Godsforsaken

Chapter 55: Strange Creatures

Even just the possibility that the Holy Maiden might be able to launch a full-scale invasion from Olympus spurred me on, pushing me forward, faster and faster, to the point where everyone but Yume and Hermes struggled to catch up with me.

“What's gotten into you?” Yume asked.

“Hopefully nothing!” I called back. But my gut was twisting up.

In all honesty, it probably was nothing. If the Holy Maiden could somehow make Zeus tear open a hole in reality that led to the Outside, there was no reason she wouldn't have done that already. The capital would have already been overrun long before we'd set out for the Underworld. If it was as easy as convincing Zeus to do it she could probably have managed it by just promising him some pussy. But there had to be something there.

It might have been foolish to extrapolate from her plan in the Crystal Crown to her current motives but the plan back then had been something inconspicuous that would have resulted in a cataclysmic outcome had it succeeded. And seen from that perspective this was more of the same. Barely anyone had taken notice of Olympus being overrun – a fact I was savoring in the back of my mind – but if she did manage to open some kind of portal it would result in a cataclysm the likes of which the world had never seen.

Or maybe this wasn't her plan at all. Maybe she was trying to corrupt Zeus the way she had his congregation, to turn him into a puppet she could control. Nobody would believe he was helping her of his own volition but that wouldn't matter when she had Zeus himself on her side. All of the Olympians were formidable but Zeus was a cut above the rest. If even half of the myths were true, he would be a force of nature even compared to other gods.

Even before he'd had worshipers he'd managed to defeat his father Cronus, one of the Titans, a god older and more powerful than what we knew today. Not only had he beaten Cronus, he'd sliced open his belly, saved his five siblings from inside his father and then cast him and all the other Titans down into the depths of Tartarus. Although, truth be told, there likely were some embellishments to this story.

For one, Zeus had never imprisoned all of the Titans. Hecate and Prometheus at the very least were very much not locked up in Tartarus nor had they ever been. For another, I doubted he'd done it all by himself. Of course, that left the question of who had helped him. The idea that Gaia had helped him didn't make much sense given that Zeus had imprisoned her as well. But I doubted it had been as simple as the myths had made it sound.

But that was neither here nor there. I likely would never find out the true story and it didn't much matter anyway. What did matter was that Zeus was powerful and if the Holy Maiden's plan at all involved him we would be best served to hurry and free him from her grasp as fast as possible. And to do that we first had to free his brother, Poseidon.

Athena had told us that Poseidon's tholos would be guarded by beings that, to her, looked like orcs mutated by the Black Goat and so I prepared accordingly. Orcs were humanoid creatures, as tall as men and built like brick outhouses. Their bulky bodies were covered in coarse bristles and their heads were those of boars, with pig snouts and wicked tusks. Orcs were not really evil by themselves but often found in the employ of Dark Lords nevertheless, simply because that gave them ample opportunity to fight. Orcs corrupted by the Black Goat, however, were evil, as was everything else she touched.

The easiest way to fight orcs was to bring weapons strong enough to carve through both their bulky bodies and the tough armor they usually wore. I used to fight them with axes and greatswords but these days Helios Edge was the only weapon I needed, sharper and stronger than the more mundane weapons I used to have to make do with.

And so I drew Helios Edge as we neared Poseidon's tholos, then waited for a few moments for the rest of our group to catch up. When they were only a few hops behind Yume, Hermes and me I started sneaking up the stairs to the tholos until I saw what we were dealing with.

First of all, Poseidon's tholos was larger than those of the other Olympians, as Athena had told us back on the Elysian Fields. It wasn't an enormous temple structure or anything but it was much larger. And it had to be.

The tholos was, for all intents and purposes, a slice of the sea. Where the columns looked normal from the outside, they were covered in starfish and barnacles from the inside. There was a clear walkway that snaked its way through the tholos, with a space about the size of the other Olympians' tholoi at the center, but everything aside from that platform and the walkway was water, water so deep I couldn't see the bottom despite the bio-luminescent coral lighting up the depths. Going for a swim in full combat gear might not be lethal for us after our experiences in the Crystal Crown's dungeon but it would still suck. And that was a problem because Poseidon was stuck underwater. Heavy chains like the ones that had held Aphrodite had been hammered into the ground here as well, affixed to all his limbs, and another chain with a heavy anchor on it was chained around his waist, keeping him underwater. I had to assume the god of the ocean could breathe underwater, otherwise he would have died long ago and presumably popped back up into existence on the stone platform. Still, though, this had to suck.

And then, of course, there were the creatures that had done it to him.

I could see why Athena had thought them orcs corrupted by the Black Goat but they looked nothing like the corrupted orcs we'd seen back when we'd fought the Dark Lord of Shub-Niggurath.

These creatures were bulky humanoids, to be sure, but they weren't like boars at all. Rather than being covered in thick bristles their skin was bare and pale, kind of like wendigo. The comparison to wendigo was further emphasized by the cankerous growths on their chests that pulsed with something like a heartbeat, but their skin looked more textured than that of wendigo, almost like the rough skin of certain types of fish, the types that had no scales.

The creatures had talons for hands as well as goat legs and their most bizarre feature was their heads. Rather than the boar heads of normal orcs these had goat heads. Normal creatures of the Black Goat always looked like messed up goat hybrids. A goatee here, an elongated head there, the by now obligatory orange goat eyes, but these just had the heads of goats, sized for their bulky bodies but perfectly ordinary other than that, except for the part where their heads, too, were hairless and covered in that same rough, pale skin, goat horns curling up over floppy goat ears, creepy orange eyes with slitted pupils staring out from either side of the head.

Their armor, too, looked weirdly out of place. Or rather, their armor made an unnerving amount of sense.

Orcs working for Dark Lords always wore the best armor. Normal orcs didn't have particularly good armor, often relying on leather armor and their own natural toughness, but Dark Lords usually supplied their subjects with good gear, steel plates or scale mail or something similar. But it was always armor that fit the Dark Lord in question. If the Dark Lord wore heavy carbon steel plate then his orcs could be relied upon to wear something similar. If the Dark Lord preferred chainmail then his orcs usually wore that underneath their leather armor. These goat-orcs looked like they'd been outfitted for naval battle. They wore high, heavy boots and similarly heavy leather gear. They wore leather kilts and each of them had a fishing net slung over their back, tied to their armor. I didn't know if the net was for carrying gear or for abducting victims and I didn't want to find out. Their weapons had a similarly maritime theme, some wielding tridents and harpoons, some carrying heavy anchors as maces.

If our traitor was indeed Oceanus then it would only make sense for him to have equipped his orcs like that and if they'd been corrupted by the Holy Maiden afterwards that would explain their appearance. But these truly were the weirdest orcs I had ever seen.

“Yume, once the fighting starts, do you think you can dive into the water and free Poseidon?” I whispered.

“Are you sure I should be the one doing that?” she asked. “These beasts look formidable.”

“You wear the lightest armor of us,” I reasoned, “so you'll have the least trouble diving down there. And I think with your Qi you'll have the easiest time building up enough strength to break those chains under water.”

She considered for a moment, then nodded. “I will do my best. But I won't be able to support you with magic while I'm doing it.”

I nodded. Her fire magic would be of limited use here anyway, seeing as any foe she would set on fire could just cool off in the water but not having her illusion magic along would sting. We had gotten into the habit of relying on her when fighting new kinds of foes, slowing them down and making them miss so that we could study our opponents before they had a chance to be dangerous to us but this time we'd have to go into this blind.

**

I waited long enough for the rest of us to join us before quickly laying out my plan and then we engaged. Selene and I both Qi Dashed toward the nearest goat-orcs and then the battle began.

With all the momentum of the Qi Dash behind me I rammed my sword into the goat-orc's gut, eliciting a pained bleat but before I could yank my blade out of him he drew a cleaver from his hips and swung at me, forcing me to let go of the sword and dance out of the way.

Before I could even think up my next move he'd tossed the cleaver aside and was jabbing a harpoon at me, the heavy spear looking like a toy in his massive hands. As I danced out of the way of his stabs I noticed that the hands I had taken for mere talons before actually had webbing between the fingers. Strange. I'd never seen maritime features on beings corrupted by the Black Goat.

Either way, I kept dancing away from the creature and out of the corner of my eye I could see that Selene was likewise being driven back. This was ridiculous. We were powerful enough to put away dungeon bosses with relative ease. How were these goat-orcs slowing us down at all?

That being said, my sword still stuck in the beast's gut was doing work all on its own. The beast was slowing down. Black, tar-like blood was running out of its wounds, the flow increasing every time it flexed its stomach to prepare another stab. But still, how were these things giving us trouble?

I found my answer when Alisha, Melinoe and Hestia threw spells at them. A massive fireball, a purple cloud and a hail of air lances rained down upon the goat-orcs... and stopped. One orc in the back was holding up a battle standard, a crude thing made of rusted metal and barnacles, and an almost invisible barrier had stopped the spells cold. Now that I knew what to look for I could see that same almost invisible glow shimmering around the goat-orcs, no doubt empowering them.

So it was like that, huh?

As I continued to evade the harpoon of the goat-orc my sword was stuck in I pulled out a throwing knife, charged up a Qi Burst and lined up a throw on the standard bearer. The knife whistled through the air like one of Anna's arrows but as it approached the standard bearer it slowed and slowed and by the time it reached him he was able to slap the knife out of the air contemptuously.

I let out a frustrated sound and pulled out another sword, then did something risky. I used a flash step and moved right behind the goat-orc I was facing, then rammed it into his back. Immediately one of his buddies behind him charged at me but I rolled out of the way, back in front of the one I had wounded, and as I passed I yanked Helios Edge out of his flesh.

He was still reeling from my sword in his back but that didn't stop him from flailing wildly with his harpoon but now it was the easiest thing in the world to slap his weapon upward, giving me a clean angle to stab him through the canker.

The beast dropped like a marionette with its strings cut and that left me with the next problem. We'd been fighting right in front of the path through the water and the corpse blocked that path. Not a problem normally, I could just step over it, but that would take precious attention I couldn't spare when there was another goat-orc trying to skewer me with a harpoon.

I jumped back, charged up a Qi Burst and then sent a fire lance at the beast, then watched in horror as that, too, shattered as it hit the barrier. That standard bearer had to go.

Athena had clearly come to the same conclusion because a moment later I heard her call out: “Charge forth, Palladion!”

A spear of brilliant light shot forward, en route to hit the standard bearer. The divine miracle did not vanish on contact with the barrier but just like my thrown knife it slowed to a crawl and by the time it came close to the standard bearer all he needed to do to avoid the attack was to take a lazy step to the side.

I knew I should just flash step over there and end it but I was terrified of getting caught up in that slowing effect. If it could affect people the way it affected miracles and objects I would simply lay down my life for no gain.

I backed off even further and pulled out my crossbow. If my bolts couldn't reach the standard bearer I could at least put a bolt between the eyes of the goat-orc I was facing, giving me room to breathe. But as I was pulling out my crossbow I saw the orc hefting his harpoon like a throwing weapon and aborted the motion. I slammed Qi down my legs and arms as fast as I could and while he was still aiming the harpoon I blasted forward, ramming my sword into his canker and yanking up, trying to toss him off the platform.

The goat-orc was dying. He knew he was dying but instead of surrendering to his fate he decided to get the last laugh in. Instead of pushing me away and trying to save himself he wrapped his arms around me, crushing me in his grasp, and then he flung us both into the water.

I managed to suck in a huge breath of air before going under and that saved my life. For the first few moments our tangle underwater was a mess of bubbles and thrashing, all my senses overloaded. Salt water stung my eyes and I tried desperately to cling to the air in my lungs and the sword in my hands as the orc's thrashing attempted to take both from me.

Finally I kicked the bastard off me, put Helios Edge in its sheath and then took stock of my surroundings. The chaos of the battle above was so far away I couldn't even hear it and despite my heavy gear I wasn't sinking as quickly as I had thought.

From this deep below I could see that the walkway across the water didn't go all the way down to the bottom. I could actually see the underside of it from down here and far in the distance, almost too far to make out in the water, I could see a gorgeously naked Yume carving through the anchor holding Poseidon down, looking like a gorgeous foxy mermaid freeing the god of the ocean one chain at a time.

My eyes were drawn to the heavy anchor as it sank down to the bottom of the pool of water. I followed its descent with my gaze... and immediately wished I hadn't.

A mess of black tentacles undulated at the very bottom of the pool and two enormous glowing green eyes stared up at me.