The total quiet that blanketed the Grand Colosseum in the wake of the 60-Second Overdrive Clock was so heavy that the gentle crackle of cooling sand sounded like snapping twigs. One hundred and twenty thousand spectators sat frozen in their stone tiers. Their hands gripped the iron armrests, their eyes fixed in collective, stunned awe upon the center of Ring 1. The world-ending sphere of golden fire that had threatened to burn up the tiered arena had vanished fully. That left behind only the warm, dry scent of spark-charged ozone, drifting gray smoke from the griffin’s cut drug dispenser. The pale autumn sunlight filtering down through the shattered quartz dome.
In the center of the ring, resting securely across the wide, fiery dark rock armor scales of Titus’s back, lay Sol-Invictus.
The huge one-ton griffin was fully motionless. But its massive ribs rose and fell in deep, natural, rhythmic respirations. The terrifying crimson glare had faded entirely from its eyes. Beneath its feathered lids, its pupils were tightened to their normal resting width. The man-made light-glands grafted behind its collar bones were no longer glowing white-hot. The jagged Teflon delivery lines hung cut and inert, dripping tiny, thick, sticky beads of purple Prometheus-9 into the sand below.
