Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
Aria
The fall was not a terrifying, chaotic descent into oblivion.
It was a plunge into the throat of the world, yes, but I wasn’t a stone dropping helplessly through water, waiting for the darker depths to crush me.
I had become the lightning strike that boiled the ocean, a jagged tear in the fabric of the Citadel’s oppressive reality.
Wind whipped past us, a roar of displaced air that battered my ears, smelling of crushed damp minerals, ancient dust, and the sharp, coppery ozone burn of the magic I was hemorrhaging.
I was hyper-aware of everything, my senses dialed up to a painful degree by the sheer overdose of power coursing through my veins.
I felt the scorching heat of Kaelen’s chest pressed against my back, his presence a furnace against the subterranean chill.
His arms were locked around my waist like bands of heated iron, refusing to let go even as wind whipped and tore at our clothes, threatening to rip us apart.
Beneath that, there was the rough, calloused grip of Flynn’s hand clamped around my ankle, a desperate tether preventing him from spinning away into the pitch-black void.
Below us, I sensed the massive, gravitational pull of Thane, a heavy anchor steering our chaotic descent through the twisting throat of the cavern.
And spiraling around our tangled forms was Elias, a comet of turquoise light and sorrow, his presence a shimmering shield deflecting the jagged rock walls that blurred past too fast for mortal eyes to track.
We shouldn't have survived. By all laws of physics and any magic I had ever studied in the Citadel’s pristine library, we should have been pasted against the jagged walls within seconds.
Instead, we fell for moments that stretched into agonizing eternities, dropping past layers of geological strata that predated humanity, down into the dark of the mountain.
"Brace!" Thane’s voice boomed. It was a command; his tone more stern and desperate than I’d ever heard it before.
The ground rushed up to meet us, a slab of unforgiving black rock that should have obliterated us instantly.
Thane hit first. But he didn't impact; he merged.
He struck the cavern floor with the force of a falling meteor, yet instead of the sickening crunch of shattering bone, the rock yielded.
Under his command, the geology surrendered.
The stone turned to liquid mud on contact, rippling outward like water disturbed by a thrown pebble.
He sank waist-deep in an instant, creating a shock-absorber of living earth deep enough to swallow a tank.
We slammed into him a split second later, a chaotic pile of limbs, glowing skin, and raw divine power.
Mud sprayed in a violent, gritty arc, coating everything in a layer of cold slime.
Air left my lungs in a violent whoosh, the impact rattling my teeth and snapping my head back despite Thane’s impossible cushioning.
Momentum took over, physics demanding its due, and we tumbled out of the liquefied pit.
We rolled across a surface that felt slick and organic, like wet moss growing on cold rock.
We slid, limbs tangling and untangling, until friction finally won the argument against speed.
I came to rest on my back, breath hitching in a bruised throat, staring up into a darkness so complete it felt heavy, pressing physically against my eyes like a velvet blindfold.
My chest heaved, sucking in air that tasted nothing like the sandalwood-scented incense of the temple above or the cold damp of the Cradle.
This air was thick, heavy, and tasted of ancient fungus, stagnant water, and the slow, deep breath of the earth.
Silence.
No booming percussion from the ceiling above. No mental screams from an enraged goddess tearing through my psychic defenses like paper. No chanting of the Keepers, no alarm bells, no order.
Just the sound of five hearts beating a frantic, synchronized rhythm in the oppressive dark, loud as war drums in the quiet.
Then, the laughter started.
It came from beside me, starting as a low, shaking sound that reverberated through the stone floor before building into a roar of pure, unadulterated release.
"Kaelen?" I wheezed, my voice cracking as I pushed myself up on trembling elbows, my hands sinking into the muck.
The Dragon Prince was lying on his back in the mud, staring up at the invisible ceiling.
I could barely make him out in the dark.
His chest was convulsing, rising and falling in sharp, jagged spasms. He was laughing so hard he was choking on it, a ragged, desperate sound that scraped against the silence.
It wasn't the laughter of joy; it was the hysteria of a man who had looked absolute death in the face, paused, and then spit in its eye.
"We survived," he gasped, the words tumbling out between sharp inhales as he fought for composure.
He rolled onto his side, ignoring the slime coating his body.
His golden eyes found mine in the gloom, blazing with a fervor that was terrifyingly bright.
"You utter lunatic. You beautiful, disastrous lunatic. You actually pulled it off."
"Are we... functional?" Flynn’s voice drifted from somewhere to my left.
There was a frantic scuffling sound, the scratch of nails on stone, and then a small flame flared to life.
It wasn't the devastating roar of dragon fire, just a simple conjuring cupped in Kaelen’s palm.
It illuminated his face, which was streaked with blood, which I hoped wasn’t his, and gray rock dust. He looked manic, his pupils blown wide, adrenaline warring with exhaustion.
"I feel buzzed. Like I swallowed a thunderstorm. "
"We are more than functional," Elias murmured. He was standing a few feet away, illuminated by the fringe of Kaelen’s flickering light.
He was brushing mud from his grey robes with an air of fastidious annoyance that seemed utterly absurd, given we were miles beneath the crust of the earth. "We are silent."
I sat up fully, wincing as my muscles protested the abuse they’d just taken.
Every inch of me ached, but the magical exhaustion that had crippled me earlier, the hollowness that usually followed a major working, was gone.
In its place was a humming, vibrating energy that made my skin feel too tight for my body, as if I were a vessel overfilled.
I looked down at myself in the flickering light.
My shredded clothes hung precariously off one shoulder.
The bite mark on my throat, where Kaelen had claimed me to seal the bond, pulsed with a rhythmic golden light.
It didn't hurt. It felt like a second heart, pumping raw power directly into my jugular.
The mark on my shoulder from Flynn mirrored it, a warm, throbbing knot of amber magic that seemed to sync with my own pulse.
I raised a hand, touching the glowing mark on my neck, feeling the heat radiating from it. "The song, the broadcast, did we complete it?"
"Listen," Thane rumbled. He pulled himself out of the mud pit he had created with a wet, sucking sound, shaking himself off like a massive bear shaking off river water.
Great clumps of mud flew everywhere, splattering against the rocks.
"Do not listen with your ears. Listen with the blood. Do you hear her?"
I closed my eyes and reached out with my senses, expanding my awareness upward through the miles of rock, past the tangled roots, toward the excavation chamber far above us.
Silence.
Not the silence of an empty room, but the silence of a void.
The "Distress" signal, that constant, subconscious pressure of the Gate’s screaming broadcast that I hadn't even realized I was hearing until it was gone, had vanished.
The psychic weight that had pressed on my mind since birth was simply absent.
"She stopped digging," I whispered, the realization washing over me like cold water. "Hera. She halted the excavation."
"Because there is nothing to dig for," Flynn said, a sharp, feral grin splitting his face, his teeth flashing white in the magical light.
He wiped a streak of slime from his cheek, smears of dirt enhancing the savage angle of his jaw.
"As far as the universe, Hera, and your Keepers are concerned, we just ceased to exist. We are background radiation.
We are dust mote signals in a hurricane. "
"We are ghosts," Kaelen corrected. He pushed himself to his feet with a fluid grace that defied the sludge beneath us, the mud sliding off his scales as if it dared not stick.
He reached down and hauled me up, pulling me hard against his bare chest. His skin was scorching hot, dragging the chill of the deep earth right out of my bones.
"And ghosts can go where the living cannot. "
He buried his face in the crook of my neck, inhaling deeply, his nose brushing against the pulsing bond-mark he had placed there. "You taste like the Void, fireheart. It is terrifying. And entirely intoxicating."
"I feel..." I flexed my fingers, watching arcs of golden sparks dance between my knuckles, illuminating the dirt under my nails. "I feel full. Too full. Like a glass jar about to crack from the pressure."
"The binding," Elias said, stepping into the circle of light, his turquoise eyes examining me with clinical fascination. "We flooded your system to power the broadcast. But the broadcast was a burst. A shout into the dark. You still hold the echo of that shout within you."
"Is that safe?" I asked, looking at the glowing veins now mapping my arms like river deltas of liquid light.
"Probably not," Flynn said cheerfully, appearing at my side in a blink of motion.
He wrapped a strong arm around my waist, his nose burying into my hair even though it must have smelled of sweat and tunnel decay.
He kissed my temple, a proprietary, possessive gesture that made Kaelen growl low in his throat.
"But you look spectacular. Like a galaxy wrapped in skin. "
"Where exactly are we?" Thane asked, looking around into the shadows that Flynn’s fire couldn't pierce.
I followed his gaze. Flynn pushed a little more will into his flame, and the sphere of light expanded, pushing back the oppressive darkness.
It revealed columns of stone that twisted and spiraled like braided rope, stretching up into the blackness.
The floor wasn't flat rock; it was textured, grooved, and knotted with patterns that looked biological.
"The Roots," I said, a visual from Theron’s stolen journal flashing in my mind, overlaying reality. "The nervous system of the Titan. We are below the Throat. Deep in the substrata."
A wet, chittering sound echoed from the dark, followed by a wet squelch.
Damp, a voice complained directly inside my skull, the mental tone shivering with displeasure. Dark. Good hunting. Bad smell.
"Steve!" I spun around, eyes searching the gloom.
The Skal pulled itself from the mud behind Thane, shaking its tentacles with vigorous indignation.
It looked unharmed, though thoroughly coated in subterranean slime that made its translucent skin glisten.
Its large, soulful eyes swiveled toward me, narrowing with recognition and simple, biological pleasure.
Master shines, it observed, the mental voice vibrating with satisfaction. Bright meat. Tasty signal.
"Don't eat me, Steve," I warned automatically, the reprimand slipping out with the ease of habit despite the absurdity of the moment.
Forbidden snack, it agreed mournfully, dropping a tentacle in defeat.
"We cannot linger here," Kaelen said, the dark humor fading from his face, replaced instantly by the sharp, calculating focus of the general he had once been.
He scanned the perimeter, counting exits and choke points in the gloom.
"Hera stopped digging because the signal vanished.
But she isn't stupid. She will suspect a trick. She will send search parties to scour the mountain’s base. "
"She won't find us," Elias said, his voice carrying the weight of prophecy and old dust. "Not down here. The Titan’s resonance masks us now. We are surrounded by its dormant dreams."
The adrenaline that had sustained me through the fall and the impact finally began to recede, leaving my knees weak and trembling.
I slumped to the ground, legs folding beneath me as gravity reasserted its hold.
"I feel like I'm full of angry bees. I'm exhausted, but I don't want to sit still.
Every nerve is firing." I didn't add aloud that the sensation was confusingly entangled with the heat of desire that had been in their eyes a few moments ago, a hunger that the mortal danger had only sharpened into a blade.
The roots of the Titan pulsed beneath me with a slow, rhythmic heartbeat, the air thick with the scent of damp earth and something older, something that smelled like the essence of the world itself.
I could feel the magic humming in my veins, a restless, vibrating energy that made my skin too tight, my thoughts racing too fast. The binding had changed me. Again.
Flynn crouched beside me, the movement fluid and predatory.
His amber eyes faintly reflected the glowing marks on my skin, making them seem to burn with an inner light.
He reached out, tracing a rough finger along some of the golden markings on my arm, his touch sending a cascade of invisible sparks skittering across my skin.
"Then don't sit still," Flynn whispered, his voice rough with a challenge as he cocked an eyebrow at me, a dangerous smirk playing on his lips. "Burn it off."