Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
Aria
The floor didn’t just crack; it disintegrated.
The solid iron plating we were standing on dissolved into shrapnel, sucked down into a maw of churning fire as the foundation of the Forge gave way. Gravity lurched, sickening and sudden.
"Move!" Kaelen’s shout was barely audible over the screaming of twisting metal.
He didn't wait for compliance. He grabbed me by the waist and threw me.
I sailed through the air, the heavy, dense weight of my new body feeling surprisingly light under his dragon-strength.
I landed hard on a ledge of basalt that was still attached to the wall, my boots striking the stone so hard that the impact shook my whole body, but there was no pain in my shin, no buckling of the knee. Just a solid, resonant thud.
"Thane! The support pillar!" Elias screamed, pointing a bloodied hand at a massive column of obsidian that was tilting dangerously toward Flynn.
Thane didn't look. He reacted. The Bear Prince slammed his shoulder into the falling stone, catching tons of rock with a grunt that sounded like two continents colliding.
His boots slid backward, carving deep grooves into the ledge, but he held the weight long enough for Flynn to scramble underneath, a blur of motion.
"Go! Go!" Thane roared, muscles bulging against his armor as he shoved the pillar into the abyss. It fell silently into the red gloom, swallowed by the rising smoke.
We sprinted.
It wasn't a run; it was a negotiation with catastrophe.
The mountain wasn't just shaking; it was unravelling.
The Titan was stretching its limbs after a millennia-long nap, and we were fleas on a dog that had decided to scratch.
The tunnels leading away from the Forge were twisting, the walls heaving in and out like breathing ribs.
"Left!" Thane bellowed from the front, his eyes squeezed shut as he felt the vibrations in the stone. "The right tunnel is dead! The lava is cresting!"
We veered left, banking hard into a narrow service shaft that smelled of ancient sulfur and panic. The heat was suffocating. My new skin drank it in, the runes on my arm glowing happily, but I could hear Flynn wheezing behind me, the air too thin and too hot for his lupine lungs.
"It’s getting tight!" Flynn coughed, scrambling over a pile of fallen gears. "Are we sure this goes out? Because it feels like we're crawling into a throat."
"It leads to the surface vents," Kaelen growled, bringing up the rear, his sword drawn and glowing with a light that pushed back the encroaching shadows. "Unless the surface has moved. Which is a distinct possibility."
The tunnel shuddered violently. A crack appeared in the ceiling ahead of us, widening instantly into a fissure. A curtain of magma, thick and blindingly bright, began to pour through.
"Stop!" I skidded to a halt, throwing my metal arm out to catch Elias before he ran straight into the molten waterfall.
"We’re cut off!" Elias gasped, wiping soot from his face. He looked at the magma, calculating flow rates and cooling times in a panic. "We cannot cross! The thermal output is..."
"Jump it," I said.
They looked at me. The gap across the fissure was thirty feet, obscured by the falling curtain of lava.
"Aria," Flynn panted, leaning against the wall. "I can jump that. Kaelen can fly that. Thane can make it through. But you..."
"I can take it," I interrupted him.
I didn't wait for a debate. I backed up three paces. The power inside me, the Titan's weight, the Dragon's fire, was a coiled spring in my gut. I felt heavy, indestructible.
I ran.
"Aria, no!" Kaelen shouted.
I hit the edge of the fissure and launched myself.
I didn't float. I pierced the air like a bullet. I hit the curtain of magma chest-first.
It didn't burn. It tickled. The star-metal alloy fused to my flesh absorbed the heat instantly, channeling it into the bioluminescent veins that ran through my body.
For a split second, I was inside the fire, seeing the world in shades of orange and black, and then I punched through to the other side.
I landed on the far ledge, skidding on one knee, smoke trailing from my shoulders.
I stood up and turned back to them through the fire.
"Clear!" I yelled, my voice ringing with power.
There was a pause on the other side. Then, a dark shape blurred through the curtain, Flynn, landing in a roll. Then Thane, barrelling through like a boulder, shaking off droplets of liquid rock. Then Kaelen, carrying Elias, his wings flared tight to his body to shield the Phoenix.
They landed beside me, staring. My armor and under clothes were half-burnt away, scorched tatters clinging to my form, revealing the obsidian chrome skin beneath.
"Show off," Flynn grinned weakly, though his eyes were wide.
"Keep moving!" Thane barked, already turning down the corridor. "The floor is literally lava and what isn't is getting thin!"
We scrambled up a steep incline, the ground beneath us hot enough to melt rubber. We were climbing continuously, aiming for the daylight, or whatever passed for it now that the Devourer was eating the sky.
The tunnel opened up suddenly, dumping us out onto a narrow maintenance gantry clinging to the side of a massive vertical shaft.
"The main chimney," Elias identified it, leaning over the railing. "We are above the Forge now."
I looked down. Miles below, through the smoke and the distance, I saw the red glow of the Anvil where I had been unmade. But I also saw something else.
Movement.
Not the small movement of people or machines. The walls of the shaft were moving.
"The mountain," I whispered.
The rock face opposite us shifted, grinding upward with a sound that made my bones ache.
A hand, a hand made of bedrock and granite, five fingers each the size of a cathedral, punched through the wall of the shaft lower down.
It grasped the edge of the chasm, fingers digging in, crumbling entire city blocks of stone into dust.
"It's climbing," Kaelen realized, staring at the Titan's hand. "It's pulling itself out of the earth."
"We need to be somewhere else when he breathes," Flynn said, backing away from the edge. "Where is the exit?"
"Up," Kaelen pointed. Even through the smoke, I could see a circle of grey, swirling nothingness far above. "The mouth of the volcano."
"It's a mile climb!" Elias despaired, looking at the rickety metal stairs winding up the walls. "The structure won't hold!"
As if on cue, the gantry beneath us groaned. The bolts popped, pinging off the stone wall like bullets. The section of walkway we were standing on tilted forty-five degrees.
I grabbed the railing with my metal hand, squeezing until the iron collapsed like putty. Thane grabbed Flynn. Kaelen grabbed Elias.
"We don't climb," Kaelen decided, his gaze locking onto the distant circle of light. "We fly."
He released Elias and stepped back, unfurling his wings. In the cramped tunnel, they had been a liability, but here, in the vast open throat of the mountain, they were magnificent. Membranes of smoke and ember stretched wide, spanning twenty feet.
"Grab on," Kaelen commanded. "Thane, to my left. Flynn, right. Aria... hold my waist. Elias, you steer."
"Steer?" Elias squeaked as Kaelen hauled him up.
"Use the gravity," Kaelen grunted, digging his claws into the stone to anchor himself as we struggled to find purchase on him. "Make us lighter. Maneuver the falling rocks."
I wrapped my arms around Kaelen’s torso. His skin was burning hot, slick with sweat and ash, but he felt solid as a tree trunk. I buried my face in his back, right between the wings.
"Ready?" Kaelen asked.
"No!" Elias shouted.
"Go!" Thane roared.
Kaelen launched us.
The sensation was stomach-turning. We dropped for a second, plummeting toward the Titan's grasping hand below, before Kaelen’s wings caught the updraft of the hot air rising from the Forge. We snapped upward, accelerating with a force that tried to rip my grip loose.
We shot up the chimney, threading the needle between falling boulders and plumes of superheated gas.
"Right! Bank right!" Elias screamed, his hands waving frantically as a chunk of the palace fell past us.
Kaelen banked, the force pressing me into his spine. We dodged the debris by inches.
"Thermal pocket!" Flynn yelled, his Wolf senses reading the air.
We hit the pocket of hot air and surged upward, racing the smoke. The opening grew larger, a circle of grey nothingness rapidly expanding.
"Brace!" Kaelen shouted.
We burst out of the mountain.
The transition from the enclosed shaft to the open air was violent. The wind was a hurricane, screaming as it was sucked into the void vortex above.
We were high. Impossibly high. Olympus was spread out below us, but it wasn't the city I remembered even from a short while ago when we'd arrived. It was a ruin. The white marble was cracked and blackened. Entire districts had simply fallen into the sea as the island fractured.
And in the center of it all, rising from the shattered mountain range, was the Titan.
He was made of earth and fire, a humanoid shape vast enough to block out the suns. His shoulders were mountain peaks covered in snow and lava. His eyes were burning lakes. He was shaking the debris of the city off his back like dust.
And hanging in the sky above him, a black wound in reality, was the Devourer.
"We have to get clear!" Thane shouted over the wind. "Land there! The lower shelf!"
He pointed to a jagged outcropping of rock miles away, near the edge of the floating island, where the mortal realm merged with the divine. It was the jumping-off point.
Kaelen dipped his wings, entering a steep glide. We descended rapidly, the wind tearing at our clothes.
We hit the shelf hard. Kaelen landed first, his legs absorbing the impact, but the momentum was too great. We tumbled, rolling across the rough stone, limbs tangling.
I skidded to a stop near the edge of the cliff. I scrambled up, dusting off my knees.
"Is everyone intact?" I called out.
The Princes were pulling themselves up. They looked wrecked. Kaelen’s wings were tattered, smoke curling from tears in the membrane. Flynn was limping. Thane was holding his ribs. Elias looked like he was about to vomit.
"Define intact," Flynn hacked, spitting blood.
"We made it," I breathed, looking back at the Titan. He had turned his attention to the sky, raising a fist of stone to punch the Devourer. The resulting shockwave flattened a temple complex near the peak.
"We aren't secure yet," Kaelen said, his eyes fixed on the horizon. "We need to get to the mortal realm."
He walked to the edge of the cliff. Below us, through the swirling clouds and debris, I could see flashes of green. Forests. Oceans. The human world, bleeding into ours.
"We jump," Kaelen said. "We use the updraft to glide across the gap."
"I never thought I was terrified of heights, but this is something else entirely," Elias whispered, clutching his robes.
"You're a bird, Elias," Flynn pointed out, shoving him gently toward the edge. "Act like one."
We lined up on the precipice. Behind us, Olympus burned. Before us, the drop into a world that I doubted was ready for us.
"Together," I said, reaching out.
We linked hands. Through the bond I could feel them all, Kaelen's hot grip. Thane's rough callouses. Flynn's twitching fingers. Elias's cool, slender grasp.
"One," Kaelen counted.
"Two," Thane rumbled.
"Three!" Flynn yelled.
We leaped.
For a moment, we were weightless. The wind roared in my ears, whipping my hair across my face. We fell toward the green world below, leaving the fire behind.
Then, the wave of power hit us.
It didn't come from the Devourer. It came from the Titan.
As he stood fully upright, shaking the foundations of the world, he let out a roar. It wasn't sound; it was pure, unadulterated Old Magic. It was a pulse of primal authority, a command from the grandfather of gods that stripped away all artifice. It demanded that things be what they truly were.
The pulse washed over us in mid-air. It felt like being hit by a wall of golden water. It soaked into my skin, into my metal, into my soul.
And it hit the Princes.
"Aria!" Kaelen screamed, his hand tearing from mine.
I watched, helpless, as we continued to fall and he began to change.
His skin split. Not with blood, but with light.
Scales, black as obsidian and hard as diamond, erupted from his flesh.
His face elongated, his jaw snapping forward into a snout filled with rows of serrated teeth.
His wings didn't just flap; they exploded outward, spanning a hundred feet, blotting out the sky.
He wasn't a man with dragon magic anymore. He was the Dragon. A beast of legend, massive and terrifying, wreathed in black fire.
To my left, Flynn threw his head back and howled.
His body contorted, bones cracking and reshaping with sickening speed.
Fur, thick and brown as the forest floor, burst from his skin.
He grew, expanding until he was the size of a house, a wolf of nightmare proportions, his claws tearing rents in the air itself.
Thane... Thane simply became the bear of the mountain. His form expanded, rock and moss and soil knitting together into the shape of a bear so large he could have crushed the Citadel in his jaws. He roared, a sound that shook the clouds apart.
And Elias.
Elias dissolved into flames. He wasn't a bird of flesh and feather. He was a creature of living fire, turquoise and gold, his wingspan trailing sparks that hung in the air like constellations. He screeched, a sound of beautiful, piercing sorrow.
I was falling alone amidst monsters.
I looked at my own hands. The star-metal glowed blindingly bright, reacting to the pulse, but I didn't shift. I remained as the bridge. The lens.
This wasn't a curse. It was the truth. The Titan had stripped the human masks away.
Kaelen, the Dragon, dove. He swooped beneath me, his massive back a plain of black scales.
Grab on! his voice roared in my head, primal and deep.
I didn't argue. I fell onto his back, grabbing a ridge of spinal scales. The heat was immense, but I drank it in.
Around us, the Wolf ran on the air, stepping on invisible currents. The Bear fell like a meteor, unbothered by gravity. The Phoenix spiraled, weaving a net of light.
We plummeted toward the mortal realm, four monsters and a girl, running for their lives.