Six Souls [Isekai/LitRPG] [B1&2 complete, B3 in progress]

Even Aphrodite and Morana had swelled to gigantic proportions now. The battle between the minions was merely a backdrop to the real fights occurring. Winter and the Sun couldn't be driven apart; it was a grudge match between former lovers, which I suspected was why Aphrodite was involving herself in it.

I interceded as I could. A dagger cut here, then I'd vanish to avoid the blast of solar radiation from the wound, only to reappear and deflect a burning wing from one of my allies with a thrown knife.

Most of my attention was spent moving through the ranks of the minions. I couldn't pull myself away from the simulacrums of my friends, and I burned mana to call down fire or tear apart the earth in their defence.

Which was stupid. I watched them reform whenever they "died", but I still fought like a lunatic to protect them. All the while, though, I kept an eye on the one fight that mattered. Aresk was losing.

The bronze statue had taken multiple wounds, rents left behind in its metal flesh that slowly knitted back together as the spear blurred. Aresk could fight. He was fast and powerful; every blow was executed with a mechanical perfection that only highlighted the organic fluidity of his moves.

He was smart as well. Aside from the way he manoeuvred around the pair of opponents, he made sure the bulk of the damage to the minions fell on his enemy's side. I was also conscious that he was splitting his attention, keeping some part focused on me. He never did anything so blatant as to look in my direction, but I knew he was waiting for me to make my move.

But with Hadesti, the giant bloody skeleton, and Poseidon, the tentacled nightmare from the deep in play, I couldn't make my move. I would need several seconds to carry out the hit, and he wasn't able to occupy the pair of them alone.

"Munius! Marbo! Attack the gods!" I bellowed, and my titans turned dutifully and charged towards the fray. I ran in the shadow of Marbo as he bounded along, broken tusk swinging through the air.

With a scream, they threw themselves at Hadesti, managing to snag one of his arms for a second. Aresk moved, spear flashing forward to slot between Death's exposed ribcage and twist. At the same moment, Hadesti glared at my minions, his blue eyes flaring, and they began to decay where they were. They never let go, even as bits of them fell away, revealing bones and putrid flesh underneath.

I appeared behind his skull, but I didn't lash out with a dagger. My Source rose up out of my palm, and I slammed it into the back of the god's head, then I pulled on his power, sucking it away.

"I made this Source from your own," I growled, the imbalance in energies becoming difficult to manage.

"I spared you the worst visions of your future, brother," the skeleton moaned. "I didn't show you what comes after this."

"That was Time's power you used." I snapped the Source away and pulled it back beneath my skin. Where it had touched him, a section of the bone was grey instead of white.

"He and I are much alike."

I drove a conjured dagger through the back of his skull, causing it to expand to a size that would matter to the enormous avatar, just as Aresk's spear blade flashed through his right forearm and severed it. The scythe went tumbling to one side.

Then the world went spinning away from me. I teleported to right myself and break my momentum. When I turned to look, Poseidon had taken advantage of Hadesti's fall, tentacles and trident snaking out to attack Aresk.

The left arm of the statue was shorn away as a dozen writhing limbs grabbed the wrist, and the harpoon flashed out into his elbow.

I had heard Aresk laugh many times. I'd heard him angry, jovial, and on a handful of occasions, he had even been melancholy. I had never heard the war god cry out in pain.

Poseidon threw his arm aside and lurched closer to enclose him in her many limbs just as an apple landed between them. Aresk seemed to visibly strengthen as the tree twined up around Poseidon's body. Before she could rip it apart, I acted.

I appeared and planted a dagger into one of her thicker limbs, pinning it in place against the creaking tree. Then another. I dodged and drove a fresh dagger through the next tentacle to swat at me. I don't think I was smiling, although Aresk later told me I was cackling like a lunatic throughout, but I may have been.

At each attempt to knock me away, I pinned another limb as the tree grew taller, lifting her off the ground. When she was fifty feet off the ground, the trunk began to sag, then, after hanging for a moment, it fell, crushing her beneath its weight.

I appeared next to her head and drove a dagger into her eye. The aqueous humor spilled out and ran down her cheek.

"I remember when you drove a knife between my ribs," I snarled, dodging one of her free tentacles to drive a blade between hers in revenge. "But how do you take revenge on a god?"

"You can't. You can hurt me, but that's all. And we will be enemies for a very long time. The brute didn't mention that, did he?" she hissed through clenched teeth. "Mortals never appreciate how long eternity really is."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"You don't have eternity. None of you do. That's why you play these fucking games, to keep yourselves going. More believers, more followers, more mental slaves."

She laughed. Even as I drove a dagger through another limb, leaving her almost completely pinned down, she laughed in my face.

"You misunderstand the nature of things, little brother," she spat. "Our pets need us as much as we need them. Their lack of faith means little in the long term."

"Do it," Aresk ordered, leaning on his spear as one foot swept out to kick away a group of sea monsters attempting to come to their goddess's rescue.

I tore open a portal to my own domain. "Prender! Now!" I called, keeping an eye on Poseidon as she squirmed to bring her remaining eye into focus at the use of power.

"Mond?" he asked as he stepped through. He took in the scene for a moment, the snarling, writhing goddess, her monstrous form pinned down like a sacrifice waiting for the knife.

The young man stepped forward and drove the blade between her ribs. He was tiny in comparison to her; the dagger Velkit had made for me was more like a scalpel blade than a weapon of war. But it cut.

Poseidon howled, a bubbling, dribbling noise that sent shivers through me. Prender recoiled, but I moved to his side and shoved his arm forward. At some point, I'd grown to more than three times my normal size, and I dwarfed him like the Huskar used to do to me.

I felt him siphoning her power, his own faltering control sustained only by my intervention. I took some of the weight of it, sealing her power off in the warped Source I'd forged from Life and Death and the other domains I'd stolen from.

"This won't work," she gasped.

"Looks like it's working to me," I growled.

"Knife! We don't have long," Aresk called. His missing limb had partially regrown, and he was forcing back the hordes from the deep, supported by his own mechanical minions.

I sent my aura and domain into the wound in the sea god's ribs. Pressure. Crushing pressure that pummeled at my mind, demanding I yield, fold, break and collapse. I did not. I channelled it, slicing little parts of it away to smooth the flow to Prender. My overgrown hand rested on his shoulder as we drew off Poseidon's strength.

Her body began to wither, nailed down like a sacrifice, her essence pulled away to my ally.

"Hold on, bloke," I muttered.

"Too much, Mond! Too strong!"

"Don't break now. Water flows. Path of least resistance."

His own yell joined the ragged noise coming from Poseidon, rising in falling in a terrible harmony. It was like a battle; they each competed to be the dominant voice. The babble of words from each of them blended together until they were saying the same words in different voices, ever so slightly out of time with each other.

Gradually, Prender took the lead. His words were a half-second ahead of hers. I had no idea what they meant; it was a language so alien it made no sense. I couldn't parse any kind of grammar or theme.

It was harsh, guttural, and primitive. Like something lost in the dawn of history, long before we even learned to work flint.

I yanked harder on her power, shoving it into my travelling companion, eliciting a hiss of drawn breath. We were so close. Revenge was seconds away.

Prender staggered back, pulling the knife from her side and dropping it at his feet. His body began to compact. Like he was squeezed in a vice from all directions. His eyes bugged out for a moment, then whatever was crushing him found them and forced them back into his skull.

I heard bones snap. His arms and legs twisted in unnatural ways, obviously painful, but despite the mask of agony on his face, he didn't make a sound. His mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water, but no sound came out.

It hit me then. The price of my revenge. For as long as Prender might remain in control of the power, there'd be likely peace between us. But sooner or later, the averaged out personality of Poseidon would reemerge, and the hate would cause me problems.

I'll still be here for you, Tezca's ghostly thought echoed in my mind. Neither of us would have long. Hundreds, maybe thousands of years, but long in the grand scheme of things. A perspective I still hand't fully grasped.

Let me help you.

I pushed the voice away.

Prender fell then, and I reached out a hand to catch his arm. My fingers shrivelled and compressed, but it was only a matter of will to rebuild them afterwards. I endured the pain. I needed to remember, and nothing teaches a lesson like pain.

He screamed, finally a sound escaping whatever crushing weight surrounded him, and then fell silent. His bones straightened as he stood, shaky on his feet for a moment.

"Prender?" I asked.

"He did it! Two new brothers! A day to celebrate!" Aresk boomed from above.

The tidal creatures retreated, leaving tentacles and fins behind. As did the skeletal masses of Hadesti. Only Apollo kept fighting, but Morana and Aphrodite were getting the better of him. He couldn't last long.

"Knife. Killer. What have you made me into?" he asked. He stared at the backs of his hands as scales ran up his skin, turning him a light blue colour. "You've got your revenge?"

He sounded like a kid asking if his dad had gotten a promotion.

"I'm sorry, Prender. It was the only way."

"I… see that. Call off Winter. The Sun will retreat as well." The last sentence boomed out, and the flaming, many-winged object that was Apollo made manifest turned and seemed to stare at us for a moment. Then he and his minions vanished in glares of light.

I stared down at the shrivelled husk of Poseidon. She'd killed me. Stolen me from everything I'd ever known. Robbed me of my life; whatever it was, it had been mine. Made with my own hands by my own choices. I'd been free, and now I was once again.

Thoughts of Faye, my son, and my friends all ran through my mind. They would lead good lives, long lives. I'd make sure of that, and Patricia could turn the primitive world I'd fallen in love with into something much easier on its inhabitants. One day, I'd have to come for them, my friends and family, the edge between life and death. I'd pass their souls over to Hadesti. Part of me hoped Tezca would have won by that point. But for now…

"Prender, how about a beer? I know a little bar back home, an old mate of mine by the name of Jimmy runs it. He's a bit of a prick, but not such a bad bloke. It's where all this shit started. I'd like to tell you the full story."