Tales of a Dead God

Chapter Thirty-One: War is Hell

It was a rush of chaos in the camps. Yelling and movement in all directions. Soldiers ran to their positions. Some with half their armor on others pulling their horses with them to get them ready for march. Noah watched Theo disappear before running off and grabbing his armor and weapon to meet up with the others. He by no means was on the level of talent these archers possessed but Gabriel wanted Noah by his side, and Lorcán had placed Gabriel in charge of this assassin team.

"Ciro?" The general looked very confused seeing Ciro standing in front of him.

"Orders sir."

The general looked over to Theo and then back to Ciro. "I was told you had your own set of orders directly from Lorcán."

Ciro nodded. "Yes sir, but I need orders from you as well, given we're riding in your calvary."

"Oh." The general nodded and turned to look over some maps that were scattered over a table. "You're leading group three." Ciro nodded.

Without another word, Ciro rushed out of the tent and into the crowd again. Theo was hot on his tail. Theo's mind was racing a million miles a minute but he couldn't focus on any of those thoughts right now. His only duty right now was to make it to his ordered position. They made it back to camp in record time and started getting ready. Ciro focused on his horse while Theo went into their tent to dress in his own armor. He saw that Noah was gone and felt the sadness build up.

Ciro entered to start putting his armor on and turned to Theo. "You wearing the witch's necklace?" Theo nodded. "Good. It may just save your life out there."

Theo paused before placing his sword on his side. The realization hit him at that moment. This wasn't some training or playing swords with his brother. He was about to go and fight for his life against an evil that had walked this earth since the beginning of the earth's existence. Ciro saw Theo freeze and stopped what he was doing.

He placed a gentle hand on Theo's shoulder. "Hey." Theo looked up into a pair of golden eyes that stared back with care and empathy. "We're going to make it home."

Theo nodded briefly thinking of if he didn't. What if? Then a horn being blown broke him out of his fog.

"Warning signal. We need to go now."

~~~*~~~

Noah stood among five other men in a small tent. He could hear all the commotion outside and his worry only grew as there was still no sign of Gabriel. After a few minutes of silence, one of the men stepped forward to speak. It was Jonathan. He was in his late twenties but seemed older from how he acted. Noah always looked up to him during training.

"As you can all see, Gabriel isn't here."

"Well, that's an obvious dumb ass." Another said.

The one looked back and rolled his eyes. "Thank you, Will. Anyways. I was informed this would potentially happen and was given the task of giving you some supplies." He pulled out some small wooden boxes and placed them on the table in front of him. He opened the first box to reveal several bottles of a silver liquid. "This is a healing potion. Any injury you receive can be completely healed with just a few drops on the sight. No, it can't reverse death." He opened a second box to reveal a red bubbling liquid inside glass bottles. "Acid. Use it as you see fit." He opened the last two boxes. One had bottles of electricity bouncing off the sides of the bottles. The other sat an iridescent black liquid. "Our wizard friends were kind enough to give us some lightning in a bottle. One time use so use it well. Now this." And he picked up a bottle of the black liquid. "Liquid death. Dip the tips of your arrows in this and no matter where you hit your target they will go down." He looked up at the group but no one said a thing. "Grab your bottles. Meet me outside, we're hiking into the tree line."