Chapter 4
FOUR
Elias
"Burn it all down," Aria said, repeating Kaelen's words. The echo of her voice, rough with exhaustion yet sharp with intent, lingered strangely in the vast, dusty air of the hall.
I looked at her, really looked at her. Her skin was pale, translucent like parchment held up to a flame, and the golden markings of our bond were pulsing with a frantic, uneven rhythm.
She stood with the rigid, trembling tension of a bowstring drawn past its breaking point.
She was magnificent. She was terrifying.
And she was vibrating apart.
"Incoming!" Flynn roared, his voice cracking the stillness.
The high, domed ceiling of the Hall of Muses shattered, exploding inward.
Heavy glass and bronze framework rained down in a storm of shrapnel.
With the debris came the Harpies. They descended in a screeching vortex of molting feathers and the stench of carrion.
They were hideous things, torsos of emaciated women fused to the bodies of vultures, their talons dripping with a black, viscous ichor that hissed when it hit the marble floor.
"Form up!" Kaelen’s command was a blast of heat, his sword igniting with dragon fire that painted the falling glass in strokes of violent orange.
I moved instinctually, my mind calculating the trajectory of the falling debris. I raised a hand, expanding a field of kinetic dampening above us. Probability shift. The shards of glass diverted, flowing around us like water around a stone, clattering harmlessly to the floor.
"Thane, the east flank!" I shouted, my voice calm despite the chaotic thrumming of my pulse. "They are targeting the pillars!"
Thinking was my weapon. While Kaelen burned and Flynn bled, I saw the math of the slaughter. The Harpies weren't just attacking; they were herding us, trying to drive us toward the unstable section of the floor where the Devourer was already gnawing at the foundation.
A Harpy dived at Aria, her screech piercing enough to rupture eardrums.
Flynn intercepted it mid-air, a blur of leather and steel. He slammed into the creature, driving his daggers into its wing joint. They tumbled across the floor in a ball of feathers and fury.
"Get behind me!" Kaelen roared, shoving Aria toward the base of a massive statue of Calliope. He swung his sword, the long blade cleaving a Harpy in two. The smell of burnt feathers and ozone flooded my senses, choking out the dusty scent of the archives.
Aria stumbled, clutching the hilt of Hades’s sword. She looked disoriented, her eyes tracking too slowly.
"I can fight," she gasped, raising the blade. The shadow-metal drank the dim light, heavy in her hand.
"Don't!" I warned, seeing the fluctuation in her aura before she even drew breath. "Aria, do not pull on the bond!"
She didn't listen. She never listened. She was Pandora's heir, after all. Curiosity and defiance were woven into the very essence of her being.
She thrust her hand forward, aiming a blast of force at a Harpy diving for Thane’s exposed back. I felt her reach into the collective well of our power. She grabbed blindly for Kaelen’s fire and my gravity.
But the conduit was stripped bare.
The sound that tore through the room wasn't a roar of magic. It was a sound I had not heard in aeons. It was the high-pitched, resonant ping of crystal failing under pressure.
Aria didn't scream. She simply folded.
Her knees hit the marble floor with a sickening clack, like two stones striking together. The sword of Hades clattered from her grip, sliding away across the polished stone.
"Aria!" Kaelen’s shout was pure, unadulterated panic. He abandoned his guard, turning his back on the flock to reach for her.
I was closer. I slid across the floor, my robes billowing, and caught her just before her head struck the base of the statue.
Her skin burned against mine, but it wasn't the healthy heat of exertion. It was a dry, friction-born heat, like a machine running without oil.
"Look at me," I commanded, cradling her head.
Her eyes rolled back, the amethyst irises swallowed by a milky, opalescent white. But it was the markings on her skin that stopped my heart.
The golden markings, the beautiful, living map of our bond, were changing. As I looked at her, the gold was bleaching out, turning a stark, sickly silver. The light didn't pulse anymore; it flared in jagged, strobe-like spasms.
She tried to move her arm to reach for me.
The sound was audible over the screeching of the Harpies. Crrr-k-k.
It sounded like ice cracking on a winter lake.
"My... arm," she wheezed, her voice thin and reedy. "It feels... stuck."
I looked at her elbow. The skin had gone taut, shiny, and hard. It looked less like flesh and more like spun sugar.
"No," I whispered, the diagnosis hitting me with the force of a physical blow. The ancient texts in the Great Library of the High Seat had theorized about this, but I had never seen it. I had prayed I never would.
"Elias!" Kaelen was beside us, his sword whirling to deflect a Harpy’s talons. He dropped to one knee, his face a mask of terror. "What is it? Is she drained?"
"Worse," I said, my fingers trembling as I hovered them over her chest. "Something terrible…"
"Speak plain!" Thane roared from the perimeter, swinging his hammer to crush a Harpy’s skull. "We are a little busy!"
"Friction," I snapped, looking up at Kaelen. "We are four divine souls poured into a mortal vessel, Kaelen. We are too dense. Too heavy. Every time she channels us, every time the bond flares, it creates metaphysical friction."
I looked back down at her. The silver light was spreading from her neck to her jawbone, turning the skin rigid.
"We are cooking her from the inside out," I whispered, the horror of it tasting like bile. "Her mortal frame can no longer handle the pressure."
Aria convulsed, a stiff, jerky movement. "It... burns," she gasped. "Cold. It burns cold."
"If she moves too fast," I told Kaelen, meeting his golden eyes, "she will shatter. Literally shatter."
Kaelen went pale, the dragon fire in his eyes dimming to a flicker. He looked at her arm, at the way the joint seemed locked in place. He reached out to touch her, then pulled back, terrified.
"How do we stop it?" Flynn shouted, appearing out of the melee, bleeding from a scratch on his cheek. He skidded to a halt, seeing her condition, and the blood drained from his face. "Unbind her? Let her go?"
"We can't," I said, my mind racing through permutations, deducing outcomes at the speed of thought. "The bond is structural now. If we sever it, she crumbles into dust. If we keep it, then she will probably turn into a statue."
The irony was not lost on me. We were in a hall surrounded by statues, had recently been fighting living statues, and now we were turning the woman we loved into one.
Three harpies synchronized their dive, aiming directly for the huddled group of us, each of them letting out an almighty screech.
"Defend her!" Kaelen roared, rising to his full height. The dragon surfaced, scales rippling across his skin, his fear transmuting instantly into a violently protective rage. He unleashed a cone of fire that vaporized the lead attacker.
"Thane!" I yelled. "I need a shelter! She cannot be moved!"
The Bear Prince slammed his hammer into the floor. The marble buckled and rose, curling upward like a stone wave to create a crude, low dome over us. It was dark inside the shelter, lit only by the sickly silver glow radiating from Aria’s veins.
I held her still, using my body to cushion her from the vibrations of the battle raging outside our stone cocoon.
"Elias," she whispered. Her lips were turning pale, the color draining away. "I can't feel my fingers."
"Stay with me," I murmured, stroking her hair. It was brittle, dry as straw. Even her hair was dying. "Focus on the sound of my voice. Calculate the rhythm of your heartbeat. One, two. One, two."
"It's... slowing down," she said.
It was. Her heart was struggling to push blood through veins that were hardening.
"Why?" Kaelen crouched beside us in the cramped space, his large frame filling the shelter. He looked helpless, a king with no army to command against this enemy. "We healed her. We fed her. We did everything right."
"We are too much," I said sadly. "We forgot the basic law of the cosmos, brother. Mortal clay cannot hold divine fire forever. The kiln eventually cracks."
Outside, the screeching intensified. The stone shelter shuddered as heavy bodies slammed against it. Claws scraped over the rock, seeking purchase.
"They smell the change," Flynn’s voice came from outside the dome. "They smell the magic leaking out of her. It’s driving them into a frenzy!"
"We have to leave," Kaelen said, looking at the cracks forming in Thane’s barrier. "We have to get her to... somewhere. Is there a cure?"
"There is no cure for becoming a god," I said. "This is apotheosis without the immortality. It is a one-way transmutation."
"Stop talking like a textbook and fix her!" Kaelen snarled, grabbing the front of my robes.
"I am trying to see!" I snapped back, shoving him away. "The future is chaos, Kaelen! Every thread I pull snaps in my hands!"
I looked down at her. The silver had reached her cheek. Her breathing was shallow, hitching.
"The seed," Aria whispered.
Her hand, the one clutching the pomegranate seed, was clenched tight. The knuckles were rigid, stark white.
"The Titan's heart," she rasped. "Maybe we should... open it."
"Aria, no," I said, realizing what she was suggesting. "That seed is not an option. It wakes the mountain. It destroys the High Seat. If you use it here and now, the energy release will vaporize you in this state."
"I'm... breaking anyway," she murmured with a strained voice. Her eyes found mine, milky and terrifying, but the spirit behind them was still fierce. Still her. "If I'm going to shatter... I want to take the roof off."
The stone above us cracked. A harpy’s talon punched through, dripping black ichor onto Kaelen’s shoulder. He barely flinched, burning the fluid away with a thought.
"The dome is failing!" Thane shouted from outside. "I cannot hold the weight!"
We were trapped. A dying girl, a broken plan, and a legion of monsters sharpening their beaks on our tomb.
I looked at the seed, or rather, the heart, in her hand. It pulsed with a deep red light, a heartbeat of the earth.
There was a theory. A desperate, unproven theorem from the Second Age.
Resonance damping.
If the friction was caused by four discordant divine frequencies vibrating her apart then perhaps adding a fifth, massive frequency, a bass note so deep it swallowed the treble, would stabilize the wave.
Or it would shake us all to dust.
"Kaelen," I said, my voice steady. "We cannot stop the transformation. But we might be able to stall it."
"How?"
"The Titan," I said. "It is earth. It is the original vessel. If she connects to the deep root, if she grounds the excess energy into the mountain itself..."
"She wakes the Titan," Kaelen said. "She destroys Olympus."
"She survives," I countered.
Kaelen looked at her. He looked at the silver creeping toward her eyes.
"Do it," he said.
The stone roof exploded inward.
Dust and feathers filled the air. A harpy shrieked in triumph, diving for Aria’s exposed face.
Kaelen intercepted it with his bare hands, roaring, ripping the creature in half in a shower of black gore.
"Now, Aria!" I shouted, placing my hand over hers, over the seed. "Crush it! Ground the energy!"
She tried. I saw the effort in her face, the strain. But her fingers were locked. The transformation had frozen her grip. She couldn't break the shell.
"I... can't," she sobbed, a dry, tearless sound.
"Help her!" Kaelen urged Kaelen as he dropped the carcass of the Harpy.
For a moment I hesitated, then I grabbed her hand, my larger fingers wrapping over her frozen fist.
"Together," I growled. "Push."
I squeezed, but it wasn’t enough. “Kaelen, Thane, I need one of you as well.”
Kalen dropped to his knees next to us and wrapped his hand around mine and Aria’s. His dragon strength, fueled by panic and love, clamped down.
CRACK.
The sound wasn't loud. It was a small, wet pop, like a berry bursting.
But the reaction was instantaneous.
A red shockwave exploded from her hand. It passed through us, through the harpies, through the walls of the Hall of Muses.
For just a moment, the world went silent, and the fighting stopped. The harpies froze in mid-air, then dropped like stones, unconscious or dead.
And then, the floor beneath us inhaled.
The mountain took a breath.
The silver light on Aria’s skin didn't fade, but it stopped spreading. It turned from a sickly, pale white to a deep, resonant iron-grey. The brittleness seemed to harden slightly, just enough so she didn't look like she'd break if she blinked wrong.
Her eyes snapped open. The milky blindness was gone.
She sat up, the movement fluid, but slightly off. She looked at her hand. Red juice stained her palm like fresh blood, but the seed was still there, cracked but not crushed completely.
"Is she..." Kaelen started, reaching for her.
The ground lurched violently, throwing us all off balance. A deep, grinding boom echoed from the roots of the world, miles below us.
Aria looked at us. "He's waking," she said.
And then the floor of the Hall of Muses split in two.