"That's the deal," Hermes sat back down, propping his feet up on the control panel with infuriating ease. "Entertain me."
The Cyclops roared.
It wasn't a thinking sound, nor a challenge. It was a wall of noise, a primal release of aggression that shook the stone beneath our feet. He lowered his shoulder and charged.
"Scatter!" Kaelen shouted.
The team exploded outward. Flynn went high, leaping onto a swinging chain with the agility of a jungle cat. Elias slid left, manipulating the gravity around him to skate out of the charge path like water flowing uphill. Thane stood his ground for a fraction of a second, just long enough to shove me violently toward the perimeter wall.
"Move, Aria!" Thane bellowed.
I tried. I pushed off with my good leg, throwing my weight to the side in a desperate lunge. But my silvered left leg swung like a pendulum, heavy, dead, and unresponsive. I didn't glide; I crashed. I hit the wall hard, the screech of the foundry metal ringing against the metal of my skin in a jarring discord.
The Cyclops slammed into Thane.
It was like watching a mountain hit a glacier. Thane caught the giant’s hammer on the handle of his hammer, the impactcreating a shockwave that blew the dust off the floor in a widening ring. Thane grunted, a low, pained sound, as his boots carved deep, screaming furrows into the iron plating. He was being driven backward, inch by agonizing inch.
"He's too heavy!" Thane roared, straining against the impossible leverage. Veins bulged against the thick muscles of his neck.
"Turn him!" Kaelen commanded.
The Dragon Prince ducked under the backswing of Brontes’ hammer, slashing at the Cyclops’s hamstring. He turned the blade at the last second, striking with the flat of the steel rather than the edge. It was a blow meant to bruise, to break bone, but not to sever the artery.
Brontes howled, stumbling forward but not falling. In a blind rage, he backhanded Kaelen with a fist the size of a boulder. Kaelen took the hit on his shoulder, skidding across the room and slamming into a stack of cooling ingots with a sickening crunch.
"Don't kill it!" Hermes sang out from his throne, voice light and airy. "I see smoke coming off that sword, Kaelen! No burning the equipment!"
I pressed my back against the wall, my chest heaving, fighting for oxygen that wasn't there. The runes etched into my skin were going wild. The proximity to the Anvil, which sat glowing in the center of the arena, was acting like a magnet. The gold and silver lines were racing toward my heart, burning with a cold, chemical fire that made my vision swim.
Closer,the instinct whispered in my blood, a voice that wasn't mine but belonged to the metal itself.The solution is right there. The fire calls to the ore.
"Aria, watch out!" Flynn screamed from the rafters.
I looked up, snapping back to reality. Brontes had realized Thane was an immovable object and Kaelen was a stinging wasp.He turned his single, burning eye toward the one thing in the room that wasn't moving.
Me.
"Intruder," Brontes gargled, his voice a grinder of wet stones. He raised the hammer high.
He charged at me.
I couldn't run. My left knee was locked solid, fused into a rigid joint of silver. My hip was grinding with every shift of weight. I was a sitting duck encased in slow-drying cement.
"Stop him!" Elias shouted, throwing a hand forward, his face pale with exertion.
A gravity well materialized in front of the Cyclops's feet, warping the light. Brontes stumbled, lurching forward as the floor seemed to drop away beneath him, but his momentum was too great. He crashed through the gravity field, roaring, shattering the magic like glass.
He swung the hammer down at me.
I didn't think, but I knew I couldn't dodge and there wasn’t time to flee.
I braced into it, shifting my weight onto my silvered leg, planting it like a pillar rooted into the earth's core. I raised my left arm, the one fully consumed by the gray metal, and I moved it to protect my head.
Thane’s voice echoed in my mind, a memory of training in the quiet dark.I am the earth. The earth is hard. The earth endures.
I visualized the mountain. I visualized the Citadel's walls and the strength they represented.
The hammer struck my upraised forearm.
