Page 80 of Gods' Battleground

Nero held me for a moment longer, then gingerly set me on my feet. “This way.” He waved for me to follow him, then turned and headed for a rocky archway at the end of the tight chamber.

We passed through the archway, entering an underground cavern of beautiful, shimmering rocks. Rainbow light bounced off the high ceilings of the cave. Water churned in rushing rapids through subterranean rivers, pouring into sparkling lakes.

“This place is so beautiful,” I said. “Being here, it makes me feel even worse about mining it. And disturbing the dead.”

“These Immortals have been dead for millennia. There’s nothing left of their bodies. It’s just underground rivers and pools of magic. Some Nectar, some Venom, some mixed into Life. That’s how nature is. It’s a cycle of life and death. Even in death, the ancients of the past are bringing life to the future.”

I drank in his words. They were so beautiful. As beautiful as this place.

I sat down on one of the large rainbow rocks and started sketching, marking my map everywhere that we saw shimmering white Nectar or glowing black Venom flowing in the streams. And Nero sat beside me, watching, waiting. It felt good to have him here with me.

“Ok,” I said when I was done marking this chamber on my map. “Let’s move on.”

We headed deeper into the caves, following the passageways, exploring the caverns, marking my map. And then we made a totally unexpected discovery.

“A city,” I gasped as we entered the largest cavern yet. “An underground city.”

Nero’s gaze panned across the buildings, down the roads, up the spires to the rocky ceiling high above. “It’s all perfectly intact.” He looked at me. “Perfectly preserved.”

“And perfectly abandoned,” I commented. “I wonder what happened here.”

“Let’s check it out,” he said.

We explored the city street-by-street. It looked so normal, so familiar. It could have been any city on Earth, from the time just before the gods and demons had come to our world and turned it into a war zone. It was almost like a great hand had scooped up this city and dropped it into this cavern—like a scene, a moment frozen in time, set in stone, now trapped inside a snow globe.

The city was perfect, preserved, pristine…but not abandoned. We discovered that inside the old library in the city center…or, rather, as we were attempting to leave the library.

“You,” I gasped, staring wide-eyed at the woman cutting off our escape.

She and twenty-some armed soldiers.

“You’re dead,” I told her. “All of the princes died at Midnight Castle.”

The Sun Queen folded her gloved hands together, a dark smile twisting her red lips. She’d traded in her soft silk gown for hard battle armor.

“Haven’t you learned anything by now, Leda Pandora?” she said, brushing her dark braid off her shoulder. “The past has a nasty habit of coming back to bite you in the ass.” Her gaze slid to Nero. “Isn’t that right, Nero?”

Nero hit her with a granite stare, a stare without mercy, a stare seething with anger.

“You know her, don’t you?” I asked him. “You know the Sun Queen.”

“Yes.” Steel echoed through the open room as he drew his sword. “But she didn’t call herself the Sun Queen back then.” He pointed the tip of his blade toward her. “That, Leda, is Kia Brightwing, the former Angel of New York and traitor to the Legion.”

CHAPTER 26

OUT OF THE SHADOWS

As far as surprises went, I’d had way better ones than this. The traitor Kia Brightwing and the slave lord pirate Sun Queen were the same person. Ok, fine, they were both totally evil, so my brain could process that.

But what I didn’t get, didn’t understand, was what the evil queen was doing here with her evil army. How had they even found this place to begin with? I was the one with the map of the Ancient Lands. Theonlymap.

And, come to think of it, how had she gotten here? According to that same map, the only way to or from this world was through the magic mirror. That magic mirror only went to one place: Midnight Castle. My castle. If she’d been sneaking around my castle, I would have known it. I’d installed the same security system I had back in the Legion Purgatory office, and Miss Queenie Brightwing there was most definitely not on the guest list.

I can feel my magic again,I transmitted to Nero.

Yes,he agreed.This particular building seems to amplify magic rather than mute it.

I cataloged the soldiers closing in around us. The horde clashed horribly with the bookish setting. The men looked likebarbarians: tall, strong, and dumb. And half-naked. They were showing more skin than cloth on those big bodies. They were showing weapons too. Lots and lots of weapons. Knives, swords, whips, guns, and chains…they were strapped to the soldiers’ bodies like a shrine to modern and medieval warfare. All that weaponry must have weighed a ton.

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