Chaos In The Flesh

Chapter 11

Beep. Beep. Beep. Anomaly detected. Section 12011420919.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Anomaly detected. Section 12011420919.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Anomaly detected. Section 12011420919.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Anomaly detected. Section 12011420919.

******

September 17th, 3:27am

The massive, 6'8", 300 pound, black haired, tunic wearing, leather sandaled god of war spit a tooth out onto the dust, corn covered floor. He was kneeling on one leg while the other helped prop up his arm, barely holding him up. He was uncharacteristically breathing heavily.

His armor was nowhere to be seen. He had no weapons on him, he had received more scars since their last training session almost a week ago (a terribly long time, but Cassie wasn't complaining).

Cassie stood on the other side of the silo, her knuckles bloody and her face bruised, but she was still in her fighting stance. Her black sports bra was stained and her dark blue spandex shorts were ripped. Her sneakers were covered with blood and dust and she was pretty sure her pinky toe was broken. And even though a large chunk of her hair had come out of her ponytail and hung in her line of vision, she still tried her best to focus on Ares' movements.

The god of war groaned as he pushed himself into a standing position, but quickly tipped over and hit the wall. His head hit the metal with an echoing clonk.

Cassie flinched and put her guard down. "Brother?"

"Do not," Ares growled, grabbing his arm that broke his fall. "Call me that."

Cassie pursed her lips and limped over. Ares shifted and placed his back against the wall. His head hung at an odd angle to the side with his hair covering the side of his face that would have been visible to Cassie.

She sat on the other side of him, feeling awkward. She didn't realize how big he truly was. Well, she knew, but at this moment she felt so small. And she hated it.

She waited until he was able to catch his breath before asking, "Where is father?"

Ares looked down at her, his molten red eyes glowing dangerously. "Olympus."

She looked at him seriously. "Or dead?"

Ares raised an eyebrow. "You of all people should know that gods cannot die."

"But they can be transformed into other types of energy." Cassie looked up at the silo's roof which was partially broken. It revealed the open black sky with some stars shining lightly. "Other gods and immortals can take the energy that they are made up of and make it their own, right? Therefore, that god is forgotten and the being that absorbed that energy is stronger and more powerful."

Ares looked down at her. "Where are you going with this?"

Cassie took down her ponytail and began retying her hair up. "Smallville was attacked by an old god a few weeks back. I didn't think anything of it because of how inconsiderate he was towards my studies, but there were important pieces of evidence I gathered between that time and today.

"Firstly, he should have been forgotten, turned into other energy, or at the very most, weakened, because while he still plays a huge part of mortal society, he's not valued in that way, not like you, Athena, Artemis, etc. However," Cassie explained. "He had a pair of lightning bolts as his weapon."

"If you're suggesting they were Zeus's, you are insane." Ares cut in. "Zeus would never give his lightning bolts to anyone."

"That's what I thought at first, but then he said "Let them be scorned. Let them be ridiculed." It took a while, but I put together who hated Zeus, who would have wanted his power, who wanted revenge on him, and someone who enjoyed the despair of others through ridicule."