My knuckles didn’t even get the chance to split Blight’s head open from the jaw upward. A woman beside him lunged at me, slamming her shoulder into my ribs and sending us crashing through a run-down convenience store. I scrambled to get up, kicking my heels into her gut and shoving her off me. I rolled to my feet, and then watched as dozens more bodies flung themselves forward, smashing through the brick wall and throwing their limbs and bodies through stands and shelves with so much force they got sent flying through the air and punching holes through the ceiling. I flipped over my hands, ducked, and shot to the right. A tidal wave of bodies slammed into the back wall, some of them erupting into the alleyway behind it. Most of them, in a gaggle of limbs, tore free and charged at me.

  I met them head on, and it felt like I’d just been smashed into by an eighteen-wheeler. Out through one wall and into the next building, all shrouded in a cloud of choking dust that stuck to the roof of my mouth. I fought and kicked and smashed my fists into faces and bodies, crushing some and barely denting others. Space, Ry, get some working space. But that was easy enough to think about and wish for, and the snarling, snapping, grabbing rush of bodies picked me up and slammed me down and grabbed hold of my hair to hold me in place. A fist got me in the nose. Blood sprayed onto their faces. My head rang as hot iron trickled down my throat. I tried to swallow. A hand wrapped around my neck, snapping the air out of my mouth when I gasped. They hand my arms stretched and feet in place, with hands wrapped around my torso like binds, dozens of them holding me in place. I gritted my teeth and tried to move, to pull my arms out from their grasps. But tens more grabbed my wrists, my forearms, my biceps and my shoulders, locking me in place. They got me down onto one knee. I forced myself back onto my feet.

  The tiles beneath my sneakers splintered, then I was back down again. They forced my hands behind my back, then one of them grabbed hold of my hair and painfully jerked my head backward to face the slender figure.

  Blight stood in the hole we had made, barely a clear figure surrounded by the cloud of concrete dust. He moved slowly, carefully, making them part for him as he stopped in front of me, his eyes narrowing. “It’s pointless.” I tried to move. I got hit across the face by a heel for my troubles. I slowly shook my head, then spat blood onto his feet. He didn’t glare, he barely moved. “We have watched,” he said, his words rattling out of his gullet of a throat, “and we have studied, and we have collected your bones, your blood, your muscle and your flesh—we understand you on a level that goes beyond your own comprehension. Our methods are refined. Our decisions reinforced. Once a threat, you now do not pose so much as a pause. I wished to have seen reason in you. Unfortunately you are not your father.” He turned around, hands laced behind. “You’ve one use in this world, and that is your body, and we shall be acquiring it shortly. Our methods will be neither painless nor short, and I assure you, Rylee Addams, that the Triumvirate is forever grateful for your sacrifice.” He paused, then looked over his shoulder. “A hero’s death.”

  “Hey!” I screamed. Blight stopped, then glanced over his shoulder. The bodies piling onto me, that held each other down just so I couldn’t even get to my feet, struggled to stop me from getting onto one knee. I was panting, my body ached. My eyes burned with the kind of golden light that left the shadows as streaks along the floor and the walls, reaching for the corners. I strained, making every single muscle in my body ache. I took a handful of deep breaths, slowing my heartbeat until I could hear my own voice over it. I stared at him. He looked at me, watching quietly, his hands tensing with every passing second. “You really think I’m nothing like Zeus?”

  Blight turned around, then continued walking, vanishing into the darkness in front of me.

  “Good!” I shouted. I buckled. My face hit the ground when a body lunged at me, slamming their full weight against my back. I struggled, trying to push myself upward, feeling their fingernails burrowing into my skin, my shoulders, my back and my legs. They slammed their fists against my torso, but I still had just enough sense, just enough in me, to shout one last sentence, the last he’d ever hear: “‘cause tonight’s the last night you say his name and mine in the same breath. Mark my words, this is the last fucking year anyone thinks I want to be him!”

  His voice came from each of their mouths, bored, detached, and cold: “We sincerely doubt it.”

  “Here’s a word of advice,” I said through clenched teeth. “Remember the name.”

  It started deep in my gut, a swell of nausea that frothed and burned and got so intense it felt like I was being ripped in half. A storm of electricity erupted through my body, flooding my veins and humming through my bones like the roaring song of a horrific thunderclap. A fraction of silence. And then the bodies went flying, flung off me when the golden arcs of lightning exploded from my body, cratering the floor, shattering tiles, consuming the shadows and burning the air into a stinking ozone. Everything slowed. Time held its breath. A deep reverb settled into the air, into my ears, coursing through my entire body as I dragged myself off the ground, away from the bodies, shoving them out of my way as their bodies charred, burnt, the closest disintegrated, turning into pulpy, fleshy tumors of skin that blackened to clouds of ash. My thighs tensed. My sneakers blew apart. And then I ran.

  For a heartbeat, it almost felt like I was on the starting blocks in high school. The world was silent. The air moving so slowly I felt it scraping against my cheeks. Then electricity crackled between my fingers, and I lunged.

  Blight didn’t have a chance in hell.

  He turned his head at the last moment.

  Just in time for my fist to cave in half of his skull.

  Bone gave way. Brain and blood gushed from the splintered seams along his head.

  He didn’t stop smashing through buildings until I was the one thing he couldn’t go through. His body slammed into mine. His neck whipped backward, snapping his head against my shoulder. I let him collapse onto the ground, every long, elongated limb, every patch of stretched grey flesh, taught and shaking and torn apart. The chaos he’d left behind meant several buildings collapsed. Several more swayed and slumped in on themselves. Nobody in this part of town. The fire had swept through and that meant people had run. All that was left was burnt and old and covered in soot that turned my t-shirt black and my skin filthy and the body at my feet a shaky mess.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  He tried getting onto one arm, then collapsed when his forearm snapped. He didn’t moan, didn’t scream, this body probably wasn’t his, maybe something he’d created to be stronger, faster, more resilient. But I guess that really doesn’t mean much when you get hit with enough force to leave your brain sloppily slipping around your head, only kept in place by the flesh covering your skull. Black tar spilled out of his mouth and dribbled down his chin, hanging there before splattering onto the ground, sizzling and spitting as he craned his fractured head to look at me. I unfolded my arms and crouched, my hair loose, my body stinging, aching so badly that every fibre of muscle in my body felt like it was burning. But I didn’t stop. Rhea’s warning about using my powers like this was lost on me, all because, well, a part of me really liked the way he looked at me—it wasn’t fear, and it wasn’t terror.

  It was a blankness, a flash of understanding that meant he didn’t know what he was looking at.

  “Wanna know a secret, supervillain?” I asked him. I picked him up by the throat and dragged his body through the building until we were out on the street. The cloud of smoke still hung over the tops of buildings. The sky still burned a hellish red from distant fires. When my feet met the asphalt, it bubbled and hissed and turned to oily gravel that stuck to his skin and turned it into a blistered scarlet mess of pulled flesh. “It’s been one hell of a year for me, mostly because of assholes like you.” I could hear his slaves approaching. I could hear their thunderous feet pounding into the pavement, leaping from buildings and shrieking like devils. “And I’ve changed a lot. Inside and out. But one thing a lot of you don’t get, is that if I really, really, really wanted to, then I wouldn’t even bother killing you or ripping you apart or smearing you all over the concrete. I do that to send a message. But here’s the thing, Blight.” I brought his face closer, and… I can see your eyes in there, through the tar, and they’re terrified of me. I lowered my voice, so he alone could hear what I had to say. “Your time’s up. The Golden Age you know is over. Your heroes are dead. The Supervillains are missing. And all that’s left are stories, broken legacies, and things like you who for some fucking reason,” I grabbed his jaw and shook his head, “think that I’m gonna let you keep ruining the party. You’re old news. You dealt with dead people. It’s a new age, and you’re not gonna live to see it.”

  He gagged on the tar filling his throat. It gushed from his mouth like vomit, spilling down his chest. I gave him a handful of seconds, letting him gather his words. Then, quietly, he said, “Lucian… Lucian knows all.”

  “I sincerely doubt it.”

  His slaves came screaming and hollering down the avenue in droves, but that didn’t matter to me. We were in the sky before they could even get close, up through the shroud of black smoke and through the heavy clouds that had settled just above them, then I spun, and threw him as hard as I could toward the inky black ocean near the bay. He slammed into the water, skidded across it, shearing flesh off his arms, his back, grinding away on the surface like he was grinding against concrete. When he finally stopped, it was only because he slammed into a rusted orange buoy. It sank just as quickly as he did, and out here, where the waves were choppy and violent, where the tide swelled and the air was frigid and wet, I hovered above the water, watching him fight for his life, flapping and gasping, because suddenly, very quickly, he wasn’t very scary anymore. He was drowning. And fast. Struggling for each breath. Fighting against each wave that lifted him up and smashed him back down into its cold blue embrace.

  I did him a favor and picked him up by the bicep, holding him out in front of me. Water and blood flowed off his body, down his chest and along his legs, dripping off his feet as if he’d just been dipped in scarlet water.

  “And just like that,” I said, as a storm brewed in the dark clouds above me, “you’re not so mighty anymore, because when someone puts you in a situation you don’t understand, you feel like you’re drowning, don’t you? You feel like you don’t even remember how to swim, don’t you?” I brought him closer. Lightning flashed above me, followed by the deem roar of thunder, My eyes lit his face, his hollow sockets, his tar-smeared lips and the strips of skin missing from his neck, his head, his jaw and right along his throat. “But everyone keeps telling you how bad of a swimmer you are, about how they would try to swim, and then they get mad at you for finding your own way to do it.” I grabbed his neck, and tore his arm from his body. It was gristly. His muscles and bones were hard, tense, like rubber that refused to come apart—but I tried, and he screamed, and he lashed and then he begged, but I didn’t stop.

  Not until I had half of him in one hand, and the other half pouring out of him into the ocean.

  Blight was breathing rapidly, gasping for air, suddenly very human on the inside. In pain. In agony. Trying not to scream but gasping every time he was a fraction too close to shrieking until his throat was raw and bloody.

  “I’m not gonna leave you here to die,” I said. Rain next, coming down in cold sheets, washing the blood and grit off my hands and face, lashing against my cheeks like tiny whips. “What kind of superhero would do that? And risk letting you wash up somewhere onshore just so you can be a pain in the neck later? Ha.” I smiled at him, because it was the look on his face that was getting to me—the flesh was a mask, one that came sloughing off, one that very much showed the man behind it. The meat of his face, the muscles that tensed and flinched whenever the thunder exploded and the lightning flashed and I dug my fingers deeper into his throat. “You’re not coming back. And you should’ve stayed gone. You might’ve been able to keep up with my old man, but you’ve fucked with me for almost an entire year, and I think it’s time I get rid of you fuckers the one way that makes things the easiest.”

  His one remaining hand latched onto my arm, jerking me closer—still enough strength in his stringy limbs to make my jaw tense as his fingernails bit hard into my skin. “Your death,” he wailed, hissing saliva and tar onto my face, mixing it with the rain and the steam rolling off my body, “has been foreseen! He has claimed it so!”

  “Lucian’s next,” I told him. “I’ll make sure to put him in a casket the size of a shoe box.”

  “You’re no child of Zeus!” he screamed. “You’re no superhe—”

  I’m not gonna hear what being a superhero means from a supervillain.

  I backhanded his jaw, taking it clean off his face, leaving meat and bone dangling from his head. He slumped. But he wasn’t dead. He wanted to scream, but his lungs were drooping out of the side of his body that had come apart when I’d torn him in two—his throat was exposed, his tongue was missing, and finally, he was silent.

  As the rest of his fucking generation should be.

  Now, I thought, looking up at the sky, let’s see how far I can throw you into space.

  Who knows, maybe I can give the Empire a welcome present. They’ve always loved corpses.

  Maybe this time they’ll take it as a warning.