Chapter 8 The Hero’s Quest #2
Phix let out a sharp cry of pain, her massive golden body flying backward.
She crashed hard into the garden, crushing the white flowers beneath her weight.
Where the corrupted death magic had touched her, her golden pelt briefly lost color and turned grey.
But as I’d hoped, it quickly began to recover, fed by the ambient energy of Asphodelia.
She got up again and started to circle me, as if considering a new angle. “You would use your own child against me? For your wretched scheme?”
“Didn’t you hear her?” I drawled. “She’s not my child. She’s a weapon. And she was made to do this.”
When Phix attacked me again, I yanked the binding a second time. Medea screamed. Another concentrated blast of pure decay erupted from her palms. This time, I was a little more careful when aiming her, just in case.
The attack caught Phix in the wing. The sound of obsidian shattering echoed across the terrace as black shards rained down onto the silver stones. The Sphinx collapsed onto her side, her ruined wing dragging heavily on the ground.
Medea fell to her knees, her arms still locked rigidly in front of her Tears streamed down her face.
She kept her eyes fixed on her hands, watching the lethal energy pour out of her.
“Please,” she sobbed, her whole body shaking.
“Jason, please. I will go with you. I will do anything. Just stop making me hurt her.”
I stopped just a few feet away from her. Reaching down, I grabbed a handful of her silver hair and wrenched her head up. “You are already going with me, Medea. But you were never what really mattered.”
I turned my gaze to Phix. She was panting heavily, her golden frame shuddering with every breath. There was absolutely no fear in her dark eyes, only a cold, ancient hatred.
“You are a scavenger,” she rasped. “You are a maggot feeding on the unweavings of a world you did not build.”
Her empty defiance only made me laugh. “The maggot is the one who survives the feast. The world I build with your gifts will be far greater than this rotting sanctuary.”
I raised my staff. The black wood began to pulse with a sickly, jaundiced yellow light. I wanted to feel the life leave the sphinx myself. I wanted to carve the golden pelt from her bones while her ancient heart still beat.
“Telamon, take the girl,” I commanded.
Telamon stepped forward, his hands locking over Medea’s shoulders. She tried to thrash away from him, her bare feet scrambling against the silver stones as she reached desperately toward the dark den. “No. Leave me alone! Don’t take me away from him.”
Him. Again with the mysterious monster she’d apparently fallen for. I’d have to teach her a new lesson once we were back on the Argo. Weapons weren’t allowed to feel.
But for now, it was Phix who demanded my full attention.
I stepped closer to the sphinx, leveling the glowing tip of my staff at her chest. “Now, let us see the might hidden beneath that golden pelt.”
Phix tried to move one last time. But the corrupted magic had done its work, weakening the tapestry that was keeping her together. She wasn’t falling apart like the other Blighted Ones, but she was entirely vulnerable. She was ready to be harvested.
I raised my staff higher and began to chant. “Power of the Shift, come to me. Give me your strength. The magic of a million endings!”
The ritual would channel the intensity of the world-ending calamity that had torn our world asunder. It was only fitting, since I fully planned to tear it apart all over again. Alia Terra had grown stagnant and empty. With the sphinx’s power, I’d be able to fix that.
I reached out with my free hand, my fingers stopping mere inches from the golden fur of Phix’s neck. I could feel the intense heat of her life-force, the flickering embers of the very first creature.
“The Shift will never belong to you,” she growled, but her voice was feeble. A mere shadow of what the sphinx had once been.
“It already does. Just like you, sphinx.”
The world seemed to hold its breath, waiting for my final strike. The white flowers were perfectly still. The shattering crystals had gone completely silent. I was the master of the weave, and I was finally going to win.
The ground beneath my boots buckled with tremendous force.
A sound like a thousand heavy bronze bells ringing in unison erupted from deep inside the stone den. A massive shockwave of blinding blue-white light blasted out of the archway, striking with enough force to instantly evaporate the yellow fog surrounding me.
I stumbled back, throwing my arm up to shield my eyes.
Phix laughed. “I told you, foolish human. Your arrogance will be your undoing.”
I’d have loved to punish her for her words, but some strange instinct forced me to face the den.
That was when I saw it. Through the harsh glare, a massive silhouette emerged.
A bronze giant stepped onto the path, moving with the terrifyingly swift grace of an apex predator.
The metal was glowing with an intense, raging heat. His eyes were completely dead.
“Captain!” Telamon shouted, his voice cracking with overwhelming fear. “What… What is that?”
I stared at the colossus, and my heart skipped a beat. Medea's loss of control should have incapacitated the monsters of Asphodelia, but this monster was one of an entirely different nature. One built, not woven.
There had been a few rumors. Stories of a creature that had come from Charon’s hands. But everything I’d heard suggested it was only a vessel for death energy. Nothing more.
It seemed Asphodelia had kept some of its most precious secrets away from everyone. And the bronze monster was one of them.
Medea stopped fighting Telamon and stared fixedly at the metallic creature. She knew him. Oh… The creature was her groom. My daughter had certainly found an interesting guardian.
But she hadn’t yet realized he was completely untethered. There was no guiding intelligence behind those glowing eyes, no master holding his leash. He was a hollow, mindless weapon operating purely on absolute, destructive instinct.
Any other day, I would have found her ongoing hope amusing. But as the mindless bronze titan moved silently toward me, closing the distance with unnatural speed, I felt something I had not felt in decades.
I felt fear.