The Exorcist Doctor

Vivienne’s hands were trembling against his. Jin noticed that first. It wasn’t the Grand Ballroom, the Breeder recovering from his missed tail strike, or even the music that’d suddenly erupted from one side of the ballroom. He felt Vivienne’s fingers wrapped around his, shaking hard enough to betray every ounce of fear she was trying to strangle behind that awful, forced grin.

And yet she kept dancing.

She pulled him through another turn, guiding his footwork away from the Breeder. Healing blood poured into him through their bloodshackle with every breath. Bruises tightened under his skin. Cuts along his ribs and shoulder closed enough to stop bleeding. The burning pressure behind his eyes began draining away into the shackle, and after a few more seconds, even his lungs finally remembered how to breathe without tasting poison, courtesy of her Swarmblood Art.

Vivienne was terrified, but she was here.

The music blared again, louder and rougher than anything the Endless Masquerade had been playing before. Jin glanced towards the noisy balcony through the turn, still disoriented enough that his mind had to drag every detail into place by force.

Huh.

That’s…

Evelyn. And Liorin. The two teenagers stood where one of the frightened bands had abandoned their instruments, Evelyn’s cheeks puffed around a crooked wind instrument with brass ribs and black pipes. She played a low, rowdy, and unmistakably Blightmarch rhythm—with too much grit and swagger and back-alley laughter in the notes—to try to rob the ballroom of silence. Beside her, Liorin had claimed some long-necked string instrument he clearly had no business touching, but his fingers plucked and slapped the strings with wild, earnest timing that somehow matched Evelyn’s rhythm perfectly.

“Louder, forest boy!” Evelyn shouted between breaths. “Play like the dead owe you rent!”

“I play strong!” Liorin called back. “This song… is fun!”

But it wasn’t enough. Two teenagers playing stolen instruments on one balcony couldn’t carry the silence of the entire Grand Ballroom. The old music had stopped. The guests had stopped dancing. The show was still dead, twitching, and one bad breath from becoming a disaster that’d turn all of Bleakhearth’s polished knives towards the Heartcord Clinic.

Then a piano struck from the balcony on the far opposite side of the ballroom, and a strong, clean chord rolled over the crowd.

Jin’s gaze snapped towards it as Vivi led him into another turn. On the other balcony, Cara sat at a grand black piano, her hands moving with absolute authority as she took Evelyn and Liorin’s rough tavern rhythm and gave it bones. She gave it structure, she gave it weight, and she didn’t soften the tune. Somehow, her playing refined the rhythm into something that could survive the ballroom without losing Blightmarch’s signature sound of smoke and gutter-brass.

And now that there was music coming from two sides of the hall, a new woman’s voice rang out through a combed speaker at the far end of the Grand Ballroom, perched on the grand stairs.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the Endless Masquerade!” she announced, grinning through her ruby mask covering only half of her face. “Pray forgive the interruption to tonight’s revelries, for the Rot Merchants proudly present a most unusual entertainment in your honor: The Dance of Venom, a battle of rhythms hailing from the oldest of old Blightmarch legends! So please! Keep your masks on tight, your valuables close to your chests, and your screaming tasteful as tonight’s performers attempt not to die before the final chorus!”

The combed speaker in the lady’s hands crackled shut with a sharp click, and then the rest of the balconies around the ballroom erupted with sound. Dozens of smaller bands emerged around the hall, all of them dressed in neat suits, elegant brass masks, and clawed metal fingertips that looked far too sharp to belong to ordinary musicians. Still, they could play. They raised violins, drums, pipes, horns, bells, and ugly little Bharnish instruments Jin didn’t even know the names of, and—one by one—they joined Cara’s foundation rhythm.

Now the Grand Ballroom was filled with music once again, and as Vivi continued twirling Jin farther and farther away from the staggering Breeder—whose unstable Myrmur armor screeched and spasmed against his skin—the panic in the ballroom slowly began to loosen its grip.

A few paired guests were still backed away. A few were still staring at the Breeder with shock cracking through their masks. But as the music grew bolder and the rhythm even wilder, and the Rot Merchant bands leaned even further into the act, the first drunken patrons began swaying to the beat.

A couple resumed dancing to the left, grinning to themselves. More followed, laughing nervously. Then a whole swathe of couples suddenly twirled into motion, chattering like the ceiling hadn’t just caved in, and when more than a few people could convince themselves this was all staged for their entertainment, the rest of the people could, too.

The Endless Masquerade began anew.

“What’s going on?” Jin muttered, glancing around in disbelief.

“No idea,” Vivienne whispered back, “but I think I’ve seen that lady in the back before, so let’s just… roll with it?”

But the Breeder, of course, had no intention of ‘rolling’ with anything. Having regained a semblance of control over his scorpion armor, he snapped himself upright before hissing in pain, spearing his tail forward in an attempt to impale both of them from dozens of steps across the hall.

Jin started to move, but someone else arrived first. Fergal cut across the floor with a blur of speed, striking the tail from the side with a kick so heavy it slammed the stinger into the floor, cracking tiles outwards in a jagged fan. The Breeder reeled. Fergal didn’t. The boss of the Saint’s Hands landed, glanced back at the two of them for a moment, before leaping away to Cara’s balcony beside the piano.

Four spider claws unfurled from the man’s back, but rather than attack, he raised them like a conductor’s batons.

A signal.

And without a word, dozens of Saint’s Hands couples emerged from every side. Their clasped-hands masks gleamed as they twirled out from between ordinary guests, taking their positions by dancing in a continuous circle around the two of them and the Breeder. By doing so, they formed a living perimeter made of bodies and rhythm, keeping ordinary guests out while keeping the three of them trapped in the center.

A dancing arena was what it was.

Jin couldn’t comprehend it.

For all his drunken chatter about not causing a ruckus, Gael had still expected things to go wrong. And Fergal had expected the same. The Rot Merchants, the Saint’s Hands, Cara, Evelyn, Liorin—all of them had been waiting somewhere, ready to support Jin and Vivi in case everything went wrong.

There was no other way to explain it. Jin hated how impressive that was, but he also hated how relieved he felt.

“... Everyone’s helping us,” Vivienne whispered.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

He looked back at her.

They were still dancing and circling in the rhythm she started. Her dress was torn at the sleeves, her breathing was ragged, and sweat clung to her temples like she’d run across half the city just to get to him—and fear still sat in her eyes so clearly he could’ve named every part of it—but there was something brighter there too, awkward and trembling and stubborn enough to make his chest feel strange.

He had no idea why and how, but the smile she was giving him now was the brightest smile he’d ever seen on her face.

“The show’s not over yet,” she breathed. Her voice shook, and so were her hands, but she didn’t let go. “I’ll lead you on the dancing, so… lead me on the fighting, partner?”

Jin stared at her for a second too long. His mouth opened—nothing came out.

So instead, he closed his mouth and narrowed his eyes at the Breeder across the hall.

A nod was all he gave her.

“Oh, well,” the Breeder said, his voice twitching between human irritation and insect rasp. “Unlike you, I have no need to keep this show intact.”

Then his living armor started warping. The scorpion tail sank in, the back split, and orange poison-light began crawling out from a new pair of armored wings. Netwing beetle wings. If they were to open fully in the center of the Grand Ballroom, every dancer, musician, and masked servant staring at them would be poisoned by the light.

Thankfully, Jin recognized the move.

“Vivie—”

But she was already moving. Her left hand slipped away from his gauntleted right hand, and for one second, he wondered if she was going to let go of him—until she suddenly pivoted into a one-handed hold, turning under his arm with a quick, snapping step, before whipping him out like a blade.

His eyes widened by a fraction, but he didn’t let the opportunity pass him. Following the snapping rhythm, he jerked his gauntlet out on the turn and fired a burst of mudblood so thick it sounded like a fistful of wet bricks leaving his fist. The mud struck the Breeder across both shoulders just as the wings tried to unfold. Then it clung there, heavy and fast-hardening, pinning the joints before they could fully expand.

The orange glow flickered only weakly. The Breeder stumbled back, clicking his tongue in irritation as he tried to brute force his wings out, but Vivienne pulled him through the next turn before he could plant himself and start brawling like an idiot. The show had to keep going, but the steps came fast—too fast for the usual Vharnish ballroom forms. A snap to the side, one-hand pivot, heel slide, step in, step out, turn again… Jin knew this rhythm the moment his body caught up with hers.

It was the Harbor-Step. He hadn’t thought of this dancing form in years. Supposedly, it came from some foreign port city with too much salt, too much wind, and apparently too little patience for proper noble postures. It was a form for two dancers that used only one clasping hand, quick footwork, and extremely sharp motions. It was a dance that looked too eager to be elegant and too playful to be respectable. His Vharnish instructors hated teaching it. Noble mothers hated seeing it. Formal ballrooms treated it like a stain on all dances.

He hadn’t expected Vivienne to know it, and he definitely hadn’t expected her to enjoy it.

A breathless laugh escaped her as she guided him through another snapping turn, sweat shining at her temples, fear still wide in her eyes but no longer swallowing everything else.

“This one’s my favorite,” she said with a grin, almost disbelieving it herself. “It’s so much more fun than the stuffy nonsense all noblewomen have to learn, isn’t it?”

Jin looked at her, stunned. Then the Breeder snarled and tore the mudblood on his shoulders apart.

The pinned wings cracked backwards, but instead of forcing the netwing beetle further, his living armor shifted again. The orange glow collapsed inwards. Green-black chitin erupted outwards. Shield mantis. Two great scythes burst from his shoulder blades and cleaved through the remaining mud clinging to his back, and once his movements were no longer obstructed, he lunged at the two of them with all four mantis limbs spreading into a fan of blades.

Jin took the lead.

He didn’t think about whether Vivienne could keep up. He simply moved and trusted her hand in his. A scythe swept for their knees, and he jerked her sideways into a fast caper. Another came for his shoulder. He spun her under his arm and ducked with her, the blade shaving a ribbon from the sleeve of his suit. A third slash carved down in a brutal arc, so he pulled her close, stepped back, then drove them both into a sideways leap that turned, somehow, into another Harbor-Step flourish.

The crowd gasped as they escaped the Breeder’s flurry of arcs and slashes, but soon the gasps became cheering. They became excitement. Heels struck the floor in rhythm as hundreds of patrons, Saint’s Hands and Rot Merchants alike, began stamping with the music, giving the bands a harder beat to chase. Clicks and clacks spread through the Grand Ballroom. The musicians seized it. Cara’s piano hammered faster. Evelyn’s wind instrument screamed like a gutter-cat with a knife, while Liorin plucked and slapped his strings with frantic joy.

The Breeder’s furious gasps vanished beneath the growing music. Vivienne’s breaths were starting to hitch as well with how fast Jin was pulling her through the battle-like steps of the Harbor-Step, but she wasn’t tiring nearly as quickly as the Breeder was.

“Is he… about to collapse or something?” she breathed, voice ragged as he pulled her into another turn. “He doesn’t look… fine.”

The Breeder really didn’t. His mantis armor warbled under the ballroom light with every missed slash, chitin plates screeching as they tried to pull away from his limbs. The scythes were twitching at bad angles. His steps were also jerking out of rhythm, then self-correcting with too much force.

“Whatever ‘formula’ is letting him control those Myrmurs won’t work forever,” Jin breathed back, only slightly less winded than her. “We tire him out. He’s going to wear himself down soon, so just keep—”

“Not yet,” the Breeder snarled, having heard enough. “I’ve still got more!”

The mantis armor recoiled into his body as he backed off. Grey chitin shoved out next with rounded plates, translucent wings, and resonant throat sacs swelling along the neck.

Shrill cicada.

“Hold on!” Jin snapped.

“What?”

“Just hold on!”

Then he yanked her forward. This time, there was no disguising it as dance. No way. He launched them both straight towards the Breeder with a powerful skip, and Vivienne made a startled sound, but her grip locked around his hand instead of slipping.

No you don’t!

As he neared the Breeder, he fired mudblood in every direction around them, shaping the blood as it left him and forcing it into a circular shell. As he landed, the Breeder let his throat loose and screamed—but Jin’s mudblood dome had already formed around all three of them, and the shriek hit the inside of the dome like a storm trapped in a coffin.

Jin’s eardrums ruptured. Pain cracked through his skull white and hot. Vivienne hissed as well, her fingers clamping down on his so hard her nails bit through his skin, but the dome muffled the worst of the shockwave from escaping into the ballroom, and Vivienne’s Swarmblood Art would heal them. The Breeder, on the other hand, had no such ability. His own shriek echoed back to him, making the muscle strands of his own Myrmur warble and try to tear off him again.

For Jin’s part, he was ready to punch the Breeder out of the dome and resume fighting in the Grand Ballroom, but Vivienne jerked his hand down and shook her head, eyes sharp with pain.

“Down,” she hissed.

Jin barely heard her. “What?”

“Bring him down! There’s a large space under the building! We can take the fight down there!”

His first instinct was to reject it. Vivienne didn’t know fights. She didn’t know how to read terrain like he did. He shouldn’t be listening to strategy from a lady who’d nearly died because she couldn’t keep her footing above a sewer grate after the battle was over.

But then he saw her face.

Still afraid.

Still exhausted.

Yet completely sure that she knew something he didn’t.

… ‘People can change down here’, huh?

For once, he decided to trust her.

While the Breeder remained stunned, he twisted, planted his gauntlet against the floor, and drove every bit of force he could into one downward punch.

Mudblood and raw strength struck together, and a whole circle of black-and-invory ballroom floor cracked beneath them, making them plunge into open darkness.

For a moment, all Jin could feel was the three of them falling through dust and broken stone—Vivienne’s arms wrapped around his waist for dear life—but candlelight bloomed beneath him quickly. Hundreds of small flames trembled inside skulls mounted along the walls of the vast chamber that opened around him, and there were even more peculiarities blurring past him. Coffins, pillars, and shadows were the least of them. As far as he could tell, he was falling through some sort of giant catacomb, but…

What is this place, really?

And what’s that laughing down here?