Twice Loved by the War God

7 - Strife

 Eris, she had said.

Strife.

The sudden rush of intuition that bloomed in my mind should have alarmed me, but I didn't have time to wonder about it. I knew her name, and I knew what it meant. That meant I knew a little of who she was, too, and hinted at how exactly the chaos had come about. Strife, I thought again. A powerful name. She was dangerous.

The villagers were still looking around each other in confusion, but one by one, swiftly, they realized that this was no time to be standing around doing nothing. The houses and other buildings were on fire still, blazing high and wide with no one to put them out. The first screams and shouts of horror to ripple through the crowd went straight to my heart, but there was little I could do for them now other than try to keep this strange woman at bay - along with her strife. They were paying no attention to me anyhow; whatever I had done to make them stop, they didn't remember.

Meanwhile, the one who called herself Eris was still glaring down at me, and she too went unnoticed by everyone around us. How? She was the most colorful, vibrant, poisonously colored thing in the vicinity, and she was standing tall as she looked down her nose at me and everyone else scurrying around on the ground. But then again, I hadn't noticed her either when I first arrived. I narrowed my eyes, wondering how I could have missed something so obvious.

"Tell me what it is you want," I called up to her, and I moved toward the statue to approach her. The crowd had all but dispersed in just the last several seconds as everyone rushed off to save their possessions from the raging fires. It was just her and me now, with the sounds of shouting a ways behind us.

She sneered at me again, and her red lips curled up in a smug snarl. "Nothing from you," she jeered. "Or else I would have taken it already. Get lost."

"No. Whatever you did to these people, I won't let you do it again."

"Oh, really? So what do you plan on doing to stop me? Are you going to guard me day and night so that you can use your annoying little counter-curse every time I so much as sneeze? Go ahead and try it. This comes as easy as breathing to me, and I'm having fun doing it to too."

Counter-curse? Was that what I had done? The thought that I had done something that felt far beyond me made me uneasy. This thing where everyone else seemed to know so much more about myself than I did was getting really, really old. Thankfully, it seemed that she assumed I knew a lot more about it than I did.

"I'll do whatever it takes," I answered, and at the flash of wary anger that passed over her face, I felt a rush of new bravery beginning to fill me. "So you should give it up now. Come down from there and we can -"

"What, we can do what?" she demanded. "Were you about to say that we can talk about it? Please, you're so embarrassing -"

"Astra!"

I turned around at the sound of Ares's semi-distant shout before common sense had a chance to warn me to keep my eyes fixed on the danger. He was upset; I could hear it all too clearly in the tension of his voice. And he had every right to be. I had disappeared without a word, and directly into the fray as well. He was a little too far away for me to see the rigid, stone-hard expression I knew he had to be wearing, but I could imagine his anger as clearly as if he were standing before me now anyway. Once this was over, I knew he would have much to say about my recklessness.

I didn't know if he was close enough to catch it, but I sneaked a relieved smile in his direction before whirling around to face Eris again. She had a hand over her brow, dramatically staring into the distance at the approaching war god. Maybe she didn't realize who it was yet, but I saw not even a speck of fear in her wild eyes.

"Oh, no, they're multiplying,"she moaned, then threw her head back in a loud, drawn-out cackle. "Well, at least this isn't boring. I hate being bored. So much, so much."

"Is that why you did all of this?" I asked, and I made a sweeping gesture to indicate the dispersed villagers. "Because you were bored?"

"Why else?" Her smile sharpened, but the mirth that had been sparkling in her eyes disappeared suddenly. The dark, insidious gleam that replaced it made my skin prickle in growing apprehension. Was she even more dangerous than I realized? "Why else would I do any of this?" she demanded. "I want to have fun, witch, and if there are mortals around, there's so much of it to be had. Didn't you see how they were going at it? Just a little bit more, and someone would have lost his head."

"Burning what little these people have to ashes is fun to you? And - making them hurt each other?"

She had little to fear from me even if I wanted to hurt her - there was no way I could clamber up the smooth, ten-foot statue anyway. But she didn't know that, and at the angry scowl that darkened my face, she drew back a little and narrowed her eyes at me. Still, she didn't back down.

"Ha!" she snorted. "The fire? Don't be stupid, I didn't start it. The fire is what woke me up, witch. They did that all on their own."

What? This strange, dangerous woman hadn't been the cause of the wild blaze? I was loathe to take my eyes off of her, but I glanced back anyway to see what was happening behind me. The fires were still raging, but I could see the fuzzy shapes of the villagers running to and fro with pails. They were back to their right minds now, it seemed - and perhaps the flames had been an accident after all. I could sense the truth in Eris's claim; she wasn't lying about that.

But she hadn't disclaimed the chaotic violence of the mob that I had stumbled across just moments ago. She was responsible for that from beginning to end, and I could see the wicked pride over it in her expression.

"Oh, here's your friend," she exclaimed, and cupped her hands around her mouth before calling out over my head. "You! Are you going to preach to me and be a hero, too?"

Behind me, I heard Ares's heavy footsteps slow to a halt, and I had to resist the urge to reach back and take his hand. Something about this woman was jarringly sinister, and although I wasn't afraid of her hurting me, I couldn't help but feel as if something were about to go wrong. The sensation wormed into me and rested heavy in the pit of my stomach, as if I were watching a glass teeter on the edge of a table or a branch about to snap in a fierce wind. Except I didn't know what it was, and therefore I had no idea how to stop it.

My hands clenched into fists at my side. The source of this troubling unease - it had to be her.

"Astra."

Ares's voice was quiet. Too quiet. It wasn't a whisper, but it was a rumble so low and wary that I instinctively knew he was - worried. I had never heard that tone before, as if he were watching me stand trapped in a minefield and a single movement would blow me to smithereens. A wave of cold goosebumps washed over me. If he was alarmed, then there was something very wrong.

His hand enclosed my wrist, and I didn't protest when he drew me back several steps until I was half-shielded behind him. I didn't want to hide like this when I was still in the middle of confronting the remorseless hellion standing on top of the bronze statue above us as if she were lord of all she surveyed, but being stubborn was unwise. Ares knew more than I did, so I had to trust his judgment.

"You've been gone a long time," he said, and my eyes widened at his rasped, tense greeting. He knew her? From where? And when? "How did you end up back here, Eris."

My head swiveled back, and I stared up at her to see how she would respond. But to my surprise, there was a look of utter confusion on her face as well. Not only that, but her eyes narrowed into a guarded scowl and she tipped her head back with a suspicious glare.

"...You don't know me," she said. "And mind your business -"

"She said it had something to do with the fire," I interrupted. Maybe that would shed some light on all of this - "She said the fire woke her, or something." The same fire that I was now itching to help extinguish so that I could save at least some part of these villagers' lives. I glanced back again, brow furrowed. They needed help, and we were just standing around talking...

"She didn't start it?"

"I'm right here," Eris snapped. "Don't talk like I'm not here. For your information, I don't take credit for things I didn't have a hand in, because that's no fun. So no, I didn't start it. I did take advantage, though, because why not -"

"It's no ordinary fire if it called to you." Ares's grip tightened around my wrist again, nearly bruising me. I tried to wriggle out of his grasp, but it never loosened. "You wouldn't care unless it was set in malice."

I should tell him she was telling the truth, I thought, but this didn't seem the time. I waited, listening.

"Ha! I never said it wasn't. I just said I wasn't the cause of it. Wouldn't you know, there's some kind of treasure in this here village that a few idiots were fighting over. Killing each other over, actually. Mmm...Delicious."

"Where is it, then."

"Like I'd tell you! Don't act so friendly with me, big man. I'm more dangerous than you know."

"So am I, if you're talking to me that way."

"Oh, I'm sure. But look at you, holding onto the witch there like she's your little doll. I wonder if she's as fragile as she looks? I admit she's got a few tricks up her sleeves that I wasn't expecting, but other than that, she looks pretty breakable to me..."

I sucked in a sharp gasp when I felt his skin heat up like a furnace against mine. Suddenly, he was angry, furious - I tugged on his arm with my other hand to try to calm him, but all he did was grip me even tighter and crush me against his side.

"Get out of here," he snarled, and this time, his voice changed into something darker and more violent, full of blood lust and promises of pain. It drove a shiver down my spine as he held me to him, and I was reminded of the day that we had fled the erupting volcano of Hephaestus's hideaway. That was what it felt like now, standing next to something about to burst open and eat me alive.

Even Eris's face tightened in response. Her skin was so pale that it had no color to lose, but I was certain she was now afraid - now, more than ever, I was sure that she had no idea who Ares was and how terrifying he could be. Even so, her nerves of steel were something else. I saw her fists clench and loosen at her sides as she worked through her fear:

"Get out of here, he says," she mocked. "Oooh, I'm so afraid, so scared. Not! No one makes me do anything I don't want to, big man. Nice try."

She was lying, I could taste it cold and sharp in the air. She was terrified, and for good reason. I opened my mouth to warn her to stop and turn aside before things could escalate any further. I didn't like her, and she ought to face the consequences of whatever she had done, but when I glanced up at Ares's face, I knew that the only consequence she was in danger of facing was nothing less than death. I recognized only too well his killing intent, and worse, there was something predatory about it, too, as if he knew he could crush her between his hands in a second and would find nothing but pleasure in it. This was not the aura of a war god ready to fight and survive. It was the aura of a war god looking to s*******r.

But before the words could make it out of my throat, Ares's voice was rumbling through the air, the ground, and straight through me as well like an earthquake, an earthquake in flames -

"I said get out of here," he snarled. "Or I'm coming to you."

Eris's eyes widened, and I knew in that instant she understood how outclassed she was. Without another word, she vanished into thin air as swiftly as if she had never been.