Chapter 20 #2
Flynn moved. He was a blur of motion in the dark, cramped space beneath my stone shelter. He didn't run; he flowed, vaulting over debris and dodging the spraying steam. He scrambled to the massive bellows mechanism where the Cyclops lay bound in Elias’s light-cage, snoring through the apocalypse.
"Wake up, ugly!" Flynn shouted.
He didn't wait for the monster to stir. He kicked the release lever on the bellows intake with enough force to dent the iron.
WHOOSH.
Fresh air from the lower tunnels blasted into the space, feeding the starving fire. Flynn was back in place a split second later as Kaelen’s aura ignited with renewed fury, turning from a sputtering white to a blinding, star-hot blue.
Aria screamed on the slab. The sound was muffled by the stone, but vibrant in the bond, a spike of pure sensation that nearly broke my focus. The color flooded back into her metal skin, turning it molten and pliable again.
"Hold the line!" I gritted my teeth, feeling the strain of holding tons of rock suspended over our heads while simultaneously maintaining the gravity anchor on Aria’s soul.
My muscles screamed in protest. I felt a wet warmth on my upper lip.
Blood flowed over my mouth, seeping between my lips as I breathed heavily, making the air taste of copper.
The Titan beneath me, beneath the whole mountain, struggled. The earth didn't want to be a roof; it wanted to be a weapon. The energy from the cracked seed was pulsing, sending shockwaves up my legs, trying to throw me off.
Let go, the mountain rumbled beneath me. Let us shake the fleas off.
Not yet, I snarled back, stomping my foot to reassert dominance. Wait just a little longer, ancient one.
"Elias!" I called out, my voice ragged. "How much longer?"
"Almost there!" Elias’s voice was strained, high and thin. His hands were weaving frantically in the dim blue light of the dome, tying knots in reality. "The heart is encased! The integration is ninety percent! But the resonance... the seed energy is interfering with the lattice!"
"What does that mean?" Kaelen demanded, pouring more fire into Aria until the stone around him began to glow cherry-red.
"It means the Titan is trying to get in!" Elias yelled back, panic edging into his tone. "The earth magic from the seed... it’s merging with the star-metal! It’s too heavy for the lattice! It will crush the delicate structure!"
The connection between me and the floor, between me and the Titan, was flowing into Aria. It was leaking through my anchor. The red pulse of the heart-seed wasn't just waking the mountain; it was trying to root itself in her new body.
"She can't hold the mountain and the four of you!" Hephaestus warned, raising the hammer for another strike, his eye wild. "She needs an outlet! Thane! You have to ground the excess!"
"I am holding the roof!" I argued, my knees buckling under the dual strain. If I grounded the energy, I lost the canopy. If I held the canopy, I crushed the girl.
"Ground it through me!" Aria gasped.
She turned her head on the Anvil, the movement stiff and metallic. Her eyes locked onto mine. They were no longer amethyst; they were swirling pools of magma.
Thane, she projected, her mental voice fierce and searing. Don't filter it. Give it to me.
It will crush you, I thought back, the fear cold in my chest. You are the sky, Aria. You are the wind. You are not meant to be the stone.
I am the bridge, she corrected, and I felt the steel in her will, harder than any metal Hephaestus could forge. Give me the weight.
The black oil rain outside pounded harder, eroding my shield. The Titan stirred beneath my feet. The stone canopy groaned, spiderweb cracks forming in the obsidian pillars.
I had no choice.
I opened the floodgate in my mind. The raw, primal connection I had with the waking Titan, the sheer, crushing mass of the mountain, and I poured it into her.
Aria arched her back, her body lifting off the Anvil.
But she didn't break.
Her skin turned a deep, dark grey, the color of stone walls at twilight. The runes glowing on her body shifted from gold to a deep, pulsing crimson. She absorbed the weight. She took the crushing gravity of the earth, the power that should have flattened a mortal, and she breathed it in.
"It's working!" Flynn yelled, watching the energy stabilize, his amber eyes wide. "She's eating it! She's metabolizing the mountain's magic!"
Hephaestus bellowed, a sound of triumph and madness. He brought the hammer down with everything he had, the final strike to seal the alloy.
BOOM.
The impact didn't just ring; it detonated.
The force of the blow sent the stone canopy flying, tearing itself apart from the inside out.
Debris rained down around us, bouncing harmlessly off Kaelen’s heat shield and Elias’s protective wards. The black rain returned, falling through the shattered roof. I glanced up trying to figure out how to repair it and protect Aria and that was when I saw it.
A figure floated down through the breach in the ceiling, descending through the curtains of black sludge.
It was a figure I hadn't seen since before we were sent to the mortal realm, since before the chains. I recognized him instantly, even from a distance, even through the smoke. But the recognition brought no joy, only a cold dread.
He wasn't the Golden God anymore. His skin was grey, dead and ashen. His eyes, once bright as the morning sun, were black voids giving off distinct trails of smoke. He didn't glow; he seemed to suck the light out of the air around him, a black hole in the shape of a man.
He landed on the remains of my stone canopy, his feet touching the rock silently.
"Well," Apollo said. His voice was a distorted echo, like words spoken underwater, layered with a thousand whispering screams. "Looks like I missed the party."