I left an hour before Katie. Showing up again at the same time might've been suspicious, and we weren't sure if everyone else would be as on-board with our rendezvous as we were, so it was best not to leave it to chance.
As I walked down the old subway tunnels I couldn't help looking down at my body. Something still felt different inside. Ever since that odd rush after Katie and I's first round, I could tell something was different. I was pretty sure it wasn't just another part of my body being ready to use my true form. This felt like something different, like a new organ was forming inside my stomach with a function I couldn't guess at. All I knew was that it didn't feel bad. Just… new.
I'd only been gone for a couple of hours, but when I got back to the men's camp it looked like it'd been raided.
"There you are!" Leo jogged up, waving. "You had me worried for a sec, man. Where'd you crawl off to?"
"Checking out the local plants," I said. "Did something happen?"
The canvas tents had been pulled down, with half of them missing entirely. Only a couple of the men who'd called the camp home were in sight, and all of them were hard at work collecting things of use. One had a backpack stuffed with makeshift weapons. Another was moving a collection of flammable garbage that could act as fire fuel.
"Yeah. Something like that." Leo sounded a little sad as he looked where I was looking, taking in the vacant camp. "You know how I went to talk to Artemis? She made her call."
"We're moving?"
"Eventually," Leo said. "I'll explain on the way."
Leo took me along the same route we followed earlier that day, the one that led to the women's camp. Along the way, he talked a lot, which I was learning was pretty much his default.
"I told her about the murder dumbo you killed, obviously, and she wasn't happy at all. Said the same thing I did— that once one of the Pandai found us, the rest couldn't be far behind. So we're going to run away again. But the thing is, she doesn't want to do it yet."
"When does she want to do it, then?" I asked. "Seems like before the monsters get here would be the right time."
"You'd think so, but Artemis would say you're wrong." Leo laughed nervously. "She thinks they're keeping an eye on us. That their plan is to wait for us to run, and attack us then. They're surprisingly good trackers for organic creatures. I mean, still not as good as a good machine, but still pretty impressive. So she wants to dig in and force them to attack. We'll weather a few waves of 'em, and when the time is right we'll jet out of here like we've got a twelve-cylinder to our backs."
"Provided we survive the first attack."
"Yeah!" Leo said. "Provided that."
We got to the women's camp, and I discovered the men's camp wasn't the only one that had changed in a few hours.
The tents had been reorganized. One was clearly for storing food, while another had a conspicuous red cross painted above the door. The men from the other camp were pretty concentrated near the edges, but they'd more or less mixed in. I saw Artemis in the center of the camp issuing orders. She looked at the men multiple times, but never rebuked them for getting too close.
She really had changed, I decided.
I turned to Leo. "We should still have a day, right?"
"Probably about twenty-four hours," he agreed. "I mean, we don't know for sure, but it should take the Pandai a little while to organize and attack, even if it's them. If Artemis's right, they'll wait a little hoping we'll try to run so they can ambush us. It also depends on their mood. If they're mad, they'll probably attack sooner."
I remembered the furry white humanoid I'd vaporized outside our camp. Plus there was the other one that chased Reyna and I…the one whose arms I snapped with a manhole cover.
"Mad, huh?" I said, chuckling nervously.
"It's fine," Leo said. "We don't have that much prep to do, so as long as they don't show up in the next hour, earlier might even be better."
I pushed my sleeves up.
"Where do we start?" I asked.
Leo's skillset was more versatile than I realized. He might've hated being thought of as a leader, but he had no problem taking on a foreman role. I joined the rest of the men hefting old car parts and heavy wooden furniture around according to Leo's instructions. We built defensive positions for archers to fire from while the women prepped bows and wrapped arrows in oil-soaked cloth. It was like Leo had blueprints of the whole place inside of his brain. Once enough cover had been built, he moved on to making traps, which he handled himself. A few of them were pretty devious, like rigging one of the tunnels into the station to collapse entirely as soon as anything as heavy as a hydra stormed in.
Katie returned slightly after I did, arriving to a mild rebuke from Artemis for having gone missing, but nothing more. Those two marshaled the women, running through final checks. The underage girls I'd seen moving around the camp didn't get weapons of their own, but were instead sent to work inside the food tent or the tent for the injured.
The plan was simple: every major entrance had been barricaded with traps and defensive structures to fight behind. There were four ways into this station in total— one set of stairs coming from above ground, the tunnel for trains to pass through that could be used in both directions, and a small service tunnel that had been used for subway maintenance personnel. We were set up to repel any attacks coming from the stairs or the tunnel. After weathering one or two waves of attacks, the goal was to slip into the maintenance tunnel and collapse it behind us, making a clean getaway.
I don't know how confident anyone was in this, even Artemis. But it seemed like it could work, and in a bad situation sometimes that's he best you could do.
We had decent numbers, but most of these people were mortals. They were tough as nails, but didn't have supernatural strength to help them out. What we did have was a few heavy hitters, and each of us knew how many people were relying on us.
Artemis stationed herself at one end of the train tunnel, and Leo at the opposite end. Katie was leading a small group to protect the service tunnel. That left the stairs to the surface… Which had been given to me.
"Can you handle it?" was all Artemis asked when she told me, one of her eyebrows arched.
"You can count on me," I told her.
"I must," she said, not sounding too pleased. Then she was gone, attending to other details as she tried to get these people prepared.
Night arrived, although it was hard to tell underground. I only slept in spurts. It wasn't like I needed rest the way these mortals did, and there was always the chance that the Pandai arrived early.
In the end, my suspicions weren't just paranoia.
The ceiling started to shake. That was the first sign. The second sign was the noises: deep drum-like thuds and soft hisses.
I stood up, stepping toward the base of the stairs. They'd loaned me a weapon. It was a long metal pole that I was pretty sure was the lower half of a stop sign post, with a little bronze spearhead fastened on the end. I had never been the best with a spear, but a little celestial bronze would go a long way to pulling this off without my true form.
Before I could raise the alarm, somebody beat me to it.
"The enemy has come!" Artemis screamed. "Wake yourselves! Raise your weapons! We are the last— us, and no other! If we fall, it ends! Keep the story alive!"
Cheers tore from the mouths of groggy mortals. They took up positions remarkably fast. Overhead, the ceiling was still shaking. The enemy was coming.
Someone tried to call me back to the defensive line but I waved them off with a smile. I flexed my fingers. I thought I could smell the acrid tang of acid, but maybe I was just imagining things. No one spoke. The world stood still… until it exploded.
A small barrier had been erected on the stairs, similar to the one that the lone hydra busted through at the men's camp. Instead of monstrous snake heads, this time it was snake legs I found myself facing.
Scythian Dracaena swarmed down the steps. They wielded shields and curved swords, equipped with armor better than they deserved. Our archers had drawn their bows, but these weren't hunters of Artemis with hundreds of years of experience. They were ordinary women, and they were scared to fire, worried that they'd accidentally hit those in front of them.
Someone tried one last time to tell me to fall back. I would… eventually. But I knew why I'd been placed here. Just like Leo and Artemis at the other entrances, my job was to hold back the tide, keeping as many mortals alive as possible. This was a team effort… but I knew who the star player had to be.
I flipped around the metal pole I'd been given, holding it like a javelin. Smiling a grim smile, I gave it my best throw.
There were so many dracaena that I didn't have to aim. Anywhere I threw it was bound to hit something. A dracaena in the middle burst into dust. Then the one behind her did the same, and the one behind her.
A line was carved out of the attackers. My weapon kept flying, killing anything in its path on impact. Somewhere out of sight, it finally hit the stairs, embedding with a crack that could be heard all the way where I was standing. The other dracaena stopped, staring at me with murder in their eyes.
"Where'd your smiles go?" I asked.
They converged on me.
Arrows flew by. I guess the mortals had decided when a hundred plus monsters were charging, it was worth the risk of a bad shot hitting me in the back. I heard voices behind me cry out when instead of backing up, I charged the dracaena right back.
The first one I punched so hard that her face turned into a sinkhole before she dissolved. Her bronze breastplate fell until I grabbed it, using it as a mallet to crush the head of another. I swept away five more by knocking them into each other before dropping the armor. Grabbing two fallen swords, one in each hand, I went to work.
The blades were blurs, a cyclone of dust forming around me. Even in my demigod days dracaena had been grunt monsters. Now that I had an enhanced immortal body, they had no hope of stopping me.
But there were so many. At some point, as more of them kept falling, the ones who were still alive decided revenge wasn't worth it. They started ignoring me, trying to reach the mortals. There was no way I could stop them all.
I still tried. I cut down anything that slithered, twisting and spinning as I sliced them to ribbons. But there were always more. They reached the barricade, locking the mortals into combat. Almost immediately, I spotted sprays of blood, some from non-lethal wounds while others the victim wouldn't be recovering from.
I couldn't help but roar with rage, but my body was already moving as fast as it could. The dracaena swarm was finally beginning to thin, but they weren't done yet. I could hear brutal fighting at the other entrances… and the enemy wasn't even trying yet. This was only an expeditionary force. There was no other explanation for the lack of heavy-hitting monsters.
Artemis may've lost her divine powers, but I hadn't. With a single choice, I could crush this entire attack before any more lives were claimed. I knew I could! But I had to force myself not to.
If Hyperion's main force was destroyed like this, he would hide himself deep in his fortress and make sure we never reached him in time. Revealing myself would make everything we'd done so far worth nothing. Eventually, even with my protection, the world would catch up to these people and crush the last of them. The only way out was to destroy the ruler of the East once and for all.
But I couldn't help but ache every time I heard a mortal scream with pain, possibly for the last time. I wouldn't forget this. Every single life lost here would be added to all the death that had been wrought above, and the Titan was going to pay for it tenfold. That extra organ I'd noticed growing in my gut beat like a heart at this thought, pumping something other than blood.
My eyes flickered over the chaos in front of me, noticing that the dracaena had been reduced enough for me to actually follow what was happening. For all the mortals that had fallen, more were still standing and fighting. They could handle the remaining dracaena. Without waiting for doubt to creep in, I sprinted up the stairs.
I refused to slow down for anything. Monsters burst into particles as my pilfered swords cut through them, armor and all. There were only a dozen or so Dracaena on the stairs. Behind them, I spotted the first Hydra.
At least twenty heads sped toward me, filling the hallway. I went low, sliding toward the ones on the bottom and slashing them out of the way. I kept sliding until I found four squat legs around me, at which point I dropped my swords and wrapped my hands around its stomach.
Offering my biggest, nastiest hug, I stood up, lifting the large monsters off the ground. I could feel its insides shifting beneath its sleek scales. Multiple somethings popped. All its heads let out an unearthly wail— then the monster's life ended in a finality-filled crack.
I marched out the other side with dust mixed into my hair and coating my clothes. I needed a shower, but I'd settle for some blood. Two Pandai stood frozen, swords in their hands as they stared at me. They were a little smaller than the one I killed earlier. Looking at them, I cracked my knuckles.
"Just remember," I said. "This is your fault."
They looked at each other. One charged while the other sprinted for the exit.
A sword whistled at my throat, but I leaned back just enough to avoid it. A stab was aimed at my stomach next, but I slapped the flat of the blade with my palm and knocked it off-course. Before the Pandai could react, I'd buried a boot in his gut and launched him into his fleeing friend.
I was on them before they could untangle their limbs. They both tried to stab me, aiming at different parts of my body, but I was faster. I interlocked my fingers and brought my hands down like a club, crushing their torsos and cracking the floor beneath them.
All that was left behind were their swords. Unlike the dracaena who brought steel weapons perfect for killing mortals, the Pandai were using real celestial bronze. I took their swords before I returned to the station.
Things were going well, but I had a bad feeling. I was starting to learn why the Pandai had such a fierce reputation. Those two knew that I was out of their league, but they'd reacted quickly and done the best thing they could, sending one to stall me while the other fled. They were extremely tough by monster standards, too. Before becoming a god, a single one would've given me a tough time.
There was something about the way they wanted to run, too, that I couldn't let go of. This whole attack seemed awfully strange. It was like they were feeling us out, rather than trying to wipe us off the face of the planet in one crushing attack.
It was over by the time I got back. More mortals were being carried to the tent filled with the injured, but the last of the dracaena had been slain. The other entrances were quiet too. I took a moment to appreciate that we were alright for now. I spotted Artemis standing next to Katie, but for some reason they didn't look happy.
I followed where they were looking… and suddenly I understood why the Pandai had been trying to retreat.
The ceiling had been damaged during the fighting. There was a cave in, soil and hunks of rock forming a large blockage. The part that collapsed was none other than the service tunnel. The last, hidden way out we had been banking on was gone.
"They won this battle," said a girl's voice.
I turned around to find Reyna. She was in a wheelchair again. Although this one looked much more beat-up than her old one, I was impressed Artemis found one for her at all. The Roman demigod was looking at the blocked service tunnel with a neutral expression.
"These people are trapped," she said. "They will have set up camps outside the other exits. They can launch as many attacks as they want, crushing them slowly. Or they can just starve them out. Artemis will be left alone… But only if they don't choose to end it sooner."
She was right. These people were out of options. I could already see defeat written of faces, despite having repelled the attack. But my heart had started beating. I was having to try not to smile.
When do you think a coward shows their face? I'll give you a hint. They like to look tough, showing up in the nick of time to crush enemies who've already been defeated.
Hyperion was coming. And when he arrived, I was going to show him there were worse fates than photosynthesizing.