Page 41 of Chaos Unleashed

I ready myself as I finally leave the bowels of the dungeon and enter the castle, the smell of death and pain is replaced by the smell of clean fresh scents. The carpet runs the length of the corridor, and beautiful tapestries hang on the walls. I want to stop and admire them to study them closer as they each depict scenes of battles, new beginnings, and gods. I have a feeling that this is the remnants of Hades, and the tapestries in Grey’s house are in a very similar style.

I stop as some of the things that the princes have said sink in.

Holy fuck, Grey is Hades.

Oh, we’re going to have some things to talk about when I get back to them. Wait. Oh fuck, of course, that’s the reason that he has the silencing spell on him. I wonder if I tell him that I know whether he will finally be able to talk about it.

“Naughty little mouse,” Jomeial chastises as he appears in the hallway, and I curse myself for being distracted, although in my defence, I’ve just realised that one of my closest friends is a freaking god.

“You look surprised,” I taunt as I slip into a fighting stance, holding both of my swords up, ready to attack.

“Not so much surprised, Little mouse,” he sneers, “more like thrilled.”

I need to end him quickly. Once one prince arrives, the others are usually quick to follow, and although I am confident in my skills and the anger of my magic, I don’t think that I’m strong enough to take on all four of the princes together, possibly five if Azreal decides to defend his brothers. They’re all demigods, and together, they’re incredibly strong; I mean, they managed to trap Hades and put a dampener on his magic somehow so he couldn’t access all of it. I’m actually assuming they had help because although they’re strong, the things that I’ve heard about Hades would make him impossible to beat, especially for demigods. Unless, of course, the stories have been wildly exaggerated.

I’m not inclined to believe that, though since I know the kind of person Grey is, and even without all of his magic back, he was a freaking powerhouse and good too. If I manage to get back to him and the guys, I need to warn him about what’s happening here.

I infuse my magic into my weapons just in time for him to charge, swinging his own sword; that is something that I have learned about Jomieal; he loves his weapons, and I’m guaranteed to be able to fight with my own weapons, something that I prefer to do.

Our weapons clash, sparks of magic shooting in all directions and His smug smile starts to fall as he realises that I know what I’m doing. They should believe what their research tells them and not let pride blind them. I know that they’ve done enough research to question me about certain things, and they obviously know about my father and what he had me do, but for some reason, they seem to skip over the part where I’m capable of assassinating all manner of creatures.

Prideful fucks.

I spin and twirl, stretching muscles that haven’t been used properly for far too long. I enjoy the fight, but as I start to sense a significant power source approach and Poca growls in warning, I double down on my attack, infusing more of my magic into my swords and trying to find a gap in his defence so that I can take him down as quickly as possible. With a rush of power, my sword comes down heavily on his and snaps it in a move that not only shocks me but shocks him as well. Fortunately, I recover from my shock quicker than he does, my swords singing through the air as they slice through his neck. Poca darts forward and catches the head before it hits the ground. In a move that we haven't done since I last did a job, I open up a small pocket in the Void, and Poca swings his head and launches the princes’ head into the hole, yipping and jumping around happily when he makes the shot. I grin as Merri and Oryn watch curiously. I have a feeling that they’re going to want in on that trick from now on or at least to practise it.

I don’t really have time to gather myself as I feel a steep rise in the magic, and I know that one of the other princes has appeared behind me. My magic hasn’t waned at all; if anything, it’s gotten stronger somehow. It's almost like it's excited to be able to get a proper workout, and now it's had a taste, it wants more. Because of this, I end up taking Yeal out with an ease that surprises both of us. Once again, Poca catches his head before it hits the ground, and I throw it into a different pocket of the Void than I threw Jomieal's head just in case they decide to conspire. I mean, I’m not entirely sure that chopping off their heads will kill them, but I assume that separating their heads from the bodies will at least make it more difficult for them to be put back together for a while at least.

Once the body crumbles to the floor, I pause in moving on, waiting for another prince to turn up; after five minutes of no one and no power surges, I figure they must have felt their brother's life forces go out and are planning their next move. I start forward, pushing through the doors and heading further into this giant fucking castle.

As I walk, my mind drifts to the fifth prince; as I said before, I refuse to include Azreal unless he gets in my way. He’s never been the same as them, and he actually used to sneak me food before Hades turned up in the cell opposite mine. After that, he disappeared, but he never joined in with any of the torture. He never said a word either, and I kind of assumed that when the other princes didn’t have someone to take their depthless anger out on that, they took it out on him for some reason. I never begrudged him for not helping me escape; I understood that he was doing as much as he could, and that was enough for me.

I honestly think that he probably orchestrated having Hades put in the cell opposite mine, whether he knew that we’d be able to escape if we were together or he just wanted to give me some company. I don’t know, but I was always grateful for that.

My senses are heightened as I hear every soft step that I’m making, every creak of the castle, and the very light padding of Poca’s feet; he’s choosing to let me hear him so I know exactly where he is in case we get jumped. The thing is, that’s all I hear; I don’t hear anyone or anything else, and quite frankly, the castle should be teeming with servants and guards. It’s actually more concerning to me that I haven’t seen anyone than it would be if I were regularly being attacked. I mean, there were only a few Helliers guarding the prison, and there were at least twenty the last time I was here.

Of course, that may be because they had Hades in the fucking prison.

I walk past yet another set of giant double doors, and my magic pings; I’m hoping that it’s telling me that there’s a prince in there, one that I want to kill. I don’t do subtlety, now is not the time for it, so instead, I boot the door as hard as I fucking can; the wood splinters, and I realise I may have put a tiny bit more magic in that kick than I intended. Magic is immediately flung my way, but instead of it slicing me like it has done repeatedly for god knows how long, my magic grabs the strands that are coming for me and yanks them, pulling the surprised Dagon closer to me.

“Just the arsehole I’ve been looking for,” I grin, my need for revenge bubbling up to the surface.

Chapter Fifteen

Farren

I order my magic to seal the doors behind me shut again and add a layer of nasty as fuck spells. Some of them replicate the ones I had to go through to get to my magic. It’s not until I’m layering them against the door, and then windows for good measure that I realise I have the perfectly memorised, it’s almost like because I had to take them apart, violently, they’ve now been committed to my memory forever, all of them. This means that not only can I now cast some powerful and painful spells, but I can also pull them apart with ease. It also means that my magic now recognises them, and knows how to disarm them.

In trying to stop me, the princes have actually given me a massive advantage, and I now know thousands of spells that I had no knowledge of before.

Refocusing on Dagon as he tries to send yet another wave of his pathetic magic at me, I bat it away as if it’s nothing and pull a chair from one of the nearby tables and force him to sit down, my magic pinning him in place in a better way than anything else I could’ve used.

I know, in theory, that I should be heading straight for the key piece, but the opportunity to pay Dagon back for my missing finger and for the multitude of scars that have no doubt joined the rest of them, well, that opportunity is just too much for me to pass by. Besides, the more princes I can kill, the better off the whole of the Underworld is going to be.

Unfortunately, because of the time constraint and wanting to get out of here as quickly as possible and back to the guys, I’m not going to have much time to torture him as thoroughly as I’d like to. Instead, I settle for trying to cause him as much pain as possible in as short of a time as possible. My magic is like an excitable puppy at the thought, and I release it, instructing it to tear and slice at Dagon but to drag it out as much as possible. My magic seems to revel in the fact that I’ve given it a challenge and a time frame to do it in. Wielding it, I slice at him, my smile growing as his screams of pain echo around this room; I decide to methodically take each of his fingers, not just the finger that he took from me.

Once he’s in pieces, a blubbering mess, and no longer screaming, I take his head, ending his miserable existence and hoping that he’s with some mean as fuck Underworld demons and they’re punishing his soul in the darkest depths of the Underworld.

Opening up yet another separate pocket in the Void, Poca throws Dagon’s head in there as well, and I release my magic, holding the doors tightly shut, slowly moving through them to see that the hallway outside is empty. I move as quickly and silently as I can away from the blood-soaked room, Poca, Oryn, and Meri following closely behind me, each one of them rubbing against me every now and then, almost as if it's for reassurance that I’m still here. It makes me smile.

---