The heat hits first, followed by blinding pain that consumes everything on the arena floor.
My wolf’s rage that has been one with me all this time changes to a low growl, confusion blurring my thoughts.
Where am I?
Pain, pain is all I can fucking feel.
But through the burning haze, I hear a voice, “Jayce! Stand up!”
Sienna…
Her voice pulls me back. I lift my head, my body broken but still burning with power. The world spins, the light unbearable, but I will not lose. My eyes find Helios, the divine mark on his chest glowing faintly.
I take one step. Then another.
My body feels like it’s turning to ash. But I keep going.
The air tastes like metal. Every breath burns.
The ground of Solaria glows red beneath our feet, cracks running like veins of fire through the ground, burning my feet and my legs, agony tearing through me.
Helios straightens, his golden aura blinding, heat rolling off him in waves. His voice fills the arena, echoing through the domed sky as he looks at me with scorn.“You think strength alone will save you, son of Andronikos?”He raises his hand, a golden sword appearing in it, its blade a strip of living sunlight.
“Yes,” I manage to spit out.
“Then come, withstand it, show me what true strength is.”
He lunges, a blur, and I do the same, not knowing where I find the strength. I meet him halfway, our auras exploding when they collide. So powerful, so intense that it feels like everything is being destroyed. I feel the ground beneath us cave, and we are falling deep down, everything around us shattering.
His sword cuts through the storm, grazing my ribs, the heat searing my flesh, but I swing back, fists wreathed in lightning. Each blow I land tears through his sunfire. He defends with his blade. We are a blur of power and speed, sparking a storm in our wake.
I will not lose. We will not lose.
Block, attack, defend, counter… It’s a dance of power, but I’m not yielding; the force is slowly but surely driving him back, each hit getting closer and closer to him. The mark on his chest flickers.
Now, Theo!I snarl through the mind-link.
Theo’s energy hums from somewhere unseen. A mist twists beneath Helios’ feet, tendrils of it coiling up his legs like chains.
Ares!I shout.
Ares surges forward, water roaring with him, his body drenched in water. “Move!” he growls. I jump back just as he brings both hands down, and the sea itself crashes into Helios, sweeping him off his feet and slamming him into the cracked stone before it begins to wrap around him, the splashes cooling my own burning skin.
Helios jerks, his eyes going to the bindings that hold him, as water too strengthens its hold.
Renji and Carter are already here. They leap at once, almost a mirror of one another, fangs bared. Renji’s sink into Helios’ arm, whilst Carter’s rip into his shoulder.
Helios roars, fire bursting outward. Renji is thrown first. He hits the ground hard, blood smearing across the rock. Carter clings on longer, but Helios grabs him by the scruff and hurls him across the sunken crater.
I move through the chaos, my gauntlets blazing white.
Helios rises, his chest heaving, his hair no longer braided or neat but unruly. His body is covered in dirt and marks, and not all his wounds have healed. His eyes burn with a fury far too powerful to put into words.
“Your defiance ends here,”he hisses. The ground trembles. He swings his sword, but he isn’t aiming at me, but at the sky.
The heavens split open.
A column of fire descends, molten and pure, swallowing the centre of the arena, opening a bottomless pit.
