Chapter 10 #2
I looked at my metal hand. The star-metal. It was the only thing that was unequivocally real. It held a charge. It held a frequency.
"Hold him down," I ordered Kaelen.
"He's partially intangible!"
"Just do it!"
I scrambled around to face Flynn. I didn't treat him gently. I couldn't.
"Flynn!" I snarled, channeling the command voice. "Look at me!"
His eyes flickered toward me, lazy and unfocused. Pretty... light...
I raised my metal hand. I pushed the pain of my cracked neck aside, pushed the exhaustion down, and summoned a pulse of Titan-energy.
I slapped him.
Hard.
My metal palm connected with his misty cheek with a sound like a thunderclap. CRACK.
Light exploded from the impact. Violet sparks showered over us. The force of it knocked Flynn’s head to the side.
He yelped, and it was a real, vocal sound.
He shook his head, ears flapping. The grey mist around his shoulders coalesced back into solid fur. He scrambled backward, eyes wide, teeth bared in a reflexive snarl.
Ow! The projection was loud, indignant, and beautifully clear. You hit me!
"You were fading out!" I yelled back, grabbing his ears and pulling his face close to mine. "You were turning into dust, you idiot!"
He blinked, the amber fire returning to his gaze. He shook himself, a full-body rattle that sent a cloud of bone dust flying. He looked at his paws. They were solid.
I... He looked at me, then at the endless white waste. I stopped running.
You stopped being distinct, Elias corrected, hopping onto Flynn’s head and pecking him sharply between the ears. You are a closed system, Wolf. Do not merge with the open system.
Flynn growled low in his throat, but he leaned into my touch. "Don't do that again," I whispered, my forehead resting against his snout. "I can't carry you if you're not there."
He licked the blood, golden and hot, from my neck wound. The sensation was rough and grounding.
Tastes like lightning, he murmured. Wakes me up.
"Good," Kaelen said, standing up and brushing bone dust from his trousers. He looked shaken. "Because we aren't stopping again. If you have to run circles around us, Flynn, do it. But stay solid."
We regrouped. The scare had injected a fresh dose of adrenaline into our veins, burning off the lethargy.
We crossed the bone desert. It was grueling. The dust shifted underfoot, sucking at our boots, trying to drag us down. Every step was a battle for purchase.
Flynn refused to walk now. He ran in wide, looping arcs around the group, creating a perimeter of motion. He was a blur of grey and brown, a satellite orbiting the gravity of the pack.
Checking the fl-fl-flank, Flynn stuttered mentally as he zoomed past. Nothing but dust. Dust and quiet.
"He's manic," I observed, leaning heavily on Thane’s arm. My limp was getting worse. The crack in my neck was burning again, the seal Kaelen made already failing.
"Better manic than nonexistent," Thane said stoically.
As we neared the far edge of the desert, the ground began to vibrate.
Not a tremor. A rhythm.
Thump... Thump... Thump...
It was faint, felt through the soles of our boots rather than heard.
"Is that the Titan?" I asked, looking down.
No, Elias’s voice was tight. The Titan is geological. This... this is biological.
We crested the final dune of bone dust and stopped.
Below us, the world fell away into a massive, spiraling crater. It was miles wide, descending into a darkness so absolute it hurt to look at.
But hovering over the center of the crater, suspended by chains of pure shadow that stretched up into the grey sky, was... something.
It looked like a heart.
A massive, beating heart made of black glass and wet smoke. It was the size of a cathedral. With every beat a shockwave of grey distortion rippled out, washing over the landscape, erasing details, smoothing out rough edges.
And feeding into it were streams of silver light. Souls. Flowing from the north, from the south, from the very air itself.
"So that's it," Kaelen breathed beside me, his voice stripped of its usual bravado. "That's the heart of the Devourer."
It’s beautiful, Elias whispered in my mind. The thought was full of a terrible, academic awe. Perfectly efficient. It is the end of all things, made manifest.
Just then, a voice slithered out of the stagnant air, weak and thin, like a radio signal from a dying star.
"Don't flatter it," Hades rasped. "You're still miles away. That's just the intake valve."
We scanned the desolate landscape, but he was nowhere to be seen. His presence was a mere echo, a fading stain on reality.
"Hurry," his voice crackled, full of static.
"It's pulling the realm apart at the seams. I am…
running out of floor." The transmission was weak, laced with desperation.
"You must destroy the core, or give it a reason to feed elsewhere.
Before it sucks the memory of me from my own bones.
This is the best I can do to help at present. " His voice faded on the last word.
I knew there was no point in responding either he wouldn’t hear or wouldn’t be able to respond as the ground in front of us turned into stairs leading downward.
There was no doubt in my mind that Hades had just used some of his quickly waning power to create a shortcut for us.
Which given the state of us I was extremely thankful for.
I only hoped that it got us there before I bled out or Flynn faded into nothingness.