Up.
I rose from the flame. I didn't fly; I ascended, carried by a localized inversion of weight. The fire clung to me for a moment, dripping off my boots like water, before snapping back into the pit.
Silent as a shadow, bright as a star, I rose until I hovered above the edge of the chasm.
The room went dead silent.
Kaelen fell to his knees. He reached out a hand, shaking, his fingers brushing the air as if testing for heat.
"You," he breathed. "You're..."
"Alive," I finished. My voice had changed again. The harmonic distortion was gone, replaced by a clarity that cut through the roar of the forge. It was resonant, the voice of the bell finding its true pitch.
I touched down on the iron floor. The plating hissed, retreating slightly from the intensity of my presence.
Flynn stared at me, his daggers hanging loosely in his hands. He sniffed the air, his amber eyes blowing wide.
"You smell like sunshine," he whispered.
Elias was weeping silently, his hands pressed over his mouth, staring at the runes flowing across my skin. He was reading them, I realized. He was seeing the logic of the universe written on my body, an equation that finally balanced.
"It circulates," he choked out. "The loop... it’s infinite. Energy in, energy out. No resistance."
I turned slowly.
Apollo stood by the ruined wall of the forge, half-buried in the rubble from fighting that had happened while I was in the fire. An assault from Thane would be my guess.
He pulled himself free, dusting off his tarnished golden armor. The black smoke leaking from his eyes had stalled. He stared at me with the blank, horrified expression of a man who realizes he has brought a knife to a nuclear detonation.
"What did you do?" Apollo asked. The layered, demonic distortion in his voice wavered, cracking to reveal fear. "That fire... it unmakes gods. You should be nothing."
I looked at my hand. The dark, chromed metal shone with an inner violet light. I took a step toward him.
"It tried," I said, feeling the power of the primal anvil coursing through me, no longer a burden to be carried, but a river to be directed. "But I made a deal with the heat."
I clenched my fist. The runes on my arm flared blinding white.
"You wanted to break the vessel, Apollo," I said, the corners of my mouth curving into a smile that felt sharp and dangerous. "Congratulations. The glass is broken."
I raised my hand, pointing my palm at his chest.
"Now you have to deal with the storm."
TWENTY-FIVE
Thane
The air in the Forge didn't cool down when Aria rose from the flame; it simply surrendered.
I stood twenty feet away, my boots fused to the melting iron plating, and I felt the heat of her wash over me like the blast wave of a detonating sun. But it wasn't the chaotic, devouring fire of the Dragon, nor was it the sterile, blinding light of Apollo.
It was structured and possessed a density that my earth-affinity recognized instantly, the crushing, absolute mass of a collapsing star.
She hovered above the pit, a creature of obsidian chrome and bioluminescent violet veins, pointing a hand at the sun god. The metal looked as though it had been poured over her skin like living mercury, reshaping her silhouette into something that was no longer entirely human, nor entirely divine. It was a weapon, forged in the shape of a girl I had sworn to protect.
Apollo, the Sun God, the golden boy of Olympus, looked small. He stepped back, his radiant armor dulled by the sheer chaotic output of the Forge, his boots crunching on the black glass debris. For the first time in millennia, I smelled the distinct, sour stench of a god’s fear. It was an acrid scent, sharpas vinegar, cutting through the sulfur and the rot of the void-rain like a razor.
"Now you have to deal with the storm," Aria said.
