Chapter Sixty-Four: Denizen
Tami Abramov had to dive behind a boulder to avoid getting roasted. This was starting to get old.
"Amadeus!" Tami had to scream to be heard over the roaring flames that were engulfing the other side of the rock she was hunkered down behind. "How many!"
The fire ceased, gave way to the sound of wingbeats. Tami had about five seconds before the wyrm wised up and decided to charbroil the boulder from above, which would incinerate her.
"Three!" The high-pitched, childlike voice of Amadeusprite shouted back. "Are you okay?"
"Lasers, Amadeus! Lasers!"
"Okay!"
Tami heard several energy blasts coming from higher up in the sky, followed by screeches of anger from the aggravated wyrms as they turned to face their attacker. That was her cue. Tami's composite bow was already in her hands, fresh from the strife specibus, her quiver appearing on her back. The number 'three' burned into her mind, Tami took a deep breath and nocked her first arrow. Then she broke cover.
Tami's first arrow caught the nearest wyrm in the soft part of its throat. The winged underling went down without a sound, its body dissolving into a shower of grist. Tami whisked a second arrow from her quiver, drew back her bow, fired it at the next underling, struck it in the chest. It was not a lethal hit, but the wyrm went down, unable to continue flying.
Wyrm Number Three had already twisted around and was gunning straight for Tami. The teenaged girl did not blink, nocked her third arrow. The underling opened its jaws wide and roared, fire cascading forward. Tami loosed the third arrow, sending it into the underling's mouth and straight through its brain. She was singed from the blast of fire, wincing as she was pelted by a sudden hail of grist as the wyrm's body transmuted mid-lunge.
Good thing Tami's hair was short, otherwise it likely would have caught fire. She was wearing a sleeveless shirt, as well, due to the heat from the desert she'd walked through, so there hadn't been any stray pieces of clothing that had caught fire, either. She was very fortunate. But the only thought going through her head was how proud her brother would have been, had he witnessed those three shots.
Tash… Tami's older brother, who'd taught her to shoot…how to play the violin, the piano, and so many other things… Where was he right now?
The grist glowed green before vanishing into Tami's grist cache, bringing her back to the present. She stepped over to the second wyrm, which was still struggling feebly on the rock ground. Tami seized her second arrow, tore it free from the underling's chest. She then plunged it into the wyrm's temple, her stomach turning as she felt the crunch of bone, the sickening squelch of brain matter. More grist, more green flashes.
"That," Tami said, wiping the blood off the used arrow and returning it to her quiver, "was too close. Way too close… Amadeus? You alright, lil' guy?"
The sprite-mouse fluttered back down to ground level, his eyes wide, his aura flickering with erratic sparks of emerald energy. "I'm scared."
"Yeah, me too. These wyrms are bad news-"
More howls echoed off the canyon walls.
Tami swore under her breath. For the past three or so hours, Amadeusprite had been leading her through this canyon. Little did the both of them know that it was home to an entire swarm of winged, firebreathing underlings. Every time they attacked, they got a little bit closer to burning Tami and her sprite to a crisp. This was the first time three had attacked at once...and from the sounds echoing off the canyon walls, an even larger group was on the way.
The underlings were learning from the mistakes of their deceased brethren, gradually figuring out that Tami would not be able to shoot down an entire horde of them.
"Palace up ahead! We move now!" Amadeusprite screeched.
Girl and Sprite got moving.
There was music coming from deep inside the palace.
Tami slammed the entrance doors shut with a resounding BOOM. The angry howls of the dozen or so wyrms on the other side were suddenly cut off, the sound unable to penetrate the thickness of the doors. Silence fell over the giant entrance hall, save for the soft, lilting tones of a distant violin.
"Fuck…" Tami breathed deeply, resting against the doors for a moment, catching her breath. "God damn, Amadeus… Why does everything on my own planet want me dead?"
Amadeusprite hovered close, nuzzling Tami's hand with his snout. "I don't want you dead."
"Aw, that's very sweet of you..." Tami allowed herself a wan smile as she scratched her sprite behind his ears, before straightening up and stepping away from the door. "No turning back, now. For real. Unless we want to get the toasted marshmallow treatment…"
"Follow the music?" Amadeusprite suggested.
"Yeah, that's what I was thinking."
The sound of the violin was almost magnetic to Tami. The more she listened to it, the more she wanted to find its source. At the other end of the entrance hall was a flight of stairs that spiraled down, deep underground. Tami and Amadeusprite descended these stairs, Tami moving faster and faster, wanting to reach the music.
At the bottom of the stairs, the corridor split in two - one passage curving off to the left, the other continuing straight. Tami took the left-hand corridor. The violin music was coming from that direction. There was no light in the corridor, forcing Tami to slow down. Eventually she had to stop, could not see anything, not even with the the glow of Amadeusprite's body. She pulled out her iphone, searched for its flashlight app.
The music had grown louder, beckoning her to continue.
Tami could not quite put her finger on the exact reason why she was so drawn to this music...perhaps it was because her planet was one that was shrouded in silence? And ever since what had happened with Gino…
Tami's stomach turned once again, unpleasant memories springing back to the surface. Gino's bloodied corpse, his half-open eyes… After kissing her ex-boyfriend's body to revive his dream self, Tami had buried it in the sand dunes. She refused to let it bloat and rot in the desert sun-
Tami shook her head several times, allowing the violin music to clear those troubling thoughts away. She found the flashlight app, tapped it.
A skittering up ahead in the darkness.
Amadeusprite let out a piercing shriek, sent a bolt of crackling green sprite energy searing into the hallway ahead. It exploded on impact, the close quarters of the corridor amplifying the sound to a much greater degree than what it would have been had it occurred out in the open.
"Jesus, Amadeus!" Tami held up her iphone, which was now shining light from its camera flash, illuminating the path ahead. There was a smoking crater in the wall where the sprite's blast had landed, as well as the remains of a tiny charred skeleton. "You just vaporized a mouse."
"We aren't related." Amadeusprite squeaked. "I'm nervous."
"Gee, you think?" Tami nudged the skeleton out of the way with the toe of her boot. It crumbled to ash. "Calm down, okay? I'd rather Hemera's first impression of me not involve blowing holes in her home. That's not a good first impression."
"Sorry."
The corridor had a gradual incline. It was curved, as well, which meant that Tami and Amadeusprite were walking up a gentle spiral. Within two minutes, the passageway began to brighten with soft lamplight. The light grew brighter and brighter until, suddenly, the corridor ended.
When Tami stepped out into the concert hall, it was simultaneously underwhelming and overwhelming. Underwhelming because she and Amadeusprite had just strolled right on through this palace unchallenged - for all the hype that had been built up around the Denizens...well, Tami had been expecting something a lot more dangerous and life-threatening. Though she only had to think back to her narrow escape from the wyrms outside to quell the 'underwhelmed' reaction.
On the other hand, Tami was absolutely floored by how beautiful this concert hall underneath the palace was. It was stunning. Rows upon rows of seats, red velvet carpeting running all the way down the aisles to the stage, a mezzanine, and booths high up on the side walls of the space...there was even a blue crystal chandelier hanging from the lacquered ceiling, providing much of the light in the hall. Tami almost expected a masked man to appear and start singing 'Angel of Music'. The person onstage playing the music was not wearing a mask, however.
Standing in the middle of the stage was a tall figure, playing a bluish-white crystal violin with strings that looked like they were made out of light. She had the face and body of a woman, clad in a cloak of glimmering gold, but her skin seemed almost...scaly. It glowed with a pale blue-green aura and shimmered when the woman moved, almost like one of those holographic cards that changed when looked at from different angles. The aura of light pulsed and flared in rhythm with the music of the violin.
Most unusual, perhaps, about the woman was her eyes. They had no pupils or irises, no whites...they were two orbs of bright neon-green light that were difficult to look directly into without tearing up.
The music was enrapturing, full of sharp notes and minor chord progressions. That was one thing Tami absolutely adored about violins - the ability to play an entire chord several times over in a single upstroke or downstroke merely by shifting the position of her fingers a few centimeters.
The music stopped.
"Hello, Miss Abramov." The woman's voice was soft and light. The feeling of a velvet pillow sprang to mind. Or the lining of a coffin. Tami chose to stick with 'velvet pillow'. "I have been waiting."
"Ah." Tami had been hesitant at the last moment, debating whether or not she should approach the stage and interrupt the violinist, but she had already been noticed. Too late to turn back. "Are you Hemera?"
"I have many names. But the consorts who once dwelt here called me 'Hemera', yes."
"Simple 'yes' would've sufficed…"
"Beg pardon?"
"Nothing. Um. Aren't you supposed to be...erm...sleeping? Or whatever? My sprite said-"
"Sprites are highly knowledgeable creatures, are they not?" Hemera mused, stopping her music to smile at Amadeusprite, whose aura flared a hostile lemon-lime. "They are not, however, omniscient. You would do well to trust your senses, in this case, as I am clearly awake."
Irritation sparked deep within Tami's gut. "Yeah, I see that. Did you know, then, that there are Dersites digging up your planet, right now?"
"I am aware." Hemera nodded, unfazed by Tami's attitude. "And this is not my planet. It is your world, Muse. Those Dersites are your responsibility, not mine."
"Bullshit." The irritation increased, Tami's forehead creasing in a deep frown, the corners of her mouth tugging downwards in a scowl. "I never asked for that responsibility; it was kinda shoved in my face. I don't want it."
A grin crept across the Denizen's face. "This responsibility, and your quest by extension, is yours nonetheless. You may embrace it or shirk it, but it is still yours to embrace or shirk."
Hemera resumed playing her crystalline violin, which Tami noticed had begun to glow faintly. While Amadeusprite flitted about nervously, the teenaged girl stood silently for several minutes, listening to the Denizen play. Her mind was abuzz with questions, but the music helped calm her down a bit. Hemera played like a master. Not for the first time, Tami wished she hadn't left her ukulele at home...she would have liked to join the Denizen, but she had no instruments.
Finally, despite the calming effect of the music, Tami could remain silent no longer. "Shouldn't you be fighting me, right now?"
Hemera glanced up from her violin, amusement glinting in her neon eyes. "Would you like me to?"
Amadeusprite hissed, getting ready to shoot another energy bolt. Tami was quick to stop her sprite. "Amadeus. Pendant. Now."
The sprite blinked once. "But Tami-"
"Now." With that, Amadeusprite vanished in a flash of green light, returning to the sprite pendant that hung around Tami's neck. The teenaged girl had not broken eye contact with her Denizen. "No, I'd rather you didn't fight me."
"Then why even suggest such a thing?" Hemera asked. She continued playing the violin, not bothered in the least by Amadeusprite's near blowup.
"Well…" Tami cleared her throat awkwardly, slowly making her way up to the lip of the stage. "I was under the impression that Denizens were like final bosses… You know, the last thing to defeat before finishing the quest?"
"Perhaps you should come back later, then," Hemera recommended, shaping her music into a light, airy chord progression that sounded like it was teasing the teenager. "Your quest is hardly complete. And you are also in no condition to fight me right now."
"I'd rather not."
"What, fight me at a later time?"
"I'd rather not fight you at all. Your music is very beautiful. Why would I want to fight another musician, especially when she's in the middle of playing?"
"And, at long last, reason and intelligence take their root!" Hemera's grin widened into a smile. She lowered her instrument. "And thank you for the compliment. I was taught by the very best."
Tami wondered for a moment about who could possibly have taught a Denizen to play violin, but she did not dwell on the mystery. She had other questions. "Ask you something, Hemera?"
"You just have," Hemera pointed out. The Denizen's neon eyes twinkled again with laughter as Tami found herself at a loss for words. She then relented. "You may ask, Muse."
"I, uh… Why is this place so quiet?" Tami asked her Denizen. "Where are my consorts?"
Hemera's smile slowly faded. She raised the violin once more. A sustained A-natural sang from the blue light-strings of the crystalline instrument. The A-natural then shifted down to an G-flat, down again to a E-flat, then a C-natural...it was a mournful tune, bringing feelings of grief and longing bubbling up to the surface.
"The Salamanders…" Hemera sighed. "Lovely creatures. In the Age of Dissonance, as they preferred to call it, the Salamanders gradually came to discover the joys of sound. The bubbles they produced from their mouths had a certain pitch to them when they burst, and the creatures learned that they were able to control that pitch. And so, music was born in a land of dissonance and chaos. The Salamanders then built upon these discoveries. They started to craft instruments, devices that could amplify and shape these tonal pitches through use of the breath, and so they reconstructed the musical scale. What wonderful music they once played…"
"What happened to them?"
"The Noble of Life arrived," Hemera explained. "He changed the Salamanders' perception of music by introducing a new idea - Resonance, he called it. Resonance...resulting in music born of vibrations independent of one's breath. This instrument, the 'violin', was but the first of the instruments introduced to this land by the Noble. But the idea of Resonance was much more than a means of creating sound...it turned music from a pleasant-sounding compilation of noise into a reflection of the inner self. Music is emotion. It is joy, it is anguish and sorrow, it is longing and anger. It is Life. Tell me, Muse...do you know where the energy of omnicrystal comes from?"
Tami could only shake her head.
"It was ordinary crystal, once, resting at the center of this world. But since the creation of this planet, that crystal has been saturated with the energy of Life...eventually, it began to grow and change on its own. It ultimately reached the surface in the form of trees, the crystal forests which I am sure you have seen. And do you know what happened when the crystal broke the surface?"
Another shake of the head from Tami.
"It stopped," Hemera declared, allowing her mournful tune to gain some steam on the next upstroke, switching from a minor key to a major. "The omnicrystal, as it turned out, infused with the Life Aspect, had felt a profound Resonance to its source - the source of energy for all the Aspects."
"Skaia?" Tami ventured a guess.
"Correct." Hemera's smile began to return, following the gradually lightening spirit of her song. Her aura shined a more intense shade of blue-green. Even the giant crystal chandelier seemed to glow brighter, bringing a humming warmth to the concert hall that hadn't been there a moment ago. "For millions of years, that crystal grew. It broke the surface, drank in the light of Skaia...and stopped. It no longer had anything to grow towards. Trees, once they matured, would grow no further, as they had already made direct contact with the source of their Resonance. Do you see now, Muse? The omnicrystal is alive. Stable, dormant, and alive. It brings a Hero's Quest to mind. You are, after all, making your own path towards Skaia, much like the crystal. However, while the omnicrystal had to navigate the nooks and crannies of the insides of this planet to reach its goal, you must navigate a much more perilous terrain: Choice."
"Look, this is all very fascinating, and everything, but I still don't see how it relates to my consorts," Tami interrupted. "How am I supposed to have a quest without consorts?"
Suddenly, Hemera locked eyes with Tami and started to play a new song. Tami gasped in pain and surprise. She listened to the song, yet found herself utterly incapable of describing it. It crawled through every micrometer of her skin, every atom in her body, every little fiber of her being. How could she possibly describe such a melody?
Well, there were a few things she could discern. It was being played as agitato con fuoco, which translated from Italian into 'fast and agitated, with fire'. And it made her head feel like it was about to split open. It filled - no, pierced her mind, like she was listening to nuclear-charged earbuds. Tami blinked several times, touched a hand to her forehead...only to recoil in horror when she saw that her hand - and, indeed, the rest of her body - was flickering. Almost like a TV channel whose reception was being interrupted. She tried to speak, but all that came out was an inaudible mess of gibberish that sounded like it had been autotuned.
Hemera stopped the new song, allowing Tami to stabilize. Her body stopped flickering, returned to solid form. The teenager's breath came rushing back as she nearly hyperventilated, supporting herself against the lip of the stage. "What...what the fuck...the fuck was that?"
"That," Hemera said, "was you, Miss Abramov. It was your Song, as played through the Life Aspect. What you just felt was a form of Resonance - resonance to yourself, one of the most powerful kinds."
"But I...was…" Tami swallowed loudly, taking a deep breath, waiting for calm to return. She raised a hand again, inspected it, making sure it was no longer flickering in and out of existence. "I was…"
"Everything in existence has a Song, and playing the Song of another comes with great responsibility. It was never something that was taken lightly," Hemera said. She put down the violin and stepped up to the lip of the stage, extending a hand. Tami hesitated, but quickly accepted the hand after the pause, was surprised at the strength with which the Denizen lifted her up onto the stage. "That Song was yours. But imagine an entire species of consorts...thousands upon thousands of musicians, all playing the collective Song of their peoples...a Symphony. And you know what they did? They 'matched' their Symphony to that of the omnicrystal, which was no longer moving, and merged the music. Like the crystal, the Salamanders stopped."
"Like...are they frozen in time, or something?" Tami asked.
"Frozen is an apt way of describing their current situation." Hemera nodded in agreement. "However, they are quite outside the influence of time. Unfortunately, they are incapable of returning to corporeal form while they are in limbo. They must be assisted from the 'outside'. Called back, if you will. Resonance must be created, Resonance which will attract an entire species."
"And how are we supposed to do that?"
"We are not." Hemera chuckled. "This is your quest, Muse, and I have given you what little knowledge you require to begin." Suddenly, she tossed the crystal violin to Tami, who caught it out of reflex. "This violin was crafted out of omnicrystal by the Noble of Life when he was a child. No need for the horrified facial expressions - it is quite unbreakable. You will need it. And you will also need this…"
Tami jumped as the Denizen seized her wrist. Hemera drew the teenaged girl close, stared straight into her eyes. The Denizen's neon-green eyes started shining white. Tami's eyes watered as she looked at them, musical notes filling her mind, blanking out everything else. She struggled briefly, tried to look away, but found she was not able to. Hemera brought up her other hand and rested it gently on Tami's forehead. Immediately, the music in the teenager's head grew to fever pitch. Tami's vision started to blur, filling with white light, her ears hearing nothing but discordant music. She wanted to scream, but could not move her jaw.
Then, a single word from Hemera that broke through all the noise: "Follow."
The chaotic music, the discord, then resolved into a breathtakingly beautiful chord. For the briefest of moments, Tami could see an image in her mind...a short, squat figure...yellowish skin, big green eyes...it was an upright-standing salamander, nearly four feet tall, clad in what appeared to be a tuxedo.
Then the image was gone, the music was gone, and the white light filling Tami's vision went dark.
Theo Gibbons woke up to two initial things: an indigo ceiling and the sound of gunfire. He blinked once, floated up out of bed. He looked to his left. Sure enough, the walkie-talkie he'd left on his nightstand was squawking like crazy. A leaden weight settled in Theo's stomach as he started connecting the dots.
The teenager grabbed the walkie-talkie and activated it all the way. The storms of static quickly resolved into the familiar voice of the Wrathful Veteran. "...s instant! Thane! Mister Gibbons, respond this instant!"
Theo depressed the 'transmit' button as he made his way over to the nearest window. "Theo, here," he spoke into the mic. "What the hell-"
"Thane! There is artillery trained on your tower! Get the hell out of there! Regroup at the mansion in Eastvale-"
There was a deafening explosion that went off someplace that was uncomfortably nearby, and the walkie-talkie's channel dissolved back into static. By then, Theo had reached his window, peered out. There were no less than five Dersite battleships hanging in low orbit over the area Theo's tower was located in. Far below, squadrons and platoons of heavily-armed commandos could be seen making their way through the pockmarked streets, trading fire with unseen attackers who appeared to be shooting at the soldiers from inside buildings.
Theo's jaw was hanging slack as he took in the sight of the battle raging below. He turned his gaze upward, squinting to see as far towards the horizon as he could. He caught a glimpse of Cass's tower in the distance.
It was in flames.