Page 20 of Where Darkness Bloomed
The club swung again, crimson spraying across the Greek’s breastplate.
“No.” Apollo’s reply was flat. “Ajax of Aegina—formidable, but not Achilles.”
Ares grimaced as he scanned the battlefield once more, watching the bloody, churning chaos. Swords and spears flailed in unskilled hands, wielded mostly by farmers and shepherds. Men with scarcely a prayer of survival, sent to die by their kings. The same grim, clumsy spectacle he’d witnessed a thousand times on the killing fields.
The dance of death was brutal, unchanging.
“Perhaps Achilles oversleeps,” he grumbled, shifting his weight.
Apollo ignored him, his gaze cutting sharply back toward the Greek lines as a roar surged, swelling in the air.
The ranks parted down the center. From the shifting mass of armored bodies, a lone warrior emerged.
Clad in blazing bronze, the warrior was lithe and powerful. He advanced with unnerving calm, a sword hanging easily from his hand. Black horsehair crested his helmet. Behind him, the Greek ranks closed, surging forward, as if drawn by the force of the bronze warrior.
Over the eons, Ares had seen warriors of every breed: brutes with raw strength, tacticians who wielded strategy like blades. But this one...
This one moved like quicksilver.
Mercurial. Untouchable.
His feet scarcely skimmed the blood-soaked earth as he advanced with swift, sure steps. Trojans fell in his wake, cries cut short by his blade—a flash of lethal precision, each stroke deadly and blindinglyfast.
Death, honed to its purest form.
To lead an assault was to invite death, yet no weapon found him. Spears glanced off his armor like broken reeds, harmless. Arrows whistled past, slicing only air. Even the dust seemed to recoil from him, as if unwilling to embrace something so ferociously alive.
“That,” Apollo said, nodding to the bronze-clad figure, “is Achilles. Son of Peleus and Thetis.”
Ares’s gaze sharpened. A thrill stirred in him, sharp, visceral. Admiration and unease coiled together, indistinguishable.
For one wild, blistering moment, the urge to descend gripped him. To meet this mortal. To measure that fury against his own and see if Thetis’s golden son could survive staring into the true face of war.
Hisface.
The gods watched in silence as Achilles carved through the chaos, moving with a predator’s elegance—ruthless, inevitable. Each strike was measured, each kill deliberate, cutting through men like a blade through cloth. No wasted effort. No hesitation.
Behind him, the Greek line surged forward, ranks tightening, the tide of battle shifting under his command, swelling with every step he took. Momentum built like a stormfront, and the war—the war—followed him.
The Trojan line bent beneath the assault.
Then snapped.
Retreat was called, swift and decisive. The Trojans fell back to the stronghold of the city walls.
“Achilles!” The Greeks roared his name in unison, an earth-shaking cry. “Achilles!”
If the warrior was moved, it didn’t show.
His bronze armor was slicked with blood that trickled down in dark streams as he stalked back toward the Greek encampment. Beneath the fierce helmet, his face was carved from stone. No glory, no triumph. Only the cold, steady burn of purpose.
Ares watched grimly. “He is not immortal. Drive a sword through him, and he will die.”
Apollo clicked his tongue, his gaze sweeping the field. Chanting still rose on the air, an exultant hymn. Voices crying out not to Olympus, but tohim. The mortal in bronze, son of Thetis.
“Do they know that?” Apollo asked. Bitterness clung to theedge of his words. “The Greeks will follow him to the world’s end. They pray to him, call out to him—not us.”
Ares’s gaze was stony, still fixed on Achilles’s back. “Before this ends,” he said darkly, “they will follow him to the Underworld.”
