The Titan moved.
It was first the thing Aldric heard not the roar, not the falling rocks, not Artemis yelling in his ear. Simply as fifty feet of animate rock had burst out of stillness to motion in a heartbeat.
One time it was on duty, old and wise.
The next, its hammer-fist flew at them as collapsing mountain.
The blow fell on the barrier of Artemis. You felt the violet light screaming and cracking and clinging. The earth upon which they stood broke. Aldric experienced the blow in his teeth, his bones, the chain hewn together under his skin.
"Barrier won't hold another!" The voice of Artemis was strict, repressed. "Go now or we're paste!"
He went.
Chains burst out as he ran not this time, at the legs of the Titan, but up. The pillars were of black steel, wrapped around the stone, and pulled him to the air, and swung him in a sweeping motion in the direction of the head of the Titan. Wind screamed past. The runes in the surface of the creature glowed white, with the direction he was going.
It saw him coming.
Didn't matter.
He dropped on its shoulder with chains in the offing. They made its neck round as old oaks, covered with changing runes, and pulled. Stone groaned. Splits spiderwebbed over the face.
The reaction of the Titan was careless. A backhand, nearly as peeved as he could be, which struck Aldric full in the breast and hurled him off.
He struck a pillar fifty feet off. Went through it. Hit another. Halted when the barrier of Artemis reclaimed him, the light violet, being bent in upon itself by the power.
"Adaptation!" she screamed. "It's already adapting! You need to--"
The tendril arm of the Titan struck, caught round her barrier, and gripped. The violet flicked and dimmed and broke.
Aldric was already moving. Chains were spread forth, took hold of the tendril and drew him back towards the Titan as a thong. He struck its feet first in stone, chains in its chest, and anchoring.
Titan made an attempt to shake him off. He held.
Artemis's barrier collapsed. She rolled away, and the tendril broke the space she had been in and stone flew.
Aldric forced his chains in. The Titan flickered like his runes, making an attempt to interpret him, get to know him. He was aware of it a chilly intelligence that touched his mind, and enumerated his movements, his arms, and his person.
Let it look.
He took one of the chains and thrust it into the eye of the Titan.
White light exploded. The animal screamed as mountains rubbing each other together. Its head turned back, and threw him down. He dropped, turned, grabbed a pillar with his chains, hung himself up.
Artemis was already beside him, with grimoire flashing. "Stage one worked. It reads you now as a cutting menace. Next assault, it will put on a breast.
"I noticed."
"Then you know what comes next. You have to vary "
Like a chest, the drones burst forth out of the Titan.
Stone animals, like horses in length, drizzling out of chasms in its body like insects through the holes of a broken nest. Wings of jagged rock. Eyes of white fire. Fifty at least, perhaps more, swarmed at them.
Artemis stepped forward. Grimoir pages were torn off, dancing round her like a cyclone of violet light. "I've got the babies. You get the mama."
Aldric looked at her.
She was very pale, and bled with a dozen little cuts, one arm hanging lifeless at her side. And her eyes were fixed, violet burning, so perfectly composed.
"Go," she said.
He went.
The Titan had adapted.
Its chest round which Aldric had thrust his chainlets was now encircled with plates one over another, like castle walls. Its eye, which he blinded, had already hardened and a translucent membrane was growing over it.
Instead, he struck it with dead blows. The hammer-fist was wound round chains, and swung him round, and hurled him in its head. Stone cracked. The Titan staggered.
It adapted. The head grew thicker.
He would attempt to strangle chains around its neck, and pulling it by all his strength. The runes flared. The neck swelled, with its bulging muscles, and it is impossible to choke.
It adapted. Always adapted.
Artemis was struggling with the swarm behind him. The darkness was flashed with violet. Stone drones broke, reappeared, broke. She was holding, barely.
Aldric stumbled on the ground and panted. Fifty feet of divine indifference was the Titan hovering over him. Its runes pulsed. Its healed eyes looked on him as though they were nearly curious.
What now wilt thou attempt, little mortal?
He'd tried speed. Power. Variety. It could adjust itself more quickly than anything.
Which left only one option.
He stopped moving.
The Titan tilted its head. The drones stood still in their assault. Even Artemis appeared to stare at it, with sweat and blood streaming down her cheeks and puzzlement flickering over her features.
"Aldric...?"
He spread his arms. Released his shackles to the floor.
The tendrils of the Titan flashed out not to strike, but to see. They covered his arms and his chest, and his throat. Lifted him off the ground. Brought him close to its huge visage, wherein the runes were fiercest.
Examine, they whispered. Absorb. Learn.
The tendrils penetrated into his flesh.
It felt like being unmade.
Godlike force filled him not aggressively, but as a reader. Listing all the artifacts, all the cracks, all the marks. The consciousness of the Titan touched his, with its primitiveness and immense age and complete alienness. It observed the Blessed Eye of Thorne, yet waving in its socket. Saw through the core of the Hound, which is his arm. Saw the fading light in the Fingerbone, imbedded in his wrist.
It saw the curse.
Aldric's eyes snapped open.
Look deeper, he thought. Look at what I'm made of.
The Titan looked.
And found ash.
Discovered the remnants of the wife, cemented together. Located the remains of the son, pulverized them in his lungs, his blood, his soul. Located the everlasting smoldering memory of that night the screaming, the laughter of heaven, the instant the spell had broken and he was back to reality of what he had done.
The Titan tried to pull back.
The tendrils were wrapped in chains of Aldric.
No. Keep looking.
The ash spread. Godly power opposed human misery, opposed grief, and anger so ancient and profound it had taken a seat in his very bones. The runes of the Titan glowed dusty gray, stable to spasmodic. Its eyes lost focus, glowed and lost it.
It was unable to assimilate what it was taking in.
Too much pain. Too much human.
The tendrils jerked, made attempts to loosen. Aldric held on. Chains dug deeper. Ash poured into the Titan, and blackened its runes, and broke its stone.
It screamed.
It was not a roar this time it was an actual scream, high and dreadful, as of a mountain becoming accustomed to pain. Its body convulsed. Cracks spread over its surface and then broadened, deepened. Whitish light ran through each wound.
Artemis was peeking up, swarm forgotten, with her mouth open.
The Titan's grip loosened. Aldric pitchedched but his chains remained in her, fast rooted behind the breast. As he fell on the ground they drew up.
He stood. Braced his feet. Pulled.
The Titan's core cracked.
The valley was echoing a sound as it broke the world in half. Stone split. Light erupted. And the Titan of the Grave the first watchman of heaven slain no sixteenpenny more in ten thousand years started to sink.
Aldric pulled harder.
The core tore free.
He held it in his hands.
A throbbing heart of hewn stone and divinity ensnared, runes still wickedly crawling on its surface, stolen souls screaming inside, without sound. It was warm. Almost alive.
The Titan fell behind him. The ground shook. The air was full of dust and stone and ash.
Artemis came at a slow pace; she was picking her way through the rubble. She looked at the core. Looked at him. Opened her mouth, closed it, opened it.
"That was..."
Aldric waited.
"I don't have words for that."
He didn't either. So instead he smashed the core.
It crumbled but didn't fall. The pieces floated in the air a moment or two and then flew in, and lodged in his heart. In his sternum. In his heart.
The suffering was such as he had never experienced before.
His back arched. His jaw locked. All the relic he bore flared at the same time eye, arm, wrist, now chest fighting, merging, becoming. The new cracks burst through in his torso, white, and then reddish, and then sank back in deep throbbing gray.
At its termination he was on his knees. Breathing. Alive.
Barely.
Artemis knelt beside him. Her hand moved about his shoulder but not quite touching. "Aldric?"
He looked up.
His mind was full of new knowledge. Grave Smash. Bang the earth with relic charged impact make stone drones of the debris, and dead though only temporary. The Titan's last gift.
He pushed himself up. Stood. Experienced the new knots on his chest tugging on each inhalation.
Artemis followed him, which was something convoluted in her mind. "The gods... they'll know now. That was that was their eldest parent. Their first line of defense. And you " She stopped. Swallowed. "They'll send real hunters. Not beasts. Not guardians. Hunters."
Aldric looked up at the sky. At the non stars that were stars. The eyes which looked on heaven above.
"Good."
He walked away and headed to the inner sanctum of the temple.
Behind him, Artemis followed. The corpse of the Grave Titan, behind them both, was slowly disintegrating into dust, the ten thousand years of its silent watch over them at last over.
On the other side of the water some man watched in a golden hall above the clouds.
Tall. Silver armored. Gold eyes that saw all and condemned most. One of the spears of white light was leaning against his throne, and humming.
Sir Gunnar the Blood-Pious.
He'd watched the entire fight. Beheld the mortal, through the guardian of heaven, with his chains. Watched him absorb its core. Saw him stand subsequently, broken and bleeding and quite unbroken.
The lips of Gunnar tightened.
A lesser angel stood next to him shifting nervously. Your Grace, the King of Heaven is yet to make a decision. Perhaps we should wait for "
"No."
The angel fell silent.
Gunnar rose. His armor moved with him living metal, nurtured, not made. The light was collected at his feet, and was willing to take him whither.
It was a mistake of the King, Gunnar said. He made a gun and did not take aim. And now it will wander killing all it sees.
The angel's eyes widened. "Your Grace "
"I will correct the mistake."
The spear of Gunnar flew into his hand. Light blazed. The surface of the pool was shaking, and displaying the back of Aldric, who walked into the shadows of the temple.
You have to correct a mistake, Gunnar, Gunnar, I said.
He went into the light and disappeared.