The Exorcist Doctor

The corridor finally gave way to the Grand Ballroom, and Vivi forgot to breathe once again.

Large would’ve been manageable. Large implied proportions were still obeyed, and that her eyes could eventually settle somewhere she could declare the end of the room—but the Grand Ballroom refused that courtesy. It opened before the two of them in a sweep of golden lights, music, glass, silk, and hundreds of moving, twirling bodies so intense that for a second, it was like she’d been transported right back up to Vharnveil.

The floor gleamed black and ivory beneath hundreds upon hundreds of feet. Balconies curved along the walls where entire bands played behind them, draped in velvet and lit with amber lanterns. She recognized at a moment’s notice that none of them were playing the same song, but their music didn’t clash. The Grand Ballroom was large enough that different sections of it had their own rhythm, their own style, and their own pairs of swaying wealth and nobility. On the sides, staircases rose along the walls, carrying tired dancers up into what were probably smaller rest rooms where they could pause, trade whispers, settle debts, and then return to the dance floor with fresh lies on their tongues.

Through all of it, Three-Faced servers and waitresses glided between couples with trays balanced high, their own steps matching the music so perfectly that they seemed part of the choreography. Drinks passed from hand to hand. Little plated morsels vanished and reappeared. Masks turned, gloves brushed, jewels flashed—and then there was the ‘chandelier’, the giant mechanical moth hung on wires and fluttering across the ceiling in swirling arcs. Its mechanical body was lit from above, and the light scattered down through its crystalline wings, refracting columns of rainbow-hued light across the entire ballroom.

“... Whoa,” she whispered. The word escaped before she could dress it in anything more ladylike, but Gael had no admiration to give, because he grabbed both her hands and yanked her forward immediately.

“Can’t just stand here clogging up the entrance like a constipation miracle,” he muttered back. “Get in there.”

Then he twirled her straight onto the dance floor. She let out a startled sound as the momentum seized them. Dozens of bodies moved around them in immediate, elegant flow, and the pressure of the crowd flowing into the room behind them made stopping impossible—so Gael immediately stepped on her toes, making her wince as he grinned with shameless cheer.

“Whoops,” he said brightly as he fumbled through the first turn. “Time to lead, upper-city lady. How the hell do I dance?”

Vivi stared at him for half a second. Then the training returned in fragments: she recalled her instructor tapping her ankle with a cane, correcting her posture, and endlessly insisting that her body must always know the next motion before her mind caught up.

The rhythm around them helped. The structure of the music helped even more. Somewhere under her bundle of shaking nerves, her spine remembered what her panic had forgotten—so she inhaled, set her hands firmly against Gael’s, and whispered.

“Three steps back, two steps to the left, then turn.”

Gael obeyed with astonishing little pride, and that, more than anything, made her believe they might get through this.

She guided him through the next turn, then the next, and then the next. A side-step here, a pivot there, a soft pull to angle them between another pair. Gael was clumsy, yes—and too loose in the shoulders, and he also moved at times as if his limbs had been borrowed from a different, drunker body—but he was also quick to learn. Quick enough that once she found the rhythm for both of them, they began to slip more naturally through the current of the dance.

Her focus narrowed.

The room stopped being one enormous threat to her. Instead, they became… pieces. Hands. Footfalls. Timing. Pressure. She stopped seeing faces and started seeing lanes of movement. She stopped hearing the whole orchestra and instead heard the little beats she needed to carry them through it. The wary looks from the surrounding dancers fell away. Their distance from the Raven ceased to matter. The music did what it was meant to do and swallowed her nerves piece by piece, and soon, she found herself lost in only the dance.

Gael grinned at her.

“Damn,” he said. “You really can dance. Now I know how to dance with Maeve on our wedding day.”

She felt an anxious little smile twitch at the corner of her mouth. “I’d still… uh, ask you to hire an actual instructor, but thank—”

“Alright, now start looking around,” he cut her off promptly as they neared the center of the ballroom. “Do you spot any Myrmur Hosts here?”

She swallowed and forced herself not to tense.

Right.

We’re not here to actually dance.

They were here because somewhere in this monstrous hive of wealth and music, someone connected to the recent swathe of artificial Myrmur Hosts was likely moving through the crowd as calmly as anyone else.

So she looked. She let her gaze move across the crowd the way it ought to in a dance—past shoulders, over masks, along the edges of chattering and laughing couples as they turned and twirled. It was a bit troublesome at first, splitting her attention between the steps and the search, but she also adjusted quicker than she thought. The dancing occupied one part of her body, and the hunt occupied another.

Soon enough, red pulsed in her vision. Then there was another pulse. Then three more, separated by different sections of the room. Her breath hitched, but she kept her expression as calm and composed as she could.

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“There’s a few,” she whispered.

Gael’s eyes were already moving too, behind the round lenses of his mask. “Uh-huh. I also see a few. Guess it’s only statistically normal for there to be one or two in a place like this.”

“I guess? But what are we—”

“Now tell me something more useful: among them, is there anybody who doesn’t look sickly at all?”

Vivi looked again.

Most of the Myrmur Hosts were what she’d come to expect: a little too pale under the skin, a little too thin around the mouth, or moving with the slightly delayed fragility of people carrying something ugly inside them. They hid it extremely well even by Bleakhearth standards, but after seeing so many Myrmur Hosts over the past few months working with Jin, her eyes didn’t miss the symptoms.

… But for one Myrmur Host.

It was a masked lady dressed in a subdued black gown, lingering just off to the side of the ballroom on one of the lower-level balconies. Wine glass in one hand and a cigar in the other, her gaze swept over the ballroom with far too much purpose and far too much life in her. Still she pulsed red in Vivi’s vision all the same.

“There,” Vivi whispered, guiding Gael through another turn so he could see her. “Up there, on the balcony. She’s a Myrmur Host, but she doesn’t look sick at all.”

Gael followed her line of sight, stared for a few seconds, and then grinned to himself.

“Well, well,” he murmured. “Then we’ve probably found ourselves a little co-conspirator.”

Vivi frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Nobody can completely hide the symptoms of being a Mymur Host now that the Steelborn have knocked the stabilizers off the market, so anyone who looks healthy as day despite being a Myrmur Host is either a god in human flesh or someone related to the artificial Myrmur Host project,” he explained, spinning one more time so she could take a look at the lady again. “She’s probably not the doctor who does the surgery, but she’s someone who works with the doctor. I’ll bet Maeve’s left arm she’s looking for someone she can drug and spirit away from this room without causing a scene, so we’re gonna keep tabs on her. The moment she makes a move, we’ll go after her.”

The rhythm of the Grand Ballroom carried Jin forward whether he liked it or not.

He’d never enjoyed dancing. He understood it, yes, like all upper city boys had it drilled into them so they could keep up appearances with the other households, but enjoyment had never been a part of it. Even now—as he guided Maeve through the slow turns and controlled steps expected of them—the entire thing felt like a performance he’d been dragged back into against his will.

He was reminded of Vharnveil, and he hated it. Still his body remembered the moves.

His right hand held hers at the proper height. His other steadied her at the waist with just enough firmness to guide without drawing attention, and his steps, while not really ‘elegant’ whatsoever, were precise enough to pass. In a room like this, where everyone was pretending to be effortless, ‘good enough’ was all he needed.

It also helped that Maeve was a quick learner, and she followed her very easily. He adjusted their direction slightly to avoid colliding with a passing couple, then glanced past her shoulder as they turned.

Even in the chaos, he picked out several familiar pairs. Evelyn and Liorin were dancing nearby, though it’d be more accurate to say they were doing something that vaguely resembled dancing. Liorin moved with enthusiastic, earnest energy as always, his steps occasionally correct but often drifting into something freer, something less structured. Evelyn, on the other hand, looked like she was trying to dance and threaten someone at the same time. Her posture was sharp, and her movements were far too clumsy and aggressive for the music. Naturally, that led to friction, so the two teenagers’ bickering was loud and clear for everyone around them to hear.

“Oi, don’t spin me like that,” Evelyn snapped. “You tryin’ to break my arm or impress the room?”

“I’m doing both. Is good, yes?”

“Not it ain’t!”

“But it fun!”

And across the floor, on the other side of the ballroom, Jin spotted Cara and Fergal as well. For how fast he’d seen the boss of the Saint’s Hands move with his Jumping Spider Class before, Fergal was currently moving like a stiff doll, his steps swift but lacking any natural ease. Cara, by contrast, moved with the most proper Vharnveil precision Jin had seen, which made guiding Fergal an absolute chore.

“Back straight,” she said, adjusting his shoulder with a firm push. “Don’t curl in. Keep your center of balance firm.”

“Saints help me, woman, I am straight.”

“You’re not.”

“Fuckkk.”

… So it was an absolute miracle Jin had some amount of synergy with Maeve. Still, he couldn't help but exhale through his nose.

“They’re drawing too much attention,” he muttered. “We have to—”

“Just let them be,” Maeve said easily, following him into the next twirl, caper, and rotation. “More eyes on them means fewer eyes on us. I’m happy we’re not the spectacle.”

He didn’t like it, but it made sense, so he adjusted his focus and let the others fade from immediate concern as he guided Maeve deeper into the ballroom.

But after a few more turns, another errant thought surfaced.

“You… really don’t know how to dance?” he asked, frowning at her. “You’re already better than me after five minutes of this, and I had weeks and months of practice.”

Maeve glanced at him. “Nah. I started Exorcist training under my foster mother pretty early, so I never got to that part of the upper-city lady life.” Then she tilted her head, caught his incredulous look, and smiled just a little. “You know, you’re not that bad of a dancer either. If you used this on Vivi, she’d probably fall right for you, hook, line, and sinker.”

His expression flattened. “And why would I do that?” he mumbled.

Maeve hummed, clearly unconcerned with his answer, so he looked away and let the conversation die as his eyes started scanning the ballroom again. This time, he wasn’t looking at any people. That was Gael and Vivienne’s job, to find anybody who might be working for the artificial Myrmur Host project so they could lead the two of them to any kidnapped people who needed rescuing. His job was much simpler.

“... That one,” he said quietly, nodding towards a staircase partially obscured along the left wall, much less crowded than the others. “We’ll go up that one and check the upper floors one by one. That fat guy and my father both said the laboratory they were operated in had a glass dome ceiling, so if it’s here, it has to be one of the upper rooms.”

Maeve followed his gaze, then nodded quickly. “We’re definitely going to be passing smaller dance rooms even as we move through the non-dance corridors upstairs, though. You sure you can keep this up the whole way while we check room-to-room?”

Jin grimaced. He didn’t like this place at all. The dancing, the music, the crowd, it all reminded him of the upper city he left behind and promised never to return to until his father’s death was avenged—so if this was where his journey was going to end, he’d grit his teeth and bear with it.

His jaw tightened.

“I’ll do whatever I have to,” he said quietly. “And when I find the bastard, I’ll kill him.”