CHAPTER 60
Azra'il - POV
I gathered the three Boreas household musicians in a small rehearsal room, far enough from the rest of the manor to keep any outside curiosity under control. The lutenist and the flautist, old acquaintances from Eris's turbulent dance lessons, showed up with the posture of people already expecting some new eccentricity from me. Beside them stood the third member: a grey-bearded violinist Hilda had recommended as the most versatile musician on the property, capable of improvising over any melody without needing weeks of prior study.
"I'm going to need your collaboration on a special project," I announced, handing out the sheet music pages I'd copied out myself the night before. "A performance for Eris's tenth birthday. It won't be an ordinary parlour piece. It'll be something longer, with an epic structure."
The violinist leafed through the pages with focused attention. His eyebrows rose as his eyes swept over the unconventional arrangement: abrupt time-signature changes between sections, intensity markings ranging from an almost inaudible whisper to a dramatic fortissimo, and long pauses at points where any local composer would have filled the space with excess notes.
"This is... considerably more complex than a traditional court melody," he remarked, adjusting his glasses.
"It's a musical epic poem," I explained, settling into my chair. "Divided into sections I'll call cantos, given the span of time each one covers in the narrative. You'll be responsible for the instrumental accompaniment, but the story will be sung entirely by me."
The flautist looked up from the page. "You intend to sing the entire piece alone?"
"Yes."
"That will require unusual breath control for a performance of this length."
"I assure you I possess the necessary stamina for that technical detail not to pose an obstacle."
I then presented them with the narrative's skeleton. I avoided the particulars that would have demanded more time than that meeting allowed, but gave enough for them to grasp the dramatic arc: a warrior queen separated from her beloved by a conflict she hadn't wanted, and the twenty-year journey that would take her back home across seas populated by monsters, capricious deities, and her own stubbornness in never accepting defeat. I mentioned the main names, Asteria, Calliope, the creatures who'd appear across the cantos, and noticed, on the three faces before me, that typical expression of professionals realising they were about to take part in something far bigger than the nobility's usual commissions.
"Who wrote this work?" the lutenist asked, running his fingers along the parchment's margins with something bordering on reverence.
"I wrote it myself."
He looked up, surprised. "You've also mastered the art of composition?"
"I write from time to time," I replied, casually. "I've been working on a fantasy book these past few months, more as a personal hobby. This particular story seemed suitable for a performance."
It was a plausible justification for the inhabitants of this plane of existence. The house's "child prodigy," already known for running a hair-care business and teaching temperamental nobles, writing stories in her spare time wouldn't be the most bizarre item on the list of eccentricities the Boreas manor had learned to associate with my name. No one there needed to know "fantasy" was far too generous a term to describe actual memories, fully lived through in an existence that preceded this world.
The violinist nodded, satisfied with the answer, and turned his attention back to the notes.
We spent the next two hours reviewing the piece's structure, rehearsing short passages so they could get familiar with the musical vocabulary I'd chosen. It was a style closer to a dramatic ballad than traditional chamber music, full of building dynamics and sudden drops in volume to highlight the story's heaviest moments.
At the end of the rehearsal, the violinist asked: "Where do you plan to have us positioned during the actual performance?"
"I'm still deciding the staging details. You'll be informed with enough notice to coordinate your positions."
That concluded the preparation involving other people. The rest of the work I needed to carry out alone.
I returned to my room that night and accessed the dimensional inventory, reviewing the materials I'd gathered over the past weeks. I set aside luminous crystals in different shades, chosen for specific functions: cold blue for the sea scenes, intense red for the combat moments, and soft gold for the divine appearances. I also organised the pigments that would give the clay figures quick colour without compromising the clay's stability during the magical movements.
〈Eos, is the quantity of materials sufficient for the piece's length?〉
[Ninety-one per cent of the required stock is secured. I recommend one adjustment to the red pigment's proportion. Previous tests resulted in an excessively pale shade, resembling pink rather than the battle blood the narrative requires.]
〈Is that an aesthetic critique or a technical observation?〉
[Both. The War of Ilion's dramatic impact will considerably lose its visual force if the casualties look covered in fruit juice.]
I let a small, silent smile appear and noted the pigmentation adjustment.
The performance venue also demanded rigorous planning. The main Boreas hall, where the birthday would be celebrated, offered ample space to accommodate the moving set I intended to project, but the setup would require extreme discretion. Any visible preparation before the banquet began would destroy the surprise effect I'd planned.
I moved on to the part demanding the most manual patience: shaping the clay figures.
I moulded the first prototype using ordinary earth, trying to recall the almost obsessive precision Rudeus applied when sculpting his own earthen miniatures. He devoted obsessive attention to every anatomical detail of his figurines, even the parts no one would ever bother inspecting.
I didn't need that level of artistic refinement. My clay figures would only serve as moving silhouettes, with exaggerated gestures to communicate the action from a distance, closer to the concept of shadow theatre than detailed sculpture.
Even so, my brother's habit had taught me something useful: even a simple object carried greater dramatic weight when the mind shaping it genuinely thought about the character's identity, instead of just stacking clay into a vaguely human form.
I made a point of keeping that process secret. Just yesterday, I'd had to throw Rudeus out of my room at the point of an iron ruler when I caught him lingering over the outlines of my female clay figurines, under the pretence of "studying the three-dimensional anatomical proportions of the figures."
"If you touch these clay dolls with even one more finger, you perverted Chubby-Cheeks," I stated at the time, narrowing my eyes, "I'll use this same batch of clay to mould a new nose onto your face, and I promise I won't use delicate tools for the process."
"I was merely trying to offer artistic consultancy to improve the figures' relief!" he protested, retreating towards the door with his hands raised.
"Your artistic consultancy shows a character deviation I consider intolerable for this room. Get out before I decide to test the ruler's resistance against your skull."
He retreated with exemplary haste.
Free of interruptions, I went back to the modelling. I created the first figure of Asteria with a small clay crown, a short cape, and a bow on her back. I shaped Calliope with a long dress whose folds would receive the golden pigment to catch the crystals' light. Lastly, I adjusted the giant Arges's bulk, a disproportionate mass with a single point of blue light where his eye should sit, altering the proportion three times until his scale conveyed the necessary threat without demanding excessive space in the hall.
I carried on, shaping dozens of other smaller figures, crew companions, sea monsters, deities, each receiving only the details necessary to be recognisable from a distance, without demanding the excessive refinement that would consume weeks instead of hours. By the end of the night, the entire table was covered in small clay figures lined up side by side, a silent army waiting for its turn to tell a story none of those people would ever suspect was real.
With the modelling done, I accessed the dimensional inventory one last time, seeking out the instrument that would crown the performance.
I found it exactly in the compartment my memory pointed to: the old lute from my bard life. The wood had darkened with time, the strings had been replaced countless times, and the varnish showed the characteristic wear at the points where my fingers had gripped it night after night, in taverns of cities that had long since turned to historical dust.
I ran my fingertips over the surface, feeling the imperfections no new instrument could ever replicate: a fine scratch near the bowl, the result of a tavern brawl whose exact details I'd already forgotten; and a faint discolouration where the sweat of hundreds of performances had subtly altered the wood's natural tone.
I plucked one of the loose strings, just to hear the vibration.
The sound came out full-bodied and honest. It didn't have the technical perfection of an instrument fresh out of some renowned luthier's workshop, but it carried that acoustic richness only time and continued use can give to wood.
〈Eos, the instrument's structural integrity.〉
[The resonance box remains perfectly stable, with no identifiable internal cracks. I recommend replacing the first two strings to avoid material fatigue during the piece's more intense sections, but the lute's body is fully functional.]
〈It'll serve its purpose well, then.〉
I put the lute away with the same technical rigour I'd devoted to every stage of the preparation so far.
I turned back to the clay figures spread across the workbench, correcting a proportion here and adjusting a detail there as the night went on. Little by little, the entirety of the plan, the melody, the figures, the crystals' lighting, and the warrior queen's story, began to fall into the exact shape I needed it to take by the time the day of the banquet finally arrived.