Finding Your Tune

She wished he wouldn’t use incense. It was distracting - the earthy scent stuck at the back of her throat. The smoke would cling to her robe, and Neesa would smell like a forest for the rest of the week. Florin claimed it helped her to clear her mind and hear the Tunes, but she doubted it. How could she clear her mind when it was filling up with hazy smoke? What Tune could she possibly reach out to, that didn’t reek of a forest in bloom? Neesa hated the forest. Her whole life in Vinestop and she never really connected with the woods that surrounded them, cutting them off from the outside world. Ten years of staring out the window, fear gnawing at her like a wolf on bones. Perhaps twice a year, the forest would claim a life, or send some terrible animal out to try and destroy them. Neesa remembered Gerri’s father running out of that terrible weald, chased by a bear. He was exhausted, and the fool had not dropped the reams of fish that had attracted the predator in the first place. His pole tangled his feet and, betrayed by his livelihood, the man had fallen some thirty feet away from the village borders.

Strips of flesh and spouts of blood sprayed through the air as the bear went to work. Scales mixed with human muscle, and Neesa could only watch. Evan and Ayla appeared at the gate, bows strung, and they let death loose. Despite the horror, despite the sharp keening of a mother and daughter in grief, the archers did not miss. Still, it took half a quiver for the bear to drop. Neesa had kept her eyes on the face of her friend’s father. Eyes wide in terror, jaw wrenched wide from screaming and blood speckling his face like the pox. She remembered that face still, every time she talked to Gerri, every time the hunters or fishers went out and every time she slept. It was that face, and the smell. It had rained, a short summer shower, and so the scents of the forest encased the village and seared itself in Neesa’s mind.

The smell reminded her of being helpless, and Florin knew it. A scholar from afar, the old man had arrived at Vinestop some years before Neesa was born, and wielded his knowledge of lore and medicine to make himself valuable. Nearly everyone had a story of old Florin helping them through troubles. But, there was more to the man. Rumours, whispered in Darren’s tavern, spread by the children after teachings, that hinted he was more than was to be believed. They said Florin was a Tuner, and that he could teach that magic. After Gerri’s father, Neesa had approached him, asking to be taught the Tunes of the world.

Florin had denied her at first, but her stubbornness had worn him down. She would not be helpless against the forest anymore. She needed to help protect people, so that things like Gerri’s father never happened again. She had explained this once, after waiting in the rain for an afternoon for the old man to answer his door. As she shivered her way through the explanation, something shifted in the scholar’s eye. Curiosity began to gleam through, and he finally agreed to teach the stubborn young girl. Though she was, of course, sworn to secrecy. The village believed her to merely be behind in her letters and Florin kindly offered more of his time to help her.

It had been a year, and no Note nor Tunes had made themselves heard. They seemed to hover just on the edge of her hearing. If she strained, part of her swore that the Tunes could be heard, but at the end of every lesson, she had got no further. Despite her failures, Florin did not cast her out or tell her to give up, and so she didn’t. She would find it, she had to.

Neesa’s brain flared with the memories of the bear attack again, as the incense burned her nose. Florin’s voice, gentle and guiding, pierced the haze filling her mind, “You are focusing on the failure, turn instead to success.” How did he always know? Sometimes it was like Neesa had no thought private from the wise old man. Stop looking at failure? What did that mean?

In her mind’s eye, Neesa tore her gaze from the death of Gerri’s father, and instead looked at the bear. It was strong, primal. Neesa was sure the bear had never feared the forest, but it hadn’t had success either. It had died. Moving through the image was like wading through snow, it took more effort than it should. That didn’t make sense, this was her dream. Neesa turned her gaze, finally, laboriously, to the archers. She screamed, both in the dream and in the tiny hut. Evan and Ayla blazed, their forms outlined in glorious light. More than that, they sang. Music, beautiful, ancient and terrible music, tumbled from their lips, from their bows. It was a song of wind, which carried their arrows straight and true. The thrum of the bowstrings added notes to the melody, which cut through the screams of despair from the villagers.

Neesa watched. Neesa learned. The Tune had a name, and it took Neesa three hours to learn it. The Tune avoided her, and she could not grasp all of its Songs but, come nightfall Neesa could play the Tune of Cutting Wind, Dempaak.

Her triumph was short-lived, as was the pride gleaming in Florin’s eye. Another scream. This one real, shrill and cut off wetly. Neesa and Florin both looked out the small window of his hut to see Vinestop.

It was under attack. The gates had been smashed, and in the torchlight Neesa could see hulking forms, with sickly green skin and jutting, blood stained tusks. Orcs. Children of the abyss. The Souldead. Here? In her little village? They had no treasure, no gold. As Neesa puzzled over the situation, she saw Evan and Ayla loosing arrow after arrow. Unless they got a shaft through the eye, it took four or five arrows before a single Orc would fall. The archers shot as fast as they could, and Neesa saw Evan’s bowstring snap from the stress. It whipped him in the eye, causing him to stumble. The orcs gave no quarter, and swarmed him. Axes rose and fell, and soon one held Evan’s head aloft in victory. Ayla fell soon after, and the horde of monsters pushed further into the village.

Neesa was shaking with rage and fear, and she barely heard Florin when he whispered, “Right on time. Go on then Neesa. Show them what you’ve learned.” She looked up at her mentor, shocked at the violence in his voice, but she knew he was right. This is exactly what she had wanted to learn for. The Tune was still raw in her mind, and she was sensitive to its notes. It was powerful. She was powerful.

For a second, everyone, orc and human alike, stopped in their dying when she came out of the hut. A skinny ten year old girl, with long dirty blonde hair. Her robe was covered in filth, and when she opened the door, it creaked and tumbled incense haze out into the clearing. Fear threatened to make her collapse, but the Tune was there. A deep well of power, blazing in her mind. Instinctively, Neesa raised her hands. She inhaled, and nervously at first, Neesa Sang the War Song of Dempaak.

The air swirled around her, lifting her hair in gusts. Her robe flapped, and as the wind picked up speed, it stole the screams of the attacking orcs away. A vortex encircled her, and Neesa could tell when it was ready. There was yearning that she felt, as the notes tumbled from her faster than she thought she could speak the strange sounds. At the apex, as the orcs charged her, she told the wind to take shape, to wage war.

With a thud, the first four orcs were cut in half. Their guts tumbled out, glistening and black, making the ground slick and treacherous for their allies. Neesa cut a hand down, and another large scythe of wind tore the heads off of the next group. With each swipe of her hand, orcs tumbled to pieces. Magic coursed through her, it burned pleasantly and, as pieces of her enemies flew in front of her eyes, Neesa laughed. Shouts turned to screams, turned to wails. She didn’t realise that her friends and family were also screaming, as little Neesa became a whirlwind of devastating punishment. Her wind had become red as blood got caught in it, blurring her vision. Enemies became vague shapes, blurred by the spilled life of their former comrades. As such, she did not see when one particularly meaty individual risked the wind and tackled her.

Neesa thought her spine was broken, as she was slammed into the wall of Florin’s house. The orc that hit her now slid against her, back torn to shreds by the protective vortex. It slumped on her, and Neesa could not move it. As she tried to shift it, she could feel the Tune failing. It began to tear through her mind, seeking an encore, and she screamed her throat bloody. The magic erupted out of her in that scream, notes burned into her mind. Then, the wind calmed. It was gone. Nessa tried to reach for it again, but the pain was too much, her head threatened to split open. She could Sing again, not now.

Free to continue, the orcs moved on to their next target, Florin’s home. As she shifted under the corpse trying to free herself, splinters digging into her back, she heard a deafening crack. Timber, stone and orc rained around her, and another scream tore from her ruined throat.

A light blinded her, and heat washed over her tiny form as the orcs that had been charging the house were suddenly ablaze. They screamed and writhed and cooked, flesh crisping and cracking. Neesa could hear movement behind her as Florin’s voice echoed through the village, loud and full of power like never before. “You dare hunt me, Children of Xin. You force an awakening. So be it, we are here, and now all will know our terrible rule.” Another gout of flame washed over the orcs, who now began to flee before this new power. Neesa felt the ground vibrate as Florin took slow, ponderous steps, and appeared before her, facing down the remains of the soulless.

His back glimmered in gold, which cascaded down his arms and strong, muscular legs. No longer the frail old man, his neck was long, whipping his head around to survey the carnage. There was grace in his movements, despite his new, massive size. Idly, his tail swished back and forth, tearing the remains of his humble home apart. His eyes were still the same, a deep green that seemed to shine even more in contrast to his golden scales. They still glimmered with that curious intelligence. For a brief moment, his head snaked toward Nessa. It was hard to tell, but Nessa felt she heard a smile in his parting rumble, “A good first Song. I look forward to your Concert.”

He turned then, surveyed what was left of the village. Not much. Bodies of orcs and people lay scattered about, many torn to shreds by the magic Nessa had wielded. At his feet, a pile of burning orc corpses provided light so that the few remaining villagers could see the golden serpent and the terrified, crying, child by his feet. As the last of the fires burned down, he spread his wings, glorious shining wings, with membrane of gold leaf, and leapt into the air.

Neesa watched her mentor, the first dragon to be seen in fifteen ages, fly away.

The next she would see him, it would be war.