Chapter 20
TWENTY
Thane
The silence that followed Elias’s mental return to the circle wasn’t empty; it was dense, heavier than the gravity I was currently wielding. It pressed against my eardrums, a physical weight that I knew well.
For a heartbeat, the Forge of Hephaestus held its breath.
The chaotic, screaming static of the bond, that psychic tearing sound that had nearly driven me to my knees moments ago, had vanished.
In its place was a hum. It was a clean, resonant frequency, low and throbbing, that vibrated like a plucked cello string.
I looked across the glowing surface of the Anvil at Elias.
The Phoenix's eyes were open. They were no longer bleeding that horrifying black ichor.
Instead, the turquoise irises shone with a terrible clarity, bright as a desert noon.
He looked older, ancient even, the copper of his hair seeming to catch a wind that didn't exist in this subterranean cavern.
He nodded to me, a small, exhausted dip of his chin that carried the weight of a thousand lifetimes.
She is ready, his voice echoed in my mind. It did not come as a shout or a plea, but as an undeniable fact, solid as granite. Hold her, Thane. Do not let her drift.
"I have her," I rumbled. My voice felt small, lost in the roar of the bellows and the groaning of the mountain, but I put every ounce of my conviction into it.
I clamped my hands down on the invisible pressure plate of the magic.
I didn't just push; I rooted myself. I ground the soles of my boots into the metal plating of the catwalk, feeling the vibrations of the machinery travel up through my shins.
I became a conduit, not for power, but for the crushing, absolute weight of the earth.
On the Anvil, Aria gasped.
Her back arched off the stone slab, her mouth opening in a silent cry that tore at my heart.
Every instinct in me screamed to let go, to rush to her, to wrap my arms around her and shield her from the pain.
But I couldn't. To let go now would be to drop the sky on her. She didn’t flicker.
She didn’t fade into the ether. She took the weight I fed her, and she swallowed it whole.
The transformation was terrifying and beautiful.
The silver substance on her left side surged, flowing like liquid mercury across her chest. It moved with a life of its own, knitting together with the molten gold of Kaelen’s dragon fire and the mortal red of her own blood.
It wasn't consuming her anymore. It was recognizing her. It was becoming her.
"Seventy-five percent!" Hephaestus roared, his voice a rugged clash of boulders. He swung the massive hammer with a manic rhythm, the muscles of his back bunching like coiled cables.
CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.
Sparks the size of fireflies sprayed across the room.
"The core is fusing! Don't stop! If you stop now, the alloy shatters and takes her soul with it!"
"I'm burning!" Kaelen shouted from the north point.
His face was a mask of strained fury, his golden eyes narrowed to slits.
White fire blazed from his skin, so hot it scorched the air in my lungs, tasting of ozone and melting iron.
"I cannot push any harder without vaporizing the containment field! "
"You don't have to push harder, you just have to—" Flynn started.
CRACK.
The sound didn't come from the Anvil. It didn't come from the machinery. It came from above, a sickening, wet snap that sounded like the spine of the world breaking.
We all looked up, eyes stinging from the salty sweat and the oppressive heat.
The ceiling of the cavern, hundreds of feet above, was gone.
The stone had not collapsed; it had simply ceased to exist. In its place was a swirling, churning vortex of absolute nothingness.
The Devourer hadn't just sent its rats into the pipes; it had arrived to eat the house. The sight of it made my stomach turn.
And then, it began to rain.
It wasn't water. It was a thick, viscous black oil that fell in heavy, sluggish sheets. It smelled of rot and ancient stagnation.
"Cover!" Flynn yelled, his reflexes faster than thought. He dodged a glob of the sludge that struck the railing next to him. The metal didn't just react; it hissed and began to melt, eaten away by the void-touch.
The oil slammed into the open magma channels running through the floor. HISS. The cheerful orange light of the molten rock sputtered and died wherever the black rain touched it, turning into jagged, dead obsidian instantly. Steam, acrid and blinding, billowed up, choking the cavern.
"The fire!" Hephaestus screamed, dropping his tongs to shield his face with a leather-clad arm. "The thermal levels are dropping! The Void is smothering the heat!"
The ambient temperature in the Forge, which had been hot enough to blister skin, had plummeted. The sweat on my neck turned to ice. The white fire rolling off Kaelen flickered, dampening under the assault of the supernatural chill.
On the Anvil, the change was catastrophic. Aria’s skin lost its translucent, ethereal glow, turning a dull, matte grey. She convulsed, a violent shiver racking her frame as the cold bit deep into the unfinished transformation.
"She's freezing!" Elias cried, his hands trembling as the geometric lattice of light he was weaving began to waver in the air. "Thane! Shield the Anvil!"
I couldn't move. My feet were welded to the spot by the magic I was channeling. If I stepped away from the Southern point, the gravity well would collapse, and Aria's untethered soul would be torn out of her body by the sheer force of the vacuum waiting above us.
"I cannot break the seal!" I bellowed, the strain popping the tendons in my neck.
I was holding a girl together with nothing but will and gravity.
A glob of black oil struck my pauldron, sizzling against the divine steel.
I felt the cold sear through the plating, biting my skin like a brand of ice, but thankfully the divine imbued metal held.
"Then bring the roof down!" Flynn shouted, kicking a piece of smoldering debris into the magma channel to create a desperate flare of heat. "Make a shield, Earth Shaker!"
The rain intensified. It was a deluge of entropy. It was landing on Kaelen, hissing as it doused his flames. He roared in frustration, steaming, trying to reignite his aura, but the cold was a physical weight pressing him down, suffocating the dragon within.
"She is dying!" Hephaestus wielded his hammer not at Aria, but at the falling sludge, batting globes of void-matter away from the girl. "The lattice is crystallizing! If she freezes now, she shatters!"
I looked at Aria. Her eyes were open, seeking mine through the steam and the darkness. They were terrified. She was trapped halfway between flesh and rebirth, unable to move, unable to breathe.
Thane, her voice whispered in my head. It was faint, cold, like a ghost trapped under ice.
I closed my eyes.
I couldn't move my body. But I was the Earth Prince. I was the memory of the mountain's roots. My reach extended further than my arms.
I reached down. Past the metal plating of the floor. Past the steaming magma channels. Past the crust of the mountain and the stone foundations of the Citadel.
I reached for the Titan.
The seed Aria had crushed, that pulsating heart of the mountain was still vibrating with power. I could feel the energy of it seeping through the foundation, vibrating the walls, shaking the supports. It wasn't just energy; it was a consciousness. Ancient. Angry. Awake.
It was overwhelming. It hit my mind like a landslide, a crushing wall of geological time and pressure.
WHO WALKS ON MY BONES? the deep earth screamed. It was a soundless roar that rattled my teeth.
I do, I answered. I didn't use words; I used the heavy, unyielding pressure of my will. I projected the image of the Bear, the immovable object. I am your son's son. And I need your shield.
I didn't ask. I took.
I slammed my awareness into the tear that the seed's energy had created in the crust. I grabbed the tectonic stress lines of the cavern like physical ropes. I wrapped them around my mental fists, grit my teeth, and I pulled.
The floor of the cavern exploded upward.
It did not crack gently; it erupted. Not under the Anvil, but around it. Four massive pillars of obsidian and bedrock shot up from the magma, tearing through the iron grating with the screech of tortured metal. They moved with the speed of a striking snake, defying their immense weight.
They converged above the Anvil, slamming together with a thunderclap that shook the remaining glass from the instrument dials on the walls.
Debris and rock fused instantly under my command, creating a crude, massive stone canopy over the dais that the anvil sat on. It was a ugly, jagged thing, born of desperation, but it was solid.
The black rain hammered against the stone roof. Thud. Thud. Thud. It sounded like the drumbeats of the end of the world. But the stone held. For now. Though I knew it was slowly being eaten away.
The oil sluiced off the sides, hissing into the magma channels, but the center, the Anvil, and more importantly, Aria, was dry. My shoulders slumped for a moment.
"Heat is returning!" Hephaestus yelled, the relief evident in his gravelly voice. He was panting, his chest heaving. "Dragon! Now! While we have shelter!"
"I am trying!" Kaelen snarled. "But the air is too thin!"
He was right. I had sealed us in. The fire needed air to burn, and I had just built a tomb. The oxygen levels were plummeting as the magma consumed what was left, and Kaelen’s fire was choking.
"Flynn!" I commanded, sweat stinging my eyes, blinding me. "The vents! Circulation!"
"On it!"