Myths and Gargoyles Jamie Hawke (i read a book .TXT) 📖

with his crew of interns on foot. He led us to a building with metal detectors and the full government look of tall columns and marble stairs. One of the interns led the way with a keycard, another pulling out what I thought was a gun but then realized must have been some sort of magic item, based on the way it was glowing. Not likely interns, then, but still fun to think of them that way. We made our way in, then down spiral stairs. More marble, it seemed, and the floor below was white and black tiles. Paintings of white men with white hair lined the wall, one bust-like statue near a separate set of doors we went through, leading us to the dining area.

“Grabbing a bite?” Steph asked with a hint of annoyance.

“Tunnels,” the senator said.

We shared a look of confusion. As he led the way, one of the interns explained, “There are some main ones that go to the Capitol from other government buildings. Some are known, others… less so.”

“Better to travel where we’re not being watched, I figure,” the senator called back.

“Smart,” Ebrill muttered as she moved up next to me. “What’d we miss back there? What happened?”

“Fuck,” I said, and let out an almost hysterical laugh. “A damn lot.”

We moved through gray tunnels beneath D.C., toward the Capitol, while I told them what had happened with Thiten and Thiton joining, only to be absorbed by Fatiha. How I had saved Megha and even released Yenifer, but how both of them had vanished.

“All we can do now is hope,” Aerona said.

“It’s that bad?” I asked.

She nodded. “We’d hoped to have Megha, and that was before Fatiha had… absorbed, as you say… Thitis.”

“What she is trying to politely say,” Kordelia chimed in, “is that we are, how do you say…?”

“Fucked,” Steph filled in the rest. “We’re fucked.”

“Not so fast,” Senator Funai said, turning to us. We had reached another set of doors, although the tunnel continued to our left. “This is it. Through here and up, and we’ll be at the portal location. All we have to do is fight long enough to deactivate the portal by destroying at least one of the magic items holding it open. Defeating Fatiha can come at a different time.”

“Or not at all,” a voice said, somewhat a mixture of Fatiha and her absorbed goddess. The door blasted open and three dog-like creatures the size of bears burst in. Lines of glowing green moved along their bodies like snakes but were like cracks in the stone that made up these creatures.

I was glad they weren’t legit dogs. Maybe it was my dad’s love for them, but I couldn’t see myself being okay with fighting one. These things, though, with their nasty, snarling teeth and their eyes that peeled back to look like demons’ eyes, weren’t going to be a problem.

It was the way they split open after being torn apart by spells and gargoyle claws that worried me. That green glowing stuff came out like ooze, forming into blobs that shot out, tendrils trying to take us, and left sizzling lines on the cement of the passage.

Senator Funai lifted a clawed hand that shook, causing one of the blobs to convulse and squeeze back in on itself until it kind of splatted, done. His interns had those magic gun-looking devices, shooting and sending shocks through the others. Aerona shouted for me to freeze them. I did, then brought them back as remnants—because more enemies were coming. A creature with a hood and robes like Death swept through, each hand wielding long blades, or maybe its hands were the blades. Rilandwas cut, but Ebrill swept him aside and held him while he healed. Kordelia tried to hold her own against the death creature but it was faster than her. Luckily for us, we had it outnumbered. I used my go-to spell, the ice claw, and that distracted it at least long enough for Kordelia and Riland to attack with spells that left it as a slumped pile of robes.

Meanwhile, I saw that the senator and his troupe were dealing with little kobold creatures and several Drow who had made it down. One of them looked familiar, actually, and when the Drow blocked a spell while surging toward the senator, then held his body close, blade sticking through and coming out from the man’s back, I saw why.

It was one of the Drow who had been on guard back in Avalon, before the betrayal. If Rianne were here, I wondered what she would say.

As it was, the others had enough to spit out at him.

“Fucking traitor!” Ebrill howled, lunging at him with blue flames licking her horns and fingers, claws clanging off his armor.

He dropped Senator Funai’s lifeless body and attacked, but then switched to defense as Kordelia joined in.

“We trusted you to defend Rianne,” Kordelia growled between strikes.

“Everyone makes mistakes,” the Drow countered. “That was one of the many that your people made.”

Aerona had seen and was trying to fight her way over through kobolds and others, tearing a path through, but Riland got to him before her, at the same time as an intern’s shot from the magic taser hit and put the Drow on his knees, and then Riland summoned a sword that cut right through the Drow’s head.

“Brother,” Riland said, standing over the corpse, watching it fall.

“Not…?” I started, wondering if he meant real brother, but Ebrill shook her head. The fighting was still going on. Steph was nearby blasting fire as her wraith knights fought just past her, but I then finally processed the fact that the senator was dead.

I stepped over to him, overcame a kobold with my remnants, and stared at the lifeless eyes of the man who had come to our aid. I had hardly known him, and there he was, dead… for me.

Monsters of all sorts were converging on us as Senator Funai’s body lay lifeless at my feet. All I could do