Page 4 of Flamesworn

A seed of war.

Seeds often came in the form of an assassination or the fall of a border town, but by the time anyone pinpointed the moment war broke out, they were already too deep into the thick of it. Ares sought it out, stopping and turning several times as they sensed it in the sand like a hunting cat sensing prey, until they came upon a man dying of thirst under a tree.

The man wasn’t particularly interesting—just a soldier, barely even an enlisted member—but the seed of war lay withinhim, and Ares took him by the shoulders and forced him to sit up.

The man blinked, and Ares scooped a handful of sand. It turned to water in their fingers, and the man swayed as Ares poured it over his parched lips.

“There’s somewhere you need to go, soldier,” Ares whispered. “Is there not?”

The man could hardly speak. “Axon,” he croaked. “War. They brought—the Beast brought war to Arktos. The watchtower—” He started to cough, and Ares closed their eyes, sinking deep into the memory of the earth below them. Far beneath the shifting sands, the hills of the old warriors remembered their god, and Ares’ form shifted slightly. Their hair twisted into a wreath, their belly grew, and their body hummed with the power of a god that gave and took life in the ancient hills of Iperios. They kissed the soldier, breathing life into the seed of war within him, and the soldier stared at them with eyes far brighter and more alert than before.

“Who…Who are you?” he asked.

“I am what follows you,” Ares said. Their ancient form disappeared, and they were back to the lean, uniformed figure that belonged in modern Arktos. “And what is your name, soldier?”

“Castor,” the man said, looking down.

Ares nodded. “Get up, Castor. Go to Axon.”

“Please.” Castor bowed, forehead pressed to the sand. “Please, have mercy. Don’t do this.”

“So you do recognize me.” Ares stood. “Then you know I am inevitable. Go. I have given you the strength you need.”

“Please, god.”

Ares waited for the man to stop weeping into the sand. They fed him water from their hands again, even though he sobbed and begged in a broken voice for mercy that wouldn’t come.

Ares said nothing. They simply waited, and when Castor stumbled, shaking and shuddering, toward the heart of Arktos, Ares followed like a vulture sighting prey.

Axon was bigger than it had been in Ares’ time. It wasn’t as grand as the old empire that lay under the dunes, but it was a vast, orderly city created by economical minds, and Ares could see Atreus’ influence everywhere. The simple layout of the streets, the soldiers on duty in the public paths and roads, even the uniformity of the houses reminded Ares of Atreus’ plans. He would have loved this Axon, if he’d become Ares’ companion as he should have been.

Pain stung Ares’ chest at that thought, but they pushed it down. They’d relived Atreus’ death enough in dreams. They didn’t need to relive it in the waking world, too.

Castor didn’t have to walk far once he reached the city limits. One of the tidy little pretend soldiers in the street spotted him immediately—though they didn’t recognize Ares—and in a few minutes, a group of other pretend soldiers came by with a wheeled stretcher and a doctor. Castor looked back at Ares as he was lifted onto onto the stretcher, and pointed to them.

“Do you see them?” he asked. “Do you? Do you see them following me?”

“Hallucinations, possibly,” the doctor whispered to one of the soldiers. Ares smiled.

“No!” Castor shouted, gripping the doctor as he was pushed into the stretcher. “You can’t just leave them there! Don’t let them into the city! Don’t let them come! Turn them back!”

Ares laughed, and one of the other soldiers stiffened, turned, and took a step back as their gaze locked onto them.

“Attention, soldier,” Ares said, and the soldier looked to Castor sobbing on the stretcher before turning back to Ares. “Will you send me back?”

“Someone’s—Someone’s there,” the soldier said. “He’s right. Someone’s following.”

“Don’t let them come!” Castor reached for one of the people holding him, and came up with a weapon Ares hadn’t seen before. It was metallic and heavy, and quite cumbersome, but it was certainly a weapon of war, dragged from the earth and shaped for a terrible purpose. The soldier pointed it at Ares, and Ares staggered as something blasted through them. Metal. Powder. Grit. Ares dipped a finger inside the wound it made and sucked off the blood, tasting metal. It reminded them of the powder that pirates used in their cannons in the southern seas.

“Do it again,” they said, as the other soldiers struggled to disarm the man who fired the weapon. “Do itagain.”

The man’s finger twitched. Again, delicious pain dragged through Ares’ body, and the other soldier who could see them cried out, reaching for a crossbow. He aimed it at Ares, and Ares strode toward him, their wounds already closing, the taste of blood and powder on their tongue.

“You’ve already let me in,” they said, and the other soldiers shouted in horror as the crossbow bolt went off—and went silent as the arrow didn’t fly into the street but stopped in the middle of the air. Then they all saw Ares at last, every one of them, staring in silence as Ares ripped the arrow out of their belly and licked the shaft.

“Go on, soldier,” they said to the man they’d followed from the desert. “Do your duty.” Then, fueled by the fear of the soldiers, they made themself vanish.

The chaos was almost amusing. Atreus would have been horrified. What kind of military was surprised by the presence of war? Were they not Arkoudai? Ares stayed at their heels as they rushed Castor to a building that hadn’t been there in Atreus’ time, where he slowly got to his feet with the doctor’s help. He limped into the building, and the soldiers around the entrancefrowned as the other soldiers joined them, weapons drawn. One went running down the street, and Ares sat on the steps of the building, kicking their feet out into the stone street.

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