[necessitas etiam timidos fortes facit]

Mount St. Helens was a sleeping giant, and one that Eli wanted to ensure stayed asleep. He knew the sorts of devastation that the volcano had wreaked in the past, and he could only imagine how that devastation would double, triple if the mountain was under the control of Typhon. Forget the surrounding area, the entire Pacific Northwest would smolder in seconds.

The thought sent a shiver down the son of Ahklys' spine, but it might as well have been the breeze of the cavern he and his companions were picking their way through. Ariel had been the one to scope out the entrance, but part of Eli wished that she hadn't. The cavern was something out of a horror movie, and the slightest sound filled Eli with unnerve.

"Would you relax?" Kiara grumbled at Eli's side, flicking the beam of her flashlight at him.

The sound of Kiara's voice made Eli focus, but he couldn't help but frown at seeing her thunderous expression. She held his gaze with those starry eyes of hers for a moment, before huffing a breath and peering down the hall.

"I'll relax when you tell me what happened," Eli said carefully, his words clipped.

Kiara visibly tensed. "You'll have to be more specific, Eli."

"You know exactly what I'm talking about, Fairwolf. Don't even try to worm your way out of this one," Eli rebuffed, partially surprised at the assertion in his own voice.

Apparently, so was Kiara. The daughter of Asteria whipped her head around to look up at Eli, surprise etched onto her porcelain features. But Kiara mustered up her familiar emotional shields and the shock faded from her face.

"Mission gone wrong," Kiara muttered airily, casting a quick glance over her shoulder to where Liam and Kiara were trailing about ten feet behind them.

"What kind of mission?" Eli asked, resisting a flinch as the cavern they were in narrowed into a meandering tunnel.

"Why are you asking so many questions?" Kiara huffed a strand of dark hair out of her face.

"Why do you keep avoiding them?" Eli retorted.

Kiara stopped in her tracks, took a moment, then spun around to face Eli. Her face was cut from stone, and her starry eyes looked stormy. "Because the answers are none of your business, Allistairs. Now would you stop worrying about my life and focus on your own?"

Eli felt something twist inside of him, and he pressed his lips together to keep from screaming in frustration. Kiara was stubborn, he knew that, but this was something else. Whatever she had done to invoke the Mania, it was something that she did not want to dwell on for any longer than she had to. He could see the fear behind her façade, but without knowing what caused it, how was he supposed to help her?

"Fine," Eli put his hands up in mock surrender, forcing a sickeningly sweet smile. "I'll stop."

"Thank you," Kiara fired back.

"Hey," Liam's English voice called down the cavern. "Are we at the end of this thing yet?"

"Does it look like it?" Eli shot the son of Despoina a look.

Liam's eyebrows shot up in shock. "Ooh, feisty." His electric gaze averted to Kiara. "What'd you do to our Eli, love?"

Eli cleared his throat, glancing at Ariel who was watching the situation play out like a tennis match. "So, how do you know about this tunnel?"

Ariel watched Eli for a moment, as if gauging his temperament, but shrugged slightly. "It used to be my father's prison, in this universe."

Eli racked his brain and remembered that Ariel had been from the alternate universe, in which the General ruled over the Regiment. Over there, the Titans had been freed and served as the General's officers and commanders, whereas on this universe, they were still imprisoned.

"After I fled the Regiment, I came here and tried to seek out my father. I found him, and seeing as I had no one else to go to, I'd visit every once in a while. He eventually guided me to Camp Jupiter and the rest is history," Ariel shrugged, fiddling with the twisting ring around her finger—the symbol of Hyperion.

"Huh," Eli managed. "That's...neat."

"Tell me about it," Ariel rolled her eyes. "But Hyperion's prison was moved a while ago. He's somewhere in the Ring of Fire now."

Eli nodded along to the cadences of Ariel's voice, half-listening. Sometimes, he forgot that Ariel, Liam, and even Kiara belonged to another universe. They'd witnessed countless moments of peril, torture, and chaos, and yet still managed to fight for the resistance against the Regiment, Valiance, without losing hope. Or maybe they had lost hope, and what kept them fighting was their parentage. If you were born a half-blood, you were born a soldier, and soldiers couldn't exist without war after all.

In his melancholy, Eli didn't notice that the tunnel had come to an end, leveling off into a circular chamber with two connecting halls on either side. Astonished, he swung his flashlight around and the beam of light met the only fixture in the room—a pedestal of Imperial gold. Atop the pedestal sat something that looked like one of those deposit tubes you'd see at a bank—a clear cylinder capped on both ends—but filled with a smoky substance that flickered like lightning. Arcs of energy surrounded the cylinder in a sort of semispherical cage, and the light bounced off the chamber walls.

"Well, that was easy," Liam chimed. "Let's disable the bloody thing and go home, shall we?"

"Liam, wait--!" Kiara exclaimed, but Liam was too far gone. He sauntered towards the pedestal, only to hit what looked like an invisible wall. As he barked out a curse, symbols that hadn't been there before materialized around the pedestal on the floor, shimmering in some language that Eli couldn't decipher.

"That's a safety hazard," Liam huffed, retreating back to the group. "Someone should file a complaint."

Eli stared at the circle of glowing symbols. "Is that Greek?"

Kiara furrowed her brow, taking a step closer. "No." She said flatly. "It's some demon language."

Eli looked at Kiara, bewilderment in his eyes. "How do you know demon languages?"

Kiara merely waved a lazy hand, as if it was a matter for another day. She stared intently at the symbols, and Eli could almost imagine the gears twisting in her head. "I can try to break the spell."

"What, can your little fairy dust necklace crack ancient codes too?" Liam folded his arms across his chest.

Without looking up at Liam, Kiara retorted, "Is your input actually good for anything aside for making noise?"

Ariel and Eli's eyes widened in shock, and both tried to fight smiles. Liam merely blinked, unfazed. "Proceed."

Kiara unsheathed a knife and slowly started walking the circumference of the circle. "If I can just find the right symbol, the spell will be broken."

"But what happens then?" Ariel asked. "We still need to disable the actual power source."

"We'll cross that bridge when we get there," Kiara called.

Eli would have laughed at the exasperated expression on Ariel's face but his gaze caught on movement out of the corner of his eye, and he spun around just in time to face a vanguard of storm spirits spiraling towards him and his friends.

~~

Thankfully, Eli wasn't entirely helpless. He had just enough time to draw Azrael from its sheath, swinging the blade just as the first storm spirit barreled into him. The spirit dissolved into dust with a hiss, but more kept coming. Spirits as dark as night and misty as smoke continued to whirled towards Eli and his friends, and if they overwhelmed them...

Eli cursed under his breath before launching himself into the fight, Azrael's blade glinting in the glow of the lightning. He shut down every part of him that tried to stray from fighting until all he knew was staying alive. He slashed and ducked and lunged and blocked until another five storm spirits had disintegrated into golden dust on the cavern floor.

Eli huffed a breath, brushing fallen strands of his platinum hair out of his face. He surveyed the cavern floor—Ariel was firing arrow after arrow at the storm spirits, Liam was vaulting his way through the spirits like they were toys to be knocked aside, and Kiara was doing her best to fight a spirit as she sprinted around in search for the right symbol. But their efforts wouldn't be enough.

"Foolish half-bloods," A voice hissed, and Eli whirled around to face the stormy visage of a storm spirit. It materialized enough to take the form of a man, with an electric grin. "You have no idea the destruction your meddling will cause."

"Shut up," Eli told it, and stabbed Azrael through the storm spirit's smoky figure. It dissolved with a screech, and while it was gone, Eli couldn't help but be shaken by the spirit's words. Were they really about to unleash something terrible by trying to prevent something even worse?

A flash of light filled the cavern and a hum resonated through the air, sending a flare of panic into the pit of Eli's stomach. He turned towards the pedestal to find the symbols disappearing from their circle, save one that Kiara had stabbed her knife through.

"Got it!" Kiara exclaimed triumphantly, an almost maniacal grin on her face. "Let's move!"

"A little busy here!" Liam grunted as he spun his sword around, slashing a storm spirit in half.

Eli raced towards Kiara and the pedestal, his heart pounding. They needed to act quickly before more storm spirits and more monsters in general overwhelmed then, or else this whole mission would all be for naught.

"How do we disable it?" Eli marveled at the lightning arcing over the pedestal, resisting the urge to just test his luck and reach through it.

"How this controls Typhon is beyond me," Kiara said under her breath, crouching down to examine the shaft of the pedestal. She pushed herself back to her feet, shaking her head. "There's no button or anything to stop it. Just solid gold."

"Of course, they can't just throw us a bone," Eli sheathed Azrael, feeling like he was back in the Principia, typing in command after command to be met with errors. Then he stopped, looking up at Kiara as he fully registered what she said. "Solid gold?"

"Yeah," Kiara blinked. Realization filled her arctic blue eyes. "Eli, don't."

"It's worth a shot," Eli countered fiercely. "Step back."

"You're going to hurt yourself, or worse!" Kiara protested.

Eli held her gaze. "If I don't try this," He said. "I won't be the only one getting hurt."

Kiara pressed her lips together in frustration, but obeyed. She stepped away, giving Eli the parameters he needed to carry out his next move.

Eli took a deep breath, shaking out his hands and cracking his knuckles. He'd only ever used his powers a handful of times, and those times had been few and far between, in moments of absolute desperation. His powers were manifestations of misery and torture and pain, and inflicting it on his enemies took a toll on Eli as well. But what he was about to do, he'd only done once before, and it had nearly taken his life.

Just shut up and do it, Eli, Eli thought to himself fiercely. So he did.

Eli held out his arms, raising the backs of his hands as if he were to begin conducting an orchestra. Like mountains erupting from the sea, liquids and moss-like forms began to materialize on the cavern floor—bright blues, neon greens, fluorescent yellows and reds and purples. Plants began to bloom around his feet, from enchanting blossoms to speckled funguses. Soon enough, Eli stood in a swamp of poison and acid, and only he was immune to it.

For now.

It had been a very long time since Eli had taken a chemistry class, so his science could be completely wrong. But as the battle intensified behind him, he felt as if he had no other choice. With a tug in the pit of his gut, he manipulated the most acidic poisons in his arsenal and willed them towards the pedestal.

Like streams of quicksilver, the poisons responded, shooting towards the pedestal and up its golden stand in arcs and ribbons of color. Steam and smoke began to rise from the gold, and Eli intensified his command, willing more and more poison to the pedestal.

"Eli, stop," Kiara's voice was distant in Eli's ears compared to the sound of his heartbeat racing.

The pedestal slowly began to disintegrate, chunks of gold falling to the pools of poison beneath it.

"—Eli—"

The lightning began to falter as the poison reached the platform, corroding it away.

"Eli!"

The cylinder of Typhon's power met the poison and a feeling like a shockwave sent Eli and Kiara and everyone else in the chamber flying. Eli felt like a rag doll, and he hit the jagged cavern wall like he weighed nothing at all. He slumped to the ground, taking a breath from what felt like paper lungs.

The world was spinning, his body was burning, and something took hold of his mind. Suddenly, Eli wasn't inside Mount St. Helens anymore, but instead, standing on a city street hewn in chaos. Bodies of civilians and soldiers alike rested on the pavements, blood like some of the soldiers' cloaks spilling onto the blacktop. People were getting out of cars, racing down the street in absolute panic as in the distance, a massive tidal wave rose over the city skyline. A girl was at the center of it, her dark hair flying around her, her green eyes glowing venomously. Tessa?

"The sun erupts, in pillars of fire. The earth destroyed, in moments dire.

The seas claim the innocent, dragged to the deep. With love left behind, hell to reap.

Bust as heroes divided, no peace shall remain. Accept thy darkness, accept thy name."

Eli, baffled, looked up at the smoky sky to see a boy falling to the ground, burning up as he did. Screams pierced his ears, blood stained his hands, and absolute power ran through his veins. But before Eli could do anything—save the boy, defend the civilians, run for his life—the world slipped out from under him and everything faded to black.