Chapter 23 When Rage Runs Deep
His lowered blade twisted in his hand, causing the ground to tremble.
Light burst from the runes on his blade, arcing like lightning through the air.
Whatever form the witch now held, it shrieked behind me, as if still alive.
But in her writhing to avoid the flow, another cold pain licked across my neck.
The faint white glow of his aura darkened, bleeding into crimson until it burned like twin suns through fog.
A sound rumbled in his chest, so low it made the air quiver.
The earth trembled beneath our feet, and the light beneath his skin began to spread.
Veins of molten red pushed through fissures that split his flesh like stone cracking under pressure.
He doubled over with a guttural cry, and he rose taller and taller until the ground seemed to shrink away from him.
His doublet strained, seams whispering in protest before they tore, his muscles convulsing.
Then came a sharp, wet rip, as his shoulders split, blood seeping through as they broadened, before hardening into jagged spines of bone.
The bones pushed outward until they became ridges of dark stone.
His skin greyed, hardening to a cracked marble sheen, fissures glowing faintly from the heat beneath.
His face shifted too, the planes sharpening, the jaw jutting out until it looked carved.
Granite-like skin crept across his cheekbones, but beneath the stone the warmth of him still pulsed, a madness of contrasts.
His eyes, once dark depths I could lose myself in, now burned with a crimson inner light.
The hair along his arms rose, as if charged, and his muscles knotted and swelled beneath his ripped clothing.
The change was not graceful; it was primal.
Each breath he took came out as a growl.
His fingers clawed at the earth, gouging deep furrows, his body expanding as if struggling to contain the storm within.
The air pulsed, waves of energy rippling outward, bending the trees, scattering the leaves.
The scent of power and blood filled the clearing, heavy and electric.
When he lifted his head, he was no longer entirely human. His face was still Atlas, the man I knew, the man I loved, but it was twisted now with power and fury older than time. His eyes blazed red, reflections of the sun caught in fire, and his voice, when it came, was thunder.
“You dare threaten what is mine!”
The ground split beneath him as he roared, a sound so loud, so ancient, that the forest itself recoiled. The witch staggered, her hold faltering.
“No,” she rasped, her voice trembling. “No, it cannot be… Your bloodline… it was never meant to walk this realm.”
He took a step forward, the weight of his fury pressing down on everything around him. The light flared in his cracks again, red and furious. And although it wasn’t the first time that I was afraid of him, it was certainly the most terrifying yet.
Not because I thought he would hurt me, but because I finally understood what it meant to be in the presence of something divine and terrible. Power like his did not belong to this world, and yet it wore the face of the man I had just fallen in love with.
I could not breathe. To see a man grow into a god, to watch a human become the instrument of an ancient violence, was an intimacy I had not asked for. The clothes that remained clung to him in shredded tatters, torn fabric hanging like banners from his broad chest.
“I will kill her, beast!” she threatened, but it wasn't enough, and then, in a blur of movement, he was gone.
I didn’t have long to question where he had gone, because I heard the scream behind me, seconds after the sickening crack of bone.
The blade was finally gone from my neck, not just gone, the arm that had held it was missing too, and a mist of darkness sprayed out as if an airborne infection tainted the air.
I turned just in time to see Atlas slam a single fist into the earth, once, twice, a percussion so violent that the ground itself seemed to shudder.
From this, blows of lightning leapt out, jagged fingers of white fire snapping across the clearing.
The electricity crawled like living rope, wrapping around the witch's shadowy form in a bright, sizzling harness.
I stumbled, my feet scrabbling for purchase, crablike, trying to move away from whatever horror my eyes were about to witness.
The electric strands climbed her like vines.
They wound up through the steaming black vapor that edged her phantom body.
Power entwined her wraith-like form until her dark essence thinned, causing seams of flesh and fabric to reappear, until the ghost was becoming whole enough to feel pain.
I had always wondered how you killed a ghost, and watching it happen was worse than any answer I might have expected.
Because the unholy sight of her was tethered to the ground and she was no longer purely a shadow.
No, now her form held weight, she had skin, but more than anything…
she had a throat Atlas could enclose his deadly hand around.
He lifted her like she was a rag, the bottom half of her still rooted to the earth, the top half dangling, stretched, and exposed. She screamed, a sound that shredded the air.
Her cries were animal, raw, pleading, and bile rose in my throat as she begged, “Please, no more,” as if the thing that had been doing this to her could be stopped by human pleading.
Atlas's face was something I had never seen, like it was carved from bone and filled with thunder, his voice when he spoke was an inhuman rumble that made my bones ache.
“Tell me who sent you!” he demanded, every syllable a threat.
The witch's answer was torn from her throat between sobs and a rasping whisper. It was like watching a confession dragged out of death itself.
“Your brother…” she croaked. “Your brother, Lazaros,” she spat the name like a curse, and my world tilted.
Atlas's hands tightened, the veins in his arms standing out like ropes, and for a heartbeat, I thought he might implode with fury.
“You lie,” he seethed, the word a low, deadly hiss, but she shook her head, frantic.
“No, no… I swear it, your brother killed your father, and then he seized the throne. He was the one who opened the Rift, he sent his army of darkness through so he could sit upon the throne in your stead.”
The sound Atlas made then was not human, it was an animal tearing at the world, it seemed to come from Hell itself.
He looked at the witch as if his grief had a mouth and teeth.
For a second, he was a man again, the ragged edge of the Atlas I recognized, and something like pain, deep and ancient, pinched his features.
Then the monster returned, surge after surge of power boiling through him, and without another word, he plunged his hand into her chest. She screamed as he tore out something black and pulsing.
A heart that looked rotten from the inside out, slimed and twisted with whatever maleficence had borne her.
He held it up to the sunlight, a wet sheen glistening, and fooling me into believing it still continued to beat even though it had been ripped free.
The witch's form convulsed, her phantom features slipping, and as the last of that dark thing fell away, she crumbled, dusting like ash once more.
Her final sound was a single, broken wail that died with the wind.
He lifted the black thing in his hand, the dead heart, and looked at it.
For a sliver of a second, I saw the entire trajectory of his sorrow.
His father gone, a kingdom usurped, the raw, jagged map of a life scorched by betrayal.
Then rage returned, full and whole, the monstrous thing slipping its leash.
I scrambled further to get away, and Atlas merely snarled and crushed the rotten heart until dark matter spat from between his fingers.
I stood still, shaking, staring at Atlas with a mixture of awe and a new, visceral terror.
His eyes snapped to me, and he swallowed hard, his jaw working in a slow, deliberate way. Then he spoke in a voice that had recovered some of its human timbre.
“Human girl…”
A small whimper escaped me and he lowered his head, as if he hated to see me so frightened, but he was too far gone, consumed by that rage, and I was powerless against him.
His head rose, and in that demonic voice, he warned me, “Do not run from me.” It was a warning my mind screamed to ignore.
Because when you’re faced with danger and you stand unarmed against impossible odds, sometimes you have only one option left.
So, I chose it.
I turned and…
I ran.