Third Movement: Imaginations from the other side

It is truly remarkable how invigorating a good night’s sleep can be – if it is spent among family and friends within a safe and cosy environment. Yesterday’s tumultuous events still weighed on my mind, of course, but I was looking forward to today’s (literal and figurative) trials and tribulations with a strange mixture of anxiety and anticipation, nonetheless. I imagine Katalina would understand – as a matter of fact, I am almost certain she would agree wholeheartedly.
After I had unveiled my Song of Remembrance during breakfast – I am still not entirely happy with the melody as a whole, but it will do for now – and Yuri had left Te’Sarim in my parents’ care for the time being, we made our way towards Eatifat to stand trial.
Upon arriving at the courthouse, we reunited with Alizée once more, and I must admit that I was profoundly glad to see her again. While I am not exactly well-versed in Shal’Azura’s political intricacies, I am almost positive that the Tamasha would have had little to no trouble walking away from any accusations levelled against her while hanging us out to dry. The fact that she chose to stand with us instead was laudable indeed; and while I would like to think of myself as a person who would have done the same in her shoes, I cannot in good conscience say so with absolute certainty.
After we had entered the courthouse proper, we were introduced to our designated defense attorney Hadiyah Flamescale, who in turn informed us about the proceedings during the trial and the other major participants: the prosecutor Yasmin Djinnborn and the presiding judge Zsetszathuss al-Ssahn.
 
[several moments pass in silence, followed by a series of coughing and choking noises as if someone tried to unravel their bruised tongue from around their uvula]
 
 
Ahem. Anyway, justice prevailed, and we were cleared of all charges. If my description of the actual trial seems a bit lackadaisical, it is due to the fact that the vast majority of it was taken up by Brielle’s witness testimony, which I cannot bear to repeat here in its entirety. Or, you know, at all.
Our next order of business was to pay a visit to PRT H.E.L.I.O.S. – a possible lead we had picked up quite a while ago. As such, we made our way to the Bennain Guildhall – a fascinating, yet utterly confusing place indeed. With a little guidance from a student (whose cooperation had, in turn, been mostly contingent on Alizée’s presence), we managed to have a rather enlightening discussion with the Helpful Founder. It bestowed upon us, among other things,
 

a few pointers about the nature of and the conditions relevant to conjuration magic in general;

far too many facts about carp;

the area where the next murders were most likely to occur;

and the realization that the great Component Conundrum™ would not be settled anytime soon.

One of those things seemed ever so slightly more important than the others, so we immediately sprang into action and… picked Yuri up from his sculpting class.
 
...If we ever become famous, I should probably embellish this sequence of events a smidgen.
 
As soon as we arrived at the location H.E.L.I.O.S. had pointed us towards, we immediately understood that we had come too late. The crime scene – which it indubitably was – was awash with members of both the Order of the Vigilant Eye and the Separ Talsam. The Living Echoes had claimed their next victims, and the fact that Shal’Azura’s brave defenders had managed to slay one of the assailants in turn seemed like cold comfort at best. One of two survivors, the lady of the house, soon passed away despite Aurelie’s commendable efforts to stabilize her, whereas the other survivor – her brother, it seems – made a physical, if not mental or emotional, recovery.
I readily admit that I was of very little help during this entire ordeal. I am just a simple entertainer and performer – how would I possibly go about counselling someone regarding their grief over a loved one? Me, of all people; knowing what I know now? I felt overwhelmed and helpless, and without my new compatriots I most certainly would have felt utterly alone in the dark, as well.
Of course, after all was said and done, we still had an objective to achieve, and I clung to that thought – that purpose – like a drowning man to a piece of driftwood.
Unsurprisingly, we found another arabesque knot under a windowsill and, under Oro’thion’s tutelage and with H.E.L.I.O.S.’ elaborations in mind, continued our experimentations with it. As it turned out, we were now in possession of the missing puzzle piece that had eluded us before – we had seen (and, perhaps more importantly, remembered) Dibarra himself. That being the case, our efforts proved fruitful this time around, and we were transported to a most unusual location.
The courtyard we suddenly found ourselves in was truly a sight to behold; beautiful and terrifying in equal measure. Surrounding a magnificent palace which undoubtedly included Dibarra’s abode, it radiated a sense of dark foreboding, mainly due to the fact that its residents – mostly animals, but also the servant approaching us upon our arrival – had their eyes scratched out and their mouths sewn shut. Said servant spoke to us in a tongue almost none of us could understand. Aurelie managed it, but it seemed to take quite a bit of effort on her part – akin to someone learning a language trying to keep up with a rather verbose native speaker, or to myself trying not to fall asleep during one of Leonardo’s rules lawyering diatribes. Given those circumstances, I was rather dumbfounded when Yuri suddenly started to converse with the liveried gentleman like he had spent his whole life doing it. I have been well aware that Yuri possesses hidden depths, of course; even without factoring in his hesitation to talk about his past, but between this and the masonry class, I am beginning to wonder whether I know anything of substance about him at all.
The servant offered little in the way of useful information except for the fact that the Sixth Prince was, at present, residing in his tower and that the way ahead was littered with traps. Yuri seemed to be able to convince him to refrain from announcing our presence to everyone who would listen, after which the poor, probably severely underpaid, servant started his spiel once more from the top. We left him to his own devices and pressed on, guided by Aurelie’s glove – which, inexplicably, now seemed to function as a compass pointing towards the Sixth Prince’s tower.
As we continued onwards, we had to pick our way across a myriad of small coins, knick-knacks and other assorted trinkets that were strewn across the cortyard – a multitude of things lost or forgotten. We thought it prudent to abstain from taking anything with us, although I must confess that I briefly toyed with the notion of stealing rehoming a magical broom autonomously sweeping the courtyard. Its allure was difficult to withstand – it sang to me with a melody I had never before encountered within the scope of the Great Music, almost as if it were one of a kind in every conceivable way. Ultimately, though, I resisted the temptation, and we forged ahead.
Continuing our journey we came across a weathered brass brazier sitting in the middle of a square and, more importantly, a mangy fennec right next to it. The poor creature had clearly seen better days, and we speculated that we might be looking at someone’s erstwhile familiar, now lost and forgotten after its master’s presumed demise. Yuri, following his penchant for rescuing animals against their will, decided to take the fennec with him. Objectively, this might not have been the best of ideas in the grand scheme of things, but I honestly cannot fault him for his decision. Such an attempt to deliver a soul from eternal oblivion is utterly commendable, and it occurred to me at that point that, apart from being a tremendously competent brother-in-arms, Yuri might be a significantly better person than others, including himself, give him credit for. On the more practical side of things, Oro’thion seems to have some inkling of how to try to stabilize this newly-forged connection once we have successfully returned to Shal’Azura, and I am happy to defer to his wisdom regarding this matter for the time being. This might sound strange coming from me, but the quintessence concerning my relationships with familiars is that Betty and my humble self are not master and servant (and even if we were, our respective roles might not be what one would expect) but more like partners in crime (and dance and obviously neither of us has, to date, ever had the displeasure of outliving the other.
We pressed on into the palace proper, briefly – and rather unavailingly – interacting with an old man who seemed intent on picking up a particular stone (his own Tasmia, perhaps), but was utterly incapable of doing so. There was precious little we could do for him at this juncture, but I am hopeful that we will be able to rectify his – among many others – conundrum if – nay, when! - we manage to cut off the head of the proverbial snake.
As we continued to follow Aurelie’s heading, we came across a music box containing a ballerina endlessly tiptoeing accompanied by a variation of the First Song of the Founding. I do not appreciate creepy porcelain dolls at the best of times, even without their own dramatically appropriate theme music, so I was quite happy to forge ahead as soon as possible. Of course, doing so required me to clamber down a rope from a window into what may or may not have been poison sumac, because when it rains, it pours and/or pelts you with Meteor Storms from clear skies.
At this point, do I even need to mention that our next encounter was a potentially cursed child on a swing trying to invade our minds with maniacal laughter? Because of course it was. Fortuitously, none of us seemed to have been significantly affected by the apparition’s shenanigans, and we continued our journey relatively healthy and hale.
And then, in a twist worthy of a ballad (if I could actually compose one to save my life), we came across Ibn-al-Hadibi, The Forgotten Founder; lost in a seemingly never-ending elegy concerning his true love, Salome Boethos. After some back-and-forth, with great efforts from Alizée and Oro’thion, Siham ultimately managed to break through the thick fog of oblivion by recalling and mentioning Hadibi’s, a bar in Karam adorned by a portrait of Ibn. Astoundingly, this seemed to rejuvenate Ibn – now more appropriately designated as Ibn-Ice-Hadibi, Djinn of the Elemental Court of Ice – and restored most of his memories. In gratitude, he presented Siham with a special snowflake™ facilitating a singular escape from almost anywhere.
As an aside, Ibn and Oro’thion hashed out some manner of nondescript deal, but neither of them was particularly forthcoming about the details. It is, of course, no business of mine, but I will ask Oro’thion about it later, anyway. It might help fit “Ibn-Ice-Hadibi” into the meter of the Song of Remembrance somehow, although I am not exactly holding my breath in that regard.
At any rate, Ibn graciously offered to teleport us in front of the Sixth’s Prince’s tower. We accepted and found ourselves in front of a massive marble gate – which, unsurprisingy, did not budge to neither physical nor magical assaults. Happily, Aurelie had the bright idea to present her hairband – akin to the multitudes we had encountered on our way – as an offering, basically ‘losing’ it voluntarily to coax the gate open. It worked! We entered the tower proper, whose ground floor consisted mostly of a series of wall paintings and mosaics encircling the room; the center of which was dominated by a gigantic apparatus that, as Aurelie explained to us, was some sort of elevator. She immediately devoted herself to studying its underlying mechanics, exhibiting a level of excitement we had never seen from her before. That is to say, not a lot by any objective measure; but by her standards, it might as well have been her birthday. Heck, for all anyone – including herself – knows, it just might have been.
As for myself, I am barely competent at playing my bandora, so messing around with intricate mechanical devices is right out. As such, I contented myself with sneakily (in the truest sense of the word, for I had rendered myself invisible via the power of my beloved instrument) examining the paintings, carvings and tapestries encircling the room. They seemed to depict a history of times long gone by; and it pains me greatly that I, being who I am and what I do, could not make heads or tails of it. Alizée seemed to fare better in that regard, muttering something about ancient beings called the Weaves of Twilight (or Weavers? She does not tend to bother as much with her accent when she thinks nobody is listening) spinning the fates of all mortal races.
This is, without a doubt, a most fascinating tale which certainly should be enshrined in song, but, alas, it was not to be at that particular moment. Aurelie had, by now, figured out how to operate the elevator and beckoned us to join her in glory and/or death.
Naturally, we complied, and found ourselves whisked past a vast library on the first floor, a dusty hall filled with altars on the second floor and a third floor filled with terribly dissonant… stuff (it certainly was not music, but I am loath to even deign it with a designation as esteemed as “noise”) before reaching what seemed to be the topmost floor. As we made our way forward, we were accosted by the same manner of creature Aurelie had described to us following her brief foray into this realm; four in number, and one of them obviously significantly more competent than the others. Battle was joined!
I am, first and foremost, a bard. I sing of great deeds and acts of bravery, and few, if any, will contest me when I tell you that I have never seen anyone rush into danger as recklessly – and bravely – as Lady Alizée did at this moment. If there were ever any doubts that she was committed to forging her own path, they would have been blown away (alongside a good chunk of her enemy’s organs) in that moment. Following her inspiring leadership, we managed to vanquish our foes.
I must admit that, despite my lack of active contributions to the fight, I was beginning to feel the relentless teeth of exhaustion gnawing upon my body at that point. I was utterly incapable of facing another strong foe; such as, let’s say, a basilisk.
In the next room, we faced a basilisk.
On the plus side, even accounting for the reinforcements heading our way, we could maybe try to hold a chokepoint against a basilisk and friends. On the flipside, it had been a very, very, very log day, and I really did not enjoy the idea of such a creature ruining it any further. So I tried telling it the worst joke I know.
It worked.
Miraculously, the tale of the animals of the woods floored it long enough for my companions to deliver the killing blow, and its reinforcements were easily dispatched. This seemed like an appropriate time to take a short break – and here we are now; although I must confess that I have never felt quite so exhausted. I shall conclude my account for the time being with an amended version of the Song of Remembrance; since it feels of greater importance now than it ever did.