"Move," I turned my back on her and continued to stomp the path flat.
We reached the far side. I stepped onto solid basalt and immediately turned to guard the landing. Flynn hopped past me, his face pale. Elias drifted down, looking nauseous from the magical dissonance.
Aria stepped off the bridge. She didn't stumble this time. No, she marched past me, her head high, though her gait was an agonizing limp as she refused to look at me.
Kaelen came last. He stepped onto the stone and immediately grabbed the front of my armor, shoving me back against the tunnel wall.
"What is wrong with you?" he hissed, his face inches from mine. Dragon scales rippled across his cheeks, gold and dangerous. "She is terrified. She is turning into stone, and you are treating her like a pack mule."
"I am treating her like a survivor," I said calmly, removing his hand from my chest plate with slow, deliberate force. "You offer her pity, Kaelen. Pity makes her weak. It makes her focus on the pain. I offer her orders. Orders give her something to do besides panic."
"She needs to know we are with her! That we love her!"
"She knows," I said. "But right now, she does not need lovers. She needs a way to the Anvil before her heart turns to metal."
I looked over Kaelen’s shoulder. Aria was standing a few yards away, leaning against the wall. She was glaring at her own leg, her expression fierce and hateful. She wasn't crying. She was strategizing.
"Look at her," I told Kaelen. "She is angry at me. Good. Anger beats despair. Anger keeps the blood moving."
Kaelen looked at her. He saw the set of her jaw. The fire in her eyes. His shoulders slumped, the dragon receding.
"You are a bastard, Thane," he whispered.
"I am the earth," I said, adjusting my grip on my hammer. "The earth is hard. But it holds you up."
I walked past him toward Aria. She stiffened as I approached, bracing herself for another command.
I didn't give one. The truth was that I was trying to help in the only way I knew how, so I reached into the pouch at my beltand pulled out a small, smooth river stone I had carried from the Cradle. I held it out to her.
"Squeeze this," I said quietly. "In your left hand. The resistance will help recalibrate the grip strength so you do not crush things by accident."
She looked at the stone, then at my face. She snatched the stone from my hand.
"I hate you right now," she whispered.
"I know," I said. "We are close. Can you smell the sulfur?"
She sniffed the air. The faint, rot-smell of the void was fading, replaced by a deep, intense heat.
"Yes," she said.
"That is the Primal Anvil," I said. "Let's go break it."
We moved forward; the tunnel sloping sharply downward. The air grew hot again, a blistering, dry heat that felt like walking into an oven.
But as we rounded the last bend, the tunnel didn't open into a workshop.
It opened into an arena.
And standing in the center, hammering a piece of celestial bronze on a massive, glowing anvil, was a giant. He stopped mid-swing as we entered, his single eye, a cyclopean orb of burning red, fixing on us.
He wasn't Hephaestus.
"Intruders," the Cyclops bellowed, raising his hammer. "The Master said no visitors."
Behind him, chained to the wall with fetters of gold light, sat a man with a beard of tangled wire and sad eyes.
Hephaestus.
