Horsemen's War (The Rebellion Chronicles #3) - Steve McHugh Page 0,96
the ground there.”
“Just once, I’d like it to be easy,” I said with a slight sigh.
I looked across at Selene and spotted Judgement standing beside her. “Judgement,” I said, letting my air magic carry my words. “You think you can give me a hand with this one? We need a constant stream of flame.”
Judgement smiled. “Sure thing.”
Judgement wrapped me in a shield of dense water as I poured flame into the fog. It immediately ignited, causing a massive explosion of power that forced me back, the water shield vanishing in an instant. We tried again, bracing for the explosion this time, and began to walk toward the realm gate. The closer we got, the less fog we saw as the flames managed to ignite it the second they touched.
Eventually, we were both twenty feet from either side of the realm gate, and the earth was a scorched mess. The fog, however, was still coming up, albeit slowly.
“We need the earth lifted up,” Tarron shouted.
“Is he taking the piss?” Judgement asked.
“Apparently not, no,” I said with the sigh of someone who had been having several exceptionally long days in a row.
“You got this?” Judgement asked me. “You keep burning; I’ll do the lift thing.”
I nodded, using all my concentration to keep the flames focused on the fog, almost crushing it, while at the same time using the flame to shield the explosions from hitting both Judgement and me. It was hard work, and sweat poured down my face through sheer exertion of power as Judgement slammed her hands onto the ground and the water tore the earth apart, revealing half a dozen large metal barrels, each one with runes on it that allowed the gas to escape through a hole in the top.
“That’s not dwarven,” Judgement shouted.
Tarron was next to us in an instant, looking over the barrels, while I forced the flame to change into six different streams and stuffed them over the barrels to try to stop the fog. Each barrel was the size of a large bathtub, so after a few seconds of this, I was already on my knees, my entire body telling me I really needed to stop.
“Stop,” Tarron shouted after he’d spent several seconds writing over the runes that were on the barrels.
I shut off my magic, collapsing back onto the dirt.
Judgement’s smiling face appeared above me. “That sucked, eh?”
I nodded. “Let’s not do it again.”
“Is it safe?” Judgement asked Tarron as I accepted her hand and got to my feet.
“There’s still gas in here, and they need moving, but I’ve disabled the runes,” Tarron said. “These are elven.”
Selene walked over to us all and gave me a brief kiss. “How is it you’re always wherever it’s most dangerous?” she asked.
“Luck or I’m cursed,” I said. “You pick.”
I told her what had happened in the city.
“So Mordred is still in there?” Judgement asked. “I’m going to go find him, then.”
“I’ll join you,” I said. “Tommy ran off, too, and I have no idea where he is, but I don’t know if my friend is still in there. I don’t know how I can break whatever was done to him.”
“Excalibur,” Selene said. “That might work.”
I nodded. “It’s worth a shot.”
Once the barrels were moved and the area was declared safe, the two groups remained apart, but a third was created further away from the realm gate so that they couldn’t all be seen from the city. We’d lost 106 people. Their bodies had been destroyed in the initial explosion or melted by the fog. Hera’s legacy of creating horror continued.
Arthur had lost nearly a hundred Horsemen, but I got the feeling they were acceptable casualties to him.
I remained by the realm gate with Judgement, Selene, Hel, and Loki.
I looked down toward the city. It was a fair distance away, but there was a blast of something that caught my eye, and I was pretty sure that the large plume of smoke that was thrown up into the air had something to do with it.
“More trouble?” Loki asked me.
I shrugged. “I’m not sure yet, but probably, yes.”
“Nothing is happen—” Loki said just as the drawbridge to the city evaporated in an explosion of light so big it also took out a large chunk of the wall on either side. Pieces of debris rained down into the river, and a bridge of ice appeared through the smog and dust that were thrown up. Mordred walked across it.