Breaking away from her unit, the mounted warrior guided her horse with masterful skill, clearing obstacle after obstacle across the battlefield with ease, and came to a stop before the collapsed ruins.
"Are you the queen of the Amazons?"
King Admetus approached her with a broad smile, eager to build some rapport with the leader of these reinforcements.
The horsewoman glanced at the
King of Thessaly and shook her head faintly.
"I was. Not anymore."
"...?"
Admetus blinked, thoroughly confused.
The woman offered no further explanation.
She simply swung down off her horse and looked past the crowd, toward a particular figure.
"There. My duty is done. From this point on, I am yours to deal with as you see fit."
"...?!?"
King Admetus and the people around him froze, then turned as one, staring with strange looks at the person clearly trying to slip back into the shadows.
"I told you already, it was a misunderstanding."
Lorne stopped in his tracks and, under the curious stares of the crowd, spoke up wearily to set the record straight.
During the fight in the underground temple earlier, the burst of divine power from several awakened sigils blew him clean out of the ground.
The moment he climbed out of the crater, he ran straight into an Amazon column on the march.
Neither side knew who the other was, and both had their nerves stretched tight, so when several Amazon warriors saw a stranger suddenly blocking their path, they loosed arrows on the reflex.
From there, the two groups, thrown together on a narrow road, inevitably fell into a full brawl.
The Amazons were formidable fighters one on one, but Lorne, simply outclassing them, soloed the impromptu skirmish without much trouble.
Unlike the Amazon warriors, who carried the blood of Ares and tended to lose their heads easily,
Lorne stayed considerably calmer.
Wanting to sort out what was actually happening, he held back from killing, choosing instead to beat the nine commanding sisters to their knees in front of the whole army, then took the Amazon queen, Hippolyta, prisoner outright.
With hostage and force both on the table, the two sides finally sat down for a peaceful, friendly exchange.
Once it became clear both were reinforcements bound for Thessaly, the whole misunderstanding came to an end.
After that came the part where
Lorne led this company of Amazon warriors down like reinforcements from the heavens, turning the tide of a battle already lost.
"So what's going on now?"
Caenis scratched her head, looking between the two of them with open curiosity.
"In a fight to the death, he won and I lost. There's nothing more to say.
As payment for my sisters' lives and freedom, I, as queen, chose to answer for it myself, to submit as his prisoner for him to do with as he wishes."
Hippolyta spoke flatly.
There was frustration in her eyes, but her bearing stayed unflinching.
"Now that I've fulfilled Lady Artemis's divine will, I can formally set down the title of queen and keep my word."
"Ahem. Come on, we're past enemies now, aren't we?
No need to be so strict about who won and lost and what comes of it."
Lorne cut in with a dry cough, trying to smooth things over.
The Amazon queen's brow only creased further, a faint flush rising across her lovely face.
"Are you mocking me? Man."
Caenis, who also carried a share of the war god's blood, jabbed Lorne in the shoulder and murmured a quiet warning.
"To the children of Ares, losing a fight isn't shameful. Running from the consequences of that loss is."
Lorne's face darkened at that.
It did sound exactly like a code that brute Ares would have drawn up, and to a hero, honor often mattered more than life itself.
Seeing no way out of it, he leaned over and asked Caenis under his breath.
"So what does the Amazon tribe usually do with a defeated opponent?"
"Women get offered up to whichever god they worship. Men get taken back as slaves for breeding."
Caenis let her eyes drift over Hippolyta's pretty face, then threw an arm around Lorne's neck like an old army buddy, a teasing glint in her eyes.
"Why not give it a try? I heard that because of her devotion to Artemis, an Amazon queen has to stay a virgin right up until she steps down."
Like hell he'd try it!
Lorne shot the woman who'd apparently decided to become his troublemaking friend, and the most beautiful woman in Thessaly besides, a flat look, then turned back to Hippolyta and reached for the oldest trick in the book: stalling.
"Why don't you head back for now? I'll let you know once I've thought about it."
"I've lost. I no longer have the right to lead the Amazon tribe, let alone stand as their queen."
Hippolyta spoke quietly, a trace of gloom in her eyes as she looked at the man who had beaten her.
Her nine sisters joined forces, backed by over a thousand warriors in full battle formation, and still they were pinned to the ground and beaten, with the queen herself taken prisoner in the end.
Faced with a defeat that crushing, she, as the commander who had led them into it, could hardly avoid responsibility, and the war god's blood in her veins left her no choice but to honor the old law: the victor rules.
Stepping down as queen and taking the blame herself was the only way to spare the whole tribe the shame of it.
Lorne rubbed his temples as he looked at Hippolyta, waiting to be dealt with, and finally made a decision, however reluctantly.
"Then stay by my side as an attendant for a while."
The true war against the Gigantes had not yet fully broken out, and Thessaly, worn down by two battles back to back, had seen its defenses cut sharply.
In every practical sense, keeping Hippolyta and her Amazon warriors close, ready for whatever came next, made sense.
This would serve as a middle ground for now, a step to bridge the gap, until things settled and a more permanent arrangement could be worked out.
Hippolyta nodded readily at the outcome, and something like warmth crept into the look she gave Lorne.
He doesn't lord his victory over the defeated.
He knows how to respect an opponent.
Not a bad man, this one.
Just as the small commotion around them settled, the battle itself was also drawing to a close.
With the fresh strength of the Amazon warriors added to the fight, the already dwindling numbers of monster beasts and Gigantes were quickly split apart, surrounded, and wiped out in turn.
Not long after, the god-blooded heroes Lorne had earlier pulled free of the underground temple arrived to help as well, led by Heracles and the twin brothers, cutting through a stretch of forested hills on the far side of the battlefield to reach the front.
They too, it seemed, had been thrown clear of the fighting by the power of the earth itself.
But between the stubborn resistance of Thessaly's defenders and the steady arrival of reinforcement after reinforcement, the Gigantes' carefully laid ambush fell apart completely.
Watching their own kind fall one after another, and the gathered monster beasts all but wiped out, a handful of terrified Gigantes lost their nerve entirely, turned, and dove into the open fissures in the earth, fleeing the bloodied field.
Wary of the earlier close call, the heroes did not dare pursue them too far.
Instead, they moved quickly to clear the field and seal off the underground passages they had opened, so no more Gigantes could crawl back out through them.
With that, the long, hard-fought battle for Thessaly finally came to a close.
~
"They actually held?"
On a distant mountain, wrapped in a haze of water-blue light,
Triton looked down at the mountain of monster corpses and Gigantes bodies piled across the battlefield, and at the royal city of Thessaly still standing beneath the drifting smoke, and frowned deeply.
He had assumed the city would fall to an assault of that scale, that Admetus would be run to the end of his rope, Zeus's temple thrown down, the sacred fire snuffed out.
Only then would Triton arrive with the Sea Palace's mechanical god and its war machines, saving Thessaly at its lowest point.
He would use that moment to win his father Poseidon the greatest possible gain, planting the sea god's faith into the ruins of this land.
Instead, not only did the children of Zeus and Apollo step in, but even Artemis sent someone to intervene, and the hand the Huntress played was none other than her own finest Amazon warriors.
And on top of that, the man who had come from Athens was strong.
Very strong.
Triton thought back to the single strike that had split the battlefield apart earlier, that withered-branch spear, and something like real wariness rose in his eyes.
He turned toward the mechanical god of war standing behind him, Ares.
"Against him, what are your odds?"
"Two in ten."
The mechanical Ares answered in a low voice, then glanced at the massive crater left at the center of the battlefield, frowned, and added after a moment, almost idly.
"If that was even the whole of his strength."
That low?
Triton's frown deepened.
It seemed both his father and he himself had badly underestimated just how troublesome Thessaly would prove to be.
Should he ask his father for more hands, to make certain the Sea Palace held the advantage in this contest?
He shook his head, dismissing the thought almost as soon as it formed.
Anyone could win when the wind was at their back.
If all he knew how to do was crush people with brute numbers, what separated him, a prince, from all those useless failures who lost battle after battle?
Triton narrowed his eyes, sinking into thought, something flickering behind them.
All he truly wanted was for Thessaly to turn its faith to the sea god.
He didn't necessarily need to fight that dangerous man from Athens to the death.
If there was no need for enmity, why not turn an enemy into a friend instead?
And that Athenian hero seemed to have one rather obvious weakness.
Triton's gaze drifted toward the arrangement of company around that dangerous man, and the corner of his mouth curled upward.
"Where's Aphrodite?"
"Something unusual stirred behind the hill. She went to look into it."
"Call her back. I have something more important for her."
Leaning against a tree trunk,
Ares looked over, puzzled.
"What do you need her for?"
"To deal with the one man even you aren't confident you can beat, obviously."
"Her? A useless support unit!"
Ares's face twisted with disbelief and open resentment.
Triton shot the brute beside him a flat look and let out an unimpressed snort.
"There's more than one way to win.
A fight isn't only decided by fists. Stop arguing and go get her, now."
Just as the mechanical Ares turned, grudgingly, to obey the order, a graceful figure stepped out from the shade of the trees.
"No need. I'm already here."
Aphrodite, the returning Machine God, crossed the gentle slope and gazed off toward a busy figure within the royal city, her lovely eyes shifting with interest.
"This task. It's him, isn't it?"
Triton nodded without quite thinking about it.
He had only just finished laying out his plan, yet somewhere beneath it all, he thought he heard the faint sound of someone swallowing.
Behind the two Sea Palace leaders, unnoticed by either, the shadow Aphrodite cast on the ground seemed to ripple faintly with threads of red and black light.
~
"Bang!"
A thick fist smashed a stretch of blue-black stone wall to rubble. Standing at the mouth of the cavern, Alcyoneus, King of the Gigantes, looked out over the wreckage of the underground temple, his expression darkening.
"Where is the woman?"
"She, she's gone."
The seven female giants known as the Alcyonides answered timidly, then bowed their heads low, unable to meet the anger in their father's eyes.
"I told you not to trust that woman."
Beside them, a giant with serpent legs let out a cold, malicious snort, contempt spilling from his long, slitted eyes.
They were Gigantes, a race born for war, strong enough that even the Olympians could not afford to dismiss them, and here they were, tiptoeing around a handful of feeble humans, reduced to using tricks and schemes just to deal with them.
Alcyoneus, King of the Gigantes, glanced at his seven trembling daughters, raised a hand to cut off the serpent-legged giant's tirade, and spoke flatly.
"Enough. We missed this chance. There's always next time.
We have all the time in the world."
Hearing what sounded like the king favoring his daughters, the serpent-legged giant let his displeasure spill out.
"We have time, sure, but Antaeus is dead, and he was an ally I worked hard to bring to our side."
Born of the union between Mother Gaia and the sea god Poseidon, Antaeus originally planned to side with his father Poseidon, meaning to raise a temple to him in Libya built from human skulls.
But after witnessing the true strength of the Gigantes and the Old Gods, and after being talked into it, he chose to join the Gigantes instead, working toward a world ruled by the Titans.
Yet in his very first battle, Antaeus died at the hands of a demigod named Heracles, all because of some foolish plan to lure the enemy away.
That outcome left the serpent-legged giant more than a little bitter.
"All he had to do was fake a defeat and lure those god-blooded heroes on the surface into the sacrificial grounds.
But no, he had to go and prove his own strength, fighting those heroes outside to the bitter end instead."
Alcyoneus, King of the Gigantes, grew angrier the more he spoke, seizing the serpent-legged giant by the throat and slamming him against the wall, his face dark with a cold snort.
"I haven't even brought up how his recklessness delayed the sacrifice and got so many of our own killed, and you're standing here defending that fool?"
"And the sacrifice? Didn't your grand plan fall apart just the same?"
The scales along the serpent-legged giant's neck slid loose, and he wrenched free of the king's grip, pointing down at the ruined sacrificial grounds below with an unrepentant sneer.
Alcyoneus's face went dark at that, unable to save face.
He raised a fist, ready to teach this kinsman a lesson for daring to challenge his authority, while the other Gigantes gathered around them, banging rocks and bones together, egging the fight on.
As a race that loved nothing more than violence, watching a fight break out was their favorite entertainment.
"Enough! Fighting among yourselves, at a time like this? A pack of fools!"
A low, furious roar rolled out from the depths of the cavern.
The tower at the center, ringed by eleven temples, burst into blue-black flame, taking the shape of a face twisted with fury.
A wave of overwhelming divine authority crashed down over them, and the Gigantes in the cave shrank back, trembling, barely able to draw breath.
Even the King of the Gigantes and the serpent-legged giant dropped their bravado at once, bowing their heads in submission, and asked, carefully.
"My lord, you've awakened?"
"I've only just recovered a fragment of awareness. And a scrap of strength like this is nowhere near enough to reclaim the glory that belongs to the Titans."
The voice from within the tower let out a cold snort, edged with impatience.
"The sacrifice continues."
The two Gigantes exchanged an uneasy look.
"The humans on the surface seem to have found themselves some powerful help."
"And we've already lost no small number of our own kin over this."
The voice inside the tower fell silent for a moment, then grew slowly deeper, graver.
"Help? Do we not have our own? Prometheus still suffers, chained to that cliff on the Caucasus. Atlas still bears the weight of the heavens on his back as his punishment.
Free them. Then take the lightning from Zeus's hand, drive Poseidon from the sea, throw Apollo down from his sun chariot, and let the world belong to the Titans once more!"
(End of Chapter)
P.S: The Patreon run is fifty chapters ahead of this one, if you'd rather read it there: [Patreon.com/abhi28]