"Look at you," Apollo said. His voice was wrong. It sounded like a choir screaming in a burning church, layered and dissonant. "Playing house. Playing smith. Do you really think you can fix what the Maker broke?"
He raised a hand. He didn't hold a bow. He held a lyre made of shadow and bone.
"Incoming!" I roared, my hands still locked toward the Anvil, pouring every ounce of kinetic energy I had into Aria’s failing heart.
Apollo plucked a string.
It wasn't a note. It was a shockwave of silence.
The sound cut through the roar of the bellows and the hiss of the magma. It hit us and I staggered, my boots slipping on the slick floor. The vibration rattled my skull, trying to separate my thoughts from my actions.
On the Anvil, Aria screamed.
I felt it through the bond, a sharp, jagged spike of terror. The silence was attacking her anchor. It was erasing her rhythm.
Thump... thump... silence.
"Don't you stop!" I shouted at her through the connection, practically vibrating with the effort to restart her pulse. "Beat, damn it! I am giving you the rhythm! Take it!"
"He is disrupting the frequency!" Elias yelled from the East, blood streaming from his nose again. "The discord! It’s unravelling the weave!"
"He's trying to stop the music," Kaelen snarled, the white fire around him flaring violently as he fought to keep the heat constant. "Hephaestus! Get him off us!"
The Smith God didn't look up from his work. He was swinging the hammer with a manic, rhythmic desperation,shaping the metal that was Aria’s soul.CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.
"I am busy!" Hephaestus bellowed. "Guard dogs! Wake up! Target the intruder! Authorization pattern: Alpha-Zero-Kill!"
The response was mechanical and immediate.
From the shadows of the forge’s perimeter, the remaining clockwork hounds activated. We had scrapped a few of them on the way in, but this was the Master's workshop. He had spares.
Six massive, bronze automatons surged from the racks along the walls. Their ruby eyes flared to life, burning through the gloom. Gears whirred with the sound of angry hornets, and pistons hissed as they launched themselves at the fallen Sun God.
Apollo didn't even look at them. He plucked another string.
Ping.
The sound wave hit the lead hound in mid-air. The bronze didn't dent; it simply ceased to hold together. The automatons fell apart into a tumble of gears, springs, and oil that rained down onto the floor.
"He's unmaking the binding agents!" Elias analyzed, terror sharpening his voice. "He is resonant-matching the metal and shattering it! He will do the same to her!"
"Not if we're louder!" I growled.
"Wolf!" Kaelen’s voice was tight. "You have the friction! You have the noise! Counter him!"
"I'm a little busy keeping her alive!" I snapped back, sweat stinging my eyes.
Aria was thrashing on the slab. Through the bond, I felt her slipping. It wasn't just physical pain anymore; it was identity death. The Silvering was eating her memories to fuel the transformation.
Who...?The thought floated through the connection, fragile as smoke.
I saw flashes in her mind. A face. My face. But it was blurring, fading like an old painting left in the sun. She was forgetting the garden. She was forgetting the kiss against the crystal tree.
No.The growl started deep in my chest.You don't get to forget that. I won't let you.
"Thane!" I shouted across the circle. "Can you hold the beat for thirty seconds?"
Thane looked at me, his face a mask of stone-like concentration. He was holding the gravity well that kept her soul in the room. "If I shift focus, the pressure drops. She might float."
