Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
Flynn
As soon as Aria's hands touched the Anvil, the connection between us erupted into noise. It wasn't the noise of the Forge, not the bellows, not the hammer, not the roar of the Titan beneath the floor. It was the sound of Aria herself.
The connection opened like a floodgate, and I didn't just feel her pain; I drowned in it. It was a scream that didn't use lungs. It was the screech of a soul being stretched on a rack, the sound of atoms violently divorcing one another to make room for something denser.
My amber eyes blew wide, pupils dilating until the red-lit cavern turned into a blur of motion and heat.
KEEP. HER. BEATING.
The command wasn't Hera’s. It wasn't Kaelen’s. It was mine, and it may as well have been etched into the marrow of my bones.
I stood at the western point of the circle, my boots vibrating against the stone.
I shoved my hands toward the Anvil, not touching it, but pushing my essence into the space where she lay.
I poured the hunt into her. I poured the adrenaline of the chase, the rhythm of lungs pumping air, the chaotic, beautiful friction of life refusing to stop.
She arched off the slab. Her back bowed, her spine popping audibly as the energy hit her.
Her skin... gods.
The silvering wasn't creeping anymore. It was reacting. Under the assault of Kaelen’s fire and Thane’s gravity, the metal skin turned liquid. It rippled like mercury, boiling and frothing, trying to consume her human side in a panic.
"Hold her!" Hephaestus roared, his voice a grinder of rocks. He swung a hammer the size of a tombstone. CLANG.
He hit her.
He actually hit her.
He struck her left shoulder, right on the silver joint. Sparks flew. Not orange sparks, but white, blinding chips of star-metal.
Aria didn't scream. She gagged, her body seizing, but Elias held the pattern. I felt the Weaver’s mind clamp down, a geometric cage forcing the energy to endure the blow rather than dissipate.
I snarled, baring my teeth, my claws punching through the leather of my gloves. Every strike of that hammer felt like it was cracking my own ribs.
More, I projected, feeding her the frantic drumbeat of my own heart. Don't you dare stop, Pup. Consider this an endurance run. Run with me.
She was with me. I could feel her terror, cold and sharp, but beneath it was that stubborn, iron-willed core that I wanted to sink my teeth into.
Then, the smell hit me.
It cut through the scent of ozone and burning spirit-flesh like a rusted blade. It smelled of wet wool, curdled milk, and old graves.
The ten minutes were up.
"Company!" I barked, my voice cracking under the strain of the channel.
BOOM.
The ventilation grates high in the cavern walls blew out. They didn't just fall; they were kicked out by a force that turned the heavy iron mesh into shrapnel.
Black oil poured from the holes, shadows made liquid. But it wasn't just slime. Forms pulled themselves out of the ooze, dropping onto the catwalks and the factory floor with wet, slapping sounds.
Sentinels. But not the pristine gold-and-white soldiers of the Citadel.
These were wrong. Their armor was fused to their flesh with veins of black corruption.
Their faces were blank slates of void-matter.
And with them came the beasts, chimeras with rotting lion heads, harpies dripping black ichor, minotaurs with horns made of void-glass.
Hera couldn't get in, so she was emptying the garbage chute on top of us.
"Do not break the circle!" Kaelen roared from the northern position. He was glowing, literally burning, his skin wreathed in white flames that poured into Aria. He couldn't move. If he stopped the heat, she would shatter under the hammer.
"They're going to flank us!" I yelled, watching a corrupted centaur gallop along a catwalk, aiming a bow at Elias's exposed back.
The Weaver was entranced, his turquoise eyes fixed on the empty air above Aria, manipulating threads of light I could barely see. He wouldn't even see the arrow coming.
Hephaestus raised the hammer for another strike on Aria’s hip. "If you stop the flow, the metal cools! If the metal cools while I am shaping it, she dies!"
"We tag out!" I shouted, making the tactical call because Kaelen was too busy being a furnace and Thane was currently the only thing keeping Aria from floating off the table. "One at a time! Two minutes of violence, then switch! I go first!"
I didn't wait for approval. I ripped my hands back, severing my connection to the Anvil.
The effect was instantaneous.
Aria gasped, a terrible, sucking sound. Her chest stopped moving. The motion I had been feeding her vanished. Her heart stuttered, missing a beat, then two.
Don't die, I mentally screamed at her. Hold your breath, Pup. I’ll be right back.
I spun on my heel, drawing my daggers. The bond in my chest felt hollow, an ache that screamed at me to go back, to reconnect, but the enemy was here.
The first Sentinel hit the floor ten feet from me, spear raised.
I didn't duel him. I didn't have time for artistry.
I became a blur.
I tackled him, driving the point of my left dagger through the gap in his neck armor before he even registered I had moved. Black blood sprayed, sizzling on the hot floor. I rolled over his collapsing body, coming up in a sprint.
The corrupted centaur on the catwalk loosed an arrow.
I snatched a discarded cog from the floor, a heavy disk of bronze, and flung it like a discus. It sheared through the air with a hum, impacting the centaur’s front legs. Bone snapped. The beast toppled over the railing, screaming as it fell into the magma channel below.
One minute thirty.
"Behind you, Wolf!" Thane rumbled from the circle, his voice strained.
I dropped flat. A massive, void-fused manticore leaped over me, its scorpion tail whipping the air where my head had been. It smelled of poison and ancient dust.
I lunged upward from the crouch, burying both blades into its soft underbelly. It thrashed, shrieking, but I rode the fall, ripping the daggers free in a spray of gore.
I scanned the perimeter. More were coming. Dozens of them, spilling from the vents like cockroaches fleeing a fire. They were swarming toward the light of the Anvil, drawn to the immense power radiating from Aria.
I sprinted back to the circle, sliding on the slick floor, blood and oil mixing on my boots.
"Thane! Switch!" I roared, sheathing my weapons and slamming my hands back toward the Anvil.
"I cannot—" Thane started, sweat pouring down his face as he held the gravity well.
"GO!" I commanded, shoving my essence back into the bond.
I felt Aria’s heart kick-start against my ribs like a stalled engine roaring to life. Thump-THUMP. I poured the circulation back in, forcing the blood through her crystallizing veins.
Thane dropped the connection.
Aria’s back arched violently again. Without the Bear's grounding weight, her soul tried to eject. She flickered, her physical form turning translucent for a second, ghosting out of reality.
"Hold her in, Elias!" I shouted, gritting my teeth against the strain. I focused on the motion, but tried to make it heavy, to do everything I could on my side to keep her soul intact.
Thane didn't run; he exploded from his position.
He summoned the war hammer to his hand from where it lay. He didn't look tired anymore; he looked like an avalanche that had learned to walk.
A group of satyrs, their eyes black pools of void, charged the southern flank.
Thane swung.
It wasn't a fight. It was physics. The hammer hit the floor, and a shockwave of earth magic rippled out, turning the iron plating into a liquid wave. The satyrs were launched into the air. Thane caught the lead one on the backswing, swatting him into a pillar with a wet crunch.
"Two minutes, Bear!" Kaelen yelled, his voice sounding like a bonfire crackling. "My heat is spiking! I need you back to anchor the pressure!"
Thane decimated a cluster of Sentinels, using his hammer to flatten one after another. He moved with terrifying efficiency, protecting the perimeter with his body.
But the shadows kept coming. They were coalescing into larger forms now, pooling together to create hulks of void-matter.
"Elias!" Thane bellowed, smashing a shadow-hound aside and rushing back to his spot. He clamped his hands onto the invisible weight of the ritual. "Switch!"
The gravity slammed back down on Aria. She slammed onto the Anvil with a thud, breathless but solid again.
Elias looked terrified. "I cannot break the pattern! If I let go, the lattice unravels!"
"If you don't kill those harpies," I snarled, nodding upward, "they're going to drop a ceiling tile on her head while she's open!"
Three void-harpies were diving, talons extended, aiming for Aria’s exposed throat.
Elias hesitated, then pulled his hands back.
The geometric cage around Aria vanished.
Her scream changed. It wasn't pain anymore; it was dissolution. Her skin bubbled, the shape of her losing cohesion without the blueprint to hold it. Her arm looked like it was melting into slag.
"Fast, Elias!" Hephaestus yelled, bringing the hammer down on her chest to shock the system. CLANG.
Elias spun around. He didn't use kinetic force. He clapped his hands.
Flash.
A pulse of turquoise light expanded from him, hitting the diving harpies. It wasn't an attack; it was a rewrite. He reversed their personal gravity.
The harpies screeched as they were violently yanked upward, smashing into the ceiling with fatal force.
Elias whirled back, barely a ten-second gap, and grabbed the pattern again.
"Got it," he gasped, blood running from his nose. "I have it. She is stabilizing."
"She is not stabilizing!" Hephaestus argued, hitting her leg. "The left side is hardening too fast! The heart is fusing! I need more heat, Dragon!"
"I am giving you everything!" Kaelen roared. The white fire around him was so intense his clothes were smoking.
"It's not enough!" The Smith God yelled. "The void is cooling the room! The shadows are sucking the thermal energy!"
He was right. The encroachment of the void-creatures was dropping the temperature. Frost was forming on the iron floor where the oil spilled.
"Kaelen, you have to clear the room!" I realized. "You're the only one with enough area of attack to push the cold back!"
"If I leave, the fire dies!" Kaelen argued, looking at Aria with desperation.
"I'll hold the heat!" Thane? No, I shouted that. "I can run friction! I can make her burn with speed!"
Kaelen looked at me. "Do not let her freeze, Wolf."
"Go!"
Kaelen broke the seal.
The white fire vanished. Aria convulsed, her skin turning an ashy gray instantly as the warmth fled.
I focused. I didn't have dragon fire, but I had friction. I pushed the motion aspect to its limit. I vibrated her molecules. I made her blood run so fast it generated its own fever.
Burn, Aria. Burn for me.
Kaelen unsheathed his sword. The blade ignited black, sucking the light from the room.
He didn't just fight. He unleashed.
He spread his wings, ethereal constructs of shadow and flame, and took to the air. He roared, a sound that shook dust from the ceiling beams.
He flew a lap around the perimeter of the Forge, trailing a wall of black fire. The void creatures screamed as they burned. The shadows boiled away. The temperature in the room skyrocketed, the frost turning to steam instantly.
He landed back at the North point with a crater-making impact, sweat sizzling on his skin, and slammed his hands back toward the Anvil.
The white fire returned.
Aria gasped, color flooding back into her cheeks, or rather, a glow flooding back into the metal.
"We are running out of time!" Hephaestus yelled, discarding the tongs and grabbing Aria’s metal arm with his bare hand. His skin hissed.
"Incoming!" I shouted.
The main vent, the big one directly above the Anvil, groaned.
Something massive was squeezing through.
A blob of void matter the size of a carriage dropped. It landed on the Anvil, right between Aria’s legs.
It had no face, just teeth. Thousands of them.
It lunged at her abdomen.
"NO!"
I didn't think. I broke the circle. Again.
I leaped.
I tackled the blob, knocking it off the Anvil. It felt like wrestling a bag of freezing slime filled with needles. It bit me. I felt teeth sink into my shoulder, my arm, my chest.
I roared, not in pain, but in fury.
I drove my daggers into it, over and over, churning the void-muck. It shrieked, a sound like tearing metal.
"Flynn! Get back!" Thane yelled.
"Hold her!" I screamed back, kicking the creature away. It dissolved into a puddle of acidic goo, but I was already moving back to my spot.
I grabbed the connection.
Aria’s eyes snapped open.
They weren't human anymore. They were solid disks of magma, glowing with a terrifying, ancient light. The runes on her body ignited, turning from silver to blinding gold.
She looked at me. She looked at all of us.
And then she screamed.
But this time, it was a sound. A sound that shattered the glass gauges on the walls and cracked the stone floor.
"Now we can really begin!" Hephaestus swung the hammer with both hands, bringing it down on her heart.
CRACK.
It wasn't the sound of bones breaking. It was the sound of a shell cracking open.