Chapter 10
TEN
Aria
"Just give me a minute," I had said.
A minute came and went. Then five. The minute wasn't the problem. My body was. I had asked it for a pause and a recovery, and it had taken the pause and refused the recovery.
I lay on the cold obsidian bank, the sharp edges of the volcanic glass digging into my back through my tunic, but the pain felt distant. It was information arriving via a delayed courier. What felt immediate was the heat radiating from my neck.
It wasn't a fever. It was a leak.
Kaelen knelt over me, his face a mask of furious concentration. His hands, usually so steady in battle, hovered over my throat, terrified to touch the jagged fissure where the star-metal met flesh.
"It’s not clotting," Kaelen growled, his voice tight with a panic he refused to let fully surface. "Blood heals. This... this is just spilling."
It's energy, Kaelen, Elias chirped from his perch on a nearby rock. The Phoenix looked wretched, his feathers molting into grey ash, his fire dimming to the color of a bruised plum. The vessel integrity is compromised. She is venting surplus divinity. If she doesn't seal it, she will lose it all.
"Stop talking like she's a machine, Bird," Thane rumbled. The Bear Prince was kneeling at my feet, his massive hand encompassing my entire leg, grounding me. His touch was heavy, reassuringly solid in a world that felt like it was dissolving. "Aria. Look at me."
I forced my eyes open. They felt gritty, like I’d been sleeping in a sandstorm. Thane’s face swam into focus, pixelated at the edges before snapping sharp.
"I'm here," I touched the bond, but it felt slippery, greased with exhaustion. "I'm... still solid."
Barely, Flynn whined.
The Wolf Prince was pacing in a tight, frantic circle around us. His claws clicked a nervous rhythm on the glass, click-click-click click-click-click, too fast. Way too fast. He stopped for a second, looking at me with wide, amber eyes that seemed to be vibrating in their sockets.
You smell like a star dying, Flynn projected, the thought sharp and acidic. Smell like ozone and leaving. Don't leave.
"I'm not going anywhere," I promised, pushing myself up to my elbows.
The world tilted violently to the left. A wave of nausea hit me, tasting of copper. I hissed, my hand flying to my neck.
My fingers came away wet. I looked at them.
It wasn't red. It was gold. Even though I knew what they had said it still surprised me to see it.
Liquid light, thick as mercury, shimmering with an internal luminescence that cast eerie shadows on the black rock.
It was beautiful and terrifying. It didn't drip; it floated slightly before dissolving into the grey air.
"Dammit," I breathed.
"Don't move," Kaelen ordered, pressing a strip of cloth from his own torn shirt against the wound. His skin was fever-hot against mine, a stark contrast to the ambient chill of the Underworld. "You tore the seal. When you became the bridge... you stretched too far."
"We had to cross," I said, wincing as he applied pressure. The contact sent sparks dancing across my vision. "Whatever. It's done. Help me up."
"You need to rest," Thane argued, his voice deep with worry.
"We rest, we die," I countered, looking past them to the horizon. The landscape ahead was a nightmare geometry of basalt pillars and shifting grey fog. "Thane, you said it yourself. The gravity here... if we stop moving, we sink. And look at Flynn."
We all looked.
The Wolf wasn't just pacing. He was stuttering.
Flynn trotted three steps to the right, and then, without turning, he was suddenly three steps to the left.
He wasn't teleporting. He was just jumping backward without actually moving.
Just for a split second, his hind legs seemed to dissolve into static, turning transparent, revealing the grey rocks behind him, before snapping back into solidity.
What? Flynn asked, freezing. He looked at his own paw. It flickered, the edges blurring like parchment. Why is my paw buzzing?
He's destabilizing, Elias whispered, hopping down to inspect Flynn, keeping a safe distance from the snapping jaws. Kinetic dissonance. He is the aspect of Motion. But there is no time here. Motion requires time.
"English, Elias," Kaelen snapped, keeping one hand firmly on the glow-stick wound in my neck.
"He is moving faster than the reality can understand him," Elias clarified, his voice grim. "If he stops moving, he might fall out of the equation entirely."
Flynn let out a high, terrified yelp. He started spinning in circles, chasing his own tail, as if proving he still existed by generating centrifugal force.
I'm real! I'm real! Keep moving!
"We have to go," I said, grabbing Kaelen’s wrist and pulling his hand away from my neck. The cloth was soaked in gold, but the flow had slowed to a sluggish ooze. "If we stay here, we lose him."
Kaelen looked at the cloth, then at me. His jaw worked, a muscle feathering in his cheek. He hated this. He hated that he couldn't burn this problem away. He hated that I was the one paying the toll.
"If you fall," Kaelen said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, low register, "I will carry you. I don't care about your pride, Aria. You fall, you go over my shoulder."
"Deal," I gritted out. "Thane, give me a hand."
The Bear pulled me up. I swayed, feeling top-heavy, my metal arm weighing a thousand pounds. Gravity pulled at me strangely, tugging at my left side more than my right.
I took a step. My boot crunched on the glass.
Pain.
It shot up my leg, white-hot, but I clamped down on it. I locked my knees. I focused on the bone map Hades had given me.
"North," I pointed with my good hand. "Toward the..." I squinted. "Toward the drop."
The terrain ahead didn't just slope; it fell away. The horizon line was missing. It looked like the edge of a flat earth.
"The Soul-Well," Elias murmured. The drain.
"Flynn, take point," I ordered. "But stay in sight. Do not run ahead."
Running helps, Flynn projected, already trotting toward the drop-off, his form leaving trailing afterimages like a ghost. If I run, the static can't catch me.
"Thane, rear guard," I said. "Kaelen, you're with me. Elias... try not to burn out."
We moved out.
Leaving the banks of the Phlegethon felt like walking away from a graveyard, only to enter a tomb. The silence of the void plains returned, heavier than before. The crunch of our boots on the obsidian was swallowed instantly, echoing for a fraction of a second before being smothered.
My neck throbbed in time with my heartbeat. Thump-burn. Thump-burn.
Kaelen walked so close his arm brushed mine with every step. He wasn't holding me, but he was hovering, radiating a protective heat that kept the worst of the soul-numbing chill at bay.
"You're quiet," I murmured to him after a few minutes of walking.
"I am calculating," Kaelen replied, eyes scanning the broken terrain.
"Calculating what?"
"How many things I am going to kill when we get out of here," he said simply. "Hera. The Titan. Whatever architect designed this hellhole."
"Technically, the original Titans designed it," Elias offered helpfully from above. "Though the lack of aesthetic variation is disappointing. It’s very... binary."
"It's a garbage chute," Thane rumbled from behind us. "It wasn't meant for living things."
We crested a ridge of razor-sharp slate and looked down.
The landscape changed again. The glass gave way to a vast, sloping basin of what looked like white sand. But as we got closer, the smell hit us.
It wasn't sand. It was bone dust.
Miles of it. Ground down to powder.
And in the center of the white desert, Flynn was waiting.
He wasn't moving.
He stood frozen, one paw raised, his entire body vibrating so hard he looked like a blur. A low, continuous whine was broadcasting from his mind, drilling into my skull.
Stuck, Flynn whimpered. Stuck stuck stuck.
"Flynn!" I shouted, forgetting to conserve my breath.
We slid down the embankment, boots skiing on loose stone and bone, and ran toward him.
As we got closer, I saw what was wrong.
Flynn wasn't standing on the ground. He was sinking into it, but not like Thane had sunk into the mud.
Flynn was phasing through it. His paws were buried in the bone dust, but looking closely, I could see the dust inside his leg.
He was losing solidity. The matter of the Underworld and the matter of the Wolf Prince were trying to occupy the same space.
"Don't stop moving!" Kaelen roared, breaking into a sprint.
Can't, Flynn projected, panic rising to a fever pitch. The air is glue. The dust is grabbing me. I can't... I can't find the friction!
He tried to lunge forward, but his back legs just passed through the ground, offering no push-off. He collapsed onto his belly, snapping his jaws at the air.
"Elias!" I yelled. "What's the fix?"
Elias landed on Flynn’s back. He needs traction! He needs to remember he is separate from the environment!
I slid to a halt next to the wolf. Up close, it was terrifying. The edges of Flynn’s fur were dissolving into motes of grey light. I reached out to touch him, and my hand went through his shoulder.
It felt like dipping my hand into ice water.
"Flynn!" I gasped, pulling back. My fingers were numb.
Aria? His mental voice sounded distant, like he was shouting from the bottom of a well. It's so quiet here. The wind stopped.
"No, no, no," I said, dropping to my knees in the bone dust. "Kaelen, grab him!"
Kaelen grabbed Flynn’s scruff. His hand held, but just barely. "He's fading, Aria! It's like trying to hold smoke!"
Thane arrived, the ground shaking with his impact. He looked at Flynn, then at me.
"He's forgetting," Thane rumbled. "He's the Prince of Motion. Without movement, he forgets who he is."
I looked at the Wolf. His amber eyes were dimming, turning the same flat grey as the sky. He stopped struggling. He laid his head on his paws, looking tired. So incredibly tired.
Just gonna... nap, Flynn mumbled. Just for a second.
If he sleeps, he vanishes, Elias shrieked.