D&D Excerpts

Prologue

Angel, knowing that she is losing her sense of self, succumbs to a long-held desire… She contacts Savior. And… They talk. Of music, of their stories, about their children… it's everything Angel thought it would be. But Aurem knows. And she makes Angel’s life a living hell. And finally, Angel breaks under it all.
Who is she? A bard? A demigod? Which one was the facade? Which Songbird was she? And how many of her thoughts, opinions, motives… Are hers, and not Aurem’s?
She still plays music. But why? Because she likes to? Or because that’s the role of Song? A bard.
And there is that moment… Where she’s ordered to do some despicable thing… And it doesn’t sting. Not anymore. How could it, all those times she’s killed innocent people, committed atrocious acts…

And Savior is left with the final story: Angel. She sacrificed everything to do what she believed was best for her people. Her morality, her very personality.
And so, like the others… Savior writes her a song. Obsessively, she works on it. Revises, perfects, until she’s certain it’s done.

Performance

A Saturday night. Snow was sure to play her music, but as always, the question lingered among locals: what would she play? Would she sing uplifting tales of Phoenix Feather, sea shanties, folk songs, and other such pieces befitting a lively tavern atmosphere? Would she play technical marvels, pushing her musical knowledge, creativity, and mimicry to their absolute limit in an astounding show of all she’s learned? Or, would she play from the heart, somber tales of past lives and her own falsified freedom?

After speaking with the tavern keeper for a moment she walked on stage, lute in hand. Nothing out of the ordinary thus far, but also nothing tell-tale. She wore her simple elven dress and vibrant yellow scarf, and of course, she was adorned with feathers of various sorts. She had with her an elven short sword and potion at her waist, reminders of her past as a rogue, as a rebel, and as an adventurer.
She took in a deep breath, raised her lute, and began to play.

This was a complicated piece; and, erratic, too. Hauntingly beautiful melodies that... Seemed somewhat similar to a few other of her motifs hid behind harsh staccato notes, both played and sung. The music was gripping, leaving the tavern-goers on the edge of their seat, unable to guess where the erratic tune would bound to next. It wasn’t truly chaos, it was all well thought out, well practiced, and perfectly executed… And, it was entirely new.

The tempo ebbed and flowed along with time signature shifts, jarring, but never once unbalanced, as that haunting melody grew in intensity but then was suppressed by the simulated chaos. The song continued, building, approaching a climactic point that their resident bard would surely find some gorgeous way to resolve, even amid the erratic chaos… The tempo hastened, the chaotic lines of music began to converge…

Snow shifted her grip on the lute, one hand reaching for her potion… No... A knife. The potion had been an illusion? She twirled the blade in her hand and in a singular swift motion, almost too sudden to truly process, she cut through her lute strings. A sickening snap, partially mimicked to give the illusion of more strings having been broken, echoed through the tavern. A distant look in her eye, she sang, softly, nearly inaudible, the slightest hint of the melody; that motif that now, in it’s simplest form, was identified to be something of an echo of her debut lute piece. Her mimicked lute plucks steadily slowed, became disarrayed, missing beats, growing quieter, hushed, whispered, hazy… Until the tavern was bathed in silence, and there it lingered until Snow began to walk off stage. Her footsteps were light but amid the stunned silence… Her every movement was heard.

It was as if the song itself had exhausted her.
Snow was quiet, keeping to herself. She had slung her lute back on her shoulder, not even bothering to place the strings. But otherwise... Acted ‘normal’ in ordinance to her more somber performances.
Odd, though, that she lead and ended with only that one piece.