“My guys couldn’t possibly be in this, could they?”
She makes an indignant sound. “Even if they managed to find us, I sealed these trials. They couldn’t possibly break through my seals. If you see familiarities in them, it’s because the Horsemen were studied for years by pairs and quads alike. Not to mention, I may have started planning this the moment I learned you were all alive again,” she says as though she’s expecting a pat on the back. “They’ve been training and watching your boys to learn how best to aid The Apocalypse.”
They slice through one after another, and my heart gets in my throat when they round one passage, not seeing the three-legged, four-armed, five-horned bull monster with a massive, glowing-red sledge hammer awaiting them.
Three more of those monsters move in behind them, as soon as they begin battling the first.
“These are some of the creations I was telling you about. I didn’t stop perfecting them until Cain found himself struggling to take them down. We’ll have to help them out of this. I probably made it too hard to defeat that many at once—”
She stops talking when the guys split up, and the bull monsters get a little confused, losing sight of them in the tricky maze.
“That’s stupid. They’ll be picked off like flies. How sad. They were so promising, too. I suppose some teams just can’t work together in harmony when times get tough,” she says on a disappointed sigh. “Let’s find another set to grant our attention—”
She stops talking again, and I watch as the one with a scythe comes sliding behind the bull beast closest to him, cutting across its back.
The monster roars and stomps a hoofed foot into the ground so hard the gray rock under him splits on impact.
As if timed, the one with a sword comes racing out of a hidden cove, sword drawn, as he flips over the top of it, rapidly stabbing four or five times, before landing on one knee.
He doesn’t even bother looking back as the monster turns, roaring again, and charges him from behind. Suddenly, the beast drops seconds before reaching him, and the swordsman looks up at me as the beast bleeds to death on the rock, lifeless.
“That’s not possible. It should take a whole quad to bring just one of those down. Cain struggled with one. He was limited on which powers he could use during the battle, but still, he struggled,” Hera says as though she’s defending her easily downed monster.
My eyes search, finding the triton wielder, as he bursts through one of the maze walls like he’s the charging bull. The monster gets blindsided, and the triton goes through its middle as its pinned into the next wall that cracks.
“These walls were made with soul stones. They can’t be broken,” Hera bites out. “I spent weeks designing this course with only the best materials.”
The four of them reunite, closing in on two of those monsters now. They strike fast, and the beasts fall like they’re pawns instead of the supposed ferocious creatures Hera swears they are.
I’m personally not all that impressed with her design. It’s simplistic and apparently easy to defeat.
She mutters something under her breath, as I eye her throne. How’d she summon it?
I snap my fingers, but…nothing happens.
It’s only mildly disappointing enough to distract me a moment longer from the four who advance into the final section of the elaborate maze.
A lot of dead monsters lie in their wake, and Hera looks as though she no longer enjoys her game, simply because they’re making it look too easy.
“Isn’t it a good thing that four are more advanced than the others?” I ask, gesturing toward the hordes of men who are still trapped in phase one of the maze.
She says nothing, glaring down at the four masked crusaders, who move through the large arena portion, warily inspecting their surroundings.
Our cliff breaks off, startling me just barely, and it floats through the air until we’re hovering at a closer angle to watch them.
“They won’t make it through this section without needing help,” she says with a wicked curve to her lips.
My own smile grows when a bowl of popcorn appears in my lap, and Lamar appears next with a purple, leather upholstered throne with black trimming.
“It’s beautiful,” I state in slight awe as I hurry to take my seat.
His lips twitch as Hera shoots him a look, but he stands stoically at my side otherwise.
“Be glad my brother is devoutly in love with you,” she says through clenched teeth.
I’m confused about their stare-down, but he cordially bows to her at last. “I can assure you I’ve done nothing to interfere in your match,” he tells her.
She cuts her eyes away, returning her attention to the match below. They’ve begun fighting with some creepy crawly skulls on spider legs that have some blue goop spraying from their mouths. The guys dodge the blue goop, sliding over the ground and striking from whatever angle they can.
I’m now wondering if these four really are my guys, given the weird tension between Lamar and Hera and the mention of some bet between herself and Manella.
Some of their moves seem so familiar, but there are a lot of ways they move that I’ve never seen my guys do. Considering I’ve studied them more intently than anyone, I’m the resident expert.
Still, I can’t actually tell if they’re—
“Let’s see how they fare with the vortex keepers,” Hera says, cutting through my thoughts.
My gaze darts to Lamar, who bristles as though he’s suddenly uneasy.
“What’s a vortex keeper?” I ask him.
“A desperate ploy to win Manella’s crown,” he mutters under his breath.
“That doesn’t tell me anything,” I point out, really confused now.
A raging battle cry has me jerking my head back toward the fight, while shoving popcorn in mouth, because this fight just got good.
The vortex keepers are apparently black knights. It’d be anticlimactic…but…as the scythe wielder manages to slice through one’s torso, it splits and quickly regenerates. Only it regenerates two knights instead of one.
“That’s going to be impossible,” I say, moving to the edge of my seat as the triton wielder and swordsman make the same error with two others.
Now there are six knights attacking instead of three.
The staff wielder does the same thing, causing another split. The more they fight, the more knights seem to form.
I hear a grunt of frustration that sounds very Jude-like, but surely not. They’d be smart enough to figure out when to quit slicing and come up with a new plan of attack.
They switch from offense to defense, fending off the knights’ unified attacks without splitting them into even more. I see the stern concentration in their eyes, and this close up, seeing those more and more familiar skills, I blow out a long breath.
Damn it. These are my guys.
“There’s no way to fight something that only multiplies when it should die,” I say as more and more dread creeps up my spine. “Will my fire burn them, or will they just regenerate again?” I ask Lamar, looking over at him.
“I’m sure they can handle it,” he says, as presumably Kai swings the triton at the front line that closes in on them.
It splits a whole bunch of them in two, and he gets cursed when the multiplication-regeneration crowds the increasingly small space.
“Can they do this without my help?” I ask, darting a worried look over to Hera.
I have a feeling they’ll be pissed if I interfere, since they’ve figured out what I’m up to and have gone to the trouble of showing up all the less than sub-par candidates, who are…officially recycled.
Oops. I forgot to pay them any attention, and apparently Hera forgot them as well.
I guess she did make that part of the course too hard for most. My guys really are that much stronger than even her hand-selected warriors.
Not important.
“Answer me,” I say, turning a glare on her when the guys are forced to fight back and end up multiplying their foes even more.
Hera smirks as she looks over at me. “Without you taking care of things for them, they’d need to summon their collective power—the Unity Strike.”
“What is that?” I ask, annoyed that I’m still getting information I should have already had.
I cut my eyes toward Lamar, and he gives me a timid smile. “It’s been a while. I struggle to recall all their details. They always seemed far less important to me than you,” he says in his defense, doing the thing where he flatters me to cushion my anger.
“They haven’t achieved that level of power yet, so it’s not like it matters,” Hera cuts in. “Don’t worry, Paca. You can step in and save them whenever you please. In fact, I encourage you to do it now that you see there’s no other way. No need to be hostile.”
“I’d like to advise against that course of action and think of a way to counteract the multiplication attacks until they wear them down. Vortex keepers don’t have the ability to sustain their power for longer than a few hours,” Lamar goes on. “If they can hold out, they can cut them down—”
“I increased their stamina levels. This could go on for days…if the guys don’t die first,” Hera adds in a rather chipper tone.
Lamar’s look changes, and he shoots me a small grimace. “Never mind. You really should step in, even though I hate to say that and cost Manella his crown.”
“What’s a Unity Strike?” I ask him, trying not to panic, now that I realize these things have the ability to actually do real harm to my guys.
“The Unity Strike is a collective power they have to summon with a simultaneous thought, something only a strong bond can help wield. They were only able to do it once, even when they were at their strongest,” Lamar tells me, which forces me to exhale harshly.
“And goodness knows their bond is definitely weak, given all the fighting that’s been going on lately,” Hera adds.
There’s a winning gleam in Hera’s eyes, and a prideful piece of me wants to let them figure this all out on their own.
They may be fighting a lot, but it’s the tension, hesitation, and conjoined fear of losing it all to a battle we shouldn’t have to fight that’s causing the discord.
At the end of the day, Jude is going so far as to force himself to love me just to make me stronger. Even though he cares for me, he’s not doing that for me. He’s doing that for them, in spite of the struggle it’s clearly become under the time crunch.
My lips tug up on one side in a sad smile, because I went and made myself important to them. It’s all I wanted.
Now I wish I never had, because it’s possibly put their lives at stake.
Yet the old me wanted me to fall back in love with them, and them with me, or she’d never have tethered me to them in the first place.
This hesitation is mine. That Paca had a plan. I just…don’t know what it was.