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MARCH SADNESS - A Symphony of Sorrow

SYMPHONY OF SORROW

If the Audience Would Please Take Their Seats

You find yourself at the theatre.

You may be asking how you got here, why you are here, when did you arrive. But none of that matters, does it? Nothing matters. Whether you are shocked at yourself for thinking so or whether you have known that nothing matters for years on end does not matter either. Whatever meaning there was to be had in any of this escapes you now. Who you were and what you wanted, what you valued and stood for, it all seems now like such a hazy dream. Out of reach.

There is a ticket in your hand. It tells you where to go. You follow it dutifully. Ticket stubs are exchanged for playbills. A schedule of performances. Whatever. You numbly proceed to where you belong. Performers and stage crew to their places, orchestra to the pit, workers to their positions. All with the knowledge that there can be only pain.

A four-armed conductor in moth-eaten robes raises his baton, and there is music.

You deserve this.

You deserve this.

You deserve this.

Observer’s Overture

First Movement in E Minor

adagio, con dolore
PP

Lights down on the chorus, who sits in the stands. They are playing the role of the audience. Ad lib spoken word between chorus members seated near one another. Soft music begins to swell eerily.

Lights up on the stage. A performance begins, apparently in media res, where the chorus is meant to observe.

vacillante, improvvisato
cresc. P

The performers on stage play out their acts, appearing fearful. The chorus ad libs quiet uncertainty from the stands. Some of them will look down at their playbill and find their own name on the schedule of acts to come. There is a brief description on the page of the act that is scheduled for them. It is clear by the state of the ones already on stage that this isn’t something they have a choice in.

Chorus members attempt to rise from their seats, but cannot. Not yet. Foreshadowing to a later movement. For now, they must endure the overture.

Opera Infernale

Second Movement in Various Keys
( A medley of vignettes, performed in various styles)

chorale concerto a tutti, con affetto

F

Various chorus members rise between songs and make their way to the green room, where they are costumed. They have some time to talk with other incoming acts. They will find themselves and their loved ones being prepared for their acts.

segue

Those who performed before stop in the green room again. They look drained. A fate which awaits the incoming acts.

segue

On the stage, each act is a musical recreation of trauma. A worst fear, a most painful moment, an act of cruelty, a time of hardship. The styles will vary accordingly. If the other players in a given tale are present, they will receive their role without question. If a cast member has no fellow performers from their own world present, an understudy will be chosen to play any other roles from those that they are close to. Everyone is off book. Vocal quality is adjusted to match the conductor’s standards. Staff ensures there are no interruptions. The show must go on.

CODA: Für Nimona
A Coda in A Minor

There is a stranger in the green room, unmoving. Pale glowing eyes peer out from an ungulate-shaped void perched atop a high end suit. Antlers leer overhead. He is waiting for someone. Staff take no notice of him.

Ensemble's Lament

Third Movement in G Minor

bocca chiusa
PPP

There are other places to be besides the stage. Other roles to play.

pesante

Behind the stage, the stage crew toil under Baritone, the stage manager and the Viscount of Suffering. There is a pipe organ built into the man’s chest, and the bell of a horn where his heart ought to be. It shows. He is as cruel as he is miserable. He runs a tight ship.

declamando, letando

There are others in the pit, if they have the musical skill for it. And while this part of the performance is managed by a kinder sort, the Contessa of False Comforts is not so named for no reason.

The opera is long. There are no intermissions. The orchestra plays until their lungs ache and their fingers bleed, while Sonata assures them that it will all be over soon. Surely she cannot be lying. Surely there must be an end…

freddo, pietoso

Just outside the auditorium, there is work for the chorus serving food and drinks, taking ticket stubs for the endless stream of audience members, cleaning messes, or all other manner of soulless work. Perhaps these ensemble members simply did not interest the Conductor. Or it could be that they were made more miserable elsewhere.

Reprise - Observer’s Overture

Fourth Movement in E Major

impetuoso
FF It would seem that once a chorus member’s concerto is complete, they are free to move about the premises. At least until they are scheduled in a supporting role for another soloist. This means a chance to explore--- or escape.

presto repente, bellicoso
cresc.

Those attempting to escape will be met with resistance, however. Guarding the doors are shades, creations of the Conductor who can wear the faces of those held dear by those that look upon them. Escape, more likely, will come from within.

Members of the chorus who attempt to do battle with the Conductor, however, will find themselves up against something far more dangerous. Figures of glass, in all different shapes. Some abstract and solid, some hollow and human-like, and everywhere in between. Perhaps some chorus members will find one to be familiar.

The Hero will need an ensemble of her own to make it through and strike at the Conductor. Perhaps a resistance can be formed in a hidden location near the green room.

Homeward Aria

Fifth and Final Movement in C Major

tiempo di fanfara, vittorioso
F

When a dagger of Aster is driven into the heart of Prince Efrain of Sorrow’s Song, at last, the illusion fades. The members of the chorus relinquish their roles and find themselves on the summit of Crane’s Ridge.

It will be an arduous journey home, but it can be done with the solace that there is one less Demon Prince to trouble Pumpkin Hollow. Music in a joyful major key swells, then decrescendos.

enfatico, mancando poco a poco

| CONTENT WARNINGS: altered states of consciousness, entrapment, grief, depression, mood control, loss of bodily autonomy |

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Just like our alien friends back home," Carolina grunts, splicing a stretch of cobweb that would have veiled her face. She isn't in the mood to be a bride right now. "We get swept up into their game without any clue what the hell is actually going on. Not until we're staring it in the face. Or dead." Or both. Does this count as both? No; they're walking and that's all the proof-of-life she needs.

Still, shaking off the black tendrils of their performance is... difficult. The original memory not easily shunted in her mind— unsurprising. She continues forward and watches CT sway, hunch, catch herself on the wall. Struggle to shape herself into the sturdy soldier she'd like to be in this and every moment. Not a soldier, but a bag of bones and blood and stunted breath smacking loudly against the wall.

And her, the shadow who would have chased CT even after she'd dealt the killing blow. Carolina looks down and is dizzied at the sight of herself, black faux-kevlar taking on new meaning.

Her stomach tosses. Dread, the rare kind where she knows a mission will fail before their boots touch soil. "I don't like the sound of him. Whatever he's aiming for, he won't stop once he has it. They never do. And you can't go making alliances without considering the consequences when the enemy's gone—" Careful, a quiet voice. You're scolding again. "—If what he's promised turns out to be a sham, who's going to stop him? There'll be no one left. Anyone that proactive about power is bad news."

Their stuffy corridor branches out venously, darker and darker the further they move from the stage, and deliberately so. The building— wherever, whatever it is— seems fitted to deter restless audiences back into their seats.

One door leads into a rehearsal room, mirrors constituting the walls from floor to ceiling.

Another draws wanderers up a metal spiral staircase to a catwalk.

Some doors lead nowhere. Others lead everywhere, their insides incomprehensible to non-demon eyes, causing terrible nausea.

Sharply, sharper than she means to: "I haven't made any alliances with demons, Carolina. These are— observations. Information. I-I couldn't stop him or anyone who decides to take his deals if I tried."

Even Valdis considering making a deal with him that would, in theory, buy them time sets her teeth on edge, nerves assuaged only by Valdis's honestly about the whole affair. Cerrit having made a deal with Aster long before she even arrived in town was enough to shatter her faith in him entirely, once he was finally able to admit he'd done it.

She cannot stop people making deals with the devil. Sometimes, it may even be genuinely useful. But she doesn't like it.

Another heavy breath. She leans against the wall again and watches Carolina pull open another door, a bitter laugh at the back of her throat. Of course this place isn't any easier to navigate than the damn gala was.

"But the demons— they know everything. A-And I mean everything. We still haven't found a blindspot."

"All I'm trying to say is—" She stops, finds the right words (if there's any to be had), "—one person's decision affects everyone. You're involved with the police here, right? So you have some kind of say in how they conduct business."

A beat.

"I know you have no problem questioning authority, CT." There isn't a hint of malice in her voice. She's perfectly mild— mostly. It'll take a good day or two to shake the tremor from her throat. "If your team decides it's time to start shaking hands with demons, bail. I doubt they'll find that blindspot anytime soon."

She clasps her fingers around a doorknob and swings it open, met by racks upon racks of garish costumes. Dust scent wafts in the air. Half the selection is moth-eaten. She fights a sneeze.

"Come on— there's a door through here."

"I know what I'm doing, boss," the word comes with the precision sharpness of a stiletto blade angled up beneath the xiphoid process, thrust with all the force she can muster. "I know the situation a damn sight better than you do. I-I'm just struggling to articulate myself because I just died in front of an entire fucking audience of people."

Maybe not really. Maybe her lungs never stopped drawing air and her heart kept pounding in her chest. Maybe it was just a show. But that doesn't feel like it matters, right now. The feeling is the same.

Deep breath in. She pushes herself up from the wall again and her nose wrinkles against the dust creeping past the doorway.

"How many costumes do they need..."

Carolina's face hardens. Her lips part in a retort her brain hasn't pieced together yet— something like watch your tone or you think I don't realize that? or I'm not enjoying this either— but in the end she falters and says nothing.

Difficult to come by, that silence. It's the pot of gold at the end of South's rainbow. The weakness Leonard Church feasts upon. Silences from Agent Carolina are typically followed by stiff kicks to the groin that'll land you in the ICU. If you're spared that torture, expect a verbal burn to the second or third degree. Silence, the atmospheric tremor as a bomb plummets toward the ground.

Silences like these are of the rarest sort. The sort that ends in nothing.

Shame stirs deep and repressed in Carolina's stomach. She wants to empty it like an old canteen. Toss it aside and forget it entirely. Leave it half caked in dirt. Chin and sternum touch as she shoulders her way into the room.

"Lotta costumes for a lotta people. This stuff is filthy..."

Tawdry coats make up tawdry battalions at either side, three dozen rows thick. They stand in wait. Wait. Wait. With slack arms ready to animate at the slightest disturbance. Somewhere, a moth prattles. She tries not to touch anything.

Carolina squeezes between cotton rows, taking the lead. "Careful."

It's just clothes, CT almost says, but the words hang unspoken at the back of her throat instead, like saying them will invite the room to prove her wrong. Nothing in a demon's domain has to be what it seems.

She's used to treading light. Even in her state, head spinning and body aching like she's shaking off old injuries, she knows how to make as little noise, disturb as little of her environment, as possible. Stay steady. Don't touch anything.

"I just wish I knew how long this is going to go on before— whatever happens happens."

The playbill was impossibly long, so many performances to come—but how many will get to happen, before the true final act takes place? How long do they have to wait for something to give, for this to end?

Old coats moan like souls without vessels, their moth eaten sleeves stirring, rising, searching, please, please, wear me once more so that I might feel the pleasure of making separate parts whole. Warm flesh and blood so easily forgotten as I spend all eternity waiting for a host that may never come, please please—

Don't look back.

Carolina steps a little quicker. Keeps her nose pointed forward for the fear that, in looking back, she might oblige demonic hunger and be swallowed up into costume racks. That, by acknowledging the rustle-voice from several dozen dusty, stinking old coats, she'll find herself under control once more.

"Whatever they're doing, they could afford to hurry it up a little—"

Fuck she hates all this weird, demonic stuff. How she misses the days where the challenges she had to deal with were all technological barriers, knives and bullets, explosions—quantifiable things, understandable things, things you could brace for with relative certainty of what was coming for you.

Magic, demons—there's no telling what they'll do next. There's no way to be prepared.

"I get the feeling we'll— we'll know when it happens. Efrain's playing conductor. Right in the middle of everything."

No distant backroom. Not hidden away behind a maze.

"And last time it all just— stopped, when Mendel dropped. Just like that."

Careful, careful. She tries to keep pace with Carolina.

War stopped being the subject of her nightmares long before now. Closed eyes brought interpersonal conflict, not gunfire. Familiar figures with shrouded faces, loved ones just out of reach, lapses in control like sand slipping between her fingers and the tops of high peaks, but never war. War dreams were mundane dreams. Work dreams where she thinks she's woken up late or forgot an important piece of gear.

This— the rustle and moan from inanimate objects, the cerebral pull and door that seems further and further away— is the stuff of real nightmares. It's abstract. She can't make sense of what to look out for, meaning she can't prepare, meaning they're screwed—

No we aren't.

"Whoever does the job, they've got balls. Attacking head-on like that is risky."

Her fingers wrap tight around a gaudy brass knob and pull. The door flies open. Carolina steps aside, plants a hand on Connecticut's back and shoves her through.

She makes the mistake of looking.

Still racks have moved. A conglomerate, all fabric and hangers and pieces of costume rack jutting like bone through broken skin, flaps wildly in its charging forward.

Ho- ly shit—

Air cuts through gritted teeth and CT almost snaps at Carolina, but the reflex has her turning fast enough on her heel that she dizzies before she can follow through. The feel of the hand on her back is lingers long after it's gone but all annoyance evaporates at the sight of what's changed in the open room.

"Shit—"

She reaches back through the door and grabs Carolina's wrist, yanking her through after her before this can turn into even more of a horror movie in the making.

War-torn bodies and buildings turned to rubble— she's seen that plenty. Phantasmic coats, however? Not so much. It's no surprise, then, that Carolina's lapse in judgement should be punished by that very specter. ...Specter? Demon? Hallucination? Whatever the hell it is, she's contorted her face into fitting disgust and wields it as an ineffective weapon.

Little moths swarm like flies to a fallen soldier. Larva first— in the eyes and mouth and wounds, gesticulating, churning their teeth. Out sprouts the wings and out comes the eggs. More dead, more flesh to feast, more eggs to lay, more swarm. Bodies cook under the hot sun fast. The scent, it's—

Disgusting—

Slam— the door behind her back. Dust and cotton and moth spores swirl miasmically, a fine powder on their shoulders. Carolina grits her teeth, rolls her shoulders. Steady yourself. It's fine. Don't let it happen again. Ever.

"—Thanks."

"Yeah, well— I don't leave people to die."

It's not meant to be a jab, not really. You're welcome or no problem or don't mention it just don't feel right in her mouth, and silence feels worse than nothing. So clumsy words fall in its place.

Nothing is safe in this place.

Another hallway stretches out from where they stand, and CT has no better idea of where they are or where they should go. In the distance, the music still swells in new, twisting arrangements for unseen performances.

CT swallows.

CT's words are a dull, serrated knife's edge to skin. Slow, grueling, untidy. They make their home somewhere in her gut and begin to hack away. She should say something. Defend herself. She tried to go back, didn't want to leave her for dead, had no choice but to retreat alongside Texas.

The muscle taut across Carolina's jaw clenches. (It's a wonder she has any teeth left). Tongue and cheek ready to form words equally caustic, and again she finds herself with nothing. Not quite submitting to clumsiness, and so resigning to silence. But not before leveling a look in Connecticut's direction.

Focus.

She digests the narrow sprawl of corridor carefully. A couple doors. Music at 9 o'clock. A fork right and left.

"There has to be main entry point. A lobby somewhere. If— whatever his name— is so intent on creating an authentic experience, he wouldn't have cut corners. And if there's a lobby, there'll be attendants. People like us."

Then, in CT's direction, "You can touch base with your group, if they're there."

Or...

"Or... We go back to the auditorium, take cover and stake out until it happens. If anything goes wrong, at least you'll be the first to know."

CT bites the inside of her cheek, thinking. "...I don't know how much cover there is to be had back there, every row was filled one way or another and the exits are in near constant use, but— maybe. We might have to circle through the lobby either way."

Unless they want to cut back through the Green Room, now behind them—assuming this space even obeys the laws of physics, which is never a safe assumption in these places even without the signs they've seen that it doesn't—which CT doesn't much fancy. Move ahead, see where it takes them. They have to reach the lobby or the auditorium eventually.

Probably.

Walk on. If that's what it takes to get out of here, so be it. She can handle it. If she can handle parading out on stage to reenact her guiltiest moment, she can handle this. This— this stupid hallway. This stupid demon, putting together stupid performances of coalesced memories he shouldn't know in the first place. What gives him the right to get inside her head? To screw with her thoughts, make her do things?

Embarrassing.

She isn't anyone's puppet.

She isn't a toy soldier. Not anymore.

They walk on. What other choice is there? They walk on, and she feels her face redden like a tomato. (Easier to avoid these things with a helmet). She boils at the thought of obliging whatever stupid game it is Efrain is playing with her, Connecticut, everyone, by wandering aimlessly. This is a trap. This is a fool's errand. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

She walks on, feeling the strap-muscle across her jaw tighten. Her hands ball into tight, white-knuckled fists and her shoulders rise.

Determination fuels her. She won't stop, but God she'll detest every moment she doesn't.

Walk on. Waste time. Do nothing. Go nowhere.

Carolina, saying nothing, bursting at the seams but saying nothing, keeping it inside where these things belong, sends her fist crashing through the nearest wall and continues to walk on.

One step at a time, that's all CT has ever been able to rely on. One stage of investigation after the next, layer after layer of encryption, slowly escalating but necessary risks, a long string of bases when on the run... she had to learn patience or go nuts and, well, she's not entirely certain she didn't go nuts but the patience has stuck.

So she walks, focused on the next step: getting out of this damn hallway into a populated area of the theatre and wait out the rest of the event.

She damn near jumps out of her skin at the sudden, crashing impact, pivoting on her heel on pure, panicked instinct that something's happened—

And watches Carolina's fist withdraw from the wall and her walk on. Jesus fucking christ.

She blinks. Gestures. "And if that wall had led to some other cursed room full of demonic shit? Or, hell, if that wall had been the demonic shit?"

Dust plumes in a cloud where her fist retreats from its newly-made burrow. Drywall falls away in pieces. Were she alone, she might have eviscerated it. Punch punch punch— lines of holes made like bullets through a practice dummy. Her knuckles beaten red and raw and satisfying, calloused skin cracked like a lizard's shed gone wrong, knee drawn up to blow through the half-decimation, body a weapon, a two-legged destruction, punch punch kick—

She's being ridiculous.

She's acting like South. Thinking like South.

Carolina exhales sharply. Smooths back strands of loose red hair and attempts to comport herself.

"We'd be fine."

Pause. She looks to the wall, waiting for it to send demon arms out through the hole to strangle her.

Nothing. She gestures.

"See? Fine. We can handle it."

Walk on. We're fine. You're fine. She's fine.

CT just stares at her for a moment, head tilted, silent and studying, until there's a quiet huff and a shake. "Don't take lessons from South. It never did her any good either, you know. I think it made her feel worse."

Anger as a filter emotion. Every other negative feeling twisted into a form that felt easier to digest in the moment, but that left bruises on the psyche where it had been forced to fit.

...they really were friends, once. It's weird to think that she's deader than either of the two of them that stand here, now.

CT sighs and turns to walk on. "Come on. It can't be far now."

Does she feel worse?

Has blowing her way through drywall or sandbag-dummies or holo-targets ever made her feel better?

Carolina wrangles herself inward, sitting introspective mind down like a parent strong-holding their child into completing homework. And the child, insisting they know everything; that they'd be wasting time by putting pencil to paper, obliging useless questions with useless answers—

So why am I sitting through this elementary classroom bullshit—

Connie's right.

She follows silently, shaking drywall dust from her fist.

Harmonic droning from the stage grows louder.

A dull sense of dread hangs over CT heavier and heavier the closer they get to their target, but for now she dismisses it as a simple consequence of being stuck in this place at all. It's meant to make you feel terrible. Now that the lingering effects of their performance have mostly faded, she's just picking up the ambient atmosphere, that's all.

(She doesn't really believe it, even as she thinks it.)

Down the hall, another turning, another door. The bustling sound of endless patrons and those serving them, trapped in their roles just as much as anyone on stage. CT presses her back to the wall and peers around the corner into the lobby, looking for the door to the auditorium.

"Well. You were right about attendants."

Carolina shoulders up against the wall, trying her hardest to ignore a Commanding Officer's muscle memory. 'Sync' ready to fall from her lips at any given moment. Hand falling to her waist in search of a firearm and finding nothing. And Connecticut, the only thing she recognizes in this awful place.

"Pretty crappy job if you ask me."

Hawk eyes scan the lobby perimeter; bodies that move to will apart from their own, shoveling food into buckets and doling out drinks. They look uniquely, expressionlessly miserable.

"Think they'd point us in the right direction?"

"I don't think they could do much but serve us popcorn."

Another scan of the room. What would be the doors are blocked by shades that CT refuses to let her eyes linger upon for too long once their faces twist into something familiar. The attendants at their sales positions, fulfilling endless orders for endless patrons. And beyond the throng, the entrances that should lead to the auditorium.

"We just have to make it through. I think."

"Wouldn't be the worst thing in the world."

Popcorn and shades— what more could she ask for? A large cup of eldritch horror Coke, maybe. And a one way ticket out of here. Screw the big finale.

By the looks of these things, though— mindless drones to a demon's fanfare, with a duty to ensure that each performance be uninterrupted— she's certain they'll be a real pain in the side. A nuisance at best, and a danger at worst. Assume everyone's an enemy. It's gotten her this far.

Carolina makes a tight, thoughtful noise as she surveys her path. Cracks neck and knuckles.

"Simple."

And like that, she's off.

CT huffs something of an empty laugh. Same old Carolina.

Where Carolina is fast and direct, CT slips out of her hiding place and sticks to the edges. Either Carolina will succeed in her own approach, or she'll be a distraction, and CT can take advantage of either to keep the false crowd's eyes off her as she makes her way around the walls of the space toward the auditorium doors.

Or, she should've been able to. If something didn't suddenly root her to the spot.

Carolina speeds into the crush.

There are bodies on all sides of her. Operatives in little vests and bowties sweeping popcorn from the floor, patrons brought up from darkness solely to get in her way. That's fine. Nothing she isn't used to. Keep an eye on Connecticut, a stern voice in her head. She won't drop the ball this time.

Gaze cast out into a raucous sea, she spots her sneaking. Just her style.

Focus. Lead them away. Create an opening.

She blows hair out of her face. Turns shoulder into battering-ram and clears a path only to be met by greater resistance. One shade twists gaseous limbs around her bicep, face yawning expressionlessly— mouth a black hole, a nightmare— right beside her's. It reeks of death and cold. Another reaches for a broom. You've got to be kidding me.

"CT, we've got— CT?"

She isn't moving.

Why the hell isn't she moving?

"Hey!— what's your problem?"

MARCH SADNESS - A Symphony of Sorrow

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cw gore and bug mention

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About wrap?

wrap!