Phix tried to move one last time. But the corrupted magic had done its work, weakening the tapestry that was keeping her together. She wasn’t falling apart like the other Blighted Ones, but she was entirely vulnerable. She was ready to be harvested.
I raised my staff higher and began to chant. “Power of the Shift, come to me. Give me your strength. The magic of a million endings!”
The ritual would channel the intensity of the world-ending calamity that had torn our world asunder. It was only fitting, since I fully planned to tear it apart all over again. Alia Terra had grown stagnant and empty. With the sphinx’s power, I’d be able to fix that.
I reached out with my free hand, my fingers stopping mere inches from the golden fur of Phix’s neck. I could feel the intense heat of her life-force, the flickering embers of the very first creature.
“The Shift will never belong to you,” she growled, but her voice was feeble. A mere shadow of what the sphinx had once been.
“It already does. Just like you, sphinx.”
The world seemed to hold its breath, waiting for my final strike. The white flowers were perfectly still. The shattering crystals had gone completely silent. I was the master of the weave, and I was finally going to win.
The ground beneath my boots buckled with tremendous force.
A sound like a thousand heavy bronze bells ringing in unison erupted from deep inside the stone den. A massive shockwave of blinding blue-white light blasted out of the archway, striking with enough force to instantly evaporate the yellow fog surrounding me.
I stumbled back, throwing my arm up to shield my eyes.
Phix laughed. “I told you, foolish human. Your arrogance will be your undoing.”
I’d have loved to punish her for her words, but some strange instinct forced me to face the den. That was when I saw it. Through the harsh glare, a massive silhouette emerged. A bronze giant stepped onto the path, moving with the terrifyingly swift grace of an apex predator. The metal was glowing with an intense, raging heat. His eyes were completely dead.
“Captain!” Telamon shouted, his voice cracking with overwhelming fear. “What… What is that?”
I stared at the colossus, and my heart skipped a beat. Medea's loss of control should have incapacitated the monsters of Asphodelia, but this monster was one of an entirely different nature. One built, not woven.
There had been a few rumors. Stories of a creature that had come from Charon’s hands. But everything I’d heard suggested it was only a vessel for death energy. Nothing more.
It seemed Asphodelia had kept some of its most precious secrets away from everyone. And the bronze monster was one of them.
Medea stopped fighting Telamon and stared fixedly at the metallic creature. She knew him. Oh… The creature was her groom. My daughter had certainly found an interesting guardian.
But she hadn’t yet realized he was completely untethered. There was no guiding intelligence behind those glowing eyes, no master holding his leash. He was a hollow, mindless weapon operating purely on absolute, destructive instinct.
Any other day, I would have found her ongoing hope amusing. But as the mindless bronze titan moved silently toward me, closing the distance with unnatural speed, I felt something I had not felt in decades.
I felt fear.
9
The Colossus
Aion
The colossus opened its eyes to a fractured world.
A blazing heat bled from the torn weave of the city, pressing heavily against its chest. A deep, ancient compulsion thrummed to life within its bronze shell. The balance of Asphodelia had been shattered, demanding a singular response.
Destroy the infection. Restore the quiet.
The bronze giant rose from the dark bed in the den. It marched down the stone corridor, cracking the floor beneath its immense weight. As it emerged into the chaotic garden, its knowledge of the pure wrongness surged further. Men in dark armor, reeking of unnatural, decaying magic, trampled the white asphodels.Near the edge of the path, the golden sphinx lay wounded by a form of corrupted magic. She was a sacred pillar of the city, and she was dying. All because ofthem.
Intruders! Silence them!
The mortals instantly sensed the underlying threat. “Captain!” one of them gasped, stumbling backward. “What is that?”
The colossus rushed forward. The men scattered and screamed, and the taste of their terror fouled the air in the garden even more. To the side, the sphinx let out a raspy laugh.
