Free Web NovelChapter 6: Chapter 6: Speed.
Bang!
Blood splattered across the snow. The tourist who had been barking nonstop lost his head - and his mouth along with it. All it took was a single pebble.
The remaining tourists went still. From the nearby cliff, a golden-haired man stared down at them all, his golden eyes burning with fury.
"Jig’s up. Take her!" one of the tourists said - a woman, her eyes bleeding red, her teeth sharpening to points. She broke into a sprint toward Nyima.
The others followed. Horns pushed through foreheads, spikes split skin, claws tore through fingertips. Most of the Sherpas stumbled back in horror. They had grown up hearing the stories - warnings passed down by their guardians. They had always assumed it was myth.
"Demons!" a villager screamed - and then went silent, three claws buried in her chest.
It wasn’t just a myth.
Cheering was already moving. He pulled out his shotgun and leveled it at a demon charging toward his sister. "Everyone, stay calm! Our guardian is with us."
Bang!
The shot rang out, but panic had already taken hold. People screamed and scattered. Ureil drew her sword and planted herself in front of Nyima, cutting down anything that came close.
Nyima stood frozen, blood and chaos all around her.
"Who are you? What’s happening?"
Ureil stepped forward and sliced a demon clean in half, then spun to block the claws of two more.
"The name’s Ureil. A friend of your husband." She glanced back. "Down!"
Nyima dropped. A blade whispered past her head with barely a hair’s width to spare.
Ureil gritted her teeth. She couldn’t use her gifts here - not with so many people watching. She hurled her sword at the demon looming over Nyima, and it drove straight through the creature’s skull.
Something was wrong. She had counted the demons earlier. The numbers should have been dropping.
But, they were climbing instead.
Five more lunged at her at once. Across the field, Cheering kept firing, buying time, trying to protect as many of his people as he could. "Run! Get back! Mina - go! Lhaso!" He spun around, searching. "Lhaso, where are you?!"
He found her. Three demons had her surrounded, their claws raised, aimed at her throat.
His blood ran cold.
"No... no!" He raised the shotgun, then stopped. They were too close. He’d hit her.
Please. Please, no.
Then the three demons vanished. Just gone - as if something had reached into existence and plucked them out. Then another vanished. Then another. Golden streaks of light swept across the field, and one by one, the demons dissolved.
The ones surrounding Ureil disintegrated in an instant. A whisper reached her ear.
"Heal them."
She turned. The injured villagers lay scattered across the snow, some writhing, some still, but laid them gently.
I didn’t even see him. She thought.
Then the field went quiet.
"What happened?" Cheering said, his voice low, barely more than a breath.
Lhaso ran to him from across the field and threw her arms around him, shaking.
"I thought, I thought I was going to die." Tears ran down her face.
Cheering held her. He caught the faint scent of alcohol on the air, and a whisper settling into his ear like smoke.
"Keep Nyima safe."
***
Amon was still running at full speed, dragging a figure by the neck through the snow - not soft snow, but hard, packed snow that tore through flesh like gravel. A trail of blood and torn meat stretched behind them.
He hauled the demon lower and lower, grinding him into the earth, until they reached somewhere secluded and out of sight. Then he threw the body forward. It hit the ground and skidded, smearing red across the white.
"How dare you," Amon growled, standing over him. "A feeble demon, crawling onto my ground and laying a hand on my wife."
The demon began to heal. Steam rose from the wounds as bone knit itself back together, then muscle, then skin, then finally - eyes. The demon pushed itself upright, breathing ragged, and looked up at who had dragged him to the edge of nothing.
The golden hair. The golden eyes. Recognition crept across its face like a cold tide.
"The... the golden immortal? The Slayer?" it breathed. It took a step back. Then another. "No. No, I was ordered to kill someone - that’s all. Just a target. I wouldn’t dare - I would never dare touch you."
Its back met a wall of rock. Nowhere left to go.
Amon studied it. His golden eyes cut through the human shell to what was underneath - a body covered in mouths and eyes, writhing beneath borrowed skin. He knew that form right away. Minions of the fourth damned one.
"You multiplying little vermin are supposed to be locked away," Amon said. "How are you walking in the mortal world?"
The demon said nothing. Its one heart hammered louder the closer Amon came. It knew, it had always known, that this being existed before the seven damned kings. Before the gods themselves.
It spotted a cluster of tourists rounding a path in the distance. One chance.
Its body shuddered, then split - folding apart like disturbed water, fracturing into separate forms.
Amon scoffed. "Pitiful."
He raised his hand, golden light bleeding from his palm. His lips moved, shaping something ancient and cold. The fragmented shapes wavered, then began to pull - drawn toward him like iron to a magnet, unable to resist.
The demon tried to hold the split. It couldn’t. Its true form tore free from the human shell and collapsed into Amon’s grip.
Amon closed his hand around its throat. "That sort of trick doesn’t work on me. Tell me what I want to know - or I’ll damn your soul so thoroughly you won’t even find your way back to your filthy hell."
The demon trembled. "It..it was the gods," it confessed, the words tumbling out. "The gods sent me."
Amon stared at it. A demon of the fourth, running errands for the...gods?
Interesting.
"I told you - please, just let me g-"
One squeeze.
Blood hit the snow. There was nothing left.
Amon turned toward the cluster of tourists who had wandered too close. He gave them a slow wave, his hand still red.
"It’s okay. You didn’t see anything."
The tourists blinked. Then they turned and walked away, the memory already dissolving.
Ring.
Ring.
He looked at his phone. A message from Cheering.
"The village is under attack?" Amon read, his brow creasing. "No. This is a trap - that much is obvious. But who among the gods is bold enough for this?"
The familiar interface flickered into view.
[New Mission]
[Find the God of Wrath]
[S Rank]
"Oh," Amon said quietly, declining it as he always did. "God of wrath..."
He looked out across the mountain, jaw tight.
"Bloody Olympians."
