A harpoon nailed Pax's assailant in the chest.
Someone skidded past Pax, right into the Roman's knees, as if the harpoon wouldn't be enough.
"Ajax!" Axel snarled, tossing the Roman, "Chi'naj!"
Pax took a moment to register the Mayan word for "door." [footnote 1] He scrambled past the scuffle. Fortunately, the hinges were still intact, though he doubted they would last long. Other footfalls rapidly approached. This time, he managed to slam it shut. He barred it and went to push a crate—
A body smashed into his selected crate.
Pax almost elbowed the person in the head. Then, he smelled the overwhelming swirl of sandalwood and saw antlers sticking out from the figure.
"Incantara:glacies fulmen iniectum,:" Alabaster hissed, his voice tight with pain. Bolts of ice gleamed at his fingertips. Alabaster flicked his wrist and three blue-white streaks exploded outward. One shattered against some blurry, massive blob, maybe a yard away. Another lodged into something a few feet below the first. The last one blasted off into the fog.
The glow of the lodged ice sickle came closer until the massive blob solidified into the expansive red rectangle of a Roman shield.
Pax grabbed Alabaster's arm. He dragged the Witch Boy off the crate—a spear slammed into their previous location. As if Pax didn't already feel trapped, someone banged on the barred door behind them as the shield and spear wielder approached from the front.
Maybe now wasn't the time, but Pax really wanted to gloat, "Oh, and I thought it was just me that screwed up." Somehow, knowing the door that Alabaster should have protected had also been breached—that didn't make him feel any better.
The Roman struggled to withdraw his spear from the crate. "Leader of Hecate located!" Something fizzed and made the silhouette of the Roman shield glow.
Pax released Alabaster to fumble for a weapon. Pax never knew if Alabaster collapsed to the floor because he needed Pax's support, or if he'd strategically wanted a better line of sight on his target. Either way, at the next, "Incantara: glacies fulmen iniectum," the ice bolts blasted under the Roman shield.
The soldier screamed. The metal shield thunked to the floor.
That glowing object lobbed over the shield.
Before Pax could bat it away, the thing stuck to Alabaster's leg. It continuously sputtered with red sparks. Alabaster grunted.
"Lion located!" someone shouted in the fog.
Another fizz. Another spitting glow, maybe ten feet away. Pax's heart thudded in his chest. Flares. They were using flares to mark their locations.
But the Romans didn't know where he was yet.
"Are you sure I haven't found you, little Roman?" came Axel's stage voice with sadistic glee. Pax heard stories about Axel's stage persona. He really didn't want to see it. From the thinning of the fog, he could discern three things: Alabaster was so low on magic that he couldn't keep the fog thick, Axel's stage persona was terrifying, and people should not drive in fog. Far too dangerous.
Alabaster tor at the flare on his leg and snarled in fury, "It's covered in something sticky. I can't get it off—don't touch it!"
Pax withdrew his hand. A deep tremble ran through him at the words, "Spy assist located!"
Another fizz.
When this flare lobbed over, Pax fumbled for anything. His fingers wrapped around something cylindrical—the PVC pipe. He must have dropped it when he was knocked prone.
Pax swung the PVC pipe like a baseball bat, hitting the flare. It didn't bounce off, but stuck. Pax grinned.
Using the last of the fog for cover, he skidded around the shield. There was the Roman, struggling to redirect that spear and balance on one foot (there was a tiny icicle problem in one boot.) Pax nailed the Roman with his PVC pipe in the back. The flare, as he hoped, stuck.
Pax liked to think that the Roman's jaw dropped.
"Professional Asshole located!" Pax said, mimicking the Roman's bravado.
"Ajax, drop into a ball!" Axel snarled.
Instinctively, Pax listened. Something bumped into his back before toppling. Two bodies—likely a soldier Axel had thrown into another one—tumbled over him, smashing into the shield user as the Professional Asshole shouted, "Wait—compromised flare!"
"Incantara: excandescunt!"
Flames erupted beside Pax, so close the heat wicked sweat off his skin. This was getting too close. The Romans were closing in.
As though on cue for a heart attack, the door exploded behind him. Fragments chucked into his shins. Pax's door was breached again.
"Romans!" Centurion Ari's voice boomed from inside the building, probably from the front entrance. "Una acies. Contendite vestra sponte!"
Pax's mind scrambled through Latin to remember what Mercedes said that meant: single-line. Your own effort? Wasn't that the massacre order?! What happened to taking the cute spy assistant alive?!
Instinct should have taken over. He should have ran or fought.
Instead, Pax froze.
With no magic or dry ice to replenish the fog, it dissipated out the three open entrances, leaving the murky shapes of the advancing Romans. Their dark blurs moved inward, one organized line approaching from the front entrance, two disorganized, smaller bunches along either side entrance. As they drifted, they absorbed their injured, dragging them behind the protective line. The Roman war machine. Pax had heard of it, but hadn't seen it in use.
He, Axel, and Alabaster still had crates to hide behind for cover. They had some supplies left. They could fall back. But, the Romans knew where they were. Alabaster had just smashed the tip off his flare, exploding smoke around his weird horns, but Axel's fizzed ominously on his right shoulder. Pax might be able to make it to the back barricade, but he would need Axel's help to move the crates out of the way. Alabaster seemed injured and they weren't going to leave him. There must have been way more than fifteen Romans. Judging from the lack of Alabaster's magical reserves (he wouldn't resort to fire in close quarters otherwise), he must have taken out half a dozen. Pax knew he got three. Axel had wiped the floor with those that got past them. Why were there so many left?
A sob choked Pax's throat, thinking about the three of them trapped against the back wall, easy practice for the Romans to spear as subjects in an anatomy lesson.
That sob released when he heard a beautiful song fill the room, echoing off the walls and clutching at Pax's soul. "Drowning in my sea of loathing. Broken, your servant, I kneel."
Armor shifted. Someone collapsed.
A laugh, more manic than Pax had ever heard it, erupted from the front. "Oh, stupid Romans. Can't you see? You forgot about little ol' me. I can see inside you, the sickness is rising. Don't try to deny what you feel—"
"Jak-Jak!" Pax cried.
It must not have only been Jack.
Screams erupted from Pax's breached door, the southern door.
"Wait—what?!"
"Stop!"
"Why—"
Pax tore his eyes from the front to see bodies falling in a cluster. Two Romans had turned on their comrades, literally stabbing them in the back. As the betrayed collapsed, a girl became visible behind them, one with stilettos in her dark hair and a mutilated face. Flynn's mouth was set in an annoyed line and her arms were folded. "Thanks," her melodious voice hummed with charm speak. "Now, hold still."
"Anything for—"
The comment cut short. Flynn wrenched the backup knives from the soldiers' belts and jammed them into their temples.
Pax flinched and looked away before he could see any blood spurts or brain matter. This was a riveting, exciting rescue, but he'd rather focus on the being rescued portion than the murder portion. At least she didn't make the last two kill each other. That was courteous, right?
Pax could hear the grin in Flynn's words as she whispered, "Now, panic, you fuckers. I'm going to kill all of you if you don't kill each other first."
The break in the Roman's Southern line was all Centurion Ari needed to make the call. "Fall back. Northern wall. Redirect!"
Chaos ensued.
Pax couldn't keep track of everything. He crouched to grab Alabaster. Flynn flew over, the Roman knives glinting in her hand. "No need for weapons. Come here—" her voice sounded as sweet as her gaze looked frenzied.
Jack's song from the front crescendoed. "Down with the sickness!"[footnote 2] Another Roman dropped to their knees, vomiting. One discarded his weapons to walk, open-handed, towards Flynn. His comrades couldn't grab him in time. Some threw spears at Jack and Flynn. Flynn laughed, using her charmed soldier as a shield, the spears lodging into his back. Jack—Pax was relief to see—must have acquired one of the actual shields. There was a massive rectangle of metal in the front door with a tuft of red hair poking overtop.
The screams kept going after the majority of the Romans had left. Pax tried not to remember any of it. Maybe it was because Pax knew he would be safe or maybe it was because he wanted to tune out the severe amount of trauma, but his mind wandered.
He was the information broker, a spy master's assistant. He was supposed to gather intel and leave notes like, Our camp's name is cooler than yours. He wasn't supposed to hang people with power cords or be on a battlefield, even a small one like this, hearing his surrogate father's beautiful voice make people upchuck blood, watching his surrogate mother slaughter the charmed soldiers that Romans couldn't stop from walking towards her, feeling the air pressure pop from his crush's and his brother's magic as they picked off those retreating.
He wanted to remember how the people from Camp Half-Blood had caused Jas to get vaporized and had melted the skin of Lucille's back when they blew up Monster Donuts. He tried to think about the names of the people who died in skirmishes against the Romans.
Not for the first time, Pax wondered if those born into violence and baptized in blood could ever surround themselves with another kind of love, with laughter that was not contingent on the suffering of others.
He thought of the way Axel made Alabaster cover his eyes to break that first soldier's neck, at the beginning of all of this. Pax burst into hysterical giggles.
Alabaster swatted Pax's hands away, bringing him back to this reality.
When Pax tuned in, he got the blurry view of Centurion Ari, covered in feverish sweat, wrestling one charmed Roman into an arm bar and carrying two others across her shoulders, both likely succumbed to fever. She scowled at Axel as she exited the building. Unlike proper hero protocol, there was no "Until next time." Wise. Most likely, she would have tried, choked on blood or vomit, and ended up with, "Anthills flex dimes."
With her and the last few soldiers retreating through the Northern door, the building seemed to heave a sigh of relief. Or, maybe that was a dozen Roman eagles flying off into the distance. Highly possible.
Jack's song cut off abruptly with, "My boys!" He skidded out from behind his shield. Pax couldn't decide if it was more or less disturbing that Jack's bubbly grin remained as he tripped over corpses. "Oh, my boys! You're alive!"
Axel's shoulder slumped. "Don—" Before he could finish, Jack slung an arm around Axel's back to drag him to Pax's level. Jack tried, unsuccessfully considering Axel was now bigger than him, to drag the brothers into his lap for a joint hug. Pax happily complied, wanting nothing more than to curl up in someone's lap with a mug of hot chocolate, half-filled with marshmallows, and hear stories about magical ponies. Axel grunted in pain.
Alabaster sighed. The annoyance in his tone was shaky. "Jack, his arm is dislocated."
Sure enough, Axel's arm was rebellious in its placement. There was more. Jack was horrified to see where Axel had been stabbed twice and covered the wounds with duct tape.
Jack started the typical procedure: snipping off clothing that clogged the wounds, clearing out debris. They would get to Axel's dislocated arm after Jack assured "there will be no bleeding out on my watch!" Jack gently moved Pax, so Pax could still lean on one of his bowed knees while he twisted to tend to his older brother. Pax stared at the bruises forming along Axel's chest, especially around his right arm socket. Like usual, Pax hadn't received any injuries while his brother seemed to receive double. Pax really hoped Axel hadn't made an arrangement with Satan about that. Satanic deals for short-sighted noble reasons? Totally Axel's style.
"Torrington!" Jack cried. "I am so disappointed. Does this look like acceptable babysitting to you? What if one of them had been seriously injured?!" Axel choked in pain as Jack set his shoulder back into place. "How am I ever supposed to trust you with my sons again! Alabaster, they're fragi—"
Alabaster was still half-leaned against a crate, where Pax had left him. Each breath rattled painfully. "Flash… I have a broken… ribcage… and am… out of magic… What do you… want from me… right now?"
"Definitely better childcare!" Jack said. "It's bad enough that the Androphagoi Darecare program bombed—"
"They're… cannibals…"
"But now I can't trust my friends!"
"We're… not—"
"I want you to know that I won't heal you until you promise that they'll never get hurt on your watch again!"
Now was not the time for Pax to point out how often Alabaster used them—well, mostly him. Axel had too much self-preservation and too little respect for the awesome risks involved in scientific and magical discovery—as test subjects for various potions, some of which had definitely poisoned Pax. Plus, all this madness considered, Alabaster had been against the Pax brother's plan to distract the Romans and taunt them into an assault.
Alabaster closed his eyes. "That's… literally impossible… for me… to assure."
Flynn trudged over the bodies, dragging one in particular behind her. Once beside them, she dropped it with a clatter of metal. "We need Alabaster for the war effort. You have to heal him." The comment was absent. Her gaze scanned the wreckage until her black irises landed on Jack. His healing hum paused as she gently touched his shoulder. "Jack…"
Pax twisted to see her better. Her brow furrowed with uncertainty. "You were able to distinguish between people you wanted to heal and people you wanted to kill."
This was one of the main reasons Luke never wanted Jack on the battlefield. In theory, Jack could bring plague to the whole Roman army. But, he could also bring plague to the Camp Othrys army, and this was one situation were "sharing is caring" wasn't the answer.
Jack beamed. He puffed up his chest. "I did! I only killed the right people! My maternal instinct kicked in."
Axel opened and closed his fist on the arm that had been dislocated. "I think you mean paternal."
Alabaster smiled weakly. "He knows… what he said…"
"Speaking of which. I want to know how they knew to hurt my boys." Jack shifted Pax onto Axel's lap. As Pax had many a time, he thanked the gods that Jack seemed to think Pax was five years younger than he really was. If he was older, they might expect him not to be curled in fetal position. All Pax wanted was to keep close to someone he knew could kick some serious ass. This building felt too exposed. Sure, the Romans had retreated, but what if their reinforcements showed?
Flynn dragged the Roman in front of Jack. Pax pointedly examined the Roman's knees, not wanting to recognize a face. What if it was the girl he couldn't hang? Vomit smeared the soldier's blue jeans and greaves like someone's craft night involved one-to-many milk challenges. The person's breath was so slow and rattled, Pax would have mistaken them for dead on a walk-by.
"Oh, no! No you don't—you're not dying yet. I'll make sure you live. You—you little—little—you bad person! You—you—" Jack struggled to find a word he found harsh enough. "You jerk!"
"Let's get the… boys home." Flynn never liked to refer to the Pax brothers as her sons, more like her impossible-to-get-rid-of parasites. Her tone was too sweet. "Then we can focus on interrogation."
"I want to be home." Pax meant that he wanted to be back in Belize, in their one-room shack, play-wrestling with his little brother and older sister. Axel ruffled his hair—something Uncle Frasco used to do. This new home was nice. Right? Their real dad wasn't here. But, Pax didn't want to consider why Jack would need to be present for an interrogation. Flynn or Lucille could command people to tell them the truth. Why would you need a healer?
Fingers hovered in Pax's face. He glanced up. Flynn had set the body down to offer him a hand up. "Let's get you there." She almost smiled. The look was painful and Pax wondered if he and his surrogate mother needed to practice facial drills to increase those smile muscles. "I saw what you did to the windows. That was good work."
Compliments were like albino tigers from her: so rare that you want to jump in excitement about seeing the fluffy cutie, then remember you should probably run away because it can still eat you. The melodiousness of her words warmed his bones and relaxed his tensed muscles. Pax felt his eyelids flicker. That had been good work, an echo cooed, forming the shape of her lips in the blackness behind his lids. Papa would be proud.
He'd be proud of you hanging someone.
Pax seized, clutching Axel's knee. Charm speak. Why was she using charm speak? She'd used it on him before, to get him to move faster or stop talking. But, why was she using it now? Nausea battled back the lulling effects.
When he opened his eyes, her gaze was gentler than normal.
Pax wanted to laugh, to give Flynn a charming smile, and say, "Thanks, I work out and think of ways to be devious and evil in my spare time." Instead, he threw up all over his brother's lap.
Axel sighed. It wasn't like this was the first time one of his little siblings had thrown up all over him. As he gathered up Pax, as Jack jabbered about doing something celebratory for Alabaster, Axel, and Pax's "victory," as Alabaster bitched about his ruined lab, and as Flynn packed up the near-dead Roman, Pax shuddered. He told himself it was because Jack must have accidentally made him sick.
Thanks for reading! I hope you… enjoyed? Things are about to get pretty dark at Camp Othrys in the character department and scene department and… okay, they're going to have a bit of a power outage on the happy-go-lucky aspects for this crew. However, when we come back, you get one of the purely fluff pieces in the series. Alabaster's The Delicate Dance of Chance.
Thank you to "Psychadelic limbo," "Thank God It's Friday" by Ice Nine Kills, and "Dangerous" by Son Lux and a slew of music from Bring me the Horizon and Famous Last words for inspiring this scene.
Footnotes:
1 Technically, this specifically means "door of house." My Mopan Maya dictionary has a word for that, "door man," and "door brace."
2 "Down with the Sickness" by Disturbed. You know, before COVID-19, it was hard to find songs about disease and viruses. Jack was born (and died twice) in the wrong decade.