Rise of The Guardians 2: Just Like Fire

Chapter 26.2: Aria

My hair was coming loose of its ponytail and was mingling with the sweat on my face, but I didn't have a chance to push it out of my eyes as Kronos sent another ghostly grey blade of smoke at me, and I had to roll out of its path.

As the physical exertion bore down on me, my world seemed to narrow to just this. The empty circle of silence, the two of us, my laboured breathing. Kronos's blades and my increasingly delayed evasions.

We both realised that despite the occasional fireball I sent in his general direction, I was defenceless, living on borrowed time.

Kronos laughed.

There was something inside my chest that woke up at the sound of that evil enjoyment, the triumphant laugh of an enemy who knows they've won. The pressure was intense, as though something was actually trying to claw its way out of my ribcage. A monster, and I didn't know if I could stop it, or control it, or even what it would do to me. My fear of it fed it, my hatred of the man who was once my father watered it.

As I glared into the blackness surrounding me, I realised with a shock that I had closed my eyes, as if that simple action could stop the pressure forcing its way out. Opening my eyes again was like tuning a radio to the correct frequency, the world going from faint static to blaring in my ear.

Kronos, standing dead centre in a circle of stillness, was still laughing. At me, the little girl on her hands and knees before his might, the girl who can't seem to control her power any more. The girl who seemed so confident, but couldn't even muster the courage to kill a monster.

The pressure exploded.

Sparks hotter than anything I had ever felt flooded into my nerves, rushing around my body before I could even gasp. My eyes slid closed again as I was overwhelmed by the piercing heat exploding in my veins.

I was only very slightly aware of what was going on around me, of my limp body rising off the ground to hover in the air. My head fell backwards as my arms were lifted out to my sides, a nightmarish copy of a crucifixion.

"Aria!" Jack yelled, his voice piercing the fog surrounding my mind.

And I lost control.

Bringing my hands together to concentrate the flames, they spilled out of me – towards Kronos.

In that same instant, thick, cloying grey smoke surrounded me. It was suffocating, entering my airways and heading straight for my core, my power. It wrenched at some invisible heat source inside me.

Even as my eyes slid closed, I smiled, breathing out a single word. "Checkmate."

I fell out of the sky.