Another fun one that was daunting because I was worried about coming up with enough content based on an image with so little going on. Somehow, it all worked out.
Thanks for reading.
Artwork by Eren Arik
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/KXYqo
DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.
The Story
Rattle-click-clack-ting.
That wasn’t right, not right at all. So off key. Freylin almost laughed at his joke, but he would have been the only one to hear it, and he despised his laugh. A fluted inhale followed by what could only be described as a reverse burp. Utterly disgusting.
BOOM.
That wasn’t right, either. But it was a reminder that he wasn’t alone. The fleshy abominations that guarded this citadel had his scent–the essence of pine and lavender, if you were curious–and were BOOM-BOOM-BOOMing a tempo that was in direct opposition to the symphony he was composing. His lockpicks were the batons, they keyhole the orchestral pit.
If the BOOM-BOOM-BOOMing weren’t enough, the dreadful heat emanating from the brazier to his right was enough to drive him mad. It licked the stone wall like a dog who could never quench its thirst.
Freylin wiped his brow with the back of his glove for the twelfth time. He despised the fact that he knew the number, but he was an elf of numbers. That and locks, of course.
And music. Far more refined than the filth the prancing dolts in the forest played, for theirs did nothing but usher virginal swoons into glades to lose their innocence well before dawn.
Freylin’s music was about control. He was in command of this microcosm that had such a tight grip on this guardian slab. The bones of one of the great fathers who once stood tall for thousands of years, only to–
BOOM.
Gods, if those buffoons weren’t an annoyance. How could he perform under such circumstances? Closer, they were, and anyone would and should be frightened if they had naught by lock picks and their wits, like him. But not Freylin, oh no. He had plenty of time. Neither their jostling fat and muscle nor their slavering jaws struck fear into him. He’d been in far worse circumstances, faced worse odds, like the one time below Castle Harrow, far below, in the dankest of pits, where Freylin sipped breaths while golden-haired Mora kept watch, gods rest her beautiful soul, and the–
CRASH-BOOM.
Freylin lost his grip on his picks, almost lost himself to the memory, but the mouth of the lock, transfixed, allowed it to dangle from its lip.
“Mora,” Freylin said. The name was sweet. Bitter. Sweet.
The keyhole remained slack-jawed, and Freylin went back to work as the discordant counterpoint to his succulent interlude quaked down corridors to test the foundation of this ancient abode. To test his patience.
Rattle-ting-ting. Clatter-ting-tong.
“Dah-tee-dah, the Winter Maiden’s song,” Freylin sang. He hadn’t planned on lyrical accompinament, but when inspiration strikes, one cannot deny the muse.
He continued his delicate work, parting teeth and pillars and swirly-things, guiding barings and barrings and tiddly-darlings. Not their proper names, of course, but they were his names, his to raise, to mold, to release to find their true potential, which was to create a tone to make the dead weep. They are your children to name, and no other’s, was his mantra to his apprentices, when he was bored enough to take them on. If you use the names others have given, you will have no power, because there is power in a name.
“Elf!” came a bellowing at his back, stirring his cloak. Hotter than the brazier it was, a wind to smelt the most stubborn ore. But not Freylin, oh no. Steadfast he was, focused, yet able to perceive all around him. The picturesque moon, splashing silver onto gold. The sculpted halls, rising to where no light could reach, yet where sound could, producing such acoustics he had never experienced. The fetid flesh of the ones who pursued him, squeezing through the crumbling stone corridors BOOM-BOOM-BOOMing, and now talk-talk-talking.
Impressive, their pronunciation of his race, Freylin would give them that. A quiver of excitement tickled his back teeth and widened his eyes as tonal jewels spilled forth from the drooling keyhole.
THUNK.
From the corner of his eye, Freylin saw a crude axe embedded into the portal’s grained facade, then his own hair, caught silver by the moon coasting to the ground like dandelion seeds. And it was enough for him to lose focus, lose control, lose the power of the names he had given them, because he couldn’t let part of himself touch this disgusting place, tainting himself and his art as well as leaving behind ingredients for nefarious wizards to find.
Freylin collected every strand on the tip of a finger and frowned at it before stuffing it in his shirt pocket.
The keyhole stared blankly black, ordinary set in the hammered iron. Freylin stared back with that same blankness and blackness.
SWOOSH-TUNK.
TING.
Sung.
Sin.
An arrow, fletched with horror, with sin, but gilded with song. It could have been the locks of Mora there at the end of the shaft. The moon did nothing to dampen its golden luster, and the brazier’s fire only enhanced it.
Freylin went back to work as more arrows and axes missed their intended target as he swayed to the music he created, danced with Mora who existed only in his mind, captured by his symphony, as was he. That’s when you know it’s right. When it becomes part of you and you become part of it, one with everything and everyone until there is no singular, there is no plural, there is only an indescribable creation that has always been yet rarely experienced because once you experience it, you cannot experience it any longer since your senses are unable to be counted on a single hand, and music is all that is left, not even love, and you are helpless to its call, but eventually that music all comes crashing down to face a beautiful end of endless pieces because everything has an end, including the endless, but you step away at the last moment, providing release, closure, a final kiss if you will, and the sound your lips leave behind is a–
Click.
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