Fire Heart (The Titans: Book One) (63 page)

Serah stepped forward then, her eyes locked on some point out amid the carnage, and said softly, “There is no need, Sister.” She pointed at one of the burning ships. “He is here.”

Will followed her finger—and his heart skipped a beat. Pestilence had been unsettling; Despair was frightening in his own devious way; but this Fallen, the one called Strife, was utterly terrifying.

His form was an inky blot against the background of blood-red flames, but what Will could make out was enough. The traitor was massive—larger, perhaps, than even Leyra. His raven-black body bulged with muscle that could not possibly have belonged to a normal human, and his thick shoulders gave him a constantly hunched, bestial appearance.

The fearful visage remained for only a moment longer, and then the Fallen One simply disappeared in a cloud of thick, greasy smoke.

“Where did he go?” Clare asked, and the slightest shake in her voice betrayed her fear. Her gaze darted from side to side, and Will heard the leather on her sword handle creak as she tightened her grip.

“I—I didn't see,” Will answered, and his voice held no more courage than Clare's.

“Move!” Serah screamed, and she threw her hands out at Will as though to catch him. There was a deafening gust of wind, and he felt a sensation roughly akin to being hit by a charging bear before he was flung bodily to the side, where he hit the deck and half-slid, half-rolled until he crashed into the railing. What would have been painful was lessened substantially by his armor, but an instant later Clare slammed into him, and one of her bracers hit him squarely in the jaw. He felt his cheek split against his teeth, and stars danced before his eyes as he scrambled to right himself and help Clare do the same. Then
his eyes found Serah, and his heart skipped another beat.

Strife was like nothing Will had ever seen. Indeed, he had never even had nightmares so frightening. The traitor's immense size had been evident before, but now, standing a mere dozen paces from him, Will could see that his earlier estimate was grossly inaccurate. Strife was not only larger than Leyra—he
dwarfed
her, standing half again as high as her and twice as wide. His body was monstrously thick, but now only the vaguest impressions of musculature were visible; what before Will had taken to be obscuring shadows from the dim light overhead were, in fact, shadows that Strife seemed to wear as armor. They danced and writhed like black fire, distorting the air around him, and they covered every last bit of his body; Will wondered if perhaps he was not simply
made
of the shadow-stuff.

“I have come.”

The thundering statement was so simple, so uncharacteristically short for one of the Fallen, that Will was left wondering for an instant if Strife would say more. But he did not, and in the next moment the monster turned to face Will.

His head was set low atop gargantuan shoulders, with thick, spiraling ram's horns that sprouted from his temples and curved back behind him. And set in the middle of his rippling, featureless face were twin pits of burning flame—his eyes, bright and terrible as they flickered and bored deep into Will's soul.

“Dragon King,”
Strife rumbled, and he charged toward Will with unimaginable speed, his footsteps pounding on the deck and splintering wood where they landed.

The next few moments were a jumbled ball of confusion; his last memory was of Strife thundering toward him, and then he was staring at the red-tinged clouds overhead. He felt weightless, and the wind whistled quietly in his ears; the sounds of battle had faded away, and an odd sense of peace descended over him. It would have persisted, too, had he not become suddenly aware of an immense pain in his torso, and he looked down in mild shock to see that his chest armor had been crushed inward, the delicate scrollwork marred and the plate rendered useless.

Then his flight came to a sudden and jarring halt as he collided with the ship's helm, shattering the wood as he flew through it completely. He felt his shoulder dislocate with a loud, wet pop, and pain prickled in a dozen places across his body as jagged wooden splinters found their way through the chinks in his armor. He came to a halt against the back railing—his face found it first, and he felt one of his cheekbones shatter and cave as it made contact with the unforgiving wood. The rest of his body followed suit soon after, coming to a halt with a crunch of wood. He lay where he had fallen for a moment, dazed and confused, the breath driven from his lungs. He became suddenly aware of distant noises as well—the clash of metal, tinny screams, and what sounded like several people repeatedly crying out his name.

And then strong, thin hands lifted him up from under his arms, and he felt himself being dragged bodily across the deck. His progress halted a moment later, and he found himself staring up into a woman's face. She was screaming something at him, but her words sounded tiny and garbled, muffled as though heard through water-clogged ears. His vision began to fade, and blackness began to engulf him like an ever-shrinking tunnel.

“Will!” The cry jolted him awake, and he felt the hands shake his body roughly. He wished the woman would leave him alone; he was very tired, and rather sore. It felt like his limbs were broken—all of them.

Oh, wait. Stupid. That's Clare.
His head was swimming with pain—it was difficult to concentrate on anything for too long, and his thoughts were a jumbled mess of strange images and broken memories that flitted back and forth across his mind's eye. The effect was rather disorienting.

“Will!” she cried again, this time with an even greater sense of urgency. “Will, look at me—look at me! Don't go to sleep!”

“Tired,” he mumbled, and winced as the shattered bones in his cheek ground painfully together. He coughed; thin flecks of blood misted from his lips and hovered briefly in the air before falling back down to speckle his face. His chest hurt, undoubtedly from the ruined armor. Had he shattered his ribs as
well?

“Stay awake!” Clare screamed, and Will realized his eyes had fallen closed once more. He thought perhaps he should open them, but the effort was too great and after only a brief and weak attempt he gave up and let himself drift off. He distantly heard Clare yell something else, but once again he was unable to make it out.

Just need to sleep for awhile,
Will thought.
Just...need to sleep.

~

Borbos stayed his hand at the final instant, his strangely solid fist halting a mere finger's breadth from Despair's dented faceplate. The Fallen One looked around in confusion, and then resumed his futile struggle. Borbos barely noticed him—something had happened up on the surface.

He directed his consciousness up above the waves, manifesting himself as a thin stream of water that rose high into the air. He saw what he was looking for almost immediately, and even in his current form, under the sway of the fearless Titan Beros, he felt what passed for his heart skip a beat. The one that called himself Strife had always been fearsome in battle—Davin had even appointed the one-time
C
ouncilor as the head of the Titans' armies—so Borbos had been expecting a monstrous presence all along. The form the Fallen One had developed over the centuries, however, was...troubling.

He knew he should help his brothers and sisters, but he was captivated by the scene before him—so engrossed was he that he barely felt Despair struggle free of his grip and vanish into the safety of the ether.

Borbos' attention centered first on Clare, who knelt close to the
Fury's
ruined helm clutching the broken, bleeding form of one of the sailors. Borbos wondered for only an instant why she would abandon the battle before her for a nameless soldier when something clicked in his mind; had he eyes, they would have widened in shock at the sight of the nearly unrecognizable Will. The Dragon King's limbs lay sprawled at impossible angles, clearly dislocated or broken—or both. His chest armor seemed to have been hit by a boulder—undoubtedly Strife's doing—and he bled from a dozen wounds all along his body. His face seemed to have taken the brunt of the punishment, though, for his left cheek had been crushed brutally inward, the skin around it already turning dark. He looked dead.

Borbos felt pure, white-hot rage surge through his body, and he whipped his gaze over to the embattled deities. Three Titans should have been enough to slay one of the Fallen, but Strife seemed to be holding his own against all odds. Feothon was dueling the monstrous shadow-man, his sword flashing through the air with impossible speed, but Strife easily kept pace with nothing but his massive fists. Leyra, now a towering, unrecognizable creature made entirely of granite and sparkling quartz, pounded against the traitor with near identical success. She roared and swung her arms, now weaponless save for her own body, and slammed her rock-flesh again and again into Strife's form. He stumbled occasionally, and one blow connected solidly with what would have been his jaw, sending him to his knees, but overall he seemed able to shrug off the majority of her attacks.

But where was Serah? And then Borbos saw her high overhead, her body a flickering, shifting form in the rough shape of a human. Lightning crackled across her and lashed out into the stormy sky, seeking to rend and tear and burn anything it touched. Borbos realized then that Feothon and Leyra were simply the distraction for a much greater blow.
But it will not work,
he realized, his gaze centering once more on Strife.
He be more powerful than any of us could have imagined. We underestimated them.

And with that thought ringing in his head, he made up his mind.

~

Fury was all that Serah felt. It enveloped her, consumed her, gave her the strength she needed, but she knew she had gone too far—she had passed her limits, something that should never have happened,
and there was a good chance that she would be unable to turn back. But she had already resigned herself to that fact; the Void could take her for all she cared, if only Sorr would give her one last chance to kill the monster that had slain Will. She remembered Leyra's deathly premonition from before, and had she a mouth it would have twisted into a humorless smile.

Leyra was wrong,
she thought.
It will be two of us.

This is unwise,
said a soft voice in her head, and she knew Sorr was speaking to her. The spirit had done so only twice before in her long life, and Serah had always heeded her counsel—except for now.

I do not care,
she thought back, and grief and guilt seized her in an iron grip as she looked down at Will's ruined form.
I have failed yet again.

No.

You lie.

I have never lied.

Serah blocked the spirit's voice from her mind, not caring to listen anymore. She could feel the power flowing through her, and she knew that it had reached its peak and beyond. Her body burned with Void energy, and she reveled in the pain.
Die,
she thought, and then, as she plummeted toward the flickering shadow-man below, screamed,
“DIE!”

She hit Strife in an explosion of light and heat, unleashing pure power that burned away his shadow armor and drove through to the core beneath. Thick ropes of lightning coiled around his body, searing his shadow-flesh and tearing a deafening scream of pain from his lungs. His form flickered as she pressed the attack, and she could feel the energy pouring out of her body annihilating both the traitor and herself. Her scream joined his, but where his was one of pain, hers was one of rage. From the depths of her soul it tore into the bloody air, fusing with the crackling squeal of lightning to form a haunting cry that shook the very air for leagues in every direction.

Her body was no longer there; it had disappeared, engulfed in a burning sphere of blue-white light that scorched the
Fury's
wood and melted through Strife's shadow-flesh as easily as a hot knife through butter.

He is dying,
she thought, and the realization filled her with joy. She pressed the attack, willing her power to consume her victim completely—and then, against all reason, she was batted aside as easily as if she were little more than an annoying insect. She felt her power flicker and wane as confusion and despair washed over her, and when she crashed into the deck a moment later it extinguished itself completely, leaving behind a thin, charred woman. Serah's skin and what remained of her clothing smoked and steamed in the flickering crimson light, and though she could barely move to look, she knew that much of her flesh had been reduced to a blackened ruin. With an extreme effort of will she raised one hand before her face; it was a patchwork of deep brown skin and charred carbon. She flexed one finger, and though the motion sent white-hot lances of pain up her arm she had not even the strength to cry out.

She fell back to the deck, her head landing on the hard wood with a dull thump, and stared into the flashing sky.
I
failed,
she thought, and it was her last before she passed completely into blackness.

~

Borbos swatted Serah aside, wincing as the crackling ropes of lightning seared his godly form, but he put the pain out of his mind. Serah would not die today; he would not let her.