by Steve McHugh
The combat had been fast and brutal. I’d been burned on my arms and ribs, but so had Cronus, and he looked really angry about it. Although, whether that was due to the pain I’d inflicted or his inability to beat me quickly, I was unsure.
“You’re not at full strength,” I said. “This isn’t a fight you can win easily.”
“I won’t be beaten by a child.” He spat the final word, as if the notion that someone as young as sixteen hundred years could possibly better him was unthinkable. I aimed to prove him wrong.
He grabbed a huge rock, which probably weighed several tons, and threw it at my head. I stopped it by pushing up with a massive gust of air, giving Cronus the chance to throw a second rock at me from the opposite direction. I released my magic and aimed more at my feet, propelling me up and over the rock. When I was halfway past, Cronus changed the direction and flung it up toward me. I brought down a whip of air, which cracked the rock, but didn’t break it. Instead, the rock plowed into me, knocking me to the ground and then rolling to turn me in a squishy mess.
I drew in a portion of the krampus’s soul that I’d taken in Germany and used it on my air magic, pushing a column of air up at the rock, which exploded from the impact. The fact that Cronus managed to keep the magic together and turn the remaining rock pieces into tiny missiles was a testament to how powerful he was. A blast of air in his chest robbed him of his concentration, and the small chunks hit the ground harmlessly.
I got back to my feet. My continued existence and refusal to just lie down and die had etched an expression on Cronus’s face that was similar to the one on the face of someone who’d found their trash bins knocked over, spilling rubbish everywhere. I wondered how much longer I could keep pissing him off before he went nuclear—probably not long. Cronus wasn’t known for his ability to keep his temper in check.
Cronus walked over to one of the massive vertical stones that littered the Stonehenge circle we were inside and, with a crunch, grabbed hold of it, his fingers digging into the rock. He picked it off the ground as if it weighed nothing, and threw it at me. A little air magic to make me quicker allowed me to dodge the block as the rock struck the ground and tore a lengthy trench into the earth. Earth magic allows its users to increase their strength, much in the same way that air magic allows me to increase my speed and agility.
The second the massive stone came to a stop it was joined by a second one, forcing me to use my air magic to deflect its trajectory, taking it straight into a third rock. The noise was deafening as little pieces of rock began to pepper the hastily assembled shield of air I’d created. Stonehenge had stood for thousands of years, and Cronus had destroyed a sizeable portion of it in less than a few minutes of fighting me.
I wrapped air around Cronus’s feet and yanked back, forcing him to drop yet another stone. He used his earth magic to shield himself before part of Stonehenge connected with his skull, but a second yank back on my air magic forced his head to smash into part of the stone anyway.
He threw a ball of fire at me, which turned, slowed, and changed direction when I avoided its first pass. Trying to control any magic in such a way is hard work, but doing it during a fight meant Cronus had to put his attention elsewhere, which let me sprint toward him and tackle him to the ground. It wasn’t pretty, or particularly impressive, but it made him lose his concentration, equally so when I slammed my air covered fist into his jaw a few times, drawing blood.
The ground around us sprung to life as Cronus drew on his earth magic, smashing into me and throwing me off him with enough force to knock the wind out of me, despite my air shield. I dove behind a stone pillar and waited for my breath to return. I kept an eye on Cronus, who’d gotten back to his feet and shouted something in Latin that I didn’t pick up. I guessed it wasn’t anything nice when a boulder the size of a hatchback was hurled at me with enormous force. It crashed into the stones I’d been using as a shield, tearing my makeshift cover to pieces, but I was already on the move, using my air magic to sprint toward Cronus faster than any Olympic runner could have managed.
I threw a ball of flame at him. He stopped it with a shield of earth, which appeared across his arm. But with my power still increased by the soul of the krampus, the whip of fire tore through Cronus’s shield with ease. He threw himself aside and countered with a jet of almost white-hot flame. But I’d moved beyond where he’d expected me to be. Dodging more jets of flame, I raced within striking distance and drove a blade of fire up through his side, twisting it slightly before tearing it free through his back.
Blood cascaded from the wound, but I couldn’t follow up as four huge slabs of earth shot up around him, protecting him from further harm.
I released my magic and stopped my use of the krampus soul. I’d been traveling at much higher speeds than I’d ever have been capable of without it, but I doubted that Cronus was finished. I didn’t want to be without one of my most powerful weapons when he rallied.
I threw a ball of fire at Cronus’s earthen shield, which simply absorbed it, the wet muck moving as if to take the flame for Cronus to consume.
I wasn’t sure if Cronus could still absorb magic while practically encased in mud and rock, but it wasn’t a risk I was willing to take. I created a sphere of air in my palm and began rotating it, faster and faster until it was almost a blur, and then I ran at the rock and drove the sphere into it before releasing the magic. An entire side of the shield vanished from the impact, but the cloud of dust that was thrown up allowed Cronus to crash into me, taking me off my feet and driving me into the ground, where more of his earth magic leapt around my hands and throat, keeping me pinned down.
“You’re stubborn and strong, but not strong enough,” he said, slightly out of breath.
He got up, and I kicked him in the knee, hitting it just right to dislocate the joint and force his magic to vanish. I was up and on him in an instant, raining blows down with fist and elbow across his body, but he would not go down. He used his earth magic to ensure he stayed rigid and upright as he blocked a blow to his jaw before slamming a pillar of solid earth up into my face.
I didn’t move in time to shield myself. The best I could do was move enough to take it on the shoulder. The impact was sufficient to lift me off my feet and dump me several meters away from Cronus. Pain wracked my shoulder, and I knew it was, at the very least, dislocated. I touched the limb and found the arm free of the socket. I smashed my shoulder into a nearby stone, which caused me to cry out.
“I’m done playing now,” Cronus said, and when I looked up at him, his fire and earth glyphs had merged over his arms.
I scrambled to my feet as lava flowed over Cronus’s hands and up to his forearms, a constant stream of molten heat that he was preparing to use. I didn’t have to wait long as a stream of lava headed toward me at an astonishing rate. I didn’t even try to use my magic to counter it, but just ran, the lava incinerating everything it touched as Cronus followed me in an attempt to turn me into a barbecued version of myself.
I’d made a whole lap of Stonehenge before Cronus realized he couldn’t keep up and just decided to destroy everything. Huge stones and boulders hurtled at me with every step, and it was all I could do to keep moving, to keep the krampus soul burning inside of me to ensure I was quick enough. But I couldn’t do it forever. The soul would extinguish at some point, and then I was as good as dead.
I threw a jet of flame at Cronus, who created another block of earth in front of him to stop it, but by the time the flame was extinguished, I was already on my way toward him. A huge rock appeared in front of me, but with some air assistance, I leapt up onto it and onto a second rock that appeared as if out of nowhere. Every time I cleared a rock, a new one appeared, forcing me to go higher and higher above Cronus and the battlefield below. After the fourth rock, I created a sphere of air in my hand and poured part of the krampus’s soul into it, creating an orb of incredible power. I cleared yet another rock, but there was nothing below me but dozens of feet of space.
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Cronus must have seen the sphere, because a massive column of rock tore out from in front of him and up toward me. Just before it hit me, I activated my fire magic, merging it with the air and forcing lightning into the sphere. Electricity crackled from within it as I put my arm out before me, the sphere now containing traces of yellow and red.
The sphere hit the top of the column like a bomb, destroying the first ten feet of solid rock as if it were paper. It took me through the next ten feet with barely any resistance, although the sound it created as the rock was torn asunder was deafening. Just releasing the magic wouldn’t have worked; it would have destroyed the rock, but left Cronus standing. Instead, I focused the hand-sized sphere into something smaller and smaller, until it was the size of a golf ball. When it was the exact size I wanted it, I pushed it into the rock and then released it.
There was no big explosion or catastrophic failure of the rock. The sphere bore through it like a mole through soft earth. I fell to the ground, managing to use enough air magic to keep me from making a splat, but not enough to stop my ribs and wrist from breaking. I glanced over at Cronus just in time to see the sphere exit the rock near his chest. The Titan didn’t stand a chance. It stuck him as if it were a sniper rifle round, tearing into his body and through the other side with enough force to lift him off his feet and throw him twenty feet back into one of the giant stones. The barrier of the well stopped the sphere; otherwise, I had no idea where it would have ended up.
The massive stone column crumpled to the ground before Cronus and shook the earth beneath my feet. Cronus had fallen to his knees. I was almost out of my krampus soul, and my body was beginning to tell me that enough was enough. I remembered reading something in Zeus’s grimoire, a piece of magic he’d used time and again with devastating results, but a trick so dangerous that one wrong move would cause him terrible pain. Considering I was already in pain, I figured there wasn’t a lot to lose and stood up.
I raised one hand to the night sky and concentrated, creating a blade of lightning that stretched up five feet above my head. I gathered my magic inside me and pushed it out toward my extended fingers. I held the magic in place with incredible concentration and hoped to whatever gods happened to be around that I knew what I was doing, and then I pushed the magic out of my hand, up toward the sky.
The rumble of thunder was deafening to the point of making me want to clamp my hands over my ears, although with one hand being broken and the other covered in magical lightning, it probably wasn’t a good idea. Lightning, natural and terrible, flew down the magic well toward my fingers. I’d anticipated the power surge, but it was like nothing I’d ever felt. The lightning mixed with my magic, and power grew inside of me, a dark, horrific power whose sole purpose was to destroy. There was no creation in the mixing of real lightning with magic, only ruin and chaos. I extended my broken hand toward Cronus, and the lightning left my body in one giant agonizing push.
It destroyed the stone that Cronus had been kneeling in front of, pretty much vaporizing a large portion of the surrounding area too, and I crashed to my knees. I was as close to spent as possible. Using the lightning had taken a huge amount out of me. I’d used the remainder of the krampus’s soul to ensure it didn’t fry me on the way through, and I was pretty certain it was a trick I wouldn’t be trying anytime soon, but it had worked. Cronus was no more. It was a shame he’d had to die, but there’d been no other—
Cronus stood up out of the wreckage of stone and earth.
Heat poured off him. Parts of his clothes were melted to his skin, and other parts were on fire. His skin was bright pink, blisters formed around his mouth and forehead, and one arm hung loosely by his side, the skin barely recognizable as belonging to anything that was once human in appearance.
He took another step and stopped. The skin on his arms began to heal before my eyes. His face returned to normal, and the look of rage in his eyes stopped me from opening my mouth.
“You dare!” he shouted. “You dare use my son’s own magic against me?”
I’d taken an idea from Zeus and thought I’d won the battle, but all I’d done was make it much, much worse.
CHAPTER 35
There are times in my life when I just wish I hadn’t bothered. Kneeling before an exceptionally angry Titan who’d just gone from looking like someone who’d been strapped to a sun bed for six months, to his normal healthy glow, was probably not going to bode well for me.
I was pretty much spent. The lightning had taken almost the last of my reserves, and the only thing I had left was to pour as much magic out of me as possible in the hope that the nightmare took over before I died. It wasn’t exactly the best plan, but I’d skipped over “best plan” some time ago and was now happily settling for “desperation.”
I got back to my feet, ready to fight, and created a blade of fire. If I was going to lose, I was going to fucking well give Cronus something to remember me by.
The fist-sized rocks hit me in the chest with the speed of an aircraft, flinging me back to the ground. I scrambled up, but a second squadron of the little bastards smashed into me, and my shield of air only managed to deflect half. The rest hit me in the chest and head, knocking me silly for a moment. I felt blood flow into my eye, half-blinding me. I was unable to stop the pissed off Titan from grabbing my throat and head-butting me on the nose, breaking it.
The next few minutes were a blur as Cronus kicked the shit out of me in the middle of Stonehenge. I tried to fight back, but every time I used magic, it was weaker and he was somehow stronger. I crashed to my knees in front of a stone column and wondered how much longer I had to wait.
“Magic wells are wonderful things,” he said and lifted my hand toward me. The hand that was supposed to have my rune inscribed on it. When I’d fallen from the column, just before the sphere had struck Cronus, something had cut through my hand, severing the rune.
“You understand now, yes?” he asked. “I was amazed that you even had enough magic to access the lightning. By the way, for that, I’m going to kill you. I can’t have people use my own son’s magic against me.”
I spat blood onto the ground. “You’re healed.”
“The well—again, you kept piling on the pressure, but you never severed my link to it, and the whole time you were fighting me, I was getting stronger and stronger. The sphere was a nice touch, though. I’ve never seen that before. Maybe Zeus and Hades were right about you. Either way, it doesn’t matter.”
Cronus picked me up off the ground and held me by my throat, my feet dangling helplessly.
“This was fun,” I wheezed. “We should do it again sometime.”
“No.” Magma covered his hand again, extending out to form a blade of pure lava. I struggled slightly, but it was no use. “I’ll make it quick.”
“Release him,” said a woman’s voice from somewhere behind Cronus.
Cronus sighed and let go of me. I fell to the ground coughing and hacking, but otherwise okay.
“Persephone,” Cronus said. “This isn’t your fight.”
I rolled away, finally stopping by a small group of rocks near the edge of the well. Persephone wore a pair of Lycra shorts and a loose T-shirt. Both appeared to be dark in color, although to be honest, I wasn’t really paying much attention.
Persephone wasn’t wearing shoes. As she was an earth elemental, it was something that should have struck Cronus too. It should have been enough for him to run like the damn wind, but he was arrogant and stubborn and had just kicked my ass, so he probably thought very highly of himself. He was about to be proven wrong.
“Look, woman, go back to being Hades’s trophy wife and let me do what I need to do.”
Persephone put herself into a fighting stance, and I noticed the rune on the back of her hand for the first time. She’d come here to fight, and Persephone was not someone who did that lightly. I tried to get to my feet, but my body protested, and I collapsed back to the ground.
Cronus threw a ball of fire at
her in a halfhearted way, but she just swayed to one side and avoided it. It was then that I noticed that wherever Persephone stood, the grass actually appeared to grow and was brighter in color, curling up over her feet and ankles.
“You sure you want to do this, girl?”
Persephone stretched one arm out in front of her and moved her hand so that the back of it was facing her opponent, and then she motioned for Cronus to come get some. Cronus created a massive bolder of rock and threw it at Persephone with no care for whether she lived or died.
Persephone didn’t even move. She just turned her hand around, and the ground leapt up and grabbed the rock before it was even close, vanishing back under the dirt as if it were never there. Cronus’s smile faltered just a little bit.
The big difference between sorcerers and elementals is that sorcerers use a magical version of the element they’re throwing around. We create it from nothing, and it molds to our will. But once we’ve created it, it’s as real as any other element. Elementals are one with the element. They’re part of it, the real thing. And that means any sorcerer who throws an elemental’s own element against them is basically pissing in the wind.
Persephone shifted her foot, and the grass grew around Cronus’s feet. The first he knew was when they tugged him into the ground itself. He tried to use his earth magic in desperation, but elemental trumps magic when it comes to commanding non-magically created nature.
Cronus tore himself free and charged, throwing balls of fire at Persephone, who blocked each of them with rocks pulled from the ground. When she’d finished, over a dozen rocks, each about the size of my head, spun slowly in the air. And then they rushed toward Cronus in an instant, forcing the Titan to dive aside after he finally got free of the ground. Persephone shifted her foot again and vanished from view before jumping out of the ground beside Cronus and catching him in the jaw with an uppercut that almost took his head off.