Chapter 63: Unpleasant Reunion

  All the trolls we'd fought so far had looked horrific but the one Athena had been fighting looked by far the worst. Apparently she'd used her Paldion miracle several more times to try and destroy its heart, presumably in the hopes of stopping its regeneration cold but it hadn't worked. The nces of concentrated life force had managed to pierce the creature alright but it hadn't actually hurt it much. After each attack pink flesh had bsted out to repair the damage, resulting in enormous shafts of pink flesh sticking out of the creature's chest from both sides. With one of those stakes the creature had simply looked impaled but now it more resembled a horrid pink sea urchin than a troll.

  Even worse, what I had simply taken as stakes of hardened pink flesh was, at closer inspection, a hideous cluster of tiny pink arms clutching and grasping each other and I was certain they would be able to reach out and grab anything that even attempted to approach the creature.

  “Once I've sliced it, can you cut off and cauterize those stakes?” I asked Yume as we approached.

  “Of course,” she said, both swords trailing behind her as she ran.

  As we reached Athena the troll had just swung one of its massive fists at her and she had just blocked it with her shield. Instead of any fancy tricks I decided to conserve my strength and simply charged past Athena, my sword slicing a line of red into the troll's arm as I went.

  The moment the beast yanked its arm back in pain Yume nded right next to it. Her swords shimmered with an almost invisible heat mirage and as she sliced through two of the fleshy stakes the hiss of cooked meat rang out through the tholos. The pink flesh hit the ground with a wet spping sound and no bubbling flesh shot out of the wound to repce it.

  Before I could praise Yume her bdes fshed again and again and soon the beast had an expanse of hideous burnt pink flesh where the stakes had been.

  “Now,” I told Athena. “Try your miracle again.”

  She didn't say anything to me, too focused on her foe. She simply nodded and the white power of her life force swirled around her. “Pierce through, Paldion!”

  A stake of white light shot out of her spear and blew a hole a foot wide through the creature's body. The troll, evidently too stupid to understand why it wasn't healing, reached for the wound, its face twisting up in what looked like confusion as it realized it could reach all the way inside its own chest cavity. Only then did the creature finally keel over and die.

  “I don't think I've ever hated fighting something as much as these,” Athena said as she lowered her shield.

  “They suck alright,” I said, then caught Yume's gaze and nodded over to where Albrecht was fighting another troll.

  The two of us rushed off to help him and found that this time he'd gone for a different approach that had resulted in an even more grotesque outcome than st time. Knowing that he couldn't kill these trolls without our support he had clearly attempted to neutralize his foe rather than kill it. Judging by the injuries the troll had sustained he had attempted to cut its limbs off. And he had succeeded. Kind of.

  Both of the troll's arms had clearly been cut off multiple times and just clearly strands of pink flesh and sinew had shot out to hold the limbs together. The result was that the arms were now about twice as long as before and much bendier but judging by the creature's movements the limbs were now much harder to control. As we approached the creature took a swing at Albrecht. The limb extended like a frog's tongue, shooting out well over twenty feet, but the motion was so clumsy and wobbly that even with his huge frame and lugging that enormous bde around he had no issue dodging out of the way of the swing. And instead of being able to punch holes into the marble floor the way other trolls had been able to, this one's arm simply bounced off the floor.

  “I almost feel bad for this thing,” I said.

  “I don't,” Albrecht replied. “Once it figures out how to punch with those arms it's going to be dangerous.”

  I could see that. If the beast learned to compress the pink flesh and then make it expand like a spring its punches would nd like cannonballs. Of course that kind of tactic would necessitate a level of intelligence that trolls simply weren't capable of so I wasn't too worried. That said, I still wanted to take the thing out as quickly as possible.

  Once again Yume and I charged forward, me slicing with the enchanted bde and her following up by cutting off its limbs and cauterizing the stumps. With such an obvious opening in front of him Albrecht wasted no more time and sliced the troll in half with a single devastating swing that sent a bst of air outward.

  “Onto the next one?” he asked and I nodded.

  **

  There were another half dozen of the goat trolls left and the three of us made short work of them. Athena and Poseidon kept engaging the ones we weren't fighting and with the two gods keeping the trolls busy we managed to beat the rest with no trouble. By the time we had killed the st troll the others had long since finished taking down the goat-orcs and with all foes dead we all took a moment to catch our breath.

  All of my girls had come out of the fight pretty much unscathed. Alisha and Anna had done their best supporting the Heroes, as had Melinoe, Hestia and Aphrodite. Selene, Hephaestus and a few of the more defensively minded Heroes had kept the casters safe while Hermes, Atanta, Odysseus and several more of the Heroes had taken the fight to the orcs. Only Poseidon, Athena, Albrecht, Yume and I had actually dealt with the trolls and I had to admit I couldn't really bme anyone.

  Once Poseidon, Athena and Albrecht had started to engage them it had become clear that the trolls were a css above and that most fighters here had no hopes of killing them but even before that almost nobody had been willing to engage them. Most fighters simply weren't equipped to deal with huge, hulking creatures like that. Heroes who went after huge monsters were actually surprisingly rare. Most Heroes earned their title by being Chosen and killing a Dark Lord and that didn't always require them to kill giant monsters. If they ever found themselves faced with something like a troll they could simply rely on their divine miracles and so most of them simply didn't have any experience actually fighting something huge.

  In this case, however, the Heroes, even those few who still retained access to miracles, had known that this was only the first fight of many and so exhausting whatever supply they had already would have been foolish. And so most of them had opted not to fight the trolls. I couldn't bme them. Atanta's wind swords and multiplying arrows, as devastating as they had been against roughly human-sized enemies, would have been utterly useless against the trolls, even with Yume and me to support her. She simply didn't have the raw power to take down something like that easily. Oh, I was sure she could have managed it. She had felled the Calydonian Boar, after all. But it wasn't as easy as it was for Albrecht. Same with Odysseus. His enormous arrows were enough to kill multiple men in a single shot but on creatures like these trolls they amounted to little more than toothpicks.

  But that was neither here nor there. What was concerning was that, judging by some of the blood sptters on the ground, I was pretty sure we had lost at least a couple of Heroes to those trolls. They were still Heroes, sustained by the Elysian Fields, and couldn't truly die but it did raise an important question:

  “I know that the Olympians revive nearly instantly when killed but how is it for Heroes like you?”

  “Depends how badly we die,” Atanta said, then pointed at a particurly gory blood sptter. “This guy won't be back until this fight is over. But if we just get our throat slit we should show up again in a couple of minutes. And trust me, if I die here I'll keep coming until we win this thing.” A cheer sounded in response to her words.

  “So if I see someone badly hurt but not dead...” I began.

  “Slit our throats or stab our hearts to make it faster,” Albrecht finished. “It's morbid but it works.”

  “So when I killed you in that sparring match I actually did you a kindness?” I asked.

  “You did,” he confirmed. “Would have sucked to y there until I expired.”

  I nodded, slightly relieved to hear that.

  “Shall we get going?” Odysseus asked and in response Atanta jumped back to her feet.

  “Absolutely.”

  **

  Unlike every single other tholos, Zeus' was not part of the same circle as the others. The rock pteau inside the circle that should have been his was bare, a bridge of light leading to an empty pteau. Hades' and Poseidon's tholoi were much rger than the rest but Zeus' was far bigger still and located on a much rger, much taller rock pteau a ways away from that empty pteau, just to make sure you knew you were looking at the tholos belonging to the King of the Gods. Pompous bastard.

  Fortunately the empty pteau and the much rger pteau holding the tholos behind it gave us a good idea of what we were up against. Not that knowing made it any better.

  Athena had informed us that Zeus' tholos, unlike every other one, was only accessible via a bridge of light originating from the empty pteau. Unlike the others there were no stairs set into the rock itself. I supposed it made sense that the tholos belonging to the King of the Gods would be harder to breach but, then again, our enemies didn't seem to have had any trouble breaching it.

  The empty pteau was full of enemies. Athena hadn't mentioned that when she'd had her owls spy for us so I had to assume these forces had been pulled here in response to Wilhelm tattling to the Holy Maiden. And while the force looked formidable, cultists and Dark Young and more goat-orcs, they weren't what had me worried. Bck tentacles coiled around Zeus' tholos, apparently growing out of the very stone of the pteau itself, and they were so huge I was sure they were perfectly capable of spttering anyone who approached the tholos. We would either need to find a way to sneak past a forest of tentacles or we would need to take the time to take them out.

  Thankfully for us at least this was still a problem for ter. For now me and my girls had to go save Artemis and confront whoever the blond guy who controlled the goblins was.

  “So for once we get to fight without any of you showing us up?” Albrecht asked when I admitted our little detour to him.

  “Yes,” I said. “Knock yourselves out. And if you're done before we return, see if you can do something about those tentacles up there,” I pointed at Zeus' tholos. “I don't want to have to waste one of Alisha's Cleanse miracles on clearing a path but I will if we have to.”

  “I'll see what I can do,” he said. “Need to show that we were worth bringing, after all.”

  “You already did, buddy,” I told him and went to save Artemis alongside Alisha, Selene, Yume, Anna, Athena and Melinoe.

  Given that Wilhelm had clearly already told the Holy Maiden all about us we no longer needed to be stealthy and so we used a bridge of light to go from Hades' tholos to the main pteau. The light felt bizarre underneath my feet. It was solid like gss, it sounded like stepping on gss, but it wasn't slippery in the slightest.

  “Is the footing this true in the rain?” I asked Athena as we crossed the bridge.

  “It is,” she confirmed. “The marble is enchanted for that as well. You don't need to worry about slipping.”

  “Does it even rain here?” Alisha asked.

  “Of course,” Athena said. “The weather up here is... well, not the same as in the mortal realm but it is just as temperamental.”

  “Fascinating,” I said. And it was. As a child I had learned that the weather responded to Zeus' mood so unless the King of the Gods had really bad mood swings he didn't actually have control over the weather. It made sense, of course. There were many weather gods so why should the Olympian one get all the control? But it did pose the question of what purpose the gods even served if even the weather was beyond them.

  We had barely reached the main pteau when a voice I had really hoped not to hear rang out.

  “What trouble have you gotten yourself into this time you little shit?” Ares asked as he fell into step with us.

  “Ares...” I managed not to growl and was proud of myself for it. Yume, on the other hand, let out a low, rumbling growl from right behind Ares. “So, did you beat the bastard?” I asked.

  “Fuck you, Tailor,” Ares ground out.

  I looked over and narrowed my eyes at him. He looked pristine, not at all like he had just fought another god to the death. Which left only one conclusion.

  “The fucker managed to kill me,” he growled.

  ChrisLensman