Chapter XXI: The Blackbird

Almost immediately, a problem became very, very clear. I’d set up my ambush on the wrong hill. The noise, the sound of a single pair of feet walking slowly and carefully through grass and underbrush, was coming from somewhere behind me and to my left. Once I had realized how stupid I was and crawled out from under the blanket I’d spent so, so much time making, I realized where I’d gone wrong. There was another flat area, a low ridge not too far off from where I was, but fairly similar in terms of acoustics. I’d simply never noticed it because of the direction I’d been going in my patrol.

For a moment I considered trying to take aim and shoot from where I was, but then I looked down, and realized that the navy blue of my warm clothes blended in almost perfectly with the darkness of the night around me. If I was careful, I still had a chance at obtaining surprise. 

So I cast the blanket aside, took my revolver into my hand, and started moving. I walked in a crouch, my fear over what the Musician might be able to do spurring me to move more quickly while my common sense reminded me to move as slowly and carefully as I could. I dropped down into the valleys to remain out of sight. Whatever was making the noise, and it was continuous, I couldn’t see it, and the thought briefly crossed my mind that I might be about to ambush some other person. Again.

Then the music started. It was a similar sound to the first attack, aggressive stabbing violin notes played with expert skill. They started slow and soft, hesitant, almost awkward, but that changed before I even got to the base of the hill. The Musician’s song this time was almost melancholy, like sobbing and grief-stricken cries rendered into notes, though it was faster than your typical dirge. 

Before I even saw her I could tell that my armor was definitely working. By the time I was this close to the Musician the first time around, the backup instruments were almost overpowering, the electric guitar and synthesized drum beats almost deafeningly loud. With the armor on, they were basically absent, with only the occasional lone guitar chord to underscore the strokes of the violin. The hallucinations were a lot less awful this time, as well. The occasional movement in the shadows, or swarm of hallucinatory beetles, but nothing more, and nothing I didn’t immediately recognize to be an illusion. 

I caught the Musician in much the same position I’d found her in last time. She was standing alone on top of the hill, her weird metal-composite violin resting against her chin. She was doing a series of slow-motion dance steps to her own music, but seemed utterly lost in the art of it. I don’t even think her eyes were open, though the creepy mask made it hard to tell. 

I cocked the pistol as slowly as I could, trying to muffle the sound with my left hand. One noise could give it away, and I didn’t trust my own accuracy enough to hit a moving target from thirty or forty feet away. Once it was cocked, I raised it with both hands to steady myself. The metal glinted in the starlight, and the light distorted weirdly like a wavering candle flame. I ignored all of that, locked my gaze on the Musician and the sights of the revolver, then fired. 

The bullet passed right through the Musician, completely unhindered, and her image flickered out of existence. The shadows rose up in a pillar of smoky darkness, and the true Musician stepped out. 

“Your thoughts are much too loud,” she said, “and I could hardly focus on my work over the endless shrieking of your idiot dog brain.”

“If you can hear my thoughts, then you know what I’m here to do, and you know that this time, I’m prepared.” I cocked the revolver, five shots still to go.

The musician lowered her glare, looking momentarily at my chest, her bow slowing down momentarily on the strings. “Hmph. So you learned the secrets of those goddamned river-dwelling savages? Interesting. I’ll have you know, however, that no armor is proof against my music.”

I didn’t bother with more banter, firing off another shot as quickly as I could. It grazed past the hem of the Musician’s long white robe, and before I could cock it to fire again (and damn my tiny hands for being too weak to use the double-action variant) the music was back at full blast, the Musician’s appearance rapidly wavering back and forth, weird reflections spinning and dancing in and around her. 

“Now you have my full attention, Bluerose dog. Let us see how well you fight against a true master.”

I tossed my revolver into my off-hand and went for my sword, reasoning that she couldn’t evade me if I was right up in her face, stabbing the shit out of her. “Bring it on!” I screamed, and charged at full speed, crossing the space between us in maybe a second and a half.

My first strike was a heavy overhand slash, and the Musician was able to make an effortless pirouette out of my reach. Next a lunge, and she sidestepped, just in time for me to slam the hilt of my saber into the cocking lever of my revolver. The sound of my point-blank shot echoed through the hills, but the bullet had no effect. The Musician I’d struck was an illusion. 

“You can’t keep evading me forever, dumbass!” I said, dashing forward into a series of lightning-quick cuts. She dodged like it was a dance. I was already planning my next attack when pain shot up my sword arm. Every muscle from my wrist to my bicep suddenly felt painfully tight, flexing hard enough that I was sure the bone was about to break. I dropped the revolver in panic, grabbing my frozen arm by the wrist. There was an arm reaching up from out of the ground, a corpse’s arm buried in a shallow grave, still wearing that green ring. It wasn’t real, it couldn’t have been real, but the moment I saw it I could feel the cold, damp grip seizing my fingers and pulling me down. 

“Okay, maybe the armor wasn’t as good as I thought it was…”

“Oh, don’t mistake me, the cage is very annoying,” said the Musician, her music now a slow, thoughtful bridge. “But how did you expect to protect your mind without a helmet?”

“Ah fuck…” I said.

“See? You can’t win.”

“What’s your plan?” I said through gritted teeth, trying to unfreeze my arm. “Are you going to violin me to death?”

The Musician made a disdainful snort, then kicked me in the face. That’s an understatement, really; she pulled off a move that wouldn’t have been out of place in a martial arts tournament, a full 540-degree spinning leaping kick that ended with her transferring the muscular force of her entire body into her foot, through her hard boots, and into my skull. The entire world went white, and the sound of something cracking reverberated through my inner ear, as my entire body was thrown backward, leaving me on the ground and trying to remember which way was up. The music didn’t stop; she didn’t even miss a beat. At least, not until she very deliberately stopped playing, holding violin and bow in one hand. 

“I will destroy you, Bluerose dog; in body or in mind,” she said, having evidently stopped her playing to do some quick leg stretches, the bastard. “Your nervous system is a set of strings for me to play, and I will play them until they break. I have yet to decide if I shall merely paralyze you for life, or render you brainless and idiotic, or simply destroy the part of your cerebellum responsible for allowing you to breathe.”

My jaw popped back into its socket and my nose stopped pouring blood into the back of my throat. I stood up, extending my sword to keep her at a distance. I was fairly sure that the blade meant I still had a reach advantage. “I knew fighting was a lot like a dance, but this is just making it ridiculous.”

“Stop talking, and die!”

The Musician ran the bow along her strings with an unearthly screech, far too loud and far too deep for any normal violin. The song she played now was simple and rhythmic, utterly aggressive, like something out of a horror movie. All at once, it was like the night itself was closing in on me, and I had to clench my jaw to ward off an oncoming sense of claustrophobia. 

One second she was there, and the next she wasn’t; in her place was a chaos of shifting blacks and blues, a chaos that I desperately squinted into in an attempt to see where she was. By the time I noticed, it was too late; she appeared with a spinning reverse kick, driving her heel into my stomach hard enough to make me lose my breath. I couldn’t raise my sword in time for her followup, another leaping kick to the side of my ribs. Each of her attacks was perfectly in time to her own music, and accompanied by a lightheadedness I’d never felt from any injury before. Each attack was two-pronged, mind and body, and I realized that I had made a terrible, terrible mistake.

I fought with everything that I had, all the skills Rook had given me, all the confidence that came from knowing that she couldn’t hurt me… physically at least. Gone were the flashy hallucinatory terrains and philosophical quips. The Musician was fighting to kill. She concealed her movements with weird blind spots in my perception or walls of blinding light and confusing noise; then emphasized her attacks with pulses of nausea, migraine headaches, and pulses of unbreakable despair. At times I wouldn’t even be able to raise my sword, either because I was in too much pain or because there was a voice in the back of my head telling me it just wasn’t worth it anymore. The worst part was that she was getting a bead on me: each psychic attack was more devastating than the last. 

That was when she went in to finish it. It was a simple combination of attacks, almost childishly so. She stunned me with the sound of a deafening scream and a veil of illusory flames, then went in with a kick to the knee. I lunged with my sword, but each movement took so much effort, and it wasn’t like I was prepared for her anyway. Then she went right past me, and before my unfocused mind could figure out what the hell she was doing, I was on the floor again. Her boot went down on my throat hard enough to hurt, but just softly enough that I wouldn’t suffocate, at least not immediately.

“You see the truth of what I said, no? You. Cannot. Win. I give you some credit; the armor made this take some small effort. But… I still relish this. It has been a very long time since I have last had the chance to fully disassemble a human mind.”

If I hadn’t had a boot on my throat, I might have gone for a witty comeback. I thrashed back and forth, trying to kick her or get my arms around her legs in such a way that I could knock her off-balance, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t losing strength anywhere nearly as fast as I should have been with no oxygen, but I hadn’t had much strength left to begin with. Not to mention… I was terrified. I just wanted her to go away, no matter what that took. I twisted with my entire body and gurgled out animalistic screams and growls, and none of it had any effect. 

The Musician took a long, slow, focused breath, and replaced the violin in the crook of her neck, the absolute image of a collected and focused violinist. Then she played. It was a strange song, not really musical in the way the others had been, more a series of weird and discordant notes, like feeding nonsense code into a synthesizer. Almost at once, a small, timid pain formed right between my eyes. It grew quickly, like a sponge soaking up all the water of my sinus cavities and swelling with pain. I rapidly lost whatever control over my limbs I’d had. My deafening scream died in my throat and came out as a hoarse groan, and my limbs seized and spasmed and thrashed against the ground. I was dying, or worse, and I didn’t even have the mental acuity left to wonder where I was going to end up. 

Everything ended in a flash, as so many things happened in quick succession that I took a second or two to process it all. The music stopped, and with it the pain faded into a faint headache. The Musician screamed in pain and cursed, and the pressure relinquished from my neck as she staggered back. There was something sticking out of her, it looked like a blade, emerging from the flesh of her outer hip.

Even after I realized that someone had thrown a knife into the Musician, it took a few seconds longer for me to realize what that meant. I was still alive, for one thing, and I could already feel myself getting stronger, more vital. There was still a chance. Someone had come to help. I rolled over and crawled on the cold grass to where I’d left my sword, and my revolver, then fought against the weight of my body and mind to get my footing once again.

“I was wondering when you’d make an appearance, Blackbird,” said the Musician, spitefully. As she retreated, the knife dislodged from her and fell to the ground. “I hear you’re good. Time to find out how well a real opponent can stand before my power.”

I turned in the direction she was looking, and saw her. She was still wearing that same outfit, the same black leathers and black cloth mask, the same ruff of black fur around her neck. The Musician had called her “Blackbird”, and it seemed an appropriate moniker. This was the second time, now, that whoever this was had saved me; my sword arm went slack as I realized how outmatched I must really be out here, that it was even necessary. 

The Blackbird glared at the Musician. Through the thin black silk, I could see the vague suggestion of her mouth opening to speak; then she shot a glance my way, and bit her lip, and stayed quiet. 

“Not one for talking? Odd. Your reputation suggests otherwise.” The Musician placed her bow back on its strings and straightened up, though I could hear her grunt with pain from the wound in her side. “I do not need words to prove myself the superior mind.”

She started to play, a similarly rhythmic, brutal, inevitable series of low notes to the ones she’d used to completely annihilate me head-on. This was the first time I’d witnessed her at work without being the target of it, and though my logical brain was screaming to run, my legs refused to move, because apparently I wanted to enjoy the show. All my eyes could see was the Musician, standing alone on a deserted hilltop, and all my ears could hear were the thin strings of her music cutting through the night air. Her power was something you felt. 

It was a pressure, an overwhelming force driving out from her in every direction, strongly enough that I stumbled back a step, but I could tell somehow that the brunt of it was directed at the Blackbird. She had drawn two short blades, longer than knives but not as long as a full infantry saber, but by all appearances she wasn’t doing anything to use them. She was standing mostly still, occasionally rocking back and forth or tapping her feet on the grass, and locking her eyes with the Musician’s. She had presence too, but more subtle, a stalwart defiance to the overwhelming dominance of the Musician. I had scarcely any idea what was going on; my senses were contradicting each other about what was happening, and as the seconds stretched out before me I got the cold, sinking feeling that whatever was happening here was entirely beyond me.

The Blackbird’s first move came lightning-quick. She bent forward like a football tackle and almost blurred across the hilltop toward the Musician. She made it about a third of the way there before collapsing onto the ground, writhing for a moment in silent pain before struggling back onto one knee, once more locking eyes with the Musician. 

“Why are you weakening yourself, Blackbird? You and I both know that the filament engine is the foundation of the Bluerose school, so use it! It would be the great regret of my life if I killed the one and only Blackbird without seeing her at full strength…”

The Musician didn’t feel the need to whip her neck around like the Blackbird had; she turned slowly, methodically, and I could almost see the squint in her eyes as she looked from me to the Blackbird. The pressure didn’t even increase when she stared into me; the Blackbird was her priority. 

“You know her! Don’t deny it, Blackbird, your thoughts are an open book,” said the Musician, with perverse relish. “You know this whelp, and you refuse to let her know who you are! How pathetic. Unless, of course, you would like to speak up and disprove my hypothesis…”

The Blackbird remained silent and utterly still. She made a staggering attempt at standing, but a second later collapsed onto the ground. Without my help, she didn’t stand a chance against the Musician’s power. I raised my sword into a low guard and advanced one step at a time. 

The Blackbird glared at me, and even though her face was totally obscured, I could tell that her eyes had met mine. A moment later, I nearly fell back as a burst of thoughts exploded into my brain. They didn’t take the form of words or speech, but intent and idea. Don’t get yourself hurt. Run, now. I can take her on my own if you just run. I don’t want you to get injured. 

I stumbled back, legs pumping to maintain my balance, my head suddenly feeling like it had been split open. It didn’t take a genius intellect to realize that I’d just had a message telepathically shoved into my cerebrum, somehow. The obvious response, the heroic response, the correct response would have been to shake the warning off, raise my sword once again, and charge in to return the Blackbird’s kindness. I turned and ran as fast as my body could take me. 

The next few minutes were a complete blur, the pounding impact of the ground against my feet melding with the whistle of air blowing past my ears. I found my way back into the treaty grounds, which was lucky, because if I had decided to run off into the wilderness I probably wouldn’t have noticed for a few miles at least. A few minutes later, my body caught up to itself, and I remembered that I hadn’t slept that night, and I’d just had an extended sword battle. The exhaustion sank into my bones, and I was only barely able to find a nice, soft patch of dirt to curl up on before I lost the will to stand.

Sleep closed in on me quickly, but not quickly enough to prevent me from thinking. The Blackbird had refused to speak, because she was someone who I knew, and who so desperately wanted to keep her identity a secret that she would handicap herself in a fight to do it. I tried to piece together the mystery, scan through my memories for clues about who it possibly could have been under the mask, but everything was blurry and indistinct and my thoughts had to push through a thick blanket to get to me. 

There was a sound, at least a dozen people moving quickly and quietly on the dirt and grass. They were talking to each other at a low whisper, which made it impossible to tell what they were saying. In my exhaustion, I couldn’t even bring myself to open my eyes to look at them, not even when the group moved in closer to me and momentarily stopped. The last thing I heard before losing consciousness was one person muttering in a language I didn’t understand, before she and all the others walked off.

SaffronDragon

And here we see the further mystery: the Blackbird is someone Emma knows. But who is she? And who were those people Emma saw wandering the treaty grounds late at night...? If you want to find out more, click the link below and join my Patreon. For only $3 a month, you can read the next three chapters right now, and continue to gain access to new chapters early as long as you remain. At higher tiers, you can also read two exclusive Selene prequel stories, as well as several... spicier works of mine. If not, that's fine, I'll see you in two weeks for Chapter XXII: Execution of Plans