(Flashback) To the Sound of Music

[Bandin Everdance]

1st of Spring, 517 A.V.

"I'm from Zeltiva--recently, anyway, and for now. We don't despise the gifted there," the strange man had said on the day Bandin had first come to learn vorilescence.

He'd asked around. Done his very best to get a feel for what it'd mean to go there, what to expect once he was there.

A city of water and learning. Politics and a promised order that he'd never known. He'd dared not ask too much about magic while in Sunberth, but from what he could tell the city of sailors was not so hostile towards mages as Sunberth was--not nearly so, as it ws rumored that they even taught some forms of magic within their university.

University. Now that was a concept he couldn't help but to admire. A place to learn, to maybe become something, someone, more. He craved that.

Sunberth had nothing in the way of formal education. He only knew how to read because Ruth did and had taught him--a skill her own father had passed down to him.

The Everdance family had at least one ancestor on his aunt's side that had apparently come from Zeltiva in the recent past. His grandfather had been a sailor and even a member of the wave guard, before coming to Sunberth... and promptly being lured onto a dark road of black-market narcotics and ill-gotten gains.

Something in his blood stirred when he thought about seeing the city of lost knowledge himself. Being a place that was less tribal and brutal than Sunberth was also more than alluring.

He was nervous, but setting out on the road felt like a good decision. He couldn't stay trapped in the rotting bubble that was Sunberth. Not forever.

"Are you hungry, lad?" a large akalak man, dressed in a headwrap and the guise of a merchant, asked him; strangely, no lakan hung by his side--not that Bandin would've noticed such a thing, not knowing its significance.

"You've all been too good to me," the young man said and accepted the leg of fowl that the caravan's bowman had hunted, among other kills, that evening.

"Where I come from it's every man's duty to help the young grow and become men," the akalak, named Riaris, said.

The merchant's muscles bristled as he made every movement. He was damn near taller than Bandin had ever seen a man to be--and, honestly, hardly looked to be a man proper at all. He was so foreign when compared to a human, but still obviously close enough to be a man of some kind.

"If you'd just been a beggar, then we wouldn't have taken you with us," a pretty Konti woman, with a soft, yet somewhat gritty and feminine, voice said from where she sat beside Riaris on a large, half-buried stone. "You just needed a bit of help getting away from that city."

Bandin couldn't help but being attracted to the white-haired beauty. Her breasts curved perfectly under her white top, but he still tried not to stare.

"Sunberth ain't good for nothing but a resupply and quick sell off of junk cargo," a human male said from beside Bandin, who sat across from the konti and akalak. "Glad to get you away from it."

The fire was crackling. Fireflies danced around in the air. The plains stretched out into rolling hills for seemingly endless miles all about. They'd passed a few ruined old buildings since leaving Sunberth, but the merchant band had been very firm in advising that Bandin and the other three or so tag-alongs not enter any of them. And indeed, hanks to the guidance of the merchants, the trip had been an uneventful one--though Bandin had heard the horror stories of monsters and evil lurking in the wilderness, he had yet to have anything but a great time.

As the night went on, the merchants talked over their travels and gave bits of advice here and there:

"We'll reach Ravok by winter. Bringing goods from Syliras and Zeltiva. Those people pay a high price for foreign luxuries," the human, Marthas, said.

"Zeltiva does indeed have a university, but I hear it ain't easy."

"The wave guard are a tough lot, but they really are doing their best. Just don't cross them. They're more organized and dutiful than the gangs you're used to knowing, but they'll still cut you just as deep if you make a ruckus--maybe they're even more prone to doing so. They're not used to ruckuses, not big ones."

"You don't want to be a knight," the konti woman said as the conversation drifted to Syliras. "They try to do good, but the city is so cramped. Hard to live there."

"Never been to Kalea. The mountains are too hard to cross. Too cold. Just not worth the gold," Riaris said at one point.

Bandin soaked it up, learning everything he could, and, as the fires died down, a strumming series of gentle chords began to break the air.

The other tag-along, a bard named Samantha, began to sing,

"Once I was a man with a chisel in my hand,
Breaking up the rocks with the sun burning my neck,
Then I was the sun throwing down the light of day,
Thinking I was hot, but a cloud got in my face,
So I became a cloud casting shadows, dark and gray,
'Til a gust of wind came and blew me away,
Then I was a wind, but I couldn't move the rocks,
Like the chisel and the man who were bustin' in the blocks."

It took a few verses, but eventually Bandin was joining in. It was an old tune about traveling and finding freedom, saying goodbye to those you'd left behind. An apt choice, the young man thought. And one Samantha sung beautifully with her deep, lighthearted voice.

The young bard smiled at Bandin. She was the reason he was here now. He'd wanted to leave Sunberth for some time, but it was his chance meeting with this traveling performer that had brought him to where he was now.

Her smile to him said more than just a friendly acquaintance. Samatha had introduced him to and invited him to travel with the merchants. She was not a member of their band, but had apparently had them recommended highly to her by a friend.

"I can be what I wanna be,
I can fade by the apple tree,
Wanna do what I wanna do,
Wastin' time with some point of view,
I can be what I wanna be,
Take me home and set me free,
Wanna do what I wanna do,
Remember me as I remember you,"

The trio of merchants appeared to drift off into sleep, one by one.

Bandin too began to be taken by the urge to sleep. Darkness took him in. His voice drifted away, leaving only the bard to continue her tune to sounds of crickets and crackling, crispy firewood.

Bandin felt so peaceful and comfortable. He'd met a beautiful girl, a talented one too. And he seemed to be making friends with the merchants.

Things were going so well.

That was why, when a scream cut the night, some hours later, he was awoken with a feeling of sheer confusion and cold fear.

Samatha.

His mind almost instantly reached out to find the singing, slightly muffled hum of his weapon. His magic and hand sought out the location of his glaive, only to find that it was very nearby, strapped to his backpack, exactly where he'd left it.

His heartbeat as he opened his eyes fully. In that instant between sleep and discovery, he really hoped he didn't need the weapon.

The others were gone.

He heard the scream again. Only to hear it be muffled soon after. A horrible shrieking sound drowned it out almost completely, a wailing that almost brought his ears to bleeding.

*Song Slightly Adapted from Home Away from Home by Brett Dennen.

Word Count: 1,331

[Bandin Everdance]

He didn't hesitate to run towards the scream. He wanted to, though, once he hadn't. He didn't want to go towards whatever was making the bard so terrified, or towards the wailing shout.

He couldn't not, though. His legs just did it. His heart pounded. If he let a woman he'd been so close to face terror alone... no, just a friend, even, then he couldn't be the kind of person he needed to be.

He could barely see at first. The dark wasn't pitch, a full silver moon sat in the sky; he could see, somewhat, but it was an adjustment his adrenaline was only spurring to be just a little quicker.

Coming over the bend of the nearest rolling hill, he was met with a scene that was equally as hard to make out and understand. Two shadowy figures encroached upon another, a blast of sound shook the air and Bandin felt his very skin shake in disgust. The sound was maelstrom chaos made into noise; it was just wrong

The hunted figure was sent flying. Her scream marked her as the woman Bandin worried for. Samantha cracked hard into the ground and was sent rolling multiple feet.

Bandin gripped his glaive harder. He felt his djed flowing through it, bringing back to him the calm, steady heartbeat song of the weapon. It calmed him slightly in its steadfast and unchanging nature. It was simple and true and always, every day, just a bit more so than it was the day before.

"The bands, before she can summon her magic again," a voice that shocked and disheartened Bandin said.

It was the Akalak trader, Riaris, but his tone was gruffer and much crueler. From where his words were coming from, Bandin realized it had been him who had produced the vocal shockwave... somehow. Magic, perhaps?

"I can't endure her singing. We should take her throat. I barely managed to pretend to sleep when she started by the fire, just clenching my eyes shut... and the pain," his Konti companion stated.

"Her magic and song will stop us first," Riaris said to Niva. "Take it and then we can eat... and better yet, get rid of another damn bard."

These traders, if they ever were, were bard hunters? Bandin had never heard of such a thing. Few people hated the god of music or his followers; they brought so much joy in their travels. It didn't sound to be anything Samantha herself had done personally that had been an affront to the two, either, just her existence as a marked of Rhaus was enough for these two to attack her in cold blood, it seemed.

The young smith watched as the konti produced a pair of thin, silver wristbands that glistened brightly in the moonlight.

"Use the goggles to aim," Riaris said.

The konti grunted in a very unbefitting manner for her previous graceful seeming personality.

Samantha wobbled her way to her feet, during the exchange of tactics. Bandin could sense the pain and weariness from her shadowed figure, just by watching her favor one leg. Still, the resisted death.

The bard raised her hand, back and up as if preparing to hurl something. She whispered a strange language that Bandin didn't recognize and, as she did so, a ball of flame lept from her palm.

The injured woman hurled her arm forward and, at the same time, the konti woman sent her own held shackles flying through the air, expertly.

Bandin, for his part was already moving. His heart pounded in his chest as he scaled down to the konti, ignoring the akalak who was already attempting to dodge Samantha's conjured fireball.

With a mighty swing, committed to decapitate, Bandin entered the fray. It was the first time he'd been of a mind to kill, in earnest; his heart felt wrong, no particular way--he figured that would come later.

Word Count: 653

[Bandin Everdance]

The silver chains whirled quickly and with expert aim. Samantha didn't have a chance; they hit at just the right angle. The impact slammed both her wrists together and as they locked, a small silver light glowed faintly around the bardic mage and then died away.

Bandin meanwhile felt a thick, salty gush fill his mouth and spew across his face. His eyes widened and he watched the headless corpse of the konti woman hit the ground. He saw a glistening catch the moonlight from where her head rolled; a wheezing sound came from the wounds--he could just barely hear the unsettling hissing coming from the woman's very blood upon his skin.

Riaris wailed from where he'd rolled to. His arm hung limply by his side and Bandin could smell burning flesh.

The creature seemed to feel no remorse for his fallen comrade, only rage at being injured so and backed into such a corner. Bandin could feel the malice rolling off of the thing he'd assumed to have been an akalak. It did not at all resemble the kind trader that had offered him and Samantha passage back in Sunberth.

Riaris, with all his new malic, slowly approached Bandin; the smith only now saw that the akalak's hand was filled with a long scimitar.

The young man could barely see. He squinted in the moonlight to try and make out anything other than rapid movements and shadow. He didn't like his chances against this man--especially not with having seen his previous and hideous sonic wail, the same one that had floored and thrown Samantha.

"Who's out there?" Samantha screamed. "Don't! Run! They're just here for me! I didn't know!"

"What are they?" Bandin screamed. "I can't see!"

The akalak threw his remaining arm out and opened his mouth wide--frighteningly wide. A deep and echoing shaking rumbled in the back of his throat and began to unsettle the very air, even before being released.

"They're wailers! Monsters. They hate Rhaus and hunt anyone with a voice," Samantha screamed. "I can't feel my magic! These cuffs are doing something to me."

Bandin needed to see, or they'd both die, especially if Samantha was as defenseless now as she seemed. He quickly grabbed at the konti's severed head, seizing upon a thought.

The wailers long-range shout reached him just as he was bringing the goggles that the konti had worn off of her cooling face.

The wail wasn't nearly as strong at long-range. It seemed to die out rapidly over distance. Bandin had meant to roll out of its way, of course, but had misjudged its great speed. He was forced to clench his teeth as his very bones vibrated under the force of the echoing, metal-grating like squeal. He felt a stream of crimson blood begin to leak out of his ears and mix with the konti's ichor that already painted his face.

He held the goggles tight in one hand and the glaive down by his side in the other, squatting over the other wailer's dead face, and doing his best not to linger in the feeling of the whole world spinning.

The wailer rushed him at the same time, seemingly planning a quick kill; it raised its scimitar without mercy.

To its credit, Bandin felt his heart jump and almost didn't raise his glaive in time. It was only in feeling the sobering song of his weapon that he was able to quickly move it into action; it was almost as if its song encouraged its use, or at least always reminded its wielder what its true purpose was.

The scimitar deflected off of the haft of the glaive, but chipped it very slightly at the same time. It was then that Bandin heard a very uncomfortable cracking sound in his mind, as if a mighty oak were falling to its death--the weapon was declaring its damage, not quite screaming or seeming to be in pain, but the reading he was getting from his glaive had definitely spiked and changed when it'd been inflicted wear by the wailer's strike.

Word Count: 681

[Bandin Everdance]

Bandin found it hard to match Riaris' strength; despite apparently being a monster, and the same type as the dainty konti had also been, the akalak imposter still seemed to posses the sheer power of his build and then some.

Bandin was easily forced almost down to one knee; it was only in realizing that he would be beat down and slain if he continued to try and meet strength with strength that he finally rotated out and to the side.

His instructor, a former mercenary turned drunkard, had taught him that.

"The use in a spear and a glaive, or any long, pointy weapon with a stick at the back, is that its got reach, ye'? But it's also got leverage for the same reason its got distance on its side, because it's long enough to," the human named Darius had said.

Bandin felt sweat coming down his brow. It was much harder to put the actual theory into practice, however. What sparring he had done before, which was only as much as he could get Darius to do, before the man ran off with coin to go buy booze, had never left him even nearly half as drained as the maneuver he'd just pulled had.

Battle fatigue was apparently a thing.

He tried to calm his breathing. He still could barely see. The blacksmith backed away more and more, as Riaris righted himself.

Bandin waisted no time in sliding on the goggles he'd stolen haphazardly. He sent a prayer to any god that would listen and thrusted his glaive forward in a thrust reminiscent of one done with a spear.

And sure enough, even with it being a novice's basic maneuver for keeping distance at best, Riaris hesitated and even jumped back somewhat.

The hesitation gave Bandin just enough time to wipe off the giant spurt of gunky blood on the goggle's right lens. Once the glass was clear, he was met with a shocking sight: he could see perfectly all around him, at least for quite some distance.

The ploy of putting on the goggles had been a half-baked one, but he had heard the akalak telling the konti to use them to aim in the dark. It made some sense that there'd be a reason for that.

Still, even with being able to see, Bandin didn't like his chances in a pitched duel. He didn't have the skill he needed to match blow for blow with a stronger opponent, let alone one with a monster's weird magic.

The wailer, almost as if thinking the same thing, opened its mouth once more. At the current distance, which was closer than that which Samantha had been thrown back at, Bandin did not like his chances of survival at all.

The wailer's throat began to vibrate.

The smith drew upon the sound of his weapon to ground him and give him strength, calling upon the faint hum. Then he struck. He knew he wouldn't reach the wailer in time. He was done for, truly he knew it.

Then a loud singing broke the silence of exertion and labored breaths.

Wordcount: 520

[Bandin Everdance]

Samantha's singing was labored, but strong. The music was intoned with a beautiful resonance that calmed Bandin greatly. He could feel the notes resonating within his core and taking his heartbeat down several notches. The same tones blended gorgeously with the stoic and utilitarian heartbeat of his glaive, allowing him to further catch his breath and calm down to an even greater extent.

To the wailer, wearing the face of the akalak merchant named Riaris, however, the tones seemed to have the opposite effect. His mouth hung open widely, suddenly silenced it seemed and unable to wail and end the life of the young man before him, as he was almost certainly about to do prior.

The screech instead became a muffled cry of pain. Bandin was given the opportunity and took it gladly then to drive his glaive deeply into the chest of the creature.

The wound let loose a great pressure around his haft's blade as it tore through weakened sinew and muscle. He could hear the decompression with a startling volume. Whatever this 'wailer' creature was, it wasn't just flesh and blood, but something else entirely. It was almost as if it was made of sound.

It was interesting and terrifyingly foreign as an concept.

Bandin continued to focus in on his glaive's hum and the beautiful voice that swirled around him. Fighting monsters, however interesting they were, was proving to be a very stressful endeavor and he needed all the help he could get just to stay calm.

He had lost the majority of his momentum when his glaive had lodged its way into the pocket below the false akalak's sternum. Still, he seemed to gain yet more as the bard continued her song and lowered her notes an octave; it was almost as if her music was weakening the very sound-infused flesh of the beast that Samantha and Bandin now fought in unison with their varying talents.

The blacksmith felt the creature collapse to its knees before him. Its weapon clattered to the ground and its eyes shone with hatred. One shaking hand reached up violently to the blacksmith's throat. It let out a wheezing noise, as if trying to tear his very body apart with its once-functioning sonic screech, but failing to do anything of the sort. A gush of blood left the creature's mouth.

Bandin ripped his glaive from the beast's body, finding it much easier to come out of the monster's flesh than it had been to get into it. A byproduct of the damage that Samantha's song was doing, no doubt. He kept the weapon pointed squarely at the thing's throat.

"Your voice will be mine," the wailer said; the words that came out of its mouth had none of the civility or friendliness of before, it was now a monster's voice through and through, entirely inhuman and disturbing--and entirely desperate for murder. "The bard will--"

It wheezed deeply from its gaping chest wound. "--die."

"Why?" Bandin asked; why had the creatures so willingly thrown themselves into combat and gone through all the work of ambushing the woman?

"We hate them," the wailer said. "So many of us killed. I have the memories. Generations of us murdered."

Bandin didn't entirely feel as if that was an unwarranted thing for someone to do, though. He saw no remorse or quest for vengeance in this monster's eyes. There was just agony and hunger.

Some things just couldn't be allowed to exist, he figured. It was them or mankind--and they were the ones making it that way, thus they were the ones that fairly had to go.

Wordcount: 603

[Bandin Everdance]

"I'm sorry, but," Bandin hesitated; to commit to what he was about to say still felt a little heartless, even to say it to a monster. Still, how many more would this creature kill? "I don't really see a problem with that."

The creature growled with a dying rage. "You don't get to live over us. We will remember. We will still feed, and live, and grow. Faster than you can."

"Remember? You've said that a lot," Bandin said.

The wailer smiled a sociopath's grin. "Every memory of my father I have. Every memory of their father they had. It will never stop. We have always been there, learning and hiding beneath your noses. Feeding and living."

Bandin felt a cold terror that even reaching for the hum of his weapon and the beautiful notes of Samantha's song couldn't take away.

"Hold old are you?" he asked.

"Older than your cities. Older than your youngest gods," the wailer said menacingly. "We have been watching you since before you even knew we could."

The blacksmith gripped his glaive even harder. He pulled his djed from the weapon, trying desperately to fight away the eerie terror.

"Not you," he said. "You won't pass this one."

"I have sired young," it said. "We have."

Bandin was suddenly wrought with revelation. Such beings as these wailers didn't seem the type to be friends with one another, but all creatures needed to breed... and this one seemed especially obsessed with the idea. The pair of wailers. Had they already produced more like them? How far away? How long ago?

"Where?" the smith asked.

The wailer smiled. "They will watch you people."

Bandin raised his glaive and swung it. It didn't matter. He would not allow this one to do it again.

The creature hissed sharply, but was too weakened from the bard's song and the blood loss to move or do anything to stop its head from being removed from its shoulders.

Bandin had went with the tried and true method. Decapitation had worked once before and, as the wailer's head rolled, it seemed to work again.

***

The fire crackled. Bandin toyed with the silver bands. Samantha had told him that they'd completely stopped her ability to cast her magic. The smith didn't need to be a scholar to know how valuable that was, though he certainly didn't want it in the hands of something like a wailer. How had they even gotten their hands on it?

"Marthas," Bandin addressed the other merchant, who had apparently gone to his tent sometime in the night and slept through the entire ordeal--though the smith had his doubts about whether he hadn't just awoken in the loud chaos and hidden. "How long did they travel with you?"

The human man shook his head. "Seasons. I contracted on with them out of Syliras last year. I had no idea. We were... friends. They were so human."

Bandin eyed the items, the goggles and the silver bands. "Where did they get these?"

Marthas shook his head. "I have no idea."

There was silence for a moment.

"Why didn't they... do what they tried to do to you, to me?" the merchant asked.

Bandin looked up at him and found himself at a loss for words.

"They don't need to," Samantha chimed in; she was a bit bruised up, with a few broken bones here or there, but no worse for wear--really. "They don't feed often. You were likely more valuable as cover than anything else. Someone to talk to anyone who might be able to tell they were off, to tell what they really were, so they didn't have to."

"How didn't you know?" he asked.

Samantha shook her head. "They become better at hidding each year. There's almost no way to tell a wailer from a man unless the wailer tells you."

"They were after me because of my mark," she said. "They despise bards. Hate them with a passion, really. We represent ordered sound--the opposite of their monstrous selves. They're disorder and murderous resonances given form. Cold, emotionless music with a face. We hurt them with every note we sing, even more so if we try. The thought of that enrages them, that they have a natural predator all their own."

She paused. Her face grew colder. "I'd never met one before."

Her tone said it all: she never wanted to again.

Bandin shivered, despite the fire's warmth, and couldn't help but stare at the remaining merchant. Could he be?

No.

There was no way to know.

OOC: Goggles of Night and Mage Bands earned, and given permission to be acquired in game by Gossamer, in this challengethread.

Word Count: 761 Words

[Alric Lysane]

Hi Hi! If you return please update your CS and PM me for your grades ~ No Worries