Fallen Gods Read online

  Thanatos struggled back to his feet, put his foot on the body, and pulled out the spear. He stopped for a moment to look back on the epic battle unfolding before him. Bodies were being thrown about by the might of the gods. The clash of metal was almost enough to drown out the lashing of thunder overhead, and the cries of the wounded echoed about the courtyard. Ares was still fighting like a lion. Hades looked to be having a hard time against him, even with the help he had. He stopped for a moment and locked eye contact with Thanatos.

  “Go on, do it!” he yelled before being forced to defend himself from the fury of Ares once more.

  He didn’t need to be told again as he leapt on to the stairs and charged up them. Invigorated to finally be reaching the ultimate target of it all. He stormed up hundreds of steps, arriving at the crest. He stepped out onto the edge of the open temple. There he was, Zeus himself, all alone. This moment had been chosen very carefully, as so many of the gods were occupied or engaged in fighting elsewhere. Zeus could see they had chosen their moment well, but he would not show a single glimmer of weakness.

  “This is your doing?” Zeus asked in his deep growling voice.

  “I never wanted this, Allfather. But I warned you many times. Your reign has turned to one of tyranny.”

  “What would you know about tyranny!”

  His voice carried like a shock wave.

  “Step down. Let someone else wear the crown. It’s time to let someone else rule!”

  “Nobody can rule here but me, and anyone who challenges me will be destroyed!”

  Thanatos shook his head. He’d hoped to reason with Zeus, though knew deep down that it would be futile. Zeus was unwavering in everything that he did.

  “You have come here to what, kill me?”

  “If I have to.”

  Zeus smiled, but it soon turned to a laugh as his whole body shook, and the room echoed violently. The smell of death was in the air. But it was not over yet.

  “I never wanted any of this, but we can’t go on like this!” Thanatos pleaded.

  Tears were almost coming to his eyes. He was scared, sad that it had come to this. It was clear to him now. All his suspicions were confirmed. Zeus would not leave without a fight. The Allfather was empty-handed, and yet he was never unarmed. He clenched his right fist, a flash of light erupted, and a fizzling spear extended out in his grasp. The lightning bolts of Zeus, a weapon that struck fear into the hearts of men, and many gods, too. Thanatos was all too familiar with how devastatingly effective it could be, but he had not come unprepared. He drew out a small shield that had been slung on his back.

  Zeus began to laugh at the dinner plate size shield he held. But Thanatos shook it, and the diameter expanded out to three times its size, fizzling with the same energy of Zeus’ lightning bolt. Zeus’ eyes widened at the sight of it. It was the smallest of reactions, and yet Thanatos spotted it.

  “You’re going to need more than that to defeat me!”

  Thanatos knew that was likely true, but it wasn’t the only surprise he had up his sleeve. He drew back his spear in readiness for the fight. He’d never beaten the Allfather in training, and yet somehow, he believed this could be different, he had to.

  “Last chance, end this now, or die!” Zeus roared.

  He simply shook his head. Zeus drew back his lightning spear and launched it with all his force. The spear like weapon struck his shield and exploded in a hundred sizzling shards that scattered all around. Zeus looked angry, and the lightning spear was in his grasp once more. For it was not one weapon, but a great ability that had been bestowed on him. He threw another, and it shattered like the first. Thanatos peered over the shield, thinking that would be the end of it, but Zeus threw a barrage at him in a rage. He hunkered down and took the impacts. Each one seemed heavier than the last, and his arm was becoming numb. Finally, on the ninth impact his shield flickered as though it was losing power. It was a terrifying prospect. He had but one choice, to go forward.

  He let out a visceral war cry as he charged forward, taking another two impacts on his shield. Shards and sparks of light flashed past him. One cut his cheek, but he continued until he was close enough to strike with his spear, forcing Zeus to defend himself. He used the lightning spear in two hands, swinging it like a mighty pole weapon. He beat Thanatos’ spear aside and swung a heavy blow down toward his head. He parried it with his shield, but felt his arm almost buckle under the power of the blow. He came out from the cover of his shield to strike, but was met by Zeus’ foot kicking him in the chest. He was launched back and hit the floor. Sparks flew from his armor as he slid to a halt. A lightning bolt followed him, and he narrowly raised the shield up in time to save him.

  He rushed forward again and thrust forward, but Zeus grasped his spear in one hand and cut it in half with the other. He tossed the weapon head aside as Thanatos backed away. He drew out his short sword, the only thing he had left with the ability to kill Zeus. He ran forward once more, cutting from one side to another, but every blow was parried away until finally his wrist was locked by a firm grapple. He was powerless in the hands of the mighty Zeus, who held him like a ragdoll.

  “In what dream could you ever have defeated me?” He had a wicked smile on his face. Thanatos had no response. He was exhausted and completely outclassed. Zeus lifted his lightning bolt to deliver the blow that would end him. Thanatos showed no fear. He’d accepted this might be the end of him. But as Zeus was about to strike, he was hit in the back. He staggered, losing his grip on Thanatos, which is when he spotted Zeus’ attacker. Hades had thrust a blade into his back. Eris was by his side, the daughter of Zeus, and several other gods.

  Zeus lashed out and struck Hades with a backhanded strike. The powerful blow rocked him, and he staggered away, but Eris leapt in with another thrust that drove deep into his flank. It was enough time for Hades and the others to get back in the fight, relentlessly cutting and stabbing at Zeus. Thanatos was pale and appalled with what he was seeing.

  “Thanatos, come on!” Hades shouted.

  As he got to his feet, he staggered back. In that bloody moment, all of his doubts were confirmed. He never wanted it to go this far. Zeus pushed them away one last time as he staggered back, pierced more than a dozen times, and looking weak. The look of betrayal and disappointment on his face was heartbreaking. Thanatos knew he had made a mistake, but there was no undoing it.

  “It’s over. You’re finished!” Hades gasped.

  Zeus’ disgusted look said otherwise, even if he was dying.

  “You were my family, my blood! I curse you all!” He took the crown from his head.

  “What are you doing?” Hades demanded.

  “I curse you all for eternity!” Zeus threw the crown down with all his might.

  “No!” Hades screamed.

  It shattered across the rocks before them. The entire scene erupted into a blinding ball of light. Thanatos faded into oblivion as he passed into a different realm. He knew what this would do but had no idea what it would be like to experience. They had been cast to the stars. Life was over, as he knew it. They had been expelled from Olympus. All of them.

  Chapter 2

  A blade flashed through the air from one side to another with lightning speed, striking back and forth, barely being parried by a similar blade as the aggressive attacker pressed his opponent. Sparks flew from the training weapons as Luca, the younger fighter, backed off and seemingly had no answers to his opponent’s flurry of attacks. These were not wild attacks, but precise and accurate. The long hilts of the swords being used to maximum effect and leverage in two hands. He was just about able to stop himself from being hit, but his opponent closed on him with such speed their masks came face-to-face in an instant. His weapon was locked and his feet up in the air before he even knew what was happening. He crashed down to the mat, exhaling as the wind was knocked out of him. He gasped for air and pulled off his heavily padded fencing mask. Luca was hispanic and twenty-one years old. He had a smile on his fac
e, despite the defeat.

  A hand was outstretched to help him back up. It was his opponent. Who held his sword under his arm as he drew off his own mask. His opponent was nearly twice his age, and yet had the speed and technique to overpower him with ease.

  “Every damn time,” said Luca.

  Aaron had a huge smile on his face, but he wasn’t gloating. He just loved every minute of it. He hauled Luca to his feet, still grinning like he’d won the lottery.

  “Your speed, you’re just too fast,” gasped Luca.

  He was young and fit, and he couldn’t understand how he was being so severely outrun by the older fighter.

  “You’re thinking too much. Trying to plan out your next move between parries, that’s no good. Sure, we all have a plan when we advance, but its all goes to hell once the fighter in front of you responds. In preparing for battle, I’ve always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable, you know who said that?”

  “Should I?” Luca shrugged.

  Aaron laughed and patted him on the back. “Eisenhower. Dwight D. Eisenhower.”

  “Come on, the dude’s been dead longer than you’ve been alive.”

  “Yeah? So has everything we study here, and yet still you bug me to learn.” He smiled and pointed to the artwork on the walls. Each panel was hand painted with copies from manuals on swordsmanship many hundreds of years old. Surrounded in text in German, Italian, and English, too. It was an old building, and with the décor of the old masters, they could just as easily have been training a few hundred years ago; aside from the rock music playing and their modern training equipment.

  “All right, you’ve got a point,” he replied humbly, “I don’t know how you come and do this almost every night. You finish a shift, and you have the energy for this?”

  “You know what makes me tired?”

  “What?” Luca asked with genuine curiosity.

  “Doing nothing. Go home, sit in front of the TV, do nothing. It’s exhausting. My joints ache, my body gets stiff. I just can’t do it.”

  “Really? You gotta find the right woman.”

  He grinned.

  “What?”

  “Had that once.”

  “And?”

  “And it ain’t none of your business.”

  “Fair enough.”

  They hung up their gear while others continued to fight in the background. They were going at it with all sorts of weaponry from the medieval period to the civil war. Rapiers and sabers clashed while others wrestled bare-handed. Luca shook his head in disbelief. He wasn’t new to HEMA, but this was like nothing he’d ever experienced. He noticed two people walk in off the street, fascinated by what they were seeing.

  “What is this?” asked the woman in what looked to be a fresh-faced couple.

  Aaron smiled, realizing they’d reeled in more blood. It was hard to not see the appeal in what they were doing. The enthusiasm for it was electric.

  “Come on,” he said to Luca, leaving the new couple to one of the other instructors, who began the usual speech.

  “Hi, guys, welcome to the club.”

  “What exactly is it that you do here?” The man sounded bewildered.

  “We fight, with swords, for fun!”

  It wasn’t the sort of fake enthusiasm you’d get from an underpaid waitress in a dive bar, trying to score the best tips she could get. Ava was genuine, and as excited and enthralled by the topic as if witnessing it all for the first time. That brought a smile to Aaron’s face. To know that others felt as passionately as he did. He and Luca marveled at her sales pitch. Though in reality, none of them were there for the money.

  “We are a HEMA school. That is Historical European Martial Arts. We read, study, and practice from highly detail manuals that were left to us by masters many hundreds of years ago.”

  “And you then fight?”

  “That’s right. We don’t want to just understand these long lost arts. We want to experience them. We’re training up a new generation of sword fighters!”

  “I mean, it looks amazing, but I got to ask, why?”

  “Because it’s fun!”

  Aaron smiled as he and Luca headed for the showers, and more people began to come in from the street. It was a well-established academy, their name painted across the far wall, ‘Society of Steel.’ Ava continued to show them around the edges of the hall, as five pairs of fighters continued to go at each other with a variety of different weapons. She stopped beside them so that the new couple could get a good look, and she explained what was going on.

  “See these guys, they’re using the longsword, the sword in two hands. That’s what Aaron and Luca were fighting with when you came in. They’ve got a lot of reach and leverage, and they’re fast as hell, nothing like the movies, and there’s a load of close up work. Grappling, disarms, locks. If you like to wrestle, that’s a great sword.”

  “So you’re really trying to hit each other?”

  “Sure, but we make it as safe as is possible. This isn’t for show. We’re trying to train like these are real sharp swords, and strike in ways that would kill, while treating our defense with the same level of respect. If you were using these for real, you wouldn’t want to get hit. So the two women beside them are fighting sword and buckler, or sidesword and buckler. This is a really graceful cut and thrust fight that I absolutely love. That’s what I mostly teach here. Then behind them you have military saber, the sort of thing used in the revolutionary war and civil war by soldiers. Right at the back there, another longsword pair, and finally at the back, rapier and dagger. The longest of one-handed weapons.”

  “And that’s just for thrusting, right?” asked the new guy.

  “No, it uses a lot more thrusting than most, but it still has things in common with the sidesword you’re seeing there.”

  “So, everything you do here, it’s like, western?”

  “That’s right. We’re a school devoted to European martial arts. That includes some American stuff, too, but most of these weapons are from before we declared independence, hence the European name. But you can call them western martial arts, too.”

  The couple looked around in amazement at all the weapons and masks slung on the walls. Ornate illustrations from old fencing treatise were painted on many of the walls. They were stark and violent.

  “It may not look pretty, but we don’t actually run anyone through,” said Ava excitedly.

  She was a bubbly little character, shorter than anyone else in the room, but fit and full of energy.

  “Follow me, and I’ll show you to our changing facilities.”

  The man looked awkward and hesitated to move.

  “It’s okay. The locker rooms are unisex, with individual shower and changing cubicles. Space is a premium round here!”

  She smiled as she led them through to one long bench with lockers either side and six cubicles at the far end. Aaron and Luca were just stepping out to gather their gear from the lockers. Aaron opened his locker and pulled out a holster pistol that he slipped onto his belt. The new couple looked a little concerned as Luca did the same, but soon after, Aaron pulled out an NYPD badge hanging from a band that he slipped over his head, and Luca did the same.

  “You’re cops?” The man was surprised.

  “What, we can’t get a exercise in after work?” Luca asked.

  “I mean, no, but, you fight crime, and then you come here to fight each other, with swords?”

  “What do you do for a living?” Aaron asked him.

  “I…I’m a web designer.”

  “Yeah? So, tell me how it would be any stranger for you to finished making websites to then come out and hit people with swords?”

  “I, I don’t know.”

  “It’s okay. There’s no right or wrong answer. No answer really needed at all. You don’t need a reason to do what we do, some kind of excuse to justify it to anyone. We like swords, and we like learning to use them, and hitting each other with them. To us it makes all the s
ense in the world. If that appeals to you, come and join us. You’ll have a blast,” he said, pulling on his jacket that covered up his badge and gun.

  “I guess, I just never really thought about it. I never knew this even existed. People using swords in the 21st century, I mean, actual real swords. It’s nuts.”

  “But you like the look of it, don’t you?” Aaron smiled at him.

  “It looks amazing!” The man’s partner joined in, and he couldn’t help but agree.

  “You know we have all sorts of people who come here. It doesn’t matter what your age or your job is. None of it matters here.”

  “So what do you think guys, you want to join up?” Ava asked.

  “Sure, how can we get started?”

  “Our work here is done,” said Aaron as he and his partner left, but not before Luca shot a cheeky look back at Ava and shook his head at how beautiful she was. He thought his partner hadn’t noticed, but he was wrong.

  “She’ll chew you up and spit you out,” said Aaron.

  “What?” he asked innocently.

  Aaron just shook his head, for they both knew what he meant.

  “Come on, can’t a guy dream? It’s not like she’s my teacher.”

  Aaron laughed as they stepped out the door and onto the street. It was dark, but mild outside. They were heading in the same direction. They didn’t live far apart, and parking was hell.

  “A couple like that, think they’ll stay?” Luca asked.

  “Doesn’t happen too often, but we can hope.”

  “So, come, give it to me.”

  “What?” Aaron asked with his characteristic smile, as if he knew exactly what his younger partner meant.

  “How am I doing in there? I fight, and I do well, and then I fight you, and you’re just all over me.”

  “You’re all right, but you think too much. You think about the first and the second strike, and you can handle those, but you can’t handle the third, the fourth, the fifth.”