“And who,” he replied in a low voice, barely audible over the roaring conflagration and falling detritus, “maintains his honor? Who is left standing?”
The estate shook, sending sparks spiraling in crazy insectoid patterns, like orange fireflies. A piece of the crown molding snapped with the sickening sound of breaking bone and fell beside them, blackened and still burning at one end. The sounds of an entire ceiling collapsing in some nearby room assaulted them. Bits of the ceiling out here in the hallway began to follow suit. It wouldn’t be long now until the entire building fell apart and burned to ash. It occurred to him as odd that he hadn’t heard any fire engines arrive on the scene yet.
Apollo registered no surprise when the hand clasped his ankle. In a sort of meditative fashion, he almost expected to feel it there, to feel Doom’s yet indomitable will. He turned, finally, to look down at Moros, as the chunk of ceiling plaster broke upon the massive back like waves upon the shore, and for the first time since he’d entered this house, his heart was moved not by vengeance. It did surprise him, a little, to find pity there. Pity for what this god at his feet might have accomplished, for his family, for the world at large, had he found some more positive channel in which to focus his energies.
Ultimately, though, that pity faded to irrelevance, in light of both the house falling apart around them, and the just vengeance he intended to extract before delivering him to justice. Gluttonous fire had consumed Moros’s makeshift wings by now, and was losing no time in devouring his hair.
It was time to make an end, and abandon this abyss.
He reached down, almost lovingly, not with warrior’s hands, but with surgeon’s, grasped the xiphos that had missed its target. Next to Moros’s lifeless arm he found a relatively small spike of wood, a piece of the crown molding that had fallen. The fall had broken it into several pieces, and this one held a decent enough point at one end. It would serve. He hefted it in one hand, the xiphos in the other. And entire section of the ceiling and wall behind them collapsed in a blistering roar and a whoosh of air as the air pressure equalized, carrying more of the endless yellow monster with it.
“ARE YOU AFRAID?”
He knelt, leaving stationary the ankle where Moros had grabbed him. Baleful eyes glared at him from a dwindling halo of flame, his hair now almost all consumed; the reflections in those eyes of the fire behind him told Apollo everything he needed. Without breaking the gaze, his hand fell, the xiphos driving home between the bones of Doom’s wrist. Expending the last of his pity, the Shining Son replied, “Yes, Moros. I am afraid.” The crisped spike found the space between vertebrae just above the base of the hulking god’s neck. It had been a relatively light blow, only enough to sever the somatic nerves; he might have cut a few of the autonomic ones, but the fact that Moros was still breathing served as testimony enough that he’d missed the most important ones.
He waited, as more and more of the building fell in burning rubble and gouts of flame and smoke, waited agonizing eternities of moments, until finally the now-bald and blistering head slumped forward, unaware, unconscious. A six foot long section of ceiling cracked and fell on the opposite end of nerveless body, covering his legs to the knee in flaming offal.