Things were not going as planned. Apollo, running for the moment on only the cold intellectual logic of battle tactics (screw strategy, that was for commanders like Athena), fueled by and siphoning away his hate and anger and lust for vengeance, knew that if he had to close to melee combat with Moros, he’d have even odds, at best, to come out the victor. Doom was just too much a bruiser, and often too oblivious to his own hurts, to deal with effectively up-close.
And yet he retained that maddening habit of ‘catching’ all his arrows. Poor Hedylogos; he’d have to apologize to the kid after he came back out of Concept, for peppering his body this way. Though if he spent very long under Doom’s ministrations, maybe he’d want to apologize to Apollo for letting his body act as a shield for the bastard.
The fallen beams, bits of ceiling plaster and other junk behind him were burning, or soon to be. He was trapped in this hallway with seven feet of bad bearing down on him. He needed a way out of this hall, and he needed it soon. He’d considered trying to taunt Moros into charging him (he trusted in his speed, and was almost sure to find a way around the big guy if he were running instead of the slow, measured steps he was taking now), but he discarded that idea almost immediately; he hadn’t the kind of leverage he’d need to goad someone like Moros into doing something out of anger, if such a thing was even possibly anymore, as mad as he was.
More from a sense of “ought” than anything else, he shot another arrow down the hallway at the approaching god. He aimed high, for the head, and knew that the spear Hedylogos would impede its progress before it found its mark, but he could always get lucky, and it might offer enough of a distraction, with his “shield” in the way to afford Apollo the opportunity he needed.
He turned and glanced for a moment at the burning wreckage. It was, of course, all a jumble and from the tricksome light shed by the fires and smoke drifting up it was difficult to tell. Man-high, and no decent ways through. But, maybe…yes, there. There were a couple of boards that didn’t seem to be load-bearing, and would be wide enough for him to get through. It’d be a near thing, but he’d take it.
Spinning his head back around to face the approaching Doom, he knew he’d need to keep Moros as distracted as he could, lest he see what Apollo was up to and picked up the pace a little. He pivoted himself more, to turn the lower half of his body closer to facing the burning wall. He leaned forward, drew his next arrow, raised his leg and quickly checked his balance. He let fly the arrow at the same moment his leg struck the boards that were now flickering with the first tentative tendrils of flame.
The boards held, and the arrow sailed off to one side, still true in its path, but an easy deflection for the hulking god bearing down on him. He nocked another arrow, but this time leaned back just a little. He raised his leg again, and as he kicked, and loosed the ashen shaft, he shifted his weight forward, to give his leg more speed.
Again the arrow pierced Hedylogos’s corpse; he was looking more like a bloody pincushion than a proud god. But the boards could not withstand the second kick; they had given way with a resounding crack. To his relief, the intact section of the beams still held the other debris up, so he now had his escape route.