"The Forge," Elias breathed.
"What?" Thane asked.
"The Olympian Forge," Elias said, the words tumbling out faster now. "Hephaestus's workshop. It lies deep in the inner city, near the vents of the eternal fire. There is an anvil there. The Primal Anvil."
"The place where the stars are hammered flat," Kaelen realized, his gaze snapping to the burning skyline outside the shattered windows.
"It can reshape anything," Elias said, looking at me with desperate hope. "Metal. Magic. Souls. If we get her to the Anvil and Hephaestus's tools, then we can expand the vessel. We can reforge her body to withstand the power. We can stop the Silvering."
"Reforge her?" Thane asked, his voice thick with worry. "That sounds painful."
"Agony," Elias confirmed. "But the alternative is becoming a lawn ornament for Hera's garden."
The floor beneath us groaned again, a deep, resonantthrumthat vibrated my bones. A chunk of the ceiling fell, smashing into the mirror where Kaelen and I had spoken to Pandora's ghost.
"The titan is waking up," I said, feeling the pulse of the mountain through the soles of my boots. "We don't have time for a debate. Where is the forge?"
"East," Elias said, pointing through the shattered wall toward the smoking heart of the city. "Past the market district. Under the red tower."
Kaelen squeezed my shoulders, his heat seeking to penetrate the cold shell I was becoming. "Can you run?"
I tried to flex my knees. They moved, but with a grinding sensation, like rusty hinges. "I can run. But I might be slow."
"Then we'll carry you," Flynn said, sheathing his daggers.
"No," I argued, shrugging off Kaelen's hands. "I need to move. If I stop moving, I think I'll freeze solid."
"Then we run," Kaelen commanded. He drew his sword, the black flames roaring to life, illuminating the ruin of the Hall. "To the forge. And if the Smith God is there, we will make him fix his mistake."
I wanted to tell Kaelen that it wasn't the god's mistake, that Pandora had been the one that had been made, but he was too angry to listen. I didn't blame him; I was angry too, but I hadn't just had a thousand year old secret dropped on me either.
We burst out of the Hall of Muses into a nightmare.
The storm had swallowed the horizon. The black vortex of the Devourer was a colossal wall of nothingness eating the sky, churning silently as it slowly erased districts whole. But the immediate threat wasn't the sky; it was the ground.
The plaza streets were buckling. The waking Titan was stretching, his movements ripping the city apart from below. Marble avenues rippled like water. Buildings folded in on themselves.
"Stick to the high ground!" Thane shouted over the roar of collapsing masonry.
We sprinted along the aqueduct ridges and the tops of reinforced walls. I ran, my heavy, metallic limbs feeling alien, slamming against the stone with too much force. Every step sent a jolt through my spine, but I pushed through it. I focused on the heat of Kaelen ahead of me, the reassuring bulk of Thane behind.
"Hera!" Elias shouted, pointing upward.
I looked up. High above the chaos, a figure floated on a disk of white light. Even at this distance, I could feel her rage. Specifically, I could feel her looking forme.
She was blasting the ruins, white fire arcing from her hands, hunting the rats in her walls.
"She doesn't see us yet," Flynn panted, leaping a gap in the aqueduct. "The smoke is hiding us."
"The Titan is hiding us," I corrected, my voice booming strangely. "His wake-up call is masking our signal."
We reached the edge of the market district. It was a shambles of overturned stalls, scattered ambrosia carts, and fleeing minor gods who looked more like panicked sheep than deities.
"Through there," Elias pointed to a massive, squat structure made of bronze and dark iron that squatted amidst the white marble like a toad. Heat rolled off it in visible waves. Smokestacks belched fire into the darkening sky. "It's not the Olympian Forge, but it will connect to it."
It might not be exactly what we were aiming for, but it got us out of sight and away from where Hera was searching for us, which was all we could hope for at that moment.
SIX
