Zyros crashed into him in a brilliant flash of white light. An explosion of energy burst out from their meeting, tearing through stone structures and leveling most of the city. Caelan flew backward, the air knocked from his lungs. He managed to land on his feet, but he still slid through the rocks, grit, and debris.
With a hand braced on the ground, he shook his head, trying to clear the ringing from his ears. His vision doubled and his head throbbed as if his brain had been knocked against the sides of his skull. Blinking, he forced his eyes to focus, but he wasn’t sure he could actually believe what he was seeing.
Zyros was crouched opposite him a few hundred yards away, appearing as stunned as Caelan. The creatures of her making who had been too close when she attacked had also been knocked back, but their bodies were now broken and mangled from the force of the blast. They were strewn about like bits of fleshy confetti over the rubble.
And standing beside him were the other gods. On his left were Tula and Kaes, while Nyx and Caris were on his right. Their eyes were locked on Zyros.
The Goddess of the Hunt wheezed a low, rough laugh. “Finally come to watch your chosen champion fall.”
“We couldn’t let him have all the fun,” Nyx murmured. He twirled his staff in one hand and slammed the end on the stone ground with a metallic thunk that echoed through Caelan’s chest.
“It doesn’t have to be this way, Lore,” Tula called out, ignoring Zyros completely. “Stand against her and we can save you.”
Caelan averted his eyes from the God of Wisdom and clenched his teeth to hold in angry words as he rose. She was the last person Lore wanted to hear from. This had all started because of her jealousy and continued out of his blind love. He didn’t want her help, and he didn’t want to be saved.
When Caelan looked up, it was to find that Lore hadn’t moved an inch. It seemed as if he was not even aware of their presence or what was happening around him.
“My Lore will never leave me,” Zyros snarled.
“Then he can be destroyed with you,” Kaes bellowed, his voice low and deep like the booming pound of thunder.
Overhead, the blue sky turned black as night. Dark, oily clouds poured across the heavens, outlined here and there by bright flashes of lightning followed immediately by crashes of thunder.
With a cackle from the God of Storms, lightning slammed into the ground again and again. Each time Zyros darted out of the way, dodging each one as if she were a child skipping easily through puddles, her own laughter rising up to compete with Kaes’s.
“Enough of this nonsense,” Tula snapped. She waved her right hand at Zyros and vines shot out from the nearby forest, thorns more than an inch in length lining the green ropes. The Goddess of the Hunt slashed each vine in half with her talons while continuing to dodge the lightning. The vines writhed and toppled on the fragmented rocks strewn about the city, carpeting it in a new coating of lush green, but they did nothing to stop the goddess as she drew closer to them.
Snarling in frustration that neither Kaes nor Tula had managed to even touch Zyros, Caelan launched himself at her. His blade flashed in the lightning strikes as he collided with the Goddess of the Hunt. He traded blows with her. Each time, her claws slammed into his blade or glanced off the protective shield he held in place.
The battle raged all over the city, over the broken buildings and through half-standing walls. The lightning continued to hammer the ground and the damn vines still snaked out, forcing Caelan to avoid them the same as Zyros. The God of Storms and the Goddess of Life didn’t care whether they took him out as well as the mad goddess.
After far too long, Caelan’s foot finally caught on a chunk of rubble and he went down hard on his ass. He immediately rolled to avoid the strike that would inevitably follow from Zyros.
Instead, there was a roar and a scorching flash of heat and light. Caelan jerked to find a wall of flames separating him and the Goddess of the Hunt.
“Do it,” Caris snapped.
For a heartbeat, he thought the Goddess of Fire was shouting for him to act, but in the next heartbeat, the entire world slowed. Time crawled to the point of stopping, frozen so that the flicker of flames became a nearly impenetrable walls of blinding light and melting heat.
With a wicked grin and a flick of her fan, Caris flashed across the distance that separated her and Zyros. A long knife of flames erupted from her free hand, and she thrust it at the goddess.