claw for freedom. Decimus didn’t bother fighting back and let the portal consume him again thankfully. Isadora and Elias held onto the edges and tried desperately to force them back open, but I kept bringing my hands together, which in turn made the rift collapse on itself. Isadora and Elias screamed out when they fell into the portal, which closed with a loud whoosh before the field fell still.
Constantine and Soren panted wildly as they caught their bearings, as did Blaine, who fell to his knees in relief. “Fuck, good riddance!” Soren heaved.
“Nice work, Nick,” Constantine complimented.
Sweat spilled down my temple as I let my hands drop. “We still have big fish to fry. You guys help the Life Elementals round up the remaining demons for slaughter. I’ll handle War.”
“Uh… Nick?” Alice gulped, pointing to War, who had risen from his grand throne. He brought his sword forward and pointed it at me, then let out a cry before charging towards us. “Looks like he’s pretty pissed off!”
“Good, so am I.” I whipped my scythe free and danced across the field, and when we collided, the sound was so numbing that nearly all fighting ceased momentarily. My scythe and his sword slammed together powerfully, and each time they collided, sparks and metal scraping echoed through the landscape. The power behind his strikes was so intense that the collisions made my spine tingle, but I knew I had to subdue him before I had a chance at going after Famine and Dad. “Asher, I know you can hear me! Please, stop this madness! Come back to us, buddy, please!” I coaxed over our crossed blades.
Asher was far gone at this point. The absolute monster that brewed within him was now here, replacing every ounce of love that tiny creature I’d kept close to my heart had ever felt towards me. This was a titan of Gehenna, the commander of the ultimate army, and he wanted me dead no matter what it took.
Claude and Jackson were doing utterly nothing to stop War, not because they weren’t trying, but because their attacks meant nothing to him. Claude was shocking him so severely that his energy made the hairs on my body stand up, but each strike barely pierced the thick armor War adorned. Jackson’s vines were swallowed by the heat that emanated off his body, and when Jackson switched to stone, it was as if he were throwing pebbles. The boys grew frustrated by their failed attempts and turned from trying to subdue him to trying to protect me from him.
War and I were getting nowhere fast. Our strength was evenly matched to my surprise, but I was caving under wounds I had sustained from Pestilence, and War knew that. His crooked smile proved he was ready to hit his final strike, but I still had fight left in me and wasn’t going down without giving this my all.
I dodged one of his swipes and took that opening to cut upward. My scythe curve wrapped around his neck and let me drag him backwards towards the ground. “Water Gods! Summon as much water as you can!” I exclaimed as I dragged War down.
Xenobia, Halcyon, and Elizabeth held hands and flashed brilliant blue eyes before waves higher than anything I’d ever seen rose from behind them. Jackson flashed down and pounded the ground to create a makeshift opening for their mini ocean, and once everyone was ready, I pinned War to the bottom of the hole and let the girls at him. Their waves crashed over his hot, burning body, swallowing him in their grip and pinning him to the floor. He sizzled wildly and screamed from the pain the water was causing to his hot skin, but the girls kept wrapping the waves around him to form a bond that kept him in place.
“We need him down long enough for me to get to Atlas! Do you think you can hold him?” I asked them.
“Are you kidding? We got this!” Xenobia chimed.
Or so she thought.
That frail moment of silence was broken by a low, methodic hum that consumed all of us. Griffin and Galaxy cracked through the sky as lightning bolts before materializing, their faces bruised and cut up from their long battle. “Nick, we got big trouble! Famine is on her way here!”
“Famine?” I gulped.
“She’s not too happy, either!” Galaxy huffed as he hastily tried to heal Griffin’s bleeding face.
“Neither is that guy!” Soren whimpered, pointing to the horizon.
I turned slowly to see a black mass crawling from the depths of the desert. Its long arms literally clawed up the hills, its bone face consumed by black smoke and its cloak. The black sky from before followed him as he crawled, consuming the desert around us and making the temperature drop drastically. I recognized the being all too well and swallowed a rising lump in my throat. “Looks like Dad isn’t too happy about his familiars getting defeated.”
Dad, or now, Death, ghosted over the battlefield and turned it black. His cloak expanded to fill the skies above us in an ominous black veil that suffocated all underneath it. He surveyed the many Humans beneath us with a satisfied growl, pleased to see that War had summoned so many. When he touched the ground, every Human, all of the thousands of them beneath us, dropped in an instant. Each one, one by one, hit the cold ground, their eyes grey and mouths flopped open. I covered my own in absolute horror at the complete devastation, tears filling my eyes.
How could a man that loved so intensely kill so many with just his touch?
Death threw his head back and howled into the sky, and that howl summoned every single being in Gehenna once again. The rift I had closed burst open in with a violent rip, allowing thousands upon thousands of demons to scramble free and swallow the Life Elementals on the field. Every demon ruler, Evris to Peregrine, followed their demons in their own demonic forms, unable to ignore the call of their God, and joined the battlefield to cause as much destruction as they possibly could.
Through the thick, black sky, Pestilence and Famine descended on the field from the call to free War, who, when they were all stood side by side, pulled their weapons free andpointed them directly at me. “Impostor!” they exclaimed in perfect unison.
“Nick…?” Halcyon croaked.
Death hummed in delight and brought a boney finger out to point to me as well. “Cades verberatus, false deus!”1
“Fuck me…” I whispered before throwing my hands out and summoning my Shadows. All seven appeared around me, weapons drawn, in their God forms of the past. “It’s go time. We need to hold them off long enough for Geneva and Magnus to find Ambermourn.”
