Changing the Future

Chapter 42

When I landed, there wasn't a soul in sight. Well, let me rephrase that. There wasn't a living soul in sight, because there were still a few Lares milling around, concern evident on their ghoulish faces as they all faced eastward.

I tapped the heart charm on my bracelet, my armor appearing on my body with a flash of gold. That had been a gift from Salina, whom I hadn't seen since December, after she had found out about what I was doing for the gods again.

"No daughter of mine will be forced to fight without armor," she'd huffed before adding the charm to my wrist herself. I'd tried to argue against it, saying I could just shove my armor into my bag, but one look from the goddess was enough to shut me up and quietly accept the gift.

You wouldn't think the goddess of wishes would be that frightening, but she so rarely got angry, meaning that when she did show signs of irritation or anger, it was quite terrifying. That'd be as if Hestia started screaming at someone for dropping a cup – unheard of and completely frightening.

Still, it was a handy little gift, especially with how often I was finding myself outnumbered in the missions I was being sent on.

"Where is everyone?" I asked myself, turning a corner so sharply that I almost knocked over a statue of Ceres.

I received my answer in a form of a flash-bang grenade. Off to my right, I heard someone shout, "Take cover!" before an explosion of blinding light filled the sky, brighter than as if someone had chosen to stare at the sun. Then followed the actual explosion, the sound loud enough to cause me to wince even though I was far away from the grenade. If that was true, I didn't want to think about the eardrums of those in close proximity.

Despite my wounded leg, I took off running in the direction of the fighting, deciding that the best thing I could do right now was to fight through any discomfort.

By the time I was on the field, Epithymia was already unsheathed, managing to slash through two empousai that I'd caught off guard. But while that may have been a substantial number of empousai during the Battle of the Labyrinth, that was nothing compared to the mess that was covering the Field of Mars.

Hannibal, the war elephant, was stampeding on the opposite side of the field, his rider guiding the elephant to trample as many enemies as possible. But the thirty-some hellhounds were making it nearly impossible for Hannibal to move, cutting off the elephant from the rest of the legion while trying to eat his rider.

Overhead, Reyna was riding Scipio, shouting directions at the legion. Meanwhile, I had no clue where Jason was in this mess, only knowing that he'd been alive when we'd last talked about three minutes ago.

I really didn't have time to look for him, though, parrying a blow from a dracaena before stabbing her in the chest and pushing myself farther into the fray.

It wasn't even five minutes before exhaustion started creeping in, my muscles feeling like I'd been pumped full of lead. It wasn't that I was out of practice or anything, but I dare you to fight like your life depends on it when an injury was already sapping your strength, not to mention the four-thousand mile jump from New York to California.

From underneath one of my vambraces, I pulled out a small square of ambrosia, bit off the corner, and shoved it back in place, the heaviness fading a little bit from my arms. I adjusted the grip on Epithymia once more before returning to my slash, parry, stab, and kill technique, slowly taking out the monsters one by one. Even so, this was taking forever, and the legion seemed on the verge of collapse.

"Fourth and fifth cohorts, cincinno conspergitur scuta!" Reyna shouted, swooping down towards the monsters, managing to sever the heads of at least a dozen Laistrygonians before returning up into the sky. "Third cohort, iactare tela modo!"