The Reaver's shriek was not sound. It was a weaponized spike of dissonance, a psychic icepick driven directly into Kaelan's temples. He cried out, clapping his hands over his ears, but it was useless. The frequency drilled into his mind, scrambling his thoughts, churning his stomach. The world swam, the beautiful harmonic arches of the Chorus blurring into nauseating smears of light.
Through the agony, he saw Morwen move.
She didn't flinch. She absorbed. The threads of indigo light she'd been weaving solidified before her into a shimmering, hexagonal shield. The Reaver's shriek hit it and splintered, the destructive resonance fracturing into a dozen harmless, shrieking fragments that ricocheted off the bone-white arches.
"The blank one!" the lead Reaver buzzed to his companions, pointing his hooked instrument at Kaelan. "Take him! The Weaver is mine!"
The other two Reavers lunged, not at Morwen, but straight for Kaelan. Their movements were jerky, unpredictable, their forms flickering with disruptive energy that made his eyes water to look at.
Panic, cold and sharp, severed the cord of the psychic attack. He was weaponless. Powerless. The only thing in his mind was the recent, searing memory of Valerius's betrayal and the devastating force of the pillar's destruction. Using either would cost him another piece of his soul. A price he couldn't, wouldn't pay for these strangers.
He stumbled backward, his heel catching on a glowing root. He fell hard, the impact driving the air from his lungs. The two Reavers closed in, their distorted laughter grating in his ears.
A flash of dark metal. Morwen's dagger embedded itself in the shoulder of the nearest Reaver. He snarled, more in annoyance than pain, and ripped the blade free, tossing it aside. But the distraction was all she needed.
She didn't go for the kill. She moved between Kaelan and the Reavers, her hands a blur. She wasn't weaving a shield this time. She was weaving a snare. Glimmering silver threads shot from her fingertips, wrapping around the Reavers' legs, tangling their steps, slowing their advance. It was a delaying action. A stalling tactic.
"Get up!" she snarled at Kaelan, her voice strained. She was holding two of them at bay, but the lead Reaver was circling, his instrument charging for another attack. She couldn't fight all three.
Kaelan scrambled to his feet, his heart hammering against his ribs. He had to do something. He had to Record something, anything.
His eyes darted around, landing on the glowing moss. He slapped his hand against it, desperately trying to Record its simple, harmonic pulse.
The sensation was weak, muddied by the Reavers' disruptive field. He got a jumbled impression of soft light and a gentle hum. It was useless.
The lead Reaver fired again. This time, the dissonant spike wasn't aimed at Morwen's shield. It was aimed over it, arcing through the air like lightning, straight for Kaelan.
There was no time to think.
Morwen's head turned. He saw the calculation in her eyes, faster than any thought. Protecting him meant dropping her defense against the two other Reavers. Letting him get hit meant losing her key.
The decision was made in a microsecond.
She didn't move to block it. Instead, her left hand flicked outward. The silver threads binding one of the Reavers yanked him off his feet, pulling him through the air with a surprised grunt and directly into the path of the dissonant spike.
The energy bolt struck the hauled Reaver square in the chest. There was no scream. There was a sound like shattering crystal, and the man simply… unraveled. His form dissolved into a cloud of chaotic, grey static that hung in the air for a moment before dissipating.
He had been erased. Not killed. Unmade.
Kaelan stared, frozen in horror.
Morwen didn't pause. With one opponent gone, she redirected her full focus on the remaining Reaver at her flank, her threads constricting, pulling his weapon arm aside.
The lead Reaver let out a roar of fury. "You spiteful wretch!" He charged now, not with a ranged attack, but physically, his jagged instrument held high for a killing blow aimed at Morwen's exposed back.
She was busy with the second Reaver. She couldn't see him coming.
Kaelan saw it all unfold in terrible slow motion. The calculating Weaver. The fanatical Reaver. The certain, violent death.
And something in him broke.
He didn't think of the cost. He didn't think of the Tax. He thought of the raw, unbearable pain in her eyes when she'd spoken of her daughter. He thought of the terrifying void of the Unwritten Vault. He thought of the fact that she was, for all her coldness, the only thing in this hellscape that even vaguely resembled an anchor.
He reached for the only powerful memory he had that wasn't pure destruction. He reached for the Memory-Lock. For Valerius's betrayal.
He Played it.
But he didn't aim it at the Reaver. He couldn't. The complexity, the targeting—it was beyond him.
He did the only thing he could. He played it into the ground at the lead Reaver's feet.
The Tax was immediate and brutal. The vault inside him screamed open, demanding a memory of profound, personal significance to pay for such a powerful, focused manifestation.
It took the memory of his mother singing him to sleep. The soft lullaby, the feeling of her hand on his forehead, the absolute safety. It was gone. Erased. A third void opened up inside him, a fresh, bleeding wound in his past.
The ground where the memory hit didn't explode. It remembered. The white, polished bone of the arch remembered being a gate. The moment of Valerius's choice, the ultimate betrayal, echoed outward in a wave of tangible treachery.
The lead Reaver, mid-charge, stumbled as if the very concept of trust had been ripped from under his feet. His charge faltered. His weapon wavered. The disruptive field around him flickered and died as his concentration shattered against the psychic backlash of another man's ultimate sin.
It was only a second of confusion. But it was enough.
Morwen, sensing the shift, dispatched the second Reaver with a vicious twist of her threads that snapped his neck with a sound like dry kindling. In the same motion, she spun, her hand now holding a sharp, woven spike of solidified resonance. She drove it through the lead Reaver's throat before his focus could return.
The fight was over.
Silence returned to the Chorus, the harmonic pulse slowly steadying, the moss's glow returning to a calm blue.
Morwen stood panting, surrounded by the evidence of her brutal efficiency. She yanked her spike free from the Reaver's throat and let the body drop. Then she turned to Kaelan.
Her eyes were not grateful. They were wide, shocked, and burning with a furious, blazing intensity.
"You," she breathed, stalking toward him. "You opened a memory-lock. Voluntarily. You manifested a historical echo without a physical anchor." She stopped inches from him, her gaze drilling into him, not seeing a person, but a phenomenon. "Do you have any idea what that means? The power that requires? The control?"
She wasn't thanking him for saving her life. She was conducting a post-mortem on a seismic event.
Kaelan could only stare back, the hollow where his mother's lullaby had been aching with a fresh, terrible emptiness. He had spent a treasure he couldn't quantify to buy her a single second.
And all she saw was data.
He had chosen a side in the ambush. But as he looked into her furious, calculating eyes, he realized he might have chosen wrong. He was an investment to her. A precious, volatile instrument.
And instruments were meant to be used until they broke.