First Movement: Murder on the Dancefloor

The good thing about being accused of committing a capital crime first thing in the morning is the fact that things can only go uphill from there. (Or is it downhill? Which is the positive one again? This is precisely why I am a dancer first, a musician second, and a poet not at all.)
Last night’s events, as revealed to us by Noonblessed Captain Maria Goldenlight Turinya , included not only the complete and utter destruction of the Market of Melodies that we had witnessed, but also the murders of six people within Shal’Azura; unfortunately – and disturbingly – including the Majilisun himself. Four of the murders happened in a corner of Karam we happened to pass by during our escape last night, and as such, we are now wanted for the crime. Since the various executive branches of our grand city are nothing if not pragmatic, we were given three days to try and clear our names, and we started that endeavor immediately.
I, myself, am woefully unsuited for crime scene investigations, so it was all I could do to offer a few words of encouragement while my capable companions uncovered that the men of the respective families – next-door neighbours, as it were – had fallen victim to something that caused their muscles to atrophy rapidly, resulting in their untimely demises. The women, on the other hand, had their very souls wrested from their mortal bodies, apparently condemning them to a fate worse than death. Oro’thion seemed particularly disturbed by this specific circumstance, and I cannot say that I blame him. The mere notion of someone’s music being so abruptly and irrevocably ended – nay, silenced – chills me to the bone.
The women’s bodies bore reddish-purple lines around their necks – markings left by something akin to implements called soul knives, as Yuri suggested to us – as well as a curious knot-like symbol. We soon found another instance of the latter outside the window where some creature – a creature with fearsome claws, from the looks of it – seemed to have entered the house. Those particular symbols seemed to be portals of some kind, and might very well have been the means via which the families’ unfortunate children had been whisked away. We had found some positively ancient sand at the murder scene earlier, and Oro’thion, in a stroke of frankly impressive genius, sprinkled some of it on the portal and channelled his magic through the symbol in order to induce the teleportation effect. It worked; alas, Oro’thion himself could not utilize the connection in the same way. Since non-living matter makes for notoriously poor spies, we tried to use the next-best option we had available: Aurelie. She volunteered to try making the selfsame journey the sand had made; and if I were a better wordsmith, I would interrrupt my narrative at this point to sing her praises and extol her bravery.
Aurelie promptly vanished through the portal and returned to us just a few seconds later, but said few seconds seemed to encompass the totality of time since the dawn of creation. She spoke to us of a stone room – more of a mausoleum, really, going by the impression I got from her account – littered with statues that came to life as soon as she appeared and bore their stone-hewn weapons against her. Luckily, her journey back occurred just in the nick of time, but not before she perceived a deep and ominous voice intoning, “Come now, my little ones! We are building a new kingdom!” The whole experience must have shaken poor Aurelie to the core, because it took quite a few tries for me to decipher what she was trying to tell us.
It is a testament to how earth-shattering all those revelations were that the fact that another group of survivors from the Market of Melodies was also present at the crime scene and actively trying to frame us for the murders with wildly divergent levels of competence seems almost an afterthought to me. One of their chattier members informed us that they were acting under orders of a mysterious woman whose description matches the aforementioned Lady Diamanté rather closely. Well, as the old bard saying goes, one stanza at a time. We had other matters to attend to, and we would turn our undivided attention to them immediately!
In this particularly context, “immediately” translates to “after stopping by Alizée’s shop, where Oro’thion, Siham and Yuri proceeded to wreck her inventory with gleeful enthusiasm”. I tried my level best to clean up after their shenanigans, but neither might nor magic is ever a match for sheer, unbridled tomfoolery. On the plus side, this brief interlude gave me the opportunity to observe Alizée’s spidery companions at work – a truly marvelous spectacle to behold!
As we were planning our next steps, I called Betty back to me. I had surreptitiously tasked her with checking on whether mom and dad were okay after last night’s cataclysmic events. I have never shared my parents’ faith in Gond, and I certainly would not call myself religious in any sense of the word, but I did – briefly, but intensely – thank each god I knew and, to be safe, each god I had yet to learn about, after learning that my parents were fine. I did not deem it necessary to check on Aeris or Leo. Aeris would scratch out the eye of The Whispered One himself if he pissed her off too much, and if Leo were in her vicinity at that point in time, death and damnation would be the least of his worries.
After some consideration, we took the scenic route to Siham’s current accommodation – the estate of Lady Zahara Jal'Zuun and Tholim Coppermantle. Fortuitously, the more learned ones amongst our group (i.e.: not me) took it upon themselves to broach the subject of the ancient sand we had found to Tholim, who immediately and eagerly excused himself to study that strange phenomenon.
In the meantime, Alizée took her leave to visit her family, whilst Oro’thion and Siham engaged in a scouting mission of the erstwhile Market of Melodies and the site of an elemental rift Yuri had spotted before.
During that time, I kept ruminating on the tumultuous events of the day and considered contacting Leo, but ultimately decided against it. Either things would go back to normal soon enough, and there would have been no reason for undue alarm, or – which seemed more likely by the minute – things would go downhill (or uphill? Re: my earlier thoughts on the matter) very rapidly, in which case I would be, at best, a liability. I might ask Betty to give them a once-over later anyway, just to be sure.
Eventually, Alizée, Siham and Oro’thion rejoined us, albeit without any new information to further our cause. I was, in all honesty, just glad to see them safe and sound.
During the magnificent supper of which Lady Zahara had graciously invited us to partake, Tholim entered the dining room to inform us just how utterly, impossibly old the sand we had found really was, and I must admit that I was getting disheartened by this point. There were forces at play here for whom concepts like time and memory were mere playthings. Even the strange symbol we had discovered seems to relate to one of the stone pillars surrounding Shal’Azura, deep within a land so cursed and fearsome that none who ventured there ever returned. How could a bunch of helpless mortals such as ourselves possibly stand up to that?
Then again, this might be an exciting new opportunity to experience something few, if any, have done before. Who said bards were only allowed to sing the praises of others instead of carving out their own place in the Great Music for themselves?
At any rate, we have decided to spend the next day at the Bahar Library to do some research, potentially followed by a visit to PRT H.E.L.I.O.S. I have never met them in person, and I must admit I am a little nervous about the prospect of doing so.
It is getting late now, and I will momentarily lay myself to rest. What a day it has been; strange and frightening and exhilarating all at once. In spite of – or maybe just because of – all that has happened to us, I feel like my companions and I have grown a bit closer in the short time we have known each other. It really seems to me that our individual leitmotifs are starting to merge into a rather enticing symphony, and I must admit I rather like the idea of that.