Re: The Vivacious Deadlock: S3G6: Round Two: BJ
03-31-2012, 02:28 AM
(This post was last modified: 05-06-2013, 01:41 PM by Akumu.)
Originally posted on MSPA by Akumu.
Phere and Crowe did not make it far beyond the front plaza of the opera house before they crossed paths with a group of men marching in ordered ranks, uniformed in bright colors and bristling with weaponry, at least, what passed for weaponry in Santa Nada. Judging by the size of their tasselled epaulets and of the feathers rising from their cylindrical hats, they must have been of quite impressive rank.
Crowe clasped two of his four hands behind his back, there scribbling a simple pattern into a scrap of paper cupped in one hand. He stepped back away from Phere, who found her eyes, both the natural and the technomagical, sliding off of him like water from a greased skillet. When she turned her attention to the approaching platoon, even the thought that she had been trying to see something slipped away. The man with the largest epaulets and feather of all took in her dazed expression and manacles, exclaiming “Thank Sf’rzando, the prisoner has been delivered on time!” He jerked his head towards her, and two subordinates marched double time out ahead of the group and took her by either arm, frog-marching her back into the interior of their ranks. There, in a sea of eye-searing reds and yellows, she was deposited alongside a man in a black coat, its tails flapping behind him. Though he was not an old man, his wild hair was the same white as his primly-knotted bowtie. He walked briskly to keep up with the marching soldiers surrounding them, and Phere had to fall in beside or risk being trampled. The sober-colored man turned to her with a manic grin.
“Maestro,” he said by way of introduction, “It’s going to be a pleasure working with you today!”
Some time later, after the winding route that Cascala had led them on through the streets of Santa Nada, Dr. Harmon and Klendel arrived at that same plaza. Things had clearly not gone according to plan for the Santa Nadans. The squad that had been left outside to guard the entrance to the opera house had been wiped out, their corpses missing chunks or with tuning forks jutting out of their necks. Most of them did not even have their instruments in hand, having been caught completely unawares.
Cascala strode forward through the carnage, her sandals splashing in the rivulets of blood running between the cobblestones. Klendel followed behind but stopped when he realized Harmon was not doing the same. He turned back and saw that she had drawn up short, staring wide-eyed at the bloody scene. The Cog looked with confusion for what was so troubling and had to suppress a laugh when he realized it was nothing more than a couple of dead bodies.
“For a hard-nosed professional, you certainly do lose your composure easily. Don’t tell me this is more than you can handle!”
Harmon glared at him and shook her head angrily, following him towards the looming opera house doors that Cascala had already slipped through.
“And don’t worry, I’ve seen what that mage can do. As long as we stay on her good side, we’re in safe hands.”
In the main auditorium, the Thunderwolf commandos that had infiltrated to the heart of the city was engaged in a heated battle with the Santa Nadan forces. Despite their stealth, fighting through an entire platoon without being noticed had proved to be impossible. Unfortunately for them, tuning forks and dog whistles, while deadly in their precision, were not in the strictest sense musical. When they clashed, the colorless, perfectly round strikes of the vikings’ weapons were blown away, shattered by the rainbow-colored, undulating rhythms of the marching band. The commandos were the best of the best, but so were the Symphony Guard, and things were looking desperate.
In the center of the auditorium, Phere sat shackled to the iron chair facing the orchestra pit and the great pipe organ. Neither side seemed interested in harming her and a cursory attempt showed that struggling with her bonds would get her nothing more than chafed wrists. She sat stock still, waves of terror and fury crashing against her, but pushed them down. Neither anger nor fear were of much use to her at the moment. She fought to keep calm, to remain composed and in control; ultimately to keep a clear head to think her way out of this situation. The gaze of her hollow drifted outwards, three of her competition were already within the building. The only problem with counting on them was it was a battle to the death after all and she doubted she held enough potential value to them to have them risk life and limb to keep her alive, especially when they could not all survive till the end. What she really needed at the moment was someone who had a vested interest in her survival – the thought was interrupted by a tickling sensation on her forehead, and suddenly Crowe was standing before her, lifting a pen away from her face.
“And not before time.” Phere hissed, “Get me out of here immediately.”
“Tell me where she is.”
“Get me out of here first and then we’ll talk.”
The Spectator’s servant dropped his lower pair of hands to lean on the iron bands constraining Phere’s wrists, and with his upper pair grasped her head tightly and pulled her forward until her face was inches from his own. His eyes were flat and dead, his pupils obscured by a milky film, but still Phere could feel his piercing stare. No words needed to be exchanged; the sounds of battle and the weight of her restraints impressed upon her the seriousness of the situation she was in.
But even so he spelt it out anyway. “You will tell me where she is or I will let you die here.” He snapped, his anger at Phere’s impudence getting the best of him.
“You know how vast the multiverse is.” Phere said. “You know that without me you don’t have a hope in hell of finding her.”
“You are nothing but a foolish child, trying to play with forces that you cannot even begin to comprehend.” Crowe snapped back. “You are so insignificant to me; I have murdered entire worlds to suit my ends. Do not think to test me.”
She did not break Crowe’s stare, and feverishly hoped that the panic, the uncertainty did not show in her eyes. This ruse only worked if she was able to project an air of absolute certainty, to completely dispel the notion that she might not know where the Spectator was. This was too far, he had to be thinking that anyone willing to go this far could not have been bluffing, at least that was what she hoped he was thinking. His eyes, like her own, gave nothing away. Of course the only problem with this strategy was that she could not hope to keep it up forever. Once Crowe had extracted her from this situation, as she knew desperately hoped he would, she would be in real trouble, but that was then and this was now and she could only handle one life or death situation at a time.
After a long beat, Crowe opened his mouth to deliver another ineffectual threat. Whatever it was to be, it was swept away as deep bass tone, rich and full, reverberated through the auditorium, and he spun about with a sharp oath.
The Maestro had been dragged out of his hiding place beneath the pipe organ’s keyboard, and was now sitting at the bench in front of it with a tuning fork pressed into his back. The last remaining viking commando had managed to reach him and was daring any of the Symphony Guard to come closer, lest they lose their only means of summoning their final line of defense.
“The Symphony is ours now! Run and tell your masters, Santa Nadan whoresons. Tell all of them that their chance to flee is now and now alone. Maestro, if you would?” he put some pressure on the tuning fork, in case his point was not clear.
“Is... is the corpus secure?”
As soon as the first note had played, Crowe had dropped to his knees and began scratching a looping design into the floor around Phere’s chair, half calligraphy and half geometric construction. When Phere had demanded to know what he was doing, he pointed at the similar etchings on the bands around her wrists, saying only “Counter sigils,” before throwing himself completely into his work. Now, only partway through the inscription, the commando turned and looked directly at the chair, piercing through the veil of inattention Crowe had been maintaining. The viking raised his dog whistle to his lips, sending its silent death racing towards Phere’s salvation. Crowe simply raised an unoccupied pair of hands and clapped out a syncopated beat; even this meager musicality was enough to disperse the ultrasonic blast.
The commando grimaced and hesitated for a moment, before roaring “PLAY, DAMN YOUR EYES” at the trembling virtuoso. And so he played.
The great wall of pipes above the keyboard came alive with the rolling and layered sounds of a toccata. Crowe slashed and scrawled at the ground, working his way around the iron chair as the organ music grew in intensity and complexity. Rising up under it, as if in answer, was a counterpoint many octaves lower, heard faintly as if from a great distance. In the orchestra pit, the blackness which had confounded Phere’s vision began to roil, revealing itself to be not just an absence of light but a substance of its own. Small sloshes began to pour out of its bounds, thinning as it left the pit to roll like a black mist across the stage. The Maestro was consumed in his craft now, throwing his head into each extended chord, his unruly mop of hair flopping with a mind of its own. The viking commando, no longer needing to keep him at fork-point, began to advance on Crowe, but glancing into the orchestra pit between them decided that it was more prudent to stay put.
The deep counterpoint was rising in volume, growing ever closer, and the blackness in the pit tossed like an angry sea. Even from feet away Crowe could not make out Phere's screamed exhortations for speed beneath the thickness of sound that filled the auditorium. By now, even the most stalwart of the Symphony Guard were fleeing. The Maestro’s fingers danced across the upper tiers of the keyboard, laying out a delicate melody that evoked windchimes in the spring. This ended, and for a beat, all was silent. In that last moment, Crowe said calmly and evenly, “Find her,” and closed the circle, popping the entire chair and Phere with it out of the auditorium. Then the beat was over, and the pit responded. The blackness exploded up out of it with a gut-punch wall of sound, pouring into the air to strike the curved, gold-leaf ceiling above it and reflect back down, focused to a single point. And at that point, where a heavy iron chair once stood, was Crowe.
The interior of the opera house was a maze of twisty little passages, and while the trio led by Cascala had come across plenty more carnage, they were not having luck penetrating to the heart of the building. That was, at least, until a stream of still living soldiers began flowing out through the passageways, so panicked that they barely spared a second glance at the new interlopers. Fighting against the stream, the three found themselves at the doorway to the auditorium just in time to see Phere vanish. If Klendel and Harmon had been looking for power, they had certainly found it, though neither seemed to have an idea of what the next step to harnessing that power might be. They watched dumbstruck as the black essence of music poured into Crowe, suffusing him and dismantling him, making him into its earthly avatar. As they stared, Cascala stepped into the room and calmly began to set up her theremin.
Phere and Crowe did not make it far beyond the front plaza of the opera house before they crossed paths with a group of men marching in ordered ranks, uniformed in bright colors and bristling with weaponry, at least, what passed for weaponry in Santa Nada. Judging by the size of their tasselled epaulets and of the feathers rising from their cylindrical hats, they must have been of quite impressive rank.
Crowe clasped two of his four hands behind his back, there scribbling a simple pattern into a scrap of paper cupped in one hand. He stepped back away from Phere, who found her eyes, both the natural and the technomagical, sliding off of him like water from a greased skillet. When she turned her attention to the approaching platoon, even the thought that she had been trying to see something slipped away. The man with the largest epaulets and feather of all took in her dazed expression and manacles, exclaiming “Thank Sf’rzando, the prisoner has been delivered on time!” He jerked his head towards her, and two subordinates marched double time out ahead of the group and took her by either arm, frog-marching her back into the interior of their ranks. There, in a sea of eye-searing reds and yellows, she was deposited alongside a man in a black coat, its tails flapping behind him. Though he was not an old man, his wild hair was the same white as his primly-knotted bowtie. He walked briskly to keep up with the marching soldiers surrounding them, and Phere had to fall in beside or risk being trampled. The sober-colored man turned to her with a manic grin.
“Maestro,” he said by way of introduction, “It’s going to be a pleasure working with you today!”
- - -
Some time later, after the winding route that Cascala had led them on through the streets of Santa Nada, Dr. Harmon and Klendel arrived at that same plaza. Things had clearly not gone according to plan for the Santa Nadans. The squad that had been left outside to guard the entrance to the opera house had been wiped out, their corpses missing chunks or with tuning forks jutting out of their necks. Most of them did not even have their instruments in hand, having been caught completely unawares.
Cascala strode forward through the carnage, her sandals splashing in the rivulets of blood running between the cobblestones. Klendel followed behind but stopped when he realized Harmon was not doing the same. He turned back and saw that she had drawn up short, staring wide-eyed at the bloody scene. The Cog looked with confusion for what was so troubling and had to suppress a laugh when he realized it was nothing more than a couple of dead bodies.
“For a hard-nosed professional, you certainly do lose your composure easily. Don’t tell me this is more than you can handle!”
Harmon glared at him and shook her head angrily, following him towards the looming opera house doors that Cascala had already slipped through.
“And don’t worry, I’ve seen what that mage can do. As long as we stay on her good side, we’re in safe hands.”
- - -
In the main auditorium, the Thunderwolf commandos that had infiltrated to the heart of the city was engaged in a heated battle with the Santa Nadan forces. Despite their stealth, fighting through an entire platoon without being noticed had proved to be impossible. Unfortunately for them, tuning forks and dog whistles, while deadly in their precision, were not in the strictest sense musical. When they clashed, the colorless, perfectly round strikes of the vikings’ weapons were blown away, shattered by the rainbow-colored, undulating rhythms of the marching band. The commandos were the best of the best, but so were the Symphony Guard, and things were looking desperate.
In the center of the auditorium, Phere sat shackled to the iron chair facing the orchestra pit and the great pipe organ. Neither side seemed interested in harming her and a cursory attempt showed that struggling with her bonds would get her nothing more than chafed wrists. She sat stock still, waves of terror and fury crashing against her, but pushed them down. Neither anger nor fear were of much use to her at the moment. She fought to keep calm, to remain composed and in control; ultimately to keep a clear head to think her way out of this situation. The gaze of her hollow drifted outwards, three of her competition were already within the building. The only problem with counting on them was it was a battle to the death after all and she doubted she held enough potential value to them to have them risk life and limb to keep her alive, especially when they could not all survive till the end. What she really needed at the moment was someone who had a vested interest in her survival – the thought was interrupted by a tickling sensation on her forehead, and suddenly Crowe was standing before her, lifting a pen away from her face.
“And not before time.” Phere hissed, “Get me out of here immediately.”
“Tell me where she is.”
“Get me out of here first and then we’ll talk.”
The Spectator’s servant dropped his lower pair of hands to lean on the iron bands constraining Phere’s wrists, and with his upper pair grasped her head tightly and pulled her forward until her face was inches from his own. His eyes were flat and dead, his pupils obscured by a milky film, but still Phere could feel his piercing stare. No words needed to be exchanged; the sounds of battle and the weight of her restraints impressed upon her the seriousness of the situation she was in.
But even so he spelt it out anyway. “You will tell me where she is or I will let you die here.” He snapped, his anger at Phere’s impudence getting the best of him.
“You know how vast the multiverse is.” Phere said. “You know that without me you don’t have a hope in hell of finding her.”
“You are nothing but a foolish child, trying to play with forces that you cannot even begin to comprehend.” Crowe snapped back. “You are so insignificant to me; I have murdered entire worlds to suit my ends. Do not think to test me.”
She did not break Crowe’s stare, and feverishly hoped that the panic, the uncertainty did not show in her eyes. This ruse only worked if she was able to project an air of absolute certainty, to completely dispel the notion that she might not know where the Spectator was. This was too far, he had to be thinking that anyone willing to go this far could not have been bluffing, at least that was what she hoped he was thinking. His eyes, like her own, gave nothing away. Of course the only problem with this strategy was that she could not hope to keep it up forever. Once Crowe had extracted her from this situation, as she knew desperately hoped he would, she would be in real trouble, but that was then and this was now and she could only handle one life or death situation at a time.
After a long beat, Crowe opened his mouth to deliver another ineffectual threat. Whatever it was to be, it was swept away as deep bass tone, rich and full, reverberated through the auditorium, and he spun about with a sharp oath.
The Maestro had been dragged out of his hiding place beneath the pipe organ’s keyboard, and was now sitting at the bench in front of it with a tuning fork pressed into his back. The last remaining viking commando had managed to reach him and was daring any of the Symphony Guard to come closer, lest they lose their only means of summoning their final line of defense.
“The Symphony is ours now! Run and tell your masters, Santa Nadan whoresons. Tell all of them that their chance to flee is now and now alone. Maestro, if you would?” he put some pressure on the tuning fork, in case his point was not clear.
“Is... is the corpus secure?”
As soon as the first note had played, Crowe had dropped to his knees and began scratching a looping design into the floor around Phere’s chair, half calligraphy and half geometric construction. When Phere had demanded to know what he was doing, he pointed at the similar etchings on the bands around her wrists, saying only “Counter sigils,” before throwing himself completely into his work. Now, only partway through the inscription, the commando turned and looked directly at the chair, piercing through the veil of inattention Crowe had been maintaining. The viking raised his dog whistle to his lips, sending its silent death racing towards Phere’s salvation. Crowe simply raised an unoccupied pair of hands and clapped out a syncopated beat; even this meager musicality was enough to disperse the ultrasonic blast.
The commando grimaced and hesitated for a moment, before roaring “PLAY, DAMN YOUR EYES” at the trembling virtuoso. And so he played.
The great wall of pipes above the keyboard came alive with the rolling and layered sounds of a toccata. Crowe slashed and scrawled at the ground, working his way around the iron chair as the organ music grew in intensity and complexity. Rising up under it, as if in answer, was a counterpoint many octaves lower, heard faintly as if from a great distance. In the orchestra pit, the blackness which had confounded Phere’s vision began to roil, revealing itself to be not just an absence of light but a substance of its own. Small sloshes began to pour out of its bounds, thinning as it left the pit to roll like a black mist across the stage. The Maestro was consumed in his craft now, throwing his head into each extended chord, his unruly mop of hair flopping with a mind of its own. The viking commando, no longer needing to keep him at fork-point, began to advance on Crowe, but glancing into the orchestra pit between them decided that it was more prudent to stay put.
The deep counterpoint was rising in volume, growing ever closer, and the blackness in the pit tossed like an angry sea. Even from feet away Crowe could not make out Phere's screamed exhortations for speed beneath the thickness of sound that filled the auditorium. By now, even the most stalwart of the Symphony Guard were fleeing. The Maestro’s fingers danced across the upper tiers of the keyboard, laying out a delicate melody that evoked windchimes in the spring. This ended, and for a beat, all was silent. In that last moment, Crowe said calmly and evenly, “Find her,” and closed the circle, popping the entire chair and Phere with it out of the auditorium. Then the beat was over, and the pit responded. The blackness exploded up out of it with a gut-punch wall of sound, pouring into the air to strike the curved, gold-leaf ceiling above it and reflect back down, focused to a single point. And at that point, where a heavy iron chair once stood, was Crowe.
- - -
The interior of the opera house was a maze of twisty little passages, and while the trio led by Cascala had come across plenty more carnage, they were not having luck penetrating to the heart of the building. That was, at least, until a stream of still living soldiers began flowing out through the passageways, so panicked that they barely spared a second glance at the new interlopers. Fighting against the stream, the three found themselves at the doorway to the auditorium just in time to see Phere vanish. If Klendel and Harmon had been looking for power, they had certainly found it, though neither seemed to have an idea of what the next step to harnessing that power might be. They watched dumbstruck as the black essence of music poured into Crowe, suffusing him and dismantling him, making him into its earthly avatar. As they stared, Cascala stepped into the room and calmly began to set up her theremin.