CITY OF THE GODS: FORGOTTEN by M.Scott Verne, Wynn Wynn Mercere Page A

him even happier with his assignment. He didn’t like standing in a big crowd, suffering the heat of all the fires and smelling the sweat of everyone around him.
    Reaching his post, he happily hopped up onto a large, flat rock. Axion looked to the right, down a slope into a valley, then to the left, up the side of a wooded hill. Seeing no beings in either direction, he gazed down the long path straight before him, hopeful that something interesting would come his way. After waiting for many minutes, he spied two centaurs arriving to cut branches for their bows from trees far down the road. His delight in watching them ended as he heard the screams.
    Axion’s heart leapt in his chest as the most horrible sounds he’d ever heard grew louder. He stumbled from his rock, almost dropping his small torch. Tightening his grip on it, he ran back toward the grove. He froze, terrified, when he saw Kinothos and two other priests trampled by a multi-legged monster with a keening boy impaled between its jaws. A cry of horror escaped Axion’s lips as the creature snapped down and flicked its head to the side. Pieces of the other boy dropped forgotten among the other Prometheans who were attempting to stop the monster with a ring of torches. It plowed through them, snapping off heads with impossibly fast bites and breaking bodies with almost graceful kicks of its many legs. The creature glanced toward Axion, pinning the boy with a look communicating that there would be no escape.
    At the largest of the altar fires, the oldest priest stood resolutely in defense. The beast pounced and shoved the man into the flames. Drawn to linger by the howls of the burning man, the creature casually rolled over both him and the fire, like a giant dog playing in the wet morning grass. The sacred flames were quenched by the creature’s impermeable hide and the stench of its burning hair was added to the miasma of blood and bowels and smoke. Axion fell to his knees, his torch forgotten now. Whimpering, frantically crawling away, he froze as the beast’s shadow fell over him. He heard the buzzards flapping and cawing, descending to share the feast.

    *         *         *
     
    “Look at them run,” Eros remarked. The orchard on the hill where he and Zephyrus had paused to rest in their hunt for Venus’ transgressor gave them a prime view of a well-traveled dirt road. Two centaurs were racing down it at top speed.
    Zephyrus spit out a chunk of golden apple core. “I bet two tankards on the black one.”
    “Wager taken.” Eros wondered why the centaurs were running. He knew Zephyrus didn’t. Most events were just random amusements to the winds, who believed themselves far removed from happenings on the ground below. But Eros considered things, and focused his attention on the horse-men to see what he could learn. “I sense no lust here. There’s no delectable virgin luring them to stampede.” He cocked his head, sifting through his impressions of the area. He ignored Zeph’s enthusiastic cheering as the black centaur surged ahead of his companion at a bend in the road. Eros looked to the horizon. “Can’t be fire. There’s no smoke.”
    Zephyrus shrugged, looking forward to collecting his winnings. “That’s two you owe -”
    “The sacred fires are out,” Eros interjected in alarm as he realized there should have been smoke. He sped down the hillside, his figure blurring to a smear of prismatic light darting from point to point as he exerted his supernatural speed.
    “Welcher!”
    Zephyrus roared after him, the limbs of the apple trees whipping from the force of his stormy passage, fruit raining from branches to roll downhill in a bouncing avalanche. A more powerful god than he, Eros was not one easily caught in such a race. However, Zephyrus thought fortune was with him when Eros suddenly stopped under an ornate iron gateway tipped with stylized flames. “A shrine? Fair enough. They should have some beer,” Zephyrus said