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“No; you cannot fight alone. I may be mortal, but I am not afraid to fight a god.”
She ripped her arm from his grip. “That just shows how much of a fool you truly are. You couldn’t last against one god, let alone two, with an entire army of demigods and magical beings at their backs.”
“And you can?”
She glared at him, feeling the anger rolling from him through their connection. Straightening her back and tossing her head, she replied, “I don’t have to win; I just have to stop them.”
“That’s suicide!”
“That’s what life is like in the land of the gods!”
They stared each other down until a squeak broke the silence. Both heads whipped towards the Broken, who cowered beneath their intense gazes.
“Go with her and stay with her at my temple,” Tempest commanded, pointing to the girl. “That is my decision, and it’s final.”
She turned her back to them, called her power, and spirited towards Toph, her body disappearing in a cloud of blue smoke. Searing pain ripped through her gut as her rapid travel suddenly stopped and her body slammed onto the hard ground. She groaned as she rolled over and realized her mistake. The pain so intense she could barely move, she spirited back to where she had left Aiden, appearing next to the writhing mortal emperor.
“I’m so sorry; I don’t know what happened!” the blonde girl apologized, sobbing. “He just cried out and dropped to the ground.”
Tempest sat up and reached out to touch Aiden. He flinched away from her.
“It’s okay. I'm not going to hurt you.”
Barely looking away from Aiden’s curled-up body, Tempest told the girl, “Go back to my temple and tell them what is happening. Tell them I am heading to Toph to stop it, and anyone who can help needs to answer my call.”
The girl bowed, her hair nearly touching the ground, then straightened and ran as fast as she could in the direction of Tempest’s temple.
“Aiden, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I was worried about Toph and forgot about the connection between us. Are you all right?”
Aiden slowly rose, first to his knees and finally onto his feet, his body still quivering. Tempest looked up at the man standing in front of her. How she hadn’t known who he was immediately, she could only guess. The sun shining behind him recreated the crown she’d seen when they first met.
He offered his hand and helped pull her up. “Never do that again.”
“I promise.”
Aiden began to pull his hand away, but Tempest gripped it tighter. “Not yet. I need to be in physical contact with you to have you travel with me.”
“Like you just did?”
She nodded. “It’s something gods can only do in the land of the gods—well, except Kirata, she can do it anywhere—but it comes in handy. You ready?”
He gave her a single nod, despite being pale and looking like he was about to be sick.
She hoped the smile she gave him was more reassuring than how she felt inside. She pictured Toph’s gates in her mind, and a moment later, only a few wisps of blue smoke were left where the two had been standing.
When Tempest and Aiden appeared at the edge of the valley, they had only a moment to glimpse the valley of Toph.
It was a never-ending gray valley with a black stone wall extending as far as the eye could see in both directions, each stone the size of a house. The enormous gates stood in the center of the valley, made of obsidian with a jagged crack down the middle, carved deeply with symbols that looked red as blood. The moans of the souls of the dead were the only sounds coming from beyond the wall.
An army of magical beings fought outside the gate. The attackers were short and ugly, with long, sharp teeth and colorful hats on their heads. Their armor was made of splintered bones, gray as ashes, adorned with ornaments made of frozen tears and ribbons of skin. This was the army of Aloysius.
Demigod warriors fought alongside them, bedecked in gleaming armor that shone as brightly as a star. The army of Soleil shone on the battlefield. Those brave and tactically superior demigod warriors could tear moving water into knots of steam and freeze flying sand into glass armor.
The horde spanned the valley, and their numbers were so great that one could not see the end of this fighting force.
Toph’s army seemed beautiful in comparison to the others, shining in their black and silver armor. Although they moved faster than their attackers, they were severely outnumbered. Tempest saw no way for them to win this battle alone.
She scanned the battlefield, looking for the gods behind the bloodbath. A bright flash of light revealed Soleil, soldiers laid out several rows deep in a circle around her after the blast.
