Page 55 of Branded By Shadow
The world went white, and what was left of my muscles seized. My half-eaten body jerked, a grotesque dance of a corpse that didn’t know it was dead. The part of me that was still human felt the jolt, a violent reanimation of nerves that should have already been silent.
Insignificant spark,the void snarled.House Zeus never knows when to quit.
As my power surged, Alexander threw up a hasty shield of arcing lightning. It shattered like an eggshell under the force of House Hades’s full might. He was thrown back and hit the wall with a satisfying crack.
The abyss inside me cackled but didn’t stop. Jet black tendrils erupted from my body, massive, coiling serpents that lashed out, whipping through the air with enough force to shatter stone. They struck the amphitheater walls, and the ancient rock groaned and cracked under the assault. Black ice spread from every point of impact, glittering with malice in the dim light.
“Archers, advance!” a new voice commanded, sharp and clear. “Suppress the target!”
A line of a dozen Artemis warriors moved into formation at the edge of the spreading chaos. Their movements were a fluid, coordinated dance. Silver bows materialized in their hands, humming with contained power. They drew and fired in perfect unison. A volley of arrows made of pure, blinding light sliced through the air, striking my churning form. The impacts were like hot needles plunging into cold fat, each one a hissing burst of pain quickly swallowed by the greater agony of my unmaking.
One of the archers stepped forward, her face set in a mask of concentration as she nocked another arrow. I recognized her. It was the guard who’d sneered at me on the claiming platform. Her eyes held the same cool contempt, except now, they were also filled with near-fanatical determination.
“His form is unstable!” she shouted to her sisters. “Concentrate fire on—”
A shadow tendril, moving faster than thought, snapped out and wrapped around her throat. It lifted her from the ground. She clawed at her captor, her feet kicking in the air, her face purpling as the life was choked out of her. The void savored her terror, a small appetizer before the main course. But it didn’t get the chance to enjoy its meal.
A searing lance of golden fire sliced cleanly through the tendril holding the archer. The moment the light made contact, a violent revulsion ripped through me. The void flinched in instinctual disgust, as if a god had spat on it. With a protesting hiss, the shadow dissipated into nothingness. The archer dropped to the stone floor, gasping for air, scrambling away from me on her hands and knees.
Through the haze of my own unmaking, my eyes found the source of the attack. Julian. Of course it would be him. House Apollo’s light was anathema to Hades’s darkness. For all that our patron gods had never fought each other, they were polar opposites. The sun simply couldn’t stomach the underworld.
Even now, Julian strode forward, his advance crumbling the shadow spikes to dust. His hands were still outstretched, palms smoking, the skin blistered and blackened from the power he had just unleashed.
“You dare touch one of my sisters with your filth.”
The void recoiled, but only for a heartbeat. Then, it surged forward, seizing not just my power, but my voice. My head tilted at an unnatural angle, and a slow, terrible smile spread across my lips—a smile that was not my own.
“Filth? How bold of you, Apollo whelp. You look down on us. We who are eternal. We who remember when Apollo first spilled his seed upon the earth.” My gaze drifted from Julian to the line of terrified archers. “And Artemis, the virgin goddess... She couldn’t help herself either. She had to breed fawns among the mortals, too. They were all so petty, the old gods.”
The distorted flesh of my arm reshaped itself, elongating into a massive, scythe-like blade of pure, solidified shadow.
“They could never see the truth,” it continued. “Mankind belongs only to the darkness. Not the light.”
With the final word, the scythe-blade swept forward in a whistling arc, aimed directly at the Artemis line. A wave of shadow tendrils erupted from my back, a forest of grasping limbs that surged toward Julian. He threw his hands out, an anguished, guttural cry escaping his lips as a defensive sphere of golden light exploded around him.
The tendrils slammed against the barrier, hissing and recoiling as if touching hot iron. The archers scattered, breaking formation as the scythe cleaved through the stone where they had been standing.
The others weren’t any luckier. Dark frost radiated from where the shadows struck. It flowed toward Marcus, encasing his boots and climbing his legs, freezing him to the stone.
“Damn you, Blackwood!” he roared, straining against the creeping, immobilizing prison of cold.
The voice from my mouth chuckled, a dry, ancient sound. “Dear gods... Ares would be ashamed. His own House. Not even realizing who they’re fighting?”
He was pinned, neutralized not by a direct attack, but as an afterthought. Somewhere in the chaos, Alexander was trying to get up, but the sheer weight of the void’s presence held him in place.
Julian remained the one true threat. His face was twisted in agony as he poured all his energy into maintaining the defensive aura. The skin on his arms was sloughing off now, the musclesbeneath visible and glowing with a sickening light. He was a bastion, a desperate, burning island in a tidal wave of shadow. The void laughed at his defiance.
“You’re the one who doesn’t realize anything!” a familiar voice cried. “Leave him alone, you beast!”
The abyss’s attention then shifted. I turned toward the source of the only other true power in this arena. Toward Cora.
“Ah, yes,” it rumbled, each word a drop of poison. “Blackwood’s broken pet. The one he tried so hard to keep from us. Aren’t you tired of being everyone’s tool? Just stop fighting and accept the inevitable.”
Cora’s frantic struggles ceased. She went unnervingly still in Helena and Lyra’s grip. Her head bowed, her auburn hair falling to hide her face. A wave of triumphant satisfaction washed through the void. It had broken her.
Then, she lifted her head.
There were no tears on her face. Her expression was one of absolute, terrifying serenity. Her amber eyes met mine, as though even through the monstrous facade, she saw the man.
