Chapter 657: When the District Answers

They had both felt the same thing at the same time—the instinct that had kept them alive for centuries, the voice in the back of the skull that said move now or die.

So they had moved.

What resulted next was the complete collapse of every building that stood around the open space, the structures coming apart under the simple swing of Benjamin’s arms.

Tiled roofs and straw roofs tore free and went flying outward, spinning through the air like leaves in a storm.

The wood and stone that had formed the walls themselves blew apart and scattered like dry powder caught in a sudden strong wind.

The air filled with dust and debris and the sound of everything breaking at once.

"It’s unfair if you guys escape," Benjamin said as he puckered his lips and turned to face the rest of his foes again.

He looked truly disappointed, like a child whose game had been interrupted. "I had to tap into some forbidden powers for that one, too."

But before he could even finish speaking the full sentence, Frigoris’ feet connected solidly with the side of his face and sent him flying through the air as if someone had thrown him with their entire strength.

The impact made a sound like a thunderclap. He traveled over rooftops and across multiple streets, the force of the kick still taking him higher and farther with no sign of slowing down.

His body spun many times. The wind roared in his ears. The sky and the ground changed places again and again.

Before his body could begin its natural fall toward the ground, a second and even heavier force came down on him from above and drove him hard toward the cobblestones below with such raw power that the air itself was stirred into something close to a windstorm.

It was Hawthorne, delivering a full hammer slam while Benjamin was still suspended in the air and unable to brace properly.

His fists were clasped together above his head. His face was twisted with effort and pain and something that might have been hope.

Benjamin managed to block the descending strike cleanly with both arms, and the moment their feet finally touched the cobblestone street the ground under them sank several feet and a wide, spreading wave of deep cracks raced outward across the entire surrounding area.

Without pause Benjamin’s hand shot out and closed around the front of Hawthorne’s shirt, yanking the larger man downward in one short, brutal motion.

Hawthorne’s feet left the ground and his face came level with Benjamin’s.

He could see the god-touched’s eyes clearly, and what he saw in them was not anger or hatred.

From his position directly below Benjamin, Hawthorne could already see the slender hand speeding toward the center of his chest with nothing left between them to stop it.

In the space of a single blink Sekhmet accelerated from the side and seized Hawthorne, carrying him clear of the path only inches before the small fist would have driven straight through his body.

She moved so fast that the air around her screamed. She moved so fast that Hawthorne did not realize he had been saved until he was already twenty feet away and skidding across the broken ground on his back.

BAAMMM!!

The force of the missed strike answered across the whole district.

The sound came first, a deep booming crash that seemed to come from everywhere at once. Then the ground sank.

The street where Benjamin’s fist had landed caved inward so deeply that the buildings still standing around him were forced over into a horizontal position, their walls leaning out until they could lean no further and simply fell.

The very earth that had held them upright was now twisted and broken into an abnormal, impossible shape.

A crater opened where the street had been, wide enough to swallow a house, deep enough that the bottom could not be seen through the dust.

Sekhmet and Hawthorne could only watch the resulting destruction with terrified eyes.

Hawthorne’s mouth hung open. His chest heaved. His hands had begun to shake, and he did not have the strength left to stop them.

Sekhmet stood beside him with one hand still gripping his arm, her face pale beneath its skin, her eyes fixed on the crater and the man standing at its center.

Benjamin straightened up. He brushed the dust from his sleeves.

Sekhmet was still running while she carried Hawthorne on her shoulder when she finally spotted the rest of their group standing ahead in another part of Lot that looked far less damaged than the streets they had just left behind.

The buildings here still had their roofs. A flower box on a second-story ledge had somehow survived the chaos, its petals bright and undisturbed.

The sight of something so ordinary after everything they had just witnessed made her chest tighten with hope.

"Sekhmet, no!" Saharit’s warning reached her ears, but the words came too late to change what was already happening.

Due to the fast reflexes she had trained for so many years she managed to spot the danger herself in that same instant.

The air behind her had changed. The pressure had shifted. Something was coming, and it was coming fast.

So she threw Hawthorne toward safety with every bit of remaining strength she could gather—his body spun through the air, his arms flailing—and then crossed both of her arms tightly over her chest in an effort to protect that area from whatever was coming.

Benjamin, it turned out, was running right behind her at a speed that was just as blinding as her own.

How she had failed to sense that monstrous aura until the very last moment remained a different matter that she had no time left to understand.

He was simply there, where a moment ago he had not been, and the air around him hummed with a power that made her teeth ache.

Benjamin’s fist looked as though it was aimed straight at Sekhmet’s chest, which was the reason she kept her arms locked in place to block exactly there.

She braced herself for the impact, tightened every muscle in her torso, and then planted her feet as best she could.