Aegis

Chapter Fifteen--Back Home

Kyros yawned. The past two days traveling with the Rogues had been awful. Ares and Reyna were polite and all, but it was boring. At least the journey would be over in a few hours. The group had passed the forest line about an hour ago.

At the moment, Reyna drove the wagon and the horses while he and Ares sat in the back.

Ares said, "Kyros, get the falcon up ahead."

Complacent from his fatigue, Kyros shot down the monster bird flying at them. The poor beast disintegrated into ashes. Unfortunately, the horses passed under the dust shower. Kyros coughed the monster ash out of his lungs. Then he leaned back against the wagon's side.

After they had passed the ash shower, Kyros finally asked the question burning on the tip of his tongue.

"Hey, Ares," Kyros said. "Why did you save me and my friend?"

Reyna glanced back at the two of them, but she didn't say anything.

Ares asked, "Would you prefer that I killed you?"

"That wasn't my question."

After a few moments of silence, Kyros resigned himself to the fact that Ares probably wasn't going to answer the question. Still, Kyros thought he knew the answer. The only problem was that it didn't match the other facts in his brain. On the night of Delos' fall, Ares had said he let them go for a penance. That word, penance, meant that Ares had guilt over something--Delos. Still, it didn't make sense. Ares was a Rogue. Kyros knew from his father that each Rogue
was ruthless.

A few sacrifices for their goal, he said.

The Rogues didn't waver after causing an uproar in Olympia, the leader of the alliance of the cities. They didn't waver when they fought and killed his father's men. Each Rogue was a seasoned fighter and accustomed to loss.

In spite of this, Ares felt enough guilt to let his adversaries' descendants escape. It didn't make sense. Ares was part of the operation to attack Delos in the first place.

Kyros glanced at Ares as the man dozed off. Ares has destroyed his town. Killed his mother. But Ares felt guilty about something.

He still killed them, Kyros thought. And he isn't stopping.

As the night wore on, the chilling wind nipped at Kyros' ears. He pulled the hood of his cloak over his head as a shield from the wind. The breeze was gone yesterday, but it picked up again a while ago.

As Kyros dozed off again for another short nap, Ares and Reyna struck a quiet conversation.

"Do you think this will actually work?" Reyna asked.

"Yes," Ares said. "It will."

"If it fails, we won't have much time to find an alternative. Pluto and Hades want the bolt assembled by the next full moon."

"It won't fail. We'll have everything we need by the time we meet up with Hades."

"By the time, Ares? Hades will be upset if we make him wait any longer. He has been at Altera for weeks now."

"Ha. We'll be alright. Pluto can hold off her brother for us," Ares said. "I can alter the mechanism while we travel to Altera."

After that, the two murmured some things about this Hades' temperament.

Kyros assumed the Rogues thought he was asleep, so he kept still. It wasn't long before he actually dozed off though. When he woke up again to Ares' command to shoot down another monster, two thoughts rolled around in Kyros' mind.