Chapter 22

  Cheek and eyes throbbing from the hit earlier but Aquiles didn’t know what to feel. His body seemed to settle on nothing, and his emotions felt numb. The look his brother’s face held told he probably felt the same. The way his friends died… Aquiles shook himself out of it.

  Ahead, the thunder of boots grew louder.

  Behind, Socorra’s speech ended in a silence endowed with strength.

  Aquiles glanced to get a last look of the main square and those in it, like a bird screeching over a kill in a field, the tunnel outside the mess was being pushed open. Horacio directed some of the brawnier weapons masters to push it back shut. The Storms ran. Socorra’s voice carried over the crowd of monks shouting one thing over and over, “Thunderhead in front, Bolt in back! Protect him from incoming projectiles!” Was it for them? Or the battle lines forming there?

  Juan moved in front of Arturo, and Other Juan moved behind Aquiles. He watched beads of sweat run down the back of Arturo’s neck.

  They barreled down the hallway, feet smacking the stone in a counter rhythm to the incoming soldiers. Adrenaline was beginning to pump through Aquiles body. He knew the feeling. It felt like the moments before an intense sparring session, swords drawn and sharp, and his ears heard every scrape of foot on stone, every huff of breath, every splash of a drop of sweat reaching the ground.

  The boots grew louder.

  Juan burst into the wooden chamber and took the stairs to the Great Hall three at a time. They all followed him as he veered around to the right behind the statues to go for the hatch. Aquiles glanced at the gaping hole produced by his brother in the pyramid, destruction incarnate and the mountainside was ruin.

  The boots grew louder.

  The oaf fumbled on the hatch in his haste and grunted. He reeled his hand back and punched the hatch in with a blast of thunder. Aquiles watched Arturo feel at his head like he’d forgotten something. “My hat,” he turned and looked at Aquiles, wide-eyed and worried, “I forgot my hat.”

  “It's too late now.”

  Arturo looked longingly back down the hallway before nodding and turning towards the hole in the wood.

  The boots stopped.

  They all spun to look at the huge opening Arturo blasted out of the stone. Hundreds of men stood armed with long spears, swords, and maces. They all wore the same cured leather armor with metal gauntlets and black boots. Men, women, and children outside the walls ran screaming in every direction.

  The Juans and Arturo were too shocked to react, but Aquiles had his head on straight. He looked within himself and found the energy in his gut, dipped into it, hoisting out balefuls and drew it through his body to his fingers. He reached for every pair of heretic eyes that watched him now, and he reached for their hearts. Aquiles would take them all.

  The energy jumped from his fingers, popping into existence, and connecting Aquiles and the foremost man. The man stiffened and began to fall. He hit the floor, scorched and his armor aflame. While effective, that wasn’t the comprehensive feat Aquiles hoped for. The company of men looked at their falling brother, then back at Aquiles and his party, back to their brother, then charged into the room with a roar.

  ***

  Josefa gripped her knives and waited in the service tunnel near the mess hall after Horacio had so kindly ordered it closed behind her. It was not effort to hide in here, the darkness did all the work for her. The attackers’ general likely ordered two attack vectors: a main one down the Great Hall and a second down this tunnel. Josefa knew he was aware of it and was certain to order the second contingent down this tunnel. That was good for Josefa. She could keep to the dark, and they would be trapped fighting, dying, in a line. Her heart fluttered with anticipation. She could pick off several of the front men and scare the rest into submission, pick off as many as she wanted before sealing them in like a great tomb with arrow-fire.

  Josefa smiled when her hunch was rewarded with the sound of hushed whispers and shuffling feet. They carried no torches. Didn't want to draw attention to themselves. It didn’t matter now. They were dead fools playing soldiers.

  She pinned herself into a narrow groove in the wall and let the first few pass. Their breath touched her cheek, and vengeance replaced her pain, filled her, bones and all. She hadn’t been able to strike back at the Ministry since her sister’s death. Not until now.

  Josefa picked her target and leaned forward. She drove her left knife into the guard’s unarmored kidney and yanked him towards her. Stab a man in the kidney and he wouldn’t be able to scream.

  With the other knife, she severed his jugular, a deep cut from left to right, opening a red smile, his skin tugging at her knife’s edge like flirty pecks from a new love. Wet, hot vindication flowed over Josefa’s hands, and she took in the sweet aroma of a metallic job well done.

  The other guards hadn’t noticed their brother’s silent takedown until the next guy tripped into his limp feet. “Que pin-”

  Josefa’s knife rammed the guard’s mouth shut, blade under his chin, through his tongue, and into his brain. His teeth cracked under the pressure.

  “Shhhh,” she kissed him on the cheek and pulled the knife free and cackled a maniac laugh for effect. Didn’t have to fake it.

  Swung swords and spears entered the dark space she left, so she slipped into another crack and let the soldiers scramble in the dark.

  “Someone’s in here!”

  “Get him!”

  One just gurgled a wet scream. It seemed a guard had taken down one of his own men by mistake.

  She slipped out with weight and momentum, and her thrust took a woman in the eye. The long blade drove from the back of the dead woman’s head enough to gouge out the cheek of the guard behind. He dropped his spear and threw up a hand to the flayed flesh over his teeth.

  Josefa caught the spear on the way down and put the butt to the stone floor like she was hunting boar. She slipped under and yanked the guard onto it by his shoulders. The next one ran onto it of his own accord.

  Into the next nook and on. Guards shouted and bled and died. Her hands were already sticky. Wreathed in darkness, Josefa set about a methodical butchery of the group of terrified men. She would make a river of blood flow from this tunnel.

  ***

  A Brother strode down the mountainside, his mending bones the only restraint on his fury. The Father said the demons had not discovered their power. He had been wrong. A Brother had never seen such a display of raw strength. A Brother was eager to capture the demons and make them suffer.

  A Brother approached the gaping wound in the Outreach and looked up and down the broken stone in the hole. Such ferocity. A Brother would gain much favor in bringing the demons down. The guards were beginning to rush the entrance against A Brother’s orders. “Halt!” A Brother called out, and the force halted. A Brother’s orders would always be respected.

  One of the sergeants rushed forward, “The demons disappeared into an underground chamber. We have sent men to intercept them.”

  “Good. I will follow them up myself.” A Brother’s communication was improper with these soldiers, true words alienated them.

  “Bolts.” Ten men, adorned in burnished plate, burnt with arcs, reinforced against lightning strikes, turned to face A Brother. “Push down the hallway into the center of the pyramid first with the Bolt-arms and fire into whatever defensive force meets you.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  They eyed each other with fearful expressions. Their Thunderheads cast their heads down. Pathetic.

  A Brother responded and tried to encourage the cowards, “You fight for the Parents. This is the best strategy to take the pyramid. Move.” The Bolts left down the hallway, Bolt-arms at the ready.

  ***

  Socorra set about ordering different groups into position. She sent the Young Ones up to the academic wings on the higher floors in the Monastery to protect them from the fighting. Horacio was forming a line at the hallway connecting to the Great Hall. A few dozen Children, experts in their chosen weapons, swords and spears and metal-studded staff, took their positions under his orders, swordsmen in front and spears behind in the gaps. The Storms were arriving to bolster the defenses. Thunderheads stood interspersed in the armed group of Children to block arrows and other projectiles. Archers stood next to each Thunderhead to return fire.

  She hoped the Ministry Storms would only bring with them their blessings. A hail of Bolt-arm fire would tear the Children apart. Thunderheads would have a very hard time with those high-speed projectiles. They’d have to attack first and prevent the fire, and that was too much a gamble. Socorra bit her nails.

  Josefa had slipped into the service tunnel to thwart any enemy advance there. Socorra thought she heard shouts through the stone. That was absurd. It was far too thick. She sent a smaller group of Children to protect the tunnel’s exit in case Josefa had to retreat. There was no telling how many men would try to push through there. Shouts and orders were flung about her in the command center Socorra had set in the mess hall. Horacio returned to update her.

  “We’re set and ready. The Young Ones are far up the pyramid.”

  “Good, settle in and get ready to fight.”

  Horacio nodded, his face a sculpture of confidence and calm. It made Socorra feel better. “Masters are taking position with the Bolts in the center of the square.”

  Her turn to nod, “Good, let’s-”

  A roar of boots echoed through the halls of the pyramid. The Ministry had arrived.

  ***

  Hernan marched down the hallway with a Bolt-arm strapped to his shoulder. His sister, Paola, marched behind him. This was so unnatural. Thunderheads were meant to protect their Bolts. A Bolt’s death ensured the death of their sibling, so it only made sense for the Thunderhead to precede the Bolt in engagements. Bolts couldn’t stop arrows or swords. That gray freak didn’t care if they lived or died.

  He sniffled and his head swam, and his heart felt like stopping as he rounded the corner and was met face to face with a wall of swords and angry faces. The Ministry ordered a massacre of these people, and it made him sick.

  What choice did he have?

  He placed his fingers to the rails of the Bolt-arm and sent his energy through them. The weapon zipped, and one of the swordsmen in front had his sword ripped free of its owner. Blood spurted in an arc, splashing the adjacent defenders. Voices from both sides raised as he tried to reload from the pouch of metal armatures and pellets at his waist.

  Paola knocked a few arrows meant for him off course with light blasts of air. Hernan was in a daze. He’d never shot someone before. And all that blood…

  Many other metallic rings echoed around him, projectiles plunging into the defenders’ soft bodies.

  He missed the reload and the pellets emptied onto the ground, bouncing away like so many scattered beads. Arrows zipped by. All he could hear was his heart pounding in his ears. Screams touched his ears from a far, far away place.

  A figure thudded to the ground next him, burnt Bolt armor spilling blood. A figure next to it writhed on the ground, arms and legs bending the wrong way. The Thunderhead’s strangled screams stopped as its neck twisted and snapped. That sound flung Hernan into a world of loud confusion and chaos. The monks managed to down a Ministry-trained storm? He vomited on the ground, bile stinging his throat and nose.

  “Get up, brother! Fire! Fire!” Paola desperately flung arrows away in the too-narrow hallway. Hernan looked up at the defenders to see many lying in pools of blood, torn apart by Bolt-arm fire. He felt dizzy.

  Something slapped him in the neck. Paola was hitting him now? He took a breath to speak, but some liquid flooded his lungs. He coughed and looked at the feathers attached to an arrow shaft in his throat. He couldn’t feel it. He couldn’t breathe. Hernan was on the ground watching Paola split small shockwaves thrown from the defenders.

  When had he fallen?

  The torched dimmed, and Hernan watched Paola spasm and fall next to him. The blood in his mouth got into his nose and-

  ***

  Horacio’s face slipped from its controlled mask to uncontrollable horror. The young Thunderhead Emiliano protected him from the Bolt-arms, casting shockwaves up at regular intervals. He twisted in a graceful rhythm to avoid using the same region of his body. Horacio always overheard Socorra tell Thunderheads to use their whole body to avoid burns.

  Torsos twisted and jerked, limbs freed from their bodily confines, blood flowing without stop from holes and rips in the body of the men and women he had told to stand there and be ready.

  Emiliano twisted in his circles like a dancer moving to a slow rhythm. The sudden onslaught of Bolt-arms was a vile strategy. The ranks seemed to explode, moving slower than real life should allow, projectiles whizzing by, Children sent into the air by shockwaves.

  It had been only seconds, yet it had lasted an eternity. Socorra was running forward now and shouting at the Bolts on the back ranks. Dozens of strikes of lightning illuminated the main square, irradiating them in sharp blue light. Shadows dispersed with light from every direction, and the hair on Horacio’s neck stood up.

  The Ministry Bolts had nowhere to maneuver, almost no way to defend choked into the hallway, no way to see the counter-attack, failing to kill the most deadly defense available to the Monastery. And their siblings could only die.

  Lightning struck the Ministry Storms as a wild boar protects its young, reckless, heedless, vicious, licking their skin and jumping from target to target.

  Hair singed, armor discolored, leather burned, and skin cooked; but their screams were the worst part. The average Bolt would find it difficult to outright kill a man, but the sustained attacks were enough to heat the metal armor pieces and sear flesh.

  Men and women died, choking on their boiling insides. The carnage before him was more haunting than he thought he was possible. These people were in pieces, bodies never meant to withstand the power a Storm wrought. Why would the Parents give men these blessings?

  ***

  Socorra slapped Horacio, putting a little jolt of lightning to his face to wake the man from his trance. He came to with a yelp.

  “We can do this,” she assured him, she assured herself. “We can do this. The Bolt-arms are down. I hate that I didn't prepare for that.”

  Horacio stared at her and finally responded, “Time for the blade.”

  Socorra looked around at the bloodshed. Half their number, gone. A hundred at least.

  Pools of blood saturated the stone and ran in between the seams, marking the ground in geometric red lines and right angles.

  Socorra felt sick. This was a massacre. What had they trained for their entire lives? She snorted, a disgusting amusement. They trained for exercise, for something to do, something to show off. It was never meant for this.

  Yet, as the Ministry Storms fell and approaching soldiers appeared at the hallway before them, the remaining Children stood tall. The monks of the Monastery. The Children of the Parents.

  Horacio drew his sword.

  ***

  The stench of manure creeped into Arturo’s nose as he ran down the hallway. Aquiles gagged behind him. Juan in front of him ran silently, and the Juan behind huffed with each step.

  Some men had chased them into the chamber. The big brothers had left them mangled and mutilated, body parts slammed so hard into the chamber walls they were stuck there. The vivid image of a man's jaw torn clean off by the edge of a shockwave stood out in Arturo’s mind.

  They hadn’t lasted a second. Several men’s entire lives ended so abruptly. What was the point? Years growing as boys with loving parents, learning traditions and fighting each other, finding jobs to put food on the table, enjoying the laughter of their wives and children, and getting their skull caved in for a hopeless chase.

  “Mierda!” Arturo realized he was crying. He realized he hated these men for throwing their lives at them. They should know it was hopeless. He would show them.

  The tunnel opened into light.

  A dozen armored guards waited for them in the stable. Simple men just covering a potential exit. They had no idea what awaited them.

  Juan ducked a frantic spear thrust. Arturo skidded to a halt before impaling himself on that thrust. The soldier spun and the back half of a spear shaft filled Arturo’s vision.

  ***

  Aquiles watched his brother drop with the sack of rice on his back. A bloody wound marked his crooked nose. He reached for the man in front of him, a physical reach. He grasped hold of the soldier and spun him to stare into his eyes. “Surrender, or we’ll kill all of you.” The soldier tried to bring the spear into Aquiles’ side.

  He watched the man die with the energy he sent coursing through his body. He looked into the man’s mouth, smelled his breath, tobacco and tequila. Lightning poured off Aquiles' body and jumped to the rest of the men in the stable.

  They all died, strangled with seizing muscles and blackening flesh, but he held onto the smoking corpse as the coward’s amigos died about him, staring into the empty pits that used to home thoughtless eyes.

  Arturos was right. How dare they attack the Monastery? Threaten the most peaceful and helpful group of people to walk La Terra? These men didn’t deserve to live.

  His grip released the remaining suggestion of a man. Teeth and skin shattered on the ground, brittle coal, like they were never part of a living whole.

  He spat on the wasted flesh and the spit sizzled where it landed. The Juans looked at him wide eyed. “They deserve so much worse. Socorra and Arturo were right. The Ministry must go.”

  Other Juan nodded slowly, “Si?.”

  Aquiles tried waking his brother. The man was out cold, but he still breathed. A thick legged horse gnawed on its reins in one stable, indifferent to the death around it. They walked it out. Aquiles drew himself onto the saddle then motioned the Juans to heave Arturo into a sitting position in front of him, the unconscious man slumped but stayed steady. They tied their supplies to saddle straps.

  Aquiles kicked at the horse to gallop out of the stable and out of the city. As the horse got to the edge of the stable, Aquiles yanked on the reins, and the horse stopped. He looked back at the oafs, the men that protected them. Simple men. Good men. “I hope to see you again, Juan. And Juan.”

  The brothers raised a hand in unison and said, “Adios, Aquiles. Hasta luego.” They smiled together.

  Aquiles turned and kicked the horse in the sides, following trails in the trees until he could get to a clearing. He’d meet the road from there, out of sight of the force of the Ministry.