Stronger Together chapter 241

The next few days were both peaceful and hectic at the same time. As  much as I'd like to say Kara being part of our little group was some  blissful life changing experience, the fact was we had far too much to  do to sit around fucking or cuddling all the time. Not that we didn't do  a bit of both, but most of the time we spent contacting allies and  asking for support, with anyone from the meeting calling in their  markers to try to cobble together an army for us to use in the battle  ahead. We had Aiden out and about with Cinder and Kara looking for the  Denarians but hadn't gotten any leads so aside from knowing big things  were coming we were mostly in a holding pattern.

The  girls had all passed their trials. They each came back with a new  weapon for our big fight. Barb as expected had ended up with Hades helm  of darkness, which she loved. Her test had been some kind of weird  puzzle game with riddles and dead people and she wouldn't stop ranting  about how much fun she had. I suspected Hades was happy with his  champion too given the Helmet was his symbol of power and he hadn't made  arrangements to take it back after the battle like Apollo had with  Kara. She must have made a pretty big impression on the old ghost and I  looked forward to seeing what she could do with the crazy overpowered  invisibility helmet.

Raven  had gotten a slightly less commonly talked about but equally powerful  patron. The goddess Hecate had been intrigued by my girlfriend and had  decided to offer her use of one of her torches. The object apparently  boosted the power of magic and of demonic aspected abilities, which was a  double whammy for Raven. Hecate's challenge had been a powerful spell  Raven had to learn from scratch and cast herself from a mural with  minimal descriptions or clues. Hecate had spoken with her in person much  like Hephaestus had with me and the two of them had gotten along well,  with the former titan offering Raven lessons after the battle.

Cinder  had gotten her own test from an even less well known deity than  Raven's. Eris, goddess of discord. I...honestly didn't know how to take  that, though it certainly fit with her personality on remnant. Her test  had been some kind of war game scenario but instead of being given an  army she had to infiltrate a pair of warring kingdoms and collapse them  both. It was by far the most intricate test mentioned and Eris had  apparently had Hades tweak the time flow in the place because it had  apparently taken Cinder months to pull off but she made it back that  same night. Eris had gifted my maiden with her very own apple of  discord, and Cinder was honestly slightly too gleeful about using it on  the outsiders.

Yang  had been approached, to the surprise of literally no one, by Ares. His  test had been as straightforward as the god himself. She had to fight  some insane chosen of his who was stupidly powerful. Luckily after  refining herself in hell for months Yang was half angel now in truth and  she was ten times as dangerous for that fact. Her semblance worked by  soaking up damage to dish it back out as strength and with her new  nephilim body she could hold a massive amount of power. Pair that with  her improvement in Fenrir's combat style and she'd torn Ares's boy apart  within a half hour. Because she was a brawler he'd gifted her his  shield instead of his sword one of his symbols of power, and offered to  train her in combat when she returned it.

Kara  meanwhile had taken to training with her bow when she wasn't out  looking for denarians and she had learned some amazing things about it.  Firstly the amount of power you could condense into the arrow wasn't  limited but the draw weight increased as the strength of the arrow did.  Far from being an issue this was actually perfect for Kara, turning the  weapon into an even more dangerous trump card for her. The bow drained  solar energy from the user, since it had been made for Apollo, so Kara  could supercharge the arrows and then draw it without much trouble,  creating massively powerful explosive charges that moved too fast for me  to see properly even in my lightning aspect.

Finally  there was my own weapon, with which I'd been training pretty  frequently. Hepheastus had given me an olympian bronze cestus to wear on  my non metal hand in combat. It actually solved a big problem for me  because I'd been slowly using my klurkor state at its max to condense my  arm further and the result was my durability on my right side being  MUCH higher. The cestus let me fight like normal without shattering my  fleshy left fist with the impacts of my at this point frankly insane  power. I'd been holding back a bit recently with my off hand but this  would patch up the one weakness I had in combat.

Needless  to say we were all much more confident of our victory with the divine  gifts, but we weren't exactly assured a win. It wasn't enough to stop  the worrying in any case, so we'd been throwing ourselves into training  and prep work non stop to make use of our nerves. Lily had been able to  rustle up a huge contingent of fae to repay our favors since this was a  matter that effected the whole court, with Lara bringing her own  vampires along for the ride. The wizards were as mentioned only able to  really bring themselves, though at my urging they'd managed to get  Carlos, Yoshimo, Wild Bill, and Chandler out here to help. They trusted  my future knowledge enough not to ask why though they were clearly a bit  skeptical the kids would be of use.

The  knights were on side obviously, with all three of them having arrived  for this fight, and River had called a few of his kinsmen in to help out  as well. The army we had brewing was shaping up to be monstrous in  power. We were hoping to take out mantis girl Tessa before the big  rumble, but sadly that wasn't to be. We'd had Soldier Field under  surveillance by a few fae scouts for a day or two now, and despite the  distance needed to keep them safe in case Loki decided to look around  the binoculars Marcone had supplied had proven essential to discovering  when it was finally time to move.

News  of the massing forces at the field as Loki set up the circle with Cowl  was passed to us quickly, and despite us moving out to intercept them in  what was probably an obvious trap, by the time our forces arrived the  circle was already about halfway completed. We all met up in the parking  lot of the field museum arranging for everyone to mass there before the  attack. We had quite a few people to manage and it would be a chore to  pull off, but since we were so numerous we figured it was a better idea  to make the arrangements close by so the formations we were using didn't  just fall apart.

While  the meeting had been pretty cramped since we'd only had the leaders of  the various factions and our friends show up. This gathering was on a  whole different scale, and my eyes were almost bursting out of my head  at the gathered forces. Thousands of people, monsters, spirits, fae, and  everything else I could think of were arrayed before us. First we had  Marcone and his goons, strapped to the nines with what looked like runic  guns enchanted by Gard, who was right there leading them all. No  einherjar because they were needed at the gates, but the criminals made  up for their lack by being generally tough looking bastards one and all.

Lily  and Fix were standing in front of hundreds of fae, sidhe, trolls,  centaurs, pixies, undines, and even a fucking unicorn all armed for  demonic bear. Off to one side the white court stood behind Lara, with  Thomas at her side, all of them strapped with magic weapons they'd  sourced from one place or another. Dalton was here with his crew,  carrying enough magical hardware to be able to keep up with them, and  with a mostly recovered Brynn watching his back as Mina hovered nearby  with the other darklings.

Flamebird  stood with River's tribe, though not out of sentiment, the forest  people just seemed really excited to meet her, and she'd even brought  her pawapicts to help out, the unpleasant little monsters swarming  around her by the dozens. The alphas were here, and Harry had come with  Ebenezar and Joe and Ramirez and the other wizards. Henry had shown up  with Calliope, and Tera was here, having left Connor with Charity who  stayed home because if Michael and the other two knights somehow fell  while also preventing the end of the world someone would need to stay  with the kids.

Every  supernatural being and monster and friend and ally we had had turned  out in force with all their pals behind them to come together into the  biggest scariest crew of supernatural baddies the city had ever seen. I  just hoped this would be enough. My own crew was behind me and I felt  their support as I stepped up to address our forces. "Thank you,  everyone, for coming tonight." I had to climb up onto the hood of a car  to see everyone, but I made sure to push soulfire into my voice as I  spoke so my speech carried to everyone, a tricked I picked up from Harry  in the books.

I  pointed out at soldier field, where even in the distance we could see  the circle beginning to gather power. "Over there, a mad god and a group  of psychos being puppeted by an outsider cult leader ghost are  preparing to bring down a war on us like we've never seen. Most of you  probably know that we're mopping up the smaller force here while the  real attack is headed for the gates, but don't think that means this  won't be hell on earth." I gave a wry smile. "And I should know, I've  been there for real." There was a smattering of chuckles that actually  made me feel pretty good about myself but I pressed on.

I  stared at the red power gathering into the circle and the small army  gathered at its foot and I knew we wouldn't be able to stop the  summoning, this would turn into a full on battle against the outsiders. I  turned to regard everyone. "I can't promise you'll all live through  this my friends. I can't even promise I will. This is the big one, the  whole enchilada. We're literally up against the end of the world here,  and not that apocalypse is a way of thinking bullshit Nico-dumbass  peddles. This is true blue destruction coming for all of us and nothing  except the best we have will stop it." I exhaled slowly. "So no  pressure."

Everyone  rolled their eyes but I grinned. "Seriously no pressure. If we fail  none of us will be alive to feel bad about it anyway, so go out there  and give it your all, because without us here the world would be doomed  so if we don't stop it we broke even anyway. It's not like anyone will  be around to bitch at you about it. Go out there and fuck up some  outsiders and don't sweat the small stuff." In the field across from us  the red energy coalesced into carmine lightning and the explosion of  malevolent force literally cracked the skin of the world as the ritual  began to power up, aided by Cowl's know how and Loki's raw magical  juice. I rolled my neck, cracking it. "Well, lets go save the world" And  I jumped down to lead my army to battle.