Chapter 9
NINE
Aria
Legend said the Phlegethon burned. Legend said it was a torrent of liquid flame that circled the Underworld, a moat of suffering designed to keep the wicked in and the living out. I had braced myself for heat. I had prepared my star-metal skin to absorb the thermal shock of a thousand volcanoes.
But there was no fire.
"Ash," I whispered, the word rasping against teeth that felt grimy with the ambient dust.
The ravine floor was filled with a moving, grinding slurry of grey particulate. It flowed like a mudslide, sluggish and heavy, churning with a sound like sandpaper rubbing against bone. But it wasn't just dirt. As I watched, shapes pressed up against the surface of the flow.
A hand, pale and stretched. A face with no mouth, screaming silently. A torso, twisted like a wrung-out rag.
It was a river of souls that had been ground down into silt. They weren't swimming; they were the water.
We can't walk on that, Flynn projected, his voice tight. His posture was low, tense, and his hackles were raised as he sniffed the air and recoiled violently, sneezing. It smells like... like burning hair and static. If we touch it, we sink. If we sink...
"We join the flow," Thane finished, his voice a low rumble of stone sliding against stone.
He stood at the edge of the bank, his boots mere inches from the moving ash.
The toes of his boots were already beginning to smoke, not from heat, but from friction.
The entropy of the river was eating the leather.
Kaelen stepped forward, heat radiating from him in waves. "I can fly us. One by one."
""No," I said, watching the surface of the ash-river.
Even as I spoke, a soul-hand breached the flow, reaching ten feet into the air before being dragged back down.
Reaching. "Look at it, Kaelen. It's not water.
It wants to move upward. The moment you lift off, every hand in that river will be grabbing for your wings.
You'd never make it halfway before they pulled you in. "
Kaelen's jaw tightened. He'd seen it too.
"Then we're stuck," Kaelen growled, frustration leaking into his voice. "We can't swim. We can't fly. We can't walk."
"We build," I said.
The words tasted like copper on my tongue.
I looked down at my left arm. The star-metal plating was dull in the grey light, but the runes were pulsing with a deep, steady violet rhythm.
It was the only thing in this entire realm that felt solid.
It was the only thing that hadn't surrendered to the Devourer.
"Aria," Thane warned, sensing the shift in my intent through the bond. "You're already fractured. I can see the cracks in your neck."
"It's structural," I lied, though we both knew it wasn't. "The star-metal extends. You saw what happened in the Forge. I can stretch the lattice."
"That was with Hephaestus's hammer striking you," Elias pointed out, his voice thin. "Here, you would have to be the hammer and the anvil. You would have to project your own soul out of your body to act as the walkway."
I looked at the river again. A hand breached the surface, clawing desperately at the air before being dragged back down by the weight of a million others.
"It wants to eat us," I said softly. "So let's give it something it can't digest."
I stepped to the edge of the precipice.
"Kaelen, eyes on the sky," I ordered. "The Devourer knows we're here. When I anchor, I'm going to light up like a flare."
"I'll burn anything that comes close," Kaelen promised, shifting his stance, his muscles bunching as the dragon stirred beneath his skin.
"Flynn, watch the shadows," I commanded. "Don't let anything touch the anchor point."
"On it," Flynn said, drawing twin daggers of obsidian he'd scavenged from the glass plains.
"Thane," I said, looking up at the massive Bear Prince. "You carry Elias. He's too weak to cross on his own."
Elias started to protest but my bear drowned it out. "And who carries you?" Thane asked, his brown eyes full of a terrifying gentleness.
"I don't need carrying," I said, raising my metal arm toward the far bank. "I am the road."
I closed my eyes and reached inward. I bypassed the fear, bypassed the exhaustion, and went straight to the molten core of the Titan heart I had swallowed. It was heavy, dense, and ancient.
Project, I commanded the metal.
It hurt immediately.
It didn't feel like magic. It felt like dislocation. I gasped as my left arm jerked forward, the metal skin splitting open at the seams. Strands of glowing, golden light erupted from my wrist and palm, shooting out over the river of ash.
They wove themselves together in mid-air, a complex, spiraling lattice of solid light and star-metal essence. It hit the far bank with a wet thud, anchoring deep into the obsidian.
The connection snapped taut.
My spine arched. I was physically acting as the pylon on this side. The bridge wasn't a spell; it was me. My nervous system stretched across the chasm, humming with tension.
"Go!" I screamed, the word tearing out of my throat.
Thane moved first. He scooped Elias up with one arm as if the Phoenix weighed nothing and stepped onto the glowing lattice.
CRUNCH.
The impact traveled straight up my arm effectively smashing into my shoulder socket. It felt like a sledgehammer hitting my collarbone. Thane’s Titan-heavy weight pressed down on the bridge, bowing the light.
I cried out, my knees buckling, but I locked my legs. My boots dug into the ash-covered rock.
Hold, I told myself. You are made of star debris and stubbornness. Hold.
Then the sky broke open.
It started with a sound like shattering glass. High-pitched, dissonant shrieks echoed off the canyon walls.
Contact! Flynn yelled, his voice warping into a snarl.
Shapes detached themselves from the grey fog above. They looked like harpies, but they weren't creatures of flesh and feather. They were jagged constellations of void-glass and hunger, their wings made of razor-sharp shards that clicked and clattered as they dove.
SCREEEEEE!
"Defensive positions!" Kaelen roared.
The Dragon Prince didn't wait. He launched himself into the air, abandoning the bridge. He shifted mid-leap, his human form exploding outward into the massive, obsidian bulk of the Dragon.
Kaelen unleashed a torrent of dragon-fire. But this wasn't the red fire of the surface; it was a white-hot plasma that seared the air. He strafed the oncoming flock, melting the glass harpies into slag before they could reach me.
Keep moving! I projected into the bond, my mental voice strained with the effort of holding the construct.
Thane was halfway across. Every step he took sent a shockwave of agony through my skeleton. My radius and ulna felt like they were being ground to dust.
Heavy. So heavy, my mind whimpered, the thought traitorous and small.
And then the river noticed me.
The suction came from below. The myriad hands in the ash stopped clawing at the air and all turned toward the glowing gold bridge. They sensed the divinity. They sensed the life.
The ash rose up in a wave, lashing at the bridge.
No! Flynn shouted.
The Wolf Prince moved with a speed that blurred reality. He didn't run on the bridge; he ran on the shadow of the bridge, defying physics. He leaped at a tendril of soul-ash that was reaching for my extended arm. His fangs flashed, biting at the magic binding the ash together.
But the Devourer was hungry.
A massive suction force locked onto my chest. It felt like a hook sinking into my lungs. It pulled.
The bridge wobbled.
Thane stumbled in the middle of the span, Elias clinging to his shirt.
Aria! Thane’s panic flooded the bond.
"I've got you!" I screamed through gritted teeth.
Golden light flared from my skin. The cracks on my neck deepened, running up toward my jawline like lightning bolts. I could feel my own blood boiling, turning into steam against the metal plating.
I pulled back against the suction. I anchored my will.
I am the Keeper, I thought fiercely. I am the Unbound. I am the Gate. I am the bridge. You do not get to eat my family.
A glass harpy broke through Kaelen’s fire perimeter. It dove at me, its faceted eyes devoid of life, its beak a jagged shard of obsidian aimed right at my eyes.
I couldn't move. If I moved my arm to defend myself, the bridge would collapse, and Thane and Elias would fall into the erasure.
I stared at the death coming for me and held the line.
A furry mass struck the harpy in the throat mid-dive. It shattered into a thousand pieces of harmless glass that rained down around me.
Flynn landed in front of me, crouching, panting, a wild grin on his wolfy face.
Told you I was watching the shadows.
"They're nearly across," I gasped, sweat stinging my eyes. "Kaelen! Cover the rear!"
Kaelen roared, a sound that shook the ravine walls. He banked sharply, his massive wings creating a vacuum that pulled a dozen harpies into his wake, where he incinerated them with a lash of his tail.
Thane stepped off the bridge onto the far bank. He practically threw Elias onto the solid ground and turned back, reaching out for me.
"Aria! Release!" Thane bellowed.
"Not yet!" I yelled. "Flynn hasn't crossed!"
Flynn looked at me. "I can jump it."
"It's too far!" I argued, my vision blurring. The strain was becoming unbearable. The screams of the souls in the river were getting louder, bleeding into my mind.
Help us... cold... so cold... join us...
Shut up, I commanded the voices. I am not one of you.
"Go, Flynn!" I shrieked.
The Wolf didn't argue. He sprinted across the bridge of my soul. His footsteps were lighter than Thane’s, sharp staccato taps that felt like needles piercing my nerves. He cleared the distance in seconds, leaping the final ten feet to land beside Thane.
"Clear!" Flynn yelled.
"Kaelen!" I called to the sky. "Landing zone is hot! Get down there!"
The Dragon Prince folded his wings and dove. He plummeted like a meteor, pulling up at the last second to crash-land on the far bank, shattering a ridge of glass with his impact. He spun around, roaring defiant fire at the remaining harpies, daring them to follow.
They didn't. They retreated into the fog, screeching their frustration.
Now it was just me.
I was alone on the wrong side of the river.
"Aria, cross!" Kaelen shouted.
I tried to move my legs. They wouldn't obey. I had poured so much structure into the bridge that I had forgotten how to be a body.
The river surged again. A massive hand, formed of thousands of smaller hands, rose from the ash. It towered over me, blotting out the grey sky.
Mine, the river whispered.
"Not today," I rasped.
I didn't retract the bridge. I ran on it.
I sprinted onto my own projection. It was a bizarre sensation, running on a surface that was also me. It felt like running inside my own veins. The golden light hummed under my boots.
The ash hand slammed down behind me, shattering the bank where I had just been standing. The shockwave traveled through the bridge, nearly knocking me off.
I stumbled, falling to one knee.
The pain blinded me. My metal skin was glowing terrifyingly bright now, the gold turning to white. I could hear the lattice cracking.
Snap. Snap. Snap.
"Don't break," I begged the metal. "Please don't break."
I forced myself up. I was ten yards away. Five.
The suction increased. The Devourer realized its meal was escaping. The bridge began to dissolve from the starting point, the golden light turning to grey smoke. The road was disappearing beneath my heels.
I gathered the last of my strength and lunged.
I hit the far bank hard, my shoulder slamming into the obsidian.
The bridge vanished instantly, snapping back into my arm with a recoil that felt like being struck by lightning.
I tumbled, rolling across the sharp stones, and came to a stop against a pair of boots.
I lay there, gasping, unable to move. My arm was smoking. The violet runes were dark, completely drained. My flesh side felt numb, dead weight.
Hands grabbed me. Not the cold, grasping hands of the river, but warm, frantic hands.
"I've got you," a voice whispered. Kaelen's heat surrounded me.
He pulled me up, dragging me away from the edge. I couldn't stand on my own. My legs were jelly. I slumped against him, my head falling onto his shoulder.
"Did we..." I wheezed, the air rattling in my chest. "Did we make it?"
Kaelen looked over at the river of ash, where the hands were slowly sinking back into the sludge, denied their prize.
By a margin of error that makes me want to vomit, Elias said softly in my mind. But yes. We made it.
Elias and Flynn crowded in, their lingering terror echoing down the bond. Thane loomed over us, his shadow warm and protective.
"You cracked," Kaelen said, reaching up to touch the jagged line of gold light pulsing on my collarbone. His fingertips came away smeared with a golden fluid. Divine blood. "You're bleeding light, Aria."
"I'll patch it," I mumbled, my eyes sliding shut against my will. The exhaustion was a heavy, velvety tide pulling me under. "Just... give me a minute."