Ares And Mia

Chapter 21

I flip open one of the journals that Ares kept on the shelf, finding refuge within the vanilla pages. Ares had left me in his office, saying that it was one of the safest places for me to be while he was out.

Out where? He didn't really say. But he looked mad, and I didn't really want to accidentally piss off the literal God of War.

Oh, and did I mention that it's the middle of the night?

It was already half past midnight and I was getting ready to read a book written by a God, in Olympus. If you would've told me that this would happen a few weeks earlier, I would've pointed you in the direction of the nearest mental hospital and pay your cab fee.

Yeah, you get the gist of it.

I plop down on one of the expensive leather sofas, shivering slightly as the cool surface met my skin. Pulling the wool blanket up, I opened the book to a random page.

'8-27-0002 A.W.

The EOD was annoyingly difficult to create, and I partially think it was because Hep purposely made it so. Now, though, I have confirmed that it was worth the effort.

It slides smoothly and cleanly through my opponents, almost like a knife through butter.'

I shiver to myself, trying to erase any mental image that was forming in my head.

'Zeus's call to order was excessive. Massacring so many beings at once, even for me, didn't seem right.

Zeus put me through every fight without support from any other Olympian, while he was constantly backed by two or three. Perhaps it was the situational difference, in which I had the upper hand in scenarios like this, in which the very motivation from the enemy side fuels my power.

It's annoying, thinking that his word is law because he's stronger than most of us. That'll change soon.

-A'

I flipped the page, biting my lip slightly. This was the beginning of the war that killed people like me. It still baffled me.

Rhea? Gaia? Just everything about that seemed so foreign, it was a bit hard to accept in the beginning, but every part of me knew that the Fates weren't lying.

'1-3-0003 A.W'

There's a large skip in time... That's... four months of him disappearing completely from records in his journals. Something tells me that this doesn't happen very often.

'I finished the last of the graves.'

My heart drops.

'There were so many. Too many. Three months of nonstop digging, even with my abilities, still wasn't enough to contain all of the bodies. The smell was horrendous, and Poseidon offered to wash them off into the sea, but I declined. War was about victory as much as it is about death.

And dying in battle is the most respectable way to go. There was no way I was going to leave warriors to rot and get picked apart by scavengers.'

He... He dug graves... for all of them?

'May they rest well.

-A'

My throat closes uncomfortably as I stare at the 'A'. A for Ares, the God of War.

The God of War who took the time to dig graves for every single one of the dead.

A singular tear runs down my cheek, my vision suddenly blurry. I shut the book, not wanting to damage it.

That hurt to read. His words were short and his sentences passive, but there was such... such pain.