Wrath "Rise of the Fallen"

Words of some kind were etched sharply into the soaring temple doors, carved from some dark, ancient hardwood. “Warning or welcome?” Poseidon wondered.

“Hermes might be able to tell us,” Zeus said. “But we haven’t time.”

“I think it’s a prophecy,” Hades said. “Or,” he held up his necklace, which sparkled again with strange light, “this is telling me it’s a prophecy. I can’t understand the words completely, but something about the breaking of seals and a coming judgment.”

Zeus pressed his hands against the etched words, felt the faintest of vibrations, and pushed. The doors swung open easily. Cool, coffin’s air caressed the god brothers’ faces. Darkness, silence. Zeus glanced back at his brothers, then stepped inside.

The darkness soon resolved into a bronze dimness cast by impossibly lit torches hung here and there along the far walls and fat columns of the vast, open chamber the gods found themselves in. The chamber went on and on and the rows of columns stood like soldiers at parade rest as the gods moved deeper into the gloom. Zeus continued to feel that soft vibration in the stone floor.

Abruptly, the columns broke ranks, falling away to create a circular space within the chamber. Torches on the closest columns cast a brassy light on three statues marking their own circle within the space. Three warriors, wearing peculiar feathered cloaks, in defensive positions pointing long spears at the circle’s center, a large humpbacked stone that seemed almost like a burial mound or a vault cover set in the floor.

The gods moved past the statues that seemed to be standing watch over the stone, and Zeus eyed each one of them. The stone guardians glared down at the large stone with expressions suggesting violence was imminent. The statues with their birdlike cloaks, their warrior bearing, stirred a memory in Zeus from that morning, from that dream. It seemed so long ago. Hades stepped forward. “There’s writing on the stone,” he said, leaning in. “Pictures… Hmm… It says here, ‘One of seven fallen.’” He reached a hand out to the stone.

As if Zeus himself had just fired off a thunderbolt, three blazing beams of blue light struck the sentries guarding the stone. In their place stood three beings. Living replicas of the statues. Blond-, brown-, and redheaded beneath polished silver helmets.

“Be gone, godlings!” the golden-haired one bellowed. “This is not your place. Not your fight.”

“Godlings?” Poseidon barked, his tattoos flaring, his trident rising.

As if on command, bright white wings exploded off the backs of the three beings, startling Zeus and drawing a gasp from Hades who swept his spear into a defensive position. The golden-haired being snapped a wing at Poseidon and his trident tore from his grip and flew off into the gloom beyond the circle. Poseidon’s jaw dropped. Hades’ spiritual fire raged upward and a gauntlet of lightning wrapped around Zeus’ fist. Little tentacles of electricity waved excitedly from out of his eyes.

Like an invisible hand swatting down on them, the blare of a great trumpet shook the temple. The three winged warriors returned to fighting stances nearly identical to those of the statues they replaced just as the vault cover cracked, then shattered with streamers of stinking smoke, then exploded open. Rock shards sprayed the gods and winged beings, tearing white feathers and flesh.

“Leave now!” the redhead yelled at the gods, who had staggered back outside the circle of warriors. Poseidon immediately ran to retrieve his trident, while Hades lit his spear with spiritual fire.

Huge black things with red balls for eyes and long, spidery arms and legs crawled with shocking speed from the smoldering hole and immediately attacked the winged warriors with giant spiked hammers and shrieking howls of torment and bloodlust. Three red-eyed beasts died immediately at the end of gleaming spears. But more poured forth from the hole.

Spears danced and hammers clubbed. Dead black things lay everywhere as the helmeted warriors worked with cold efficiency. A black creature screeched horrifically as a spear skewered it through its chest, its gangly arms spasming wildly. The blond warrior hoisted the thing and let it slide down the shaft toward him. He pulled a short sword that seemed to catch fire and, as the black beast got close, the winged warrior appeared to whisper something through gnashed teeth and took its head off, showering the floor with black gore. He snapped his spear and the sagging body flicked away to land beyond the hole, which was spewing smoke like a geyser.

The flood of horrific things continued to boil out of the crater and over their fallen comrades, and for the first time, the spear-wielding beings seemed challenged. They gave ground, and then the redheaded warrior caught a hammer strike full in the face and his jaw disintegrated; he dropped like a sack, twitching and gibbering as a black creature ripped into his neck with spiky teeth.

Zeus looked to strike but couldn’t find an open shot. Hades looked just as frustrated. Poseidon came running back with his trident and the three lined up shoulder to shoulder. “What do we do?” Hades asked. The spiritual fire pulsating along the spear’s two heads as if expressing the same aggravation he felt. The four strange beings were tangled in a frantic Bacchanalian dance of spears and clubs.

“We don’t belong here,” Zeus said. “Can you strike, Poseidon?”

“I don’t know what might come vomiting out of that crater if I do.”

As if in answer, the ground shook crazily and the smoke pouring out of the hole in the floor began to vomit forth like an erupting volcano. In a huge belch of fire, a death-black figure with blood-red eyes emerged to stand twice as tall as the others and twice as wide. Coal-black wings spread as slowly as disease, and a wicked laugh tumbled like slow-flowing lava from a wide mouth choked with dagger-like teeth. That laugh shrilled up into a hysterical screech and the great black beast swept one wing then the other through the middle of the four fighting beings. All four went to pieces with a messy squelch. Its wings drew back to loom behind it like a hooded shield.

Still grinning, the dark being tilted its head to look at the three gods. Tendrils of oily smoke curled about his head, drifted before those bulbous red eyes. With utter contempt, it murmured, “Feeble godling abominations.…” Its wings spread out again. Zeus raised the thunderbolt.

Between the gods and the beast a fat beam of golden light like liquid sunshine splashed down with a crackling roar. The brothers threw up their hands against the brightness. Left in the beam’s wake was what Zeus could only describe as magnificence.

Long raven hair, billowing platinum-white wings, and armor polished like silver that seemed to cast a glow like soft moonlight. In the left hand, a giant broadsword with a low flame flickering along its edge; in the right, a shining shield, also limned in low flames. On her belt hung a dagger with a large, wavy black ivory-lighted blade and gilded hilt. Zeus had the strangest sense of remembering. “Belum,” the being said with a voice like a lost melody, “to what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Reema,” the black monster purred. “You know exactly what this is. And you know you cannot stop it, nor stop me.”

Reema turned to the brothers and stared directly at Zeus with the brightest violet eyes, said nothing, spun back to Belum and attacked with ferocious speed her sword bursting afire. Belum blocked with one wing, the flaming sword glancing off with a shower of sparks, and drew a long-handled battle-axe with a double blood-red blade. It cut through the air with a whoosh and forced Reema to leap back and parry with her sword. Belum reversed direction with the axe and Reema had to jump back again, crashing into the gods and almost falling, which surely would’ve been her end. “Move!” she bellowed, righting herself and spiraling away with lightning grace.

The two beings, one of light, one of smoldering dark, ebbed and flowed like some living poem, accompanied by the music of clashing weapons. Neither seemed to gain or lose an advantage until finally Belum barked something. An awful alien word. A single, filthy utterance that made Zeus queasy and a little dizzy despite not knowing what it meant. Reema went down hard as if struck by a physical blow and her sword skittered from her hand and went dark. One wing was folded beneath her and the other splayed out at a bad-looking angle. Belum howled at her feet and raised his battle axe.

Without thinking, Zeus punched toward Belum, releasing his thunderbolt and broadsiding Belum. The creature stumbled off balance. Hades snapped his spear before him and the spiritual fireball flew off its points, and Poseidon double-tapped his trident on the ground. Belum took the fireball in the face and then staggered backward and fell near the hole as the temple floor dipped and shook with the trident’s power. Behind it, like a geyser, more yowling creatures rushed from the crater in a terrible black wave.

Zeus pulled Reema to her feet. “Take hold!” she roared, and the gods grabbed onto her belt. Her wings bloomed like the sails of a trireme and beat with a thunderous whoosh. The black things blew backward into the temple gloom like a cluster of dead leaves caught in a tornado. Wild air whirled around them and Reema yelled, “Hang on!” Everything went still.