Forge of the Gods 4 Read online

  Forge of the Gods

  Book 4

  Simon Archer

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  12. Hailey

  Chapter 13

  14. Hailey

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  20. Hailey

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  23. Hailey

  Chapter 24

  25. Hailey

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  29. Hailey

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  Hephaestus, God of Blacksmiths

  “You son of a bitch!” I said as I slammed my stepfather into a nearby column. I knew that fighting him was useless, considering that he was the most powerful of all of us, but he deserved to feel some of my rage.

  To his credit, Zeus took the hit and allowed himself to be flung. He didn’t fight back, which only angered me more. Did he think so little of this mistake that he didn’t deem it worthy to defend?

  The god of lightning stood up and brushed himself off, straightening his robes as if he had gotten a speck of dirt on him instead of being thrown across the throne room.

  The other Olympians looked on in disappointment. But none of them intervened. We weren’t normally in favor of physical violence between gods. We much preferred trickery when it came to fighting with our family members.

  “Hephaestus,” my mother, Hera, scolded from her perch on her golden throne, that I had made for her. “That’s enough.”

  “You heard what he did!” I shouted as I pointed a finger at the culprit. “He lied to all of us and made me…” I stopped, not wanting to admit my own fault in this situation.

  “I didn’t make you do anything,” Zeus said casually. “It was your choice to punish your child.”

  “For something she didn’t do!” I snapped. “That isn’t right.”

  “If you cannot calm yourself, son, I’m going to have to ask you to leave the throne room,” Hera said, calm as ever. Her face remained emotionless as she made this request.

  “You can’t tell me that you’re going to let this slide,” I roared, appealing to my fellow Olympians. “It’s not just my child that is at risk. It’s all of our modern demigods because of his mistake.”

  “That may be the case, but we still need to hear him out,” Athena reasoned, ever the logical one.

  I rolled my eyes at my stepsister, sick of her rationality. It contrasted so much with my fiery personality that it was a wonder we ever got along in the past.

  “Fine,” I said as I stomped out of the throne room. “But I can’t stand hearing his voice anymore. Let me know when we get to the punishment phase of the trial.”

  Then I stormed away from Olympus and transported myself back to my workshop. There, I was met with a surprise guest waiting for me at the entrance.

  “Hello, Hephaestus,” the goddess said. “I have an offer for you.”

  “I’m not interested,” I said as I held up a hand and tried to brush past her. But her next sentence caught my attention, forcing me to freeze.

  “I have a way for you to get back at Zeus,” the goddess offered. “Interested now?”

  1

  I thought the nerves would have gone away by now, but as I stood in front of the twelve Elemental Officials, some of the most powerful demigods in existence, all of their eyes on me, I froze. My mouth went dry, and my heart rate sped up. I rubbed my fingers against my palms in an effort to dry them, but they only seemed to get sweatier.

  Emma, daughter of Hestia, coughed into a handkerchief and adjusted her monocle. Athena’s daughter, Brea, wiggled her nose as if she had to sneeze. Officer Ashley, a large, buff woman who was the daughter of Ares, tapped her fingers against the table, making the whole thing vibrate. Alya, Hera’s daughter, reached over and put her hand on Ashley’s to make her stop. The head of physical education glared at her colleague and curled her hand into a fist. The only Officials that offered any comfort were the daughters of Hermes and Aphrodite, Makayla and Genesis.

  The two women worked with me last year when the Demigod Academy for the Elemental Military was infected by a love spell that made the students all horny. Well, hornier than twenty-somethings usually are. They knew what I could do and believed in me enough to even offer a closed-mouth smile and a small nod.

  I inhaled some courage and flicked my eyes to the end of the room. I thought looking at the most intimidating person in the room might be terrifying, but it only strengthened my resolve.

  The Stratego loomed at the end of the oval-shaped table, his father’s lightning bolt symbol etched in front of him into the wood. His hands were folded in front of him, thick sausage fingers intertwined with each other. He sat as still as a statue, his shadowy demeanor only adding to the ominous vibe he gave off. His salt and pepper beard seemed to crackle with electricity, and honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if it did.

  There was something in those stormy gray eyes that pushed the fear to the back of my mind. Anger quickly replaced it, blazing at the front of my thoughts. I knew that the Stratego was the ultimate obstacle to getting what I wanted. I only needed to convince six of the Officials, and then I could shove it in the Stratego’s face.

  That thought was enough to make me open my mouth.

  “Two years ago, if you had asked me if we should let Kari back into the Military, I would have been the first person to say absolutely not,” I began, the prepared words floating up to my mind like clouds. “She attacked me, framed me, and put more lives in danger, all for the sake of jealousy. Or so it seemed.”

  There was a small wince off to my right. I chanced a glance at the soldier in question. Kari’s shoulders were hunched forward, head bowed low. The weak posture made her tall frame shrink several inches. Her hair was pulled back, tight and sleek, so we could see the fullness of her face and read every expression. She wore all black, minus her soldier’s sash. We chose her entire look purposefully, making it seem as though she belonged in the Military with the standard black uniform. But she wasn’t standing as we had told her to, looking strong and unaffected by the comments. It seemed though that my recount of her past actions weighed down on her physically.

  I puffed up my chest and pushed my own shoulders back, hoping to signal to both her and myself that we were confident, strong warriors. We had freed her from a goddess’s control, brought her back from the dead, and fought terrifying monsters. We could take on a dozen demigods, no problem.

  We had to convince them that Kari wasn’t responsible for the treasonable actions of which she was accused. Instead, we had to tell them that she was possessed by the goddess of chaos, Eris. Over the past several years at the Demigod Academy for the Elemental Military, chaos reigned in the form of love spells, clay monsters, ghosts, and murder. Infamous mythical objects, like Aphrodite’s girdle or Hades’s Helm of Invisibility, went missing which made the gods very angry at us demigods.

  All signs pointed to Kari being the cause of all of this unrest. She abandoned the Military and went on these dangerous adventures. We even had eyewitnesses, including myself, saying she was the culprit. However, we found out that she had been possessed by Eris a
nd had no memory of her actions over the past two years.

  While we believed in her innocence, we had to convince the powers that be of it and that might have been harder than slaying a chimera.

  It helped that we weren’t alone. Just behind me were my girlfriends, Daniella, Jade, and Bethany, who were also giving their testimonies. Hailey had graduated with Kari and she stood alongside them. Her testimony had been filled with memories from their time at the Academy, which helped with Kari’s original character.

  The other heavy hitter in the group was Phae. Phaethusa, the goddess of radiance, stood with a glowing aura of gold. Her long waves of dirty blonde hair hung down to her navel, making her look like a queen. She came in clutch for our case because she was the one to actually fight Eris and push the goddess out of Kari’s body.

  That all happened last semester in Italy. It was such a harrowing and long adventure that I could have written a whole book about it. The long story short is this: I studied abroad in Italy with a cyclops to remake the Helm of Invisibility for Hades. Eris as Kari attacked the villa, fought Phae, and the demigod got her memories back. Then she died and we rescued her from the Underworld. Now we were here, arguing her way back into the Military she supposedly betrayed.

  There was a lot more that happened, but trust me, that’s another story.

  Now, one would think that the testimony of a goddess would be enough to convince the Officers to let Kari back into the Military. However, Phae was a minor goddess, a very minor goddess, which made her word less valuable in the eyes of the Officials.

  Unfortunately, at the Elemental Military, there was a known bias among the Olympic gods and the others. The twelve gods who resided on the heavenly mountain, plus Hades, were the most powerful. As a result, their children were blessed with the best and most valued abilities. For instance, it didn’t matter that my girlfriend Daniella was the best healer on campus. Because her father was Asclepius, they didn’t trust her as much as they would, say, a child of Hermes.

  It was unfair and definitely played against us in this instance. Especially since there were only twelve demigods seated at the table in front of us, not the usual thirteen.

  There was one chair that sat fresh and empty for decades. The symbol in front of that seat was an anvil, representing the god of blacksmiths, Hephaestus. My dad.

  I was the only known child of Hephaestus in nearly one hundred years. And the only male demigod in almost as long. I got to meet my half sister, though in her ghostly form, but since then, I was the only child of Hephaestus. So that seat remained empty, which meant a missing vote that might have helped us.

  The last argument we had before they voted, was my eyewitness account. Mainly because I was the son of Hephaestus, though I did have some leverage with the Elemental Officials since I was the missing piece to a prophecy that was supposed to help them win a war against the mythical monsters.

  Again, another story.

  Despite my nerves, I pressed on with my prepared speech. “However, I’m one of the few people who has seen the change in Kari, the before and after, so to speak. I was there when she woke up from a deep sleep inside of herself, to find that two years had gone by and she’d committed heinous acts, all without her knowledge or consent.”

  Memories of Kari’s bank face when I caught her up on the past two years flashed across my inner eye. I clenched my fists and gathered my resolve, knowing that while this was frightening and difficult, I was fighting for her second chance. It was something that everyone deserved.

  “I believe there is something bigger going on here than the betrayal of a demigod soldier,” I announced. I looked at each of the Officials as I spoke, taking a moment with every one of them, even the Stratego. “The gods don’t have a right to manipulate our lives like that. We’re here to maintain the balance and protect the mortal world from mythical beings that they can’t protect themselves from. But what about one of our own being protected from the gods? We’re a team, a unit, and we shouldn’t ever leave one of our own behind.”

  I let that note hang in the air for a bit. They all knew I was referencing the policy of wiping demigod’s memories when they couldn’t serve anymore. It was another rule that I didn’t agree with, but I had to fight one battle at a time.

  “I ask of you,” I said as I held out my hands. “What precedent do you want to set for future demigods? This will be a message of forgiveness. We need to band together during this time rather than cast out one of our own. The involvement of Eris means that this war we have been fighting for years is bigger than any of us thought. We need all the help we can get.”

  I straightened my arm and pointed at Kari. She lifted her head and stared at me with wide eyes at my abrupt gesture.

  “Kari is a brilliant warrior,” I continued, my voice becoming emboldened. “We can use her skills with the Clay of Life to fight back. It would be a waste to cast her out in the mortal world without any memory of what she accomplished here.”

  “Or any memory of the crimes she committed,” the Stratego interrupted.

  I blinked, my mouth hanging open. His words threw me off. None of the Officials said anything during our presentation. It was our right to give this argument, and then they would vote. But now it sounded as though the Stratego was about to present a counter-argument. This was something we hadn’t prepared for.

  “What do you mean?” Emma asked, squinting through her monocle.

  “Their claim is that Kari was possessed and can’t remember what she did during that time,” the Stratego said. He unlaced his fingers and spread out his own hands. He looked only at his fellow Officials, never once glancing in my direction. “However, she’s been told of what she’s done. And I’m sure that some residual memories are surfacing.”

  Kari’s jaw clenched, but she didn’t say anything in response to the Stratego. He proceeded to talk, and with every word, I felt our case slipping out of our hands like sand.

  “I’m not contesting whether or not Kari was possessed by a goddess, even though that has never happened in the history of Greek mythology,” the Stratego said as he got to his feet and paced on the other side of the room, like a professor giving a lecture.

  I opened my mouth to refute him. I expected to use my extensive knowledge of the Greek myths to counteract him with some obscure story. My mother, and consequently me, were descended from the Oracle of Delphi so we had uncanny abilities to tap into the past, present, or future. My powers were limited to an in-depth knowledge of Greek mythology, which came in handy more than once.

  However, nothing came to mind. There wasn’t a single story of human possession in the myths. There were stories of the gods transforming themselves into humans, like when Zeus and Hermes disguised themselves and then tried to get hospitality from a town. They only received help from Baucis and Philemon, and consequently, they flooded the rest of the town.

  More famously were stories of the gods transforming into animals, like swans and bulls. That was mainly Zeus, but others did it as well, like when Apollo turned into a dolphin. But none of them ever directly possessed a human, like Eris did to Kari.

  A strike of panic stalled my blood. I looked over my shoulder at my supportive girlfriends. Hailey pursed her lips and nodded for me to continue.

  Even though I wanted to counter the Stratego with a story and couldn’t think of one, I still chose to speak. “The gods are all-powerful beings. Just because there aren’t stories about them possessing anyone in the past doesn’t mean that they haven’t. We might just not know about it.”

  “Very true, Cameron,” the Stratego acknowledged, but it was a small bone he threw me. I could tell from his condescending tone that I played right into his plan. “And again, I’m not contesting that. I think we should consider the repercussions of what happened to Kari.”

  “Repercussions?” I repeated, not sure where he was going with this.

  “Yes, particularly the mental and emotional ones,” the Stratego said, still refusing to look
at me directly. “Wouldn’t it be a mercy to release Kari from the pain of her past actions? That way she doesn’t have to live with them, whether she committed them or not.”

  “That’s bullshit,” I exclaimed, unable to stop myself.

  Eyebrows raised at my language but Hades’s daughter, Effie, actually sat back in her chair and chuckled. The Stratego shot his colleague a glare, but Effie only offered an innocent shrug in response.

  “She wants to fight,” I argued, heat rising in my cheeks. “She wants to get her life back and be a part of the Military again. None of us would be here if she didn’t.”

  “Does she really?” the Stratego questioned, raising one bushy eyebrow. “Then why haven’t we heard that from her?”

  I closed my mouth and bit my tongue. It had been a difficult decision whether or not Kari should speak on her behalf. It was a little bit like a criminal taking the stand. We weren’t sure if she could handle the scrutiny of the Officials and still tell the truth.

  “If she really believes all of this, then shouldn’t she be the one to tell us?” the Stratego challenged. He held out his hand to Kari, inviting her to speak. “What do you have to say for yourself, Kari?”

  All the attention turned to the soldier. Her eyes were closed, scrunched against her face. She looked as though someone was whipping her. Quickly, though, she recovered and visibly swallowed. She opened her eyes and spoke.