The recollection appeared itself, unwelcome as ever.
The wife of Aldric Elara was standing in the courtyard of the castle with the morning light playing on her hair, laughing at something her son had done. At the age of four, small legs pounding as he ran after a chicken which had been scared out of the coop. The bird squawked. The boy giggled. Elara laid a hand to her mouth, attempting to appear stern, and not succeeding in any way.
Will you not come to the rescue, Aldric?
He had been standing at the well sharpening his blade. Smiled, yes, smiled, and said, He is fine. Character building."
Character building, Elara repeated, rolling her eyes. "You and your knight talk."
The boy caught the chicken. With triumph held it up, with feathers everywhere. Elara clapped. Aldric had a warm sensation in his chest which he was unable to name.
Then ash.
Always ash.
Aldric's eyes opened.
Same gray dawn. Same cold trees. Same weight in his chest where warmness had dwelt.
At some point, he had ceased to walk. Artemis watched him a few steps further on, her eyes, of violet, shut. She didn't ask if he was okay. Smart woman.
Yes we ought to go on, she said.
They kept moving.
On the second day of travel there was a silence.
Artemis talked; Aldric didn't. She did not mind that stuffed the blank spaces with remarks, descriptions, the scathing phrase here and there as he trampled on something that crackled.
She said somewhere about midday, The Grave Titan was smit in celestial smithies made at the world beginning. Give or take ten thousand years ago. The Divine Crown desired that which it could not be killed, nor cunningly deceived, nor could it be reasoned with. Something to guard, would just... guard. Forever."
Aldric went over a fallen tree. Moss and rot. Even as they climbed the forest was growing thinner.
"It's fifty feet tall. Obsidian veiled marble, filled with divinity ether. Lit up all the runes in its body protective prayers, and miracles of constant vigilance and the like. She gestured vaguely. "The runes shift. Adapt. Should you cut it in one place, you know the next time you swing there it is armored.
She glanced at him. "Sound familiar?"
It did. Something like that had been done by the Hound of Judgment, which had been halfway developed, compelling him to kill it before it could change. But a hound was one thing. Another was of fifty feet divine stone.
It can only be hurt by relic weapons, Artemis replied. "Normal steel bounces off. Before it reaches the stone magic burns. Even blessed weapons, the one that crusaders carry with them, only make it madder.
Aldric's chains stirred. They had murdered multitudes of relic keepers. Taken plenty of relics. They'd manage.
"You're not listening."
He looked at her.
You got some way of killing it in your mind, said she. "That's good. But you must think what happens in the battle.
She stopped walking. Turned to face him.
The gods are looking through the eyes of the Titan. It is entertainment to them first hand battle scenes on the lines of the fortifications of heaven. They are betting on the duration of intruders. When a person falls, they are applauding. They laugh to see families burn.
Aldric did not express himself differently. Yet there was a change in the atmosphere. The chains went very still.
You see they are spying on us now? Artemis pressed. "The pantheon. Most likely to bet that you will even come to the temple.
Aldric: "Let them watch."
Artemis: "That's it? That's your response?"
He stopped. Turned. Artemis sighted his eyes, not in dimness, neither in transit nor in a peep hole, but full arduously.
Dull gray. No anger. No hate. Nothing.
They laughed because my wife was burned. The sound of his voice was dry and hollow, as of stones falling down a deep well. "Let them watch me climb."
Artemis lingered long with his gaze. Then she shook her head once and turned about again to the trail.
Behind her, Aldric followed.
Both remained silent a little.
Towards the end of the afternoon the trees had yielded to bare rock and scrub brush. The atmosphere had become low; breathing was difficult. Mountains, gripping at the sky, unsheathed in permanent cloud, jutted in the distance.
Up there somewhere was the temple. Hidden in the stone, waiting.
Artemis pointed. "The Gates of Elysium. That is what they call the pass between these two mountains. The Titan is the one who guards the entryway to the inner sanctum, the location where the gods keep their most ancient relics, their experiments, which never went anywhere, their... toys.
She uttered the final word as it had a bad taste.
Aldric followed her gaze. The pass was very narrow, a strong position, ambushable. Fifty feet of guardian would keep it off.
"How do we get past?"
"We don't." Artemis drew forth her grimoire. The whispering began at once, and was more intense than ever. "We go through. The Titan is not going to give a chance to those who can pass by. And that is literally all fight things that endeavor to pass.
She flipped pages. The whispers rose to a murmur.
I have researched this animal three years. Reading of all the attacks, all the deaths, all the fragments of knowledge I could steal in Godly books. She whacked a paper that was filled with drawings. "It has patterns. Predictable responses. We can overload it, we can cause it to change more quickly than its stone body can accommodate, in case we can get the correct sequence of attacks.
Aldric: "And then?"
Then you unzip its core when it is glitching. Artemis closed the grimoire. "Easy."
Aldric nearly smiled, the first time he had done so in years. Almost.
"You've done this before?"
"No." She met his eyes. "But I've watched you fight. You don't hesitate. You don't stop. It's what the Titan has never had somebody who comes and comes no matter what.
Aldric said nothing. But he began to walk, at a quicker pace.
Below dusk they took their camp in a rock shelter an hour before dusk.
Artemis was sitting back to the wall, and reading by her grimoire. Aldric was in the doorway, and with his eyes on the path they had climbed. Nothing moved out there. Nothing breathed.
Artemis said abruptly: The Hound of Judgment. "Tell me about that fight."
Aldric didn't turn. "Why?"
Being that I have to know how your relics relate. The Hound possessed adaptive qualities like the Titan, but less great. You killed it anyway. How?"
He considered not answering. Thought of waiting till she should surrender.
But she'd come this far. Escorted him into the mountains. Known things she was not meant to know.
"I let it hit me."
Artemis looked up. "You... let it hit you."
"The first time, I dodged. It got like me acclimatized, foresaw my motions. The second time, I blocked. It developed spikes to go through armor. He looked a little round and enough to look at her. "The third time, I stood still. Straight in the breast, smack me, smack me.
Artemis stared.
"It didn't adapt to that. Did not understand why I should have been letting it strike a blow. Aldric touched his sternum where there would one day be a Titan Core Fragment, but which he did not yet know about. When it was perplexed, I killed it.
Silence stretched.
Insane, insane, that is insane, said Artemis.
"It worked."
She was nearly smiling, but shaking her head. Why, you will do the same to the Titan?
"If I have to."
"You'll die."
"I can't."
Artemis opened her mouth, closed it, opened her mouth. "The curse. Right. Unless the pantheon falls Immortal. She bent backwards on the rock. "Does it hurt? I mean when you ought to have died. Does it "
"Yes."
One word. Flat. Final.
Artemis didn't ask again.
The attack came at twilight.
First it felt with Aldric the air had changed, and there was a load there that was not there before. His chains were roused to action and he rose cobra-like. Within the same moment Artemis was standing, her grimoire flashing violet.
There was a great crash of something huge that had struck the rocks above them.
It fell in the middle of their camp, and broke down the stones. Shoulder eight feet, a wolf that was not too many joints, too many teeth, eyes that the hungry white light had burnt. The energy of the gods was pouring down it in waves so that the air was smelling of ozone and roast meat.
Hound of Judgment. Another one.
Artemis moved first. Her wall raised but as the Hound sprang and violet fire streamed between them and the creature. Teeth were brushed on it and left footprints of snapping light.
"Go!" she shouted. "I can hold it for "
Aldric was already moving.
The chaining of his arms broke out, and clothed the hind legs of the Hound, lifting it off its footing. Sideways it crashed, rolled, round, snarled up. The wall of Artemis melted away, as the goddess threw the force back in a burst that seized the monster in the bosom singed hair, scalded body, made it scream.
But it adapted. They always adapted.
The Hound's eyes flickered. The muscles became thicker, denser, and moved below the skin. The next blast would do less. The following chain blow would strike a fatter hide.
Aldric didn't give it time.
Chains first he closed the distance in two steps. they bound the throat of the Hound, its body, and its snapping jaws. It tossed, and made efforts to rise, but he held muscles straining, chains pawing, feet sliding backwards over rock, broken.
"Now!" he shouted.
Artemis didn't hesitate. Her grimoire broke, the light violet as it is painted on the rocks. One of the rays of condensed power struck the bare chest of the Hound the part of his anatomy he had not so far modified.
Something cracked.
The Hound went limp.
Aldric lingered with the chains a long time, tugging them hard, hoping to get the twitch, in order to tell that it was a fake one. Nothing. He let go. The body crashed down on the ground and made a wet thud.
Artemis was already tying up her arm. He had not seen her cut a stab wound in the elbow to the wrist, and bleeding. She has bound it up, with a strip cut out of her robe, and has gone away face pale and still.
"You're bleeding," he said.
"I noticed."
"Does it hurt?"
She gave him a very sharp glance, and then laughed a short exclamation of surprisedness. "Nice. Real nice."
Aldric was kneeling over the corpse of the Hound. Her chest was still smouldering after being blasted by Artemis. And he grabbed hold of in and got what he sought a fist-sized kernel, yet throbbing with the last of the light and pulled it.
The core crumbled. The scraps got into his palm, clawing, merging. New agony ran along his arm, over his shoulder, down his spine.
He didn't scream. But his jaws set so tighter That teeth were set.
Artemis stood looking on mutely as the radiance faded and Aldric stood. New cracks now ascribed his forearm now, and joined the others. More power. More pain.
One more to add to the collection, she murred.
Aldric looked at her. Her light face, her set stare, her immobile hand.
"You didn't run."
"Wasn't going to."
"Why?"
She took the question as though it were worth being thought. Then: Since being on the run never helped.
They were in the desolated camp, where broken stone and slain divine beast were. The first stars were rising above them and Aldric knew that they were not stars. They were eyes. Watching. Waiting.
Artemis followed his gaze. "They saw that. The fight. The way you took the core."
Aldric: "Good."
"Good?"
"They wanted entertainment." He looked back into the mountain. "Let's give them a show."
It was at nightfall that they arrived at the temple.
It was not really a building. Even the mountain itself had been cut, moulded, nurtured into a resemblance of a cathedral of stone and light. Large pillars were flanking an opening that was large enough to pass armies through. There were runes upon all the surfaces, and they were soft white, and shook as though heartbeats.
And in the door the still and spylike figure: the Grave Titan.
Fifty feet of cut divine rage. Ancient marble with veins of obsidian, wholly broken, bearing innumerable runes upon its surface, that crawled and moved as living creatures. As they came its head a mere approximation of a human face, but a false one, too many angles turned. Whitish eyes flashed out, and filled the valley with light.
The ground shook.
Aldric kept walking.
Artemis was as near him as step to step, grimoire in her hand, violet light streaming over the rocks. The voice was low, nearly monotonous.
"Barrier goes up in three... two..."
The Titan moved.
Instead of walking, it rose, arms barely moving, and turned itself into a living weapon in one movement. One hand was terminated by a hammer-fist as big as a cart. The other tore off, and writhing, reaching.
The ground shook harder. Stones dropped down off the precipices.
The barrier walled about them violet globe, glittering, clinging, Artemis. For now.
Aldric's chains rose.
The Titan roared.
The mountain roared with it.
Rocks fell.