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“No!” Maigo said, and kicked out.

Leshiy slammed into the spire wall, and quickly started pulling itself back together. But Maigo was there, full of rage, punching and kicking and breaking bones faster than they could reform. With a gargled laugh, Leshiy struck out and caught Maigo’s shoulder, opening up four red stripes. Maigo responded by slamming her head into the creature’s face, three times, until it was nearly flattened. She stepped back, breathing heavily, and watched as the body and head started pulling itself back together.

She lifted Leshiy off the ground by its hair, and dragged it to the edge. Then she tossed it over and watched it fall. The whole way down, at least four hundred feet, was lit in orange light. Leshiy fell the distance, landed with a thud and lay unmoving. She suspected the creature might survive her assault, and the fall, but she didn’t see any stairs up. It wouldn’t be getting out any time soon.

“Ey!” shouted a muffled voice. “Et ee uh!”

Lilly?

Maigo rushed to the ramp and dove to her stomach. She leaned her head over the side and saw Lilly dangling from a long pink appendage jutting from her mouth.

“Urry!”

The pink glob of flesh at the end of the long tongue was peeling away from the walkway’s bottom. Maigo thrust her arm out and caught Lilly’s hand, just as the tongue slipped free. The pink appendage snapped back into the girl’s mouth. “Yeah,” she said, “I have a chameleon tongue. Tell anyone and you’re dead.”

Maigo pulled her up onto the walkway. “I think it’s pretty cool.”

“You think
what
is pretty cool?” Lilly said, looking on the verge of anger.

“Nothing,” Maigo said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Good.” Lilly looked over the edge at the still motionless form far below. “Now what the hell was that thing?”

Maigo watched for any hint of movement and saw nothing. “A little of this, a little of that.”

Lilly frowned. “Not all of us can turn out goo— Holy shit sticks!” Her yellow eyes grew wide as she looked beyond Maigo.

The eyes
, Maigo thought. Part of her didn’t want to see them again, but she had to know what was there. Had to see the real monster for herself.

She turned and saw the eyes.

And then the rest of it.

Maigo staggered back and raised a hand to her mouth. “I remember... I remember it all.”

Interlude

Ancient History

Akakios’s limbs shook and gave way, partially because of the rumbling ground, partially because of the horrific scene playing out in the city below. He fell back to one hand and then sat. The uncomfortable rocky slope beneath him went unnoticed. The pain in his knee was forgotten. He was a spectator for an event few people could imagine and even less ever saw. His memory of this day would be told for generations! He watched the spectacle with a keen attention to detail.

Nemesis, the beast, the goddess, had gone mad. Surely, she had not come to the ringed city to judge an individual or a small group. She had laid her gaze on the entire legendary city and found it lacking. But it was worse than that. She found it...offensive.

Stone shattered and exploded into the air as she swiped her massive, spike laden arms back and forth through the immense structures that grew taller toward the city’s center. Amidst the stone flew people, their features surprisingly large despite the distance.

They’re giants,
he thought,
no doubt standing twice the height of many men.
Their heads were topped in golden strands, far whiter than any hair he had ever seen. Their women would probably fetch a fortune in the slave trade, assuming women of such stature could be subdued. But he doubted there would be any of them left to trade, beyond the scattered bits and pieces being flung across the city.

Walls crumbled. The ocean, once held at bay by the ringed walls, flooded in. The giant people wailed in fires. They drowned in the water. They were crushed underfoot. Had there ever been such a slaughter? Every minute ended thousands of lives.

And then, the city was abandoned. The yellow haired giants fled in all directions, flowing from the few remaining gates.

Nemesis spun around, her three tails smashing through the tallest structures at the city’s core. The buildings toppled and imploded. Horrified screams echoed off the valley walls. Nemesis drowned them out with a war cry of her own. The bellowing baritone rumbled up the valley and made Akakios’s insides quiver. He could only imagine the raw force experienced by those surrounding it, their bodies crushed by the sound, the air driven from their lungs, along with all hope.

Akakios smiled. Nemesis’s wrath, so feared mere minutes ago, had become a thing of poetry. A rare beauty. Like watching a lightning storm as a child, aware of its potential for primal destruction, but still captivated by it. Still awed by the vast power on display.

After slamming its mighty arms down on what remained of the city, Nemesis stepped through the ruined wall, back into the valley, where it was followed by the ocean that had been held at bay.

The monster had set its sights on the thousands who had managed to flee. The giants ran in an ever widening circle. Some of them would eventually pass him by. The sight of them might normally make him run the other way, but he didn’t think any of them would pause long enough to do him harm and risk being caught.

But the beast seemed staggered by indecision. It turned its massive head in one direction, slowly surveying the widening circle of giants. It swiveled around, and after a false start, turned back the other way. Then it stopped, roared again and lifted its clawed hands in front of its glowing chest. The claws turned inward.

It’s going to impale itself
, he thought.

Had the goddess seen the yellow haired giants’ flight as a failure? Did it intend to take its own life?

The claws stabbed forward, but stopped quickly, a loud clang filling the valley.

Akakios blinked. The image before him had changed drastically enough for him to doubt what he was seeing, despite the surreal nature of everything he’d witnessed up to that point.

But it was real.

A second monster, equal in height, but smaller in stature to Nemesis, and built more like a man, had appeared and caught the giant claws before they could impale the orange chambers on her chest. The two titans stood face to face, each pulling on the other’s limbs, neither gaining any ground.

Nemesis looked beyond the newcomer, who Akakios could now see was like a metal man, and roared at the still fleeing giants.

The metal man is protecting the giants,
Akakios thought.
He is helping them escape.

Akakios had no real opinion on whether he would prefer to see the giant men killed or freed. They no longer held his interest. This new struggle, which would be more of a fight than a mass execution, was far more compelling. And the giants were faster than they looked. Many of them had cleared the valley and were no doubt headed for lands far away.

Nemesis saw this, too. The beast raised her head to the sky and let out a roar. Then with a swiftness her size made look impossible, she drove her head down and forward, striking the metal man’s chest.

The colossal man fell back, crashing to the ground and providing Akakios with his first view of the newcomer’s front side. He saw the face first, concealed by an armor mask, but revealing glowing red eyes. Something about that gaze made him think this thing was noble. Worth cheering for. A defender of men, or at least of giants. Its body was armored from top to bottom, but not in the way Nemesis was armored. Her thick plates were organic. This metal man looked like he’d been cast in a forge of gods, shielded in hues of silver, black and glowing red. At the center of the broad chest was a symbol that matched the layout of the now destroyed city, three rings united by a single vertical line, rising from below. The center line and outer ring currently glowed with the same red blaze as the eyes.

Nemesis lifted one of her huge hands and slammed it down atop the giant man, pushing him into the valley wall. She drew back and struck again, but this time, the man raised his fists. Three blades, as large as Nemesis’s claws snapped out of the metal man’s forearm, evenly spaced around the limb and extending far out past the fists on both hands. Metal pierced flesh as Nemesis’s hand landed atop all six blades.

The divine judge reeled back, roaring, but not blindly. She spun around bringing all three long tails around like whips. The spines at the end gouged three divots across the metal body, but did no serious damage that Akakios could see.

The man, who was perhaps also one of the gods, staggered away from the strike, the two titans regrouping.

Nemesis hunched and roared, arms splayed wide, ready to attack again.

The blades on the metal man’s right arm snapped back inside. With a flick of the giant’s wrist, three metal prongs shot out of the forearm from hidden compartments beside those that housed the blades.

It keeps its weapons hidden inside its body
, Akakios thought. While Nemesis was pure rage and passion, the metal man was a thinking fighter.

The goddess charged.

The metal man stabbed with the left hand, plunging the three blades through the armor of Nemesis’s shoulder. But he was caught. Nemesis lifted him up, leapt in the air and drove him toward the ground. They landed together. The valley shook. The walls collapsed inward. Rocks rolled past Akakios on all sides, some thumping against his back, but he remained fixated.

And then, just as it had arrived, the metal man disappeared in a flash of blue light. But as quick as he left, the man returned, winking back into existence above Nemesis. He fell on her back, narrowly avoiding the bevy of spikes large enough to cleave his waist in two. While the goddess pushed herself up, despite his weight atop her, he drove the left hand, with those three blades, into her back. Held in place, he lifted the right hand, and those long prongs into the air.

What is it doing?
Akakios wondered. The metal spears atop the raised fist didn’t look sharp enough to pierce the monster’s hide. But then, with a crackle of power, the prongs unleashed the very power of the storm that had once impressed Akakios as a child. Lightning arced between the metal spears, which were then thrust against Nemesis’s back.

The goddess writhed and wailed, her booming voice once conveying deep rumbling rage, now shrieking in high-pitched pain.

The three tails rose again, wrapping up and over the metal man, grasping his shoulders. There was a moment of resistance before the man was lifted off his feet and tossed, head over heels, into the ocean.

Blood poured from Nemesis as the monster climbed back to its feet and staggered around. Flesh and armor seemed to be peeling free, revealing patches of white flesh beneath. The sun struck Nemesis from behind and those white spots glowed brightly enough to make Akakios squint. The goddess was changing.

The ocean heaved and then burst as the metal man stood. Water poured from the great body, now gleaming in the sun. Aside from the three scratches across its chest, the man-god still looked unharmed. The first and second rings on his chest now glowed bright red. He stood at the ready, weapons hidden inside the arms. The two titans both seemed to be waiting, but for what?

Flesh dropped away from Nemesis’s body, revealing blinding white diamonds. But whatever the goddess was doing, it wasn’t fast enough.

The innermost ring on the metal man’s body blinked bright red.

A flurry of movement sprang from the arms, forming things Akakios couldn’t make sense of. And then the same happened to the giant man’s head.

Sound like thunder.

Blinding light.

Roiling heat.

It struck him all at once, burning his clothes, raising boils on the outer layers of his skin.

And then it faded.

He opened his eyes and saw the impossible. Nemesis stood before him, her back to him, but he could still see the metal man on the other side, staring at him through a hole in the giant creature’s chest. The metal man tilted his head as though they had actually made eye contact.

Akakios held out his hand in a wave.

The metal man transformed back into his original form and held out a hand, acknowledging Akakios. Nemesis dropped to her knees, and without another sign of life, toppled forward.

The goddess of vengeance had been slain.

As Akakios shivered from the burns covering his body, the metal man lifted Nemesis’s tails, pulled them tight and then dragged the monster into the ocean. Akakios watched them go, mind running rampant with thoughts of how to tell this story. But before he could finish his mental ramblings, or even attempt to stand, a shadow fell over him.

He looked up into the upside down face of a giant, yellow-haired Atlantean—one of thousands who had fled and no longer needed to fear the wrath of Nemesis. Aside from his size and the three-ringed symbol carved into his chest, the man looked human, but in Akakios’s heart, he knew it wasn’t true.