Ares opened their eyes in the middle of the largest training center in Arktos. The doors to the barracks were flung wide, and young soldiers trailed out of them, slinking in the dark with wary expressions toward the light flickering distantly in the archery posts beyond the outdoor mess hall. The youngest soldier, a seventeen-year-old Mislian boy who already had the pip of the officer’s program on his shoulder, stopped to crouch behind a wooden table.
“What is it, Markos?” Anfisa, his bunkmate, was two years older but a hopeless soldier—Ares could see it in her, the flame that sputtered at the mere thought of holding a sword or drawing a bow. Out of the handful of trainees creeping across the dark training grounds, it was Markos they turned to. He’d been touched by war before—Ares could sense it in his spirit as he whistled softly, calling his demon forth out of the dark. She appeared as a bird on his shoulder, her feathers twinkling with starlight.
“Go, Poppy,” he whispered, and his demon darted out into the open. One of the trainees cried out as an arrow shot through the air out of the dark, and Ares heard Markos give a sharp command for silence as his bird circled the burning archerytargets. The five targets the center didn’t burn, and as she passed them, a spark of light hung over the bodies that had been tied there—the officers in charge of the training center, their eyes black, bloody pits, mouths open, limbs hanging listless like discarded dolls.
Markos’ mouth twitched. He’d seen death, too, it seemed. While the other trainees backed away, staggering into the open, Markos stayed hunched by the tables. He twisted round, and Ares turned with him, watching as more young soldiers emerged from the barracks. None of them were older than nineteen.
“Stay down!” Markos shouted. “It’s an attack! We need weapons!”
Anfisa, staring at him wide-eyed from a few yards away, jerked like a puppet as an arrow struck her in the neck.
“Longbows!” Markos’ voice boomed over the crowd of terrified trainees. “Poppy, I need light!”
“I’m with you!” Poppy cried, and Markos closed his eyes. Ares could see the magic building between them, and balls of bright light popped like fireworks over the training facility on all sides. They illuminated the ground like pockets of moonlight, and there were more screams as lines of figures appeared on either side of the barracks.
Ares felt another pull, and sighed as they were dragged into the armory, where seven people in red and black uniforms cut down the third trainee who tried to come through the door.
Another pull. Ares blinked, and they were behind the barracks, watching more uniformed figures draw their bows. Two trainees died as they tried to climb the fence at the end of the property, the others scrambling away from the oncoming figures. A few of the trainees had managed to grab weapons, but most were unarmed, and as they ran to find safety, they failed to listen to Markos’ orders.
The Beast who’d destroyed the watchtower at the start of the war wasn’t there. Perhaps he didn’t have to be, not when this wasn’t truly a battle. Ares stepped over Anfisa’s body as Markos threw a table over as a barricade. A few others took his lead, but it was too late—the enemy waiting behind the archery posts were already approaching, and Ares saw the moment Markos knew it was over.
Ares sat on the edge of the table, watching the boy. They’d seen this countless times in many mortals, the sudden realization that death was coming. Even Atreus had considered it as he’d navigated the currents of battle. Most surrendered, but some let the sense of defeat destroy them wholly, utterly, their spirits broken before Azaiah could carry them safely across the river.
But there were some, very few, who took another path.
“I need archers in the back!” Markos shouted. His magic must have enhanced his voice again, because the air shimmered with it. “Swords in front. Hold the line! Do not let them break it! We’re Arkoudai! No one breaks, not even one!”
Someone let out a sob as an arrow struck a teenager running from the officers’ quarters.
“Not even one,” Markos repeated, and the other trainees echoed him. Terror ran through them like lightning as hands clenched on sword hilts and clammy fingers slipped on bows.
Markos knelt at the front of the line facing the oncoming figures, and his demon nestled in his hair, whispering softly in Morrey. “I’m with you. I’m with you, I’m with you, I’m with you.”
A volley of arrows whistled through the air. Someone behind them screamed. Ares’ breath hitched as terror spiked, and there was another cry as the first volley of arrows burst into splinters midair, bits of wood and feather falling like rain.
Steel sang as swords were drawn around the waiting trainees, and Markos dug his fingers into the sand at his feet.
“All right,” he whispered, and drew his own sword.
It should not have been chaos. Few massacres were anything but brutal and calculated, leaving nothing to chance. But for half a minute, as the swords bore down and the scent of blood and meat filled the air, the youngest Arkoudai in Arktos held the line.
Ares walked among them as the enemy were swallowed by the earth or had their veins burst from the inside with Markos’ magic. They lay a hand on an unarmed sixteen-year-old as they covered their best friend with both arms. They looked up at Markos as he staggered, run through with a blade in his belly. His demon howled, and the sound shook the ground and made even Ares’ ears ring with the force of it as Markos fell to his knees.
He’d been a good soldier, a true one, but even good soldiers died in the end.
Still, Ares looked around them as the uniformed figures began the brutal job of butchering the survivors. Something tickled in their stomach, an unease they rarely felt in the heat of battle. If this were Atreus dying in defense of his soldiers, or Kataida, would they want their people to die like this?
Ares looked down at the soldier still crouching over their friend, and they raised a hand. They felt their power swell, not enough to turn the tide—there was no saving them, not now—but something, perhaps, a mercy.
There were eighteen trainees left alive, huddled in a terrified group amid the bodies of their friends. Ares clenched their fist, and all eighteen fell, slumped to the bloody sand of the training yards where they’d been shepherded like a flock before wolves. Their enemy soldiers stopped, bewildered, and one pushed aside a fallen teenager with a foot before backing up a step.
“They’re dead,” they said. They were all wearing hoods, faces hidden even as they stood in a killing ground.
Ares walked among the dead until they found Markos. His body was curled around the sword in his belly, and the man who’d killed him was also dead, blood running from his ears and mouth. His demon stood on his ear, stroking his hair with her beak as though trying to soothe him, and Ares crouched on their ankles to look her in the eye.
“Why did you come?” She spoke in the language of demons, and Ares could see a light in her beak—Markos’ soul, held gently by his demon as all Mislian mages’ were, in the end. “Why did you follow us?”
“I was called,” Ares said. “He was?—”
