View Full Version : Your Souls Are Mine (Solo)
Your Souls Are Mine (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3PRXFLJYcw)
2474
Ruby tried to breathe calmly, but could do nothing but gasp fustily like a fish out of water.
“Patience child,” Delilah snapped, pacing around her counterpart with authoritarian footsteps and an accusing finger levelled at the book in Ruby’s hand. “If you go at it all flustered you will take out half the city with a misplaced syllable.”
“Oh do not be too hard on her Delilah, you took months to get it right yourself,” Celia rolled her eyes, her patience worn thin by many hours of constant rehearsal. She crossed her legs and leant back on her palms, her vantage point from the edge of the Prima Vista’s stage affording her an air of superiority over proceedings.
“That may be true, but if she does not do this soon it will be too late for anything new to sink into that gin coddled mind of hers!” The eldest of the three Burton’s took back control of the room and stopped in front of the long gallery mirror to admire her crow’s feet and ageing beauty.
Ruby slapped her knees and finally took control of her palpitations. She had grown tired of the two voices drilling into her head, but she had to remind herself that one was her former self and the other was somehow, through a plot twist not even she could understand, her mother.
“Listen,” she said snappily, though with half the conviction the others had, “I appreciate everything you have done and everything you are doing…but,” she turned to settle Celia and Delilah in her sights. “You have to take things slower.”
Delilah turned to look at Ruby with a warmer smile, but she still smouldered with urgency and contempt. The morning sun shone hazily down through the sun dome in broken beams. They cast her in a golden light as if she were born to look so radiant despite the early hour and the sleep in her eyes.
“I appreciate that, Ruby, really I do.” She stepped forwards and rested her hands on Ruby’s shoulders, pressing hard enough to remind her who was in control yet soft enough to comfort her without making too much of a fuss. The matriarchal overtone was strong in everything Delilah did or said. “Time, however, is of the essence. We do not have long. The magic that brought us into the world against all conformity with the ancient tradition we call death is not permanent. Though we are merely echoes of memories, we must impart our knowledge to you so that you may contest the mistakes of your past selves.”
“You mean contest your mistakes,” Ruby said with a smouldering contempt that she made no attempt to hide. “You are teaching me blade-singing to contest your life.”
Delilah bowed her head and nodded. She retreated several steps and composed herself. Celia cocked her gaze and smiled, her ponytail and the many beads and pins in its weave dangled and tinkled as she did so. A moment of silence buffered the tension in the room, until Delilah crossed her hands over her waist and looked with kindness at Ruby’s book.
“Okay. Let us not fool ourselves into thinking this is not because of what I did. All of us have sins to atone for, or sins to accept as our own. Lysander,” she glanced at Celia, who rolled her eyes in objection at being brought innocently into her argument. She looked back at Ruby for a moment, before glancing up at the sun dome, “Wainwright…Duffy,” Ruby opened her mouth to object more vocally but found herself mute, “and of course, the mistakes we shall make and continue to deny for years to come.”
“What is important,” Celia chipped in, slipping from the stage to walk silkily to Ruby’s side in her defence. “Is that we combine our arts into one form, so that Ruby can better deal with the burdens we have laid down on her shoulders and her heart.”
Delilah furrowed her brow in a most undignified manner; her expression mirrored Ruby’s but with added years and better teeth. Each of the three Burtons were spitting images of themselves, though each possessed different coloured hair, they were all ample bosomed women immitigably related and unnaturally beautiful. None of them, at least on the surface, appeared to be troubled by the woes of lesser mortals and the commoners they spent their lives caring for.
“My burdens are my own to tackle,” Ruby said bravely, before snapping the book in her hand closed and tucking it into the front pouch of her pinafore. “Without a doubt,” she began to express her thanks with frantic hand movements in time with each intonation of her speech. “You have given me more in this life than I could ever dream for, both of you,” she looked between the two women and smiled warmly. “If learning this art is the only way I can protect my family with my spell singing, if it is the only way to bring the peace the troupe once knew back to this citadel of theatre then by the Thayne,” she stomped her heel and strutted her shoulders like a spoilt child. “I shall learn every note, every step and every solid strike swung in the name of the blade singers of legend!”
For the first time in almost four hours, the three Burton’s clapped in cheer and agreement, before taking their places on stage, before mirror and by pupil’s side to continue their exploration of the very basics and fundamental tenets of casting one’s words to a blade, and casting one’s anger at throats and navels.
“Okay, now, from the top!” Delilah clapped three rounds of applause, and spread her arms wide like a conductor. She pushed her right heel from the floor and rested forwards on the front of her foot, and readied herself to direct Ruby’s pitch.
Ruby ruffled her chest and pulled the book back out from her pocket. With a flick of her wrist she opened it, and it fell instantly to the first page as if it possessed a mind of its own. It was a tome written in magic itself, describing the complete works of operatic intonation and the ways in which a blade singer might clad his weapon in the pitch and falsetto of the world’s finest art form, or so it claimed. It was also ornately decorated with vibrato colours laced into a cloth binding, and ludicrously expensive to buy.
“<A Carmen Sung Miserabile Vela Conforto Moestitia>!”
Delilah clapped, “Again!”
“<A Carmen Sung Miserabile Vela Conforto Moestitia>!” Ruby sang louder the second time, puffing her chest out more and more with every wag of her tongue and annunciation of her pallet.
“No Ruby, it is still too dreary, again!” Delilah shook her head furiously, and started to move in time with the tap of her feet to the tempo of the line. Her footsteps echoed down the stairs into the dusty and empty living room, and further still into he stacks of dirty plates in the kitchen, abandoned by their mistress in their hour of need.
“<A Carmen Sung Miserabile Vela Conforto Moestitia>!” She roared with an undercutting bitterness to her words forming as her frustration started to boil over. This time, a spark formed on the tip of her tongue, and crackled upwards into the rafters like a will-o-wisp.
All three Burton’s stopped moving, breathing or thinking, their mouths open in shock. Several minutes of silence followed, as the tendrils of the spell song faded from view and left an electrifying atmosphere in its wake. The stage room felt alive, buzzing with possibility.
“Excellent,” Celia started to clap, before Delilah had a heart attack. “That anger you show, that fire, it is the passion you need to truly wield your songs as a weapon, instead of a defence mechanism that enfeebles you against anything but the most deranged of foes.” She nodded and stood up on the stage. Her heels clipped against the wood as she stepped back onto the dusty red carpet and took a similar stance to Delilah. Even on the run down platform, she looked resplendent, every bit the leading lady she had been in her own life.
Ruby sighed, her chest beating furiously to catch up with the breath she had spent belting out the strange language she did not yet quite understand. “Somehow…I felt what the words meant, even though I do not know them.”
“Passion is wise Ruby. Spell singing is less about what you sing, and more,” Delilah stepped in to Ruby’s personal space and rested her hands on her diaphragm. She squeezed, and Ruby stood upright and snapped out of her defiant slouch with a twang of discomfort, “about how you sing!”
“I only ever sing with passion.” She bit her lip, but relinquished control as her elder adjusted the straps on the back of her housework dress to pull in her lungs and lift her bosom higher than custom allowed. She felt the hem stretch and tighten, and creak under the strain of the natural gifts they caged.
“Not true,” Celia replied, bouncing on her heels and stretching down to her left toe, then her right, like a ballerina in the Royal Dance Company warming up for a midsummer production of In Her Arms Dearly, the Queen Valeena of Scara Brae's life tale given momentum and pomp. “You only ever sing with passion you think is appropriate. When singing, there is no such thing as tact, only form.”
“The rest,” Delilah continued, as if they were bound to the same mind literally and metaphorically, “is improvisation!” She patted Ruby, satisfied that she was ready. Ruby squirmed in her tightened corset and stuck her fingers in the tucks to pull it down slightly so that she could in fact breathe full stop.
“I know that, I have been doing it-“
“For nowhere near long enough,” Celia cut her short, and Delilah nodded at her with an approving nod.
“Watch me as you try again,” she said, this time, picking up the violin that was resting to hand by her feet. As soon as she touched it, a dark shadow flexed into view behind her, winged and scythed and threatening to all those who did not understand its purpose. As soon as Celia touched the bow to the strings, the creature cast aside its weapon and swarmed around the bard. It held out a spectral sheet of musical notes, and almost, for a second, seemed to smile.
Delilah clapped once more, and Ruby snapped to attention and jolted upright, the curiosity and fear over the strange conductor shaken from her. She puffed her chest out, dragged her lungs up into her gullet and belted out the line once more, her gaze trailing over the inked arrangement on the page in front of her and up to Celia as she started to play along to the song.
“<A Carmen Sung Miserabile Vela Conforto Moestitia>!”
“Do it again!” Delilah barked.
“<A Carmen Sung Miserabile Vela Conforto Moestitia>!”
“Come on child, again!” She clapped twice this time, and Celia instantly switched from the slow melody of the operatic diction she saw before her on the paper, and added flourishes of her own to the arrangement.
Ruby stumbled with her words, suddenly taken out of her comfort zone and place firmly into the realm of a complete amateur. She caught up on the next line, and changed the formation of the words on the tip of her tongue to fit the new tempo and the placement of the bass notes in the verse.
“<A Carmen Sung Miserabile Vela Conforto Moestitia>!”
She felt herself rise onto the tips of her toes, and this time, the sparks that formed in a small blue ball of flame rose up into the rafters, and danced between the rotting pillars and stained glass panels for several minutes. The Burtons started it at, humbled by the wonderment of the power they wielded behind every purposeful utterance.
Ruby gasped, suddenly stricken with the understanding about the line she had been singing. Through The Aria, the words turned from the indecipherable script in the book to simple, clear as day common, then into trade speak, and back into the ancient text of the operatic elven language.
“A song sung sadly sails soothing sorrows,” she spoke slowly and certainly, and looked down from the rafters at Celia. She nodded back, and set her nape to the violin’s body once again. The reflection of the floral metal inlay cast a sigil onto her cheek in the shape of a thorned rose.
“Sing it in common,” Delilah said, their momentary victory spent and their trials resumed by her authority. She rested her hand on her hip, no longer conducting the words of her other self and smiled with a wry contention. Her sapphire and blue dress glimmered in the sunlight, her white hair, straight and set in its ways shimmered with satisfaction. “Sing it in any language that you think makes it more real. If it makes a difference to you, scream it aloud.”
Ruby bit her lip again, and set her legs wider apart as if she about to topple houses and fell armies with her voice. She closed her eyes for a moment, and pictured the elegant calligraphy of her own hand writing the words of the line in several different languages. She cycled through them again, knowing Delilah and Celia were glaring at her impatiently, full of hope and instruction. She settled on the right language, the one that felt correct and proper for the power she wielded, and opened her eyes.
With a long drawl, she cleared her throat, and let out a simple, virtuoso line that started high and ended up with pitch and perfection akin to the choirs of angels. She felt the heavens ablaze and the hells boiling.
“<A Carmen Sung Miserabile Vela Conforto Moestitia>!”
There were no sparks this time, and no balls of fire danced about the Prima Vista. Instead, there was only a sense of joy and completion. Ruby dared to look self-satisfied as she opened her eyes, but when Celia set her head eschew to prepare another rendition from her violin, and Delilah tapped her foot, her short lived hopes that her lessons for the day were over died as quickly as the first feeble spark she had conjured.
“Good,” Delilah said flatly. “You have finally understood page one of that tome, and one of the most fundamental rules of blade singing, or indeed, of any form of musical based magic and performance.”
“Indulge me,” Ruby said broodily, like an immature child spoiled rotten.
Delilah smiled, and turned on a heel to stare at her reflection in the gallery mirror. She traced her gaze over the crates and rails of props and clothing that it mirrored from the far side of the performance space and thought for a moment. Ruby caught her smile and rolled her eyes; she was being tormented and tested further still.
“I am not going to ask nicely twice, Delilah. Please, just tell me.”
“It does not matter what language you sing it in, all that matters, is that you sing it.” The simplicity of her statement left Ruby utterly puzzled. Delilah only looked smugger than ever. “I think it is time to turn the page, you can reflect and ruminate on everything you learn later, when the sun is down and those infernal children come back from the docks!”
"You are so infuri-" she stopped herself as she realised her mistake. If she was going to accuse Delilah of anything, she would only be in fact accusing herself. She scrunched her face up and stuck out her tongue at her elder before turning her attention back to the pages of the book as she was told.
Celia chuckled, and drew one last note from the violin to disband the dark conductor back to the shadows. She set it down carefully before sitting clumsily back onto the edge of the stage to continue offering impartial advance from the dusty side-lines. Her heels kicked the front of the stage, repeated little knocks to Ruby's nerves.
"'How to Sing Free.'" Ruby read the title of the second page, which was a block of hastily scribbled text with spidery accents and flourishes in gold. It was an elegant work all the same, compared to the usual hand written notes and hand me down copies of battered plays they had rehearsed from a thousand times.
"Read on," Delilah instructed, turning once more to look in the mirror. She held her hands with a matronly dignity clasped together behind her back, and took on an air of supervision that was more obvious than her smarmy vigour. "To roughly the seventh line."
Ruby did so, but at the same time, she wondered how Delilah knew the contents of the book so well, when she had never seen it, nor as far as the Crimson Mistress knew, set eyes on its contents. "To truly sing on the stage, to drive audiences into frenzy and to lull them into the heart of the opera, one must learn to sing free and unrestrained. One, in equal measure, must also learn to sing whilst bound, constrained by fear, pressure or mistrust."
The second half of the page, and as Ruby looked on, the next four pages were taken up with a complicated melody and a musical arrangement set to a simple repeating line she had practised before. It was a canto, and it was elegant and poetic, and utterly out of Ruby's vocal range.
"Not so," Delilah turned suddenly, catching Ruby's puzzled and frustrated look in the reflection in the mirror.
"Pardon?" She looked up guiltily.
"It is not out of your vocal range at all, which is precisely the point of this exercise."
She did not know how she had been so easy to read, or what talent Delilah possessed to allow her to read her mind, but she could only muster a silent opening and closing of her mouth in protest.
"I know what you were thinking because that is exactly what I thought when I first read it, two centuries ago." She stepped closer and prodded a finger at the first note. "Look, those two initials." She tapped the paper to reiterate, and Ruby stared closer at the small wispy pencil marks next to the first staccato.
"D...B..." she looked at Delilah, then at Celia. "How in the damnations?"
"Exciting, is it not?" Celia said mockingly, her smile growing brighter by the minute.
Delilah waited for the shock to set in then stepped back. Ruby tried to calculate just how they had laid their claim to her possessions, even before they had returned to the surface of Althanas via her singing. Something, she guessed, was afoot.
"Exciting? Possibly, but I expect confusing is the more likely."
"Everything about us, and thus, everything about you," Delilah jabbed a finger at Ruby's chest, "is a cycle. It is the way of the Tantalum, and the way of Tantalus."
"A fact I seem to be unable to escape, and something I am sure Lucian is laughing maniacally about in whatever hell his soul is resting in."
Ruby's dry wit cut the conversation short with a reminder of who had sundered their lives so much. They looked at one another in turn and sighed in unison. The sun was now directly overhead, and Ruby looked up through the criss-cross of sunbeams at the blue skies and counted the distant specks of black that marked the passing of gulls.
"Those books were once mine, and when I died, I expect some wayward adventurer took them and somehow, fate perhaps, they ended up in Celia's possession a century later."
"I remember them well."
"Why did you write your name there, in the same place?"
"Because, we slowly started to regain our memories of our past lives. You started, or rather Winifred Burton started long before Duffy, Arden or Lillith. We were fortunate, but cursed to remain in silence until we gathered enough evidence to be certain."
Celia stepped in, "so we left our names there, each of us in turn. You will find two other signatures in that book, though we cannot remember who they belonged to."
Ruby closed the tome and studied the ornate cloth cover with interest. She remembered back to the day she had brought them, on her morning errands about the upper-class shopping heart of Scara Brae's northern quarter. The gentlemen who had sold them to her had seemed rather keen to ensure she brought them, the flirtation had been obvious then, but now she seemed to understand.
"Full-circle..." she mumbled, running her finger along the creased spine and the two iron clasps decorated with golden wire inlay spirals with a passive interest.
"Does that mean I can read the language in my mind because you have already learnt it?" She looked at Delilah with a sudden wisdom, as if she had been stricken with a genius, perhaps slightly mad idea. From the older Ruby's smile, she guessed that she was correct, and then, in that moment, a spark crackled into life in her mind.
"Does that mean everything you two know, I know as well?"
Celia nodded, and Delilah smiled. Together, they spoke a single line laced with hidden meaning. The contrast between Celia's youth and Delilah's age still irked Ruby, who in her mind was strikingly in the middle between glorious beauty, and the haggard age yet quite contented with wisdom. She did not like to be reminded how she would one day appear.
"Everything that was and is to be, rests within the silver sea of The Aria. It is the reason Duffy can live as another life, and why Lillith can draw upon the customs of her ancestors with perfect recall. Deja vu, you might say, is very much the true nature of your talents."
"That does not explain why we all manifest our memories differently, though?"
Celia shook her head, and slipped from the stage to stand by Delilah's side. Ruby only felt more nauseous as they drew closer together. They stood practically mirroring one another, though clashing in stark shades of canary yellow and aubergine purple. She got the sense that this conversation had happened countless times before, each time with different past lives and ages of herself. The concept was mind boggling, but given their previous endeavours and their complex lives, it was not entirely beyond her understanding.
"That is part of Wainwright's only good gift to you. He gave you all a destiny, and through your connection to The Aria you have the power to fulfil that purpose."
Ruby pursed her lips. She realised now the true purpose of this lecture was not to teach her the art of the blade singer, she seemed to be making quick progress towards being able to dance a vibrato of death and conjure her songs to her blade for their urgency to be warranted. She walked slowly over to the rail of dressed behind her. With a stoop, she rested the book on the floorboards and started to rifle through the many different memories in rainbow shades with careful movements.
"What purpose would that be...then?" She spoke carefully, and inquisitively, and looked over her shoulder with a coy grin.
"If we knew that, Ruby, we would tell you." Celia and Delilah both darted daggers at Ruby's back, which she felt as a wave of pressure and condemning critique. The ice cold steel of their damning look oddly felt reassuring.
Ruby turned quickly, pulling a long red dress with leather straps laced about the waist and short, well cut sleeves from the rail in a flurry of colour as she did so. She held it up to her body and started to dance as if she were the belle of the ball.
"Will I be a princess?" She said mockingly, with enthusiasm sickeningly smothering her words. She dropped the dress with disdain, and scotched back to the rail to pick another costume.
"Ruby..." Celia said softly.
"Or perhaps a pauper, clad in rags in a castle scullery?" The long tattered rags of the pauper's daughter from Lysander's Flock appeared in her hands, and she tucked the hanger under her chin to make mock tears with scrunched up fists. The pretend sobbing only grated Celia's nerves further.
"Ruby!" She said without as much restraint.
Ruby stopped, and dropped the dress after a few moments of guilt ridden contemplation. The Prima Vista found itself suddenly without warmth and emotion.
"We do not know what will happen to us...or when the end for the troupe will be..." She crossed her hands over her waist to mirror Delilah's stance.
"Though...we hope that giving you the gifts that gave us purpose and the knowledge we possess will lead you to someone who does know."
"Or perhaps, to something that might." Celia walked to the stage and slid her violin case aside. Resting behind it was something Ruby did not expect to see, at least not in this life, if not in many lives to come. The small book was red, stained leather from Dheathain she guessed, and locked with a dehlar clasp that required a peculiar type of key to open.
"That is the missing copy of The Phoenix & the Bard..." She whispered, as if the words were forbidden, or that she did not quite believe what she was saying.
The troupe had been searching for it for so long it had become almost a fantasy, a legendary pursuit of something unobtainable. Ruby had always imagined the day they finally found it, but she had not imagined it would in fact come to find her. The irony of her circumstances left her flabbergasted, and she practically shook with delirium. She pinched herself to check she was in fact awake, and took a long gasp of air to remind herself that she was in Scara Brae, the salt, dust and faint smell of lavender proved it so.
"Do not do it," Delilah cut her short when she saw Ruby step forwards. As if her words held a power of their own, Ruby stopped, opened her mouth to speak, but stepped back towards the pile of clothes cast to the floor in her brief moment of mania.
"It may well be the solution to the troupe's greatest mystery, and indeed, to your dreams Ruby." Celia picked up the book and weighed it with a gentle toss. "It cannot however be read."
Ruby remembered the day Duffy had described the five versions of the book to her, almost three years ago in fact. It had been on that very stage, almost where Celia was standing as she spoke that he had revealed the deepest secret the Thayne Tantalus had to offer them. "That book," she continued her stream of thought aloud, "contains the final chapters not just of the book, but of our own lives."
She stepped towards Celia, Delilah's power over her weakening to the point of breaking. Her hands were shaking, struggling to contain her desire to reach out and tear at the clasp.
"You bring me here to learn cheap parlour tricks and vibrant canto knowing all the while you had it?" Her face turned sour, and she turned from one self to another expecting an answer.
Delilah lowered her head glumly, and went about picking up the dresses and returning them to the rail in silence. Ruby stared at her, and when she realised the answer would come not from her elder, but her younger self, she turned ablaze and glared at the violinist. "Tell me, what possible sadistic nature could have lead you to this?"
"You cannot open the book, Ruby. Do you not remember what Duffy told you?"
"I can try!" She roared, her hands rising as if they were beating wings and flames were pouring from every flutter of the feathers in her hair. "How dare you toy with my life in that way?"
"Your life?" Celia roared back, stamping her heel in a way that was all too familiar to Ruby. "How dare you be so selfish, you insolent witch! It is not your life, it is ours!" She jabbed a finger at Delilah, who had set the last dress on the rail and turned slowly to look at Ruby. "Do not dare lecture us about living, we have died a thousand times in our own misery to give you the chance to have the life we always wanted!"
"Stop it!" Delilah interjected.
Ruby, now red with anger and rocking on her heels with the rage she was struggling to contain turned to her elder self. Celia, sodden with her sudden outburst sat on the edge of the stage with a slump, as if anger was beyond her usual form, something alien and strange and intoxicating.
"This will do no good for any of us, can you not see that?" Her expression was one of caring mothering love, but it held a certain sort of knowing to it that told Ruby enough was enough.
"My life, our life, it is ours for living and I will no-"
"Ruby..." Delilah approached her younger self slowly and without any threatening movements. "There is a reason for everything in life. We do what we do," she nodded to Celia, "because it is the best way for you to learn the things you need to learn to succeed." She rested her hands on Ruby's shoulders and squeezed them affectionately.
"I just wish you would both be clear with me. Forgo the riddles and the metaphors, just tell me what I need to do!" She pleaded with a questioning tone to her words, and an inner shine to her eyes. She bit back the tears but was fooling no-one.
Delilah breathed heavily through her nostrils, which flared as she took several deep breaths to steady her racing heart. She patted Ruby one last time before stepping back and nodding in agreement.
"Very well."
"Delilah?" Celia looked uncertain.
"No Celia, Ruby is right. We have played games with her for long enough. If she wishes to know the truth, and how she can open that," she pointed at the book, "then sit, Ruby." Her hand moved to the edge of the stage to Celia's left, and as she moved towards it. Delilah followed with signs of old age in every step.
They sat in a row, and with their buttocks safely perched on the Prima Vista's heart, Delilah passed Ruby the Phoenix & the Bard and gestured for her to try and open the lock. She took it feverishly, and it was instantly warming to touch. She almost felt as if she had been destined to open it, and they had been reunited like long lost lovers. It smelt of cinnamon and ash, and was much lighter than it's size suggested.
"It cannot be that ha-" Ruby stuck her nails under the clasp and pulled. She found herself suddenly wanting of the strength, and tried again, practically pulling it off its hinges. "How is that possible?" She asked in defeat, holding the red leather up to the midday sun and tracing the gold inlay on the cover which depicted a phoenix rising from a harp. It was so detailed it practically jumped off the page to burn the city down with its cry.
"That," Celia began, taking the book from Ruby's hands gently but with authority. She set it down next to her violin and crossed her legs over one another with elegant squalor.
"Is where we must go back to the beginning..." Delilah continued, and Ruby set her hands on her lap and let the tension fall from her tired body and aching chest. She had done with the lies, and was ready to listen to what she herself had to say.
"Look up." Delilah said sharply.
Ruby glanced up at the roof hesitantly, then dropped her head with a look of uncertainty.
"At what?"
"Look, up," she repeated with a vigour that suggested she did not wish to repeat herself again.
Ruby sighed and craned her neck again. She took in the ironwork that kept the glass panels together, which were turning green through age as the copper deposits in the sealant was corrupted by many years of Scara Braerain. As the seconds turned into minutes, she started to grow impatient. She shifted uncomfortably as the tension on her shoulders began to hurt.
"What do you see?" Celia asked. She watched Ruby with a curiosity that could rival the most inquisitive of cats.
Ruby looked down at her younger self, "I see decay."
"Look again," Delilah said, tapping Ruby on the shoulder and jabbing a finger up.
Ruby turned her head skyward again, and instantly saw a change in the very fabric of the Prima Vista. The fading glory of the sun dome was replaced with shining golden supports and crystal clear glass, devoid of cracks and years of being replaced by slightly off colour panels. The patchwork sun was now red, orange and yellow, and looked as new as the day it had been...
"Good lord," Ruby muttered, dragging her gaze down to witness the Prima Vista as it had been nearly five centuries ago. "How?" She mumbled, looking at Celia then Delilah for answers. She felt like a child being shown heaven, and felt even more innocent beneath their experience and wisdom.
Delilah pointed over her shoulder, and Ruby followed her finger to the new carpet and the polished stage backdrop that depicted an ancient castle. Standing on the stage, as if they were casting their gaze back through time was a young woman clad in purple. Her hair was long, coming to a stop just below the shoulder and shining in the light of the sun. It was silver, almost, and Ruby recognised who she was looking at even before she turned to smile.
Ruby smiled back, but then as the younger Delilah waved to somebody behind her, standing in the doorway, she realised what day it was.
"The day Wainwright fell from Tantalus' grace..." she whispered with dread, and turned around slowly.
"Do not respond to anything you see, or you will destroy the illusion," Delilah whispered into Ruby's ear, and pushed her from the stage and together, Celia, Delilah and Ruby moved out of the way.
Wainwright stood in the doorway that lead down to the living room and the kitchen with his hand pressed against the frame and a smile on his face. His blonde fringe covered his eyes but Ruby knew the stare well. He wore a half-cloak, as Duffy did, and a simple set of vermilion pantaloons and a doublet of golden fabric laced with leather circles. He was, as Ruby recalled, beautiful and charismatic as he was in death. She snarled silently, and looked back up to the stage at Delilah's coy grin.
"It is good to see you safely returned to us, Wainwright." She whispered softly. Her voice trailed off into an echo, and Ruby shivered. Whatever magic Delilah wielded to show her memories was cold, fearful, and decadent. She did not like it. She felt strangely disconnected from the scene, but felt the warmer climate and the sense of anticipation in the room coming from the young Delilah as if she were there for real.
"Did you think harm would come to me, young Miss?" His voice was a cocky arrangement of experience and egotistical mania, which exuded more confidence than style. He unhooked the clasp of his cloak and pulled it from his shoulders, to hang it on the end of the rail of costumes before walking slowly towards the steps at the front of the stage.
"There is always the possibility," she chuckled. She moved elegantly to the top of the steps to greet him with open arms, and he ascended on steps of air to embrace her.
As they hugged, Ruby looked away to admire the splendour of her home. The dusty carpet was bright red, the rafters almost new, the floorboards gleaming with delicate and attentive layers of linseed oil and beeswax polish. The tapestries and curtains which hung from the balcony around the circle dome overhead were still whole, and not tattered or torn by time's ignorant turn.
"Watch!" Celia prodded her in her ribs to drag her back out of her daydream, and she looked back at the lover's embrace.
"I have something for you...my love." Wainwright reached into the folds of his doublet and pulled out a small red book which was strikingly familiar to Ruby. She mouthed her surprise, and started to shake with the realisation that she had already read the contents of the Phoenix & the Bard.
"What is it?" Delilah asked, pretending as if she had not already read it. She took it with thankful fingers as she stepped back to inspect the cover. She ran her fingers over the clasp, and Ruby felt gold metal on her own fingertips, as if the memories were falling back into place.
She looked at the older Delilah with a worried look, laced with fear and welling terror. She had opened the book. She had read how the troupe would end, or perhaps live forever. She had seen with her own eyes what destiny had in store for all the Tantalum, and she had remembered now what had happened next.
Delilah read from the book aloud, and the dream seemed to slip forwards in time.
"No..." She touched her navel with her fingertips, and looked down at the front of her torn and well-worn house clothes. The circle of blood echoed through the ages, and she felt the pain Delilah felt as Wainwright drove his dagger deep into her soul. She cried as Delilah did, and they both fell forwards onto their knees in despair.
"Why..." Ruby whimpered, her knees stinging from the impact with the floorboards as she fell harshly and quickly. She looked down at the illusory wound, a sympathetic rally to Delilah's lost cause. She looked up through teary eyes at the scene before her as the sun set in a swift motion and the scene changed.
Wainwright stood over Delilah's corpse, her blood long cooled and her hair eschew from her agonising death. Celia and the older Delilah both stood by Ruby's side, a hand on either shoulder to keep her steady. They remained silent, and every time Ruby tried to look away, they squeezed and brought her back into the fold as a witness.
"My death is not the lesson, Ruby. Wainwright could not bear to witness me live after I read the contents of the book and learnt, as you did, and Celia did, and Duffy and all his past lives did of the truth."
"The truth?" She looked up at Delilah, eyes still streaming with tears but her hands steadied as she overcame the strange sensation of feeling herself die centuries ago.
"That we are all part of Wainwright, characters from the play...the books are part of us, and we are part of Wainwright, even though he is long dead."
Ruby understood. It had taken her many months to come to understand the meaning of their dilemma, how painful it was to learn of all of this, only to have those memories taken away when each of them died and was reborn.
"Everything comes full circle..." she muttered, reflecting back on the books she had brought and how each of her past lives had gone through the same strange tuition from ghostly echoes of former selves. She pictured Celia and Delilah, young and bright, receiving instruction from the people that came before them.
"Everything will forever cycle," Celia continued, and she gestured at Wainwright.
He bent down, weary eyed but possessing a dark aura, and removed the strands of hair from Delilah's peaceful face. He seemed to dote over her body, as if he regretted killing her. Slowly, that emotion faded, and he brought the dagger that Ruby recognised as Wainwright's Riposte up over his head. It remained there for several minutes, shaking slightly with every heavy breath from the one great bard's lips. She wondered what Duffy would do if he knew his most prized blade had once killed her...
As it fell, Ruby clutched her heart where the blade pierced Delilah's rib cage and tore once more through her soul. The three women who shared a single mind, screamed together.
"Rise, Delilah, love." He stepped back, hands covered in blood and teeth clenched. His vermilion clothing was stained redder still, and his boots scraped off the excess of blood which had stained the carpet in a wide blotch. "Live again, and again, and a thousand times until you love me true. Live a thousand years until you accept the truth, until the finale of our great play comes full circle and we embrace as one..."
Ruby gasped for breath, the strain and the voices screaming in her head overwhelming her. She felt every single time she had died, and been reborn anew in Wainwright's petty affections. She felt every single knife blow, every single accident, every single fireball, sword swing and axe blow that had taken her soul and shattered it further still.
"You remember, Ruby, because we remember. You remember, because you have lived this life too many times. Your soul shakes in anger at what has been done to it, and it has rebelled against its creation." Celia knelt and pushed the feathers from Ruby's hair. "You must be free of these memories, but to do that," she looked up at Delilah, who had shed a single tear.
"You must remember, you must grieve, and you must see what you did to start the cycle of breaking the chains." She pointed at her own death scene, and with a serene smile, she watched the corpse rise in a flurry of light and blue spiral sparks.
The young Delilah spun on invisible strings, and Wainwright cut his wrist with his dagger, drawing it slowly over his skin with a relish and a chuckle. As Delilah span for the third time, he reached out and ran his bloodied fingers over her forehead. The two bloods mingled, and with a series of convulsions, Delilah twitched, then fell in a slump to the floor in a bright eruption of white light. Ruby could have sworn it smelt of peppermint and olive oil.
They watched in wonder. She had remembered many of her past selves, but not this one. She started to realise how it was she had understood the writing in the book, and how she had felt the meaning of the High Elven text when she had never even been to the elven lands.
Slowly but surely, the woman that had been Delilah, and was now Ruby centuries later rose. Bones cracked, wounds healed, and hair shorted. Ears lengthened, souls burnt, heartbeats returned into her chest. With a powerful magic that had died with Lucian, the corpse of Delilah stood and became something entirely different.
"Rise, Liana, High Blade Singer of Raiera, and sing me a thousand lullabies of joy and praise!" Wainwright clapped his hands, and held out his hands to his new trinket.
"He damned a Thayne to craft a love that would always hate him..." Delilah muttered, scorning her own rejection and the suffering she had undertaken as penance to try and rid herself of the sorrow of knowing what she was.
"But Liana read the book too." Celia smiled, and the scene turned in time once more. The dark of the night was broken asunder with a new rising sun and the Prima Vista streamed from glory back to decadence and decay.
From the steps to their left a dashing young man with long black hair appeared, a spring in his step and a long blade in his hands. He wore a waistcoat and a white shirt, and plain trousers and work boots, and somehow, Ruby knew who it was without ever having seen him before.
"Wainwright!" He beamed a smile up at the stage, "You wanted to see me?"
The older image of the Once Great Bard looked over his shoulder, and his older face wrinkled with a telling smile.
"Yes, Lysander. I have a task for you, something that is most important..."
Ruby listened as the men talked of their troubles. She wrinkled her nose as they spoke of Celia, and she realised now that the images had drifted to the violinist's memories. This was sixty or so years on from the first scenes, but from the way they spoke, Celia had not yet been created.
"You must find this blade-singer, and end her cursed reign as a self-proclaimed minstrel. She carriedswith her a book, a red tome with a phoenix ablaze on its cover..."
"Which is where our story begins at last," Delilah gestured for Ruby to stand. "Wainwright thought he could change the cycle by changing the outcome of the play. He rewrote his book, shaping Liana into something that she would never be."
"What did she do?" Ruby asked with a genuine enthusiasm for knowing. The smell of the stage and the blood had faded from her nostrils, and as the image changed, the blood on her clothes vanished and her hands steadied.
"She read the book against Wainwright's wishes, and travelled to Raiera to try and stop him." Celia stepped forwards, and clapped her hands together three times.
Ruby rocked as the entire world turned upside, shattered, and fell away. She resisted the urge to vomit as she adjusted to the new scene, and she realised she was still standing in the Prima Vista, but it was the present day.
It took her a moment to recover, but when she did, she stood upright and renewed her questioning with a heightened sense of determination. "Did she succeed?"
Delilah nodded, and pointed to the book where it still remained on the dusty red carpet, dead centre to where Delilah had died, and where Duffy had thrown up several times, and where a hundred playwrights, singers and actors had performed all the many tales written by the Tantalum and his merry band of thespians over five centuries of heart ache, joy and grand adventure.
Ruby smiled with a cocky grin. Now at last she understand what it was they were trying to teach her.
"Liana sang, and she closed the book forever..."
Celia and Delilah returned their hands to their other selves' shoulders and embraced her with a look of relief on their faces. They embraced in a three way hug and let the realisation wash over them.
"We gift to you this lesson, and our knowledge, our weapons and our memories so that you can find a way to open the book..."
Celia whispered softly into Ruby's ear exactly what she wanted to hear. "You must learn Liana's history and art, to learn of the fate of the troupe before it is too late..."
The last few words hung ominously in the air before Ruby pulled away with a terrified expression on her face. The sun, despite shining on her pale and perfect complexion could not do away with the contempt she started to show.
"Too late...for what?"
"Before it is too late for you to change your destiny..." Celia said her line as if she had rehearsed for centuries, but still could not muster the passion to deliver it with conviction. The cold, harsh reality of the early afternoon chill rose goose bumps on Ruby's skin, and she shook gently for several minutes as the anger in her subsided. They had been playing with here for so long she had even started to play the game, but now she was left back where she had started at first light.
"I am somewhat confused, I thought the book was our destiny?"
"The book tells you how you will die, how the troupe will die."
"We are immortal, how can it tell us when we are going to die if death is never ours to know?"
Ruby thought long and hard about her question in silence, realising that Celia and Delilah's lack of response was another part of the constant testing and scheming they were pressuring her with. She looked around the stage room for inspiration, but found only more confusion and a depressing weight setting down on her shoulders.
"I am going to die..."
Her walls started to crack, like the pillars that held the Prima Vista upright and the rickety windows and crumbling plaster. Little pieces of her world fell away into the abyss of a rising depression, and like a window struck with a stone, she shattered.
"Please tell me this is not happening?" She pleaded, her eyes sparkling with another round of salty tears. She wiped her cheeks until they became red in a futile attempt to clean away the layers of emotion that she had shed in the course of her lesson and the rise of the sun.
"I am sorry...Ruby," Delilah said softly, offering a tissue pulled hastily from the depths of flowing sleeves with a whip of the wrist.
"Really, we are," Celia added.
Ruby took the handkerchief with a nod of thanks and wiped her face free of her weakness. She stood slowly, and let the shaking fade slower still. The three Burton women stood in a loose triangle in perfect silence for almost five minutes, with no movement or motive to pass comment. The ragged tapestries rippled in the wake of unseen breezes, the distant hubbub of the city fell down in a dull echo through the sun dome, and time turned.
"Maybe," Ruby burst into mania, her hands flapping with the sudden onset of a mad idea, "maybe we can write a new chapter?"
Celia shook her head, "No, Ruby. What is written, shall come to pass, and what shall come to pass cannot be undone."
"How can we die if Lucian sav-"
The fragments of her defences crumbled into dust, to be lifted into the air and away on gusts of hopelessness. She let her hands fall to her sides with a slouch, and recalled what she had seen in Delilah's memories. He had been there, each time they had died, or been responsible for their deaths with his own hand or the manipulation of another's. His power willed them back to life, his providence and his ego kept each of the five founding members of the Tantalum troupe on Althanas, chained to a destiny that he had created. So why could they not do the same?
"Lucian is gone, Ruby. His magic is fading, his curse, lifting." Delilah walked to the edge of the stage and picked up the book into one hand, and the violin into the other. She left the bow where it rested, and returned to Ruby's side. "These, however, are very much real." She held them both out, offering them as small reconciliatory tokens for everything they had failed to be and do.
"With my violin and the book, and with the lesson we taught you this morning, you perhaps above all others might find a way..."
Ruby stared at the violin pensively. It was a master-work of musical technology, legendary, in fact, on three continents. It had been responsible for the deaths of a thousand Empire soldiers in the first civil war, and those same strings, untarnished for decades by imperfection or a bum note had called out the death lament by Lysander's side when he had fallen on the plains of Corone.
"What use is it now?"
"You cannot give up on the life you have earned Ruby, we have undergone such hardships, all of us, for you to simply lay down your burdens at Fate's whim. Fight it, fight it with all your being!"
"It is the only reason to live for," Celia said, as she pulled something from her hair and gathered the many pins and combs from the weave she kept immaculately in place. "Take these, too, they keep the violin tuned and clean and in harmony with its owner." She held them out as a second offering, fingers shaking with excitement and anticipation. She, like Delilah, and all the other selves of Ruby Burton had been waiting an age for this day to come.
"We have been waiting, Ruby, for us to finally realise we are strong, and we are worth living for. You did not give up on life, and you refused to let Lucian take that most important of thoughts from you, despite it all."
Ruby took the pins reluctantly, and placed them in the large pocket of her pinafore. She embraced the cold handle of the violin and rested it in her left hand loosely by her side, and then took the book in her right. She waited with a childish slump in her shoulders for the inevitable metaphor to incite another emotional surge in all of them, but was not disinterested when Celia and Delilah spoke their riposte in unison.
"You did not give up on hope."
"Hope?"
With a trembling hand, Ruby raised the book and shook it at her other selves like a nagging finger. She had about had it with talk of emotion and destiny and being something greater than she knew she could ever be.
"Do not you dare stand there and tell me I still have hope. I gave up on dreams and desires and possibilities long ago!"
"But you did not!" Exclaimed Delilah, who swatted the book aside with a quick deflection and a well-aimed slap to Ruby's hand. She pulled it back, abash with guilt. "I am sorry," she said, an apology that shocked Ruby more than any revelation of the day.
"Without love...passion, happiness, all the things that have been so short lived in my life." Ruby thought for a moment before correcting herself. "All those things that were missing or taken from you in our life, there is nothing to live for. Conflict is no reason to live, and no joy to wage war with."
She thought back through all the many summers she had spent blissfully unaware of the days to come, and how she and Duffy had spent them in ignorance of everything that had transpired before they existed. Ruby was lying to herself, but she concealed it well; she still hoped that one day, the troupe could forget all this ever happened, and go back to the way it was...drinking almond scented gin and giggling heart to heart with her sisters.
"We have no choice."
"We always have a choice!"
"Ruby...listen to Delilah," Celia tried to reason, but she could see the feathers in Ruby's hair were slowly starting to glow with emotion, heat waves simmered the air around her body and started to crack reality. "You are stronger than us because you still love, and you live with the knowledge that your love will always be unrequited. We could not suffer that life, and we paid the price to be free of it."
Ruby gave them both cautious glances, her lips pursed to contain her outcry whilst she made certain her memories were not deceiving her. Did they mean the bond between her and Duffy, or something she was too blind to see? Tired and hungry, she pushed between them and set a quick pace to the stage.
"Whatever happened with you and Lysander, Celia, is not the same as me and Duffy," she set the violin gently down onto the dusty red carpet and rested the book next to it as if it were a treasured relic being laid to rest in a museum. "We still love one another," she breathed a long breath to calm herself, then turned with a smile. "Just in a different, more manageable way."
"You cannot hide the truth from us Ruby, what is, shall always be. Delilah and Defoe were destined to fall in love, a cycle which has been broken in a long line of torments by Lucian ever since Delilah's eyes first wandered from Wainwright's."
"You expect me to make the same mistake, to turn a blind eye to what should be, even if what should be is not what I want?" She raised her eyebrow and tried to contain her amusement. "No, I did not think so, and that is the end of it," with a snap, she folded her arms across her chest and leant back onto the edge of the stage. For the first time since sunrise, the Crimson Mistress took centre stage.
"We expect you to do as we did."
Ruby blinked.
"We expect you to read the Phoenix & the Bard and make up your own mind about wherever or not your life as is should be as it will be."
"A destiny, after all, is only set in stone. Stone can be carved, eroded, eradicated." The retraction of their earlier comment about futility gave Ruby an ironic sense of hope.
Delilah's voice took on a soothing tone, a silver-tongued matriarchal dominance to match her spindly split ends and her spidery figure. Ruby bore a hole in her elder's chest for several minutes, considering the implications of her well placed metaphor and how much she truly wanted to see what was to become of the troupe in the years to come. The fact she could be so easily manipulated did not irk her as much as knowing it and being unable to resist it did. She unfolded her arms and took a firm grip of the stage's rough planks. She used the connection with the dirty, chipped wood to ground herself back into the familiar.
"I will find a way to open the book, but only to see for myself."
Celia and Delilah both smiled.
"Good," they said in unison, walking towards one another and holding one another's hands in a friendly and cheerful embrace. "Then we have given you everything we were destined to give."
The air immediately felt warmer, and blue spirals of ribbon light flickered into view about the two's feet. Ruby's eyes brightened, reflecting The Aria's signature and her own inner screaming. The ribbons were the same to the ones that appeared when Blank vanished, or when Duffy called on Lysander, or when Lillith played her ghostly instruments.
"Wait!" She reached out as if a loved one were falling away from her and stumbled forwards.
Celia and Delilah Burton turned their heads to their sister, and smiled at her with all the warmth they could muster. From the feet up they began to disappear. The ribbons encircling them in an ever decreasing concentric ring seemed to erase their very presence from existence. From nowhere a drum beat sounded, heavy thuds of ominous sound both primal and joyful in equal measure.
"You cannot just leave me!" Ruby screamed, her voice sore with singing and sorrow and sadness.
As the lights neared their waists, they let one another go and turned to face Ruby proper. Celia bowed, then Delilah, and they both pointed over Ruby's shoulder to the centre of the stage. Ruby knew that if she turned around, they would not be there when she turned again, but with a trembling lip and a blurry well of tears in her eyes, she did it anyway.
"It cannot be..." she muttered, even more shocked than she could ever have expected by the sight of the silver blade. It's tip rested embedded at the exact centre of the shadow cast by the stained glass sun. It was a fitting altar for such a parting gift.
The drum beat stopped and Celia and Delilah returned to the recesses of Ruby's mind.
Ruby blinked. Her thoughts were racing far too quickly for her to compose herself for long enough to cry. Her heart beat violently, so heavily she flinched each time it pounded in its cage.
The Prima Vista suddenly felt cold and lonely again, destructive and bedraggled and ignored. Celia and Delilah, though there time on Althanas had been short, had injected a new lease of life into the red brick and mortar of the old town house, and given everyone, even Blank, something to smile about, something to get up for.
"Lucrezia..." she whispered, finally overcoming her dumbfounded state of being. She stepped forwards and pulled herself up onto the stage, not caring to look back at the empty floor lest her composure fall apart again. With a heave, she mounted the red carpet and walked over to the blade. "The Sister sword to the Katarhna..."
When Celia and Lysander had fought alongside the Rangers, it had been this very blade that had sung brightly alongside Celia's voice and violin. It had claimed countless lives and sung many fables of her victories, but had vanished into the mud beneath a thousand marching feet and a countless number of seasons when her body had been left to rot and her mind had been reborn anew, far away in Scara Brae.
Ruby realised now that the single edged blade, with it's simple black leather hilt and the delicate gold spiral along it's blade was more than just a sword. It, like the book behind her and the violin, was a symbol of something stronger than hope. Celia and Delilah's lessons had taught her how to be free of her own chains, to be free of the captivity her own mind had set her in. She reached out with trembling fingers and rested them on the pommel of the sword, and bit her lip. It was warm to the touch from its basking in the sun, and warm to her soul for returning full circle back to her sword arm.
"I do not even know how to use it..." she said plainly, but somehow, if she could learn to speak elven and learn the meaning of foreign words through singing, she assumed she could call on all the many lives she had led to learn to stave away danger and protect her family with whatever strengths the blade possessed.
She pulled it gently, and as it came up from the floor, it let out a delicate, long and pitch perfect operatic flourish, as if a soul were bound to it, as if it were destined to sing with every slash, strike and riposte. Ruby felt it's warmth become something else, and the passion of five centuries of use ran up her arm, struck her heart and mind in unison, and instantly she sang along with it.
“<A Carmen Sung Miserabile Vela Conforto Moestitia>!”
“<A Carmen Sung Miserabile Vela Conforto Moestitia>!”
“<A Carmen Sung Miserabile Vela Conforto Moestitia>!”
As she sang, each repetition of the line grew louder and louder and more angelic in nature. Ruby felt herself slowly rise from the floor on a thermal of energy. Her arms fell outwards and her neck craned backwards and she span, as if she were hanging on tenterhooks and was powerless to stop the invisible tendrils that paraded her to the dark shadows and the thousands of characters that hung lifelessly on iron rails and draped over collapsing oak crates.
Her eyes burst into flame, and she convulsed violently. She sang again, and again, and again, and again. Each line took on a new lease of life, each a new accent, each a new tone as if every time the song had been sung over the course of five hundred years were being repeated. Celia, by Lysander's side, singing to bring him back. Delilah, by Defoe's command, struggling to tear Wainwright asunder. Ruby, at the edge of the cliffs, singing to bring those she loved back to her side.
The Last Song rang through the Prima Vista like a herd of flaming stallions, bouncing merrily over every surface, over every dusty sofa, every tattered tapestry and every well-worn cobblestone in the cold and lonely corners of the troupe's beloved home. Each time Ruby convulsed, she waved her arms as if conducting the fires herself, and a new strand of flame shot out from her fingertips and turned into a new and fantastical apparition of the many characters that resided in her mind.
Wainwright danced on the balcony. Duffy back flipped from the rafters. Pete sparred with the street orphans at the top of the stairs and Lillith and Blank fought strange daemons of fire, licked with the scent of dragons and treachery.
“<A Carmen Sung Miserabile Vela Conforto Moestitia>!”
She stopped singing and instantly the fires died. She dropped to the floor and stumbled to her knees, sword arm held out like a shield and head racing with nausea. She blinked, as was customary for her slow mind, and stared amidst her gasps for air at the small nick in the carpet where the blade had rested.
"I...understand....now" she practically screamed with joy between the twangs of pain that racked her lungs. Some of the flames had not been illusory, and her chest burnt with agony, sated only by the long drafts of the stale air.
"Your souls..." an image of Celia and Delilah and the other entire many Ruby's flashed before her eyes, and she sat upright. "Your souls are not his." She clenched her fists and smiled, face red with strain and body shaking.
"Your souls are mine!"
One Month Later
The account of how I came to be in Raiaera is a long, but poignant tale. Reading back over the last few pages of my journal I cannot help but feel as if the lessons learned were only a fraction of the parables, metaphors and ideas that have been planted in my mind by Celia and Delilah. Even now, I am stricken with momentary revelations of circles within circles, cogs grinding against cogs as a new wave of euphoria and understanding hits me.
The elven kingdoms are strange lands, and without a shadow of a doubt, I am glad to have taken up the challenge set by my other selves. The road was long, and the people scared to even admit I exist and walk amongst them, but a new adventure can only lead to new discoveries, and wielding the memories of Liana, I cannot help but be pulled down stream in a constant wave of recollections. Each street corner I turn is like living through her eyes, and seeing what she saw all those years ago has slowly pieced together a tapestry of memories with which I can start my search.
She sang a song, and closed the book that rests close to my heart and never strays far from my sight. I sang a song, that set in motion the new act of my life, and I will remember what I sang and how I sang it. Even if that means I have to learn every note of every song and every crenelation of this strange and enigmatic art form called blade singing.
I make first for Anebrilith, to see what I can make of Liana's history there. Someone, no doubt a bard himself, will be able to remember if she ever did great deeds amongst he people. Then, I make for Istien University, where the High Council of the Bards is seated, and where I hope to begin my tuition proper. I hope to show them the trappings of my art and work hard as their pupil to unlock the secrets I hold in my skull.
I have left Duffy in charge of the troupe, he is more than capable and with Lillith and Blank in Akashima I am sure he is enjoying the peace and quite and the time he has been given to return to the streets, to live his life as he always intended...utterly carefree and semi-catatonic through the long zenith of spring and summer. It is sad, though I think of it longingly, to consider the Tantalum momentarily torn apart by circumstance. Somehow though, I feel in my bones that even if we are to die, and I cannot undo what was written by Wainwright long ago, the troupe will still live on as was the Thayne's intention.
We must spend what time we have left ensuring the next generation of Scara Brae Thespians are strong and loving as we are, so that they can pass our exploits down through the ages, and that our names will truly, without a question of doubt, be immortal, eternal and engrained in the very musical bars of the song of life.
In the grande tradition of the theatre...
To be continued!
Spoils:
Skills:
Blade Singer:
Sword Play: Below Average
Elven: Below Average
Play Instrument (Violin): Below Average
Equipment:
The Violin De Manado (The Siren’s Call): (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?20865-A-Hero-Returns-(Celia-Burton-NPC)&highlight=) This ancient violin is enchanted and bound with the sound of the angel’s voices. It is wrought with delicate artwork of ivy and rose petals and battle scenes witnessed by Celia during her life, it is master crafted, and almost without peer anywhere in the world. The bow is ornate, and has a thin metal wire interlaced with the string that connects with similar threads on the violin strings and the guard. Through delicate resonance it can maintain its note and thus its sound for much longer than a normal instrument. The enchantments do the following, once per thread each:
• Sustain: Ruby can play a note or a small arrangement and release the enchantment. This will sustain the last note of the arrangement as if it were an electrical instrument, to allow the workings of a spell song extra length or for it to carry on momentarily whilst she prepares a new arrangement or flees etc.
• Repetition: Ruby can play a loop of eight bars length into the violin and it will repeat it for four plays even if she does not play the violin, it will continue to play and maintain the spell song or music.
• Vibrato Staccato: Ruby can overplay one song, increasing its effect but this will play with such violence and speed that one of the strings will break with an almighty twang, and she must exile the violin for at least two posts or one hour, whichever is more reasonable in the context of the thread, before she can re-conjure it.
The Trappings of Madrigals (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?20865-A-Hero-Returns-(Celia-Burton-NPC)&highlight=) (The Siren’s Silk): Various articles of jewellery, pins and hair clips, which can be removed and used as tuning forks should her violin ever become damaged or over used. There is a chain of silver links around her waist which can be attached to the violin to sling it over her shoulder.
Lucrezia, The Sword of the Eastern Isles: (http://www.thevikingstore.co.uk/ekmps/shops/thevikingstore1/images/larp-sword-bladesinger-%5B2%5D-727-p.jpg) A light weight, single edged sword with a curved tip, forged four centuries ago by Rairan singer smiths and laced with a golden spiral and unicorn hairs. It conducts the wielder's voice, and is highly conductive to blade singing magic and enchantment. It is enchanted and bound to The Aria, and when it is swung, has the potential to sing in a voice of it's own. It possesses a subdued conciousness, which will awaken slowly as it grows in power and use and as it remembers it's name and purpose.
The International
06-11-11, 03:20 PM
Review for Your Souls Are Mine
I’m going to put a disclaimer up before I start this. Since you have some of my notes from earlier reviews I won’t be as verbose as before. Your ability to write a good story with such brevity is admirable, but like I've said before you've go a lot of space that you can use. Most of my notes do not point out any strong mistakes, but ways to take your stories to the next level.
Plot Construction 20 /30
Story 8 /10 – The energy of the thread was well managed here. It escalated from what looked to be a casual training session with a bunch of women who have a close but turbulent dynamic (reminds me of my Villeneuve women) to a very serious look into the past and a possible foreshadow of the future. It started to plateau just before the two Ladies of Lives Passed left, and I thought it would be falling action from that point on, but then you surprised me as Ruby began to sing again. I was surprised that your signature poetic beginning wasn’t here this time, but its absence did not take away from this story. What I would like to see is a few more literary techniques attempted here. You played with the cliffhanger and the twist in the last story that I read from you, and you gave us a good subtle cliffhanger here which begged the question ‘how will Ruby and Duffy work out with this little revelation?’ Try some other literary techniques like Checkov’s Gun and In Medias Res.
Strategy 6 /10 – You used your PC’s skills and abilities to advance the storyline even without there being a fight (well… at least not a physical one). Very nice. I don’t think I have any notes for you here because other categories may have helped in giving Ruby the opportunity to do even more.
Setting 6 /10 – The setting in this situation was very nice as the Prima Vista was almost a character itself. I like the fact that you had Ruby snatching at the dresses when she was reaching the peak of her frustration, and how the ladies used the features of the theatre to subtly assert themselves in a truly passive aggressive way. The setting did leave me asking questions. How big is the theatre, where in Scara Brae is it exactly, so on and so forth.
Characterisation 19 /30
Continuity 7 /10 – It fits like a glove within the continuity of your own story arch, as do all your stories, but you did something here that you did with In Her Web She’s Caught, and I really liked it. You connected it with Althanas lore by making one of the past incarnations a High Bard of Raiaera. I’m glad you didn’t isolate yourself like so many players around here do. I’ve now seen you link your characters to a critical part of Althanas’ past. Now it’s time to make them a critical part of Althanas’ present and future. I think you have the intelligence and creativity to not only touch on Althanas lore, but to significantly expand upon it. That will make this score higher.
Interaction 6 /10 – It was very good considering the small amount of space you gave yourself. You melded your character’s actions with the scenery and each other. I don’t think much else can be said here because room for improvement has to do with other categories.
Character 7 /10 – I feel like you have more of a grasp on Ruby than anyone else in your cast. While you do a very good job at capturing the persona of the three ladies involved (emotion, body language, motifs etc.) I would have liked a bit more in the way of a physical description of all three of them. Now this is not to say that you need to kill the pacing by throwing down a paragraph for each of them. Do what you did with the setting and find places where you can blend it in with the progression of the story.
Writing Style 19 /30
Creativity 7 /10 – Like I said in that extremely long Story category it would be great to see some advanced over reaching literary techniques for an entire thread. That will get the score here higher, but what will also raise it is something I’ve said before… more. The average length per post in this thread was short, but I also understand that you were writing this while I was reviewing your last one, so you didn’t have much opportunity to change anything. One extra paragraph per post (cumulatively! You don’t have to tack one on to the end of each post) will start to give you the space you need to raise the score of every category.
Mechanics 6 /10 – You misspelled Raiaera twice. I couldn’t ignore that and a few other errors that might have been noticed and corrected with one more read through.
Clarity 6 /10 – The content that you’ve offered has managed to be clear enough, but has left me asking questions due to the brevity (see setting). More content = more clarity.
Wildcard: 7 /10
Well silly me. I think I wrote more than my last review.
Total 65 /100
Ruby La Roux gains 1690 exp and 200gp
Spoils Granted, although the moderator may ask you to give Lucrezia a material upon update.
Yari Rafanas
06-20-11, 05:43 AM
EXP and GP added!
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