It wasn't magic; it was command over the architecture. The marble floor rippled like a rug being shaken. Columns toppled, not randomly, but aiming for us. The statues of the gods animated, dragging themselves from their pedestals with grinding, stony groans.
"This is Olympus," Athena declared, rising into the air on a platform of levitating debris. "The very stones obey the blood of Cronus. You are intruders in a living organism that wants you expelled."
A statue of Zeus, massive and headless, swung a marble fist the size of a carriage at me.
I ducked, not because I saw it, but because Flynn felt it. His warning spiked in my mind, a jagged impulse ofDOWN. Kaelen’s fire surged in my veins, shielding me from the spray ofstone fragments as the fist pulverized the ground where I had been standing.
"She’s turning the terrain," Kaelen roared, slicing a stone arm in half with his blade. "We need to get off the ground!"
"And go where?" Flynn shouted, leaping onto the back of a marble lion that was trying to eat him. He stabbed it repeatedly in the stony neck. "The sky is eating the city!"
He faced the horizon. The vortex of black nothingness, the Devourer’s influence, was closer now. The red lightning was striking with increased frequency, chewing through the outer districts of the High Seat.
"To the palace!" I yelled, pointing at the massive golden doors Athena had emerged from. "If she’s guarding it, that means Hera is inside!"
"Guard?" Athena laughed from above. She threw her spear.
It split into three bolts of lightning in mid-air.
Thane caught one on his shield, staggering. Kaelen deflected another. The third was aiming straight for me.
In my mind, there was no time for weapons. All I had was the bond, so I pulled on Elias’ power.Future.
I saw the path of the bolt a split second before it happened. I stepped to the left. The lightning scorched the air where my ear had been, smelling of ozone and singed hair.
Reaching out, I grabbed the bolt as it passed.
It burned. It seared the leather of Hades’s gloves, biting into my skin with the heat of a thousand suns. But I held it. I channeled the energy, feeding it into the Dragon’s fire in my blood, transmuting the attack into fuel.
I wound up and threw it back.
"Return to sender!" I screamed.
The bolt flew back at Athena, tinged with black dragon-fire. She caught it effortlessly, but the force of it pushed her hovering platform backward. Her eyebrows rose.
"Spicy," she commented.
"We need a distraction," I gasped, the effort of redirecting divine energy leaving me momentarily winded. The bond was humming, feeding me strength, but the cost was high. I felt hollowed out, refilled, and hollowed out again in rapid succession.
"I have an idea," Kaelen said through the bond. His mental voice was cold, strategic.Elias. Can you collapse the support structures of the hanging gardens?
The structural integrity is already compromised by the void-storm,Elias replied, his thoughts swift and fluid.A targeted strike at the third pillar would bring the entire southern terrace down.
Do it,Kaelen commanded.Flynn, harry her left side. Keep her shield up. Thane, get Aria to the doors.
On it,Flynn snarled.
The Wolf Prince abandoned his stone lion and launched himself into the air, using the falling debris as stepping stones. He moved with suicidally reckless speed, flashing around Athena, his daggers creating a web of steel.
Athena swatted at him, annoyed, forced to raise her shield to deflect a strike aimed at her eyes.
Elias raised his hands. He didn't throw fire; he pulled a thread of magic.
High above, the massive hanging gardens, acres of floating stone and silver vines, groaned. The supporting pillar cracked.
With a sound like the world ending, the gardens fell.
They didn't fall on us. They fell between us and Athena, a cascade of stone, water, and vegetation crashing down to create a chaotic wall of debris. Dust billowed out, blinding and thick.
