#dwcaug2024

[nahisummerhold]

@daily-writing-challenge - August 2024 - Day 1 - Melee

One Song

(Sexual content)

(TW - Violence, Blood, Gore)

There is a soundtrack to a person’s life. Some individual stanzas marked years, decades, even centuries. Some songs covered a single moment… or a night.

That night always came flying back in flashes, bits and pieces linked together. Each breath, each scream, each caress, every lover’s embrace becoming deaths instead.. Patternless, no logical order, just snippets of a transformation.

******

A shivarra stood on the stage swaying, the first words of her song hit like a wave of melodic perfection, magically enhanced to reach through stone and into every body.

Snap. Her mother on a platform arms extended out gracefully while her aria traveled along the columns of the room.a slightly too tight cream dress hugging the older woman’s ripe curves, chest lifting as the strength of her voice fills free space between bodies.

Drum beats pulsed low beneath the breathy lyrics, a driving thrum of a heartbeat that lifted from the floor to grip around the heart to change the thud to synchronize together.

Snap. Hallways filled with people, nobles and servants, defenders and assailants, the clash of weapons, the collision of bodies. People trampled in panic, others, regardless of status, stopping and picking up weapons to guard a retreat.

Incubus and succubus danced together, their power linked to one another and fed through the music to infuse greater passion into a listener. 

Snap. Dancing with her best friend, bodies moving sinuously, hands searing patterns along each other’s bodies in a show for all around them. Turning she looked over the room, searching out the night’s entertainment. There… green eyes move slowly from  entrance to entrance then across those assembled. He was on duty, watching, protecting the delegation from the Temple, yet, for a moment, he looked at her and only her. 

Red and gold heat built through the audience, driving them apart then forging them back together as one.

Snap. Metal meeting, the rough grind or screech of a blade sliding along another or deflected off armor, clanging when dropped to the floor from lifeless fingers, a hiss of a dagger piercing through a slit of a plate helm, the subtle cocking of a pistol followed by the trigger pull. 

Lyrics caressed their minds, speaking of desires met if prices were paid. Each word pitched perfectly making one wonder what would be to high a cost for what the music promised.  

Snap. A clawed hand closing around her throat pushing her back along the smooth marble of the main terrace, her legs forced wide then guided over leather spaulders, fel eyes looking up into her own as she smiled a bratty little smile back, a malformed tongue rolling along the Kaldorei’s lips exposing long fangs, the tearing of silk.

Bass pounding deeper, every organ seeking to chase the beat that is already altering the delicate balance of how a being was created.

Snap. The floor was coated in blood, intestines and the gore that spilled from the body cavities of the dead strewn about like a child’s collection of toy soldiers thrown against a wall. 

A wave of lyrics pounded into the crowd, fear and revulsion rivaled with curiosity and a magnetic pull, the need to hear what the next line was a compulsion.

Snap. A delegation, a proud Sin’dorei flanked by guards of his own race and Kaldorei both. The demons came next, felhounds walking in perfect alignment collars connected to flaming chains held by a sayaad, a shivarra walking proudly followed by a succubus and incubus in collars much like the fel hounds, two observers bobbed pupils darted side to side. Finally came the people, more guards robed and cowled figures and the servants, no one of status would ever travel without them.

A pregnant pause in the composition drawing breath from the lungs carrying it to the ceiling diving, captured on a wave of sound that poured back into the lungs filling a person with lies of immortality.

Snap. Prince Keal’thas’s deep voice echoing through the entire keep. “Energy, power, my people are addicted to it. A dependence made manifest after the Sunwell was destroyed. Welcome to the future! A pity you are too late to stop it. No one can stop me now. Selama Ashal’anore.”

The shivarra’s voice lowered to a pitch that matched the drums in the undercurrent of structure, all of the power fading in to spill into a hushed moment.

Snap. Her hand playing through purple black hair, the giant elven lover with his head on her lap while she laid upon a chaise. Throat sore, she would not be singing for at least a handful of days, his rumbling voice offered an apology that she brushed aside with a harsh laugh. They relaxed together and watched the stars while he told her all about the Black Temple and the vision he felt Illidan inspired.

Voice and melody spiraled, a dance of a hawk spiraling upward together before dropping onto unsuspecting prey.

Snap. Running from the ballroom, dancer’s steps light as she bolted down back corridors now empty until she faced a towering human in blue and silver barring her path, advancing with equal measures of hate, lust and battle madness, “The only good elf is a dead elf.” Dropping to a knee, hoping to rush past as he was sure to accept her submission. The sound of his sword being drawn sent her scrambling back, eyes wide with panic. Her body moved over a broken spear and she kicked it at his feet, he stumbled and fell allowing her time to turn and slip into another hallway while he tried to regain his feet. 

Picking up, the pounding throb of intensity cresting into the wave the song began with before it came slamming back into a trough that scraped low and rolled turmoil through a soul damaging it forever in the span of a handful of words before it faded out.

Snap.  Crossing the room, bodies everywhere, something squished under her foot and clung to it. A woman reached out for her, “Help me…” She pivoted away from the grasping hand, no one was going to slow her. The black mace rose and she sprinted, throwing herself forward tackling her mother where she remained rooted in place. The overhand blow began to fall, what would have been a killing blow glanced across the side of her mother’s head. 

This was the song that would haunt her dreams forever. 

Bea Miller - Playground  | Arcane League of Legends | Riot Games Music