So, where was I?

Oh yeah, I was about to get turned into a snack by a long dead super tiger.

Fortunately for me, even though Hades could exert his influence and keep the villagers from helping, he could only paralyze me with fear for about two seconds before. Living things are messy. Messy is more my thing than his which makes family dinner awkward. Anyway, your hero Giles, Priest of Hermes, and by “Priest of Hermes” I mean “Hermes”, shook off the influence of Hades just in time to be ready to dodge the undead, long tusked, tiger that was coming at him full tilt. Instead of going for the villagers as it passed, it whirled around to make another go immediately. This thing was focused on me and me alone. I’m not sure if that was Argon being an ass or Hades wanting to neutralize me early. Either way it gave me an idea.

With a “Here kitty kitty” I ran towards the moat of fire and with a mighty Messenger of the Gods™ leap I easily made it to the other side, followed quickly by the tiger skeleton. From there I ran towards my new friend Elpis who had just turned the giant elephant into a pile of bones. Running at her, screaming at her to look up, I jumped over her at the last second and the tiger slammed into her, bringing Elpis into the fight. She grinned that smile that Ares’ fan club gets when they get to smash something, picked up one of the bones in front of her, and with a single swing, crushed the skull of the tiger. I really need to give Ares a three second too long hug when I see him next, and no I’m not explaining why. It’s much more fun that way. At least I won’t make myself look like a certain Goddess of love, sex, and pleasure first. This time.

After Elpis took the cat out, it was an easy matter to mop up the rest of the undead force. Once one of the villagers bashed the last wolf I turned to Elpis, “And now that’s done, time to party! I know this guy that makes the BEST wine.” Elpis shook her head, “Sorry Giles, the fun’s just beginning. I’d say that wasn’t the only wave we are getting.” I sighed, “When do you think the next wave will arrive?”

I was answered, not by Elpis, but by the sound of marching feet. I looked over and saw many glowing eyes. It was the second wave, the army of the dead. When they got a little closer I could see them better. There were skeletons and revenants as far as the eye could see, marching in perfect unison. This was the hand of Hades himself, come to wipe the village from the face of the Earth.

I walked back to the choke point and saw Elpis calmly sharpening her weapons. When she saw me she looked up and walked over. “So, any ideas?” I shook my head, “Not yet. I was hoping you’d have something other than ‘die bravely’.” Elpis shook her head, “Nope.” I nodded, “Ok. In that case I better come up with something. Something effective but not too obvious, low key in other words. Gaah! This is such bull….” It was then that I got the beginnings of an idea. A dangerous idea, but an idea, nonetheless.

“That’s it! Elpis, I know what to do. Random village person, rope!”

I gestured to a man passing by who just happened to have a coil of rope (seriously, if you can date a Goddess of witchcraft I highly recommend it) and he was happy to toss it over to me.

From there I went over to where they kept the cattle just outside of the town center and found quite possibly the largest bull I have ever seen. Fortunately I was able to calm him down just enough to work with him, which was the easy part. The hard part was taking the rope and tying it around the bull’s… if you’ve read the story about Loki and the goat you can guess what I tied the rope around. So a quick tie and a sharp yank and we were off to the races. I thought I’d have just the bull as we charged towards the line, but I heard a gigantic thunder of hooves behind me. And a squawk or two.

Army of the dead meet the mostly domesticated army of Hermes.

We were on them in a matter of seconds and plunged deep into their lines as they weren’t ready for a random stampede, but if you think about it, who is? About a quarter of the way through I decided to not push my luck and turn around, thundering towards the cattle enclosure after taking out half of another division. In the span of 4 minutes the whole thing was over… we were even able to get back into the pen. However, it was made quite clear that the bull I rode will never let me near him again.

I looked back where I came from and saw the best devastation I have seen in a long time. I had destroyed a lot of undead and, more importantly, confused Hades. I strode into camp where Elpis stared in awe. I looked at her and beamed, “You may praise me now.”

“Uhhh… good job? Yeah. Good job Giles.” Elpis smiled, regaining her composure.

“Thanks. I think that bought us another hour or two. Y’know, Hades wants this village really bad. I wonder why?”

I wandered away from Elpis with her following behind me. I was trying to locate interesting data anomalies that would make this village important to Hades. I was getting exactly nowhere until I missed a root, fell flat on my face, and saw a milky white stone jutting out of the ground. I reached out and tapped the stone with my fingernail and was answered by a gentle pinging sound throughout the entire village and for far as I could hear, so about 100 miles or so. “Eureka!”

Elpis folded her arms and arched her eyebrow. “Eureka? You just discovered that when you tap rocks they make sounds?” I stood up and turned around to face her, “Well, yeah, but it’s a lot more than that. This is unaligned acoustic quartz. Aligned quartz is primarily used to enhance anything spiritual but once it’s aligned towards something it is almost impossible to reset. Most of it was aligned to the Titans long ago and is useless. The rest has been claimed by the Olympians… except this vein here. Therefore, Hades wants this village for his Temple. Once he aligns the quartz to himself, even his newest Priests will be able to churn out spooks for days.”

Elpis shook her head, “I don’t get it. Rocks are Hades’ other thing. Why doesn’t he just move it somewhere else?” I sighed, “Because it doesn’t work that way. This is part of a greater ecosystem and is therefore dependent on everything around it. He has to set up his camp on this spot.” Elpis nodded, “That’s all well and good but we still have a Priest just outside of the village with… an… army..” Her last few words trailed off as she got the look of someone who has an idea.

Elpis ran to the front. I got very worried.

When she got to our choke point, lit by the fire of our moat, she shouted with the voice of Ares, “Argon, I know you can hear me! In the name of Ares I challenge you to single combat. If you win you can have the village, if you lose then your Second will order a full retreat and swear that this village will never be attacked again. Respond now or be forever branded pathetic and unworthy to command anything, living or dead!” As her words died in the distance a quiet fell upon the land, neither bird sang nor wolf howled. The silence held for a minute before it was broken by a single drum beating a slow march. It was low and deep, an echo of solemn marches that went back as far as the Forgotten War.

Argon, Priest of Hades, had accepted Elpis’ challenge.

As the drum came closer we saw Argon slowly riding forward on a pale horse surrounded by his guard of fell spirits made of shadows with glowing green eyes. The villagers scattered before them until the only ones who stood before them were Elpis and me. Argon casually got off his horse and chuckled, eyeing Elpis with derision. “Why hello there young lady, could you find the man who I am to fight and bring him out?” Elpis sniffed, pulled out two short swords and scraped them against each other making a shower of sparks, “The second you find me an actual warrior to fight, old man.” And with that, it began.

Elpis attacked with her short swords and Argon responded with a spear dripping with a black Ichor. I’ll spare you a blow by blow but if you watch pretty much any good sword fight scene and make it around twenty times more awesome, you’ve got the idea. After about 10 minutes everyone knew that the fight was almost done. Argon had given Elpis a good cut or two and the poison was taking effect, but Elpis had given Argon several nasty wounds. The last pass was quick. Argon tried a thrust, assuming that Elpis was weakened by the poison. Elpis dodged with incredible speed as she plunged both of her swords straight down into his chest, blood bubbling out of the wound as he exhaled his last breath and fell to his knees. She smiled and staggered backwards as Argon started laughing. His eyes went from brown to jet black and his hair from black to chalk white, and a new voice erupted from his mouth as he stood, the swords still in his chest.

“Pitiful mortal, did you think it would be this easy? You have defeated my Priest but against me there is nothing but defeat! Behold the power of…”

I shouted at Argon/Hades, “Hey, Commander Spooky! Listen to this!”

He turned to face me and was about to say something when his look changed to confusion as I pulled a gigantic metal hammer from behind me, grinned that Winning Hermes Grin™, and brought it down hard on the small jut of unaligned quartz to my left. Everything vibrated. The villagers fell over, the flames flickered and died, and I’m pretty sure there were some very happy women at least 10 towns over.

Oh, and because the vibration was centered right around where Argon/Hades was, it pulled the Hades energy right out of him, making him just another corpse.

Unfortunately, that also meant that I got shook out of my vessel, Giles.

You didn’t think that I was there in the flesh, did you?

Mortals... I love you guys.