Chapter VII: Mountain Pathways

Chapter 6

Sean

The trip to Four Corners was disappointingly uneventful. The only thing that might have been interesting was a very odd looking Hummer that sped by us, but it must have been some kind of monster or something because the Mortal police didn’t even take a second look at it.

Thankfully the car never ran out of gas, so it took us a couple of days rotating drivers to get to there. As we got closer things got a little iffy as we saw Monsters of all shapes and sizes walking around the countryside. We were about to get off the road at the Four Corners Monument when we passed through some sort of bubble and we saw a scene out of a special kind of hell.

In the distance, instead of a monument, stood a mountain that reached high into the clouds - which weren't there a moment before either. There was a clear path down the mountain, and at the bottom of the mountain stood an army. That is the only way I can think of describing it is an army of clay. Thousands, upon thousands, upon millions of Roman Legionnaires made of clay stood in formation in front of the mountain pass, with Giants and Telekhine’s patrolling between ranks. In front of them was that odd Hummer I saw earlier.

“Head up that way,” Brain said, pointing to some hills that were, surprisingly, unguarded. We got out of the car, drew weapons, and started up the indicated path. It was far too quiet and empty considering what we saw at the main path. Thankfully, it didn’t last that long. Some sort of cat creatures loped up the path and charged us. Anna, as practical as she was beautiful, fired arrows, braining the kittens.

“Hey, I wanted some fun after all that time cooped up in the car.” I complained. She opened her mouth to reply, but instead her jaw dropped. I turned around and saw what she was surprised at. From the blood of the dead cats formed one cat. Where there were two before, there now stood four.

“Well, looks like you get your fun,” Brian commented, bringing his hammer out. Anna began to mumble under her breath when she thinks really fast.

“Hydra like properties, fire does not stop new creature from forming. Head trauma does not stop creature from forming. Three creatures left, no reforming.” She commented, and indeed another arrow she had fired into the mouth of a roaring cat ended up killing it, and it didn’t get up. Neither did another cat spring from its corpse. Progress.

Brian shoved the head of his hammer in a cats mouth and tossed it over the edge. The angrier he gets the lighter the hammer gets and the harder it hits. That's why its called Enrage.

“So what did you do?” he asked as he slammed the hammer into the chest of another. It fell over, apparently dead, then tried to get up. It roared in pain as something tried to climb out of its chest. It stopped moving, but another cat burst from its chest.

“The heart!” I yelled.

“What?” Alex asked, firing off another arrow.

“It has to do something with damaging the heart. The arrow you fired into that one cat’s mouth must have hit the heart, that’s why it just died. Brian smashed the chest of the other one, not killing it but causing its twin to form inside the body. As the twin thrashed to get out it must have crushed the heart.” I sidestepped a cat’s pounce and stabbed my blade between ribs to hit the heart. It dropped dead.

With that figured out the rest of the cats were pretty quick to take care of. As the dust settled we checked for damage to ourselves. Nothing too obvious upon inspection. We continued up the path and were met with no other monsters. Which worried me.

I took a look down the hill and saw that the clay legions and their monsters were engaged in combat with the one hummer. And the hummer appeared to be winning. I want one.

Chapter VIII