Chapter 138: Sera’s POV — 2

Theodore and Charolette had one titan, which left the second to Arthur and me.

Pretty much fair. I would say. Though, my teammate didn’t specialize in any good combat with things whom strength was far beyond what he had ever seen.

"Arthur," I said, without turning my head. "Do something dramatic."

"I was going to anyway," he said, and opened Poet’s Dream.

He cleared his throat and began to recite, and within two lines I knew this poem was not like the others. The healing verses were soft, almost apologetic.

This one was cruel. It spoke of drowned bells and hungry harbors and a sky that forgot its own stars, and every word landed like a stone dropped into a well.

The pages darkened. A swirling grey mist rose from them, shot through with threads of black, and for one second it simply hovered, gathering, like a held breath.

Then it launched.

Rkhh! Dharum!

The fog hit the titan like a volcano.

It lifted the creature clean off the floor and slammed it into the far wall, and it did not stop.

The fog kept pushing, grinding the golden body into the stone while cracks spidered up the masonry, until at last it thinned and let go. The titan slid down in a spray of dust.

I heard something crack inside its chest. Ribs, probably. The titan did not care. It shook its head like a wet dog and began to push itself up.

’Of course it does not care.’

Behind me, a door groaned. I caught it from the edge of my eye: Edmund, in front of the throne room, pulling the great iron gates open. My brother, walking into the lion’s den as casually as if he were entering a shop.

’Idiot.’

I did not have time to worry about it, which was probably a mercy.

I crouched, drove off the floor with everything my legs had, and went up. Fifteen-feet. The air thinned around me and the hall spread out below like a battlefield painted in gold and red.

At the top of my arc, I let my spiritual power pour into Cataclysm.

The blade caught. Flames bright enough to make the titan shield its eyes, and it hummed with something older than I was.

Divine Purifying Flames.

Now, you might point out that purifying fire does nothing to these things. You would be half right. It does not wound them.

But I had noticed, in the middle of the earlier fight, that they flinched from it, that something in them itched when the light touched them. Irritation, not injury. A thorn in a lion’s paw.

These flames were different. There was Divinity in them, a quiet, steady weight that no Inferior Awakened should have been able to make. By every rule I had been taught, it was impossible.

But, let’s just say I was special.

I poured heat into the fire on top of that, until the sword shimmered like a mirage, and swung it down through the air.

The flames tore loose in a crescent and fell on the titan.

Sizzle!

It screamed.

Not in pain exactly, but in outrage, the sound of something that had never learned it could be bothered. The gold of its shoulder blistered and blackened, and some of the skin peeled back to show a dull, grey layer underneath. It looked up at me with its ruined, blind face and I would swear it knew exactly where I was.

It crouched and leapt.

A boulder with a grudge. It crossed the distance in a heartbeat, one huge fist drawn back, and I had nothing under my feet to push off from. I tightened my grip on Cataclysm.

A green vine snapped through the air and wrapped around its ankle.

"Hold on!" Arthur yelled, hauling back with both arms, and for a moment, a single glorious moment, the titan jerked in midair like a dog at the end of a leash.

Then, however, it shifted its weight and kicked.

Arthur flew.

I watched him flying, arms wheeling, vine still in his fist, until he hit a pile of overturned benches and vanished in a crash of splintered wood.

But the kick had cost the titan two things.

One: Time.

Two: Its back. It had turned all the way around to throw him, and now the wide golden slope of its spine was bare, facing me, unguarded.

I smiled.

’Checkmate.’

Puppeteer had been waiting for this since the moment the first vial was swallowed, and he came out of my shadow like ink out of a spilled bottle.

His shadow slid across the floor, curled around the titan’s own, and braided with it.

The titan froze mid-turn, one foot raised, the muscles in its enormous neck jerking as though it had been caught in a net. It could not move.

Puppeteer sank into the gap between its shadow and its skull, reaching, reaching for its Domain of Mind.

And stopped.

I felt it through the bond like a hand hitting glass. Wall after wall after wall. Not natural defenses, but built ones, layered and stitched, the kind of barriers no beast should have.

’The potion.’

Whatever Saud’s vial had done, it had not only made them bigger. It had armored them from the inside. Puppeteer could hold the body but he could not break the mind. That was fine. A held body was enough.

I landed on my good leg, crouched once, and sprang.

I drove Cataclysm into the center of its back with both hands and all of my weight.

The same false, cold feeling met the point, that illusory metal pressing back against my blade. It lasted half a heartbeat.

I pulled Cataclysm free.

The titan stood a moment longer, still held by shadow. Then Puppeteer let go and it fell, face first, with a crash that rang off the walls.

Dead.

I wiped the blade on my sleeve, turned, and looked toward the throne room gates, where my brother had vanished into the dark.

’One left.’