Chapter Text
Sabina’s body trembled against Dexter’s as the Deer Titan gobbled up the spiders. His breath hitched as he thought up a pretty simple plan.
“We gotta move,” Dexter said. “Down the wall and outta here. It won’t hurt us.”
“Are you kidding?” Julien asked.
“Just trust me,” Dexter said, keeping his eyes on the Deer while reaching for a handhold in the wall.
The Deer froze. It raised its immense head. A new rumbling, creaking, chittering sound reached their ears from the outside air. Sabina and Julien gasped. Abaddon was returning. The seismic shock of her clattering legs met his ears. The Deer tore its claws from the wall, sending rocks and shrapnel flying everywhere. Dexter’s crew all turned their faces away. By the time he looked back the Titan had vanished from the cave. The towering slender legs charged away toward the massive bulk of the Spider. Several blocks away, Abaddon’s eight pale green eyes glimmered with avarice. Now the Spider was covered in long white scars, likely from the Deer’s claws from earlier fights.
“Go!” Dexter yelled. They leaped at the wall and half climbed half slid down it. Upon reaching the ground they dashed toward the cave entrance.
Dexter gagged from the rotten egg smell. Its breath had left a chill in the air. He and the rest ran out of the cavern, stumbling over rubble.
Abaddon’s entire silk wall had been torn away, likely by the demonic centaur’s claws. Dex didn’t mind the idea of this new Titan trashing Abaddon. In the distance, the Titans faced each other. The Spider charged with eight skittering legs while the Deer charged on all fours with a towering fluidity, its lean shoulders weaving in between buildings. At the last moment it rose up like an ocean wave and took a massive swipe at Abaddon with its lanky arm. The Spider dodged and clattered sideways like an immense crab, its legs impaling roofs as it circled its enemy. Dex couldn’t tear his eyes away as the Titans finally crashed together. Abaddon’s hook-tipped legs reared above the Deer but met sharpened antlers rather than soft fur. The two Titans broke apart again.
The Chasers ran down the street, Dexter in the lead following the Deer’s path. “We got the van!” he yelled, hoping Julien could hear it over the chaos. Sheets of paper blew through the streets from the direction of the chaos.
Dexter ran on, leaping over several webs. Not breathless yet, he looked up at the battling Titans.
Abaddon lunged and grappled the Deer with its four front legs. The Deer grappled back, trying to shove two legs away. The Spider reared up and chomped into its shoulder fur only for the antlered Titan to shove its claws into the chitinous eye sockets from which the smaller spiders had fallen out before. Abaddon staggered back before racing forward and slamming into the Deer, smashing it down on a city block.
The Deer stayed on its side for a couple moments, then let out a screeching roar that stilled Dexter and his crew, rooting them to the sidewalk. It went on and on, a scream from another world. Even Abaddon seemed stunned. The Deer began to stand as Abaddon circled it. The clatter of legs were bomb detonations. All of it would’ve made for fantastic footage.
Dexter snapped out of it. “Come on!” he shouted to the others.
The van sat in the street right where they’d left it, not smashed to pieces by either of the Titans. As they dashed to it a man came out of the shadows of a web-covered fence. He sported camouflage gear and held his big gun.
“Hey!” he yelled, running toward them. “Follow me!”
Dexter unlocked the van and opened the driver side door. The G-Team soldier ran up to him and he spun around in surprise.
“This car still work?” he asked. “I’m G-Team.”
“Yeah,” Dexter said. “Yeah it does.”
“I’ll hop in,” the soldier said. “Lead you to the helicopter.”
Dexter nodded to him. Julien climbed into the passenger seat while Sabina hopped in the back. The soldier jumped in with her as Dexter revved the engine. The van vibrated from the seismic rumbles of the titanic conflict. He reversed, spun around, then took off down the narrow street.
“Turn right!” the soldier yelled. Dexter turned right, driving across the broken pavement. He heard the earthshaking roar while he turned down a curve.
Off to his left, the Titans continued their battle. The Deer shrieked its primordial war cry at the Spider, circling it on two legs. Abaddon kept low to the ground, circling the Deer. The legs kicked up tree branches, chaff, and an entire tanker truck into the air. She lunged, grappling with the Deer and rearing her body high before landing a bite on its shaggy neck. The antlered Titan let out a pained shriek as Abaddon sank her teeth in. With four powerful legs the Spider knocked the Deer back into an enormous web stretched between two apartments.
The silk caught the Deer, stronger than steel. Struggling to free itself, it yanked its forelimbs but the Spider spat globs of silk, ensnaring the Titan’s arms further. Abaddon closed in, rumbling the road in her stride. The Deer spat a fountain of white, sparking smoke directly into the Spider’s face. Abaddon howled and reared back from the gas.
Dexter drove on, following the soldier’s directions and dodging the dead remains of traffic. The Titans’ savage combat inflamed the city. Smoke billowed sky high. Bright orange flames erupted in random street corners. A shattering squeal came as glass, steel, and concrete were torn apart somewhere miles away from the van. The Deer tore itself free and it galloped away from Abaddon. The earth shook all through the Bronx.
In the rearview mirror, the great black Spider spun around and its baleful gaze fell on the van. All the spit dried up in Dexter’s mouth. JuJu stared at his side’s rearview mirror in horror.
“Dex?” Sabina said. “Drive faster! It’s locked onto our movement!”
He stomped the accelerator into the floor and drove like he was in a video game. “Turn left!” the soldier shouted. Dexter did so.
Abaddon came for them, her skin as black as a moonless night and her numerous pale green eyes staring. Its legs tore down telephone poles as it closed the distance. No matter how fast Dexter drove, Abaddon never seemed far behind. He had to slow down to pick his way around totaled cars, giant rocks, and metal beams in the road. The Spider, unfortunately, had nothing to slow her down. The tremors grew louder. The road shook.
Everyone was screaming now, pounding their seats and shouting at him to do impossible maneuvers and outspeed the demon on their ass.
The Spider strode closer, her legs tornadoes and her body a vast thundercloud. Dexter zoomed past a semi truck. In the rearview mirror Abaddon’s great clawed limb smashed down on it, collapsing its box trailer. Blocks ahead of him several corpses lay in and out of the street. He didn’t pay them a second glance until they began to move.
At first the little twitches stayed in the hands. Then the feet moved. At least a half dozen humanoid monstrosities pushed themselves up until they stood on their legs. They all turned to look at the van.
“What the FUCK!?” Julien screamed.
But Sabina’s gasp seemed less shocked. “Oh no,” she said. “That’s Abaddon. She’s raising them!”
The dead began to walk. Their limbs twitched and shuddered as they made their way into the road. The shambling masses formed something of a blockade, standing in the street. One of them fell face down on the road. Their dead eyes flickered, staring right at Dexter as he drove toward them. Abaddon trampled concrete behind them in her unerring pace.
“How?” Julien whimpered.
Dexter remembered the spider he’d seen climbing into the dead man’s mouth. That must have been how. He frowned and huffed in rage. It didn’t matter how she did it; the Titan wouldn’t stop him. It wouldn’t have his brother again. He stomped the accelerator, speeding right at the dead.
“Hang onto something!” he yelled before plowing right through the walking bodies. Spots of dark blood now adorned the windshield and side windows.
“Keep going!” the soldier yelled. “We’re almost there!”
Dexter let himself breathe a little easier. He dodged the bloodstained van around piles of rubble, spun the wheel, and knocked smaller cars out of the way. Then the web landed in the road in front of him, causing him to swerve. The street pole appeared out of nowhere and Dexter struck it, glancing from it into a tree. The crash threw him forward and rocked everyone in their seats. He wasn’t sure if he banged his head into the steering wheel or not. The van no longer moved.
Everybody screamed obscenities. The next thing Dexter knew the G-Team soldier opened the side door and yanked Sabina out. In the rear view mirror he saw the eight green eyes right behind them, thundering right up to the van. Pain sliced through his body. The van shook. Abaddon’s creaking roar, louder than a train, nearly deafened him.
“Let’s go!” someone yelled from a hundred miles away.
Feeling nauseous and woozy, Dexter opened his door and stumbled out onto the sidewalk. Holding his hand up to his face, it split into two hands before merging back into one. A rough hand grabbed his arm and dragged him away from the van as the immense jaws came down on it, enormous teeth crunching through it. Glass sprayed and oil leaked as Abaddon lifted the van up to the heavens and smashed it apart in her teeth. Then the enormous antlers crashed into her.
All four of them sprinted away as the road quaked. Dexter glanced back as he ran. The Deer had returned, pinning the black Spider’s head down from behind. As it snapped stalactite fangs on Abaddon’s head, the Spider twisted and writhed beneath claws and teeth. With a mighty lunge upward she dislodged the Deer and both Titans rolled away across city blocks, grappling and slashing each other furiously. Skyscrapers and row houses alike crumbled around them in their deadly duel. The spindly black legs struck the Deer and pinned it to the ground only for the Deer to thrust its antlers up into Abaddon’s face. The Spider danced away, dodging a swipe of the Deer’s claws. Dexter tasted blood in his mouth while dashing down the street with the others.
The lights on the chopper remained high in the sky. The soldier waved his hands in the air before leading them to a tree. All of them hid beneath it.
“It just needs to land!” the soldier said. Dexter turned back to the Titans.
The Deer stood up on its hind legs. Abaddon snapped her teeth. The Spider charged the Deer, meeting the Deer’s claws with her own. She reared up, trying to pin the other Titan.
The battle was a spectacle, yet beneath the spectacle dwelled an awfulness Dexter couldn’t describe. And it had to be captured. He lunged a hand into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and pressed record.
The Deer shoved branching antlers right into the skull face and grabbed the dagger legs, forcing the Spider to stagger backward. The deer Titan pushed the Spider’s chitinous form across the city. Then the Deer got past Abaddon’s legs and slammed into her body. The black Spider fell. Her back slammed into the streets, causing a tremendous wind to flatten several trees. The buildings shuddered. The city trembled. The Deer was on top of Abaddon now, tearing at her with vicious claws. It bit Abaddon’s head, jerking its head back and forth to work its ivory teeth into her flesh.
Abaddon’s legs curved up, rearing over the Deer. The clawed legs clamped down on fur, causing the Deer to shriek loud enough to rattle Dexter’s bones. Red rivers of blood flowed down from the puncture wounds. The Spider flung the Deer off, sending it rolling away through the darkened city.
The fancy plane chopper came, thumping the air and landing beside them. Its ass end opened up and seven other Monarch uniform dudes waved their frantic hands. Dexter and the others obeyed their shouts to get on, dashing into the plane. It lifted off and closed. As they ascended, Dexter pressed his face to a window to continue filming the Titan battle below.
But the Titans were done fighting. Both of them shakily stood up. This time when Abaddon raced toward the Deer, the antlered Titan turned and loped away on all fours. The helicopter flew higher and the Titans shrank on his camera. As the clouds covered the lost city, Abaddon chased her foe across the desolate town.
Dexter finished recording. Whatever else the Titans did, it would be hidden from human eyes. Remembering the Deer’s scars, he wondered if it would survive. Julien came up beside him then, wearing his red cap. Dexter wrapped an arm around him and grinned.